Heringer Glória

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-908670-86-1
Verlag: Peirene Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

The Alencar Costa e Oliveira family talk to each other through inside jokes, often saying the opposite of what they mean, or repeating the same sentence until it acquires new meaning. But they also have a dark inheritance: every member of the family has died of the same cause - acute melancholy. From the author of The Love of Singular Men comes a family saga like no other. Equal parts postmodern, tender and satirical, Glória follows three brothers - Benjamin, Daniel and Abel - as they do battle with online forums, religious hysteria, the art world of Rio de Janeiro, ants, aunts, love, humiliation and a stammering God.

Victor Heringer was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1988. His first poetry collection, automatógrafo, was published by 7Letras in 2011, followed by his debut novel, Glória, which was awarded the 2013 Jabuti Prize. His second novel, O amor dos homens avulsos (The Love of Singular Men), was published by Companhia das Letras in 2016, and was shortlisted for the São Paulo Prize for Literature, the Rio Prize for Literature and the Oceanos Prize. In his lifetime, he also published O escritor Victor Heringer (2015), a conceptual book of photographs, contributed a weekly column to the literary magazine Pessoa and translated from English to Portuguese. In 2017 he was selected by Forbes Brasil for inclusion in their 'Forbes under 30' list. Victor Heringer died in 2018, three weeks before his thirtieth birthday. Following his death, Companhia das Letras reissued all of his works and published a collection of his nonfiction writing, Vida desinteressante, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Jabuti Prize. Glória is his second novel to be translated into English, after The Love of Singular Men (2023).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Heringer, Victor

