Violeta among the Stars

by Dulce Maria Cardoso

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

suddenly

I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, for some time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing,

suddenly I stop


Violeta is driving along a lonely stretch of late-night motorway, in the midst of a fearsome storm. When her tired eyes close for just a second, her car veers off the road, rolls down a muddy embankment, over and over, and comes to rest on an empty stretch of sodden ground.

And as she lies amid the wreckage of her car, suspended between this world and the next, Violeta's life will quite literally flash before her eyes . . .

Scenes from her past overlap with what happened right before the accident: her upbringing with her distant, critical mother; her father's mysterious double-life; her troubled relationship with her daughter; her life on the road as she drives between waxing product-selling appointments with breaks at motorway service stations, the abuse from other travellers mocking her size, the alcohol, the risky encounters with lorry drivers on filthy public toilet floors...

Violeta Among the Stars weaves memories and feelings as Violeta reflects on her death, her life, her reality and her dreams. An astonishing portrait of a seemingly insignificant life, from one of Portugal's greatest living writers.

Translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana

Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the books pages of the Financial Times, and his translations include the anthology Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil and The Return, by Dulce Maria Cardoso.

With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

Release date: June 24, 2021

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

suddenly

I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, for some time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing,

suddenly I stop

the position I’m in, head down, hanging by the seatbelt, not uncomfortable, strangely my body does not weigh me down, it must have been a hard crash, I opened my eyes and found myself like this, head down, arms resting on the car’s ceiling, legs dangling, the awkwardness of a ragdoll, eyes fixed, listless, on a drop of water that clings to a vertical shard of glass, I can’t make out the noises around me, I start again, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home,

refrains are so tedious

for some time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing, I must have landed very far from the road, rain beating on the car’s plate metal, wheels spinning in the air, chirp, chirp, crickets, no, no, it can’t be crickets, tick tock, indicators blinking, inside the water drop, only my eyes unable to look away, only my eyes, my car overturned on empty ground, my travel bag tangled in a bush, the waxing products, the free samples for my customers and my account books strewn in the mud, further away a shoe in a distant puddle, the headlamps still on, the rain, the trails of fireflies flitting until they die on the ground, chirp, it cannot be crickets, everywhere splinters of glass shimmering brightly, shards chasing the night away,

I should have stayed at home

the hot liquid dripping from my mouth is blood, I recognise the taste, my mouth is a pulp, hot, too hot, disgusting, I want to move, to free myself from the seatbelt, my hands do not obey me, two lifeless limbs, my legs, two absences, and my eyes fixed, inert, on the light-filled drop of water, a light-flooded drop, almost catching me, defeating me, I resist, I start again, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home,

suddenly

I feel no pain, I am not afraid, my eyes drowning in the drop of light, my ears ringing with the sound of crickets,

I might no longer exist here at this moment

this moment might no longer exist for me

I drive through the darkness

gently, I glide along the road that is always the same, leaving it behind even as it renews itself ahead of me, a generous tongue swallowing me, black, infinite, I move on, guided by the cats’ eyes at the side of the road, the steel crash-barriers, the wind twisting the leafless trees into sad skeletons, lines sketched in charcoal against the sky, the electricity pylons, scarecrows holding hands in a line that goes nowhere

gently

I move on towards the place where the infinite unfolds, my head in a pleasant spin, earlier this afternoon I sold the house, I signed away the deeds with the silver pen, my hand did not tremble, I did not hesitate, if I expected it to be easy it was terrifyingly easier, I am travelling on the night of the storm, people have talked about nothing else over the past few days, the weather forecasts, civil protection authorities, in cafés, my customers, a single subject,

a storm was announced

the only topic of conversation, so much fuss and it might all come to nothing, they always get it wrong, who can foresee nature’s whims, words exchanged, it will be worse by the seaside, my head in a spin that feels good, I stretch a hand out blindly to the right, I am feeling around for my cassette tape, from today everything will be different, I say it again, from today everything will be different, the rain beats down on the car roof with a noise that should scare me, it thickens the car windows, doubles them, thousands of burst drops against the glass, watery webs torn apart by the wind, gusts of wind reaching speeds of up to, I defy the stormy night,

