13th of August Street

[Severini]

Well after years of witholding I finally let this story go.Hope someone reads it and enjoy it.







August 13th Street.

Carlos Paraná







1

I had listened to Arnaldo's story countless times and during each of them I showed no enthusiasm or attention. Arnaldo, on the other hand, was not an imbecile and as he brooded over the event, thinking he was punishing me for my negligence. Whenever he mentioned the incident on August 13th Street, he did it as if he had suddenly remembered and, perhaps with the intention of not allowing it to return to the place from which it had come, he needed to convey it immediately to someone. However, I prefer to believe in another possibility; that the words affected him like a virus, and each time he repeated the story, it was another chance to try to infect me. Not in order to get rid of that burden, but so that he could have someone close to his condition, without having to resort to the mirror. There was also the fact that none of Arnaldo's statements were credible, since, being a frustrated writer, he constantly confused fact with stories, benefiting from the idleness with which he was privileged.

He settled in a modest house, quiet and dark, on the corner of the street where I live. I don't mind remembering how long ago. He was an extremely reserved man, the kind that every inspiration seems to be an attempt to keep a secret. I was able to get closer because I got to know his former occupation. Columnist for a literary magazine named “Howl”, where he reviewed obscure books. I owned most of the issues of that magazine, being very fond of issue 14, where he had reviewed one of my favorite books: Statements, by Herbert Quain. There was another curiosity about this issue: It was one of the few occasions on which Arnaldo reviewed an authentic book. Mostly, he pretended to analyze a great unknown book, when it was an argument or fragment of his own and that had no persistence, talent, will, or whatever it takes to develop it further. It had been a nice joke at first but had turned out to be a crucial fact for the magazine's loss of credibility and its premature end. No one really knew him, as his picture in the magazine was of someone similar, although much older, who he later explained to me it was his father. He didn't seem to have gotten rid of that addiction, as most of his current accounts were variations on his fictitious reviews, which I could confirm by looking at the magazines I owned right after hearing him.

August 13th Street was the only exception. Although Arnaldo Nepomuceno esteemed it so much that he tried to insert it into his own life, this in no way made it authentic. I stated that the words that make up the report could be a virus and each time this fact comes closer to being proven. Your obsession seems to have finally infected me and I don't feel able to get rid of it even if I wanted to. Memory is a wall and it is not up to us to choose how it will be hit. Sometimes the thoughts stain it, other times they damage it and it starts to crack. There are times that thoughts barely touch it and pretend to disappear. Until something highlights it and what was forgotten and erased vibrates, throbs. This is the story, as I read it for the umpteenth time.



Feel the pleasant smell that emanates from the atmosphere of small towns, inhale this peculiar air until your lungs are exhausted. The moment you exhale this gas, its pleura will begin to wither until it finally liquefies, while you realize that this sensation was totally fraudulent. The disguises of these cities are on the verge of crumbling, although most are not able to appreciate this phenomenon, as they are distracted by the lethargy and cordiality (also fraudulent) of the city's inhabitants. What covers it is an extremely gray veil, where dirt is not allowed to be removed. It is torn in an infinity of stitches, this veil and the one who lays his hands, light or heavy, dirty or clean, on the fabric, will discover a flaw, carefully hidden.

