Nowhere People

Catarina emphasises what she has already said at the start of the interview. ‘What matters is that I got together with my two best friends and set up this Foundation to bring music and dance to the busiest public spaces in Porto Alegre,’ she says, looking across at the newspaper reporter from Jornal Zero Hora. ‘We are giving people the chance to take possession of a ludic moment,’ and she takes another sip of her orange juice. The journalist asks something else. She replies. ‘It’s a complex game that deeply touches the population who move around public spaces and touches those of us who carry out the project … I found myself facing more fear than willingness to get involved … I’ve also had to face my own reflection, and I think I have been a mirror to a lot of people.’ She breathes in, straightens her posture, breathes out. ‘Sometimes I get the impression that we’re fated to a morbid narcissism and we aren’t able to relate to the openness that we need, without making judgments, without prejudice … ’ The two of them look at each other with the kind of complicity possible in interviews. ‘Anything else, Catarina?’ he asks with a smile. She has another sip of juice. ‘You know something, Daniel? In the intervention in Praça XV, which is what those photos were that I was showing you, the street pedlars were aggressive. It was a natural sort of reaction to the sudden invasion of their space … We started slowly because we could sense that the atmosphere was tense … Things were actually going well … With each minute that passed I could feel their acceptance of us growing, their tolerance, their interest … then I noticed a black boy, strong, handsome, a bit crazy … The boy came over … He stood right in front of me, wanting to take part … I touched him, we began a choreography, he took control, he moved aggressively towards me, wanting to be in charge, he wanted to speak,’ she says, and gestures quote marks in the air with her index and middle fingers. ‘He wanted to express himself … and if I’d tried to speak, too, to speak just as forcefully, there might have been a confrontation … ’ She stops for a moment, breathes. ‘It wasn’t an easy experience. As I said, there was a lot of aggression in the air … But that’s the way it is; it’s the price you have to pay … The poetic mustn’t be a privilege, a hermetically sealed container, it has to be out on the streets, in everyday life, even if it isn’t reflecting what is beautiful, what is pleasant … It’s a part of it … ’ She takes her glass of juice, puts it down in the centre of the table. ‘Anything else?’ the reporter asks again. ‘I’ve already talked too much. I have to tell you, today hasn’t been an easy day for me. I almost phoned to tell you I wasn’t coming … It was better to come, to speak.’ He confides to her that it has been a wonderful conversation and that he’s going to fight to get a full page in the paper. He tells her a second time how much he admires her, she thanks him and gets up, he offers to take care of the bill. She thanks him with a nod. They walk over to the entrance of the Café do Porto and say goodbye. She leaves, distracted, down Padre Chagas (she’s in the part of town where she was born, the part where things work, where it’s possible just to wander at random), then turns left onto Fernando Gomes and walks as far as Rua 24 de Outubro. She is intending to go a few metres further down the pavement in front of the DMAE gardens and then take Miguel Tostes, then after that Vasco da Gama till she reaches the bookshop just before the corner with Fernandes Vieira, and there to check whether the book about popular dances from the twenties has arrived from the distributors yet. But a surprising figure, the figure standing outside the gate to the DMAE garden, catches her eye. It doesn’t look like anything she has ever seen before. Someone is wearing a kind of wooden mask-cum-body armour that goes down as far as the pelvis, covering most of the torso, the neck, the face. A single piece attached to the shoulders and round the neck by leather straps and opaque, light gold buckles in the same shade as the wood. Underneath he is wearing a piece of clothing made of straw that must be hellish in this heat. The back of the head is visible, where it isn’t crossed by the leather straps, you can see the brown hair in the gaps. Judging by the bearing, she has no doubt it’s a man. He is holding himself very straight. It’s quite clear he is not comfortable wearing that gear: his hands are still, close to his hips, holding the lower part of the mask-cum-body armour from which two wooden sticks the size of motorcycle handlebars are poking out, as though he were pushing a shopping trolley. Catarina wonders how strange it would be to see him in motion. She takes the phone out of her pocket, films for two, three minutes. Zooming in, zooming out. She walks closer to him. She stops less than two metres away, films a little more, she’s careful not to stand within his field of vision, she just watches. People walk past not hiding their disgust at what they’re seeing; there are not many who smile, even fewer who remain impassive. She tries to understand this. And she registers the chant, the low, almost inaudible sound that emerges muffled from behind the mask. It is a sad song, sung in a language she does not recognise. The funereal tone of it overwhelms her, breaks her, pulls her away from the errand she had given herself. Catarina closes her eyes, just stands where she is, listening. The two of them: the strangest couple. A few minutes go by before he stops singing. It takes her a little time to react, to open her eyes and see him (with a huge shock) standing right in front of her, face to face. ‘I didn’t mean to bother you,’ she says. He doesn’t reply, he just turns to the side, walks a few metres away (her suspicion is confirmed: the way he moves is startling). She is embarrassed, yet she still walks over to him, turns till they are face to face. ‘Hi, I’m Catarina … The music you were singing … it’s sad, and … and it’s very beautiful,’ and then she moves closer to the face of the mask to see whether she can see his eyes. ‘Do we know each other?’ The wrong question, Catarina. ‘It can’t be easy, being here … ’ Another wrong question, Catarina. He takes half a step back. From close up, the mask is not so odd, even though the upper part of the chest is smudged with whitewash, sawdust and a yellow powder. ‘Look,’ she surprises herself at the liberty she is taking, ‘I’ve just had this idea that you’re going to find a bit nuts … but it’s just that your silence is making me nervous … I do performances in public spaces … it’s a piece of experimental work … and I really was interested in that … in your … ’ this was not what she had meant to say. ‘So … so that we can talk one day when you’re free, I’ll write my phone number very faintly here on the wood … ’ She takes a pen from her bag. ‘I’ll do it in tiny little writing … ’ She shows him the pen. ‘May I?’ He does not react. She reaches her right hand out to the body of the mask (her fingers are stained with something that looks like powdered baby milk; she thinks about asking him what that is, but doesn’t). ‘I’ll jot it down here, where it isn’t stained.’ She starts to scribble. ‘I’ll write it very faint so you only need to sand it over to make it disappear again.’ This takes more than a minute. ‘It’s come out very well. If you want … ’ and she stops talking, she lets a few more minutes pass. ‘Do you need any help?’ she asks, her tone now less effusive. ‘To be honest there is something else I want to write … ’ He starts up his singing again (so quietly that she is not sure) and turns his back. She’s awkward now. ‘Well, I guess that’s my cue to leave.’ She walks around and faces him one final time. ‘I won’t bother you any more. I’ll see you. You can find me easily if you look on the internet.’ She goes off towards Praça Júlio de Castilhos. This guy is doing something worthwhile, people might not stop to look at him in the way they stop to watch her dance, but she is sure: everyone who walks past and glances at him, singing like that, even those who are scared, are not left indifferent. And she puts the pen back in her bag telling herself not to look back.