The More I Owe You

by Michael Sledge

  Elizabeth brought her coffee to her lips, but the cup was empty. “Yes, she’s very forceful, that’s clear.”

  “But with a gentle touch. You hardly even notice she’s maneuvering you. You may have sensed that yourself.”

  Elizabeth turned again in her seat. The almost violent fluttering of the wild dove against the cage unsettled her.

  Mary went on. “She would never say so, but when she adopted Kylso from the mechanic, she saved that boy’s life. He would have ended up begging on the street, at best. Lota paid for the operations so that now he can walk. She gave him an education so that now he can work. She has that kind of power and conviction.”

  “She’s an impressive woman, certainly.”

  “And yet she’s not so strong as she acts. She needs absolute loyalty. She requires it. It’s not obvious, but Lota has her own fragility. As we all do, of course.”

  “Yes that’s true. We all do.”

  “I think part of love is like service. It has to be. You have to be able to provide that to each other.You have to reach inside yourself and give to the other even when it seems your own resources are exhausted. Don’t you agree?”

  “I’m hardly the one to ask,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. “My own record is dismal.”

  “Is it?”

  What had she been thinking, that Lota had been so enthralled by her sparkling presence that she was trying to capture her, like a butterfly in her net? Save her from a life of crippledom? “Well, you’ve both been much too generous to have me for so long,” she told Mary. “You’ll have to recommend some other places I should visit before I leave Brazil. I’ve heard Ouro Preto is not to be missed, and I’m dying to see it. I thought I might go there next week.”

  When she unveiled her smile, Mary could be lovely. If she did that more often, you’d never think, not in a million years, Dry stick. “Every Brazilian will tell you Ouro Preto is beautiful, but I’ve never met a single one who’s actually gone there. They’re a funny people.”

  “Yes, they are,” Elizabeth agreed, and they shared another laugh over this, simply one more of the many charming quirks of the Brazilian character.

  8

  LOTA GRINNED AT the reasons Elizabeth gave for her abrupt departure; she was pleased even then, Elizabeth could see, by the determination of her American friend.

  Back down the mountainside.

  Into the city, choked by smog.

  “I’ll be leaving Rio soon,” she told Pearl, fanning herself with a newspaper.

  They’d ducked out of the afternoon sun into Pearl’s dark apartment in Ipanema. Once, Pearl’s place had felt like a closet compared with Lota’s beautiful pied-à-terre; now, it was a refuge from it. Her husband was nowhere to be seen. Victor rarely was.

  “I can’t stand it much longer myself,” Pearl said. “This hellish heat. So many people brushing up against you. And the noise is incessant.”

  “I thought, for a moment, I might stay longer. I thought . . .” Elizabeth shook her head.

  “What is it?” Pearl smiled and scooted close. “What’s the secret?”

  One word was all she could allow. “Lota.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Elizabeth tossed the paper to the table. On the front page was a photo of President Vargas, decrying the latest wave of strikes. Then she burst out with it. “I thought something was happening with Lota. I thought for a minute that just maybe this might be more than a place to refuel before I hit the road again.”

  Pearl moved away; she now looked decidedly unhappy. But Elizabeth went on.

  “It’s absurd. She’s with Mary, of course. But the way she looks at me. You should hear what she calls me. Elizabeechy.” In spite of herself, Elizabeth smiled, hearing her name again in Lota’s voice. “She shouldn’t play with me like that. I’m too susceptible. Elizabeechy . . .”

  “Well,” Pearl said crisply. She stood and smoothed her dress, then reached for a big woven-straw bag. “I suppose I should do the shopping for dinner.”

  “Do you think leaving Rio is the right thing to do?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve already decided? I envy you, actually.”

  Once they were in the street, Elizabeth found that she nearly had to break into a jog to keep up with her friend. Pearl’s ankle had apparently healed and possessed greater spring and resilience than ever. That’s what it was like to be young; an injury only made you stronger. Pearl flew through the butcher’s, the bakery, and the cheese store while Elizabeth remained near the entrance of each establishment, catching her breath. Obviously, she’d disappointed Pearl in some way, yet now that Elizabeth was resolved to leave Brazil, she could at least begin to turn her thoughts to what lay ahead. The whole idea of travel was to discover new perspectives, including upon one’s own choices and motivations, not dig yourself into another impossible situation.

