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A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair

by Renan Bernardo

 

 

– 1 –

I was conceived by a carpenter with quivering hands in the back of a lumberyard. She was called Anatólia. Some days she had to fix flaws, sawing one or two parts of me again. On other days she hurled chunks of me against the wall, screaming at the bashful furniture she’d built, lined against the far wall. If she knew she’d bestowed consciousness on me with her art, perhaps she’d have other thoughts. I didn’t care. She was sturdy and careful and didn’t mind her son babbling about her being too old for this kind of work. Oak trees lasted for millennia. She had but a dozen wrinkles around her cheeks. Her particular way of wheezing meant nothing. She would last.

Ignoring all the humility chipped into my wood by her hands, I was a true work of oak art. Seahorses adorned the palmettes atop my backrest, which was ornately twirled with bubbles and the contours of fishes. I had cockleshells on my apron and water lilies on my four feet, so exquisitely wrought that I feared the day someone would push me against fellow furniture. My upholstered cushion was velvety and crimson, not unlike the eyes of Anatólia’s son the day he entered the lumberyard and brought me to my first sunlight bath. The day I found out things I didn’t want to.

It happened two weeks after Anatólia sighed and told me some mysterious, uplifting words. She sat on one of my partners, an unconscious, wobbly stool, breathing out in her particular, noisy way.

“She’s going to love you,” she said.

The barbs of my wood bristled. Who was “she?” I’d ask if I had a mouth. She left after a few minutes dozing off with her hands on her knees as if mesmerized by deep thought.

It was the last time I saw her.

When Anatólia’s son brought me outside for the first time, he was weeping, and so were half a dozen other people, all gathered and hugging on the porch of a house with peeling green paint. A white truck with red lights was parked on the gravel drive. The long pack that was taken inside smelled like sawdust and coffee.

Every bit inside of me warped and swelled sluggishly when sunlight touched me. Or it could’ve been just the realization that my carpenter was gone. Turned out she wasn’t made of oak like me, but of a weaker, less resistant structure called bone.

“Keep it,” Anatólia’s son told Aunt Suzana as if I wasn’t listening. He was pointing to me and a set of other furniture. “I have to move soon.”

Was Aunt Suzana the one who was going to love me?

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– 2 –

Aunt Suzana tucked me into the back of her SUV and kept me just enough to sell me to a Wood & Depot branch near a diner on the BR-116 road. Back then, I deemed twenty reais fair enough to keep my dignity and to value all the sweat Anatólia had poured on me. Lucky ignorance. It probably paid for Aunt Suzana’s dinner later that day. Deservedly, she leaves the story now.

Life at Wood & Depot wasn’t like I dreamed. The dark years had begun. Literally. João Gutierrez, the manager, decided to put me in a corner that never captured sunlight. With the memories of the day Anatólia died at bay, I began to yearn for those light stripes that streaked through the Wood & Depot main door and picked up speckles of dust in the air. A sign was plastered on me with the number “100”. I didn’t dare to think through Aunt Suzana and João Gutierrez’s numbers. They didn’t make sense, and I didn’t want them to. What bothered me was that if that sign was kept for too long upon me, my seat would end up marked with an indelicate rectangle.

Those were also the metaphoric dark years. My days were limited to propping indifferent buttocks by day and feeling the seaweed stench of my unconscious mates by night. João Gutierrez seemed not to care that they stank. That we stank. He bragged about numbers, typed on computers, and scowled at his subordinates. He was just like Aunt Suzana. Just like Anatólia’s son. They weren’t able to love something sublimely manufactured by hands as magic as those shafts of light that greeted us every day.

Things changed one morning, about two years after Aunt Suzana dumped me. A drizzle spattered on the store’s awning, and sunlight hadn’t pierced through the glass. It was 8 a.m. on a Thursday and the CLOSED sign was still hanging on the door. They were late. And João Gutierrez made no movement to leave his desk until ten minutes later, when he yelled, startling me up.

“He’s coming! All hands on deck!”

His shout was received by woo-hoos and yells from his subordinates (though some of them might’ve been faked).

