“But don’t you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, and I thank you again.”
Elizabeth returned the phone to its cradle and reached down to remove a boning knife from Bettchy’s hand. Fortunately, some weeks had passed since the knife sharpener had pushed his cart up the hill. She drifted out to the terrace, where Sammy clucked sharply at her from inside his cage. He’d not yet forgiven her for leaving him out in the rain the previous night. In the morning, he’d stood frozen stiff, his bill held vertically, until she’d coaxed him back to life with a banana.
“It seems I’ve just won a prize,” she told Maria in a daze.
Maria clapped her hands in excitement. “How much did you win?”
“It’s not the lottery. It’s . . .” Elizabeth turned and passed quickly through the house, as if propelled. In the street, she came to a stop. A donkey tied to a fence post, with bundles of kindling strapped to his back, turned his dewy brown eyes on her. No other human being was in sight.
A drop of rain fell upon her cheek. Elizabeth put her hands to her face and looked into the cloudy sky, as if there lay the origin of her gathering euphoria. But what importance could the Pulitzer Prize possibly have when you lived at the end of the earth, with children, toucans, and donkeys as your primary company? Half in a dream, she went stumbling down the road, grinning like a deranged person. Wasn’t there someone, somewhere, she could tell?
She missed Cal profoundly. He would know what to make of this news. He’d won the prize himself; he’d told her of his mixed emotions, the joy coupled with the skepticism. No one understood her better as a poet or had more sympathy for her struggle to produce. Yes, she did struggle, but she wasn’t entirely an impostor. Since finishing the translation of Helena, she’d been writing poetry again, and regularly, not in her typical fits and starts. Even Lota was pleased.
At last, Lota’s friends would have proof that she was not a fake, she was not a mere hanger-on.
Half a mile down the hill, she came to the house where Mary was living. She called out but received no answer. Most likely Mary had accompanied Lota to the market, then they’d gone on to other business. You’d have thought the woman might have shifted focus after Lota broke her heart, or tried to build something new. But no, here she was again at Samambaia, at Lota’s beck and call. Funny how Lota had fixed that.
The rain began to pour, the daily deluge. Trapped for the time being, Elizabeth entered the house. On the kitchen counter lay a package of American cookies, horrible chocolate things with white crème centers. She would have killed for a glass of wine. Didn’t she deserve at least one celebratory toast? But of course the Antabuse would wrench her body inside out, so she’d have to make do. She poured a glass of milk instead. She made a silent toast to Cal and ate three of Mary’s Oreos.
WHEN ELIZABETH RETURNED from her walk on the beach, she found Arthur, Bobby, and Lota at the breakfast table, all three in silk pajamas.The men wore pale rose and blue; Lota was queenly in maroon. Lota settled Elizabeth into a seat, placed a cup of coffee before her, and began to prepare toast and eggs while Arthur and Bobby looked on in amazement.
“It’s a very, very beautiful thing to see, the way you tend to Elizabeth,” Bobby said, then turned to Arthur. “Why don’t you treat me like that?”
“Would you like some toast, light of my life?”
“I would love some.”
Arthur crossed the kitchen. Moments later, a slice of toast came sailing across the room and bounced off Bobby’s plate.
“You boys,” Lota said, and drew them both into an embrace.
“Frank has already called twice this morning,” Arthur informed Elizabeth. “He rudely woke me out of a very pleasant dream. He wants to know if he can come again today to worship at your feet.”
Elizabeth sipped her coffee. “I think we’ve had enough of Frank O’Hara.”
“DO YOU THINK Arthur and Bobby are all right?” she asked Lota. They were playing gin rummy on the train back to the city.
“They seem to be, now that they are back together.”
“Yes, but just because Arthur has come back to Bobby doesn’t mean they are all right. So Jimmy Schuyler is the one Arthur was in love with for so long?”
“The shy poet you like,” Lota said. “They were having an affair for five years. Bobby told me last night the whole story. Arthur broke off with the shy one, Schuyler, and now has come home with Bobby. Fairfield Porter has a wife, but he is in love with Schuyler. But Schuyler is now in love with Button.”