In the city we are now observing, there was no breaking point as notorious and irreparable as 13th of August St., where carts guided by experienced coachmen and strong, healthy horses could still be seen. This scenario, more suited to other times, persisted thanks to an archaic law, which was never revoked. This law prevented the circulation of cars on that street, as a retaliation for its appearance. There were no other options for pedestrians than the narrow sidewalks, always damp and slippery, where sunlight did not seem to be allowed, obstructed by the thick air, and repelled by the muddy odor that infested the entire street. On the other hand, banners and advertising were granted a great deal of space. 13th of August St. could be mistaken for an endless allegorical parade, begun decades ago and not yet close to its end if pedestrians were not always in a hurry and stagecoach windows were not always closed.
Arnaldo was looking at books in a store on the street, a strategy designed to fill the time while he awaited the arrival of a delivery at the post office that was also on that street. Most of the books he leafed through were new copies of classic books. He could smell the pleasant odor of the new pages, which contained in his body words coined for a considerable time, and after analyzing words and odors, he concluded that this distraction would not contain his anxiety. He walked out of the bookstore, being greeted by the pandemonium formed by the crowd filling the sidewalk. As he became part of it, he felt absorbed by the thick mass of pedestrians who manipulated him, carrying him from one side of the pavement to the other, as if they were kicking a puppet with no reason to be there. Arnaldo backed away and moved farther and farther from his destiny, with faces in front of him that resembled automatons due to his monstrous indifference. The crowd was a Tsunami, and there was no way to contain it. You had to choose between being swallowed and drowning or giving up to that ocean of faces.
He couldn’t hear his own voice as he protested, trying to hold back the Tsunami. He had managed to get himself taken to the right side of the sidewalk, beside the shop windows, away from the street and the horses and their warm blood. His suit scraped the rough walls and, fearing his clothing would rip, he gave up the fight and let himself be led, this time in the direction that would leave him exactly where he needed to go. He had managed to progress by a few steps when he was hurled towards an alley, which was an access road to another street. It seemed to have found the passage accidentally, as even those who sent it to her either didn't know or pretended to ignore the place, which was completely empty. Those who imposed its permanence did more than throw an object at will, convinced that it would no longer bother them, being broken into millions of fragments. For a few moments Arnaldo watched those who expelled him, amazed at the ignorance devoted to the passage. A desire to return to the street swelled inside him until at last he stood up. For reasons unknown, the bulge that was growing unbearably disappeared completely and, abruptly, he turned his back on the automatons, trying to match the level of indifference, and began to observe the passage in detail.
Finding it deserted wasn't something that surprised him. This was left to the peculiar aspect of the alley. It appeared to have been built moments before Arnaldo's entrance, which had made it his first visitor. As he looked at the street ahead, he noticed that it seemed to be as empty as his access road, and the distance to it couldn't be more than a few dozen steps. During the twelfth, two peculiarities about the passage attracted him, delaying again his arrival at the desired point.

1. A hand appeared on the left side, which Arnaldo thought was empty because he couldn't see it. Its shape and size seemed to suggest a child's hand, whose lines in the palm of his hand had not yet been carved by the ever-sharp, ever-cutting blade of the succession of days. That side could contain much more to be explored. In this way, Arnaldo approached the hand, willing to observe what else was being camouflaged. He hesitated again until the very threshold of contact and would continue in this state if the second particularity did not reveal itself as a flash of light.


2. Something growled behind Arnaldo, forcing him to give up any investigation. The sound hit him like an icy arrow right into his heart. Arnaldo fell next to the hand, which remained motionless, as if it were part of a comatose body. The authors of the grunt were white dogs, bound by chains held by a rickety man, who apparently would not be able to contain them. Their eyes and Arnaldo's met. They were gray eyes that didn't seem to belong in that exhausted body and that rotten face. His mouth, which seemed to have uttered every existing word in every known language turned to Arnaldo:

“The boy won't see you and the dogs won't attack”

Those words, their ethereal forms, ricocheted through the passage. From light to dark, from left to right, inflicting on Arnaldo a subtle torpor, which fear tried to multiply. Looking at the dogs and their jaws, their mouths that exuded violence and aggression, the blue eyes that seemed to express hydrophobia more efficiently than any known symptom, he concluded that the old man could only be lying. He would certainly release the dogs as soon as he noticed the slightest distraction, which would certainly happen the moment Arnaldo tried to get up. How would he walk away?
He would need to crawl, stoop to reptilian status, an offensive and humiliating move for anyone used to staying upright. That's what he did, moving slowly until he shifted into an even more degrading position, dropping to his knees as the grunts turned to barks. The attack of the dogs seemed imminent and even so, Arnaldo kept watching them, trying to camouflage his fear through the stillness of his face. But there was no way to hide that feeling, for dogs are well acquainted with that odor, a prelude that only increases the urge to tear at the beholder's flesh. He thought about confusing the beasts, entering the dark and unknown part of the passage, which was now his right side. It wouldn't be a good escape plan because the dogs could sniff him out so easily while he could not see anything. As for the hand and the one who did not want to see him, he seemed to be right, for it withdrew to where it had come from. Now he tried to manage the two fields of vision, the dark side and the animals, but he didn't do it successfully. The old man seemed to find extreme entertainment in his restlessness, and to elevate him to a supreme level, he threatened to release the dogs, projecting them towards a kneeling Arnaldo who bellowed and, perhaps being spurred on by such mockery, finally rose to his feet, while walking backwards and exclaiming to the sadistic old man:

“Get them away from me!”