They crowded, talked for about ten minutes, then entered into a frenzy. They dipped cloths in detergent, wrung them, and wiped every bit of dust from the floors, beds, cabinets, cupboards, wardrobes, and tables, scrubbing even the inaccessible corners of the store. When it was my turn, they tickled me with a duster, waxed me all throughout, and rinsed my seat with oil soap and water. They even managed to clean the rectangle marked upon my crimson velvet. In the end, I felt less crackly and dry, a bit more like Anatólia intended me to be.

So, what now? Perhaps they’d found out about Anatólia and decided to find out who was going to love me, who was the one, the right person in the whole world for whom a refined chair must be given. A sailor, perhaps? A fisherman? All that cleaning spectacle had to be a welcoming party.

The person who entered Wood & Depot was nothing like I’d pictured when Anatólia said the puzzling sentence. It was a man with a whitening Balbo beard wearing a gray tweed with a dark green blazer and sweater, elegant and overused. His hair was plastered to his head with some kind of gel that left some threads slightly spiked to the left. He folded his umbrella and squinted at the furniture around him as if we had something to confess.

“Mr. Amorim, it’s so good to have you here.” João Gutierrez’s voice was phony like imitation velvet. “Do you mind if we bring you a cup of coffee and some snacks?”

Mr. Amorim grumbled and shook his head.

“Bad taste you have,” he said, indicating the door. “That sign says Hot Sale. You should think of a better term.”

Mr. Gutierrez trembled and flexed his fingers. Pearly beads of sweat glistened on his forehead.

“So you don’t think our prices are good enough for you? We can —”

Mr. Amorim waved him off.

“It’s just that you’re associating furniture with fire. It’s a bad omen, I think.”

Mr. Gutierrez nodded, his shoulders slumping, probably relieved because it was just a minor issue. Nothing to do with his numbers.

“Perhaps we could show you the best we have.” He made a completely fake gesture of welcome, opening his hands and stretching his arms to show Wood & Depot’s products — which were already obviously visible. “You are a literate man, so we might recommend our bookshelf made of —”

Mr. Amorim raised a hand again. He seemed to know exactly how to remain in control.

“I want to refurbish the house for Joana.”

“Is she coming back?” Mr. Gutierrez smiled.

“Yes, after six years abroad. Anyway, I have a list.” He produced a tanned piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to João, whose smile twinkled as he skimmed across the items.

João waved a hand to his subordinates and they started to zigzag around the store, typing on computers, exchanging grins with each other, and sticking SOLD signs on some of my fellows.

Meanwhile, Mr. Amorim strolled around the place with his squinting manners, sliding fingers over my mates, knocking on glass doors, yet rarely opening them. When he came closer to me, the first thing he did wasn’t pressing down my upholstered seat as most people did. He smiled at my cockleshells and pressed his fingers against the seahorses’ heads on my backrest. His thumb was ridged, filled with invisible lint from his blazer. His nails were closely trimmed. I sniffed in him a scant timeworn scent of alder and beech, something that reminded me of Anatólia.

“Hmm . . .” It was all he said.

His back cast a shadow and loomed upon me. I clenched all my splinters. A flutter of anticipation swirled through my velvet.

He sat on me. I creaked (but politely quick).

“Mr. Gutierrez, please, come here.” Mr. Amorim raised a hand, his voice vibrating through my wood. “I’ll take this one too. And I have a special request regarding all the furniture I’m buying. Do you have a carpenter in situ?”

And so the dark years ended as they’d begun, in the somber back of a truck.

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– 3 –

I was promoted to a leader as soon as I was placed in the Amorims’ living room. From a lumberyard to the dark corner of a store to heading my own table. I admit I was a bit proud of myself. I led a set of five mahogany chairs, all of them acquired at the Wood & Depot and customized according to Mr. Amorim’s requests. Fruits and orchard motifs had been whittled on the backrests of the chairs and the edges of the table. They weren’t as perfect as my cockleshells and seahorses, of course. Mr. Gutierrez’s crew hands were more adapted to numbers than woodwork. (The chairs had their charm, though, just not like mine.)