I drive through the darkness

my hand blindly seeking a voice that will calm the storm, lightning, a trace of light from the beginning, in the beginning there was only light, in the beginning there was only light and we were already blinded forever,

bêtises, ma chérie, bêtises

I find it hard to breathe, a pain in my chest, a single subject, you always drink too much, my heavy body following the hand, the same difficulty in the simplest of gestures,

freak, freak

another lightning bolt, a pretty neon cleaving the dark, I find the cassette tape, thunder, the darkness roaring, it would not be hard to believe that the sea has replaced the sky and is pouring down over the earth, I move forward, as if over the sky, a road that goes on and on into the darkness, I put the cassette into the tape player, I press rewind, scratching the silence, a single subject at the service station,

look at that fat lady falling over drunk

an exchange of words, some of the things you see out there are disgraceful, not even a conversation, the things you see out there, my boot is filled with different types of wax, handouts, samples, brochures, my account books, my customers are expecting me early tomorrow morning, they have been doing so for years, not these ones, not in this place, others, in other places, an understanding, I am a good salesperson, the best, I know exactly what the various waxes are made from, the temperature at which they melt, the types of skin they suit, my life is a battle against millions of hairs, there is nothing I am prouder of, perhaps Dora, perhaps, I know my enemies, I know their tricks, they can’t deceive me, not even when they split to become stronger, or when they become ingrown, or when the cowards grow beneath the skin, hidden, I know my enemies and I never miss a chance to expose them, I don’t let them pretend, or buy time, it’s all-out war, when I look at a stranger’s legs I can immediately tell my enemies’ strength, how to combat them, other professionals might have a look and see nothing, I can take wagers, about what weapons to deploy, wax, cream, razor blade, those electric shavers buzzing annoyingly like flies, when I look at a stranger’s legs I can immediately measure my enemies’ strength, I can make out scars, ingrown hairs, even when I want to think about something else, especially if I want to think about something else, I’m a good salesperson, the best, I’ll travel a hundred, two hundred kilometres, as many as are needed to sell my wax, I don’t know how to do anything else, I pursue my enemies, millions of enemies everywhere, an unequal fight, lost, from today everything will be different, despite feeling so tired, I chase from my mind any thought that, from today, from tomorrow, not a thing will be different, not a single thing, I cannot accept an endless sea of days ahead of me, my life frittered away in a repetition of days, of gestures, of words, Ângelo saying,

nobody can correct the past, full stop

why do I hear Ângelo the spoilsport, whatever you do you cannot get rid of yourself, of what you were, what you still are, whatever you do, why do I hear Ângelo the spoilsport instead of the songs on my tape, from today everything will be different, I sold the house, it’s true that it hasn’t been long, at the service station I went back to my old ways, another man and the same old trick, the same lie, or, to be more precise, another lie, perhaps a more serious one, to all those men I had been with and who asked my name I answered with a riddle and

I share my name with a flower and also a colour

bêtises, ma chérie, bêtises

not a single one guessed correctly, perhaps it would have been strange, perhaps I would have found it very strange if I had given it any thought, I did not give it any thought, before him all the men who tried to guess replied Rose, most of them did not take their chances, smiled and walked away, they didn’t really want to know my name, it was only a question, the most basic question, they were in a hurry, only a question, the most common question, to chase away the silence, the embarrassment, the shame of having been inside a woman like me, I never knew anything as merciless as satisfied flesh, the fact is that until this night, until him, all men had guessed Rose, I liked that, to have another name and it was not me who was there but someone called Rose, a creature I sometimes felt sorry for, so when that man asked I went through the charade in the knowledge that he would reply Rose or just smile, I was so sure of it that I was shocked to hear my name, I am very frightened, anyone who hunts as I do is always afraid, all prey learn quickly about the fear that can save them, there is something on the road, the rain won’t let me see, the windscreen wipers are going at full speed, there is something up ahead, I brake hard, the car is not responding, lurches, zigzags, I’m not even scared, I get it back in gear, squint, too big to be a dead dog or cat, I move on with caution, only when I am very close do I see it is a fallen tree, its branches flailing in the wind, a whirlwind of leaves, I swerve, away from the leaves spiralling in the dark, from the branches thrashing, at least this tree did not die standing, I am always saddened by trees that die standing, they are still dreaming of future Springs when someone sticks a notice onto their trunks, this tree will be cut down, they can still feel the weight of nests and the flapping of sparrows, I am saddened by dead trees waiting for travellers who never arrive, nobody likes the shadow of death, they wait until the chainsaw cuts them to the ground, the trunk in wooden slices, the canopy a pile of branches that someone will collect to light a fireplace or, a leaf sticks to the windscreen, I am bringing it with me, from today everything will be different, I cannot correct what happened, I have no say in what happens next, an emergency exit sign on the right, the leaf blows away, it did not want to come with me, it does not want me as company, I am drunk, a leaf cannot want anything, I am drunk, leaves know everything about us, I am drunk, my heart is hurting me, my body stranger to me than those strangers who take it, I can hardly recognise it with the pain, the drink left my head spinning pleasantly, I rub my eyes in vain, they are still bleary, I begin to cry, the leaf did not want to come with me, I am so ridiculous, I feel the man’s hands on my skin, I run my fingers over the small grooves that his fingernails left on my body, trails, I don’t know what to do with the smell of a stranger now embedded in my flesh, I’m scared, what if I am no longer myself, what if I never belong to myself again, why do I let myself die,

