‘The most striking account of aging, grieving and dwelling you’ll read. More honest for its strangeness than any conventional text’

HOLLY PESTER, AUTHOR OF THE LODGERS

‘One of the great achievements of Hilst’s fiction is… the way it challenges and provokes, with a seriousness and irreverence, a comedy and bleakness all its own’

MUSIC AND LITERATURE

THE
OBSCENE
MADAME D

HILDA
HILST

TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE
BY NATHANAËL AND RACHEL
GONTIJO ARAUJO

WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY JOHN KEENE

PUSHKIN PRESS CLASSICS

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Epigraph

Dedication

The Obscene Madame D

Available and Coming Soon From Pushkin Press Classics

About the Authors

Copyright

THE
OBSCENE
MADAME D

Introduction

John Keene

Man becomes animal, but he does not become so
without the animal simultaneously becoming spirit,
the spirit of man, the physical spirit of man presented in the
mirror as Eumenides or fate.

—GILLES DELEUZE

“Le corps, la viande et l’esprit, le devenir-animal”

Suffering was much easier.

—ADÉLIA PRADO

“Episode”

How possible is it to know the self when the self is seemingly unknowable? This is one of the chief questions that Hilda Hilst poses in her extraordinary and extraordinarily strange novel The Obscene Madame D. But it is only one of many questions this work raises, or better casts forth in existential terms, as it plumbs the experiences, the depths of experience to be more exact, of its protagonist and main narrator, Hillé. We might begin with the answer that Hillé’s husband, Ehud, states quite clearly of his spouse, defining her epistemological method: she chooses the path of radical abjection, of herself and others, to approach and achieve that sought-after self-knowledge, but not abjection in the sense of negation or abnegation. For Hillé’s approach is antithetical to that of the Platonism of The Symposium, that shedding of the body toward the achievement of the purity and beauty of the gods. It also is antithetical to the self-negation of the Christian martyrs, or the abnegation of Simone Weil. Instead, Hillé’s method is closer perhaps to the Sade of Justine, or the Lispector of the stories and The Passion According to G. H. It is knowledge fashioned, if that word might be employed with utmost irony, out of the messiest, basest corporeality, out of obscene animality. Out of dereliction—the eponymous “D” of the title—unto death. Dereliction of sociality in all its forms, dereliction of Ehud and of their marriage, dereliction of herself, of life itself. Dereliction, we might even argue, of the reader. For in The Obscene Madame D, Hilst seduces and then abandons the reader to the fitful filth of Hillé’s queer quasi-existence, her acts or non-acts, her roiling, untethered, ever-searching quest. Her dereliction and the knowledge it produces, or at least aims to produce, become ours.

The Obscene Madame D opens with an untitled lyric whose sentiment reads as a hymn to sacrifice: “To be able to die / I disarm the traps / I stretch out between the walls / In ruin... Because this is necessary / For you to live.” This is as clear a précis as the reader will get: for the beloved to live, the speaker must die. But who is this speaker? It is very likely the “incestuous theophagite,” devourer of God, Ms. “Nothingness” and the “Name of No One” herself, a being akin to Sartre’s néant but without his unity of subjectivity, as Hilst quickly makes clear. Nor is this nihilism as we might usually understand it, but instead a foundation for self-construction. Hillé is married, or was married; Ehud, her husband, is alive, or was alive; the narrative unfolds—for it is as intricate in its shape as origami—in present time, or in the past. What is more overtly fixed is the delimitation of Hillé’s physical space, in the “recess under the stairs,” to which she remanded herself while her husband was still alive “a year ago,” this figure capturing the affective box in which she has placed and finds herself, from which the novel proceeds, as conversation, argument, rant, and, a few more pages in, as carnivalesque polyphony when the neighbors, from whom Hillé, lapsed believer and writher in the muck of her degraded experience, has hidden, peer in upon her, in fascination and horror. That is, when they are not scared off by her porcine shrieks and grunts, by the grotesque masks she hangs, like totems, in her windows.

Ehud, which means “love” in Hebrew, is the erotic principle made flesh, in its many manifestations. Manifest yes, but moribund. Mostly before his end nears he wants, or wanted, his wife to return to some semblance of domesticity, neighborliness, hospitality. Mostly before he takes his last breath he wants or wanted her to make love with him again, to share their bodies and bed again, to “fuck,” as he repeatedly and bluntly, though lovingly, puts it. Mostly he tries or has tried to understand and explain to others, to himself, his wife’s flight into her psychological and physical cubbyhole, her departure from him into her new ideas and ways of seeing—for the word idea is related to the Greek root verb to see—into her illusions, which cannot but elude him. Ehud nevertheless attempts, up to his dying breath, to reach his wife through dialogue, conversation, the corporeality of the voice itself. Yet in life she not only does not see his decline, she is unable to and will not see him.

For Hillé is already striving for first principles, a phenomenological mode in which every aspect of the world, every sense, is pitched at and reduced to its limit point. Even language itself she interrogates, investigates, for meaning, evacuated thereof, leaving only absences that she will spend the rest of her own existence dis- and re-assembling. If Ehud’s final desire hinges on spiritual and sexual connection, Hillé, whose name has “battle woman” and “stronghold” seeded in it, has already abandoned and killed him, Hilst implies, through her main weapons in her war to know, her relentless questioning, her strategy of self-deconstruction. To resolve this crisis of knowledge she is willing to lose everything and everyone, including herself, rendering herself into the literal and not just figurative condition of being a “sow,” querying herself down to her “pulveressence.” Become-animal, become-ashes, Hillé is willing to die for it; knowledge lies in her body, but her body zeroed out to nothingness to be remade, renamed, by her alone.

The Obscene Madame D presents the challenge of how to read it in the practical sense, given that its protagonist-narrator is so utterly unreliable, and ostensibly mad, though, as suggested above, possessed of a method. This novel moreover has no plot to speak of, returning again and again to the same narrative starting point. Throughout the text, time constantly shifts and dissolves, making impossible any sense of stable temporality. Setting and perspective as well often leap about, sometimes to the point where it is hard to know where you are beyond Hillé’s gray matter, until she mentions some tiny spatial detail, a specific place marker, and the reader can then at least momentarily orient herself. There is also the question  of voice: Hillé’s voice, or voices, her unholy apostrophes, her evocations of Ehud, directly and indirectly, jar. Amidst these there is also the chorus of the many neighbors who cannot but help to catch a peek at her provocations, their scandalized and enthralled commentaries one of this novel’s delights. By the narrative’s end sentences begin to “shred,” as Hillé herself says, the linguistic thread but fragment, fraying into utterance, and silence.

For some Brazilian writers and critics, particularly of Hilst’s generation, the challenge might also include how closely to identify The Obscene Madame D’s protagonist, Hillé, as Hilst’s alter ego. It was no secret that mental instability marred the life of Hilst’s father, Apolônio de Almeida Prado Hilst, also an author, who spent large portions of his life away from his daughter in mental institutions. Mental problems also unsettled her mother, Bedecilda, towards the end of her life. Though Hilst had begun to experiment both with form and content in her poetry of the 1960s and in her plays later in that decade, and produced a prose work, Fluxo-Floema, defying genre in 1970, The Obscene Madame D marked a sharp turn in Hilst’s oeuvre toward more overtly provocative texts, sometimes to the point of scatology. In fact, with The Obscene Madame D, Hilst launched a series of works that would push the limits of taste, form, representation, and language itself; of this phase in her work, she said in 1990 that she was saying “goodbye to serious literature” altogether. Fantastical and risqué, plotless and often lacking unified consciousness or voice, full of abrupt thematic and narrative shifts, the prose hovering between lyric and song, shriek and keen, these works provoked denunciation from friends, some deeming it “filth”; there are therefore more than a few autobiographical resonances surrounding this text.

I would argue, however, that Hilst’s novel, or anti-novel, which requires the reader to enact Hillé’s narrative process of de- and re-construction, represents a Foucauldian ethics in fictional form, of becoming and un-becoming, of instability and destabilization; it is an ethics of the mutability of process, true in many ways, despite its exaggeration, to life itself, and thus suggests an aesthetics which, once assimilated, orients the reader quite effectively. The novel’s aesthetics also reveal much more fully Hilst’s authorial vision, indicating the direction in which she ventured in the final prose works of her career. To put it another way, The Obscene Madame D’s experimental form, its defamiliarizing prose, its continuous polyvocality, and its insistent philosophizing offer a way of reading and entering a work whose central principle is un-making as a path to self-making, dereliction as the compass to navigating what looks at first unnavigable. Hilst places us, the readers, at the very core of Hillé/Madame D’s dereliction, allowing us to hear and feel and see, to witness her battles with her various selves, her importuning and imprecations, her constant dis-membering and re-membering, her means through which she might begin to understand. “A horror that became comprehension, what Hillé was.” An epistemology, that is, indeed.

Hilda de Almeida Prado Hilst was born April 21, 1930 in Jaú, a city in the interior of São Paulo State. The only child of farmer, journalist, poet, and essayist Apolônio de Almeida Prado Hilst and Bedecilda Vaz Cardoso, she spent only a little time in this rural setting before her parents separated and her mother took her to live in the port city of Santos. During this period and often for long periods until his death her father, who suffered from schizophrenia, was frequently institutionalized in mental facilities. Hilst finally visited him in Jaú in 1946, while studying at the Escola Mackenzie (now Mackenzie Presbyterian University) in São Paulo, and this encounter, which she captures in “Carta ao Pai” (“Letter To My Father”), would echo throughout her literary works, especially her fiction. Hilst went on to study law at the Faculty of Law at the University of São Paulo (Largo São Francisco), where she befriended Lygia Fagundes Telles, who would later become an acclaimed novelist in her own right, and graduated in 1952.

Even before completing her studies, Hilst began publishing her poetry, beginning with Presságio in 1950. Other early volumes include Balada de Alzira (1951), Balada do Festival (1955), Roteiro do Silêncio (1959), and Trovas de muito amor para um amado senhor (1959), the last of which inspired her cousin José Antônio de Almeida Prado to compose his “Canção para soprano e piano.” Composers who also drew from her poetry included Adiron Barbosa and Gilberto Mendes. Her volume Sete cantos do poeta para o anjo (1962), received the Prêmio PEN Clube de São Paulo. In the late 1960s, Hilst turned to dramaturgy, writing eight dramatic works over a series of two years. Her plays begin with A possessa and O rato no muro in 1967, and include O verdugo in 1969, which received the Prêmio Anchieta, at the time one of Brazil’s major literary prizes.

Hilst started publishing prose in 1970 with Fluxo-Floema, the first of a series of works that took up the themes of the plays, while erasing the boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, marking a new phase in her work. Subsequent prose works followed: the novel Qadós (1973), the collection Júbilo, Memória, Noviciada da Paixão (1974), her Ficções (1977), which was named the best book of the year by the Associação Paulista dos Críticos de Arte (APCA Prize), A obscena senhora D (1982), and Cantares de perda e predileção (1983), which the Câmara Brasileira do Livro awarded one of the country’s highest literary prizes, the Prêmio Jabuti, in 1984. After The Obscene Madame D, Hilst published O caderno rosa de Lori Lamby in 1990, followed that same year by Contos d’escárnio/Textos grotescos e Alcoólicos, and then Cartas de um sedutor (1991) and Bufólicas (1992). Selections of these and her other works can be found both on the website she set up in 1999, with the assistance of Yuri Vieira dos Santos, http://www.angelfire.com/ri/casadosol/hhilst.html, and on the Instituto Hilda Hilst’s site, at http://www.hildahilst.com.br/.