The fruit theme seemed to please the Amorims. Their living room contained a collection of ten oil paintings depicting orchards and fruit bowls, trees and plantations, women and men doing fieldwork, all of them hanging between the furniture: a cupboard, a bookshelf, a Victorian-style pendulum clock, and a blanket-covered sofa. To the right of the entrance, the living room opened to a space with a TV rack, but that was beyond my field of view, so I only caught glimpses of its weird colorful motions when someone moved me into the house.

And here I have to add something important: There was a sash window right behind me with varnish briskly applied to its casing to hide its true age. (I called it make-up for wooden beings). Every morning, just before the pendulum clock struck 7 a.m., Mr. Amorim woke up, his slippers squeaking on the stairs and echoing throughout the house. Then he pulled the curtains and opened the window, allowing wafts of mowed lawn to barge in. And . . . sunlight! The gracious rays that came from that huge ball up in the sky finally fell upon me day after day, from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., whisking through the intricacies of my oak and warming me up.

I soon discovered just two of the Amorims lived in that castle-like residence. Eduardo Amorim, who by now you know as Mr. Amorim, and Leandro Amorim, a 15-year-old boy who seemed to be part of a system comprised of earphones and a grayed-out Metallica t-shirt. Leandro was Mr. Amorim’s grandson, and his parents had been absent since Leandro was a toddler. Joana Amorim was Leandro’s sister and the one Mr. Amorim had mentioned in the Wood & Depot as the recipient of all that brand-new furniture. She didn’t live with them but was going to spend two months at the house after a year abroad. Was she the one who was going to love me? The thought scraped through my oak as the first night in the Amorims’ home mingled to a delft blue and transformed the oil paintings into mere blackboards.

Then there came a morning, seven days from my arrival, that Mr. Amorim’s tight voice startled me from my oaken stasis.

“Help your sister, Leandro.” His voice made my wood vibrate. He was at the door. “She’s exhausted from the long trip.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” Leandro rolled his eyes, darting down the stairs. “I’m also tired, okay? It’s not even 10 a.m..”

Mr. Amorim peeked anxiously through the wicket while turning his key in the door. A half-smile hung on his mouth.

“She’s early,” he muttered to himself. “Should’ve thought of a better suit.” He was wearing a black jacket with the same linen trousers he’d been wearing when he bought me.

Mr. Amorim left, and Leandro went right after him. (And here I’d like to pause and add a side note about magic hands. It would be much better if they also granted moving legs to furniture. I’d stretch them now and follow the duo outside to see firsthand the arrival of Joana, the woman who could or could not love me. But, no. I didn’t move.) I could only distinguish Mr. Amorim’s voice. At that moment, I discovered what happiness meant. It was that thrilled tone of voice, a bit higher than usual, even if muffled and indistinguishable by the rumble of the car outside. It was the different set of dimples around Mr. Amorim’s cheeks when he came back carrying a piece of blue luggage filled with stickers. It was the way he carefully but quickly set it on the floor just to look back outside again.

Leandro came next, carrying a stuffy backpack.

Then Joana, bluish circles around her eyes, mouth lined downward, and dark hair tied in a bun. She smelled like leather couches. She wasn’t like the other Amorims. In her early thirties, she didn’t have the analytical, sophisticated look of her grandpa. Joana was the kind of bone-made creature that seemed to have left a lot behind. Even more than Mr. Amorim himself, despite his age. The question that lingered in the air was whether she’d left part of her somewhere or somewhen.

At the moment when she closed the door behind her, I expected her eyes to glint in full realization of what her grandfather had done, the customization of the furniture, the unskilled-but-neat apples and oranges crusted in my fellow chairs’ backrests, the smoothness of that mahogany table where Mr. Amorim had put two golden candelabra and Leandro had left a Master of Puppets CD case. And me, of course, at the opposite wall, hidden by it all but exhibiting seahorses and fishes leaping from imaginary water, the details on their eyes soulfully fashioned. And I could see in Mr. Amorim’s eyes that he had about the same expectations.

Joana gandered at the living room.

“Your place is . . .” She frowned. “It smells like trees.”

My seat puffed out on a micro level. Trees? Really? It’s the same thing to say you all smell like flesh.

“We’ll bring your stuff upstairs,” Mr. Amorim said, lips fluttering. “Your room is like you left it.”