  “Are you still interested in seeing Ouro Preto?” she asked Pearl at the produce stand. “It was the one place I’d really hoped to visit, and I’d like to see it before I leave.”

  “Perhaps we could do that,” Pearl said, softening. “I’ve wanted to go there, too.”

  “And in the spring you might meet me in Machu Picchu. I’ll have made it to Peru by April, I’m sure. Do you think Victor could spare you?”

  Pearl’s gaze was passing over a bin of cashews, but Elizabeth suspected it was not the fruit that caused her expression to sour. “We’ll see. He probably could.”

  Even if indecent, the cashews were beautiful to look at. That was Brazil in a nutshell. The skin of the fruit was the same saturated yellow-orange she’d painted her study in Key West. Mornings, when the sun came through the high window, the entire room had glowed. She chose two cashews from the bin, and after counting out her change to the pouting girl at the counter, Elizabeth waited for Pearl in the street.

  First Ouro Preto, then Machu Picchu, Pearl or no Pearl. But probably Pearl. She’d write Lota and Mary clever postcards from along the route, and someday, when they visited her in New York or Amsterdam or San Francisco, the three of them would remember their days together in Samambaia. Lota would show her photographs of the house; Mary, of the children.

  At her feet, the concrete sidewalk had been cracked by the roots of a tree. Sprouting from the tree trunk at eye level was a spindly stalk, on the tip of which bloomed an arresting flower. Scarlet petals, shading to rose at the center. In the place of pistil and stamens, there was the oddest appendage, a sort of pinkish-cream ladle lined with a feathery fringe, slightly aromatic. She’d never seen anything like it. Higher up, the long, twisted stalks grew into a huge snarl, sprouting more of the flowers, as well as spherical, wooden fruits nearly the size of soccer balls. “Look at that strange flower,” she pointed out when Pearl joined her.

  “How odd. I’ve never noticed those before.”

  “The language sounds absurd,” Elizabeth said, “everyone goes around practically naked, with ludicrous, perfectly Greek bodies, the landscape is too absurdly beautiful to be believed, the flowers are like something from another world. What kind of country is this?”

  “One we’ve both come to,” Pearl said, “for some reason or another.”

  There is beginning, middle, and end, that is a fact. The end of things is not a moral act.

  Thus spake the scrap.

  In her notebook, Elizabeth attempted to describe the strange scarlet flower. Surprisingly, after days of lackluster writing, she found it pleasurable again to work with the words, to wrestle a bit and get the description just right. All that time in Samambaia she’d hardly put pen to paper; now she could feel the desire to work beginning to trickle back. Plainly, her craft was the only thing that had any real hooks in her. It had seen her through many different living quarters, many countries, many sad days and the occasional happy one, and if her nature could have been said to possess even one formidable ounce, then it was certainly anchored in the writing, in the act and discipline of writing.

  During the night, a
big storm had blown through, and the morning air possessed a clear, fresh quality. Elizabeth worked on the new poem until lunchtime, comfortable in her slip and bare feet, her mind sharp and lively in a fashion not to be rivaled by the false aliveness granted by constant doses of coffee. To piece together scraps into a thing of beauty and, one hoped, of at least limited use—that was her skill and purpose, to whatever end it might take her.

  The coastline of Brazil, the impractical green mountains (Green Mansions, she heard in Miss Breen’s voice), and Miss Breen herself, they had taken shape on the page. Rough shape, certainly, not much more than a prose outline. She’d talked her way through the poem and forged its bulk, with a few lines here and there that would probably remain. They were the backbone. That was the easy part. One had to continue shaping the lines as if with a minute chisel, shape and shape and keep shaping until eventually a distinct form began to emerge. A form nearly crystalline in its exactness and strength and grace. A form could be made visible, when previously it had existed only in the imagination.