In 1966, Hilst had moved to Casa do Sol, an estate on land owned by her mother near the industrial city of Campinas, south of São Paulo. Initially settling there with sculptor Dante Cesarini, she devoted herself to her work, at the same time transforming her home into a social hub for fellow writers, visual artists and musicians. Over the last twenty years of her life, she saw the reissues of many of her works of poetry, drama and fiction, and she was awarded the 47th edition of the Moinho Santista Prize, for poetry, in 2002. A year later, the APCA awarded her its Grand Critics’ Prize for her Obras completas (Complete Works). Hilst died on February 4, 2004, in Campinas.

REFERENCES

Deneval Siqueira de Azevedo Filho, A Bela, A Fera e A Santa Sem a Saia: ensaios sobre Hilda Hilst. Vitória: GM Gráfica e Editora, 2007.

Alcir Pécora (org.), Luisa Destri, Cristiano Diniz, and Sonia Purceno. Por que Ler Hilda Hilst. São Paulo: Editora Globo, 2010.

Vera Queiroz, Hilda Hilst: Três Leituras. Florianópolis: Mulheres, 2000.

I breathe and pursue
a light of other lives.

And though the windows close, my father,
The day will surely rise.

I dedicate this work, like the previous Da Morte. Odes Mínimas, and all my future works, if there are any, to the memory of Ernest Becker, for whom I feel unrestrained vehement and passionate admiration.

H.H.

THE
OBSCENE
MADAME D

To be able to die

I keep the insults and sarcasms

Between the silks of mourning.

To be able to die

I disarm the traps

I stretch out between the walls

In ruin.

To be able to die

I wear batiste

And direct my eyes

Toward new lives.

To be able to die with appetite

I cover myself with promises

Of memory.

Because this is necessary

For you to live.

I saw myself removed from the center of a thing I don’t know how to name, but this is certainly no reason for me to go to the sacristy, I, Hillé, incestuous theophagite, also known by Ehud as Madame D, I, Nothingness, Name of No One, I in search of light, sixty years in silent blindness, spent seeking the sense of things. Dereliction, Ehud would say, Dereliction—once and for all, Hillé—signifies abandonment, neglect, and why do you ask again each day and you never remember, from now on, I will call you Madame D. D for Dereliction, do you hear? Abandonment, neglect, my soul forever in constant emptiness, I sought after names, I palpated angles, nooks, I caressed hems, looking inside, go figure, curls, wefts, twists, at the bottoms of trousers, in the knots, the visible quotidians, the insignificant absurd, in the minima, the light one day, the understanding of us all destiny, one day I will understand, Ehud

understand what? 

life, death, these whys

listen Madame D, if instead of doing commerce with the divine, instead of these luxurious thoughts, you made me some coffee, uhn? And he palpated, running his fingers across my hips, my thighs, pressing his mouth against the hairs at the most intimate of me, Ehud’s lips hard and opening supple humid barely had he touched me, I said listen wait, I want so much to speak with you, no, Ehud, no, not now, please, I want to speak to you of the death of Ivan Illich, of that man’s solitude, of the multiple nothings of the day-to-day which go consuming the best part of us, I want to speak to you of the burden when old age comes, of the disappearance, of that thing which doesn’t exist but is raw, alive, Time. Now that Ehud is dead, it will be more difficult for me to live in my recess under the stairs, he was still alive a year ago when I granted myself that corner in the house, he was still saying several little things on his way up the stairs

so you’ve decided to settle like that under the stairs, Madame D?

Do you hear me, Hillé, listen, I don’t want to upset you, but the answer isn’t there, do you understand? neither in the recess under the stairs nor on the first step here, at the top, do you really understand that there is no answer? No, I did not understand and I do not understand, in the breath of people, in one breath, in a more convulsed eye, in a cry, in a step taken in error, in, who knows, the fumes of manure, dry things, one day one day one day

When Ehud died, the fish in the little aquarium also died, so I cut out two brown paper fish, I have them here with me in my recess under the stairs, they are there in the water, in the aquarium, they aren’t the same, every week I cut new fish out of brown paper, I don’t want to see things that are too alive anymore, shimmering fish or pomegranates, or oranges and other succulents, I don’t want anymore.

Every month I ingested the body of God, not in the way one swallows green peas or agrostis, or swallows swords, I ingested the body of God the way people do when they know they are swallowing the More, the All, the Incommensurable, for not believing in finitude I would lose myself in absolute infinity.

lie down, open yourself, pretend not to want to but you do, give me your hand, touch yourself, you’re all wet, so open up, Hillé, hold me, please me

I ingested the body of God and I must continue, I did it because I believed, but nonetheless I didn’t always understand, I contemplated this pig-world and I thought to myself; He has nothing, That One, but nothing to do with this, This One inside has nothing to do with this, This-One, the Luminous, the Vehement, the Name, I ingested deeply, salivating, licking my lips I demanded: make it such that I understand, that’s all. Really all, Madame D? Understand the play-thing of the Mad Child, just imagine, Hillé, or imagine the sinister pastimes of a mad child, or imagine children playing with little cats, rats, with sad errant bitches, come to me, oh, little children, what do we know of little children? How could he speak like this, he who said he knew so many things?

House of the Sow, that is what they call my house now, I am now the wife of that Porcine Child Builder of the World, I open the window chanting howls, I snarl expletives at the company at large, I roll my eyes in their orbits behind the mask, didn’t I tell you that I cut ovals out of the oakum and adjust them to my face? That I draw in black eyebrows, eyes, white gaping mouths? There are masks like groins pricked with yellow hairs (cardboard tubes, painted nails), there is a mask made of dung and soot, a mouth full of teeth, there is a disastered remainder of me, a sort of female-individual who is trying to understand the half-light, cruelty—black squares dotted with black—a female-someone who evolves overhead in the midst of people, stares at them, attaches to the aqueous of corneas, to the blasted splendor

Hillé, people find your way of looking more and more strange 

what way?

you know very well

it’s that I don’t understand

what don’t you understand?

I don’t understand the eye, and I’m trying to get closer.

I don’t understand the body either, that caltrop, nor the bloody logic of days, nor the faces that stare me down in this village in which I live, nor what are a house, a concept, what legs are, what is coming and going, toward where and what, Ehud, what these old women are, the howls of childhood, these spent men, what do the fools think of themselves, the children, what is thinking, what is clarity, the sonorous, what is sound, a trill, a cry, a howl, what’s a wing uhn? I file my nails in the dark, I cock my ears, I am leaned with my back against the partition under the stairs, I listen to myself, there are living beings inside, beyond the word, they express themselves but I don’t understand, they palpitate, breathe, there is a code in the middle, an immense umbilicus, it dilates, tries to speak to me, I sound myself attentively, folded into myself, winds flowers astonished birds, my name is Hillé, mein name Madame D, Ehud is my husband, mio marito, mi hombre, what is a man? 

listen, Hillé, the people in the village, do you hear me Madame D?

yes

then listen, the people here, in the village, ask me every day where you are, they see me deliver the milk, the meat, the flowers that I bring you, they want to know why your blinds are always closed, I try to explain that Madame D is a bit complicated, make an effort to speak a word to them from time to time, do you hear me Hillé? I’m sick of the whispers, of doors ajar when I come up the street, I’m sick of it, sick, do you hear me? I love you, Hillé, are you listening?

yes

look, this cloistering of yourself has a lot to do with the body, people need to fuck, are you listening, Hillé? I love you, do you hear me? didn’t we used to fuck, Madame D, we would fuck before you opted for that blasted recess under the stairs?

yes

and you liked it. I remember nights when you would make coffee, the white housecoat you would slip on afterwards, your breasts showed, your breasts didn’t sag, what are you doing, eh? listen, Madame D, I’m coming down, do you hear my steps, slowly, on the stairs?

yes

okay then, I’m coming down, listen, I can very well fuck in that ridiculous cupboard

don’t come, Ehud, I can make coffee and the white house-coat is here and my breasts didn’t sag, it’s almost worrisome, but don’t come, Ehud, I cannot dispose of something I don’t know, I don’t know what are a body and hands a mouth a sex, I don’t know anything about you, Ehud, other than you are at this moment sitting on a step and speaking words to me, I have never known anything, that’s it, I never knew

and yet you slept with me, even without knowing 

yes

always asking questions but you slept.

yes

which means that we will never screw again?

I don’t know

He climbs back up the stairs, to the bedroom, he is very upright, thin, long-limbed, his eyebrows bristle, he scratches the fat of his jowl with his index, the exact gesture he had as a child, there is a pinkish mark in this small space, his cheek pale and the mark, a scratch. Scar. A cat. And what does it mean for Ehud to no longer be there? What does it mean to be dead? The mark, the tiny little scratch on the pale cheek, the scar, has it moved over to another face? To be no more. If Ehud did exist one day he continues to be, if he never existed, IT IS FOREVER IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO BE, but before being Ehud he Was not and he would then have existed without being? The hours. Ecstasy. Dryness. Stung before the outdoors, I lapped the air, colors, nuances, and I stopped breathing before certain ochres, the veins of certain leaves, before the smallest of leopards, before the gray-white feathers that fell from the roof, gray of a stony gray, a shimmering silver-gray, and having seen, having been what I was, am I this one now? How can I have been Hillé, vast, and plunging fingers into the matter of the world, how, having been, can I have lost she who was, and be today who I am?

Who names the world for me? To be here on Earth, the existence of the Earth, being born, deciphering oneself and learning the adequate language of others, doing well

I am not doing well, Ehud

no one is doing well, death is at work in each of us 

Before there were illusions, no? We inhabited those illusions.

Ehud, and if I sewed silk masks, fitted, elegant, if, for example, I were serene I would go out with the mask of serenity, light, a half-smile, several small brush strokes, all the serene people would wear the same sort of mask, masks of hatred, of “I am not available”, masks of grief, masks of “I will not come to terms with”, there would be no point asking how are you just fine etc., it would all be inscribed on the face.

I don’t come to terms with people, with the world, the sun out there is not a sun of gold, I want to go without end and I search for you, I vomit, Porcine Child, I gallop buffalo zebra giraffe from the beginnings, I crumple brutally on my four hoofs, and I slump breathless in the grass, I am a very fat animal, humid, lucid, who continues to search for you, now I don’t articulate, but I am also not mute, some roars, some strident violent, come out of my throat—buffalo at present I dive—some darkness

Madame D, the vital comprehension of life is to contain the heart. make me a coffee

And in the darkness, I buffalo do not fear, I am my own master, I don’t know what darkness is but I accommodate it, the water strokes my flanks, I slide into myself, the enchantment of a snout in waters, I don’t sense you, I vibrate with my four hooves, I am the master of my own body, my great hard body, buffalo, do I know death? buffalo, do I stalk infinity?

contain the heart, is that what you said? 

