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Brazil The Women’s Writing Issue

Featuring

short stories

129

Ana Rüsche Luisa Geisler Juliana Frank Marília Garcia Paloma Vidal Miriam Mambrini Ana Paula Maia Marina Colasanti Carola Saavedra

Mystery Issue, March 2013 | 44

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Australia 21 September – 8 December 2013 www.royalacademy.org.uk Friends of the RA go free Sidney Nolan, Ned Kelly (detail), 1946.

Enamel on composition board, 90.8 x 121.5 cm.

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Gift of Sunday Reed 1977.

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129 EDITORIAL

Litro Magazine Brazil The Women’s Writing Issue

Dear Readers, We come back to writing from Brazil this year for a moment of betweenness.

The World Cup is a year away. The Pope’s July visit came in the wake of the biggest demonstrations in Brazil for twenty years. Granta’s Best of Young Brazilian Novelists list made a splash last year, then sank from view. It’s time for Litro to see where Brazilian writing is at. With the president, culture minister and head of the literary academy all women, yet a persistently machista culture and no sign of change, we really have to ask the women.

We open with a story by Luisa Geisler in which football is the last thing on the narrator’s mind. The tone slides towards the surreal and horrifyingly funny in short pieces by Juliana Frank, Ana Paula Maia and Miriam Mambrini. In Maia’s longer story, ‘Unruly Roger’, ideas of measure versus immoderacy run riot in this distorted mirror to Brazilian society.

There is no shortage of anxiety, even frenzy, behind front doors in this collection, particularly among women who live in tension between different levels of society or between generations. Yet, more contemplative notes are struck by Paloma Vidal and by our three poets. Lastly, in ‘Coexistence’, Carola Saavedra dramatises a woman’s encounter with her own, stubborn fictional creation.

One further women-only aspect of the issue deserves special mention.

A number of Oxford University's Portuguese Faculty students and their lecturer translated the majority of these stories and poems—a first experience of professional editing and publication for several. Working with these fine new translators has been a pleasure and, as readers will see, a literary success. Many thanks!

I look forward to hearing what you think of the issue.

Sophie Lewis Contributing Editor, Rio de Janeiro October 2013

Obra publicada com o apoio do Ministério da Cultura do Brasil / Fundação Biblioteca Nacional.

COVER ARTIST Laura Lima Born in 1971, Laura Lima lives in Rio de Janeiro, where she studied philosophy and art. Her work has featured in exhibitions in Canada, Switerland and the USA, as well as all around Brazil.

CONTENTS Ana Rüsche CURRENT

Luisa Geisler CORINTHIANS 1

Juliana Frank LAVIE IN THE FRIGHTFUL LIGHT

Marília Garcia AN EQUATION IN HYDE PARK

Paloma Vidal ASÍ ES LA VIDA

Miriam Mambrini PITCH BLACK

Ana Paula Maia UNRULY ROGER

05 06 11 14 19 23 26

SPORE

30

Marina Colasanti

34

OPEN CLOSET DOOR WE CALL THE BREATH OF THE MOUNTAINS

36

Carola Saavedra

37

COEXISTENCE

Lost at Sea by Danielle Buerli

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CURRENT on the electrical relationship between Brazilians and the ocean

by Ana Rüsche translated by Jenny Cearns Our generation never got to see the sea for the first time.

It was always within us, gleaming, our other half

We beg, beg the nights to darken once more but when our prayers are answered it’s just a dimwit delusion, a sea-shimmer to the eyes and the sea seethes deep inside, a rock-crunching beast

We were born flailing whales poor little demons drowning in this semblance of light and the longing is so stingily slight

We just want to see the fucking sea please, for the first time.

Ana Rüsche was born in São Paulo. She has published three collections of poetry, Rasgada (‘Torn’, 2005), Sarabanda (2007) and Nós que adoramos um documentário (‘We who love a documentary’, 2012), and one novel, Acordados (‘Awakened’, 2007).

Jennifer Cearns works as a singer, translator and photographer, and writes regularly on Brazil. She has just completed a degree in English and Portuguese at Oxford University, and is about to return to do a postgraduate degree in Social Anthropology, specialising in Brazil.