“I said they won't hurt you, coward! They can't.”

Several (there were so many that they could not be carried out even with all the available time) possibilities of aggression were imagined by Arnaldo as retaliation for the old man's sarcasm, and each one of them remained held in the only safe place he knew. Not exactly trusting the assurances presented to him, Arnaldo turned his back on them and started to walk away. He thought about running, but the shrill bark of the animals forced him to reconsider. He remained at a slow pace. The noise his shoes made as he walked seemed to merge with the barking, creating a dissonant, unpleasant sound. As he went on, the old man's voice caused the animals to immediately fall silent, as if they were suddenly unable to make any sound, or if sound was something inconceivable to them, a phenomenon impossible to occur, both its emission and reception.
The old man began to speak again. The volume of her voice was raised to the extreme, and yet she lacked the irritating quality of a scream. His effort had not had the expected result, his words were not understood by Arnaldo, who continued to follow impassively. His sudden act of ignoring something that had recently inflicted a considerable amount of apprehension in him completely removed the numbness he had felt until then. He seemed imbued with previously unknown power, and although he seemed to enjoy it fully, he knew that such power was scant, perhaps exhausted before he left the passage. Would it be his fear, hidden behind a mask?
Even so, he went on, feeling the arrow begin to melt as August 12th Street approached. She avoided looking to the unknown side, fearing that he would look back. Finally, the other street. I would pick up the order another day, as this one didn't seem to have room for anything else. Nothing but the passage and its sides, the dogs and the old man. The old man and his disguise, that camouflage of fragility, unable to hide his perfidy, equivalent to the most noxious carnivorous plant. Over the abandoned scenario that was now entering and over any other, sunset reigned absolute, not allowing the day to leave or the night to appear. He delayed their movements as long as he could, lingering, trying to exhaust himself day and night.

Stages continued to pass; pedestrians renewed their troops so that no one would ever stop marching for any reason. And the passage remained hidden, undecipherable. This constancy - which kept the passage and everything that made it up unalterable - seemed to have been the reason for Arnaldo to claim that he had never returned to 13th of August St., having even left the city (which never informed its name and location) soon after the incident. That episode seemed to have done him irreparable damage. For once, Arnaldo confessed to me what kind of damage he was referring to, in addition to its particularities. The harm (or gift, which is at the receiver's discretion) consisted of something like an overexcitement of his perception, which began the day after the incident, and which returned deliberately. Suddenly, everything felt more vivid and intense, as if the previous moments belong to another, lesser life. But this fullness which seemed to reach him, was at times unbearable. Any kind of light, natural or artificial, was intolerable, and whenever he tried to face it, insisting on observing it, he ended up succumbing, because from the beginning he knew that he was incapable of withstand such a challenge. As punishment for this transgression, he received periods of absolute blindness, which lasted for hours or sometimes days. During such periods, the dark suggested such absurd and chaotic forms to him that it forced him to beg for his sight to return. Even if it was to behold the light again. It returned, despite its cries and invocations, the moment it began to familiarize itself with the dark, when it began to accept blindness, when vision began to be less necessary. "By touching something," he told me as he grabbed my arm, "the contact is strong enough that I feel like a part of what I touch during such moments." I once found Arnaldo wandering the narrow streets of our neighborhood, and when I asked the reason for his pilgrimage in the heart of the dawn, into the night, I got the answer: “You would not be able to sleep if you were forced to listen to the crowds, their secrets and their confessions”, that day it took me a tremendous effort not to laugh at Arnaldo, although he seemed even more serious than he used to be.
Your sleep, mere vessel of dreams. Unlike the alteration in her senses, there was rarely relaxation or rest in it. The oneiric events that had the passage as a theme were frequent.

