WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SECOND EPISODE
(The grand parade)

Across the square, Maya stopped in front of the man with a giant egg under his unfurled, caught in the wind, shirt. She shivered at that open mouth that was but a rocky cave, cut across by a trident of tooth decay. When she came back the same way later on, the curtain had gone up from that Breughel face, where there fluttered a smile fit of a saint. Of the kind that rose into heaven and wore, long ago, the whitened satin of everlasting salvation. Macerated skin, gondola lips, eyes apparently frozen, and the pause, the immense pause between hisses complicating the insistent entreaty: “It’s only two euros, ma’am, couple o’euros only. Come - buy this small bunch of costmary; the greatest tonic in the world against hiccups, nervous problems, evil spells, everything.”
And Maya, not knowing why she had stopped at that shack, that warehouse of voids, found herself holding onto nothing but her purse and the small bunch of French mint that accompanied her slightly sweaty, pale, and probably astonished life line.
She walked on, in slender high heels, waving her hips in readiness and elegance, taking heed of the time and the serious look of the freckled policewoman that wouldn’t stop whispering into her walkie-talkie. Then came the crosswalk, a blotch of insects and cetacean-shaped clouds. The grand parade. And in that interval from the world, Maya remembered the trip she was about to take on the following day. Nine am, leaving for the airport and… how nice it will be, ten days in New York doing absolutely nothing. Maya poised her eyes on the lulling reflex of light coming from the big wheel at the fun fair. Chagall lights turning, arching, whirling a clarity that made it hard for you to perceive the green blossoming once again.
And footsteps crashed into each other again in an eager chaos, a sudden vortex, as soon as the pedestrian lights announced themselves to mankind. Motorbikes, buses, archangels of all kinds, and especially taxis came to a halt. Everything stops in this miniscule hour of urban delights as the city seems to burst into a mixed smell of sandal, rosemary and burnt tires. Maya’s shrewdness is obvious, as she sucks in and tastes the air, and opens her purse with care and circumspection. From within she pulls out her car key and proceeds with determination to the street corner, her tiny costmary bouquet caught between her red, blood-colored nails. This is the dictate, the everyday law. She proceeds into the park, pays for the full morning parking at the booth and walks towards her car.

(next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Was it hunger, coincidence, a mirage? Rui broke off to his left, nearing on the car door. Maya squinted for the first time.”)

Continues