MY MOTHER'S DIARY(. . .)
MY NAZI PAST : A TRANSLATION
(the past is never a justification, only a frayed excuse; it doesn’t confer any right, and doesn’t enable any error; it is even more cruel than Hitler)
— William H. Gass, The Tunnel
(. . .)
I THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY. MONTHS WITHOUT SEEING HER SON AND SHE fell asleep. I took the tray with the teacups to the kitchen. The light flickered a bit and I was worried the power was going to go out. I started opening drawers looking for candles. In one of them, I noticed a notebook with a red cover. I took it out and opened it. It was my mother Margarete’s handwriting. A kind of diary? Why would she keep it in the kitchen and not the bedroom? Probably because she couldn’t write in bed. Sitting at the kitchen table: the only position in which she was able to write(. . .) flipping way back, in one of the first pages, back around the time she still used to leave the house (there was no information about the year): “09.24. After therapy, I went to eat, at a churrascaria in Marista. I sat at a table, the most distant and isolated table I could find, but two women sat next to me, I think they also wanted to be alone and they didn’t pay any attention to me. One of them wouldn’t shut up, irritated with her husband, with herself, with everything. I had a tape recorder in my purse because I always record my sessions with the therapist, I liked to listen to them afterwards, to think about what is said in the sessions, to go over everything and try to improve as a patient and as a person. My therapist doesn’t know I record. Would it make sense to tell him? I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s allowed. Maybe it’s not polite. I don’t care. I also recorded the woman at the churrascaria. Here is my transcription: ‘Ok yeah, I tried to cut his dick off, but I told him a million times I was done taking this shit, him fooling around without the least discretion, everyone knows, while I bust my ass to keep this shitty house in order and take the kids to school and pick them up and keep the things all organized labeled neatly-piled, and this story is the worst of all of them, I swear, his boss’s daughter, an airhead, I told him to stop, I said I wasn’t going to tolerate this sleaziness, this whoring around, and him saying shamelessly Glauce isn’t a whore, that and nothing else, Glauce isn’t a whore, he didn’t even put in the effort to deny fooling around with that whore, he was silent while I screamed, stayed silent while I also shut up waiting for him to say something, anything, the shame is that he’s such a light sleeper or maybe I made too much noise or maybe both those things, and he hit me in the face when he saw me stopped there with the knife, he was really spooked and he hit me in the face and said he wanted a separation, earlier I had spoken with my sister about this story with the boss’s daughter and my sister the sluts are these men, my husband is a little slut, your husband is a little slut, and all this just completely nauseates me, I know, I know, my sister is brilliant, if she was going to cut someone’s dick off, I guarantee it wouldn’t just be an try, I guarantee that son of a bitch husband of hers wouldn’t wake up until it was too late, you know what she’s like, her husband works with mine and we wouldn’t be surprised if we found out the two of them have been trading or, in the least worst of the possibilities, yeah, that’s exactly it, the two lowlifes screwing little missy at the same time, the boss’s teenage whore daughter, maybe on the same carpet in one of their offices, one fucking the girl and the other one taking pictures, and afterwards they switch and the three getting drunk and banging, their offices are next to each other and sometimes I lose a hell of a lot of time imagining the two chatting about the asses of the cuties from HR and the tits of the new executive director’s secretary and the thighs of the third or fourth wife of the financing guy and, of course, about the firm little curves of princess Glauce, I feel like ripping the hussy’s nose off, cutting it off with one of those garden sheers, that little upturned nose, sometimes I dream I’m him and in the dream I wake up in the morning and climb on top of my wife, which in this case is me, but not in the dream, in the dream it’s that little whore Glauce, and so I give it the perfunctory fuck because my dick is hard because I have to piss, and after cumming on her perfect little tummy, because she still hasn’t had to get pregnant and have a baby three times, and what’s this thing men have about staring at their own dick while it cums?, have you seen when they do this?, does yours do this too?, he takes out his dick and looks at it while the cum sprays all over me, on my stomach, on my ass, on my face, it’s a fixation with their own dick, with their own cum spraying out, I think it’s sickening, sickening, but I was telling you about my dream, well yeah, I was him and Glauce was me, and after I came I finally go to the bathroom and when I stand over to the toilet to piss and my dick empties out in there, it simply disconnects from my body and plops, you know?, and Glauce comes into the bathroom and before I can do anything, because I’m stunned flabbergasted perplexed with my dick which disconnected from my body and fell in the toilet, before I can do anything she flushes the toilet, bye-bye, cock, and I start to scream and wake up and I’m relieved because I know I’m still me and he’s still him, snoring with his stomach in the air as if there was no today or tomorrow, the complete annihilation of time and existence, he woke up and saw me with the knife in my hand and added two plus two and was really spooked, to the point where he hit me