Identity, Body, and Displacement: Reconstructing Subjectivity in Tatiana Salem Levy’s A chave de casa

Immobility and the Fragmented Body

The notion that the body is a medium of culture has been a recurrent topic of discussion in contemporary research,⁷ wherein the body is seen as a surface on which rules, hierarchies, and social control are inscribed and reinforced. Our bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, and femininity through the organization and regulation of the time, space, and movements of our daily lives (Bordo 90–91). Yet awareness that the body is a cultural text constructed through ideologies, discourses and practices allows for alternative interpretations that contest such construction. Though physical wounds are often symbolized fictively in postmodern feminist novels reflecting women’s historical fragmentation, this leads to an attempt to actively use the body as a site of deciphering, sharing, and healing these wounds (June 5, 11). As Elaine Scarry has argued, the pain that emanates from such a state of deconstruction can establish a dialogue with its counterpart—imagination—thus providing individuals with the capacity to create cultural artifacts as a means of expressing what was previously inexpressible (169). In this shift from the unmaking that pain represents to the making that writing provides, the story that the narrator pens is a projection of her live body (280).

In A chave de casa the abused, tortured, and physically-suffering body is no longer marginalized or disregarded in place of a painless, passionless Cartesian truth. The body is no longer of secondary importance; instead, it is a primary site of conflict and identity whose conditions are both revealed and problematized. An active search for the body’s language occurs as both male and female characters somaticize their pain, converting their psychological suffering into bodily symptoms. In addition, the body’s language is delineated through physical pleasure, revealing both pain and eroticism to be portals to subjectivity. The protagonist deals with an identity crisis that stems from the burden she feels in relation to her family’s heritage, from her mother’s torture and death, and from a violent love relationship. In each of these instances, not only is the protagonist’s lack of wholeness woven into the narrative fabric through bodily issues, but it also originates partially through experiences of displacement: her grandfather’s immigration and her mother’s exile.

Originally from a migrant family uprooted by the Inquisition, the protagonist’s family undergoes the traumatic experience of immigration centuries later. Her grandfather decides to make the journey in search of a better life and joins a relative in Brazil. The burden of immigration is evident when his mother grieves his departure in advance: “No rosto dela, uma desilusão macerada … Ele sentia no peito uma culpa imensa, uma culpa que carregaria viagem afora, vida afora” (Levy 20–21). The mother’s handling of difficult issues such as the unraveling of the family unit—she refuses to talk to her husband or son after she finds out that the latter will be leaving the family behind—is not the only instance in which a painful silence prevails. It is also present after the death of the grandfather’s lover and, years later, of his own son.

The grandfather’s need to leave Turkey extends beyond a search for opportunities; it also has to do with his love for Rosa, his boss’s daughter who is forbidden by her father to marry him. Heartbroken, he decides that distance will heal their wounds, though, after a period in Brazil, he receives a letter from his sister with the news that Rosa has committed suicide: “Rosa nada podia contra a decisão paterna. Sabe qual foi a maneira que encontrou para não ficar em silêncio, meu irmão? … Com uma pedra amarrada ao pé, ela se atirou no poço da praça. Matou-se, meu irmão. Encontraram o corpo boiando, o vestido inflado pela água” (Levy 53). This episode echoes historical forms of gender oppression in traditional societies where a woman’s ownership of her body and future belonged to her father or husband. At times, women’s resistance failed and led to violent outcomes such as murder or suicide (Katrak 2) and this is precisely what occurs when Rosa is unable to reconcile her family’s expectations with her true desires. The grandfather’s silent reaction is, in turn, somaticized as he spends more than one month without leaving bed, his chest “crushed” with guilt and pain, as the narrator puts it, while his arms and legs can barely move (Levy 67). His grieving process is not only viscerally embodied, but also its description in the narrative is mediated through the body. As Levy poetically describes, roots come out of his pores, his nails become crooked, and traces of mold appear on his skin (68).⁸ This grotesque image personifies his search for rootedness, through which he is literally disembodied.

