The text

In February I participated in my first literary festival as a writer. It was agreed that my husband would go with me to Póvoa de Varzim, where the Correntes d’Escritas festival takes place, for what would be both a day of work and a romantic day away from our children.

I woke up at six in the morning and felt the wave of heat that my husband’s body emanated. He had a fever. The romantic day would no longer happen. I hurried to buy a train ticket to Porto and two hours later I was at Oriente station, alone.

In Porto, a very kind boy was waiting for me who asked me to wait for Rafael Gallo, winner of the Saramago Prize in 2022. Rafael arrived a few minutes later, we introduced ourselves and headed to the festival car. “I took advantage of the trip to finish my text,” said Rafael as he put on his seat belt. Text? Did we have to prepare a text? I discovered at that moment that not only did we have to prepare it, but it had to be linked to a painting by Gauguin. It was no longer enough for me to feel completely out of place, as if I had changed schools and didn’t know anyone at the new school, but I would start classes being the only one to show up without homework. I tried to devalue it, maybe Rafael was the big guy in the class and there were others like me, lovers of improvisation.

After a radio interview we went to lunch. I stuck with Rafael and his wife because I didn’t know anyone else and because they seemed like a nice couple, without thinking that maybe they wanted to live the romantic day I had idealized for myself.

The time had come for the presentation. The auditorium was full and there was a table on stage with room for six writers and a moderator. I opened the game with Renato, the moderator, and asked him to be the last. He told me that he would prefer me to be the third and decided not to contest it. Anyway, the weather would only bring me more anxiety. The title of Gauguin’s painting was: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?” If only one of the questions was, “Why did we come?” … As I sat down, I was thinking exactly about that, why the hell was I there pretending to be an intellectual? What was I going to say about that painting or about anything else that was really relevant? What would I have to add? While Bento Balói was reading his text, I took the blue post-it note that had my name on it and started writing ideas on the back. The post-it note was small, as were the ideas.

When it was my turn, the piece of blue paper read the starting point and some places I wanted to pass through throughout the supposed speech, but the time had not been enough to draw a conclusion. I threw myself. I threw myself into it with no idea where I was going to land. I tried to speak slowly in the hope that time would help me to see a worthy end of that place, but nothing. It was in one of those long silences that I remembered hearing a speaker who sang. That’s it. Maybe it’s cheating, but that’s it. I found a way for the painting to lead to my novel and for the novel to lead to the song that gave rise to it, and I sang. I sang and felt at home. I sang and stopped pretending to understand Gauguin and his painting. I sang and stopped pretending.

It has been very beautiful to enter this literary world, but I confess that sometimes I still feel like a stranger. I don’t know the face of writers, although I have read many of the books they have written, and that makes me the champion of gaffes. I feel like a loose piece. I asked Rodrigo Calderón, a Venezuelan writer, to sit next to him at dinner and Ondjaki to have breakfast with him. It’s like I’m back in high school, but without shame and without fear of what people might think of me.

As I reflect on this episode, I am sure that there was a reason for that painting to be attributed to me. The painter’s questions have been inhabiting my subconscious for the past few months. I know where I come from, but I can’t say who I am anymore. Yesterday I read a chronicle by Dulce Maria Cardoso where she said that she already said she was a writer even before she started writing. I released two children’s books and a novel and I’m still afraid of the word “writer”. The writer is prepared for festivals, the writer builds bridges with paintings in coffee conversations, the writer says she is a writer and laughs in onomatopoeia. The writer. A Clarice Lispector. To Sophia. A Marguerite Duras. A Virginia Woolf. To Dulce Maria Cardoso.

The day after the festival my team went to Póvoa to pick me up, we had a concert in Fafe. I got in the van and went back to being the singer, I knew exactly what to do again, I belonged again. However, before going to bed I found myself missing the day before, the winter sea of Póvoa, the meals with strangers, the meetings with writers I admire so much, the conversations, the book presentations, the beautiful interventions I heard and even Gauguin.