With My Dog Eyes: A Novel by Hilda Hilst Read Free Book Online Page B

Real hard is the best way to go, sir, way better than hard up. I get it, says Amós. No, you didn’t get it, says the big galoot, only I get it. Fine, I’m going, says Amós, leaving the money on the counter. Where you think you’re going, dumbass, you afraid you can’t keep up with me? No, it’s not that, I’ve just got to get going. Theguy at the counter: that’s enough, Meathead, the guy buys you a beer and you’re getting on his case? Meathead pulls a knife, Amós lifts his arm to protect his face. Asks: why? Meathead takes a second to brandish the knife, takes a few leaps backwards and shouts from the pavement: because it’s harder, dumbass, way harder than hard up, and you there laughing at me the whole time. (And so that was it, I’m still smiling in that way I don’t notice.) The man takes off. It’s over. Are you hurt? No, he didn’t even graze me. Full of crazies around here, man, the world is full of ’em. Yeah, seems so, says Amós. You’re pretty calm, a little pale but calm and in a good mood, you’re always smiling, huh? I’m going. Home.
    The doves are sleeping
    On the mind’s wake.
    Their beaks in tufts of feathers.
    Of flesh, keys cadenas
    White I persist
    In the white doves of piety.
    I persist sorrows.
    My beak twisted deep down
    Into waiting rooms, doves
    Of the pulpous forgetting
    Of myself: Finite.
    My aseptic papers. What beautiful graphic sculpture. What cleanliness. You could lick the page. Likewise with the surface of ice of the Unfounded. Amós goes to the bathroom. His pajamas still light green. From where I watch, Amós looks like just an elegant pair of pajamas. Initials AK, interlaced on the lapel. Confusing as a monogram. So many jagged prongs. Amanda’s idea, most likely. He hesitates on the doorjamb. Locks himself in. An instant of vertigo and he puts his hands on the tiles, leaning his forehead against the chill. He can hear what Amanda says to Míriam, the one he calls hot butt.
    Amanda: now he says that he’s only okay in the bathroom, watching the ants.
    Míriam: you have ants in the bathroom?
    Amanda: those tiny ones. the worst thing is spiders.
    Míriam: you have spiders in the bathroom?
    Amanda: of course not, Míriam, Amós says there are, that they’re geniuses, brilliant thinkers.
    Míriam: you better call the doctor.
    Amanda: ants spiders childhood dogs sows and mathematicians. leave him be, in a time of madness, a time of death. Standing, near the sink, in front of the mirror. He unbuttons his pajama shirt. Runs his fingers over his thin chest. It’s hot. A fever, he thinks. And that paradise in his eyes? Paradise? Splendor and emptiness. How did theUnfounded plan my death? Birds and roots. The highest and the deepest. Shall we look for a tree for our wings? For our growth. I remain mute. I read somewhere that they split the vocal cords of guinea pigs. So that you can’t hear the screams. The howls. I remain mute. Throat swollen with screams but I am amputated. The slit ends nevertheless blackened at the tips, sounds softer than pianissimo, fingers over shamrocks, tiptoeing so as not to disturb the sleep of men. Is there a face exactly like mine? A croaking hoarseness, as unable and despairing as mine? Vertiginous-precise landscapes done with a Japanese paintbrush, and in them I listen to the sound of my own crippled gait. I cross the rectangle diagonally. Beside your portrait, Life. The facts. Acts. Sometimes we cling to the stones, other times we merely rest upon them. Some stone or another tumbles down upon our face if we gaze On High. We pass over to the other side. Of the triangle now. It wasn’t the flesh that was harmed, no. Stones and shatterings. The sinuous slowly invading the rigid hypothetical track of equations. An
S
of sweet seduction. Of Shadow, of Sorbet, of Solution until, a thousand steps later, feet are burned in dunes of sun.
    Designifying
    I am digging out screams
    Burying height and hauteur.
    My whole soft-hard
    Also spies the wall.