Twenty Steps

‘Twenty Steps’ is the title story of Correia’s most recent collection, ‘Vinte Degraus e Outros Contos’, which won the prestigious Camões Prize in 2015. It’s also the first text I read by her, and the one that got me hooked — I was immediately fascinated by the world it creates, which is somehow both magical and harshly, viscerally real.

~Annie McDermott

Artwork by Oleksandra Skulinets. Image courtesy of the artist.

You needed twenty metres for it to work. That allowed time for the person to do their hanged man’s dance. For their eyes to cloud over on the way down, oblivious to the murderer watching from above.

The woman repeated it again and again, her dry lips flecked with foam.

No one was interested. She was talking about a bridge, her bridge, the duplicitous bridge that had tempted her with suicide and left the job undone. She, the woman, had thrown herself off and landed on the sharp rocks below. She lay there for hours, shouting. “It wasn’t bloody high enough!” she yelled. Soon she was laughing as she said it. Love had counselled her to die, but, ultimately, matters of the heart are no more important than a snake. They give you a fright, then slither away.

Her bones, large and small, had all mended just fine. Except in her left foot, which was now twisted to one side. The hole in her forehead, from which so much blood had streamed that it had run into her mouth as if not wanting to go to waste, had generated its own very peculiar substance. Neither skin nor flesh. A fatty white whirlpool, like a wax flower on her dark face.

She was born on the other side of the mountains, where women began to be ugly. The ones by the sea drank up all the light God provided, covering eyes and heads with its blues and golds. The woman’s name was Rosa, and she clung to the beauty of that name, so lovely, so full of velvets and satins. She used to hop down the road, brown against the brown landscape, her hoe on her shoulder. She farmed her grandmother’s land as best she could, hopping along in her misshapen boots, her socks on even in the heat. A large, grey, solitary rabbit. Then the man in the truck drove past.

Oh, he was a man who glittered. And because he glittered, everyone thought he was good. Even Rosa’s grandmother. She riffled through the wad of notes he gave her, and lines of joy overrode the lines of sadness without much altering her face. All her life she had dreamed of money, and never once of her granddaughter. They knew precisely how much each of them was worth.

When they reached the city, Rosa felt afraid for the first time. Not because she was worried about her Dad’s intentions, but because she couldn’t see the horizon any more.

The goodness of the glittering man may have been fake, but it still stuck to the surface for a good long while. He wore bracelets and gold chains, brylcreem and patent leather shoes. Rosa peered out of the truck window, feeling the speed, her brain lighting up and shutting down so often that, by the end of the day, it had been utterly transformed. When she went into their room in the motel, she prepared herself to be undressed and used. But, instead, the man lay down beside her, jingling and smelly, and immediately fell asleep. A good man, Rosa thought. He was taking her away to become a maid. In the morning, she asked his name. There was mould on the breakfast jam. Call me whatever you like, call me Dad, he said. He wasn’t old enough for that.

When they reached the city, Rosa felt afraid for the first time. Not because she was worried about her Dad’s intentions, but because she couldn’t see the horizon any more. She tried to make out where things began and ended, but she hadn’t even noticed when the change occurred. She’d been distracted by the long line of cars coming to a sudden halt, the tarmac stretching ahead like a dried-up river in the empty expanse of bushes and long grass. Then, before she knew it, there was no longer any distance left to look into. She began to tremble. They pulled into a courtyard. This is Lisbon, her Dad said, and he took her bag and helped her down. There’s no wind in Lisbon, Rosa thought. Nothing resembling air could possibly pass between these enormous buildings. Then she looked up, towards the sky, but it made her feel dizzy and she looked down again. Her Dad took her arm and pulled her gently along with him.

The steam from the cooking pots reached her even before the door opened. It tickled the back of her throat and made her want to cough. “I never have got used to those African spices,” she said. And she laughed. She laughed. And with that laugh she won over every client in the house. And the girls too. The deaf-mute, the hairy one, the dwarf. And others who didn’t stay long, who had bigger plans and sent the doorwoman to buy them exotic potions from a cellar in the Baixa. They knew how to make men cry, copying the catalogues of misfortunes from the TV shows of evangelical bishops. And the men wept and drank, and then came back to take the girls away. The cross-eyed girls had particular success with this technique. Not that they married well, but at least they married. They got wardrobes all to themselves. Strangely, their Dad didn’t mind. These women had, to all intents and purposes, betrayed his trust, and yet he remained on good terms with them. He often asked them for advice. He never asked Rosa. And yet Rosa had never slipped a potion into anyone’s drink.

She said, “The bedrooms were on another floor. The lift was going up and down like a yoyo.” But the other women in the building never said a word. Nor did their husbands. Because, by then, nobody was sure exactly what behaviour they were and weren’t meant to tolerate.

“We were all crippled, see?” Rosa said. But she was talking to herself. “Cripples know how to please a man. Our Dad made a mint. He even moved to a new neighbourhood.”

