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BLOOD . I Pre-(hi)stories If I start drinking blood, can I stay young forever and live a long time? If I drink demon’s blood, will I get the power to fly? If I drink human blood from an HIV carrier, can I catch the virus? Is killing chickens to drink their blood and drinking the blood of other animals bad for you? Isn’t drinking the blood of other people risky? Is it bad for you to drink your sister’s blood? Is it bad for you to shower after drinking blood? Can blood be used to recharge batteries? Drinking blood: what does the Bible say? II (Hi)story Imagine an accident with one of those blood trucks, said Franklin, holding the goat’s head in his lap. What blood trucks? Eduardo replied, driving the red Uno with the crumpled rear bumper and broken right headlight. It’d happen here, in the middle of the Bandeirantes, right at this spot, after you cross the Tropic of Capricorn, said Franklin. What blood trucks? insisted Eduardo. The truck driver would take his hand from the wheel for one second to wipe his brow – continued Franklin, ignoring his associate’s question and the smear of blood from the newly severed goat’s head staining his turquoise shorts – and that same damned second the truck’s left wheel would drop into the only pothole in the asphalt that hadn’t been resurfaced and the driver would
Humboldt 108 Goethe-Institut 2017
lose control. Even if he wasn’t distracted trying to wipe away that drop of sweat threatening to get in his eye, there’s no way he’d see the hole, Eduardo added, now taking a fancy to the story, because it’d be late on a particularly dark and moonless, starless night. The truck would overturn, Franklin continued, and skid to a stop two hundred meters ahead, blocking traffic and creating a mammoth traffic jam, bringing the Marginal Tietê to a standstill for hours and hours, all the way to Cumbica. The body of the truck would split and blood would spurt out of it like from a huge, gaping wound, or like a jugular sliced by the sharpest knife ever produced by our good friend Tom. No! exclaimed Eduardo. Not a knife. Cut with a sword! Yeah! Frank- III Art (Hi)stories lin agreed, a sword! A samurai sword, with a carved wooden handle depicting the crea- Artist sweetens tion of the world, said Eduardo, lastly. Then, art dealer’s coffee Franklin continued, the blood would cascade with menstrual blood from the truck and flow down the highway in frothy, deep red waves, forming puddles here Tattooist makes small and there, and turning both the asphalt and incisions on inner thighs the vegetation on the side of the highway and consumes the fresh blood completely red. People would get out of their cars and go over to the truck. When the flash- Michele prefers pig’s blood, which is easily lights of their phones illuminated the road and they saw that absurd amount of blood, found at the market bloodshed on a scale they could have never imagined until then, they’d start scream- In artistic experiment, ing. Yeah, Eduardo nodded, they’d start Frenchwoman injects horse blood screaming and pulling out their hair, think- and feels extra-human ing it must be end times. Men would kneel on the ground, added Franklin, women would try “I just try to avoid the neck area: it’s so cliché,” to rip their clothes and all the children would vomit. Except for one. Except for one, repeat- says American ed Eduardo. A little boy, said Franklin. An Indian boy, added Eduardo, a boy about ten At the vernissage they years old who used to walk down to the road- will serve Bloody Marys side at that time of night and watch the cars made with real blood go by. The chief’s youngest son, said Franklin. No, replied Eduardo, the chief himself, the fu- It was Beuys himself who ture chief. This boy, Franklin continued, would killed the hare stoop down and, like a thirsty dog, lap up the blood pooled in the pothole that had caused the accident. He’d lap up all that blood, like a When the Deluge vampire, as if it were the last of the world’s of blood comes Noah won’t have an ark water reserves. And when not a single drop of blood remained in the hole, added EduarFranklin went to see do, he’d go back to the roadside, where he came from, he’d hike up Jaraguá Peak and a vampire movie there, from up high, he’d look back at the and thought of a poem road and think that the smell of that blood, a smell that would soak through the pavement and would still be smelt for three long days, Veronica Stigger is a writer, art c ritic was stronger, sweeter and more cloying than the smell of the vomit. It would be terrify- and university professor. Her published ing, said Franklin. Terrifying! And the two of works of fiction include Os anões (Cosac them sat nodding their heads in agreement. Naify, 2010), Delírio de Damasco (Cultura Just one thing, said Eduardo finally, is there e Barbárie, 2012), Opisanie świata (Cosac Naify, 2013) and Sul (34, 2016), as well as such a thing as a blood truck? Yeah. Of course there is. They’re the trucks that carry donat- the children’s books Dora e o sol (34, 2010) ed blood from one hospital to another. I see and Onde a onça bebe água (SESC São Carlos, 2012; Cosac Naify, 2015). them all the time out here. Yeah, there’s such a thing, isn’t there? I don’t know. Translation: Zoë Perry