Through the night. (Part 1/n)

Sabrine Serikawa
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

(free translation of Pela Noite by Caio Fernando de Abreu)

listening to “Years of solitude” by Astor Piazzola and Gerry Muiligan

“But also, sometimes, the Night is another thing: alone, in a meditation position (would it be maybe a role I assign to me?), I think calmly about the other, the way he is: I suspend all interpretation; the desire keeps vibrating (the obscurity is translighted), but I want to own nothing; this is the night of no-advantage, of subtle spent, insensible: estoy a oscuras: I’m there, seated simply and calmly in love’s black inside.” Roland Barthes, Fragments of a lover discourse

— -

-Just like this song — he said, increasing the volume of the music while he walked around the living room opening the big window glasses to let the saxophone moan contaminate even more the dirty air from the streets, from the night, from the city.

-Exactly like this song.

The July wind disheveled a little bit his hair. His back on the back of the other, the face turned to the dark, arms wide open. As if they were dancing. And were saying, the face up to the sky covered by soot wet by the drops of cold drizzle.

-Can you see how it shrinks? Just like a person that had been punched unexpectedly. Right in the pit of his stomach, like that. He turned around suddenly and jumped inside the living room, a violent face, the fist clenched, extended in the direction of the belly of the other. Who unbalanced a bit on the couch, uncrossing the legs, the feet so very planted on the ground, the cup of wine in one hand, the other one tensely standing in the air, ready to defend himself. But he retreated without touching him, gave a side smile and went on walking, backwards again, towards the window.

-Then it extends again. Super slowly, can you hear? It’s now, in a minute, when the accordion is added. Not accordion. Bandoneon, this is how they say out there. Pay attention to it. You see. The saxophone is the punch.

Bent his own fist and performed a sharp movement in the air, as if he was punching himself. Hard, in the belly. He bent his whole body, the face twisted in a breathless pain drill. Then went on distending slowly his back. From where he was, in the opposite corner of the living room, the other had the impression that he was stretching the vertebrae one by one, until reaching the neck getting up, opening the arms like an asleep child stretching, in the morning. So he turned his face and continued:

When the bandoneon comes everything opens up. — Extended the arm in front of him, he seemed to want to hold something in the air. — Did you see? For a few moments, only a few moments, it is as if there were something like hope, like possibility of hope. Whatever it is, you’re almost reaching it. His arm is so extended that the part that joins the body seemed to be almost tearing apart. And the fingertips can feel an almost-like feeling. A tingling, a numbness. The vibration of this thing that is there, still far away from them by now, ready to be touched.

He stretched the arm even more. The trunk followed, in a so big and slow effort that he had to take one of legs off the ground. He reached it to the air, balancing himself initially poorly over the other, then more and more steady, while the stretched arm, the elongated trunk and the hanging leg made up an almost perfectly horizontal line. The face now had a pleasure expression. Or pleasure expectation. On the edge of joy, the face. Whatever it was in the fingertips, thought the other, was about to be touched in the next second. And he couldn’t help a somewhat tension in the steady look, kind of hypnotized, all the five fingers excessively open. So that — from where he was he could see — the bones on his knuckle were made more prominent. Coming from the fist, a beam of five thin bones, nervous. Unintentionally wished that, whatever it was, there, held in the air, waiting for the touch, between the white walls, the fingers soon found the object. That the fingers finally could wrap it in kind of a possession, for the relief of them both. He felt a sort of warmth, but when he placed his hand on his face there were no sweat. He thought then that, in that 19th floor, in some other building, other window, and there were so many, it should be weird to see that long and brawny man silhouette stretched like that in the air. But the music kept going on, saxophone and bandoneon, a painful, never-ending, entangled coupling just like the one of the dogs in the alleys, unbearable.

Sabrine Serikawa

Written by

Equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming buddha

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