  And when she was really flying, the work was a kind of fever, a preemptive excitement that overrode all others. It became a physical force with the power to propel her person out of the chair and across the room to the window if she did not continually grip the tabletop to hold herself in place. After a while, she became so immersed in the poem that she no longer felt the anxiety of Lota. She did not miss the proximity of Lota.

  9

  The earlier instance had been merely a rehearsal for the second, the more fateful, arrival. The key scratching in the lock. The maid emerging from her room and advancing quickly to the front hall. The door flying open.

  Elizabeth reached for a blanket folded over the back of the sofa, wrapping it around herself as Lota, arms laden with who knew what, kicked various bags of hardware into the apartment. Looking down, Elizabeth took in the wrinkled hem of her cream-colored slip, her stark white shins, bruised for some reason in two or three places, her broad flat feet on the wooden floor, indelicate, the little toe curling outward, with its split and yellowed nail.

  “Good day, Elizabeechy.”

  “Why are you here?” She was displeased at the intrusion. She wanted Lota to know of her displeasure.

  “I have some business in Rio. I won’t be long, two days at most.”

  “It’s your house. You can come and go as you like.”

  “No, it’s your house while you’re here.” Lota waved a hand. “Please continue writing. I have no intention of interrupting.” Then she carried her bags down the hallway, and Lucia shut the door.

  Elizabeth continued to stand beside the table while Lucia busied herself in the kitchen and the aroma of coffee began to permeate the apartment. Lota did not return. Her own bedroom, Elizabeth recalled, was a disaster area. Lota would think her an ungrateful guest. At the very least, she ought to close the door so that Lota wouldn’t see the mess.

  Elizabeth crept down the hallway and peered into her room. Not quite so bad as she’d imagined. She left the door open a crack. In the adjacent bedroom, Lota was digging through an overnight bag. “It is good to see you working,” she said without looking up. “You should go back to it. Don’t let me disturb you.”

  Elizabeth leaned against the doorframe. She still held the blanket around her, though it was unbearably hot. “Did you fix the leaks in the roof?”

  “Yes, now we are on to other complications. We’ve actually begun to sleep there but live by candlelight. It is a little like camping in the forest. Spiders and frogs join us in bed. Elizabeth, come here. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “All right.” Drawing near Lota, in those few steps, Elizabeth had time to observe that the sensations of excitement and dread were on occasion indistinguishable.

  “I’ve been wanting you to see these.” Lota held a number of slim books. “But they’ve been here in Rio all this time.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “The famous monographs.”

  “Here’s the one of Costa and Niemeyer’s Brazilian Pavilion at the World’s Fair in New York that I told you about. And here is the Ministry of Health and Education that really was the genesis of modernism in Brazil, the collaboration between Le Corbusier and our young architects. I’d like to take you to see it while I’m here. I also have these designs by a good friend who is planning a book about Brazilian modernism, the first book of its kind.”

  Lota picked up one of the books, then another, spreading them upon the dresser as proudly as if she’d made them herself. “Here is another house by Sergio. You can see how, without my ideas, his concepts verge on the conservative. He holds back, as though he’s afraid of the possibilities that modernism presents. And you must look at these photographs Lina Bo Bardi recently sent me of her house. I told you of her, a dear friend. It is her first building, but I promise you that one day she will be an architect of great prominence. Look, it is cube made of glass. There is actually a tree growing up through the center! She’s gone to live in São Paulo. I miss her. I would like very much for you to meet her. We’ll go there to visit.”

  Lota flipped through the photographs of her friend’s house, pointing out the details she found particularly admirable or iconoclastic, while Elizabeth sweltered beneath the blanket she continued to clutch at her throat. She was too hot, and she was standing too close to Lota, close enough that their forearms were brushing. Or else she imagined they were but would not look down to verify one way or the other. Lota continued to go back and forth through the books, putting one down and picking one up.

  Why don’t you just do it? Elizabeth thought. Just grab me.

  “Lota,” she said, “I won’t be going to São Paulo with you. I’m leaving Brazil.”