Silence is also the mode of response when he, after having built a comfortable life in Brazil with his wife Hilda, loses a son. For four years, the family is dominated by grief and silence: “O fantasma do menino rondava todos os aposentos e, assim como o passado, seu nome era interditado … Como se falar fosse um desrespeito à dor” (Levy 112). In this scenario, the protagonist of A chave de casa grows up internalizing her family’s heritage for they are not allowed to talk about this loss, confessing that

a verdade é que nasci com os pés na cova. Não falo de aparência física, mas de um peso que carrego nas costas, um peso que me endurece os ombros e me torce o pescoço … Um peso que não é todo meu, pois já nasci com ele. Como se toda vez em que digo ‘eu’ estivesse dizendo ‘nós.’ Nunca falo sozinha, falo sempre na companhia desse sopro que me segue desde o primeiro dia. (9)

The burden of such heritage is twofold: it is cultural in that her family is composed of different places and traditions as well as traumatic, for she carries the weight of the lacerating silence present for many generations. In other words, her pain symbolizes a haunting reenactment of her ancestors’ struggles (June 3). Although she understands through her family’s silence that fear has “defeated the word” (Levy 132) and acknowledges the need to speak as a way to overcome this scenario of oppressive silence, she is also aware of its perils: “preciso falar, preciso contar a verdade. Mas tenho medo, muito medo, porque conheço a pontada de cada palavra que escondo” (Levy 141). Nonetheless, she moves forward with her project of telling her family’s story. Her motivation stems not only from her personal necessity to overcome her state of paralysis, but also from her mother’s voice telling her that “cabe a você, cabe aos que ficaram, contar a história, recontá-la. Cabe a você não repetir os mesmos erros, cabe a você falar em nome daqueles que se calaram” (Levy 132). She has the mission of breaking the cycle of silence and pain in order to overcome its consequences in her family’s life and her own.

Furthermore, multigenerational migration has taken a toll on the protagonist’s understanding of who she is and what her place is in the world. Therefore, her crisis is equally triggered by her sense of rootlessness, and she explains, “Nasci no exílio: e por isso sou assim: sem pátria, sem nome. Por isso sou sólida, áspera, bruta. Nasci longe de mim, fora da minha terra—mas, afinal, quem sou eu? Que terra é a minha?” (Levy 25). While the protagonist holds a Portuguese passport, she speaks Brazilian Portuguese and at the same time feels a strong connection to Turkey. These confusing ethnic and cultural ties lead her to a misunderstanding of who she is, reinforced in the narrative by the fact that she does not have a name. In this manner, the character experiences a crisis of belonging to her physical space that leads her to question her place in the world, her identity in relation to others and to society.

The experience of the protagonist’s parents during the military dictatorship in Brazil is also a source of pain, as her father is a leftist militant who has to flee Brazil in order to avoid arrest. Her mother, however, is captured and tortured by the regime before she reunites with her husband in Portugal. After degrading and inhuman treatment, she no longer feels that she has rights over her own body (Levy 140). The shaving of her head, the stripping of her clothes, and the subsequent water torture are strategies that aim precisely at creating a sense of powerlessness: “Respire: rápido, antes que mergulhem novamente a sua cabeça na bacia funda … Ela já nem era mulher, era apenas um corpo desmilinguido, quase sem carne, a pele frouxa esforçando para segurar os ossos” (Levy 156). The narrator’s mother no longer feels like a woman; her debilitated body has lost almost all of its flesh, as Levy viscerally describes. Therefore, by attacking her body and inflicting physical suffering, the torturers suppressed their victim’s sense of self. Scarry notes that torture creates a special category of pain, for the destruction of a person’s self through torture is experienced spatially, either as the contraction of the universe down to the immediate vicinity of the body or as the body swelling to fill the entire universe (35).

In essence, silence acts as a void that cannot be filled, though through storytelling the narrator attempts to counteract this by becoming increasingly conscious of both her mother’s and her grandfather’s hardships. Decades after being born in exile and having moved back to Brazil, the protagonist experiences as an adult her mother’s battle with cancer and her ensuing death. There is, throughout the narrative, a posthumous dialogue with the mother in which her voice quite often contests that of her daughter’s. For instance, while the protagonist narrates her mother’s hospitalization and blindness through the perspective of pain, the mother reminds her that it was also a positive experience because they were in close contact, counseling, “Não vou dizer que não sofri, seria mentira. Mas também vivi naquele hospital a alegria mais profunda. Nós duas fechadas no mesmo quarto durante duas semanas, eu nunca tinha sentido amor tão aflorado, tão à superfície” (Levy 84). Although the mother’s voice adds a level of complexity to the narrative as it counters some viewpoints of the protagonist, the suffering that mother and daughter endure is still evident through the graphic descriptions of the mother’s body as “decayed,” “rotten,” full of pus and smelling of death (84).

