Taís

Tinkerbell

August 2002

Oil and collage on canvas

60 x 50 cms

Private collection of Taís Rios Salomão de Souza

Excerpt of the book "Retratos" ("Portraits"), final work for the BA Fine Arts course at FAAP:

Four years ago. 

At that time, I used to call her by another name. We dated. But alas, things in life happened and we went our separate ways.  

One day, she called: left a message on my voice mail with her home and mobile numbers. I came back home in a hurry and called, moved by an urgency that I hadn't felt in years. She was doing film studies in college and I soon thought it had something to do with help for an assignment. But no: she just wanted to see me. No other apparent reason. She just wanted to see me. Why? Why now and not four years ago? Was it life's way of teaching me something? 

Confusion. 

It had been a while since I went to my studio. I was doing photography in college and the painting studio was forgotten for a while. But there was no better place to meditate a little that the studio and its topography of raw canvases. Going back to the studio after so long was like seeing someone I hadn't seen in a while. Like seeing Tinkerbell again. Things had kept their places. Few changes. The mess I made the last time was still there. Like unfinished businesses. Like my break up with Tinkerbell. A mess I never sorted out, and that I hoped would be forgotten over time. But the clock in the studio stood still at 10:45 some day. Someone took its batteries. Of perhaps they just ran out.  

We went out. And speaking about time, those were parallel nights. Looking back on them, I can't understand how those weekends were happening at the same time as, in other days, like went on with Lee. Like falling asleep in one reality and waking up in another. Nights here lasted as long as we wanted them to. And we talked a lot about everything, about lost time, about the people that happened in our lives in that interval. And eventually, about us, four years ago. And everything that had happened that tore us apart. And she confessed that, at some point, she had grown jealous of my art back then. She thought I committed myself more to painting than I did to her. But things change, and she found her own art, cinema, and suffered the same jealousy at the hands of another boy. A lesson learned. And then, having lost count of the days we has seen each other, I took my camera from my backpack and took her out in the sun so that beautiful red hair and clear eyes could stand out. Click. 

The studio welcomed that picture heartily. Printed on regular paper, on glossy paper, on transparencies. All of us at the studio, me, the paints, canvases, brushes, the easel, we all knew what that was. It was Tinkerbell making amends with me and my art. 

And then, somewhere along the way, I stopped the car and asker her if, some day, she had ever thought about giving me a second chance.  

Perhaps.

Her answer took a long time. Meanwhile, the canvas got done and the world that had existed with Lee was painfully undone. There was a tear here, some pressure there, a lot of work in the afternoons and impulsiveness that glued pieces of canvas. Until finally, the answer came.  

Yes.

All the rest are moments from a story that began anew. 

"She entered the room, coming from her bath. Beautiful. She stood there, stretching her tiny form from the afternoon laze. Night was upon us, but some light still lingered in blue tones, coming through the curtains and bathing her again. I paid attention to all the tiny details of her body. The volume of her breasts, the gentle curve of her womb. There was a long pause, as if the world fell silent while I watched. She smiled and questioned my stare. I whispered for her to lay down while I got up from the bed and reached for my sketching notebook. I then sat on the ground, naked as she was, and ran my pencil over the paper under that dim light. She slept while I drew, and her face seemed all the more enchanting and sweet to draw than her nudity, which would remain between us, as a dear and worthless secret."

"There were times when we both fell silent, just looking at each other. She had strange blue eyes: her iris seemed to taint the whites of her eyes in a pastel blue. While her coppery hair painted the rest of her in a pale pink. At times, when the weather was right, small yellow spots caused me to notice her eyes as green. But then, on rainy days, their blue would slightly fade, leaving melancholy gray eyes staring out into the world."

"I drew close to her to see myself in the mirror. There was no need to do it while I brushed my teeth. But the way she would lean on the sink as if she needed to pay attention to some crucial detail in her mouth seemed fun enough to copy. And when I invaded her field of view on the mirror, she met my gaze and we tried not to laugh while toothpaste foam oozed from our mouths and into the sink. And then, in a matter of minutes, we were both making faces and trying to gross each other out with mouthfulls of toothpaste."

"The passenger seat of my car is a small corner of the world she likes to take for herself. There is a whole slew of memorabilia she leaves there by accident. From name tags from the places where she no longer works, to origami made from appartment adds handed to her on the street. Her tube of glitter (pixie dust) rolls somewhere when I make a right turn. There have been umbrellas left on the floor for over a month. Or magazines with theatre schedules dancing with the wind of an open window. And when the afternoon paints the city in gold, I can see strands of her hair that are shinier than golder than the sun left about." 

"She had a heart that beat in a fragile rhythm. As frail as the rest of her. I would lay on her chest, in that state between sleep and wake, and wonder if that small and light pulse was that of a tired heart giving up; or  that of a terribly young heart, still too weak to beat loudly, but full of possibility. And then, drifting towards that state of sleep where any idea is possible, I would feel the rest of her grow smaller and smaller with each heartbeat. More and more fragile. Minimal. Minuscule. At this point, I could already hold her entirely in the palm of my hand, with all the care in the world. The slightest move of a finger could hurt her. And I would stay there, hunkered down in the emptiness, holding her with both hands and peeking though my fingers like a child who has just caught a butterfly. Or a fairy, in this case... Still, I'd feel strangely at peace with that weak pulse. To me, it was the sweetest sound in the world. Something for my ears only."