Arnaldo witnessed the boy emerge from the shadows to be punished, turning into dead flesh. The blood that emerged from its wounds was reflected in the animal's fangs, as if they were mirrors. The intensity and order of events varied with each dream, like products of the intense manipulation of a sinister exaggerator. He was wounded by the dogs, while the old man and the boy watched his wounds build, an expression of neutral malignity on their faces. The boy and the old man murdered the dogs, dancing without caring about the stained clothes. Dancing a melody accessible only to the two of them, because such dreams are always characterized by the absence of sounds. The variant that he considered most ominous was the one in which he was cornered by the four, while on the unknown side there were crowds of useless pedestrians. They abdicated their march, their haste, so that they could witness the beginning of the festivities. "I never curse these dreams, however terrible they were" he once told me, "for if I could regress", he pronounced the word regress with remarkable disdain, "for the very moment I was hurled or absorbed by the passage, and tried to change it, avoid it, divert it from my path, I know the passage would wait for me, and I would find the 13th of August St. street somewhere else".
Since then, he has kept a safe distance from the territory, although his later echoes and impressions are an undeniable part of Arnaldo's life, which he seems to accept. Perhaps these forgetting were voluntary, a way of keeping him out of the realms of apoplexy, which would reach him with all conviction if he encountered the passage again, however empty, however clear. The shadow that the dark side cast hit him even though he was far enough away, even in his dreams, in which he seemed to rebuild, he seemed to try to idealize the current condition of the passage after so long. I imagined the street the way we try to idealize the face of someone we are about to meet. The problem is that such idealizations always fail in their intent, making us mistake angels for demons, water for sand, height for depth, day for night.