In this manner, the life stories of the protagonist’s grandfather and of her mother have a significant role in the construction and fragmentation of her subjectivity, as the narrator reenacts this suffering through her love relationship with a violent man. Although the relationship seems to be intensely passionate at the beginning, soon enough its novelty wears off and the protagonist starts to fear his violent treatment. Three different passages illustrate the decline of their interaction, all starting with the same sentence: “Quando você aproximou docemente os lábios dos meus ouvidos.” While the first occurrence is followed by Levy’s narrator saying to her partner that “sabia que me faria um pedido” (113), the second one builds upon the previous passage to extend her thoughts and express her growing distance: “sabia que me faria um pedido, por isso me afastei, estava cansada dos seus pedidos” (119). By the third occurrence, this distance has transformed into fear: “tive medo, muito medo. Tremi” (129). The different ways that the repetitions lead to distinct outcomes chart the deterioration of their relationship, and as it oscillates between good and bad moments this instability is perceived through the body: “Eu acreditava que o amava. Acreditava que você me amava. Nesses dias, simplesmente esquecia que tinha o corpo aberto por feridas, que você havia me rasgado a pele. Nesses dias, fingia ter o corpo inteiro e o entregava a você” (Levy 163). The protagonist alludes to the fragmentation of her body, and, consequently, her subjectivity by claiming that she pretends her body is whole, when, in reality her body is open with wounds.

Misogyny thrives in silence. When the protagonist reveals to her partner that she is pregnant, he refuses to discuss the matter, implying that she should abort the child. One week later, she suffers a miscarriage at home, yet refuses to answer her partner’s questions. In retrospect, she is unable to determine whether his rejection or her own fear was the catalyst, but she confesses at the time to avoiding his eyes for fear of exposing his guilt (167, 168). When she finally decides to end the relationship, her partner is unwilling to accept the challenge to his authority and rapes her. She narrates yet another trauma to her body:

Preciso falar com você, eu disse … apesar de todo o amor que sentimos um pelo outro infelizmente não dá mais nunca conseguiremos ser felizes … precisamos nos afastar para dar uma chance a nós mesmos … Arrancou-me a calcinha com movimentos bruscos e penetrou imediatamente seu dedo no meu sexo seco. No meu rosto, apenas terror. No meu corpo, a impossibilidade de movimento … Você se rejubilava com a minha dor. Você me perguntou: então, não é bom? … está vendo como podemos ser felizes juntos. (Levy 197–98)

From her perspective, her partner’s forced sexual intercourse expresses his disagreement with the end of their relationship as a way to “teach her a lesson.” He is unable to accept her agency in making a final decision that would affect his life and puts himself in a position to have the last word. Feminist scholar Catharine Mackinnon explains that there is a widespread misunderstanding in society that men cannot rape women they know, for rape must be perpetrated by a stranger. In addition, even if that were to happen, it would be less awful for a woman to be raped by someone close to her (Mackinnon 47), though these assumptions could not be further from the truth. In reality, “women often feel as or more traumatized from being raped by someone known or trusted, someone with whom at least an illusion of mutuality has been shared, than by some stranger” (Mackinnon 47). Both episodes transform the protagonist’s body into a site of physical and psychological oppression that she is unable to verbally express.

