It wasn't Saint John's Day. When I first crossed the threshold, the sheet was shrouding him in mist. On rare occasions, it would give way, lowering the hem beneath his eyes. He was alive, but pretending to be dead. José was the most difficult patient for the nursing staff on the 9th floor of the University Hospital of the Federal University of Pernambuco: he refused medication, conversation, food, and procedures. He's one of those who causes a commotion of voices down the corridor:
- José is really something today!
- Well! If he wants to die, let him die!
- That guy's a real handful, if he doesn't want to help, give the bed to someone else...
In our first encounter, I don't remember saying more than two sentences; we filled our space with silence for about an hour. I was sitting, he was pretending to be dead, wrapped from head to toe in the beige sheet. In the end, I said, "See you later." The following week, also on a Monday and at a similar time, there I was, the chair, the embalmed body, and a guitar, like a new visitor. I spoke even less, yet the silence was broken by a few disjointed chords. Sometimes it seemed like it would become a song, at other times it drifted away, perhaps in an impulse to start all over again. The sheet slipped from under my eyes, the visiting time ended, another one until we meet again. Upon leaving the ward where he was buried, I pressed the elevator button and looked somewhat suspiciously at the guitar inside its black case.
I was in my third year of medical school and belonged to a newly founded group, The Path, which was already painting some strange, yet interesting, facades in the old structure of the university hospital. They were small groups of students who visited patients every Monday afternoon who, before the first meeting, had never met each other. A university extension project. There was music, theater, and even a space to watch films, chosen by the patients themselves, called the "cine-ward." National and international news was also discussed through new newspapers and magazines.
As I was one of the veterans of the group, the nursing assistants on the 9th floor, who were partners in the project, entrusted me with the most difficult task: to deal with José. A student in the group had already tried, but had been frustrated in tears.
As we did, before the first visit I didn't consult his medical record to learn about his clinical history, which was one of the project's objectives: to shed the lab coat, to abandon the defense of impersonality. Only around the third or fourth meeting did I discover that José, a young man in his thirties, had been the victim of a tragedy, already trivialized by the press: his bicycle was stolen, and a bullet robbed him of the pleasure of walking on his own two feet.
At that moment I saw the wrong that embraced the world, a belt tightened on the Equator. The robbery, the neighborhood called Linha do Tiro (Shooting Line), human beings who made money manufacturing and selling that revolver and that bullet, this happening to those who often only have their legs as a means of transportation, brown skin, the narrowing of the path, hope cornered.
Behind the tragedy, there was a stage with other possibilities on which I leaned and understood why music had served as an efficient instrument of communication between us. José had spent a large part of his life in a social position that set him apart from his neighbors. He was a a choreographer of the typical collective square dance of Saint John's Brazilian June Festival, one of those stylized groups with media visibility during the month of June. the name of this kind of choreographer is the puller. He coordinated and planned the choreography, the colors of the dresses and shirts, he chose the music. Baião and forró were his favorite musical genres. He mobilized the community where he lived, injecting ampoules of life into the terrain of violence. He was, in reality, a dream puller.
By the third or fourth meeting, we were already exchanging a few words, and the sheet's hem was already at chest level. After that, I don't remember which visit, I suggested we organize an out-of-season square dance in the ward. I don't know if his expression was clear at the time, but it was clear that a duel between the possible and the improbable was beginning. For the impossible had already been fading since the silence, when José pretended to be dead.
The following five weeks were pure work: researching the origin of square dances (we discovered that the country folk danced steps of nobles), choosing the repertoire, preparing the dialogues for the priest, the bride and groom, the police chief, the in-laws, all that theater that composes the dance. I think it was the first time I saw him smile.
The nursing assistants would arrive and thank me. José was not only eating better, but he was also cooperating with his medications and hygiene care. Every week I brought a mini-system and some CDs of forró and baião music. The year was 2002. We listened, discussed the lyrics, and ended up choosing the repertoire from a Dominguinhos compilation. For a while, the person in the next bed—there were two in that ward—helped us, because besides liking the songs, he had sung that night.
I remember a memorable afternoon a little before the square dance. Night was falling, and with tambourines and a guitar, helped by other partners in the project, we did a mini-serenade. We ended up recording everything on video. We were playing a coconut genre music, José was already sitting with the headboard raised, the sheet at his feet, clapping, wriggling, and laughing.
I returned home amazed by the power of music. Depending on how it's handled, it's an instrument of both care and neglect. It makes people feel longing, fear, strength to live, melancholy. The bugles that help a man kill a stranger on the battlefield, the candomblé drum that facilitates trance and invites the entities to participate in the dance, the songs of the football fans that softens the hardest hearts, the music of the couple who just celebrated their precious metal wedding anniversary, and of the other couple, at the same dance, who just fell in love or broke up. The music of passion, the music of war, the music of the evocation of the gods. Sometimes the language of the divine.
On another occasion, he gave me the impression that he was going to give up, as if he realized that it was all just a charade. It was obvious that he couldn't go back to what he was and that, back in the community, a land where there would be no shortage of difficulties, feeling like he was on a sinking ship, his useless body with a certain weight thrown into the sea, he feared being sidelined upon his return. If the lack of a car or van to transport the group to rehearsals and performances was already difficult, imagine now without legs and in a wheelchair? And if they even manage to get a chair, since no one had said anything yet... It would have been better to have died, that's what I often heard in the depths of their silence.
It wasn't Saint John's Day, but the hall of the 9th-floor ward was decorated with little flags and balloons and was the stage for a parade of country girls in the most colorful costumes. Straw hats rested alongside peanut brittle and corn cakes on a table. New goatees and mustaches appeared, drawn with eyeliner. Patients, companions, and professionals were invited, not only from that floor but also from others.
They arrived in wheelchairs, holding intravenous medication bottles, others carrying enterostomy bags. Some were devastated, others standing firm, here one who had just been discharged and celebrated his departure in style. José, already wearing one of those hats, cocked the microphone and invited the couples for a stroll in the countryside. We had rehearsed a couple of times, me acting as assistant director, bridging the gap in communication, as he was getting annoyed with the missteps and lack of synchronization. On the big day, there were no slips to be seen.
He went full speed in his wheelchair, as if parting the Red Sea, "gentleman on one side and lady on the other," woe betide anyone who got in his way. He seemed to be holding a baton and shaking his hair in front of an orchestra.
A short time later of that day he was discharged, received a wheelchair from a charity, and was rehearsing his return home. I felt a pang of sadness at having lost a friend when I found his bed empty. I promised him a visit, to bring a VHS tape so we could watch the video of the square dance. I couldn't manage it; the whirlwind of life swallowed me up. I don't know if he's alive, or if he's led other square dances since then. I took him as an example of overcoming adversity. His love for dance and music lifted the cloak of despair, pushing him to rise, even without legs.
Now it was no longer Saint John. It was Saint Joseph. Joseph sane.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário