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Overview
As Eulálio d’Assumpção lies dying in a Brazilian public hospital, his daughter and the attending nurses are treated—whether they like it or not—to his last, rambling monologue. Ribald, hectoring, and occasionally delusional, Eulálio reflects on his past, present, and future—on his privileged, plantation-owning family; his father’s philandering with beautiful French whores; his own half-hearted career as a weapons dealer; the eventual decline of the family fortune; and his passionate courtship of the wife who would later abandon him.
Through Eulálio’s journey across the twists and turns of his own fragmented memories, Buarque conjures an evocative portrait of a man’s life and love, while bringing to life the broad sweep of Brazilian history. At once jubilant and painfully nostalgic, playful and devastatingly urgent, readers of the award-winning Spilt Milk will find themselves “in the hands of a master storyteller” (The Plain Dealer).
“In Spilt Milk [Buarque] confronts the themes that make Brazil squirm, from the stain of slavery to the inferiority complex the country has historically felt when it compares itself to Europe.” —The New York Times
“Lovely details and a fine sense of place . . . Echoing Sebald’s Rings of Saturn . . . There’s plenty to like.” —Publishers Weekly
“One of the saddest love stories, and one of the truest.” —Nicole Krauss
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780802194855 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Grove/Atlantic, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| Sales rank: | 1,024,717 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
When I get out of here, we'll get married on the farm where I spent my happy childhood, over at the foot of the mountains. You'll wear my mother's dress and veil, and I'm not saying this because I'm feeling sentimental, it's not the morphine speaking. You'll have my family's lace, crystal, silver, jewels and name at your disposal. You'll give orders to the servants, ride my late wife's horse. And if there's still no electricity on the farm, I'll have a generator installed so you can watch TV. There'll also be air conditioning in every room of the farmhouse, because it's very hot on the coastal flats these days. I don't know if it's always been, if my ancestors sweated under all those clothes. My wife sweated a lot, but she was of a new generation and hadn't my mother's austerity. My wife liked the sun and always came back glowing from afternoons on the sands of Copacabana. But our chalet there has been knocked down, and in any case I wouldn't live with you in a house from a previous marriage. We'll live on the farm at the foot of the mountains. We'll marry in the chapel that was consecrated by the Cardinal Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro in eighteen hundred and something. On the farm you'll look after me and no one else, so that I'll make a complete recovery. And we'll plant trees, and write books, and, God willing, raise children on my grandfather's land. But if you don't like the foot of the mountains because of the tree toads and the insects, or the distance, or anything else, we could live in Botafogo, in the mansion my father built. It has huge bedrooms, marble bathrooms with bidets, several drawing rooms with Venetian mirrors and statues, monumentally high ceilings and, on the roof, slate tiles imported from France. There are palm, avocado and almond trees in the garden, which became a parking lot after the Danish Embassy moved to Brasilia. The Danes bought the mansion from me for a song because of the mess my son-in-law made of things. But if I decide to sell the farm, with its two thousand acres of crops and pastures, divided by a stream whose water is safe to drink, perhaps I could buy back the mansion in Botafogo, restore the mahogany furniture, have my mother's Pleyel piano tuned. I'll have things to tinker with for years on end, and if you wish to continue working, you'll be able to walk to work, as there are plenty of hospitals and private practices in the neighbourhood. In fact, they built an eighteen-story medical centre on our land, which reminds me, the mansion isn't there anymore. And come to think of it, I think they expropriated the farm at the foot of the mountains in 1947, for the highway. I'm thinking out loud so you can hear me. And I'm speaking slowly, as if I were writing, so you can transcribe it for me without having to be a stenographer. Are you there? The soap opera, the news and the film are all over; I don't know why they leave the TV on after the broadcast has finished. It must be so the static will drown out my voice and I won't bother the other patients with my rambling. But there are only grown men here, almost all of them rather deaf. If there were elderly ladies nearby I'd be more discreet. For example, I'd never mention the little whores hunkering down in hysterics, as my father tossed five-franc coins onto the floor of his suite at the Ritz. There he'd be, concentrating deeply, while the naked cocottes squatted there like frogs, trying to pick the coins off the rug without using their fingers. He'd send the winner down to my room with me, and back in Brazil he'd assure my mother I was making good progress with the language. At home, as in all good homes, family affairs were dealt with in French when in the presence of servants, though, for Mother, even asking me to pass the salt was a family affair. And what's more, she spoke in metaphors, because in those days even your average nurse spoke a little French. But the girl's not in the mood for chitchat today, she's in a mood, she's going to give me my injection. The sedative doesn't kick in right away any more, and I know the road to sleep is like a corridor full of thoughts. I hear the noises of people, of viscera, a guy with tubes in him making rasping sounds; perhaps he's trying to tell me something. The doctor on duty will hurry in, take my pulse, perhaps say something to me. A priest will arrive to visit the sick; he'll murmur words in Latin, but I don't think they'll be for me. Sirens outside, telephone, footsteps, there's always an expectation that stops me from falling asleep. It's the hand that holds me by my thinning hair. Until I stumble upon a door to a hollow thought, which will suck me down into the depths, where I tend to dream in black and white.