That life had suited Rosa very well. The girls tried to make up for their awkward bodies with polite, respectful mannerisms that gave an impression of refinement. When they argued they danced, evolving into their monstrous limbs like birds as they fought. Most of the time, though, they were kind to one another. And they were careful to conserve their strength. They saved everything: their energy, their small change. Because they could hardly believe their success as sexual objects. And their farewells to their clients were remarkably sincere, with all the melancholy of a lovers’ adieu. And the men, as well having a strange liking for imperfections, felt somehow drawn to that polite atmosphere in which even the worst profanities carried within them a maternal murmur.

Of all the girls, Rosa was the least sweet because she didn’t need to be; she had more important skills. “You’re our salt and pepper,” her Dad would say. The other girls were grateful to Rosa for accepting the more unusual work so they didn’t have to. They knew nothing but the city. Even if they came from other towns, they still knew nothing but the city, that is, nothing but houses and concrete. They found some of the more sordid requests disgusting. Rosa, on the other hand, had been used to going barefoot into the animal pens on the farm and reaching inside goats to pull out their dead young. She didn’t mind stickiness or bitterness or decay. And her tough skin could cope with pinches and other far more brutal treatment. “You’re our salt,” her Dad used to say. “Our pepper.” One thing Rosa could not endure, however, was boredom. Life there was varied enough to keep boredom at bay.

Of all the girls, Rosa was the least sweet because she didn’t need to be; she had more important skills.

Her Dad’s business was going well. In fact, it was going too well. It was attracting unwanted attention. He was invited to become a business partner in his own brothel, and the indignity of it almost made him ill. Lucia the dwarf burst into tears before he’d even mentioned the ultimatum. He railed against the cruel injustices facing the poor on this earth. He was on the verge of becoming a communist, but then turned to the Bible instead. Not long after that, the building burnt down.

The building had some security in place, but there were weak points. A balance had to be struck: too much attention paid to visitors’ comings and goings would have caused problems. And so, through the cracks in the minimal security, the fire got in. And although nobody was killed, their Dad’s spirit died in there. No one could console him.

They lived in the boarding house like refugees fleeing a war zone. They all thought it was just a temporary crisis. Sometimes their Dad made grand speeches in which he called for a revolution. “Freedom, what freedom? Whose freedom?” he cried. “We’re living in a Hollywood movie, that’s what’s going on.” He sat on the bed surrounded by his dependents: a dwarf, a girl with an open wound on her leg, another with webbed hands and Rosa, the cripple. He had aged. One day, he came back with no gold chains, no bracelets, no watch. And yet instead of seeming lighter, he was bent and stooped. It wasn’t just his possessions he’d lost, it was his clients and friends. He was trapped in a Hollywood movie, and around every street corner lurked the shadow of a murderer. They were going to kill him and take the girls. The father gave the four girls everything he’d saved, down to the last cent, then he said: “There’s always a showdown,” and never returned.

Rosa and the girl with webbed hands moved into a single room together to save on rent. But the girl with webbed hands was hardly the most restful of roommates, and Rosa wasn’t content there either. The landlady, who always felt guilty about something, was simultaneously awkward and helpful in the way such people tend to be, and sorted out the paperwork for them to get their charity handouts. “No, that’s not what it’s called,” she corrected herself. But the right word sounded strange, and besides, said Rosa, things hadn’t changed as much as all that. “It’s up to the State now,” the landlady explained. Which rather reduced the importance of her own efforts. “The State’s grateful to people like me,” she added hastily.

“They’re paying the poor to enjoy being poor,” Rosa said. And she laughed. Her afternoons were spent at the entrance to the metro. Since she was in a Hollywood movie, the busiest stations were off limits to her. Beggars didn’t get to decide these things. There were systems in place. The great hand picked each of them up, set them down where they belonged and then collected them up again later. The more gifted among them would sing or weep. Takings were higher that way. Anyone wanting to earn a living and who took a close look would see a military map. An expanse of interconnecting battlefields. The occupied zones, and perhaps their dead and wounded. It was all about territory. There were only a few places left that weren’t under anyone’s control, breathing spaces for the ephemeral beggars whom everyone walked past without a glance. In one of these places, on a flight of steps, sat Rosa. Four steps beneath her sat the blind man.

The blind man needed money, and she didn’t. But she was looking for distractions. Her roommate, the one with pink webbing between her fingers, had gone out one day and never come back. The dry weather didn’t agree with her and she took secret showers far more often than her rent allowed. The landlady was certainly very unusual, being so constantly racked with guilt, but the waste of water was the final straw even for her. She reverted to her social class and began to keep watch, as landladies often do. She muttered insults at her tenant, sniffing around after her, and eventually took to locking the bathroom, meaning they had to ask permission to use the toilet. The girl was fast losing the courteous manners of the brothel. She fanned herself with her webbed hands. She slammed doors and shouted obscenities down the corridor. In the end, she turned on Rosa. “You couldn’t even bloody kill yourself!” she said. Her cruelty grew and grew, and eventually their room wasn’t big enough; anger had turned the girl into a giant. She kicked her roommate out of bed and onto the floor. “The heat has sent her mad,” Rosa explained. The landlady could see a disaster looming, something that would be her fault and add yet another demon to her already sleepless nights.