I also asked you for a coffee

One day I was told: your metaphysical obsessions are of no interest to us, Madame D, let’s speak of man here and now. how intelligent these people are, how modern, obscene, their big excited asses in front of their television sets, avid for fresh news, two or three modernists controlling the world, gold pouring out through deodorized holes, a vibrant modernist logorrhea, the beautiful relaxation, legs crossed oh so relaxedly in front of the video, the soul shhhh! death shhhh! let us speak of the here and now.

Are you talking to yourself now, Madame D? you know, Hillé, you’ve got to see people, you’ve got to fuck me, and pull yourself together a bit, the other day I saw a long skirt the kind you wear but ravishing, the fabric between purple and golden yellow, crimson scallops, I went into the boutique, I wanted to buy it for you, it would suit your wife very well, said the salesgirl, is she big? thin? I said, well, neither very big nor very thin, she’s blond, she has freckles, I couldn’t mention hard breasts but I did say she has a pretty bust, ah, I did say that, an observation altogether beside the point in the matter of a skirt, but I did say it, in that case, Sir, if she is blonde, she will be adorable in this layering of colors, I was about to buy it when I noticed several small pulls, it was as though, touching the fabric the skirt had been burned by the sun in the window, the skirt had the air of something already used, as though it had been worn, and so I gave up, but there must be others, say, wouldn’t you like it?

When I’m zebu I also move about in stripes, I’m a sight for sore eyes, I mean that your gaze would not be very illuminated if you were to look at me, I go about head down, endlessly busy nosing about, searching along the ground, my chops have an endless need for grass, I have the look when I raise my head of someone who doesn’t see, I search like someone who isn’t searching, I run when the others run at the sound of the voice of man gee up gee up, something raw hard like stone the voice of man, what an odor the odor of man, when giraffe I see at a much greater height, I curl up, bath-house of languor, giraffe I huddle up folded over myself in the closet under the stairs, giraffe I seek you out nearby, conceivable for Hillé licking to be buffalo zebu giraffe, conceivable for someone to be several and at the same time nothing, to look upon the world just as one discovers the new, grossness, the coagulated, and while looking in this way still have eyes that are misty, unbearable, opaque

madame D, madame D, look, two little buns for you, I made them myself, it’s me, your neighbor, do you remember? listen madame D, you cannot shut yourself away like that, death is something for me there’s no recipe, y’know, he’d be sad, monsieur Ehud, to see you like this, he’s dead for sure, death takes all of us, still you could collaborate some with your neighborhood, couldn’t you? all those faces you put on when you decide to open the window frighten my children, ow ow! madame D, stop doing that, that behavior befits a shameless woman, ah! what’s this, madona, showing your privates now, hey Antonia! hey Tunico! all I did was bring her bread and look at how she’s done herself up, she’s all naked, oh Blessed Virgin! she’s lost her marbles, should be handed over to the police that woman

who told you to go, Luzia, through that woman’s door, eh, who told you? if she got naked she is in her house, come back home woman, forget about the bread, can’t you see the devil’s got a hold of her? sow, exhibitionist bitch, a small mercy she only shows her privates in her hovel

that’s not true, and the enormous masks she displays in the window, who has the right to frighten the world like that?

say Luzia, your behind frightens people too

and your ass, your trap just the same

your fetid toothless mouth too

jesus the neighbors have lost their minds 

look at the nun passing by

look at the doctor with his lady

look at the big ass on the doctor’s lady

In the eyes of the village, of these practically adjoining houses, in the midst of all these people I’m like a giant graying sow, for many of those I have known I’m a little red sow and questioning, prowling around the tables and in corners, burrowing flesh and skeleton trying to reach the tender, the buried, the sparkling white of your bones, for my mother I was only ever a question, pride, paradox, whereas Hillé before her father had always been the secret, attentiveness, a conch, what is passion? what is shadow? I question you and supply the answer myself: passion, Hillé, is the aorta spurting voluptuous and illusion, it’s the mouth enunciating the world, purpuric on your cushion of emotions, scarlet on your life, passion is that opening in your chest, it’s also your desert. And shadow, Hillé, is our step, our desperate ascent. And for Ehud, Hillé will never have been any more than a letter, the first letter, D, of Dereliction, a tender curve clutching a cock, its verticality unceasingly quelled, gate, latch, gnawed lock. Texts, words, and the sudden hand of the Porcine Child obstructing my mouth, filling it with earth, straw, small pebbles. I suffocate in this abyss, I grew up searching, I gazed at the gazes of animals facing the sun, steps of the old stairway, I gazed at the back leaned against the wall and my eye in that eye, I saw questions float in those gellified waters; others, dead for so long, had sedimented that eye, and I entered into the body of the horse, the pig, the dog, held my own face and cried

what’s wrong, Hillé?

the eye of the beasts, mother

what’s wrong with the eye of the beasts? 

the eye of the beasts is a dead question.

Later I saw the eyes of men, pomp and furia, and a thousand dead questions and pigeons encircling a void, and I saw a long tunnel carpeted with eyes, wings and down, and walked inside the eye of those men, terror bellowed; geographies of nothingness, cold, glacial, bloody claws quibbled over gold, a maelstrom of people, lips dry, their ribs exposed, and surrounding the vortex men in coattails and opera hats, out of their hard breasts came words Lie, Call-Hunting, Death, Hypocrisy, I saw the Porcine Child shiver with pleasure before the All, his limp little hands reverberated in the oily half-light, narrow fingers tendered as high as possible, in search of whom? His twin brother petrified, eyes blind, head dangling over his chest, the body, a nacreous, pearled outgrowth.

I have come, Madame D, at the request of the village, to confess you and to give you communion, you don’t want me to? my name is

where does Evil come from, Father?

misterium iniquitatis, Madame D, we have been struggling for millenia to find the answer, good and evil, all coexist, the body of Evil is separate from the divine

who created the body of Evil?

Madame D, Evil was not created, it took place, burns like the red poker, and when it wants it cools, turns to frost, turns to snow, it has many masks, and speaking of masks, would you mind getting rid of yours and bringing peace back to the neighborhood?

and what is the body of Evil like? 

gold and darkness

I only have drab things, brown fish, dried fruit, soot, dung and the clay of which I am made: flesh

why do you always keep your blinds closed?

and why should I open them?

and why must you open them with such brutality frightening the people with your screaming?

it is the body that screams these sad lifeless spaces

why do you not feed your body goodness by accepting the kindness of others?

because the body is dead 

and the soul?

the soul is the Earth’s guest, it seeks, it looks into your eyes at this moment and it sees you chubby with questions

I am a man similar to all men, Madame D

then get out of here, out! go away! man similar to all men 

I open the blinds as he moves away, I invent croakings, awkward groans, I don the mask with a snout and yellow hairs (cardboard tubes, painted nails), I belch a spray of gravely, erudite insults, some of which are as heavy as sedimented rocks, some pale, pointed and fine, others thick as props that serve to contain furious bulls, dry as the sex of old women, drenched as the sex of young bitches, fulgurating with cataracts in a wealth of draperies, I make myself hoarse, and all the neighbors move away from the window, I grumble, I bark, I wail like a child, and then shut myself in with a crash. I stretch out on the straw in my recess under the stairs, I grope the brown fish in the aquarium, they fritter away, I’ll have to cut up new ones, maybe I should use thicker paper so that they last longer in the water, ah, this world! why was I not made of crust and callous instead of flesh, a matter composed of ductile fibers, hard, drawn, tendered like the juxtaposed cords of a bow, bound among themselves, Jonathan and David fused, cords of another flesh, a mass weighing upon Hillé, hardy, indefectible, I would put up with the caducity of the world, the brutality, the savagery, the bestiality of this century, the stench of the earth, I could put up with it with weighty Jonathan and David fused on the flesh, their raw retinas, their mirrored corneas, their thousand dead questions. I could? I could stand for my extenuated, gelatinous chest to shelter that mass of detritus, to accommodate this unstoppable march toward death, the vain gesture indefinitely suspended in the horror of reaching you, Porcine Child? I could stand to be lacerated alive, could stand the incomprehensible spiral that has me repeating day after day the same steps, the same words and, with an eye on the books, so many innumerable truths thrown into the toilet basin, so many squalid lies brandished like truths, sterile farces and repetitions, dressings of nothingness that are the quotidian of the man of this century? and despite this dust of ash and blindness, the abortion of days, of light missing at the heart of my own matter, the vast unbearable and profound nostalgia of having loved orgasm, earth, the flesh of the other, the hairs, salt, the boat that carried me away, several mornings of quietude and knowledge, certain too-brief bitter tasting afternoons exhaling their sap in our faces, the rosy raw face of youth, and another face with its tender maturity absorbing, without haste, what the eyes saw, slowly, the ears listening without resentment.

you should have married someone else 

why?

these doctors, smooth talkers, the ones that philosophize, we should love one another, Hillé, love one another for life I would say to you: you are twenty years old at the time, I’m twenty-five, know that all of that will only have one time, we won’t ever be you twenty and me twenty-five again, we’ll be fifty and fifty-five, and you will be sad for having wasted all those years asking so many questions, think of what you’ll be at sixty years. I’ll be dead.

why?

causa mortis? the accumulation of questions from his wife Hillé.

Together we climbed the stairs of this same stairwell. the bed. orgasm. The ardor. and then sleep, Ehud’s calm. his silly dreams? modesty. humility. and anger many times: life, death, your comings and goings from one to the other, forget, take my cock, good god, and forget, I love you, crazy woman. Handsome Ehud. Slender, lank, he walked as though he always knew he would find each thing in its place, as though time sought shelter in him, Ehud, and that he was its master. Why did he choose me? Maybe he believed at the beginning that I would have answers, and thus that he would know?

whatever you seek, Hillé, you will find. 

how do you know?

because nothing nor anyone can stand to be persecuted to such a degree

what does it mean, Ehud, Dereliction?

come, let’s go look together, Dereliction, Dereliction, oh, here: from the Latin, derelictione, Abandon, that’s it; Distress, Abandon. Why?

because today I fell upon that word and it made me sad 

sad? without even knowing what it meant?

DERELICTION. no, it doesn’t seem sad, maybe because the first two syllables remind me of defeat, and instruction is always something annoying. No, it isn’t sad, it’s even a pretty word. Distress, Abandon, it is thus, defenseless, that you left us. Porcine Child, some place somewhere, in those beyonds, elsewhere, so far, where you are, wearing yourself out, inventing sophisticated machineries of flesh, and daring to delight on the seventh day: that man has a brain but can reach nothing, that he feels love but is never fulfilled, that I know I exist but never know anything of the reason for my most infinitesimal gestures, that I feel the paroxysm of hate and horror to the point at which it consumes and liberates me, that little by little I stop wanting to procreate and instead eat ass, that I crawl starved of all of my senses, that you rotten, men, that you rotten, and decomposed, live body of worms, urn of ashes thereafter, that your peers forget you, that I forget and shout into eternity in search of a better idea of a new gangling geometry, more ecstasy for my plenitude of matter, liquors and oysters

come, come quickly, Hillé, a tiny very delicate beast is swallowing another

chase it away, Ehud, don’t let it, stop it, stop it

don’t yell, think, who am I to decide of the life or the hunger of another?