CHAPTER 2I don't know why you don't try to lessen my pain, miss. Every day you open the blinds brutishly and the sun strikes me in the face. I don't know what you find so amusing about my grimaces; I feel a twinge every time I breathe. Sometimes I inhale deeply and fill my lungs with an unbearable air, just to have a few seconds of comfort as I exhale the pain. But long before my illness and old age, I suppose my life was already quite like this, a niggling little pain jabbing away at me, then suddenly an excruciating jolt. When I lost my wife, it was excruciating. And anything I remember now is going to hurt; memory is a vast wound. But you still won't give me my meds, you meanie. I don't even think you're on the nursing staff, I've never seen your face around here before. Of course, it's my daughter standing with her back to the light. Give me a kiss. I was actually going to call you to come keep me company, read me newspapers, Russian novels. This TV stays on all day long and the people here aren't very sociable. Not that I'm complaining; that would be a sign of ingratitude to you and your son. But if the lad's so rich, I don't know why on earth you don't have me admitted to a traditional care home, run by nuns. I would've been able to pay for travel and treatment abroad myself if your husband hadn't ruined me. I could have taken up residence abroad, spent the rest of my days in Paris. If the urge were to take me, I could die in the same bed at the Ritz that I'd slept in as a boy. Because in the summer holidays your grandfather, my father, always took me to Europe by steamer. Later, every time I saw one in the distance, on the Argentine route, I'd call your mother and point: there goes the Arlanza!, the Cap Polonio!, the Lutétia!, and I'd wax lyrical about what an ocean liner was like on the inside. Your mother had never seen a ship close up; after we married she rarely left Copacabana. And when I announced that we'd soon have to go to the docks to meet the French engineer, she got all coy. Because you were a newborn, she couldn't just leave the baby and so on, but then she took the tram into town and cut her hair à la garçonne. When the day came, she dressed as she thought appropriate, in an orange satin dress and an even more orange felt turban. I'd already suggested she save the finery for the following month, for the Frenchman's departure, when we could board the ship for a drinks reception. But she was so anxious that she was ready before me and stood waiting by the door. She looked like she were on tiptoe in her high-heeled shoes, and she was either blushing a lot or wearing too much rouge. And when I saw your mother in that state I said, you're not going. Why, she asked in a tiny voice, but I didn't give her a reason, I took my hat and left. I didn't even stop to think about where my sudden anger had come from, all I knew was that the blind anger her cheerfulness provoked in me felt orange. And that's enough talking from me, because the pain's just getting worse.
CHAPTER 3No one believes me, but the woman who came to see me is my daughter. She ended up all skew-whiff like that and missing a few screws because of her son. Or grandson; now I'm not sure if the lad's my grandson or great-great-grandson or what. As the future narrows, younger people have to pile up any which way in some corner of my mind. For the past, however, I have an increasingly spacious drawing room where there is more than enough space for my parents, grandparents, distant cousins and friends from university that I'd already forgotten, with each of their drawing rooms full of relatives and in-laws and gatecrashers with their lovers, plus all of their memories, all the way back to Napoleon's time. For instance, right now I'm looking at you, so loving with me every night, and I'm embarrassed to ask you your name again. On the other hand, I can recall every hair of my grandfather's beard even though I only knew him from an oil painting. And from that little book that must be over there on the dresser, or upstairs on my mother's bedside table; ask the housemaid. It's a small book with a sequence of almost identical photos, which, when you flick through them, give the illusion of movement, like in the cinema. They show my grandfather walking in London, and when I was a child I liked to flick through them backwards, to make the old boy walk in reverse. It's of these old-fashioned people that I dream, when you tuck me in. If I had my way I'd dream of you in technicolor, but my dreams are like silent films, and the actors died a long time ago. The other day I went to fetch my parents from the playground, because in my dream they were my children. I went to call them with the news that my newborn grandfather was going to be circumcised; he'd become a Jew just like that. From Botafogo, my dream cut to the farm at the foot of the mountains, where we found my grandfather with a white beard and whiskers, walking in his coattails past the British Parliament. He was going at a fast, hard pace, as if he had mechanical legs, thirty feet forward, thirty feet backward, just like in the little book. My grandfather was a prominent figure under the Empire, a Grand Master and a radical abolitionist. He wanted to send all Brazil's blacks back to Africa, but it didn't work out that way. His own slaves, after they'd been freed, chose to remain living on his properties. He owned cacao plantations in Bahia, coffee plantations in São Paulo, made a fortune, died in exile and is buried in the family cemetery on the farm at the foot of the mountains with a chapel blessed by the Cardinal Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro. His closest freed slave, Balbino, faithful as a dog, sat on his grave forever. If you call a taxi, I can show you the farm, the chapel and the mausoleum.
