translated from the Portuguese by Ilze Duarte

The bus speeds up, slows down, shakes, comes to a halt. My body sways this way and that. I could sit here all day. Right, left, uphill, downhill, bumps and bounces. I stick my head out the window and the glowing morning seeps into my eyes in transit: streets, traffic lights, cars, sidewalks, shop windows, billboards, newsstands, parks, trees, flower beds, people, all enveloped in light and shadow.

A heavy woman crosses the avenue with regular steps. A car grazes her hip and the driver shakes his arm at her in a rage. There go two boys, skinny legs, no shirts, no shoes, small bottles of glue in their hands. The police officer standing at the corner follows them with his eyes until they are out of sight. Farther ahead, an old man ogles the woman at the bus stop whose skirt the wind has just ruffled up. She pulls down her skirt with a tired gesture, while the old man walks away, muttering something, flustered with pleasure.

The city slides by, drunk with golden sunlight. Buildings go by like books on a shelf. Large department stores go by, and clothing stores, shoe stores, a butcher’s shop red with meat, markets smelling of fruits and vegetables. Banks go by, and bars, restaurants, public offices. Now a porch, a small garden, a woman leaning out the window.

Then a screeching of tires. A mustachioed man in a loud yellow shirt gets up from his seat and gets off the bus. I see him on the sidewalk, his mouth open, hands crossed over his bulging belly, eyes vacant. Perhaps he doesn’t know where he’s going. The bus takes off. I stick my head out. I hope he’ll move, cross the street, but he stays there, a round yellow spot among other spots. I no longer see him. The city has gobbled him up.

The bus sniffles, huffs, pulsates. It’s an enormous churning animal and it carries me on its warm, trembling back. I suppress a yawn and a tear rolls down my cheek. The bus stops to let a few passengers in. On its way again. It is so hot. I undo a button on my shirt and stretch my legs under the seat in front of me. I close my eyes. The city with its billboards, smells, and sounds shuts off. A sadness takes over my chest. A senseless sadness that makes me sore and fragile as if I’ve just given birth to a dead baby. It is hard to breathe. I don’t want to cry. I want the innocent joy of simply riding a bus with no destination.

I sit back up and see a young woman with short blond hair and long white legs perched on very high heels. She’s playing with a cigarette; she drags on it and blows out rings of smoke. I want to smoke, but it’s not allowed, and I don’t have any cigarettes on me. If I got off here, I could bum one from the young woman. No, I wouldn’t ask her, with those thin lips pressed tight, squinting eyes, hard profile. I would never ask her for anything. The lack of cigarettes makes me anxious. The sidewalks teeming with scurrying people get on my nerves. I want to look at the young woman again. I want to see her very white neck, take in the details of her summer clothes. I turn to look and I’m taken aback: her roomy dress reveals a round bump. How can she be so slim and so far along in her pregnancy?

The bus moves on. Now it enters the darkness of a tunnel. I think of the pregnant woman now behind me. I should have yelled out to her that smoking is harmful to the baby, but my voice would have been drowned out by the street vendors’ shouting, the sounds of honking horns, and advertising loudspeakers. Better if I got off the bus and took away her cigarette. If she tried to fight me off, I would squeeze her throat. She would flail her arms, all slender and pale, and finally the cigarette would fall from her fingers.

The bus brakes abruptly and I lurch forward. Screams, shrieking horns. The traffic light turns red. People cross on the crosswalk. At the corner bar, a hefty man with a big scar over his eyebrow leans on the door, reading a newspaper. His eyes wander from the printed words to the hips of women walking by. Through the glass door, I see people bent over the counter while a waitress moves swiftly back and forth.

Forward, forward. The shiny black asphalt behind me. I’m sweating. I don’t want to go back home now. I lean my head on the vibrating window. On the billboard, a man ten feet tall advertises underwear. There he is, a muscly man, full of sex and smiles.

The sound of a body taking the seat next to mine. From the corner of my eye, I watch the woman with wrinkly skin, sagging lips, thin strands of pearl-colored hair down to her shoulders. She is small and thin, sitting very straight, her hands clutching a straw purse. Her dress, threadbare along the edges, gives off a moldy smell. I sneeze. She turns toward me and realizes she’s being watched. She shrinks back, wrings her hands, squeezes her purse.

“Do you know where I might find a bakery around here, miss?” she asks, anxiety in her voice.

“No, I don’t,” I answer without looking at her. I’m afraid she’ll want to chat.

I peek at her discreetly. She pulls down the hem of her skirt. Maybe she’s trying to hide the rips in the fabric. She opens and closes her purse. She crosses and uncrosses her legs.

“It’s been years since I’ve had a pastry,” she clucks.

I turn and I’m faced with the woman’s helplessness. In her eyes, a piercing plea. She still has desires. Her soul hasn’t completely dried out.

“Ask the driver if he knows of a bakery,” I find myself saying.

Now her smile isn’t directed at me or anyone else. She chuckles continuously, her head bending toward me. As the bus moves along, I get up and my legs jerk me to the aisle. I step on her foot. She recoils, and her pained expression seems a bit exaggerated. Our eyes meet. I apologize. She grabs my wrist.

“Miss,” she murmurs, humiliation in her eyes.

I get away from her talons. She doesn’t understand I have nothing to offer her. Not even a pastry.

“What do you want, ma’am?”

She doesn’t answer. She smiles again in the same insane way as before. I stand up straight. The worst that can happen to her is she’ll overindulge in pastries and end up with her head in the toilet. I proceed down the aisle without looking back.

“Do you feel ill, miss?” Someone catches me.

I open my eyes. A smell of burned rubber spreads through the bus. Still dizzy, I keep walking along the aisle, out the door, onto the sidewalk. The dark, stinky fumes fan my cheeks.

What now? Where do I go with my twenty years of age on this sunny Saturday morning? ■

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