why does life kill me

I speed up towards the infinite that is now my destination, one way, from today everything will be different, the night scares me, six blasts of darkness lurking beyond the car windows, it is very late, 4:37 on the dashboard’s digital clock, actually 4:32, I always gave myself a five minute head-start, it’s true they never did me any good, I never arrived in the future, always some small delay, some holdup, excuses I can no longer remember, I see a car up ahead, the first I’ve seen since I left the service station, I accelerate to catch up with the two red taillights reflected by the water on the road, the car is moving slowly, I decide to overtake, I am driving past an unknown woman on the night of the storm, I turn my face to her, round, overly round, my body, fat, sadly fat, my job, salesperson, my house, on Travessa do Paraíso, Paradise Street, my daughter, Dora, I leave the stranger behind in my car’s spray, a coil twisting in the air, instead of the red taillights reflected on the road two white headlamps in my rear-view mirror, magic, if I could really do magic I would disappear from myself, I speed up, I move away from the white lights as they diminish in the distance, I steal their faces, their bodies, their jobs, their families, a drunken woman is easily entertained, even by a dumb game such as this one, the headlamps of the car I overtook disappear in my rear-view mirror, once again there is just the night, a road sign, a yellow rectangle on the hard shoulder, which

drive with caution

I read out loud, drive with caution, the voice bouncing against the windows, another rectangle, this one is hanging, advertising a junction, four appropriately numbered roads, four destinations, I can finally change my direction, reverse my progress, give up, it is tempting to think that I can choose, and what if from today everything really were different, I know the junction from my maps, I always collected maps, I mean, I have been collecting maps for a long time, hundreds of maps at home, used, brand new, who cares, on maps I can choose my route without fear, I can go round and round in my paper worlds, I go everywhere, places I cannot relate to any landscape, or face, or flower, nothing, places that only exist to satisfy my wish to escape on those very warm afternoons, I open the maps on my bedroom floor, I don’t want to know anything about the world, I never wanted to, those very warm afternoons, I pull down the shutters and my body is covered in luminous ovals, clusters of geometrically arranged points of light, I spend whole afternoons travelling, I approach the junction, the four numbered destinations, rain falls translucent at the feet of the concrete streetlamps, drops scintillating, a shower of fireflies, what if I changed my destination, what if I gave up

bêtises, ma chérie, bêtises

on Denise and Betty, what if for once I went to a place where no-one is expecting me, I never travelled anywhere without someone expecting me, I continue my journey, I cannot give up my fight, every day my enemies defeat me on my own body, on other people’s bodies, my enemies who will be the last to die, my heart stopped, my lungs flooded, my flesh cold and my enemies still growing for a few hours, one day, I shouldn’t think about that, I am a good salesperson, the best, tomorrow I’ll be back, I asked Dora to buy bread, I left her a message on one of those little yellow papers that you can stick anywhere, please buy bread, I must not have heard what Dora said as she left the restaurant,

I’m leaving home tomorrow

how foolish to think I heard Dora say she was abandoning me, I left the message in the usual place, tomorrow Dora will buy bread and leave it on the kitchen table, never upturned because it’s bad luck, Dora knows that upturned bread brings bad luck, my Dora knows so many things, it worries me that she can learn them with the same apathy with which she scans the barcodes for hundreds of products at the hypermarket checkout, the same apathy with which she posed nude for fine arts students, a slim body, almost a child’s, whatever angle you view it from, without anyone discovering the dimples that appear when she smiles, the funny way she tightens her fists, a bundle of fingers, dozens of life drawings of a stranger, not my daughter, the same apathy that made her quit school, declaring, I never learned anything there anyway, an apathy that grows in her chest and overflows and hits me in the heart, I put my foot down on the pedal, the road opaque, the gestures softened,