The protagonist’s sense of powerlessness resembles at some level the torture her mother experienced in prison and the torment Rosa endured when she was prevented from marrying the man she loved. All three stories converge through the women’s inability to maintain ownership of their bodies and of their lives. The assault on their subjectivity is perpetrated by an authoritarian cast of male figures: an abusive lover, military torturers, and the patriarchal figure of the father. Levy’s narrative, therefore, can be read as a critique of the phallocentric society that has, throughout different historical moments, stripped away female’s power of agency. In this manner, the protagonist, her mother, and Rosa undergo what Ketu Katrak in Politics of the Female Body calls “a state of ‘internalized exile’ where the body feels disconnected from itself, as though it does not belong to it and has no agency” (2). Katrak explains that the experience of internalized exile unfolds as a process that may include resistance to domination. In resisting internalized exile, women often express their bodies via speech, silence, starvation, or illness (2). In Levy’s novel, the protagonist’s crisis of internalized exile leads to and is heightened by a period of physical paralysis. In addressing her paralysis, the protagonist first mentions that it is related to her family heritage. Later on, she claims that it happened after her mother’s death, as “nós duas sabemos ser outro o motivo da minha paralisia … Eu não nasci assim … Nenhum passado veio me assoprar nos ombros. Eu fiquei assim. Fui perdendo a mobilidade depois que você se foi” (Levy 62). Yet, in a different fragment, she changes her mind once again and confesses that her immobility is a consequence of her traumatic love relationship: “nós dois (só nós dois) sabemos ser outro o motivo da minha paralisia … Fui perdendo a mobilidade depois que o conheci. Depois que o amei: depois que conheci a loucura através do amor, o nosso. Foi o amor (excedido) que me tirou, um a um, os movimentos do corpo” (Levy 133).

Even though one could initially interpret this as a contradiction in the protagonist’s narrative, it should be noted that all of these experiences—her family’s difficult history of immigration and exile, her mother’s torture, disease and death, and her experience with sexual abuse—lead her to an “impossibility of motion.” As she puts it, “no centro do quarto, a minha cama. De madeira apodrecida, nem sei como ainda se mantém de pé. No centro da cama, o meu corpo. Dilacerado, aberto por feridas em carne viva. Impossibilitado de se movimentar” (Levy 41). This passage underscores two important points. On the one hand, the abject state of her body is directly proportional to the fragmentation of her subjectivity—her questioning of who she is and where she belongs as well as her sense of powerlessness after suffering miscarriage and rape. On the other hand, while displacement (as immigration and exile) is a fundamental component of this state of fragmentation leading to her paralysis, it is also the force that will propel her forward in search of the missing pieces of her story. Indeed, the protagonist appears to honor Rosa’s and her mother’s legacy, sharing her journey of self-discovery with the women in her life. Along those lines, the protagonist makes visible the necessity of discovering mobility in order to find herself: “Queria voltar a andar, encontrar o meu caminho. E me parecia lógico que se refizesse, no sentido inverso, o trajeto dos meus antepassados ficaria livre para encontrar o meu” (Levy 27). By going back and retracing her ancestors’ steps in Turkey and Portugal, she has the potential to move forward. It is the protagonist’s grandfather who triggers a sense of movement in her life as he gives her not only the key of the house where he lived in Turkey, but also the mission of searching for the missing pieces of their lives.

Displacement and the Body as a Site of Healing

While fragmentation and a crisis of identity do indeed dominate much of A chave de casa, additionally there is an impulse towards moving beyond instability, reconnecting to one’s inner truth, and recovering one’s origins. In other words, a commitment to continuity and reconstruction emerges rather than merely a celebration of rupture and fragmentation. This reconstitution in the protagonist’s life takes place through the act of movement, which, in turn is mediated through the body. Her trip to Turkey and Portugal allows her to be in touch with herself and with strangers who meaningfully affect her. In all of these interactions, the presence of bodily sensations is pervasive and intertwined with the act of movement.

The experience of displacement—the act of walking the streets of a foreign land, of watching strangers, and of not quite comprehending a strange language—along with the sense of hearing allow the narrator to reconnect with her inner self. When first hearing the Islamic call for prayer in Istanbul, she is transported to a very intimate place: “O canto continua … ecoando de maneira inesperada em alguma parte arcaica do meu corpo, alguma memória que ignoro. A voz—um gemido, uma lamúria—se expande por toda a cidade até cessar. Istambul parece então morta, e sinto que há em mim algo muito antigo que começa a renascer” (Levy 58). The protagonist’s awareness of the music not only establishes a connection with her heritage through bodily sensations, but it also grounds her in the present moment of experience as she feels that something inside of her is coming back to life.