“I’ll stay for two months, Eduardo.” At the time, I couldn’t say if her insipidity was due to the long trip or if it was her. “I’m just here to know if you and Leandro are fine.”

She grabbed her backpack, tousled Leandro’s hair, and moved upstairs. Mr. Amorim rubbed his hands and stared up, unsaid words swishing across his lips. Even Leandro took his eyes off the smartphone and paused whatever was drilling in through his ears. During the coming years, I would know and accommodate the rears of many of the Amorims’ guests. Their cousin Morena; Eduardo’s brother, Jorge; Leandro’s girlfriends, then boyfriends; a couple of Mr. Amorim’s affairs; Jacir, the ponytailed mailman; the neighbors’ dogs frolicking and wiggling their tails. And none of those beings had a reception so warm as the one the Amorims gave to Joana, and none ever responded with such unenthusiastic manners.

And she didn’t even spare a look at my curves.

The days went by, inevitably. I could say the Amorims’ residence was my first one. The lumberyard couldn’t be considered a home because I was being assembled. Neither could the shaded, dusty corner in the Wood & Depot. But with the Amorims it was different. My surroundings gained life.

Mr. Amorim — and I think I can call him Eduardo by now — set a breakfast every morning for his grandchildren (and sometimes for me, when Leandro dropped buttered toast on my seat, and you probably know the rules about falling buttered toast). It consisted of scrambled eggs, bread, butter, avocado toast, grilled cheese, orange juice, and pineapple yogurt, the latter specifically for Joana. But she didn’t notice all the effort Eduardo put into pleasing her, the minutes he spent scouring the sideboard’s drawer for a pretty tablecloth, the alarm he set on the refrigerator to serve the yogurt at the temperature she deemed ideal, those dimples and those sparkling eyes on his face, innuendos of smiles.

On weekdays, Leandro caught a bus for school just after they finished breakfast. He was in secondary school, in the stage teenagers absorbed all that was around them and channeled it out into excitement, frustration, and acne. And it was during the huge gaps between Leandro going and coming back from school that Eduardo tried to penetrate the mysterious Joana’s barrier.

“I don’t know the title of your thesis,” Eduardo said one time, three days after Joana arrived. They sat across from each other at the table. (Eduardo didn’t sit on me at all; he often let his grandchildren pick me if they wanted. Even when alone, he spared my seat from his rear.) “I know it’s about fishes.”

Oh. That could be the reason why I was picked.

“Fishes.” Joana twisted her lips. “You oversimplify it.”

Eduardo shrugged. “You didn’t call very much when you were there.”

“It’s about the patterns of saltwater fish in the Iberian Peninsula.”

“It seems interesting.” Eduardo actually wanted to know more. You could see it in the way he leaned over the table with his eyes glinting. It was like he’d just found out he had a granddaughter. “I didn’t know they have patterns.”

“All things do.” Her eyes never met his. “In nature.”

“And Portugal? Is it nice?”

She just nodded.

“The new furniture . . .” She looked around, a bit of scorn in her eyes. “Why?”

For you, so please be happier, I wanted to say. Look at my seahorses and those bubbles popping out around them, the fish intertwined with them.

“You know I appreciate woodwork.” He looked around the room. His hands shook slightly. “I want to revitalize the house, you know? Refreshment. Check the wiring, too, and if the fire extinguishers are okay. I think the one in the basement might be near to its expiry —”

“So you just entered Wood & Depot and bought it all?” Her jaws set in a half-grin while she stared at her grandpa. “And these fruits?”

Eduardo looked at his hands and smiled. Not to her, but to himself.

“You remember how you drew them when you were a kid?” he said without looking into her eyes. Good choice. She didn’t deserve it. “You drew them, you colored them, and then you jotted down the fruits’ names under each one. You even invented your own. And then I taught you how to sculpt an apple into a plank. Of course, I didn’t let you touch the saw and the hammer, but your eyes glinted so much . . .”

“I was a child,” she said as if to prove a point. “It’s all pretty, but you didn’t need to spend your money on this. I won’t stay.”

Eduardo didn’t move. Not even a nod. Of course, he knew she wouldn’t stay, she had her home somewhere miles from there, she had a Ph.D. in Biology and a completely separate life to lead. But Eduardo felt. And the conversation died as it began, without Eduardo knowing the name of her thesis.