2



When I visited him at home, Arnaldo had shown me what he had written days before my arrival. He told me that after waking up from a completely sterile sleep, from which no nightmare or dream could emerge with sufficient vigor to be remembered, he immediately began to write, inside his room, still in his bed, in the dark. It added an exaggerated romantic charge, steeped in allegories to describe the simple act of scribbling something seemingly worthless. It said that "the paper tolerated the flood of enigmatic codes and symbols that filled the entire length of its white body"
“It was a sucession of deviations”, he continued, “that not even their supposed author was able to reach his destiny, circling continuously around the enigma, in a sadistic, neurotic and monomaniac translation”. At times he exploded into cheap euphoria, saying he had managed to 'deform the language', but when he remembered that such 'deformation' had even tricked his memory, there being no way to remember what lines of thought crossed his mind, or the motivations behind the led to writing that obscure treatise, his countenance seemed to melt.
When I returned at the night of that same day, I found him in the same place, looking at the sheets of paper. He felt as if the pen were a blade, cutting through a fragile white body. The ink was blood, and its symbols were wounds. I had noticed before him that a new obsession had been born, had come to absorb the previous one completely.
He didn't answer any of my questions while I was there. I could have robbed his house and he would have remained indifferent to my presence. What could I do but leave him alone, at the mercy of his reflections and investigations?
What at first was idleness filled with daydream in the case of the 13th of August St., now became piles of papers. Arnaldo had created another circle for himself, out of which nothing that existed outside could mean anything or have any sort of relevance. He told me on a day of rare awareness and lucidity that several times he intended to tear up what he had written, knowing that it was a mockery and a waste of time. “But if I tear everything up, I would confirm this hypothesis. On the other hand, I see that deep down, in a place where I have been afraid to look, I believe there is something that will justify this effort, sweat, time, and blood that I pour over everything, day after day. It is something so unique, complex and original and that was the only way my mind was able to deal with it. I couldn't create something really original using conventional methods, as I had already failed too much down that path, followed it long enough to realize that there's nothing I want there. Just as my senses, everything I had created, or rather tried to create before this moment, were just imitations of what I had seen, felt and heard, splendid demonstrations of how wrong I was to continue treading such paths, which were already found exhausted. Something big, immense, certainly bigger than me, hides in this tangle of indefiniteness”
Months after this testimony, he had continued on his search. I wasn't able to see any signs of giving up or progress.
When he finally realized that he would not evolve, he decided to encourage his sleep, so that the origin of everything could bring him some clarification. I had never persuaded him to give up, had never encouraged him to ignore his quest, but this new method, in my view, was equivalent to trying to capture in a net all the dreams that had taken us by storm in our lives. The sea was the immensity, the territory of dreams, and no net could capture them. ”Give up before you start. Give up before bed”, I thought of the moments when he touched me. Apparently, he had been able to pick up my message, perhaps by my actions, perhaps by actually reaching out to touch me. Since then, he had rarely allowed me into his house. I had become an enemy.
That's when I began to realize I was being infected, because now that I was on the sidelines of their investigations, I felt restless, too curious to know their results, even though I knew that there was a high probability that they were null.
On one of the rare occasions when we spoke again, he told me that he was willing to return to August 13th Street. I realized, perhaps again before him and in tremendous disappointment, that he had never really gotten rid of that obsession. She just molded it, intending to fuse it with what could not be fused. Since that morning, this had always been her plan and I, who witnessed her birth, did not perceive the true provider, who had by no means been eliminated. “There was a period of hesitation, which I can only now repent” he addressed me in an excited tone, perhaps forgetting for a moment that he now considered me his enemy, “but there is no doubt where I can find the answer. It waits for me on that street. In the place he left behind and never intended to return”.
He didn't look scared or afraid. I tried not to think (at least while I was with you) how wrong your trip would be; I also avoided raising any kind of objection. Yet he looked at me as if he'd been slapped, as if he'd received an offense impossible to return in equal proportion for having been done by someone we think is far inferior or superior to us. He told me nothing more than to inform me that he was leaving that very day.
The night he left, I was affected by the peculiar craving for answers, which I did not know how to look for, but agreed that they lay at the bottom, as he had claimed. Perhaps he didn't admit that it was necessary to go too deep. Deep enough where it was not possible to return.
The characteristic noise of his car was heard by me the day after his departure. His face was one of absolute frustration. I felt a little afraid to approach him, even more afraid to ask him the burning question, which he would certainly take as an offense or mockery, but I still couldn't help asking, despite any reaction he might have.
"Were you able to find the street?"
Just as he ignored my approach, and, aware of my hunger for answers, he gave me none. I didn't insist on my inquiries, I left him brooding on his frustration alone, feeling alone the failure which was his only merit. Had the house collapsed, Arnaldo Nepomuceno? Somehow I feel buried underneath it too...
But what if he had left the house at the last minute, and only I found myself under the debris while he laughed while walking over it? The night would be long and it certainly was too long. Too long. Even though I was unable to see undefined shapes in the dark and I wasn't the receiver of sounds that didn't belong to me, I wasn't able to sleep. I will make him swallow and choke on everything he had inflicted on me. It was not a few times that I thought of breaking into your house in the middle of the night. But the morning was approaching, I needed to wait. I would, then. I would.
Morning came at last, and I couldn't contain myself as I went on like a blind man on the way to a cure for his condition.
The door. He knew that Arnaldo was too distracting to keep it locked up, so I entered his house without any difficulty. The inside was cool and silent, smelling of absence. I started looking for Arnaldo, calling his name as loudly as I could. No answer. The car was still in the garage, so he shouldn't be far. I would wait. I hated Arnaldo for making me wait. Much more than I thought was bearable. Hated him for his deliberate infection and complete abandonment. Hated him for knowing the answer and yet hiding it.
And I continue to hate him more and more intensely since then. For its silence, and also for a detail that is certainly much more complicated.
The fact that I have never seen him again.
How long? I don't know. I do not know. What I do know is that this is enough time for me to get rid of it all. But the nights I manage to sleep are rare. Since a certain dirty, empty and freezing morning I have been sharing my space. With a boy with a very serious face for his age. That shows off your arm, where his amputated hand seems like the greatest gift anyone could ever give him. He approaches but never says a word. It never touches me.He is never alone. Animals are there too. Those animals are white dogs, identical to those that make up the packs that roam the streets where no human walks anymore. I see only white dogs everytimee I look out the window. Dogs? White? Dogs do not have multiple legs that give them an arachnid appearance. Dogs don't have blue eyes all over their skulls, like carefully encrusted jewels. Dogs do not have jaws of such magnitude, with fangs that reflect the light from their eyes. Fangs that appear to be immense, unbreakable glass knives. And, above all, dogs would not be patient enough to postpone the moment of the attack forever. Dogs would not rejoice in making me yearn for my own end.