Brazil Issue, October 2013 | 05

CORINTHIANS 1 a young wife with more than football on her mind

by Luisa Geisler translated by Gitanjali Patel Hey don’t judge me. When I married Leandro I thought everything was sorted, that I wasn’t ever going to have to worry about men or parties or what my family thought. But I was just kidding myself. Thing is, you think you’ve found the right man for you and that’s that. You say goodbye to single life and have to listen to stuff like “so, one man for the rest of your life, eh?” And I did like Lê. You convince yourself that you wanted to enjoy life when you were young, you slept with a whole load of guys to see what was out there. Cos time passes by, you know? You had to make the most of your youth. That’s exactly it, right?

You only live once. You had to enjoy the body you had, the energy you had, you had to discover new things. After a person gets married then what? You spend your whole life a fool without a sexual repertoire, you don’t learn anything and you think that your husband with his 8-centimetre pot belly is great.

I got married before all my friends, partly by accident I reckon. I was bored.

Everyone gets bored. I met Lê sort of by accident as well, ha. You can never explain these things. The place you weren’t going to go. The time you weren’t going to go. I liked Lê. He made a change from those guys who only noticed me when I was making a joke. I liked going to different places, watching films, meeting new people because they were unfamiliar, intriguing, challenging. Because they were challenges I didn’t find particularly difficult. It was all a real novelty and I went with the flow. Because Lê never said that he wouldn’t succeed; he paid attention to detail. The time we spent together was always the same: I did the things that I didn’t want to do and that I normally wouldn’t, but it was all alright in the end. The wedding decorations were tasteful floral arrangements chosen by Lê’s mother, my aunts cried, my mum said some silly stuff, my friends reeled off the usual wedding spiel, “Love is patient, it is kind, love isn’t jealous, don’t treat it lightly…” what was next? I forget. The only thing I felt was pity for my friends, my darling friends, who might die alone —unlike me. I was going to die with Lê, the man of my dreams, the right man for me. I was sure of it.

Years went on like our relationship, you know? They were actually quite enjoyable. Lê and I, we travelled a lot. Once we went to Orlando and I lived out my childhood dream of going to Disney. We have loads of photos of those times.

At some point Lê had started to talk about children. It didn’t bother me that he was talking about children, what bothered me is that he spoke so much and never asked me what I thought. He never came up to me and said, “I think this, what do you think?” you know? It irritated me. He started to talk about other people’s children, about having children, about financial planning, the future. But no one asked if I wanted to talk about something else. Then he started saying that we should have children, that the time was right, that everyone was having children, that if we waited too long we would be too old to have children. I did in fact agree with him but it wasn’t as if Lê realised because he was too busy talking all the time.

Then I stopped taking the pill. Was it intentional? I dunno if it was. All I know is that it was Leandro’s idea. He said that I wasn’t going to get pregnant right after I stopped taking it, that the effect of the hormones would take time to leave my system, that if we were planning to plan, it would be a good idea

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by Matheus Lopes

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LAVIE IN THE FRIGHTFUL LIGHT how—and why—not to be desperate to lose your virginity

by Juliana Frank translated by Hannah Bowers Sixteen years old. Virgin. Hair in disarray. Without money to embrace freedom.

“Ungrateful Granny, lend me some money, I need to get to know life. “ “Lavie, there is no life on the street, only violence.”

Granny has a stone in her kidney which has hardened her to any passion.

“Unlikely Mummy, lend me some money?”

“Your father has a lover called Geysy Mary! Her father is a multimillionaire, the owner of a toothpaste factory! And she doesn’t have any children, she is as beautiful as a bird, without children, are you listening? … Lavie, stop bothering me.”

Unlikely Mummy is always like this, she never gives me any money.

“Daddy $? I need some cash. No-one goes far at sixteen years old, thirty reais.

Daddy $ made himself all jaunty, puffed up his chest in front of me trying to hide me from view. As if I would envy his riches. Those who don’t fear envy, like Daddy, are those who know that happiness is worth nothing; it is just a bargaining in hell.

I didn’t ask depressed Aunty, seamstress and suicidal. She lives at the very back of my house. I never really know if she is the sister of Unlikely Mummy or of Daddy $.

I packed one bag: a comb, a stolen blouse, a disease-ridden can opener, a battery, a post-it note with a drawing of a stem, a pot of scabs, a Joy Division CD and some shavings from the wall of my bedroom. Uniquely unique things.

I left kicking cans as I went. But you don’t need to kick cans, dreams or sunflowers. You need to kick the suppository of the world’s arse and let it suffocate.