CHAPTER 4Before you show anyone what I'm dictating to you, do me a favour and have a grammarian look over the text so your spelling mistakes won't be imputed to me. And don't forget that my surname is Assumpção, and not Assunção, as it is usually written, as it is probably even written on my chart there. Assunção, the more pedestrian version, was the surname that the slave Balbino adopted, as if asking permission to come into the family barefoot. Interestingly, his son, also Balbino, was my father's stableman. And his son, Balbino Assunção III, a rather chubby black boy, was my childhood friend. He taught me to fly kites, to make traps for hunting birds and the way he used to juggle an orange with his feet fascinated me back when most people hadn't even heard of football. But after I started high school, my trips to the farm grew more infrequent, he grew up without schooling and our affinities dwindled. I'd only see him during the July holidays, when from time to time I'd ask him the odd favour, more to make him feel good, as it was his nature to be solicitous. Sometimes I'd also ask him to be there on standby, because the farm's calm bored me; in those days we were fast and time dawdled. Hence our endless impatience, and I love watching your young girl's eyes roaming the ward: me, the clock, the TV, your mobile phone, me, the quadriplegic's bed, the drip, the catheter, the old guy with Alzheimer's, your mobile phone, the TV, me, the clock again, and it hasn't even been a minute. I also relish it when you forget your eyes on mine, while you think about the leading man in the soap opera, the messages on your mobile phone, your period that's late. You look at me just as I used to look at a toad on the farm, hours and hours unmoving, staring at the old toad, so as to let my thoughts roam. At one point, for instance, I got it into my head that I needed to take Balbino up the arse. I was seventeen, maybe eighteen, and I'd definitely already been with women, including French ones. So I had no need for it, but right out of the blue I decided I was going to have Balbino. So I'd ask him to go pick a mango, but it had to be a very specific mango, at the top of the tree, one that wasn't even ripe. Balbino would quickly obey, and his long strides from branch to branch began to arouse me for real. No sooner had he reached the particular mango than I'd shout a counter order, not that one, the one over there, right at the end. I started to develop a taste for it and not a day went by that I didn't order Balbino to climb the mango trees any number of times. And I began to suspect that the way he was moving about up there wasn't so innocent either, and he had a kind of feminine way of crouching down with his knees together to pick up the mangos that I dropped on the ground. It was clear to me that Balbino wanted me to take him up the arse. I just lacked the courage to make the final move, and went so far as to rehearse some spiel about feudal tradition, droit de seigneur, deliberations so far over his head that he'd give himself to me without a fuss. But as it turned out, fortunately, around this time I met Matilde and got all that nonsense out of my head. I assure you, though, that this association with Balbino left me an adult without prejudice against colour. In that I did not take after my father, who only appreciated blondes and redheads, preferably with freckles. Nor after my mother, who, when she became aware that I had a crush on Matilde, asked me straight off if by any chance the girl had a body odour. Just because Matilde's skin was almost cinnamon. She was the darkest of the Marian congregants that sang at my father's memorial service. I had already glimpsed her on a few occasions, leaving eleven o'clock mass there at the Church of the Candelária. To be honest, I'd never been able to get a proper look at her because she wouldn't hold still, talking, twirling and disappearing among her friends, her black curls bouncing. She'd leave the church as one would the Pathé cinema, where they showed American serials at the time. But now, just as the organ played the introduction to the offertory, I accidentally let my gaze come to rest on her, glanced away, looked back again and couldn't take my eyes off her after that. Because when she wasn't moving, with her hair up in a bun like that, she was herself even more intensely with her swaying hidden from sight, her interior agitation, her inward gestures and laughter, forever, oh. Then, I don't know why, in the middle of the church I felt a great urge to know her warmth. I imagined embracing her by surprise, so she'd pulse and writhe against my chest, like smothering in my hands the little bird I'd caught as a boy. There I was, having these profane fantasies, when my mother took my by the arm to take communion. I hesitated, holding back a little, not feeling worthy of the sacrament, but refusing it in front of everyone would have been discourteous. Feeling a certain fear of hell, I finally went up to kneel at the altar and closed my eyes to receive Holy Communion. When I opened them again, Matilde was facing me, smiling, sitting at the organ that was no longer an organ, but my mother's grand piano. Her hair was wet against her naked back, but now I think I'm dreaming already.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Spilt Milk"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Chico Buarque.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