if you want to smash yourself to pieces on the road that’s up to you

I burst out laughing, why are my laughs dying against the windows, why am I surrounded by this silence, Ângelo is wrong, again

laughter is the best thing we can offer others

bloody Ângelo is wrong, he does not understand life, I keep on laughing, at Denise, at Betty, at Dora, at Ângelo, at the handouts I give away to my customers, a stainless steel salt and pepper holder and a porcelain toothpick holder, wax for sensitive skin, for black skin, for women who are prone to varicose veins, I laugh out loud, my screeches fluttering in the car, I am so tired, it was a long day, very long, and the night is a black blanket that smothers me

tell me a secret

keep me awake

until this night is over

instead of revealing its secrets, instead of saving me, a blanket that suffocates me, and if I went back home, to the bread that Dora will buy, the four destinations, the junction, if I could choose, it is late, I give in to my fate, I move on, the wind blows about the oleanders planted in the central reservation, tiny points of light at the junction now disappearing in the rear-view mirror, the shower of fireflies around the tall streetlights, another sign at the roadside, this one bright yellow, a sun in the middle of the night, don’t drink and drive, I laugh, laughter bouncing around in the car until it crashes into the silence that kills it, I could kill for a cigarette, I feel around for a pack, a succession of slow gestures, listless, I have a lot of time, I put a cigarette to my mouth, a caress on my dormant lips, silence,

tell me a secret

silence everywhere, I drive past a factory, seen in the distance the lit-up rectangle looks pretty, I am unconcerned about my heart slowing down to an ever sleepier beat, I close my eyes for just a moment, I am tired, in a few hours I will be telling Denise that my wax does not cause bruising, scarring or swelling, that she just won’t find any other wax that so efficiently destroys the hair’s germinal matrix, I am the best at delivering the spiel, no question, I am the best salesperson, I know what wax to recommend for sensitive skin, the road is always the same, the white markings form a continuous line, moving faster, I am tired, I close my eyes for just a moment, just a moment

like weeds growing in empty lots

do what I have to even if later I feel ashamed, I never really feel shame, perhaps a slight discomfort, a knot in my throat that loosens as I drive away, a slight unease, the vague sense of a sin I have no intention of being redeemed for, I take the exit to the service station, I am hungry, I go past the café, I stop in front of the large windows, the rain does not let me see inside, I switch on my high beams, a waiter turns in surprise, a rabbit caught in the headlamps, the café is almost empty, a huge room with empty tables and chairs, a lone couple at the back and on the left a group of boys, few people travel on a night like this, it is so late, I turn off the headlamps, kill the engine,

always do what I have to even if later I feel ashamed

I exit the car unhurriedly, open the umbrella, pull the raincoat tight, all my movements are strangely slow, at odds with the rain falling violently, two small puddles on the asphalt, the glass doors open automatically as I approach, I like doors that open on their own, and vending machines that dispense cigarettes or stamps and give back the exact change, I enter the café and go to the counter, the boys fall silent for a moment when they see me and then one of them, who cares which one, they all look the same, says, large, extra extra-large, they all laugh, the laughter isn’t over yet and they are already speculating, must eat three times as much as a normal person, must be a disease, the bed, can you imagine the bed,

there once was a woman who was so fat, so fat, that when she fell out of bed she fell out on both sides

more laughter, at least they’re young and, perhaps because of that, merciless, I am even less fond of older people who hide the pleasure they get from witnessing someone else’s disgrace, at least they’re young and, perhaps because of that, indifferent, maybe in a minute one of the boys will say, the other day I saw an even fatter one and that will be enough for them to forget about me, move onto something else, youth does not stop, it is consumed by senseless haste, a server takes my order, I ask for two pastries and a coffee, pay up-front, the clanking of the cash register, my hands fumbling in my handbag,

the porte monnaie, ma chérie, the porte monnaie

the small tasks always seem so difficult for me, a coin falls out of my hand, I bend over to pick it up, how difficult to do even the simplest things, I point at the pastries I’ve paid for, not that I need to point, I know their actual names, I can even pronounce them properly, a lady must be chic, très chic, under all circumstances,