“Button!”
“He is a painter.”
“And is no one fond of Zipper?”
“We must see Fairfield Porter’s portrait of Schuyler. Even Bobby says it is exceptional.”
“How on earth do they all manage it?”
“Boys will be boys.”
“And I thought little old Mary made our lives complicated.”
Lota hooked her stocking foot around Elizabeth’s calf. “That, my heart, would be taking the mountain to the molehill.”
THERE WAS SO much Brazilians could learn here, Lota thought as she watched the stream of pedestrians going past the café. Her country-men were like a bunch of cocks in a farmyard, all competing to crow the loudest while secretly believing themselves lowest in the pecking order. But look at these Americans. Look at how well put together their clothes were, the hats at flirtatious angles and the bright neckties, and how they walked, facing forward with confidence and purpose and smiling! They did not question whether or not they deserved a place at the banquet; they simply took a seat and ate their fill. Even the women. Especially the women.
Lota smoked and watched the American women go by while the conversation continued behind her.
I hope you don’t mind my inviting myself along, Elizabeth was saying. But a boat trip down the Amazon! I can’t help myself. I’ve wanted to go forever.
It is not important, Rosinha said. Though you know I will be responsible for my nephew Manuel. The trip is for his fifteenth birthday.
That will be half the pleasure, Elizabeth said. Adolescents always gravitate toward me. Maybe because I’m just as awkward and uncertain as they are.
Lota nearly turned and said, Are you deaf to Rosinha’s hesitation? It was funny—in Brazil, all Elizabeth could do was complain about the country’s barbarity, and now, at last in a civilized land, she spoke incessantly about Brazil.
Enough, Lota said, banging her hand on the table. Let’s leave Brazil for Brazil. I’ve forgotten what it is like to be in a real city. Rosinha, I’m so glad you were able to meet us here. What should we do first? Shall we go to the UN and have Candido give us a preview of his murals? Or first to the museum, to visit Frank O’Hara?
Or, she thought, might they go on another foray altogether, one she did not want to mention quite yet while Elizabeth was listening, to Central Park? Lota wanted to study its plan and flow, all the park’s details, the light fixtures, sidewalks, plantings, buildings, garden railings—how Olmsted, in a context of egalitarianism, had made all of them work together. Now that the house was nearing completion, Lota’s mind had begun turning seriously to another project. What had begun as a daydream of transforming the aterro into one of the world’s great city parks was taking on the momentum of a new obsession. She had already spoken to her architect friends Sergio and Affonso and mentioned the possibility in passing to Burle Marx, to gauge his interest in designing the gardens. Once she had explained her vision of a democratic park, with beaches and playgrounds and theatre and art available to all peoples and social classes of Rio, they too had caught her fire. Now it was only a matter of getting the official stamp, which was not such a leap from reality as Elizabeth would undoubtedly believe. Less than a year after Carlos had been forced to flee the country—even after Vargas’s death, he had continued to fight the enemies of a democratic Brazil, at great danger to himself—he had returned in triumph. Thousands had greeted his plane when it touched down in Rio, welcoming him back to
power. All depended on how he built upon that power—Lota had little doubt he would soon enough be in a position to hand the aterro over to her.
I’m afraid I can’t join you, Elizabeth said. I have to get back to the publisher’s. They showed me the cover design for Helena this morning, and I nearly had a stroke. It was completely black!
Black? cried Rosinha. Do they think it is a book about death?
They must be insane, Lota said, but she felt more pleasure than outrage. Five years ago, her little woman of bom desenho would not have understood the malevolence of a black book cover. She had acquired an even finer eye, and for that Lota felt she must take some credit.
We’ll see if they put up a fight. Though I really think they’ll respect my opinion. I never imagined I’d say this, but I’ve almost enjoyed working with my publisher.
They recognize what you are, Lota said proudly. It is long past time you are finally being appreciated. Those monkeys in Brazil have no idea what to make of you. They’d rather eat bananas than see the treasure under their noses.