Who am I to forget you Precious Child, Glistening Divinoid Head, if you have never partaken of the mire that you created? oh! don’t they all say that He is in everything, in the dagger, in the bedsores, in abstract mathematics, in the sink, in the small dead children and in the grace of your bumpkin, in plutonium and actinium, in this straw in my recess under the stars, in dead Ehud. Is he in you, Ehud, now that you are dead? how can he be the Precious Child within dead Ehud? he wriggles, He grows, He has colors, the body of God in dead Ehud is difficult to make out for the eye of the living, we veil our face and turn away, look for a protective tissue for our nose, dead Ehud invested by God is a whole of repulsive flesh, a gaping wound glistening with filth, Ehud, your nails impeccably brushed every day, your smooth mucosa, the stomach you watched, your very straight scapula, your feet, your very long feet, and the sober arch of your eyebrows, the small space of the flesh of your body, what are they like, Ehud, now that they are the property of the All-Powerful the small spaces of your flesh?

And your esophagus, your tongue and the hairs of your spiked eyebrows, and your pale eyelids, and your hands, your palms?

And the sex, Ehud?

if you took care of your body, Hillé, you walk stooped like a little old lady

what is the body?

if you did a bit of exercise: if for example twice a day you went up and down the little sloping street, here, in the neighborhood, you breathed deeply, kept the same rhythm, that’s what you need to do when you walk, do you remember how we walked? do you remember that bright thing you saw at the top of a little hill during our walks when we would go to the waters? and how you never tired of going up there? and what it was in the end that was shining?

yes, I remember, a little silver cap, a tiny bottle cap that sparkled like new

as are all things that shine at the top of all the hills 

you exaggerate. the Earth is not a silver bottle cap

how could it be, HIS face, eh? is it just light? a gigantic silver cap? is there a link between HE and us? is it not said that He is a FATHER? Did He not make an agreement with us? He did, He did, He is a Father, we are sons. and a FATHER, isn’t it so, must take care of his progeny, even reluctantly, watch over it? is he a faulty FATHER?

you were sweating and you wore a leaf patterned dress in blue tones, where did you stick that dress? an amber necklace, very light, did you lose it? you said: come, Ehud, hurry up, it’s shining too brightly for it to be nothing.

then I found that little cap

and it was very good, but let’s not speak of that anymore, you’ve already changed your face

I found that little cap and I screamed, isn’t that so, Ehud, and cried desperately

it’s true, but please let’s not speak of it anymore. I shouldn’t have reminded you of it, I’d forgotten the end.

howling that God was a mad child and 

let’s go to sleep, come.

A mad child, come let’s go to sleep, yes, let’s go to sleep, what is Time like, Ehud, in the hole where you are now dead? how does Time live in that hole? Darkness and spew, suddenly, sparks of a thousand colors, what is the Time the swollen, the worm, the fetid like? The fetid, what is it? What becomes of Time in the moistness of the ditch? I am asking the Mad Child: are You there with Ehud? Death, fetid, worm, ditch, swelling, are they all a part of You?

Hillé, nothing of me is an extension of you 

Did we not make an agreement?

What?

You aren’t a Father?

I know nothing of myself, how could I extend myself into another?

There was no contract?

What do you mean? You’re crazy. I live in a void of darkness, I play with bones, I’m dirty somnolent in a desert, there is nothingness and the darkness

I can’t hear you

I am saying that I sleep most of the time and that I am dirty 

What? What are you saying, my God? I can’t hear you 

That one day a light may surge from here

What?

She’s an old toad. Haven’t you seen her skin marked all over? they’re freckles. She still has nice tits. Yuck, toad tits. We can set fire to the house on the new moon. With all those practically adjoining houses? We’ll figure it out, a fire to dance with joy. Nonô in league with the devil and with the police, you know how he spends his time inserting nails into his cat’s ass? well, Nonô pissed himself when he saw her enormous mask at the window. House of the sow. Listen, I once had a pig, that pig was gold, extraordinary, tender, big like you seldom see, it responded to the name of Nhenhen, it had become so fat so tender so delicate, that we only served it for dessert. Me, you see, I ate some meat the other day, the blood in the bowl was thick, a delicacy, Lazinha was salivating, she stuffed herself until it was all over her face, she became scarlet red again just like the image of the Virgin, the one that used to be in the city where I was born, we stuffed ourselves so much that our navels were all distended, it didn’t help with sleep, I had to sleep on my side, and to fuck, my friend, I can’t tell you, me and Lazinha two drums beating, you know, Antonão, life is so full of obstacles, cunting old toad, that if we don’t stuff ourselves full of it, if we don’t take the necessary plunges into women’s holes, a clout from time to time to certain folks, some well spat spitting, a beating for the dog, those little releases, if we don’t do them, Antonão, life remains sad. that yes, and sure as fucking and eating gives good pleasure, what else is there in life? what else? after death nothing but vermin, not even tobacco to chew, there’s no fucking anymore nor anything, after death nothing more than this hunger, this darkness, do you believe, Tunico, in the souls of the departed? bullshit, the world evolved a whole lot, those things, no, that doesn’t exist. and God? look, that is the business of priests, ministers, politicians, God, they’ve got their mouths full all day long, God during the day, and at night this one’s tits, that one’s pussy, they’re the ones relishing it, do you see?

Exiguity, heat, pleasure. Move as little as possible. Say nothing. Hand on the wall. On the body. Think the body, really try. Hillé little girl gropes Ehud little boy. Toes. If we ate one another’s flesh, what taste? and a soup of ankles? And a soup of feet? We put pork’s feet in food don’t we? Why must everything die, Ehud, eh? Animals, say, why do we kill them? To eat. But eating is abominable, no? All that stuff going down the tube and later becoming mass and even later shit. Close your eyes and try to imagine your body inside. Wriggling, blood. Take the microscope. Ah, not me. What a thing, flesh, nails, hair, and such colors in there, purplish-red. Look at yourself. Where are you now? I’m looking at my stomach. It’s horrible Ehud. And you? I’m looking at my lungs. They dilate, compress. Everything enters into me, everything goes out. There’s nothing that only goes in? No. And God? God enters and goes out, Ehud? I don’t know about that. The priest says that God is inside the heart. So, look at yours, see if it’s there, inside. I’m lookin’. Is it? No. Let me listen to your heart. Lord, how it beats! Obviously, yours too, wait, let me listen. You know, Hillé, your smell is different than mine, you smell of milk. You’re crazy. Yes, I mean it. Smell yourself. My father smells good, my mother too. They wear perfume. Why? Isn’t it good for people to smell the scent of people? I don’t know. Why do people wear clothes? Is it ugly to stay naked? They say it is. Why? Look at the lizard, she’s all naked, poor thing. Ehud, listen: have you ever seen God? Me no, God preserve me, why? Oh, I don’t know, we just don’t know. Ehud, listen: will you die too? Not me. How do you know? Only old people die. You’ll be old one day too. Not me.

Sixty years. Hillé reviews, revisits the questions, her body. The body of others. What do we really know about this story, Rimbaud carrying his gold? Forty thousand francs in gold. Did he mistreat the body? He had an Abyssinian lover, he was attentive and delicate with her, he walked a lot, always hungry. After, no, after there had been that gold. Why is gold gold? Why is money money? Why am I called Hillé, and why am I on this Earth? I learned to name a great number of things, learned the names of a great number of people, but there must be a slew of things that have no name and yet they never cease to be what they are, and me if I weren’t Hillé who would I be? Someone feeling and observing the world

Someone, name of no one 

this one is nothing

this one yes is someone

I revisit, review again, a new visit, landscapes, bodies, I would have loved Franz K, we would have laughed together, together with Max and Milena we would have read our strange texts, and letters, conferences, secrets out loud, I would have loved Tausk and together we would have killed one another, the gunfire and strength, the gallows, two mutilated bodies, your eyes Tausk, your jaws, your soul, Victor, all your perdition, there would never have been answers, never, we would have marked in red our questions without possible answers, all a single question

signed: Tausk-Hillé.

With that same majestic indication on the graves, in pink granite, surrounded by a strip of flowers, everlastings and maybe, who knows, several lilies as well, and thorns so that Lou and Freud would wound themselves, ah, they wouldn’t come, that much we know, she might come in the frozen morning, her fur around her neck, Tausk-Hillé, gifted as you were, you killed yourselves?

Do you hear me, Hillé, I’m saying that I’m dirty in the midst of bones, in an obscure emptiness.

Me too, Lord, me too.

It would be good for us to wash, hairs and shadows, solitude and desolation, I also washed Ehud a few times at the end, his armpits, his thighs, his asshole, his sex, his balls, Oh Lord, do you have like we do the same fetid hole? Hidden back there, but recalling itself to you how many times a day, hidden all compressed, humble back there, but draining all vanity, impossible for man with that luxury in his back to believe himself to be a sneeze emanated from the Divine, senators, endless speeches, the polished vests of politicians, a carnation at the buttonhole, women in satin, looking askance, fussing, their permed hair, but the hole there, did you think of it? Oh hole, are you also there in your Lord? For ages we’ve been praising it to the skies the whole of it compressed. Who knows whether you have been dethroned, Lord, in favor of that hole? Do you hear me? Altars, tapers, lights, lilies, and all the way on top, an immense giant ring, a cup of granite, some folds sculpted into the marble, an onyx of great beauty, imitations of flesh, of ass works of lyric sculptors. And the specialists say that’s where Your most perfect Presence is, the summum, the samadhi, the big ham, the dish.

you called me, Ehud?

Madame D, dear Hillé, you’re muttering, eh? the secrets of the flesh are innumerable, we never know where the darkness ends, or where the light begins, listen, Hillé, would you mind making me some coffee? the intricacies of eschatology, the twists of pleasure, the tension, the tact, the patter, and all the scaled eschatologies, should be discussed with clergy, men of the church, did you happen to open the evening paper? No. You didn’t open it. Well, if you had done you would have seen hunger, the little children in Cambodia, how they eat grass, leaves, the swellings, the pains it gives them, they’re dying by the millions, if you’d watched you would also have seen how not far from here a man named Soler had his hands cut off, cut into pieces, he lost more than four liters of blood before dying, and with him a pile of others died then hanged by their feet, do you hear me, Hillé, they torture, they kill, they lynch, they shoot, Man is the great Executioner of Horror, do you hear what I said?

Yes.