I walked with my long and pale arms down three roads, I climbed up six ladders and slid back down them again. I spent my thirty reais on pastries, old records and matches. No-one is happy in this city. I decided to die. But my death would not be a joke. With the last throes of dignity that I had left, I promised: no, no way would it be something to laugh at. One thing worried me: a virgin in paradise? Once dead, I would instantly be relegated to being one of those saints that oversees the selection. “Selection, no way. I will die dissolute. I need to break my virgin seal.”—Resolute, I made my way to a dingy bar in Sao João. I sat down and leant my elbow on the bar. It was early; the sunlight still hurt the eyes. I caught sight of a man with a communist beard, a lyrical cough and an aristocratic watch.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Nine minutes past six,” he responded.

Brazil Issue, October 2013 | 11

AN EQUATION IN HYDE PARK a Brazilian remembers rainy days in London

by MarĂ­lia Garcia translated by Eloise Stevens it is raining in hyde park today and i am on the other side of the equator sitting in the sun with a cat between my feet which are bare and tinged slightly pink

it is raining in hyde park today and i remember going to a park with squared-off grass with the boy with the green box who had an upside down photo of a nordic forest on the wall of his bedroom and who liked to count to 12 after going through the gate

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ASÍ ES LA VIDA tracing family across borders and generations

by Paloma Vidal translated by Hilary Kaplan For her thirtieth birthday, she gives herself a trip to Buenos Aires. She is going to look for the protagonist of her next short film: Inés, a young woman around her age, the daughter of her father’s half-sister. When her grandfather remarried, with three sons from his first marriage, his dream came true: he had a daughter, Inés’s mother.

The young woman lives in the same house where her grandfather spent most of his life, in a neighborhood called Parque Patrícios on the east side of the city.

She had just one vague memory of this childhood place: a long, dim hallway where, over twenty years ago, when her grandfather was still alive, she learned to ride a bike. She had not returned to Buenos Aires since.

If she had only a faint memory of the house, she remembered clearly the afternoons spent with her cousin when they went to visit their grandfather. Inés was even shyer than she was, which had seemed impossible to her until they met.

On one of those afternoons, walking side by side in the hallway of the house, she had offered her hand and Inés had accepted with a naturalness that won her over immediately.

Inés inherited the house that the law had originally left to her mother and uncles. There were no complaints. Due to distance, indifference, or the unease that accompanies such transactions, they had let the family estate go its own way. Things were usually like this between them: objects and affections were relinquished little by little until they became matters of the past.

Before leaving on her trip, she wrote her itinerary in a notebook with a blue cover. Day 1: neighbourhood reconnaissance. Day 2: introductory visit. In the remaining days, a few more meetings to better get to know her future character.

WHY HER? she asks in block letters in the centre of a blank page, before closing the notebook and packing it in her suitcase.

She lands in Buenos Aires on a hot February day. The temperature, according to the radio in the cab on the ride downtown, is about 36˚C. A cloak of humidity covers the urban landscape. She does not recognise the streets through which the taxi driver leads her, though the surroundings of trees, houses, buildings, shops are strangely familiar.

She wants to get to her hotel room quickly, drop her things and go out for a stroll; to find a café and sit at a table by the window with her notebook and the fountain pen she bought for the occasion. The hotel, recommended by a friend who has just been there, is on Charcas, at the part where it widens like a boulevard, with flower beds in the middle.

She doesn’t trust her memory, so she writes everything down. (It’s a habit she’s had since she was a child; even then she found herself chaotic and the smooth lines of the paper promised to order her thoughts). She wants to record her arrival, its sensations and images, already thinking about her departure, when everything she’ll have lived through will seem unreal.

She forgoes the reconnaissance visit. Unexpectedly, she feels anxious about standing before her grandfather’s house and she knows that once there she

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PITCH BLACK on the impossibility of imagining true sightlessness

by Miriam Mambrini Translated by Gitanjali Patel Early that morning, the sound of a radio came from the house next door, signalling that Senhor Sousa was now sat on his moth-eaten leather armchair in the living room still dressed in his striped pyjamas, his beard unkempt.

As usual his eyes were fixed on an invisible object located slightly above people's heads. The radio would stay on all day, letting her know that he was there, stationary, unmoved by the blue sky and the bougainvillea that had yielded an abundance of red flowers at the entrance.

From time to time, her mum would send her over to her neighbour's house.

She enjoyed these visits, despite being filled with cold fear on each occasion.