Please, Lota, Elizabeth objected, but the expression on her face, Lota saw, glowed with the praise. She often worried that Elizabeth was wasting away in Samambaia, with no one but Lota to keep her mind sharp.You could not sequester a genius so far away from the rest of the world. Maybe they were both wasting away there. On this trip, Lota had begun to think that they might move back to New York. Just for a time, until work on the park could be launched for real.
Rosinha, Elizabeth said, tonight we’re having dinner with some dear friends of mine. Can you join us?
Yes, you must meet Elizabeth’s poet friends, very nice. Not Robert Lowell, though. He was a great disappointment.
Rosinha demurred, then agreed to dine with them after the invitation had been repeated three times. Her manners were faultless.
Well, I’m off, Elizabeth said. Keep Lota out of trouble, would you please, Rosinha?
And then she entered the passing flow of humanity. Watching her slender back recede down the block and finally disappear, Lota felt a sweetness as exquisite as heartbreak. There were moments with Elizabeth such as this, more and more frequent, when Lota was possessed not only by love’s joy but by its rawness, its dor. Elizabeth’s gait was not like that of the other New Yorkers. She walked away like a child doing her best to be brave.
Lota turned to Rosinha with excitement and a desire for mischief. Let’s go to Central Park, she said. I must talk with you about an idea I have.
THEY SPOKE, at first, of the prize.
“I still think Randall Jarrell should have won,” Elizabeth said. “His book is certainly more fully realized than mine. The Pulitzer has probably never been awarded for such a paltry amount of work.”
“It was awarded to you,” Cal said, “and it was well deserved.”
He sat at the head of the canoe, his back fine and straight, speaking to her over his shoulder while he pulled them along with strong, even strokes of his paddle. She hardly dipped her own into the water at all. Rather untidy and in need of a haircut, Cal was still exceptionally handsome in that turn-of-the-century way she was drawn to. Women of her mother’s generation, Elizabeth felt certain, would have found him irresistible. She and Lota had arrived from the train station not an hour ago to find their hosts in the midst of a domestic crisis. “We’re at war with the nanny,” Lizzie had said wearily as she greeted their taxi in the drive, the screams of baby Harriet carrying from an open window, “but we’re lost without her.” Inside, Cal had deposited the inconsolable child in Lizzie’s arms and turned his attention upon Elizabeth. That face again, alive with the pleasure of your company yet insistent upon your absolute attention—nothing less than total surrender would suffice. Before they’d even gotten properly indoors, he had pulled her out the back toward the shore, where a canoe lay in the grass. “Go on,” Lota had said in Portuguese. “I’ll help here.” It was obvious she preferred to avoid Cal.
The slanted afternoon sun on the water’s mercury, the forested landscape, ripples of surfacing fish, birdcalls here and there—it was a recipe for heaven. Cal propelled them toward the northeast, in the direction of Nova Scotia. The place of Elizabeth’s childhood was so near it exerted a happy magnetism upon her. To sit in a canoe with Cal, surrounded by this northern, waning peacefulness, so different from Samambaia’s, was precisely what she’d journeyed back to find, not the glitter of New York.
“The prize feels deserved and undeserved at the same time. I write so very little.” She had to laugh at herself. “I must have said that to you a hundred thousand times. How many poems are you writing these days, in a good year? Ten, twenty?”
“Typically more. You just have to learn how to harness your mania.”
“My mania, if I have any, sends me straight to the kitchen to bake. Which is better than straight to a bottle of gin, as it used to. As you know, a good year for me means that I finish one poem, maybe two. Of course, I’ve always got a dozen in the works.”
“Waiting for the right word, no doubt. You of the twenty-year poem.”
“That’s right. I’ve got so many that simply require finishing, but I can’t finish.”
“What you do finish is perfection, and that exactitude is one reason you won. Everyone else sees it, even if you can’t.”