Well, Lord, Precious Child, did You hear Ehud, like me? My name is Nothingness, I fabricate counterfeit faces, hands turned, I drag myself, limp, only me and the nothingness of my name, my spite, my squalid being, a Nothingness equal to Yours, rehashing my miseries, I’m trying like You to escape, rounding an emptiness, remembering. Do you have memory? Nostalgia? Were you once an other and you are now someone who still remembers what was and isn’t anymore? Have you had inestimable ideas, buried today, dunghill and compassion? Someone has addressed You with such demands? These: look, Hillé, take this sieve and use it to gather water from the river look, Hillé, do you see this knife, use it to cut this stone, pebble by pebble, and then you’ll plant and see if it grows look, Hillé, here you have some bread but you’ll only be able to eat of it if you find within it the whole grain of wheat and discover which hand picked it, look, Hillé, here is the torch and here is the flame, swallow, and thus we will know what happens in your hollows.

look Hillé the face of God 

where where?

look at the abyss and see 

I don’t see anything

lean over a bit more 

only fog and depth

that’s it. adore HIM. Condense mist and fathom and fashion a face. Res facta, calm down.

And let’s see now which sentences are appropriate to speak when I open the window to the society of the neighborhood:

your rotten asses

your unimaginable pestilence

mouths stinking of phlegm and stupidity

enormous behinds waiting their turn. for what? to shit into saucepans

armpits of excrement 

wormhole in the hollow teeth

the pig’s woody

the cow’s cunt

your kid’s paw kneading snot 

the bitch whores

the piss of squalid tramps splashing the wall

the pee of the peepee of the pipits, the droppings, the livers, listen to it croon, look at the viper’s backside, look at death eating its eyes, look at the misfortunate one, look at the skeleton licking its digit

the tadpole swallowing the die

the die in the ford’s ass, look, there at the bottom 

look at the abyss and see

I see man. listen listen, I want to tell you this story, calm down:

while she was dying the man was fornicating 

with whom?

with the maid who was taking care of her. rattles of pleasure and agony, duettos, scherzos, moderatos, sounds of zithers and saber

he was mad 

no. A man 

ok, a madman

no, a man, a healthy sex that’s all, one that doesn’t go limp when confronted with blood, with smell, for whom death and life are natural, naa-tuu-ral, everything is very natural, dying, oh dying is part of life young lady, what nonsense, ooooohhh

And while she was agonizing she would repeat: one day we’ll be together again, my love, thank you for everything, is that your hand I feel in mine?

and was it his hand?

no, I lied, it was mine, I said yes we’ll be together, imitated his voice, pink matter was coming out of her nose, I wiped away the sweat and secretions, through the walls came the howls of the other woman, whispers, nicknames, sweet talk, barking, caresses. This one agonizing and I glued my ear to her mouth, I heard: dear forgive me the misunderstanding, the refusal, the indifference of so many days, forgive the lonelinesses, the contacts with nothingness, the straw stuck to the soul, forgive me if I did not give you clarity, emotion, if when you wanted me my eyes bathed in the waters of the past.

I Hillé answered forget forget, everything is in order at present. I was lying.

I must speak because death is coming, isn’t that so? the secret goods of the soul are advancing, some heavy and grey, others brilliant, listen to me I beg of you, everything is dissipating, listen

I Hillé answered yes I’m here I’m listening

you know, sometimes we want so much to crystalize the instant in the word, translate the spark and disgust in lucid parameters, isn’t that what we want?

yes

so, I also wanted, yes I wanted to touch your fear your love your male vanity, to exist in your dream, do you hear me?

yes

wait, what are those cries now? 

eh?

as if someone were dying before me, se muere alguien? 

no, I can’t hear anything. I was lying.

listen, yes, yes, someone is agonizing before me

Dull cries like blunt knives, sobs, me muero sí, me muero, polished stones, the cold, I’ve been looking for you for years

me too.

for years I’ve wanted to have cords, a mesh of steel wire around me, for years I’ve wanted to belong, do you hear?

yes.

Ehud, your softness enveloping me, the lividity of your face, teeth saliva, spasm, alive and coarse, what a thing the body is alive and young, what gleaming within, how old are we now? twenty? twenty-two? twenty-five? the sorrow of old age that remembers, the drizzle, those crumbs on the table, was it bread? what did we have on the table?

pomegranates and oranges.

the crumbling in the body of the soul now, papers on the table, words stuck to each page, claws, cold my God, nothing penetrates my soul, words stuck to the page and not one freed itself to keep my heart, so many books and nothing in my chest, so many truths and not one in me, the gold of truths where is it? what did I seek for so long? why did I suffer so for it to have made itself into vital matter? what fire, Hillé, is this, that wells from the illuminated manuscript, leaf through it, go on, touch

yes se está muriendo, what whimpers my God, I don’t have much time left, many of those who have left are close by, it’s time, living will have been nothing but somber anguish, a black nausea

don’t talk like that, not hatred now, no, not hatred

to live is to sink with each step, how I dragged myself, what weight, what vanity, and you you were the tenderness on my bones, the rotundity on the thorns, a wealth of caresses

calm down, let me clean the wet from your face

the stickiness there, around the mouth, clean, there, it’s ok, it’s ok, but listen again, I must go on, I wanted to touch you in the hollow of the wound that life makes us, do you hear? I withheld touch to make you into pain, more pain, do you hear? oh bitch filth sow cursed that I am

don’t talk like that, not at such an hour

it isn’t the hour of death? why do you interrupt me at such an hour? be quiet, it’s my death. every time you slept with me, man, flesh was all madness and seduction, you didn’t slip on the fingers, the sex, couldn’t you feel it?

yes

life was that, feeling the body, outline, the viscera, breathing, seeing, but never understanding. never, that’s why I often refused. I wanted the thread taut up there, the thread held by the OTHER, the OTHER, do you understand?

mamma mia what OTHER?

GOD GOD, so you still don’t understand?

Little red sow, flame and darkness along the sides, little brown eyes, rojo corazón, very thin wrinkles at the groin and the back, Hillé sow, female and fear, tocaste las cumbres del amor, tocaste? Ehud twenty years old? Hillé fifteen? Ehud fifty years old?

When was that, perdition and light, without name, a rope of gold and fire splitting your means, you laid down widowed earth but Ehud touched you and you became skiff, incandescence, a thick watering, a sun of stupor also dark and violent. What was it like to be as you were being eh? to be as you were being, vivid time, being as you were being

As you were dying, Ehud, my flesh was yours, and discipline and asceticism was everything I pretended myself to be to free my heart from that devouring fire, ah, pointless pointless the long exercises, the hunger for your touch even when I refused it, so you didn’t understand? I wanted to escape, Ehud, my mouth constantly starved for your mouth, life was splendor and marvel, unparalleled glimmer when you touched me, and sinister and hiccuping and nothingness when you were absent

lama sabactani

While you were dying I was hugging you in an excess of furor, in sordid sweetness, did my soul belong to you? desire was too much for the flesh, what a big vivid unbearable flame, what a wounded flame, what an obscene dependency whispered a very cold and arrogant Hillé, another Hillé feigning meekness and languor, plump, passive, pearl on the ‘fastídio de los mármores’, leniency and languor.

do you want me? 

of course

I ask if you love me, Hillé

questions again and always questions, as though it were simple, this thing, loving, as if the breast knew of this adornment, how can I know if the soul doesn’t understand?

the soul feels

it’s flesh that feels

Arrogance. Lie. And afterwards you left and I drew your face on mine, your long body, flooded and dimmed by you I repeated words: dew, jubilation, venustas, sconvolvulante, Hillé sconbussolata, Hillé perduta

You wear a mask, love, a livid and violent mask, to look at you is to penetrate into the vortex of nothingness, may your silence make itself mine and we’ll wander together in a lacunous vastitude, that’s why I speak, speak to exorcise you, that’s why I work with words, also to exorcize myself, that the bitterness of the abysses may cease, that may break in this tide of phonemes, of syllables, that a light may break, exempt of anguish

it’s best to be quiet when your name is passion

Two Hillé, one of whom is yours Madame D, two Ehud, one showed himself daily, lightness and moodiness, the other, my own Ehud, dreamed, or were you really the one I wanted, sober, your step wide, slowness, and a lucustrian Hillé, dark, caught with the earth, the other Hillé, wind-cloud, aqueous freshness, and another between these two who made herself instant, eternal, omniapparent

seek to understand, Hillé, now that I am dying 

understand what, Ehud?

enunciate the illusions, draw yourself away from the vortex 

you’re saying?

your search has for its name madness. annihilation. scission. 

dereliction.

That too Madame D, that too. When I’m not here anymore, are you listening? when I’m not anymore, avoid silence, obscurity, seek the gesture, the caress, an other, find yourself an other, that he may know your body as I knew it, teach him if he reveals himself to be timid and awkward, search for your salvation, incite the spirit to a long voyage, push away the spirit

Take me, Primordial Mother, I am blind and at the bottom of the river, I curl up, all holes full of water, I watch exacerbated feelings file past, excessive jealousy powerlessness, misery of being, who had Hillé been if not ever a name? Hillé sickness, obsession, touch the nails of the one who is never named, introduce language and speech into the heart, take my heart, take my affected repugnance too, vomit me, yearnings, stupors, my lipping vanity, take my sixty years, my vulgar sixty years and a single inhalation, suspended, I inhaled villas, cities, names, I’ve known a head without a face, a man who had no navel, an animal who spoke and whose eyes bit, a child who in two small steps went around the world and an old man who, having, he thought, inspected the totality of the world realized on his way home that he hadn’t left the first step of his stairs, I remember having seen someone, he was supple, light, pink tinted, alone like You yourself Porcine Child, and nil, deprived of feelings, he felt absolutely nothing, one day he started running on the beach to the sea, he dove in, and he never resurfaced, I saw when describing a curve he dove head first into the water, I saw his back, his neck, and reflections, the reflections on his head, I said to myself: strange, he moved as though he felt something. Myself, Ehud, I saw a lake of gold when I touched you for the first time, and a light on your face made of small points and so diffuse that

madame D, could you please open the window a bit? just for a second, d’you know why, it’s that here there’s a man, he can make magic, d’you know Madame D, wait a minute, the man is saying things, lend your ear a bit Madame D, the man says that, who? oh yes, Asmodai, d’you know, no, Madame D, Asmodai? he says that yes, you know, good, if you know, there’s no point in saying much more, but the man says that Asmodai is there inside your chest, eh? who else, man? ’s yet another Madame D, wait a minute that his name, that guy, is more difficult, oh yeah, Astaroth! that’s it, Jesus Astaroth! that’s it, they’re both there, that’s what the man says, and he also says it’s their own fault, that they’re the ones who make Madame D like that, do you hear Madame D? Madame D?

a light on your face made of small points and so diffuse that 

and those two are something else Madame D

fuck off mind your business, or else watch your balls 

shiii, Jesus! no woman talks like that, vade retro!

what? vade retro is for those two there, to disperse the demons. 