Dona Jorgina would always offer her a piece of cake but her main thought was to see Senhor Sousa.

"Marisa's daughter is here," Dona Jorgina informed her husband.

He was locked away in his world of darkness, indifferent to her and everything that wasn't the radio. His wife pressed further.

"Sousa, the girl brought some pumpkin cake for you."

The old man grunted a 'thank your mother' but nothing more. Before following Dona Jorgina to the kitchen for a piece of cake, she paused briefly, waiting for something else to happen, a gesture, a word, but he had already become oblivious to what was happening in the room and had returned to listening to the radio and his own thoughts.

When she got home she played at being blind. But even when she shut her eyes as tightly as she could, light would still seep through her eyelids. She couldn’t yet comprehend the darkness that he must experience. So she waited for night to come. As she lay in bed and her mother turned out the light, then yes, she almost had it. But then she would suddenly be overwhelmed with a fear of never seeing again and open her eyes. Light filtered through the door frame and Senhor Sousa’s world would disappear.

One day came when she arrived at her neighbour's house and Dona Jorgina wasn't there. In the living room the radio was advertising eco-friendly soap, before introducing the show 'The Dragon of the Wide Road’. She walked down the corridor on tiptoe to the living-room door, careful not to let the floorboards creak. There he was. His gaunt face, his sparse beard, his mouth chewing invisible morsels of food. His hands, which mostly rested on the arms of the chair, would clench occasionally as he gripped the worn-out leather with his bird-like claws. His legs were tucked under the chair, half revealing his battered sandals. His cloudy eyes blinked slowly.

She stood there for a while, observing each of his movements and expressions, allowing the strange sensation that she had become invisible to grow inside her. She gradually began to feel as though no one would know of her existence again. “UUH!” She suddenly burst out, without any warning or reason. The vowel hung in the air, heavy and lingering, interrupting the sounds coming from the radio.

Brazil Issue, October 2013 | 23

Born by Andrew Bannecker

Brazil Issue, October 2013 | 25

UNRULY ROGER an outsize hero abandons his job and wreaks havoc among the measured bourgeois of the city

by Ana Paula Maia translated by Claire Williams An ulcer is like the calloused hand of a labourer. You can recognise a man by the callouses on his hands or the wounds in his stomach. I heard that nugget of wisdom somewhere and it was all I could think of as I got distracted for a few seconds looking at my pale, clean hands, while my boss, sitting opposite me, his breath as he exhaled smelling sweetly of peanut butter, searched for alternative ways to tell me yet again: You’re fired.

Son of a bitch, I thought, looking now at my new suit. Two weeks ago he had told me to buy a better suit because appearance counts for a lot. Bloody hell, I’m paying for it in ten instalments, my brand new suit. There’s nothing like being fired in an expensive suit, which is going to cost you whatever money you’ve got left. I don’t think it brought me much luck.

A very emphatic Good. Bye. and in that second I identified the brand of peanut butter. I used to buy it and eat it slowly, which would guarantee me around twenty days of imported peanut butter. I don’t eat it any more.

Shaking his head and smoothing down the six hairs right on the top of it, he said, faking a kind of consternation in his dodgy Portuguese: I am very sorry.

Of course he is. I’m sorry too that those six straggly strands on his head won’t last much longer. It’s pitiful.

Two months ago we went through a merger with the French. They have more money and dress better. Other than that, it’s the same old story. My former boss was relocated to another department, downgraded, and I’ve been relocated into the street.

“We can’t bend the rules, there’s no way around it, Roger, c’est tout.”

He summed up all my years there with a c’est tout. What’s that about? I am someone who lives outside the rules. Bloody office...can’t bend the rules? C’est tout, Pas de tout, he spends his life saying that between gritted teeth. But one thing I have learned. Vá au merde.

He answers a phone call and I grunt a few uh huh, uh huhs, oui...oui, and he makes a clumsy gesture with his hand dismissing me. Seven years at this place... it might as well have been seven years in Tibet, that’s all I can think about, Tibet and Tibetan monks and the silence there must be inside a monastery and that they’re all bald like my boss will be by the end of the year. Shitty job...and after seven years I’m still outside the rules.

C´est tout? he asks turning his mouth away from the phone and I nod pointlessly understanding that whenever someone says c´est tout it’s to put an end to the subject, whatever it is.