It is important to note that while the protagonist seeks an inner truth, this truth manifests itself in a process of continual revision, rather than the realization of the goal. When she arrives in Turkey, for example, she discovers that her grandfather’s house no longer exists. Thus, the key no longer has its original purpose of opening a door, though it takes on a metaphorical dimension as the object that triggers movement in her life. It is thus the key to herself. In other words, the search is ultimately what matters, and dislocation and embodiment have central roles because they allow for the protagonist to engage in this process.

As she continues her journey, she goes to the city of Smyrna, where her grandfather has suggested she look for remaining family members. Although at first she feels lost and frustrated because her search seems to be going nowhere, she eventually makes contact with some long lost relatives. After speaking on the phone with one of her cousins, her feeling of accomplishment is addressed once again via corporal descriptions: “Quando coloco o aparelho no gancho, sinto o corpo relaxar, penso que devo estar no caminho certo” (Levy 138). The relaxation of her body positively signals that she is on the right path. In this manner, setbacks and accomplishments of her journey are also internalized and felt through the body. Although she feels like a foreigner in Turkey, a level of identification is gradually established through interaction with strangers. As she strikes up conversations with people she meets, they begin to acknowledge her Turkishness through physical markers: “você tem mesmo cara de turca, a pele morena, o nariz grande” (Levy 44). She might not speak the language or fully understand the culture, but her body and her face are testament to her ethnic ties to the region.

The most telling experience of belonging the protagonist is exposed to, however, takes place in a Turkish bath. When she sees how untidy the establishment is, she doubts her decision of going to a traditional women’s-only bath, as opposed to the hammams for tourists. Even though her mind races to find excuses to leave the establishment, she fights against her cultural preconceptions and decides to stay. If she truly wants to experience these women’s world, she reasons, she has to leave her own at the doorstep. She is obviously an intruder in that space, as the women devour her with their eyes and gossip openly about her (95). The protagonist, then, accepts the massage and exfoliation services that Sihem, a worker, offers her. Their interaction goes from lack of familiarity and reticence—the constant mispronunciation of Sihem’s name and the awkward way Sihem touches her—to the bridging of distance. As Sihem starts to cleanse the protagonist’s body, she relaxes and a more intimate exchange ensues. After enjoying several baths and establishing ties, the Turkish women’s hard stares become welcoming. They symbolically invite her into their community when one of them asks the protagonist to rub her body. In this manner, unexpected yet sincere bonds are created as the protagonist’s sense of belonging strengthens.

When Sihem starts to massage the protagonist’s body, she notices its stiffness and asks if she carries the world on her shoulders (Levy 98). By addressing her physical condition, Sihem provides space for the protagonist to confide in her about the reason for her trip. After listening carefully to the family’s story of immigration and the history of the grandfather’s key, the masseuse feels a stronger connection to the protagonist, as if “naquele momento, nos tornássemos iguais pela primeira vez” (Levy 98). The protagonist experiences through her body the strengthening of their ties, responding, “Depois de eu ter contado os motivos de estar na Turquia, ela intensificou ainda mais a massagem, feito para fazer a sua parte na tentativa de me desvencilhar do passado. Sentia que ela não estava apenas distendendo meus músculos, mas também lutando contra tudo o que eu acabara de contar” (Levy 99). In dialogue with this passage, Pamela June in The Fragmented Female Body and Identity (2010) explains that the symbol of the bodily wound effectively connects women, through its recognition, to other women, and suggests sisterhood, matrilineage, and community (5). Thus, the massage can be interpreted as a ritual of expiation, a ceremonial practice where the protagonist, with Sihem’s help, attempts to pacify the past.

The experience at the Turkish baths—the massages, the naked bodies, the sharing of vulnerabilities—creates a realm of intimacy that, in turn, functions as a space of meditation and interrogation for the protagonist (Augusto). In addition, this space allows for the construction of a community of women that, despite their cultural backgrounds, identify on a personal level and use their bodies as means to create bonds of solidarity. In this context, the portrayal of the female body changes from a site of pain and patriarchal oppression to an arena where such views are contested. Hence, by mediating the protagonist’s feeling of belonging through bodily experiences, the narrative highlights the body as a vital component in the reconstruction of her subjectivity.