and a light on your face made of small points and so diffuse that I awakened lips red from the shine of rubies, and I saw a stone sweat, an extensor contract, a book try to look at itself and read itself, a dream underway and a bridge under earth, what a sad thing, a bridge under earth. Scission. Annihilation. A hollow burning with light, the name of things, who holds the name of things? I leaned my forehead against your forehead, Porcine Child, two voids your eyes, two horrors, not a shadow of feeling in those two funnels, not a shadow between us of a relation

you know, Hillé, I sometimes think that we were once father and daughter, mother and daughter, brother and sister, that there were quarrels between us, and that blood ran, that I had hungered and thirsted for you, I killed you, that from your nose seeped nocturnal emanations of pain incest and violence, that you were an old lady and a young lady and a very little girl, that little bells collided in me with stridency each time I looked at you, that always, clay and silt, mirror and vastitude, you belonged to me: an infinity of flashes, clear, rapid, of both of us cut out gold on black in a pale slate and sepia light, both of us overexposed on a parapet of stone the color of earth, and then I saw myself bound, I was bound, in very white hallways and you were ten steps away from me, your voice reached me from the depths of time: remember, it’s me, you can’t have forgotten, Ehud, it’s me, and someone held you back, Hillé, before you slapped my face. It was you, yes, but at that moment I thought I was God and knowing I was God I knew that I was mad. And never, the both of us chained up like dog and bitch, never did we understand one another as existences, but your dream was mine, your blood, your life was mine

Is there room for flesh in your heart, Lord? Are there some deep veins and groans accompanied by the sound UMM? Do you know, Ehud, how to say the word intellect in Russian? It’s UMM. A ‘u’ with an ‘m’ held for a long time UMMMMMMMMM. The flesh ought to have that sound, UMM, that, Lord, is how you feel the flesh in your heart? I’m coming from the depths, I’m stuck to you, from the UMM to the flesh, a twist-stretch in the space that is ours, don’t ever separate yourself from it, don’t try, it’s blood and glue, it’s indeterminable in appearances but it’s rock crystal, living, petrified and humid at the same time, UMM, palpitating intellect, the flesh pacified in appearance, you won’t see anything of the febrilucidity if you look at me but if you touch me you catch yourself in hardened secretions, you and me, one same pellet rolled in a spiral, don’t ever separate, don’t try, I’ve laced up your ankles, I’m licking you, I rise weary, inhale your hairs, the smells, I encounter your thigh, your sex, I wanted to swallow you, Ehud, you falling in UMM into my larynx, into my entrails, my nodules, my unctuosities, I’m kneading your concepts, your purple intellect, your gaze for others, and I swallow you, Ehud, your carriage, your sufficiency, your compunction, your misunderstanding of who I am, your never-understand-anything, slide in UMM into my viscera, your blenting into me, entering undone, you’re no longer Ehud, you’re Hillé now and now I no longer fear you 

you’re whispering, eh? and everything is so simple, Hillé, a coalescent azure, a moving beyond, several falls.

what?

life, azure and coalescence. You create for yourself a real way of the cross, Hillé, the heart and the UMM are also illusions, get some rest.

I can’t, things are palpitating, they’re all palpitating, it resonates along the length of time, can’t you hear? the sounds of color, your sound, Ehud

what is my sound like?

when you walk in the house weaving lies and making yourself light, you stridulate, a uniform sound similar to the inspector’s whistle when the train is about to leave, you start, you know, to become one with the life of the train and you become the nebulous sound of the wheels, you expel the hiss of axles

the sound you make, Madame D is the UMM sound, you frighten me, you know? and then when you lie next to me and touch me, the sounds are deep, brief, if figs, when we opened them, emitted sounds it would be the sound that wells from you when you touch me

and then?

when dogs scratch at damp soil

yes, they burrow with their snouts as well, they inhale 

sniffing, something living nearby

some scratch at the earth only then to sprawl on their backs 

not you, Ehud, as though the wind, the earth, the cartilage hardened in saliva and odors touched me, tubas, flutes

you must listen to Mussorgsky, not the sonatas, not the trios or string quartets, just life, palpitation.

If you could forget, Hillé, the tensions, the cobwebs, and feel my hand without your live-death, I’m just caressing you, see, it’s the hand of a man, see how simple it is, the fingers, the warmth, I’m just caressing you and your skin your body will feel my hand as though you were bathed in water, it’s not me Ehud experienced in you, you see me as I could never see myself, I Ehud am not this that you experience in you, you’re only Hillé, Hillé that can be happy just by being touched like this, isn’t it good? close your eyes, try to imagine the emptiness, the coalescent azure, several small falls, me, a man who is touching because I love you and because the body was made to be touched, touch me too, don’t tense up, flesh is beautiful, leave the Other out of this, don’t look at me like that, the Other, we know nothing of him, Hillé, He doesn’t see you, He doesn’t hear you, He has never had any concern for you, it’s me Ehud, surge and tenderness, and avidity and moroseness as well quite often, it’s true, but it’s just a man that touches you, and let’s fuck, Madame D, that’s all it is, shit, that’s all it is

se muere alguien?

go on, come now, get undressed, take, kiss me, open your mouth, more, don’t groan like that, those groans aren’t for me, I know, it’s for the Porcine Child that you groan, for the invisible, for the light the disgust, you fornicate with that Other, don’t fuck with me, damn you, you don’t fuck with me 

oh, she’s not well, no, she’s cracked in the head, and it’s catching, do you remember when my husband blew a fuse one day when I wasn’t able to make that bacalhau, don’t you remember? he began to howl where did you put that fucking bacalhau, woman, and I was yelling shit Juvêncio, what bacalhau? because there wasn’t any bacalhau, madona, not a trace of it in the house, I was telling him calm down, we’ll go get you some, what’s gotten into you Juvêncio? and then and there, drooling, frothing at the mouth, he dropped dead. and my grandfather who had suddenly begun to hide from everyone because he thought he was a strawberry and that they were going to suck him. sure it’s catching. And when Joca put his finger in the ass of Zitinho’s kid saying it was the mouth of God

blessed virgin.

and the little black girl, do you remember? 

what little black girl?

the one who was black and went and threw herself into the lime, I’m telling you, it’s catching

Jesus, which one?

come on, the only black girl here, in the neighborhood, who turned all white

ahnnn, her, but she wasn’t crazy, she really wanted to cross over to the other side

sweet mary everyone is in a bad state, yesterday again I felt something there inside

what you need Tenth-Of-The-Month is to fuck

don’t call me Tenth-Of-The-Month, you know I don’t like it

daddy why do they call him Tenth-Of-The-Month, eh? 

because every day he screams to his wife: not today, only on the tenth

why daddy?

because his wife wants him to stick her, boy, and he only sticks when he’s light-headed, on payday: the tenth of the month

be quiet,

daddy, do you know what the epitome of patience is?

no, little cretin, what is it?

it’s shitting in a cage and waiting for the shat to sing. what a face, dad, what a face you’re making at me, I didn’t ask to be born, you’re the one who made me, and a little bird that eats rock knows what asshole it has.

Los rios, las cadenas, la cárcel, the prison of herself, sixty years, farewell Hillé, you know almost nothing about yourself, what shapes you had at fifteen, twenty years, and there, in your womb, what waters, blood, plasma, what river ran in you? what geographies drew themselves onto your face, and the face of the one who carried you in her belly, what was it like? how did she carry you, the one you inhabited? what were you like, Hillé, before love surfaced between two souls, father-mother, when he was young and wondered what woman would lie beneath his big body, what furia of words would rush to his lips, my beloved, my crazy one, light that wended its way beneath the waters, so it was you? you know, Hillé, I sometimes think that if you remain alone, if I die first, I sometimes think that you’ll have to take a young man because

yes Ehud

because you know many things, things of the soul and an immoderate knowledge

oscurece el alma

precisely, and that’s why someone maybe between twenty, twenty-five years, a little short, very sensual

Rimbaud was nineteen when he wrote what he wrote yes, but it’s rare, young men are weak in UMM, so continuing, a boy of twenty or twenty-five years, solid and vigorous, the kind that doesn’t succumb before the tumescent mosaic of bright colors where you draw life and in the very top corner of this great mosaic a black frothing of viscera, a despair that is yours alone, the searching blackness inside you

es que busco La Cara, La Oscura Cara

nonsense. Let me continue, this very young man will surely smile as he listens to your talk, he’ll place his hands on your tits immediately and say your God is me, Hillé, you’ve found me, and if you continue stubbornly with your so-called appropriate talk, and your face of stone, this very young man will have to show you

I know. A nice cock

that’s right. And delicate but firm he’ll make you open your legs and repeat

I know. Your God is me

that’s right. And you’ll stammer a bit of your dry erudition with a bit more drool of disgust on your face, a smirk that will deform your beautiful mouth, but little by little

I know

well if you know, choose someone who won’t take you seriously, because

yes Ehud, el alma de Hillé se oscurece por lo mucho que sabe. Like a big hole overflowing with waters, but, ah! didn’t we plan for drains? see how the water spreads without aim, it rushes down swallowing everything on its path. I swallow your man Christ on the water path, if you were a man you would know this discomfort in the chest, the nescience that is so whole that is akin to wisdom, the distress of being present to the world knowing there is an eternally absent father.

Hillé, your father is dying, he’s asking for you

brief long full life enough to continue living, why do you always expect more when things are there before you? you need only feel, my girl, and look past the wall

look, The crazy woman is watching us

she rolls her little sow eyes

Jesus she’s all ruffled.

and… girl… still closing the windows, neck bent, alone in this darkness, what seems so little to you and so small, a thin trickle of life running on the surface of flesh and viscera, it’s more than enough to keep living, Hillé, to question does not tame the heart

father, remember me when you’ll be over there, on the other side

give me your hand

remember that I asked you what becomes of the soul in madness? when you go answer me from over there.

squeeze my hand.

remember you promised to keep me so I wouldn’t go mad and now alone, your place empty, hold me the way you would a very small child

Hillé, let me come into the boat that will carry me to the other shore. where is Ehud?

here, I’m here, your daughter will be fine, I’ll always be by her side

be careful. Don’t let her ask the same questions I asked, the house must take in more light, casa de sol, do you understand? in shadow, Hillé is appeased, she dives, wise, heavy, toward the bank of shells, she wants to open them, she believes she’ll find pearls and she may find some but, I’ll slip this to your ear, she won’t be able to stand it, do you understand? there’s nothing inside

the shells?

inside the pearls, Ehud, nothing, empty, you understand? get Hillé away from me at this hour of my agony, she’s holding me back, with her breath, with her hands, with the great fire welling in her, she’s holding me to this life. and I must go. the profile of wolves

what, father?

the profile of wolves, Hillé, a bouquet of adages and tunnels, howls, sparks, I’m sniffing infinity, I’ve contorted myself every which way, I smelled my undersides, I wanted so much to understand and I find that I have not only forgotten what I wanted to know but I don’t even remember the moment of the beginning of that forgetting, I only remember the profile of wolves, I know I saw them, or were they men? or maybe it was me doubled, all scruffy, my nose, fur, and, oh! so in love, was I a wolf, Hillé? I loved someone who resembled you, my girl, touch me, maybe I will remember, someone who carried a long name with is and as and es but it doesn’t matter, another face is laid over that face, clear dissymmetries, this someone knows me well into my insufficiencies, the least of them, this someone is two, one woman two, Ehud, have this woman, your wife my daughter, lay here next to me.

get out, Hillé, your father is going to have a long and harsh agony.

