Julio Dantas
Panait Mariana Juliet suddenly woke up, her heart was about to jump out of her chest, her forehead was dripping with cold sweat, and her mouth smelled of blood. The room is dark and opaque. She sat up in bed, listened attentively, groped around, trying to find her place. Finally, she touched a hot and sticky body. Ah, it's a man, the man I met unexpectedly tonight!
In the morning, the clock of St. Paul's church struck three times, and the sour smell like moldy straw suffocated her. She finally understood: sleeping in the hotel on Oak Street again! In the past two years of poverty, humiliation and displacement, she is too familiar with this area. The heat from men made her tremble and feel sick.
Who the hell is this man? Panait Mariana Juliet didn't have time to see clearly, but vaguely remembered that he was wearing a yellow coat, with a hoarse voice, a thick and hard gray beard and strong arms. It was with these two thick arms that the man suddenly shook her up, hugged her and pressed her down.
She listened quietly in the dark for a few minutes. A man's snoring is rough and even, just like a sleeping animal.
Panait Mariana Juliet did not move, almost holding her breath. Waiting for dawn is a unique way for women to express their resentment. Linen sheets covered her skin and made her ears hum. She is groggy, but she can't sleep. The ups and downs of life come together with bad luck. She seemed to see her unhappy childhood again, recalling the days when she was abandoned, poor and sick; Think of the mother who cut off the artery and died in a pool of blood; She was only seven years old when her father fled to Brazil alone. Neighbors gathered in the yard and shouted at him, "Manuel da Cruz, you should have pity on this poor child. She is your daughter! " "
The night is heavy and all is silent. The heat emitted by the strange man's body is getting worse and worse, like a huge demon gnawing at her heart. Panait Mariana Juliet's hot tears flowed to her face, her chest rose and fell rapidly, and the whole bed shook with her sobs. Darkness enveloped her.
I feel dizzy and everything is spinning.
Panait Mariana Juliet lit a candle.
The man is still lying flat on the bed asleep, his beard is wet with sweat, his right hand is flat on his broad chest, and the faded old blue sweatshirt falls with deep breathing.
Panait Mariana Juliet picked up the candle, bent down and looked at it carefully, and suddenly she trembled all over. Two round eyes, wide with fear, stared at the big, thick, hairy, tobacco-yellow hand, and the silver ring on her hand shone cold by candlelight. She tried to control herself, didn't fall down, didn't shout out loud-she had seen such hands when she was a child!
Trembling, she moved the candle near the man's face and looked at it greedily. A terrible question made her suddenly look strange and her face tightened. Could it really be him? Maybe not him? At this moment, she thought of everything-thought of shaking him up, thought of running away, thought of hitting the wall.
She tried her best to search for childhood memories from her memory and glanced at her thick and powerful furry hands-like the claws of a wild animal!
She wants to find out the truth. Blood rushed to her face, and her face was burning. She threw herself on the bed, puzzled, panting at the man's clothes and rummaging wildly, as if to tear them to pieces. She finally found a letter. She can't read, just staring at the signature at the bottom of the letter. What does this stupid piece of paper say? Pain and despair come together. She held her breath, put on her clothes, put on her scarf and shawl, clutched the writing paper tightly and climbed down the stairs.
It's almost dawn, and the cold morning wind blows on my face. In the street, the morning light spreads like mist.
When Panait Mariana Juliet rushed in, the policeman was taking a nap under a lighted lamp. She looked pale and breathlessly asked him to read the name at the end of the letter paper. The policeman gave her a look, looked at the letter and read:
"Manuel da Cruz"
Panait Mariana Juliet didn't even shout and fell to the ground like a dead body.
(translated by Fan Cheng)
Baihuayuan No.7, 1983
Perhaps we have read a story in Zweig's works: a woman who was forced to sell herself for a living suddenly found out that the man she met that day was actually her father. This is a bitter and almost cruel story in itself. However, when it was written by Portuguese writer Julio Dantas, it made a different sound.
The work has created a degenerate female image with quite a personality for us. Unfortunately for her, life showed her a ferocious face too early. After her mother committed suicide and her father fled overseas, she had to struggle alone in this cold and helpless world and embarked on the lowest valley of her life. However, she is a woman with human conscience and self-esteem, and her inner world is full of rich emotions. Whenever she wakes up from a night dream, pain and humiliation will gnaw at her heart and bitter tears will flow on her face. In her, we saw the split and struggle between spirit and flesh, and the indomitable flash of human nature. However, the world doesn't even allow her flash to exist, and it is her biological father who killed this flash. She finally fell, along with social justice, human conscience and-arrogant humanity. Panait Mariana Juliet, this is her name, and it is also the name of all unfortunate women who have been insulted and bullied.
However, the artistic charm of this work does not stop there. When we hide our thoughts, not only Panait Mariana Juliet and her sad and touching fate come to mind, but also those big hands that can never be erased, those big hands that are "thick, hairy, yellow and smell of tobacco". "Those hands" are the focus of the whole paper and the ingenuity of the author. On the one hand, it is related to The Past and the unhappy childhood of Panait Mariana Juliet. At the beginning, it was this pair of "furry" big hands that pushed her into the abyss of suffering of "being dependent on others and suffering from poverty and illness"; In addition, "those hands" is an opportunity to advance the plot progress of the novel. Only when she saw those hands did Panait Mariana Juliet connect the past with the present. She had a question of fear, which made her eager to get to the bottom of it. If we think from a higher level, aren't "those hands" also a symbolic symbol? When Panait Mariana Juliet stepped into this evil world, she was greeted by a pair of big hands, yellow, black, white, thick and thin ... These greedy and savage big hands tore her life, ravaged her body and finally tore her soul. For her, isn't this world full of darkness and terror just a pair of deadly talons?
It should be said that there is nothing complicated and ups and downs in this novel, but it can still cause great emotional waves for readers. One of the reasons should be attributed to the author's artistic skills in power. For literary works, it is forbidden to tell a straightforward story and take a look. Jiao Ran in the Tang Dynasty said: "A master's narrative is like climbing a wizard, smashing the prosperity of Sanxiangying and lingering." (Poetic Style), Julio Dantas seems to know this well. He didn't mention "those hands" at the beginning of the novel, but used more pen and ink to describe Panait Mariana Juliet's poor and humiliating prostitution life, and wrote about her bumpy and unfortunate childhood, which seemed like a leisurely pen, but contained profound meaning. On the one hand, it reveals the social causes of this tragedy, which lays the groundwork for the development of the plot behind, and at the same time, it also creates momentum for the emotion behind, which contains profound and huge emotional connotation. When Panait Mariana Juliet saw those familiar big hands, the author was not in a hurry to solve the mystery, but gained momentum step by step, pushing his emotions to * * *: first, he looked at the man's face, and his doubts became stronger and stronger; Then I dug out a letter in that man's pocket, and my mood was on the verge; Finally, I found an educated policeman and read that terrible name: "Manuel da Cruz", and the emotional tide broke out like a flash flood. Although the novel came to an abrupt end, strong feelings still surged in the readers' hearts.
Robert O 'Foest, an American critic, said that a good short story "should have three main factors-rigorous structure, novel conception and amazing ending." (On short stories) By this measure, hands can be regarded as more exquisite masterpieces. (Xu Jianmin)