My daydreams are interrupted by the unbearable sound of the photocopying machine right beside us; this room with thin plywood walls, fragile like eggshell like everything else, makes me want to vomit. I leave the room and go back to my desk which has just stopped being mine. In fact it never was, but I could see some marks on it from so much wear and tear, my sweat that over

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SPORE a manicurist fosters a dark secret

by Ana Paula Maia translated by Sarah Jacobs Rosália had been watching the oven for five minutes. She usually put the nail clippers in the oven for ten minutes to sterilise them in the heat. She’d been a manicurist for fifteen years. It was cutting and painting nails that had paid for her unfinished schooling, the abortion of Tonho’s child and the building material for the work on her four-room house. She had painted the inside light yellow and bought new furniture, to be paid for in seventy-two instalments.

As she stood there for those five minutes, she thought about how many nail clippers she had gone through in her fifteen years on the job. She couldn’t count very well.

The oven timer sounded as her name was called from the reception. The 4-o’clock customer had arrived. The 4-o’clock customer was a fat, hairy woman.

For her toenails she needed to sit back in the chair with her feet on Rosália’s lap.

Many feet had lain on Rosália’s lap. But no children. Her one abortion had left her broken. She was as sterile as her nail clippers. By sterilising everything she’d ended up sterilising herself.

She saw the customer and sat down with a sigh, tired. There was some fresh coffee in the thermal flask on the countertop. She reached for a disposable cup and poured the coffee. It came out steaming hot. She drank unhurriedly, leaning against the countertop, and pondered for a while. What Rosália thought and pondered we will never know, since thoughts are silent. Not even an omniscient narrator can know all her characters’ secrets. Deep in their silent thoughts, they can emerge from their distant worlds and surprise even their own narrator.

Rosália took a pair of old, blunt nail clippers from her bag.

Whilst the customer's feet soaked she started to trim her cuticles. Rosália wanted to see a little blood. She knew that the woman wasn’t going to like it, but all the same she nipped the first cuticle. Blood flowed quickly.

“It’s well dug in, isn’t it?”

The woman trusted Rosália. She knew that her nail clippers were always sterilised. After the first sight of blood she simply kept going. Rosália carefully cut the woman’s fingers.

“Rosália, Dona Esmeralda had to take painkillers. What got into you? The woman was nearly hospitalised.”

Rosália hung her head and kept quiet.

“Have you no explanation for this?” the salon manager insisted.

Rosália shrugged and walked away, chewing her gum.

She was fired and quickly found work in another salon. And whenever she could she cut deeper into the cuticle. It became such a skill that her little attacks were not even felt. She used an anticoagulant and her satisfaction increased.

Then she found out that one of her customers had contracted the HCV virus.

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The Barman

OPEN CLOSET DOOR on seeing clothes not unworn and mountains not unmoving

by Marina Colasanti translated by Diane Whitty I open the door of my closet as I open a diary.

There hangs my life my worn-out daily existence no secrets intimacy exposed that no button will defend no pocket secure, a truer mirror than any other holding up to scrutiny the measures of my body.

Closet tabernacle of my room which I open in the morning as if at a window to consecrate the ritual of my day.

Blue Beard’s parlour cluttered with pendants long skirts and veils entangled yet trickling no blood.

Decapitated bodies my hands missing from limp sleeves.

From the closet my clothes pursue me

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WE CALL THE BREATH OF THE MOUNTAINS

by Marina Colasanti translated by Diane Whitty

Mountains are not as is said unmoving.

Mountains shift in the light green ships without sails that luminosity strikes and night straddles.

Between two hills the axe of the sun carves out a valley that afternoon light closes stitching up slopes with purple thread.

Ridges aligned in the morning a docile drove in the thread of time they will be struck till forming a wall on the horizon raised up against the light.

Mountains are not as is said inert.

Their fine breath which hovers and journeys we call

mist.

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COEXISTENCE can a fictional creation really step off the page?

by Carola Saavedra translated by Clelia Goodchild ‘You shouldn’t stay sitting for such a long time.’ Apart from the reading lamp and computer screen, there is practically no light, only enough to make out a woman seated at a desk, her agile fingers on the keyboard. A glass of red wine and a few piles of books and papers lie on the table. ‘Then you complain about back pains.’ She takes a sip from the glass, and starts reading the paragraph she has just written out loud. Someone comes up to her from behind, at first still hidden by the darkness of the room. Then, one can make out a young man, elegantly dressed, his hair brushed back with an affected carelessness.