I want to stay

let her, have her lie here and feel with me the whispers, words that slide over a web, one of those words has just stopped, and several bright threads are slowly wrapping around it, my God, they are going to cover it up, what word? what word? KNOWLEDGE, Hillé, I can still see it, KNOWLEDGE is being muted, smothered by those very fine threads made of dense matter. That’s it. It’s been erased. there were some afternoons, Hillé, dry, straw afternoons, that crackle, I was walking and could feel nothing or rather I could feel stone become discolored, I know that I was looking at those sharp grasses that come out of the stones, I know that I was bleeding but I could feel nothing, no pain, my straw feet were bleeding, I was altogether empty and papered with straw, altogether earth and straw. and I laid down on those sharp grasses

and then, father?

then I was cut into tiny very delicate pieces 

like when you cut chard into a salad

yes, that’s it, a mound of straw and earth similar to a chard salad, that’s exactly it, Hillé, exactly, and what has life been? an obscene adventure, from so much lucidity.

I laid next to you during your agony, I heard truths and futilities.

Uselessnesses. I walk, Oedipus-woman, my feet swollen, and what do I stumble upon? Memories, old age, I rummage through nothings, friendships that disappeared, objects once stroked, little lights on them in this afternoon, this here now, by these little lights, I wrap them with my own little light, the one that’s still left, yellow, faint, and they’re still there, static and disaffected on the tables, on the trunks, on the dark wooden shelf, I go somnambulic, my step narrow, my eyes, their reddened eyelids half-closed, extinguished before me, my hair rare, my teeth appearing bigger and my gums more apparent, I try to look for a bit of mirror and I look at Hillé and her sixty years, Hillé and her immoderate emotions, her logorrhea, fire and tomb, dross life has been, Hillé, as though I were playing an instrument alone, any one, bassoon, valve, oboe or flute, as though I were playing alone and only one moment of the score, but the whole concerto, where was it?

Dross, yes, the attempt to compose a speech without knowing anything of its beginning nor its end, nor why the necessity for this speech, why the necessity to try to situate oneself, which amounts to attempting to remain clutching a rope over the abyss and without even knowing how it is that one wound up there, nor whether one ought now to move to the right rather than the left, around the fog, below a roar, or above it? water? voices? ships? I am reconstituting sophisticated evenings, politics, duties, a sociology of future, a being here, they ask me, kindred with the world, and acting, and authors, citations, foaming verbosity, the ear hearing itself foremost but responding to the people with elegance propriety care as though in fact it had listened to people, theatre, all theatre

answer me, my girl, the integrity of the concerto, where is it?

answer me, Ehud, the integrity of the concerto, where is it? 

this search for the orchestra, Madame D, is a vagrant thing, who knows, they may all have moved, why do you care about the sound of everyone if you have your own? I’m telling you darkness will invade the light left in you if any

which one?

the infinitesimal light, the yellow light. if you keep insisting the darkness will gain on everything, come on, make me some coffee, or better yet, some chocolate, and those little breads, the corn breads, they aren’t too hard are they? and listen to me, Hillé, tomorrow without fail I’m going to buy you a skirt, I may find you one in those somewhat subdued reds threaded with a few strands of old gold, you’ll wear your blouse with the white and gold pattern, and you’ll undo your hair, like that, come here

it’s tired

it’s beautiful. and we’ll buy some wine and

Who, Ehud, who extinguished my envelope of light, which doesn’t stop asking questions in me without possible answers, which doesn’t hear and has aged so, which is ruining the tips of my fingers for groping so, who in me doesn’t feel?

you know that the green grocer passed by the window today and that the sow wanted to touch his head? since he’s good looking the green grocer

what are you talking about?

oh Zico, what I’m saying is that the witch wanted to touch the boy’s head, today she was without her mask, with her own head, all undone, and her blouse that ugly color of dung, the boy eyed her with eyes like this, stopped and spat into her hand

jesus, people too, such cruelty 

you’re defending the sow now?

out of charity, don’t you see? she’s all alone, that woman, she’s darkening

she looked at the spit, closed her hand, closed the window very slowly

so as not to drop the spit

There are so many laughs, must I be able to remember my own?

Someone, I don’t remember where now, spoke of the metaphysics of laughter, there are even treatises devoted to that, the different laughs… a gurgle in the throat, the cheeks full of folds, did you laugh, Ehud? Did you laugh, father? Did you laugh, Hillé? I laughed a lot watching my friend L do her feet, she filed her nails with such application, her big toe especially, her favorite, she pampered it, I would say to her: oh L, is someone going to suck your big toe? And we laughed.

you have pretty feet, Hillé, it isn’t that they have walked so far but they have seen almost everything

The feet of the father, thin, white, some veins bursting in blue. Some crazy people stay standing for hours on end

aren’t you tired?

The answer doesn’t come, the gray gaze extends all of a sudden, piercing, dry, metallic, a long raging claw, a retch, two birds confronting one another, blood on the chest, the nails

it’s that your feet are purple, father

whore Hillé, just like her mother, the amiable tones conceal the black ball of lies, ah! doesn’t the little bird seem delicate, with her peeping, her plumage, her little round eye, clear and golden, but there way in the back inside, she clutches your heart, she demands your heart

why does he say that, Ehud? 

who knows what he is seeing 

in me?

in himself, Hillé, in himself

in me, Ehud, in my face a stupor, a never understanding inscribed on my face, flaccid and wrinkled, look what it looks like when I’m without the theatre for the other

a little flaccid, it’s true

desperate Ehud, because all the losses are lived here on Earth and the Other is safe in his confines, sheltered, en el cielo, safe from all the losses, from all the tyrannies, and what must it look like to leave the rest of us in this distress? what is this love that

plunges the head of another into the toilet basin, but manages to keep his own head unharmed for eternity? And do you remember what he did to Job?

your god is safe, Hillé, rejoice

how beautiful to love him in his confines and wallow here 

Having been. And not be able to forget. Having been. And no longer remember. Being. And lose oneself. I have repeated gestures words steps. I have crossed so many faces, touched some, what feelings animated you, Hillé, when you met touched those faces? I looked for you, Without-End and Enduring, in so many gestures words steps, I lingered in a mouth, sinuous curve, thickness, savor, what soul does this mouth have? And the gestures, my God, how I appropriated them: slow frivolous suspended receiving the world, desperate grotesque. And the gestures words steps of those who made me feel love, an immense gratitude in me, and so much gold succulence perfume I would have liked to possess, and houses, sparkles, birds, poems, light, I would have liked to have had, set at the feet of those who made me feel love. I walked dark in the streets, I stopped at the edge of rivers that were also dark, and abject but clear in myself I lived with Hillé and her darknesses her pettiness, her having been and forget, her having been and not able to remember, her being and being lost. Today I live with Dereliction, with Madame D, the grandiloquence that dwells in her, her way of raising herself before an Other who doesn’t listen to her, she posts herself, contorts herself before Him, old idiot, every which way. Hands on hips, it’s time to measure up: so, Porcine Child, you see me here in pain and darkness and distress, my veins, my viscera in horror, so, is it good to have shelter from the wretches of my species like myself?

Or when she kneels, her eyes distilling red so much water: 

help me, my Father, I remember so little but I still know that you are Father, look at me, touch me, as if the Other had time to concern himself with talkative old women with their strings of homilies, we know the lengths she goes to so that her pompous sentences resonate in the ears of the Absent and how she feigns modesty humility and even poverty:

I Nothingness, Name of No One, in search, in silent blindness, of light

and now she’s smoothing the paper fish, they have crumbled in her moist humid hands, she goes to the sink, washes them, wipes them on her greasy skirt, looks through the slits in the blinds, turns back, kneels in the cupboard beneath the stairs, and in no time you can see her levitating, her tired hairs touching the ceiling, and it wasn’t a miracle of the Other, no, it’s her and her disgusting ardors, her fire of questions, her heart of flesh lifting that grotesque weight that is her body, see, she’s there, her pink skull touching the ceiling, with joined hands the sow, as if beyond the ceiling in the space through the roof, the eye of the Lord rested on her, she thinks, on herself, the eye of gold and lily on the aged skull of Madame D. Resting. She says that she loved Ehud, but God! the poor man, when he was still alive, how she tormented the neurons and the senses of the amicable man, always trying, at length, to soft-soap him with her questions, at dinner hour, and the hour of fucking, of sleep, and into the toilet where she went to invent regarding a ray of light that was falling right onto his thigh through one of the rose windows and was reflected on the tile, to invent that the ray of light was proof that the Lord was there, present, I want to say that something was fulgurating there and she didn’t know what it was. And Ehud, all the time continuing, softy that he is, his paper in hand and his slippers on his feet, to wait for the coffee she never made

yes, Hillé, your Lord must surely be here, somewhere.

People little by little, couples, so-called friends, took their distances; insidious, twisted skein of metaphysical intrigues, she would ask these women out of the blue:

do you sometimes feel the unreality of these comings and goings, the unintelligibility of all of these steps, eh, do you feel it? The woman would look at her husband, stunned, the husband would say: you know, Hillé, my wife doesn’t really understand these anguishes we have.

the wife: Oh I don’t, eh?

the husband: no, darling, that’s not what I’m saying, Hillé was talking about

the wife: talking about fucking, and that you obviously understand

And bam! brawls, blows, the husband stumbling and apologizing for his wife’s coarseness, Ehud, a thin little assuaging smile, and Hillé: my God, Ehud, I said something I shouldn’t have said, right?

no of course not, Madame D

I must be with you, with your knots, with your face with its steep cheekbones, savage, hard, dead that’s when I will be whole, executed such as I was thought by the Unnamable forever faceless, dead I will be faithful to that thinking that I was never able to be and perhaps, once dead, I will have the color I always wanted to have, a saffron red or a red without denomination, between brick-strawberry-sepia and shadow, by your side I chromo made in scarlet, finished the both of us, perfect because we are dead, our hands clasped with great ceremony, my hands that touched your sumptuous body, your body whose luster was impossible to circumscribe, so sweet to my timid tongue full, sweeter even in the day to day, pure honey then, your mouth on me, full of hummingbirds, dead one day the two of us, attached, for an infrangible eternity, and people will open their eyes wide like the opening of a well. 

But in our faces, legs, torsos, in the luminescence of our hands, no message or perhaps yes a logogriph, sparks, a song coming from the bones of the earth, a beam of pure white. Laumim. Hips.

Hillé, my girl, good and vagabond and solemn illusions, we move ourselves through illusions, gigantic and fluffy, I lived aimlessly and without compromise inside them and how I loved Hillé, several years only, but what a delicious vagabondage

the illusions, father?

and what a disappointment to understand, to know by anticipation.

schizophasia, madame D, let your father die

stay, Hillé, stay here, lie next to me, bring me a mirror 

what for?

