(Clique)
Poder, sexo, amor, ambição,
derrotas, quedas, trambolhões, é de sobra o que pode complicar a existência ou
torná-la fora de série. Ainda bem que a maioria das vidas segue num ramerrão de
hábitos, apetites, banalidades, horas certas, obediência à lei e aos costumes.
Dos que escapam à rotina só eles próprios poderão dizer como na realidade foi e
se valeu a pena. Para os outros fica a imaginação.
O que segue são excerptos do conto
de Jeanette Winterson All I know about
Gertrud Stein, publicado na Granta em 2011, e que nessa altura li. Tem a
ver com amor e paixão. Reli-o agora numa perspectiva diferente e alguma
estranheza, perguntando-me o que entretanto aconteceu ao mundo ou se a idade me
tira a escama dos olhos. O itálico é o do texto original.
“In 1907 a woman from San Francisco named Alice. B. Toklas arrived in Paris. She
was going to meet a fellow American living there already. She was excited
because she’d heard a lot about Gertrud Stein… Alice Toklas had no previous
experience of love… Gertrud Stein and her brother Leo had long since left the
USA to set up house in Paris in the rue de Fleurus… But Gertrud was lonely.
I do very badly
without a lover. I pine, I sigh, I sleep, I dream, I set the table for two and
stare in the empty chair… Sometimes I have affairs. But though I enjoy the bed,
I feel angry about the fraud; the closeness without the cost. I know what the
cost is: the more I love you, the more I feel alone.
On 23 May 1907 Gertrud Stein met
Alice B. Toklas.
Gertrud: Fat, sexy, genial, powerful.
Alice: A tiny unicorn, nervous, clever, watchful, determined.
We were both
survivors of other shipwrecks. You looked sad. I wanted to see you again.
For a while we
corresponded by email, charming each
other in fonts and pixels. Did you…do you… would you like to… I wonder if…
The Stein and
Toklas love affair was about sex… They talked about The Taming of the Shrew… not a poster-play for feminism.
Gertrud: A wife
hangs upon her husband – that is what Shakspeare says.
Alice: But you never married.
Gertrud: I
would like a wife… When al is said one is wedded to bed.
It was the
begining of their love affair.
Women used to
be in charge of love – it was our hole domain, the business of our lives, to
give love, to make love to mend love tot end love…
Alice Toklas
never went back to San Francisco. They were together everyday for the next
forty years… and they never stopped having sex.
Gertrud Stein
liked giving Alice an orgasm – she called it ‘making a cow come out’. Nobody
knows why – unless Alice made moo noises
when she hit it. Gertrud said, ‘I am the best cow-giver in the world.’
I don’t think
we talk about love in real terms anymore. We talk about partnership. We talk
about romance. We talk about sex. We talk about divorce. I don’t think we tal
about love at all.”
É um belo conto. Estes excerptos
pouco dizem, dão apenas ideia de que possivelmente todo o amor é único, uma
caminhada a dois, feita por vezes em solidão.