With anyone other than Cal, she might have dismissed the compliment outright. She’d never been able to speak about these things so openly, partially for want of trust and partially because she found discussing the subject as embarrassing as jointly examining a pile of one’s undergarments. Yet it had always been easy with Cal, from the first instant. He had won the Pulitzer years earlier, and he was far more productive and acclaimed than she, but Elizabeth had never felt she had to defer to him or hide an opinion, even if it was in opposition to his. They could talk for hours on subjects that Lota would never have the patience for in a million years. Only with this man could Elizabeth appraise her work and her peculiarities related to the solitary craft of writing—even appraise, she might go so far as to say, herself—with a clarity and an honesty that never ceased to gratify her. This was the primary thing, in Brazil, she still hungered for.
“You have no idea how much I’ve missed plain talk with you,” she said. “There’s the work, and then there’s all the fuss about the work. Most everyone is so deeply invested in the fuss. You should have seen Frank O’Hara kissing my arm.”
“The boy admires you, that’s all. As I do. The draft you showed me last month, I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket ever since. I can’t get those fire balloons out of my head. The short lines make me want to change everything about how I write. And the final image is arresting. Those animals!”
“All my poems end with an animal,” she cried, and splashed him with her paddle.
A great blue heron lifted off and glided along the shoreline. She kept her eyes upon the graceful bird until it alighted in a tree ahead and folded its wings.
“Lota thinks it’s a sign of moral weakness that I produce so little. She thinks all I have to do is sit at my desk and poems will flower from my fingertips.”
“Yes, she is a bit domineering,” Cal said, then caught himself. “But it’s obvious your welfare is her main concern. She is completely devoted, anyone can see. It’s a great solace to me that you have her. You are lucky, Elizabeth, to have finally found a place in Brazil where you can be at peace.”
“I am at peace, you’re right. But I’m still not sure where I belong.”
Right before they’d left for New York, a dinner party on the terrace at Samambaia had concluded with the most maddening conversation. In the moonlight, Elizabeth had argued with two of Brazil’s supposed foremost intellectuals; she’d had to insist repeatedly that Edmund Wilson and not Henry Miller was the better representative of U.S. letters, and that Dreiser was not completely ignored but Henry James was far superior. Defending Henry James, for God’s sake! The two men had looked just like Sammy the toucan when he became fixated on a shi
ny button—they had not really seen or listened. After she’d heatedly made her case, they had merely reiterated their unaltered opinions. They had no interest in ideas other than their own. Stifled into silence by these bombastic people, she’d looked forward to New York, imagining the many vibrant conversations she would have there with investigative minds.
But once she and Lota had settled into their East Side apartment, it was really no different. Mary McCarthy had rung to invite them to a party. Flattered by the invitation, Elizabeth had arrived to find a group of America’s supposed foremost intellectuals seated on Hannah Arendt’s living-room floor, discussing, of all things, how to read a line of verse. She’d soon suspected that her reception into this inner circle had almost everything to do with the Pulitzer Prize and very little to do with her. As the group had strayed further and further into abstractions about poetry and truth, Elizabeth realized that she’d traveled thousands of miles to sit with another bunch of bombastic people enthralled by their own words. From another continent beckoned the room where she and Lota might curl up among the bedclothes and talk of Trollope and compost late into the night.
More unfortunate was that Lota, at the party, had shown herself at her worst. Insecure among all the big names, she’d started marching about, giving orders to people and name-dropping. Mary McCarthy had watched her as if she were studying the lines of an anatomical dissection.
Elizabeth dipped her oar into the water. “When do you think you’ll come see Brazil for yourself?” she asked Cal.
“Lizzie and I would both love to.”
“Please say you will, and soon. Then I can tell Mary McCarthy we’re all booked up.”
“Is she threatening to visit?”
“Imminently. I think she fell in love with Carlos Lacerda while he was exiled here. Every time I see her, I can’t help thinking of the day Lota and I were having lunch on the terrace and the gardener came racing up to tell us a snake was eating baby birds out of a nest in a tree. We all went running to look, and there it was, with its long, green reptilian tail hanging out of the bird’s nest, swallowing the baby birds with no pity whatsoever.”
The More I Owe You Page 18