What People are Saying About This
An Amazon Best Book of the Month Winner of both of Brazil's major literary prizes, the Portugal Telecom Award for Literature and the Premio Jabuti for best fiction work
"I read Spilt Milk in a single night, awed and deeply moved. How did he do it? Buarque has breathed the story of a whole country into a single, unforgettable man with a soul as big as Brazil. But he's also written one of the saddest love stories, and one of the truest."—Nicole Krauss
"Chico Buarque is at the forefront of a new wave of writing that should make you rethink everything you thought you knew about South American literature. When I finished reading his last novel, Budapest, my face ached from smiling at its ingenuity, its audacity, its freshness, its line-by-line effulgence, its irresistible narrative momentum."—Jonathan Franzen
“In Spilt Milk [Buarque] confronts the themes that make Brazil squirm, from the stain of slavery to the inferiority complex the country has historically felt when it compares itself to Europe.”—The New York Times
“Deft and moving. . . . At its heart is the idea that everything, our very lives, is an illusion, in which we cling most desperately to that which matters least. Class, status, breeding fade away, and we are left with what we least expect. . . . What’s most remarkable about the book, though, is not that it somehow manages to internalize more than 100 years of Brazilian history but, rather, the way it also exists almost outside of history, outside of time.”—Los Angeles Times
"Buarque, a pillar of the Latin American New Song movement, gives us a fractured, refractive vision from a character seemingly in the foothills of dementia. . . . We find we are in the hands of a master storyteller. It becomes clear why this novel won major literary prizes when first published in Brazil."—Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Buarque is an elder statesman of bossa nova, and a legend for his subversive opposition to Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship. . . we can think of Spilt Milk as a prose equivalent of a Barnett Newman painting—the irritating outbursts and hallucinations about his crazy daughter end up being the strips that measures, divides, and shapes the sweep of colorful narratives that pours out of Eulálio. . . . Eulálio ends up being an idol, a wraith who, at 150, is not quite dead and not quite living.”—The Daily Beast
“Buarque is regarded in Brazil as a vital cultural stalwart, an artist who, since the early ’60s, continues to examine his country and instill large social change . . . In the protagonist of Eulálio Assumpção, the 100-year-old descendant of Portuguese invaders and the beneficiary of colonialism’s vast harvest, Buarque fashions a grudgingly likeable narrator . . . Buarque takes his time with Spilt Milk, a book whose real story sits beautifully obscured by Eulálio’s skipping incoherence. . . . Spilt Milk is a necessary, often painful examination of not just a man’s wounds but also of a country’s complicated past.”—ZYZZYVA
“Lovely details and a fine sense of place . . . . Echoing Sebald’s Rings of Saturn . . . . [When] Eulálio talks of meeting his wife . . . his desire for her is instant and extraordinary. . . . There’s plenty to like.”—Publishers Weekly
"A brilliant comic monologue by a Brazilian novelist, in which a hospitalized centenarian curmudgeon on morphine becomes entangled in his own deception-filled life story."—Shelf Awareness
“Musical, charged with sensuality and sparkling with surrealist humor, irresistibly seductive.”—La Vanguardia
“A Balzacian saga arranged in best Rio style. In less than 200 pages, it covers more than two hundred years of the history of the Assumpção family, and, through this dynasty of rulers, the history of Brazil.”—Livres Hebdo
"Chico Buarque has crossed a chasm with his writing, and arrived at the other side. To the side where one finds work executed with mastery."—José Saramago
“Buarque writes like a man with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. Shoulders slumped, a wrinkled linen suit; you join him at the bar to hear his wild story.”—Los Angeles Times