in the face and said look what you made me do, can you believe a thing like that?, I made him hit me, is that right?, he fucks the boss’s daughter and who knows how many others, I’m bothered by this and want to get even, and he feels obligated to hit me in the face, oh go fuck yourself, and afterwards said he wanted to separate, I didn’t say anything, my nose was bleeding like hell and he was a little scared because of that, I stained my nightgown, it was awful, and afterwards I said crying I’m an idiot, I said crying it was just a game, I wasn’t going to cut his dick off, if I was actually going to chop his cock off I wouldn’t have made so much noise and he wouldn’t have woken up or just would’ve woken up when the deed was done, and he said it’s two AM and I have to work early in the morning, and he took a pillow and a comforter and locked himself in the library, and the next morning after I took the kids to school I called him in the office and repeated that it had all been a game and that I just wanted to scare him, so that he would pay attention to me and stop humiliating me, and I asked could he at least be a little more discreet, more discreet how? he asked, and I responded you know I know you fuck that other one, that one girl, I can smell her trashy perfume on your clothes and the credit card bills come to the house, I know where you go with her and even what you guys eat and that you gave her a dress last Christmas, I know everything and you know I know and if you don’t help me I won’t be able to continue this farce, and so he got embarrassed and said I’m never going to leave you to be with her, I laughed and said oh yeah, that really makes me feel way better, and he asked what do you want from me? and I responded just that, discretion, you want to fuck a little floozy, fuck, fuck every day if you want, but don’t keep rubbing it in my face, and he stayed silent and didn’t say anything else and after I said tchau and hung up, and I grabbed the telephone and threw it with all my might against the wall, the whole thing shattered, Cleopatra started barking and didn’t stop, as bothered with the whole story as I was, and I sat there and cried thinking of the first time I entered the apartment building, loving that name, Tessália, and we went to look at the spacious apartment, just me and him, our friend the owner of the real estate agency trusted us with the key and said you don’t have to keep scheduling with the agent and waiting until he shows up, he unlocked the door and we walked in and strolled through the whole apartment, I loved the layout and the size of the rooms, the architect is a genius we didn’t even have to mess with anything, and he opened a suitcase and brought out a sheet that was folded up inside and stretched the sheet out in the middle of the living room, as if we had been at Vaca Brava having a picnic, and he ordered, he didn’t ask, he ordered take off that dress now, this was ten years ago, as I took the dress off over my head and afterwards my underwear and knelt on the blanket he also took off all his clothes and it was there, that day, that we conceived Juninho, on that blanket extended in the still empty and half dark living room of the apartment that would be ours, every Wednesday he gets the kids at school, eats lunch at home with the family, the four of us at the table, but next Wednesday I’m going to get the phone and call him and tell him today I’m going to eat lunch at some restaurant with the kids and I’m going to go with them to see a movie, and he’ll say all right, and I’m going to get the kids and take them to the farm and put a drug in their soda and afterwards drown the three in the pool, and what do you think of that, friend?, I think it will teach a valuable lesson to that egocentric lowlife son of a bitch.’ Now, every day, when I read the paper, I will wait for news of this. Will she have the courage?” There were many other similar entries. It seems like, back when she still used to leave the house, my mother made a habit out of recording other peoples’ conversations and transcribing them in her notebook. Afterwards, because she gained even more weight, she quit therapy, stopped going out, and the only conversations she heard came through the television. There was, also, a typewritten letter, a letter signed by Flávia, to the editor of a women’s magazine. The letter was not dated. “Dear editor. The reason for which you rejected my story remains obscure. I know the manner in which I write is correct, selecting words properly, and my friend Margarete, who reads plenty and writes even better than I do, she was a teacher for a long time, this friend of mine made it a point to correct occasional slip-ups and adjust certain terms and expressions, avoiding any grammatical errors. My piece is perfectly legible and fluent. Therefore, there must be another reason. I also understand that my story is of interest to the readers of the magazine, like how some of their stories interest me in many moments. I always tried to look at all sides, recognize my fellow person, exercise empathy. My humanity has never been called into question. I am a successful middle-aged woman, my apartment and my car are paid off, not to mention a highly regarded landscape design firm, and I travel every year to wherever I please. I help my family members whenever I am solicited and even when I am not solicited. I have never fooled anyone, and I have never been dishonest with others or myself. I pay my taxes. I go to mass whenever possible, generally on the last Sunday of every month and on the anniversary of the death of a relative. I beat cancer. I work a lot. In a few words, I am a decent and absolutely normal person. The happenings narrated in my letter which I sent three months (!) ago fulfill, in my opinion, all the necessary requisites to figure in the “I, reader” section. It is a true story. More than true: extremely real. It is my story, as it couldn’t be otherwise, given the parameters of the above-cited section. Besides that, it was the manner in which I discovered, counseled by my therapist and my good friend Margarete, how to overcome all the traumatic events which I survived over the course of the past year. The insane and infantile way in which I gave myself over to someone I hardly knew and who was much younger than me. The imbalance, the estrangements, the despair. The obsession, the sick jealousies, the financial mess. His insistence, his threats, the phone calls, the scandals, the debts I took on without having any legal or moral obligation to do so, debts I took on simply so him and his family of parasites would leave me alone. Which is when I finally discovered the horrible situation I found myself in. The cold blood necessary to take back control of my life, put things in their proper places, recompose myself and restart. The lessons all of us women could take from all this. As a reader (and subscriber!) of the magazine for decades, someone profoundly familiar with your content, I understand that my story was born to figure in your pages. Truthfully, many times in the midst of my torment, it occurred to me that one day this would happen, that, sooner or later, my story would be in your pages. That gave me the strength to persevere. Which is why I ask you, dear editor, to reconsider your decision. If it is the case, I will apply the suggestions you may eventually make. I am all eyes and ears. I am at your orders. Before I finish this letter, I would like to tell you something that happened days after I sent in my story. Something which, if you judge pertinent, may even be added to the original piece, maybe as a kind of epilogue or appendix. A few days ago, I went to dinner with my friend Margarete. We chose a restaurant located in the West Section, next to her residence. I have known her for decades, ever since elementary school, because we grew up in the same small town and we were educated at the same Salesian school. Margarete accompanied me throughout my whole recent Calvary, being indispensable to my recovery, and I was by her side when she most needed it, a few years ago, when she started to suffer from a few health problems. Unmoored by life in distinct moments and circumstances, we knew how to recompose ourselves and move forward. Despite everything. Despite everything. Margarete, it’s true, developed a certain eating compulsion, and gained a little bit of weight in the last few years. But I am certain that, with my help, she will overcome this problem. Going back to the referenced dinner, me and my friend were at the table savoring a good Chardonnay and some macadamia nuts when she donned a very serious expression. I asked if everything was alright, and Margarete responded with another question, about when I had seen him for the last time. Just like that, out of the blue. After a moment of hesitation, shaken with the question, I responded that I hadn’t heard from him for exactly six months and nine days. She put her utensils on her plate and stared at me, still very serious. ‘Did he die?’, I asked, almost in a whisper. My legs trembled. My head spun. So, as if I hallucinated, I saw my friend, my sister, my Margarete spread open a big smile and say, ‘He had an accident with the motorcycle he bought with your money.’ I got up in silence, stumbled to the bathroom and, knelt dignifiedly next to the toilet bowl, put two fingers from my right hand down my throat and made sure to expel everything. That’s it. I await your response, dear editor.” (. . .) I heard a noise from my mother, closed the notebook, put it back in the same place I found it and returned to the living room. She was still sleeping; a nightmare, probably.
(. . .)
ANDRÉ’S NOTE : MY NAZI PAST is a satirical journey through reactionary Brasilian thought. Leandro, the protagonist (and narrator of most of the story), might (or not) be the grandson of a Nazi who hid in Brasil, and he might (or not) have murdered this (supposed) Nazi-grandpa. Down this slippery slope, full of false starts and “facts” described, negated, and rewritten, the book cuts through decades of recent Brasilian history and looks to dig up the serpent’s egg — or the donkey’s skull — lodged in the national soul. It is a frequently self-defeating attempt, mimicking Brasil’s constant self-sabotage (a nation addicted to unraveling what it has woven). But by exposing this & that, in this way, the novel fucks with the geographical, the historical, the political, to reach the extreme freedom of the literary.
HAROLD’S NOTE : I was at a bookstore in Leblon, pensively masticating my cheap sub-equatorial chewing-gum, wondering to myself : why ain’t United-Statesian post-modernism had any influence on contemporary Brasilian fiction. . . ? Gaby comes over holding My Nazi Past (2025) : “I think you’ll like this.” I thought she was joking because : NAZI ; but I opened it, saw the epigraph from The Tunnel : — I found what I was looking for(. . .) There’s many passages I could’ve translated; the one I chose shows off the book’s nested polyphony & gives an inkling of its perverted carnival; I also find it moving : Leandro’s mom who don’t go outside anymore, transcribing alheial anguish, sitting at the kitchen table (not in bed!) : — a student trying to edify herself thru other sorrows(. . .)
ANDRÉ DE LEONES (Goiânia, 1980) is the author of the novels Scorched Wind, Eufrates, Below Paradise, Land of Empty Houses, and Today is a Dead Day. He lives in São Paulo. This is excerpt is the first of his work to appear in English.
gigante 🔥🔥🔥