When Joana decided to go out early in the morning or stay late in her bedroom — which meant the refrigerator beeped in vain — Eduardo scrubbed all the new furniture with a slightly wet cloth, reaching even the hardest corners and edges with cotton swabs and toothbrushes. He cleaned the cupboard’s glass, dusted the books on the bookshelf and the surface of the table and the chairs’ seats. But he took special care of me (as I deserved, of course). He sprayed vinegar-smelling solutions on my seat and scrubbed it with precise circular motions. Then he used exaggeratedly thin swabs and even needles to remove grime from the minute intricacies of my cockleshells, seahorses, and water lilies, never forgetting to apply specific products to my wooden legs, arms, and backrest. I felt exalted. (And here I must repeat myself: Eduardo cleaned the furniture every day, ritually, even if it had to be done after midnight.)

Later in the day Joana arrived, Eduardo said he would prepare a welcoming dinner for her. But she told him she was going to have dinner out. The same happened during the following five days. Only on her first Saturday there did she decide to stay and accept his offer. And so I’d have my first dinner leading a mahogany table with five fruit-themed mahogany chairs. I could swear the microscopic barbs across my legs ruffled.

It was set for 7 p.m. on Saturday. The hours stretched as I anticipated the moment. Eduardo left early for the supermarket with Leandro. After they came back and stocked the groceries, Eduardo performed his cleaning ritual. It was a bit more rushed than usual, but that was forgivable. It would be his night. When he managed to leave the kitchen for a few minutes, he paced about the living room, straightened the paintings on the wall, picked up a tablecloth, set up the candelabra in slightly different positions, and sighed with both hands on the table, eyes tight shut.

The clock eventually struck seven.

At first glance, Eduardo seemed a man of traditions, showing up in Wood & Depot all neat, selective, and provoking shudders throughout Mr. Gutierrez’s crew. But if he was, he’d probably abandoned some of them during his life. Furniture like me was born with some sense of what to expect from the world. And one thing I expected was the house’s main provider sitting at the head of his own home’s table. But he didn’t. Of course, he never sat on me, but he didn’t even exchange my place with one of the lower-class chairs. Nor did he sit at the opposite end of the table. So it was Leandro who picked me, who was surprisingly — or forcedly — without his earphones, wearing a button-down shirt almost in tune with the ten-years-later Leandro that I would eventually get to know.

“Be careful with this chair,” Eduardo said, pointing a finger at Leandro. It was the first sentence of the dinner. Damn, I was delighted.

Eduardo lit the candles on the candelabra for the first time, and they cast a sandy halo across the room. Then they each took their places. Leandro upon me, Eduardo and Joana facing each other again. Eduardo served — and prepared himself — grilled salmon, beansprouts, noodles, and roasted carrots with garlic and parmesan. To drink, Argentinian wine (since Joana was probably tired of the Portuguese taste) for him and Joana, orange juice for Leandro. From that moment on, the sum of smells swirling through the living room became the scent of reunion to me. Luscious food, melting wax, the ever-diminishing whiff of newly fabricated wood. Chairs were made to be static, but my elementary particles spun and whirled within me.

“Please, serve yourselves.” Eduardo widened his smile. “You both love salmon, so it’s what I made for today. Can’t ensure the taste is good, though. And . . . Joana?”

Joana stared at him, glints of suspicion in her eyes. (And here you might be asking how can I see those things with a 15-year-old headbanger sitting on me. Well, I can reveal to you that chairs have eyes in every part of their structure.)

“Welcome back,” Eduardo said, then nudged Leandro.

“Welcome back, Sis.”

Leandro and Joana were like old friends that had reunited but bore no further resemblance to each other. But even so, she offered more smiles to him than to her grandpa. As she did now, turning her head and grinning at him. She was educated enough to wait for her grandpa to serve himself, but he was educated enough to serve his grandchildren first. His hands were quivering but the smile didn’t thaw from his face.

“Leandro is curious about Portugal,” Eduardo said after serving them, sitting and folding a napkin on his lap. “He watched a documentary about Saint George’s Castle some weeks before you arrived.”

Leandro nodded. “Many people used the castle throughout history.”