Weitere Mitwirkende

Lewis, Sophie

Young, James

Leseproben

2. Ash Wednesday, 1992
And after this our exile. 'Salve Regina' ‘God is, or was, a stammerer,’ said the mother, to anyone who wanted to listen. The phrase echoed within. No one responded. It was hot. A few still-drunks went by outside, on the buses on Avenida Brasil, tired of so much Carnival. ‘A stammerer and dead,’ she repeated, a little more loudly, her eyes fixed on the husband who, coincidentally or otherwise, was in the coffin, drowned up to his neck in cheap white flowers, ordered by Lord knows who. She didn’t know who had taken care of the service, the coffin or the burial. The three boys, seated and groomed, were at the back of chapel number 8, under the care of some of the senhoras Costa e Oliveira, who’d been charged with keeping them distracted. The father had wanted to be cremated. He wasn’t. When the priest arrived, out of breath and apologizing for being late – traffic, Rio de Janeiro, Carnival, etc. & et cetera – he saw such furious eyebrows on the wife’s face that, coincidentally or otherwise, he began to stammer with nerves. He discovered there and then that this was the widow and, fearful that she would start to yell and offend God and all those present, he quickly began the ceremony. It wasn’t the first time a scandal had loomed in this way, with arched eyebrows next to a middle-aged corpse. ‘R-rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is thy reward in heaven.’ There was no scandal. The woman simply bowed her head and listened to what the priest had to say. From time to time, she let out a sob. Lots of people turned up: faculty colleagues, distant relatives, the husband’s bearded friends, her friends, people unknown. And all respectful, with funereal faces. Some seemed genuinely sad. There was no reason to make a scene. No one leaves home and goes all the way to Caju cemetery to witness a tantrum. And when all’s said and done, it wasn’t such an enormous tragedy. Of course: three small children, having to go out to work and everything else, but she wouldn’t be destitute. It was the 1990s; almost no woman was destitute. She had the insurance money. And she had the husband’s family to help her. She was still young and pretty. As the senhoras Costa e Oliveira said, she could marry again. She could marry again! ‘The eldest is the spit of him,’ one of them announced, right there, pointing at the open coffin. A stammerer, definitely. Especially because Benjamin looked nothing like his father. When alive, the husband had the face of one not much interested in life as it is, the amiable smile of the sceptic, the congeniality of the unbeliever. Not the boy – the boy had a startled face. When he was born he’d cried like all the others, but when he stopped his face had preserved the bewildered expression. The eldest son had extremely large eyes and his mouth was always half open. A mouth-breather, according to the paediatrician. Which explained his almost irritating slowness to react to external stimuli. In the future, the boy might have problems with posture, attention and appetite. He would be easy prey for a diverse range of viruses. Daniel and Abel, on the other hand, were healthy, perfect. Not a single problem, according to the paediatrician. But she loved all three equally, the mother told herself as she left his consulting room. She didn’t want to think about anything else. Peculiar, the things that go through people’s minds during a funeral service. An old friend of the husband’s, in a corner of the chapel, who looked like he was going at it hammer and tongs with God over the soul of the deceased, was in fact taking advantage of the religious mood to pray for a good result in the Santos vs Flamengo match the following Saturday.2 A few senhoras were worrying about the heat and their rheumatism. Abel, the youngest child, missed his globe, which he’d left at home. Daniel, the middle boy, was hating his tightly knotted tie and didn’t fully understand what was going on. Seated next to a teenage cousin, Benjamin was lost in metaphysical meditations. He counted on his fingers: twelve. He was already twelve. He was getting pretty big. He had worked out for himself that it wasn’t the moment to say God is or was a stammerer, because Daddy was dead too, and that wasn’t funny, even if he didn’t know what could go more wrong in the world than his daddy going to live with the daddy in heaven, who was also God. He was terribly hot in his tie and big jacket. Some had said he was now almost a man, the man of the house. From time to time the cousin would hug him and say everything will be all right, and her breasts would knead his face. In one of these hugs, the boy thought how it was strange that God could be a stammerer and dead at the same time. He’d learned at school that God is, or was, just one person and also is (was?) three of them. But which of these people was dead and which was the stammerer, he didn’t know. And that still left one (one, two, three, he counted on his fingers) who might still be alive and wouldn’t talk funny. Perhaps it was the white dove, which was also God, even though everybody knew it was an animal. The priest was there too, stammering and alive, so it could be him. He wanted to ask the cousin, but she was already grownup and had gone outside to smoke a cigarette. Maybe he’d have to smoke cigarettes now, too. ‘S-s-saints of God, come to his aid.’ No one knew the cause of the husband’s death for sure. The senhoras of the family diagnosed it as they always did: he’d died of heartbreak. Dying of heartbreak was the only real tradition of the Costa e Oliveiras. Other families gave memorable parties, got together every Sunday for lunch or were recognized in the field of dentistry; not the Costa e Oliveiras. The Costa e Oliveiras were known for all dying of heartbreak. They’d contract any old sadness and, making a mockery of both contemporary and twentieth-century medicine, in no time at all they’d die of it. It was a kind of curse, although with the virtue of uniting the family in a single emotion. Some died of lovesickness, others of unsuccessful lottery tickets, and others of a mysterious substance that the elderly aunts called black bile and which mired them in gloom. The husband had died of Mayakovsky-induced heartbreak, according to most of the old women, despite the death certificate saying it was a heart attack. In 1990, he had read the Russian poet’s complete works, and the following year he began to unravel. He let his beard grow until it bordered on the ridiculous, he became very thin and he stopped playing Old Testament. ‘One must be good,’ he told his sons, then repeated it to his neighbours, to his wife, to his sons again. ‘One must be good,’ he repeated throughout 1991, solemnly, sometimes just to break a silence. He would telephone the aunts – something he never used to do – and recite some Mayakovsky, only explaining afterwards who the poet was. In December, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he adopted a new motto, ‘God, what will become of you when I die?,’ and repeated it every time it came to mind: at the dinner table, on the phone to the aunts, in the lecture hall. His students, some of whom came to the funeral, thought it hilarious. In 1993, Professor Costa e Oliveira, PhD, would have voted to restore the Brazilian monarchy, but he died before the referendum. Before that, he went to Carnival dressed as the end of the world. The cause of death was without doubt Mardi Gras, whispered some of the senhoras Costa e Oliveira. No, no, he had died of Mayakovsky, retorted others. Still others stated with complete certainty, through gritted teeth, that the man had died of communism. A terrible heartbreak, communism – and they closed their eyes, putting on expressions of condolence. ‘…eternal rest, in-n-n the splendours of perpetual light.’ One must be good. Daddy had said this, and often. And now Daddy was no longer alive, he really wasn’t. But Benjamin was an adult now, he had to look after his mother and little brothers. For that reason he didn’t cry, not even when they took his hand and led him close to Daddy and he touched his hand, which wasn’t even cold or anything, just a little bluey-white, with his own. The cousin came back and didn’t hug him this time because for a while she kept her face turned the other way. Then her eyes looked at him and now they were red. It was so very hot. His clothes and tie tightened around his neck and his throat felt the urge to cry but it was only because of that, because of the tie. The cousin gave him another hug when they were walking along the cemetery’s gravel path. And that’s how they remained, hugging. His dad’s friends were carrying the coffin and talking and joking among one another, but they were awfully sad. The one with the thickest beard smoked cigarettes and said, ‘This prick gives me work even now he’s dead,’ and the jolts made the ash fall on the wooden lid. Benjamin already knew what ‘prick’ meant, but he didn’t find it funny. Then he asked the cousin why it is that God is, or was, a stammerer. She replied that stammerers sing very well, because...