And so it was: the girl went out one morning in July and never came back. Rosa went careering around the room in triumph, bumping into the furniture with her twisted foot, exultant at her victory. The landlady didn’t find anybody else to share the bed. And even as Rosa heard herself taking deep breaths, as if out in the fields, she felt boredom slipping silently and unmistakably in through the window.

“I need some fresh air,” she said to the landlady. And she went to display her foot in the metro. Not because she needed the money. She ate bread soaked in milky coffee. She wasn’t old yet, but she had adopted the food of old age, and with a few spoonfuls of sugar it was enough for her. The government handouts never let her down, and kept her from worrying about anything else. But tranquillity always bored her. That was why she’d thrown herself into her work before, going to lengths the other girls would never have dreamed of. That was why she was now staring up at the ceiling and sighing. So she picked up the empty biscuit tin, went to the metro station, and placed her foot and the tin in full view.

Four steps below, the blind man would lift his beaky little nose to take in all the information he could. Because although he was genuinely blind, he still had to report back to his mother. The heat and the cold passed through him, piercing his clothes like bullets. And he raised his powerful voice, an indignant voice that pursued passers-by, driving them away. The children cried and nobody stopped to throw him any change. “This is what you get for trying to look after yourself,” the blind man would say. When he sensed the presence of a rival, his tone became even more strident. Rosa kept talking about the bridge. The passers-by, giving the blind man a wide berth, didn’t walk past Rosa as slowly as they should have. Instead, they quickened their pace, muttering about the rain or the sun. Rosa didn’t want them to give her anything. She just wanted them to slow down. She hurled her story at them and it fell back, bruised, onto the steps. Abandoned, just like its owner.

“If you must go out, take a walking stick,” said the landlady. She couldn’t resist interfering. The blind man was curious about this new sound, the walking stick striking the concrete. “What do you suffer from?” he asked. He meant, what’s your excuse? He was thinking, what can you do for me?

Then the blind man heard shouts, the cracking of a skull and his moneybox rolling away.

“Look out for the guy who gives me bottle caps,” he said. “And tell me when he next comes past.”

“What do I get in return?”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to listen to what I’m going to say,” the woman, Rosa, replied.

And then she talked. She talked and talked about the bridge. About nice little bridges, moss-covered bridges that cradled the people walking across. And about others so high even planes were warned about them. But there weren’t any words for Rosa’s bridge, it was evil and that was that. And yet she was grateful for it. “Bridges are the devil’s pathways. They help him baptise his children,” the blind man explained.

“Don’t go making excuses for him.”

“For who?”

“God.”

It was God who chose the accidents. And the illnesses. He was the one who’d sold the matches and petrol that destroyed her brothel.

“Because God doesn’t like losers. Or cripples,” the blind man said thoughtfully.

“Or you.”

“Or me.”

And they laughed. They laughed.

A few days later, the blind man asked: “How does He choose?” He had become rather philosophical lately. “Yes, how does He decide who to cripple?”

“He just chooses because he’s bored,” Rosa replied. She felt a moment of illumination. At last, she understood God: he’d do anything to entertain himself. “Do you know how many steps there are here? About twenty. I counted. To pass the time. God does that too. He’s counted everything in the world by now.”

“Because he’s bored and in a bad mood. And he probably can’t sleep,” the blind man said.

“Maybe every now and then he’ll have a stretch and stick out his cane so that someone trips and falls down the steps.”

“Someone who gives fake coins,” the blind man added bitterly.

Oh, no, not even that, thought Rosa. God doesn’t need a reason to throw someone down these twenty hard steps. That’s what makes him God.

Then the blind man heard shouts, the cracking of a skull and his moneybox rolling away. “She did it on purpose, with her stick!” people were saying. The sound of the blows they dealt out to Rosa echoed round about and made the blind man’s heart ache. “They’re attacking God,” he cried. But nobody took any notice.

Hélia Correia has written more than ten novels, as well as poetry, short stories, plays and children’s books. Among her novels are ‘Lillias Fraser’ (2008), about a young clairvoyant girl in Scotland and Portugal in the eighteenth century, who foresees the Lisbon earthquake; and ‘Adoecer’ (2010), a retelling of the tragic life of the poet and artist Elizabeth Siddall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s wife and muse. Her children’s books include a series about the exploits of Tiresias’ grandson, ‘Mopsos, the little Greek’. With its sly engagement with classical literature, deadpan strangeness and sparse, carefully-weighted language, Correia’s work contains shades of Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood, and even Samuel Beckett, though its close connection with the traditions and landscapes of rural Portugal makes it into something else entirely.

Annie McDermott is a literary translator working from Spanish and Portuguese. Her work has appeared in publications including Granta, World Literature Today, Two Lines, Asymptote and Alba, and her co-translation of ‘City of Ulysses’ by Teolinda Gersão (with Jethro Soutar) will be published in 2017 by Dalkey Archive Press. In 2013, she was the runner-up in the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize, and in 2014 she took part in a six-month mentorship with Margaret Jull Costa, focusing on translating Brazilian literature.