Joana imitated her grandpa and set the napkin on her lap. The candlelights brought out some wrinkles on her face I’d not perceived before.

“Phoenicians, Visigoths, Romans, Moors, and more,” she said. “I’ve been there twice and the views are breathtaking.”

“Greeks, Carthaginians, Suebi, even the Celtic tribes,” Leandro said, seemingly excited with the subject. “I remember their names, but have no idea who the Suebi were, for instance.”

They laughed. I was built with a mythical concept imbued in my wood, that of a happy family. It was something I was bound to witness many times during my existence. Perhaps it was a kind of intrinsic power I’d inherited from the magic hands of Anatólia. Those twelve seconds with the Amorims were proof that it wasn’t a myth, but those moments didn’t linger. They were like lapses of love and friendship and cheery guffawing. And perhaps that held for all families, not just for them.

“Is it preserved?” Eduardo said.

“It’s mostly made of stone,” Joana said, her eyes panning back to her plate. “Not wood.”

“My question remains.” Eduardo’s voice was rough. It was the first time I’d noticed him using that kind of unsatisfied voice with Joana. But it didn’t last. His eyes were shining and glancing at his granddaughter one second later. “I’m curious about these things. You might not recall, but I have a specialization in preservation.”

“Wood and furniture preservation,” she said, cutting a slice of the fish. “The castle doesn’t have much furniture today. Lots of open spaces, though.”

“Why is that even important?” Leandro shrugged.

The living room hung in silence but for the wind battering at the window, as if they were chewing upon Leandro’s question. Joana had a way of embarrassing Eduardo.

“I was thinking . . .” Eduardo cleared his throat and sipped the wine. “Next week we could visit the Itatiaia Castle. It’s the closest we have to a castle here. They have an awesome collection of antique wardrobes.”

“I’m leaving Monday,” Joana said.

The glass dropped from Eduardo’s hand and swayed on the table, nearly bashing on the floor. Droplets of wine peppered the linen tablecloth and some of it ran over my leg. It tasted like vinegar.

He grabbed the napkin and wiped his hand. Leandro glanced at them, from one to the other.

“You said two months,” Eduardo said. “Why so soon?”

“You have all you love here,” she said. “You don’t need us.” She looked at Leandro.

“What do you mean?” Leandro frowned.

“I can’t bear staying here,” she said, darting a fierce look at Eduardo. “I came back from Portugal wanting to give you a second chance. But I can’t.”

“What the hell?” Leandro crossed his arms. “I don’t want to get old and crazy like you.”

They didn’t mind Leandro. They just glared at one another, an invisible ongoing clash. I didn’t know if any of them won, but Joana stood, her salmon barely eaten, and went upstairs.

The dinner was over. Before sunrise, Joana would leave. Flies would fester on salmon and roasted carrots until Eduardo gathered the courage to clean the table at noon the next day. His eyes were red-swollen. His hands shaky. The only thing he did on that day besides cleaning the table was dusting me and trying to remove the stains of wine from my leg.

 

 

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Host Commentary

Speaking of which—I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned here, what with time being a slippery concept as regards recording these host spots, but we are Ignyte Nominees for Best Fiction Podcast once again! This is our 5th nomination in a row—since the inaugural Ignytes, in fact—and we remain enormously honoured for the recognition. The Ignytes were founded to show a better path forward for awards, without barriers for participation but grounded in a carefully considered juried shortlist; and, being an offshoot of FIYAH, to recognise and celebrate those works that push genre forward and address historical injustices head on. To be recognised by the jury again is a huge privilege, and an enormous vote of confidence that warms our draconic hearts—as does the fact that, for the first time, our little sister Cast of Wonders is also a nominee, which is their most signification nomination yet and long overdue. To get all British about it: we’re well made up. Voting is open to everyone, for free, until the end of this month, so please do go vote by searching Ignyte Awards online (that’s I G N Y T E)—and pay attention to the shortlists in each category, as they’re pretty much the best recommendation list you’ll get in this field.

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That was part 1 of “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair” by Renan Bernardo, and if you enjoyed that then do come back next week for the second and concluding part—and I’ll hold my thoughts on the story till then, too, so see you when I see you, friends.