He moves closer, rests his hands on her shoulders, massages them—she carries on reading as if ignoring him. He insists: ‘You haven’t been working out. Don’t think I don’t notice these things.’ Without taking her eyes off the computer screen, she reacts impatiently: ‘Why don’t you mind your own business? Who do you think you are, my personal trainer? My ballet teacher?’ He keeps his hands on her shoulders, sliding them down her back, down her arms, squeezing them tightly. ‘You know that after your thirties your body isn’t the same any more, that you no longer have the same muscle structure, the same suppleness.

You just can’t leave it to its own fate. Not to mention your spine—he runs his fingers down her spine—look, you’re going to end up all crooked if you carry on like this.’ She shrugs abruptly to free herself from the massage. ‘Please let me work in peace.’ He moves away, apparently hurt; it is almost impossible to make him out in the obscurity, only his voice can be heard.

‘God, you’re so bad tempered, I was only trying to help.’ Silence. She carries on writing. His footsteps can be heard crossing the room. He turns on a small table lamp. Settling in an armchair, he crosses his legs, takes a cigar out of his jacket pocket and looks at it fondly for a moment. A sort of ritual then follows, until he finally lights it. After the first few drags, he pauses and says: ‘I worry about you, you know.’ She pretends not to hear him. He insists. ‘You don’t believe me, but I really do worry,’ he says dramatically.

‘You don’t need to. Stick to your own problems.’ He seems perfectly comfortable in the room, as if he had always been there. He takes another drag.

Upon smelling the smoke, she turns around for the first time, and with a look of reproach she says: ‘Since when do you smoke cigars? I don’t remember writing that.’ He smiles ironically. He remains silent for a moment, as if trying to create some sort of suspense, and says: ‘Indeed, you didn’t write that.’ And after another pause, he adds: ‘Not yet.’ ‘So…’ Her voice sounds impatient.

‘So nothing. I thought it would look good. It suits me, don’t you think?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ she says, moving the keyboard away and sitting on the desk, with her feet on the chair. She takes another sip of wine. He carries on: ‘If you take a close look at my habits since the beginning, my appearance, my personality, my spirit—not in the sense of my soul, the soul is of no interest to anyone. In the sense of Geist, which the Germans distinguished so well from Seele, the soul. Anyway, if you take all these aspects into account you’ll realize it’s obvious that I smoke cigars.’

‘Obvious?’ She laughs loudly. This is the last thing I need, you giving me advice on what I should or shouldn’t write, on how I should construct my characters.

And on top of that you come up with these explanations in German—don’t think I’m impressed.’

Brazil Issue, October 2013 | 37

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief: Eric Akoto eric.akoto@litro.co.uk Magazine Short Fiction Editor: Andrew Lloyd-Jones andrew.lloydjones@litro.co.uk General Online Editor : Rebecca Hattersley rebecca.hattersley@litro.co.uk Online Short Fiction Editor: Katy Darby katy.darby@litro.co.uk Online Short Fiction Assistant Editor: Belinda Campbell onlinefiction@litro.co.uk Online Fiction Editor: Craig Bates onlinefiction@litro.co.uk Book Reviews & Interviews Editor: David Whelan david.whelan@litro.co.uk Arts Editor: Daniel Janes arts@litro.co.uk Film & Arts Editor: Christo Hall Online Creative Non-Fiction Editor: Dan Coxon Contributing Editor: Sophie Lewis Lead Designer: Laura Hannum LitroTV Editor: info@litro.co.uk Membership and Development: press@litro.co.uk Marketing & Sales: info@litro.co.uk

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LITRO | 129 Brazil The Women’s Writing Issue Lassie, you should know that no-one is happy in even hours, only in odd. What makes people of our times happy, I mean, in our times, is a mere question mark. Everything depends on the cuckoo’s mood. On the hand and its continual hammering.

At six o’clock the city of São Paulo is inert. Those who pretend that they are happy and put on a fake smile don’t fool me.

Because it’s six o’clock and the drugs which can bring a person contentment are only sold later on. At six o’clock, look for the man who shuffles his flip-flops carrying a shotgun or the means to start a fire and you know that it will be some hours before happiness reaches this clockwork city. from 'Lavie in the Frightful Light'

by Juliana Frank translated by Hannah Bowers Cover Art Man=flesh/Woman=flesh - doped

by Laura Lima photo by Eduardo Eckenfels www.litro.co.uk ISBN 978-0-9554245-5-7

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