The following is from Giovana Madalosso’s English-language debutThe Tokyo Suite. Madalosso is a Brazilian writer and screenwriter, born in Curitiba in 1975. She has been a finalist for the Biblioteca Nacional Award and the São Paulo Prize of Literature. Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and translator. Her translation of Stênio Gardel’s The Words That Remain won the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature.
I’m kidnapping a child. I try to push this thought away, but it keeps coming back as we go down the elevator, say hi to Chico, pass the gates. We do these things every day, go downstairs, say hi to Chico, pass the gates, step on only the black tiles or the white on the sidewalk. But today it’s different even if we’re not doing anything different, because I know the white army stares at me. Mrs. Fernanda made up this moniker, the white army. And she’s not wrong, we really look like an army, especially this early in the morning, when they’re all in the piazza in their white nanny uniforms, babies and children in tow, chatting as they push the babies and children on strollers and swings. A world that until yesterday was my world, but that looks at me now with suspicion. Or is it just in my head? Oh Holy Mother, tell me, am I imagining things? I’m not sure, but just in case I pick up the pace, let’s go, Corinha, you can step on the white tiles some other time.
I don’t cross the piazza as I normally do. Instead, I go around it. Still, the army follow me with their eyes. I run into a nanny from the building next door, and I feel her eying my bag—my sack, really, much bigger than the usual little one, a huge bag I press tight against my body to see if it will shrink. I avoid eye contact and we keep walking, until Cora says: Maju, your hand feels weird; and she lets go of my fingers, maybe to get rid of my sweat. When I look at her, she’s already crouched down to pick up a wilted camellia. I never saw a child who loves flowers so much. I think it’s nice, a child who loves flowers. This is why I usually don’t rush her, like so many nannies do. I’ll let Cora smell an entire garden if she wants, I even carry all her petals in my pocket. Once I forgot them in some pants I put in the washing machine. It was beautiful to see, the flowers inside spinning and dancing. But today we don’t have time for that, Chickadee, not today, and I don’t even wipe her hands with a wet wipe like I normally do, to make sure they’re clean, I just grab those little fingers and don’t let go, and feel a pang for the empty of Mandaguaçu, the open of the landscape of Mandaguaçu, because here in São Paulo you can’t go one minute without being looked at. Like these cab drivers, watching people’s lives to pass the time. I know them all, we only ride with them, Mr. Cacá and Mrs. Fernanda knew them for years. Precisely for this reason, I turn around. I turn around and go up Angélica Avenue. We hop on the bus. Cora thinks it strange. We’re not taking a cab, Maju? But she also enjoys the news of it, it’s the first time she’s ever taken the city bus. She asks to sit at the front, presses her nose on the glass.
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The bus station isn’t far, and in half an hour we’re there. I look around to see if there’s anyone I know. Of course not, but I pick up the pace anyway. I tuck Cora into the elevator, the poor thing squeezed between our bags. I’ve never seen so many people carry so many shopping bags, the crinkling plastic signaling even to the blind that this place is thick with poor people. Thank God the doors open soon, and I leave with my Chickadee. We walk down a platform, and from there we can see many other platforms, people walking side to side, escalators going up and down, signs full of information, lines at the counters, stores with discounts. Cora stops and is still for a moment. I pull her hand, but she doesn’t budge. I crouch down to see what’s going on. Maju, how are my eyes so small if I see the world so big?
*
My phone is ringing but I decide not to pick up. Yara and I are lying on our backs after a long session of hoka-hoka. I wasn’t the one to come up with the name. She told me about it, then showed me the video, female bonobo apes rubbing their genitals against one another. Someone in North Africa decided on this name, which is kind of funny, kind of musical. The voice in the video talks about how female bonobos enjoy having sex with each other more than with male apes. Specialists know this from the way they look their partners in the eye and move a lot more during hoka-hoka. Yara said the voiceover was right. She once saw female bonobos having passionate sex when she was in the Congo Basin. And it was actual sex, not just plain mating like other animals, because it was a trade, an exchange of affection. I remember thinking that what defines a verb is not the subject but the object. I’ve mated with some people; with her I have sex.
It isn’t always a fair trade. I’ve been receiving less than I’ve been giving. Passion dividends. But this doesn’t change the way I look at her, I’m still delighted by even the simplest things, for example the way she holds a joint between her fingers. Even her slurring after smoking weed, which would bother anyone in their right mind, I still like. I like seeing her swimming against the current of productivity, doing the opposite of what I do at work. While I squeeze stories into ten-minute blocks, into eight-episode series, she turns hers into an entire odyssey, as if she really did live in that world she loves so much, ruled by natural cycles instead of by the urgent demands of her smartphone. That and her slightly saggy breasts, like her drooping eyelids, make me take the joint from her fingers and kiss her.
My phone rings again. I glance at it. It’s my husband. I put it on silent. I go back to rubbing my genitals against Yara’s, while outside hundreds of other primates are driving, with their hairy tails on the driver’s seat and opposable thumbs on the horn, causing an uproar in the jungle around us. When we lie back again, I have seven missed calls on my phone.
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From The Tokyo Suite. Used with permission of the publisher, Europa Editions. Copyright © 2025.