The final episode that signals the protagonist’s healing takes place in Portugal after discovering her grandfather’s house no longer exists in Turkey. Lisbon holds importance for her because it is her birthplace and, as such, she believes that she can find “alguns sentidos para o [seu] corpo, a [sua] história” (Levy 171). The passage makes clear that her personal story is intrinsically connected to her body, as locating meaning for the first will lead to her encounter with the second. The meaning that she searches for has an important component in eroticism, for even in her abusive relationship, physical pleasure plays a significant role in her self-discovery. In the narrative, there are several explicit descriptions of the protagonist’s sexual pleasure, bringing to the forefront Levy’s reflection upon a theme that is not frequently addressed in Brazilian literature. However, that self-discovery is put on hold after her rape. During her trip to Lisbon that chapter in her life continues to be developed when she has an affair with a Portuguese man. The act of allowing herself to open up for a relationship once again attests to her desire to move beyond fragmentation and seek internal coherence through physical pleasure. In this case, eroticism “é a constante busca pelo sentimento profundo de continuidade do ser” (Bataille qtd. Souza 44).

If in the beginning of her journey the call for prayer in Istanbul awakens something inside her, the interactions with her Turkish family, with strangers including the women in the baths, and with her Portuguese lover allow her to both heal bodily wounds and locate the internal coherence she has sought. Accordingly, in A chave de casa, the protagonist’s subjectivity is redefined in a way that allows at least the possibility of agency in her process of self-construction and re-construction (Hall 99). As her journey nears the end, she comes to terms with it: “E assim pude partir em paz, voltar para o Brasil com a certeza de que a minha relação com Portugal não era mais uma relação com o passado, nem do passado” (Levy 205). In this manner, the process of physical movement mediated through the body puts the protagonist in contact with her heritage and her place in it. She discovers acceptance towards the end of the journey when she makes peace with the mission her grandfather gave her, made up by her own steps, but also by the heritage she has accepted.

The last chapter of the book invites the reader to circle back to the beginning of the narrative, for it uses the exact same lines about the grandfather’s key as the initial pages: “sem me levantar, pego a caixinha na mesa de cabeceira. Dentro dela, em meio a pó, bilhetes velhos, moedas e brincos, descansa a chave” (Levy 12). While in the beginning of the text, she stares at the key in her hands and wonders what to do with it, at the end of the narrative, Levy returns to the initial scene, but now the protagonist and her grandfather both hold the key together: “esticando o braço, alcanço a mão do meu avô. Seguro-a com força, e permanecemos com as mãos coladas, a chave entre nosso suor, selando e separando nossas histórias” (Levy 206). The destiny she alludes to having to create in the beginning pages is realized when she accepts that her life story is twofold, personal and familial. Through this meeting, the past and present are unified.

In A chave de casa traveling and writing are intertwined movements that are also interdependent in the reconstruction of the protagonist’s subjectivity (Augusto). In addition to spatial and writing movements, the realm of the body, as illustrated in the preceding analysis, is of significant importance to this process. While the protagonist’s imagination is at work during the experience of displacement as she expresses a necessity to write, writing is interlaced with embodiment throughout the narrative. The mention of pain and blood expresses the urgency and the difficulty of telling the protagonist’s story and her family’s: “Se não sangra, a minha escrita não existe. Se não rasga o corpo, tampouco existe. Insisto na dor, pois é ela que me faz escrever” (Levy 69). While the protagonist refashions herself as an agent in the making and remaking of her own subjectivity, Tatiana Salem Levy fictionally binds the notions of identity, body, and displacement together. For Levy and her protagonist, to narrate and to create are one and the same (“Conto (crio) essa história” [133]). This recuperation of a personal geography composed of fictional and biographical elements provides agency on both levels, acting as a literal and metaphorical key to concepts of home and self. Although she is initially burdened by the stories of her family’s struggles, her decision to write, and thus narrate, her own trials means she is no longer a passive recipient of the past, but an active participant in her present.