  Lota closed all the books at once and set them on the dresser. She smiled pleasantly and then turned to leave the room. Elizabeth watched her own hand reach forth and lay itself upon Lota’s neck, right where it sloped into the shoulder, where the skin was cool on her hot palm.

  Lota turned back. She was smiling still.

  They drank each other in. Much later, when she had any time to reflect, that was how Elizabeth thought of their prolonged embrace. For eons they stood nearly motionless, simply holding one another. Lota’s arms were tight around her, her fingers pressing into Elizabeth’s back, and Elizabeth rested her feverish forehead against Lota’s cool neck. They clung to one another as if the spot on which they stood were the single tranquil domain in all the world. After some time, Elizabeth could not have said when, they moved to the bed. Lota had closed the door, and this was also curious, as Elizabeth did not recall a moment of physical separation. They might have kissed, but she thought not. They continued to grip one another as they lay upon the bedspread, arms and legs intertwining with the purest need. Though Lota remained fully dressed and the blanket, fallen from Elizabeth’s shoulders, had become entangled between them, the contact was beyond intoxication. Without a single word, they answered one another perfectly, with an equivalent hunger to be held and touched. An hour passed, perhaps more. The trees and birds of Samambaia passed through Elizabeth’s mind, the waterfall, the clouds and light, standing with Miss Breen at the ship’s railing, her mother holding her while she stared down into the whorl of a fern. Her hands began to rove. They touched Lota’s neck, her face, her breasts, her backside. Elizabeth’s thirst grew overwhelming; her arms turned to tentacles.

  At last Lota pulled back. “Do you find the merchandise to your liking?”

  Elizabeth withdrew her hands, deeply embarrassed. “I’m not sure this is happening.”

  “It is happening.”

  Lota rose from the bed. She kissed Elizabeth’s forehead, then tucked in the tails of her work shirt and resumed unpacking her overnight bag. Elizabeth slipped out of the room and into her own, where she dressed quickly and brushed her hair before the mirror. She did not believe herself disastrously unattractive, but she wondered if her face might be criticized for the same faults as her poetry had been. Too precio
us, too cold. A precise miniature of a face. When she emerged, Lota was having coffee with Lucia in the kitchen. The maid was talking up a storm with the mistress of the house and making Lota cackle. Lucia’s own laugh was deep, almost vulgar. Lota set her coffee upon the counter, took Elizabeth’s arm, and led her directly out of the apartment.

  The world had turned on its side, yet continued to behave as though it had not. The doorman leapt out of his midafternoon snooze to grant them exit from the building and onto the square. Beneath the trees, an elderly woman called out and Lota stopped briefly to speak with her. From the terrace Elizabeth had watched this ancient little crab walking her Lhasa apso each morning. By now, she should hardly be surprised to discover that every neighborhood eccentric, artist, highflier, and busybody was an intimate of Dona Lota, or hoped to be. She couldn’t understand a word of their exchange, yet as Elizabeth stood by, Lota’s arm linked through hers, she felt keenly the privilege of her position.

  “It’s cooler by the water,” Lota said, guiding them from the sidewalk onto the sand. They ducked beneath the arc of a soccer ball two men were lobbing off their heads. Elizabeth slipped off her sandals and let the surf wash over her feet. The water was bracing, the undercurrent strong. She took a step deeper. A wave wet her hem. From across the beach, an umbrella rushed toward them as if under its own power, two skinny brown legs sprinting beneath it. The umbrella came to a halt beside Lota, opened up, and stuck itself into the sand. A boy with dark hair bleached russet by the sun emerged from underneath and unfolded two chairs in the umbrella’s shade. His bathing suit was a strip of carmine against his burnished skin. The boy was as skinny as the dogs Elizabeth had seen nuzzling trash in the street.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Lota asked.

  Elizabeth nodded.

  Lota spoke a few words to the boy, who ran back across the beach to the nearest kiosk.

  The sky was deep blue, pellucid; the mountains were more absurdly beautiful than ever. The emerald water was full of swimmers. A little girl was lifted up and pounded by a crashing wave, then came floundering out of the surf, nearly incapacitated by delight. Elizabeth remained silent, taking in the scene. What use were words here, really?