an éclair and a millefeuille, please

the server does not understand, the world’s most beautiful language wasted on an ignorant server, I ask again, a cream puff and a custard slice, right, he says, right, so a cream puff and a custard slice, and moving his metal tongs in circles he searches for my order in the glass cabinets where I can see yesterday’s creamy pastries, and the ones from the day before, here they are, the satisfied air of someone who has just solved a mystery, the metal tongs picking up the pastries and dropping them onto a plate, the server is not worried about one pastry ruining the other, or their creams mixing, both pastries on a plate that the server puts onto the counter before heading for the coffee machine, he fills the filter with ground coffee, a brisk gesture, places the cup underneath, the server imagines he is a good employee but he isn’t, he is let down by his haste, his carelessness, the cup is not in the right position so coffee drips down the side, the server hands me the plate with one pastry on top of the other and a cup stained with spilled coffee that

where’s your head at, Maria da Guia, where’s your head at

I accept, I step away from the counter carrying the plate with two pastries in one hand and the coffee in another, I hesitate, I feel the server’s mocking smile on my back, the more insignificant the choice the longer I take, I choose a table from which I can see the car, one condition met, it is irrelevant but at least I have one condition, I sit, I place the pastries and coffee on the table, all my movements are slow,

do what I have to even if later

Denise and Betty are expecting me early tomorrow morning, if Ângelo had come with me as we agreed my movements would be different, hurried, very hurried, I can never spend too much time in someone’s company, I could never get used to other people’s presence, I still can’t understand those people who can’t eat or sleep alone, those who complain about loneliness, perhaps those who can tolerate others are happy, and even happier are those who need others, the couple at the table at the back get up and leave, the glass doors open, competent, unlike the employee, a bad employee, sloppy, scratches his head and yawns, outside the couple takes shelter beneath an umbrella, the man kisses the woman’s face before getting into the car, illicit lovers saying goodbye after an evening tryst, I correct myself immediately, so obvious, it cannot all be so monotonous, I cannot allow tedium to seep into life, I think of other theories, they all seem unlikely and tedious, I give up, reality is always frightful, my imagination, my imagination counts for nothing when compared to reality, the woman says something that makes the man laugh, I avoid looking towards the boys’ table, I cut into the millefeuille, it wasn’t baked today, maybe yesterday, the day before yesterday, who knows, the puff pastry is hard, I don’t care, the sickly sweet mush in my mouth gives me pleasure, I gobble the millefeuille and then move on to the éclair, the sugar icing sticks to my teeth, I run my tongue repeatedly over the stickiness, the boredom that suits me so well showing on my face, my mother’s card-playing companions looking at me,

sometimes it seems like she doesn’t regulate her appetites very well

while Maria da Guia twisted her apron, more distressed than the birds my father chased around in their cages,

don’t pull that face, menina, your poor mother gets annoyed

don’t eat cakes, menina, your poor mother gets so upset

the menina is a naughty girl, menina is a very naughty girl

and Maria da Guia who is languishing in a rented room, no more than five square metres, having thrown away her chances of having another life with her communist boyfriend,

when we are given one life we don’t know how to live another, menina

the éclair crumbles in my mouth, one of the boys tells the others off, raises his voice,

it’s bad luck to take the piss

the boy is not being kind, it is fear that makes him tell off the others, one of the boys, not the scared one, is wearing a T-shirt that says smile, another has a man skiing and a name, some ski resort, I was here, or, someone I know was here, I concentrate on my plan to offload the eco-friendly wax I have in the car boot, a good salesperson must develop a persuasive pitch, it is not easy to persuade Denise,

the environment can go fuck itself

perhaps I will ask Denise’s Ukrainian fellow for some help, what’s his name, Serguei, or maybe the previous one was called Serguei and this one is called Alexandre, who knows, they are all so similar, Serguei, I think this one is Serguei, anyway it might not be such a good idea to try to make friends with the Ukrainian fellow that Denise treats like a dog, no-one listens to a dog’s opinion, I must think of another way, persuading Betty is easy, all I have to do is talk about the world we are leaving behind for our children, Betty is always worrying about the two pale children she brought into this world, the boys’ laughter interrupts my thoughts, I drink my coffee, I am satisfied, I sold the house, I will no longer belong to it, free at last, from today everything will be different, I don’t know why I took Ângelo and Dora to that restaurant, I knew that my child

this restaurant is so sad

and Ângelo do not like that restaurant, Ângelo got it into his head that he is allergic to spices, and Dora, well, Dora is always a special case, they both think I did it on purpose to spite them, whereas what I had in mind was to propose a truce, tell them that I hope that in the future, when I get back I will take them out again, I will make them understand my intention, my wish for peace, I try to find the pack of cigarettes in my handbag, smoking kills, in huge letters, on one side, while on the other, sm. . .