Face

By Cecile Pineda

When a Brazilian man's face is disfigured, he attempts a grisly self-surgery in this novel of survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wings Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2003
• ISBN: 9781609401269

Cecile Pineda

CECILE PINEDA was the founder, director, and producer of the Theatre of Man, 1969-1981. She is the author works of fiction and nonfiction, including Face, Frieze, The Love Queen of Amazon, and Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World, among others. Her novels have won numerous awards, including the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California, a Neustadt Prize for International Fiction nomination, and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. She is professor emerita of creative writing at San Diego State University.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

"On March 21, 19 - , as he raced down a path in the outlying hills of the Whale Back, a man lost his footing. His fall from the footholds cut into the rock high above the bay left him unconscious and terribly mutilated.

"He was taken, still unconscious, to a charity hospital where he lay for some time wrapped in bandages. His wounds eventually healed, but because he could not afford even meager social security payments on his barber’s salary, public assistance refused him funds for surgical reconstruction.

"In the Whale Back, the slum district where he had a shack, no one wanted to deal with him anymore. His face was no longer recognizable, even to his friends. He came and went mostly at night. He scavenged for food in the garbage cans of luxury districts. He survived by begging. He became known to his neighbors as a bruxo. He was feared, despised, but not ignored: they stoned his shack, and later set it on fire.

"By September 21, he had disappeared. He was to board a bus at the Rodoviaria depot for Rio das Pedras and was not seen again in the Capital.

You may ask what this man was doing all this time he was in hiding...

______

From an address by T.G., doctor of plastic and reconstructive surgery, Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 1975.

I

CAPITAL

In the sky a cloud is forming. The head, the shoulders appear. It is May. There is a leaden grey outline lifting the white of the clouds in relief. The blue of the sky is cold, wintery. There is a greenish cast to the light. The sun is absent.

A wind forms across the bay. The expanse of water marks its restlessness in the apparently static crests and troughs. From this distance, the waves appear not to move - curls arrested on a tightly coifed head. They do not move at all. Looking, then looking away, then rapidly looking again, one can only seem to catch a movement, more imperceptible than breath itself. Or perhaps the waves are the same, the same crests as before. Or perhaps they have only moved one trough closer to the shore, shifting slightly, as if in a viewfinder.

In the sky, the cloud has changed now. The head is lowered, or perhaps it has turned around, or the shoulders have risen to ward off a blow. No more. The giant is gone. Other shapes are forming.

One stair, at the top, is etched with a crack now. The concrete in the vein has crumbled. Little pebbles, aggregates of dust perhaps, have settled in the interstices. A child worrying the crack could dislodge them with a grubby finger. A child gazing out to sea (past the hook of land), letting his vacant eyes roam the shapes of giants left by the wind, by the clouds as they move, vacant eyes puzzling the stillness of waves that move only when the gaze is averted.

The man stands there, not thinking of anything, fighting the stiff wind with each intake of air - the breath fought for, briefly denied, then won. Each time. Even with this wind, even at this height, the waves seem to hold their very breath. Still moving, they barely move at all. This is the sky he can see every morning. This is the bay which on calm days seems barely to breathe from this height.

The man stands to the left, a little behind the child, watching him idly. The child squats on the landing, worrying the crack. Perhaps some small dirt clod is wedged between his nail and finger cap. He studies it for a moment. The moment stretches, then snaps as, once again, he bends to his examination. An insect, perhaps an ant, traces its path in the vein, now emerging from the crack, now disappearing. The man stands watching. A handkerchief covers his face; it is white cotton (not linen). The corner, which hangs below his chin, flutters in the wind. The man stands there as if his hands are in his pockets. He does not move. This is the only pavement, this and the steps which stretch down the cliff face, switching back below, disappearing from sight long before reaching the water.

The man can see far down, to the point where the stairs are lost to view behind a jutting outcrop. Even the thin strands of grass there have difficulty holding their purchase. There are no trees, only the slate rock, the dead grasses assaulted by the wind. The surf is hidden altogether by the