Why not New York?

I walked through the boys' room, and their silence was such that I thought I heard the sound of their eyes following me. I entered David's room without knocking and threw the envelope with the two-hundred-page book on his desk, but he was on a call and did not pay any attention. I went down to Haddock Lobo Avenue, it was drizzling, the street was deserted, the water murky and dark. I sought shelter at a coffee, and wondered if I would ever know how to live far from the city, or at least in a city that did not end up like this, in an accident, but dying on all sides. After a while, looking at the rain and the water line advancing on the sidewalk, I felt my body move forward slightly; it was as if instead of the water level rising, the street sank. I got into the neighbourhood, rushed into a pharmacy and greeted the clerk, but I left without knowing why I had come in. I ordered a draft beer at the corner bar, I saw a travel agency straight away, I dropped the draft, crossed the street and bought two tickets to Shanghai.

Valentina brought the boy to the elevator and tried to convince him that I would leave alone, with five large suitcases and two handbags. Sitting in the cab, I waited for the forty minutes she needed to fool the child into going to the bed. We were both quietly at the airport, where the clerk asked her for an autograph and checked out the excess baggage. In the VIP room, I asked for two glasses of champagne, we spoke cheers and nothing else. When the speaker announced the flight to New York, I think I saw a slight contraction in her lips, but Valentina got up quickly, gave me a kiss on the head, and disappeared pulling the wheel case. I ordered another champagne and flipped through a magazine full of faces that seemed out of focus. Valentina's expression was still clear in my mind as she opened the passage I had given her in a suede wallet wrapped in tissue paper.

"Shanghai? And what do we have to do in Shanghai?" she asked.

It was difficult to answer,

"To look at the Yangtze, to drink liquor, to listen to poets?" in a vain attempt to convince her. Valentina wanted to improve her English, to watch musicals, plus her twin sister, Patricia, was in New York, the two could walk at Central Park, play tennis, in Shanghai, she did not know anyone.

"Does even has a department store in Shanghai?" she kept pressuring me.

"I don't know, it must have patisseries, excellent museums..."

"Shanghai? No way!"

She went to the agency and changed her ticket, like someone going into the boutique to exchange a wrong-sized gift. I could even get hurt, but she gave me no time, she got hurt before me. Since the honeymoon, it was the first time I refused to accompany her on vacation. She lay days and nights thereafter, in silence, wanting to make me feel remorse for her attitude. And now, as I answered the last call to Frankfurt, my connection, I felt a little sorry for Valentina, who, flying over the Atlantic Ocean alone, might reflect on how unfair she was. At that moment, she might be mortifying herself for not be holding hands with me, taking off for Shanghai. I decided to ignore that deep down, for Shanghai, I do not think I would invite her unless I was sure I would fly alone.

I had never seen Yue undress unexpectedly, and I had never seen such a white body in my life.

Her skin was so white that I would not know how to get it, where to lay my hands.

White, white, white, I said, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, my vocabulary was poor. After staring a little at her, I wished only to skim her breasts, her little pink nipples, but I had not yet learned how to ask for things. I would not dare to take a step without her consent, as Yue being a lover of discipline. In the first classes, I was thirsty because I spoke water, water, water, water, without speaking the prosody correctly. One day, she brought a batch of pumpkin buns into the room, smoked them under my nose and threw them all away, because I could not name them.

But before memorizing and pronouncing the words of a language, it is clear that people can already begin to distinguish them, captures their meanings: table, coffee, telephone, distracted, yellow, sigh, spaghetti bolognese, window, joy, one, two, three, nine, ten, music, wine, cotton dress, tickling, crazy, and one day I discovered that Yue liked to be kissed in the neck. Then she took off her ruffle strap dress with nothing underneath, and I was bewildered by such whiteness. For a second I imagined that she was not a woman to touch here or there, but that she would challenge me to touch the whole skin at once.

I even feared that in that second she would say: own me, make love with me, eat me, fuck me, tear me apart, how do Chineses say these things? But she was quiet, her eyes lost, I do not know if she was moved by my gaze on her body, or by my speaking in her language, white, beautiful, beautiful, white, white, beautiful, white. And I was also moved, knowing that soon I would know their intimacies and, with equal or greater voluptuousness, their names.