I want to see my face. what time is it now? 

soon it will be morning

then come, lie here and hold this mirror for me, like that, soon it will be morning, lugubrious face

you were saying father?

lugubrious face, I am arranging names, words to keep them in the trunk

what trunk?

isn’t that what they said? because I put the words in a big trunk and I’m going to take them with me, isn’t that what they said somewhere? so keep some for your trunk: lugubrious, fluctuant, intangible

It makes sense that the paper fish are two because when I only cut one out, I’ve noticed it comes apart more quickly, is it possible that even things require their double? more swiftly to the trash if alone? Hillé and someone else, that would be good. But who? or what? Who then or what could also be Hillé so coarse and sound? So much stridency, arched, blue-stocking, mixture of woman and intellijackass? Free rhymes floating in the cupboard under the stairs, fistulous, rent rhymes, rhymes verging on widowhood, a dirge smothered under the soles of the feet

hembra dura, cerrada 

los duros en la cara

hembra de piedra mala

Ripe. The mouth sticky on the pebble of fear. Forbidden, in abstinence of understanding and yet understanding. O soprano, on this day put an end once more to your demosthenian talk, to your snubbishness, your perdition, this life never-ending, the face of the soul is becoming blunted, gathered vomit and wounds, incisive doubts, a dilapidated scaffolding, a frenetic fistula but smelling of jasmine, the startlements of horror, a female being inlaid with machete blows with steel rings, nails, and tumefied, a female-someone almost proscribed for being too disparate and new, and so old this being that her soul comes from the waters within stones and had a father and a mother but also didn’t have one because she came from an Other, solemnly protesting:

what is this about a father and a mother? why do you question me about things I’ve never heard of? who put names in your mouth? that I have invented them? You’re crazy, Hillé, everything in you comes uniquely from me, I panted and folded myself into a half-moon, a magmatic effort to put these bones of yours erect, and here you are inventing these names father and mother by proposing that I would have placed them in your intimate cords? that I would have given birth to what? sound of feelings? You’re crazy. Insomniac, forgetting time’s color, slowly I foamed a female-being to my liking. And it was you. To my liking. Nothing to do with that din of sounds that I don’t recognize. Feelings? What feelings?

your bed is hot, father, your forehead too. you are burning

death is cold. so it isn’t time yet.

A being that peels. Godless. Weary sinister. Will shine dark in your bone again. And why did I love you, Hillé? oh my god, my god. Your little god is asking you now, Ehud: there were other women, weren’t there? Why did you choose mine? All those Antonia, Leticia, Lidia, Açucena, a thousand Marias, Maria do Carmo, Maria da Graça, Maria da Aparecida, Maria Lucia, Maria Cristina. Do you remember her? Such arrogance in that pure rump. And all of them frivolous, blessed, they twittered charming and talkative, with long canines, thighs always ready to open, their infinitesimal shivers, supreme delights for an Ehud full of modesty

wise, that’s what you are, Ehud 

why madame D?

around you a familiar time, the gaze of someone who’s seen his share and who, because he wanted to, unlearned

and yours? and your gaze?

the obscene gaze of my God

I smile before the megalomaniac. Seductive. Female and force. And I pursue the itinerary of longing for my inferiors. Of what I was just before knowing her. Of my supposedly chaste wanderings and between my legs a tumescent agitation, the little inexpert and yet delicious hands of those young ladies, hollow young ladies, small and cabbagy, I spoke of orifices and they answered oh yes, we know, those big buildings. Now older ladies. What has become of them? Where? Well, I must come back and say to Hillé: don’t look for the father, look for yourself. I’m bending over backwards to say it without being too insistent and before I was able Hillé anticipated me: you know, Ehud, the minute I think of looking for myself, I start to stumble and can’t stop, and challenges balance, foot and face, and I see portraits in the distance, thumbnail portraits, reductive also, the life portrait in the funnel of infinity

who is this one here, this tiny one, who is masking the eye of light?

it’s me, Hillé

and you remember this moment, you remember this thorn in the eye?

Light that doesn’t come any more. Suction that I inhale, the mouth and the eyes open in unconditional expectancy, I try to seize definitive things, this is definitive, Hillé, don’t ask any more questions, there are pestilential stupidities that end with questions, absurd parentheses, with footnotes, so convoluted, so contrived, and others quiet, almost severe, that barely provoke a raised eyebrow, or a tremor of the lips, footnotes you’ll never forget, every time you remember them you aspire to repose, claim the extreme unction, the ultimate step forward, toward the abyss. What? What? What does this footnote say? Corpulent dense resistible you don’t want it anymore, I’m going to forget it, but then, a little light flooding legs and feet: did you see that? a being in a perfect state of life in a fragment of rock? did they find an igneous eye in the stone, in the crystal?

toasts, Hillé, cucumbers and jam, a new sandwich just for you

listen, Ehud, read read this footnote

I thought of cucumbers and jam because, look, the colors are fantastic, green and red, the pleasure of the eyes makes one open one’s mouth, look, madame D, no one will ever make sandwiches like this one, a mild orgasm

but listen, Ehud

and there’s more, tomorrow a flambé of kings, peanuts strawberries and a liquor from the depths of gehenna, voluptuous, like flakes of gold

found in a fragment of rock

and wine from my grandfather. and candles. 

a being in a perfect state of life was found 

your hair is beautiful today

and an igneous eye in the crystal of the rock, read, read this footnote

And me Ehud I can offer him everything, mussels, lobster, mustard butter sauces and vintage wine. Long ago, years ago now, I drew her onto the bed and I was both abrupt and overwhelmed and avid and virtuosic and for a time Hillé my beloved the two of us, a world, an inhabitable life, a house, a hamlet, a city, touch that we traversed together, scented geographies, that we shelled together, male and female flesh made into a nervous softness, a solitary two-in-one all tensions and complications, lights there inside, palms of the feet, finger play, aqueous humors and blazes.

I have been living several days in the company of madame P, the sow who escaped from someone’s yard. I opened the door and she rushed in waddling and letting out little strident cries. Outside during this time the stridulations of the neighborhood, then the silence, then some jokes, not too many. After which I don’t know what yokel yelled: ok, ok, Dominico, leave the sow to the crazy lady, you have so many, sow and crazy understand one another. She sought refuge in a corner near the kitchen, I found some leftover corn, gave her water and several old salad leaves retrieved from what used to be a garden in the yard. I looked at the apple tree that yields somewhat sour apples, I said I wouldn’t touch such vital things again but I did, not so to tell the truth, they’re tiny apples, of an extremely discreet red, prudishly round, more bumpy than round, they don’t burn my hands. I try to get out of my pulveressence, and look at madame P for a long time. She looks at me. She’s brown, grim, very frightened, a deep bruise oozing blood between her shoulder blades. Today I was able, cautiously, to approach her, and as the sober would say: I thought out her wounds. A dull crimson red, this wound reminded me of my own wound, thick deep wound of existence. Why didn’t you touch me, Lord, and For you barely leaned over me, Lord, you didn’t, discreetly, bandage my wounds, even the infinitesimal heat of the tips of your fingers I didn’t feel, why must I dive in a thick tangle of solitudes and miseries and seeking you I emerge from myself, hands full of sludge and dust, the dull crimson red that is mine and has resided in me for centuries, lapidescent at the surface but boiling and bright red just below, eternal pain in your elusiveness. Heavy whisperous rhymes, without intention, and the ointments on madame P’s back, the friction of her snout, the warmth of her sniffing in the crook of my arm, her eyes liquid with incomprehension and gentleness, God-less a God-less one with the hyphen, always, God-less God-less. Do you know the song of the end-less bird, madame P? an end-less song, end-less, end-less our existing God-less. And it comes to mind that I could only understand madame P by becoming who she is. And it also comes to mind, Lord, that in a certain way, but I don’t know which one, you aspire to be, Hillé, a tormented human being. AND TO FEEL. Be it the spur of a Crimson red without apparent vividness.

And a time will come when you and me, father, Ehud as well, we will no longer be and where will we be outside of time? That I shall be as old and rigid as a clump of nettles

the nettles are velvety

Just like the time is coming when I shall be as old and rigid as a clump of nettles, light without any more flesh, and palpating dead things, my head tremulating with glimmers, my mouth expelling still agonic words, dates, numbers, the names of my dogs, pans of hot water throughout the house

my feet are frozen, bring me the pans, let me massage them in the water, oh, it’s no use

the names of my dogs, of the three birds, shreds of sentences

incredible

sun

dying

night

pain

soon now

light

pallor

tomorrow

strange

dogs

know

incredible the sun of today and she is dying

at night she suffers more pain and it will be night soon

in the light the pallor is more visible, how long will she resist?

until tomorrow, that’s what they said

strange, all the dogs remain by her side, they know 

they know

yes, they know, Hillé’s dogs know

like all dogs

no

look, even the sow is coming

madame P, that’s the name Hillé had given her 

Hillé was murky, no?

a fright that acquired comprehension. 

what did you say, boy?

what you heard: a fright that became comprehension, what Hillé was.

Ahn are you from around here, boy?

no, I live far from here. but I knew Hillé well. 

what is your name?

I’m called the Porcine Child. 

Why?

Because I like pigs. I also like people. 

Ahn.

Deliver me, Lord, from imbeciles and cretins.

Casa do Sol, September 4th, 1981

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About the Authors

hilda hilst (1930–2004) was born in Jaú, a small town in the state of São Paulo. She studied law at the University of São Paulo before dedicating herself to writing from 1954. She published novels, poetry and plays and won many prestigious literary prizes, gaining recognition as one of the most significant and controversial figures in Brazilian literature. She resided at the Casa do Sol, a large estate that served an informal artists’ retreat and which she shared with a rotating cast of friends, artists, lovers and dozens of dogs. Letters from a Seducer is also available from Pushkin Press.

nathanaël is the author of more than forty books, including Tempes (2024, Prix international de l’invention poétique), Hatred of Translation (2019) and Pasolini’s Our (2018), as well as Andidan, a book of conversations with filmmaker Arlette Pacquit (2025). Nathanaël’s translations include works by Maryse Condé, Édouard Glissant, Danielle Collobert, Chantal Neveu.

rachel gontijo araujo speaks Portuguese, writes in English and is located at an unequal distance between. She is the co-founder of A Bolha Editora, an in-translation press with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, and a co-founder of Praça, Brazil’s first nationwide platform for small press and artist publishers.

john keene is a writer, translator, and professor from St Louis, Missouri. Educated at Harvard and NYU, he is chair of the African American and African Studies department at Rutgers University Newark. He has published fiction and poetry, including the collection Punks (2022), which won the National Book Award. In 2018 he was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Copyright

Pushkin Press
Somerset House, Strand
London WC2R 1LA

Original text © 2018 by Daniel Bilenky Mora Fuentes
Published in Brazil by Companhia das Letras, São Paulo

English translation © 2012 Nathanaël and Rachel Gontijo Araujo
Introduction © 2012 John Keene

The Obscene Madame D was first published as A obscena Senhora D by Massao Ohno / Roswitha Kempf Editores in São Paulo, 1982

First published in English by A Bolha Editora and Nightboat Books in 2012

First published by Pushkin Press in 2025

eISBN 13: 978-1-80533-137-7

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