From the beach below came a chorus of shrieks. Lota was chasing sandpipers with Cal’s wife and daughter. Mary stood apart, holding her recently adopted baby at the water’s edge and dipping the child’s toes into the waves. Elizabeth took the binoculars; it was wonderful to see Lota’s face like this, her joy so clear and sharp, magnified through the lens, such an infrequent sight since she’d started working in the government. You’d have thought Lota’s manner might be too gruff for children, too overwhelming, or that she would be disinterested in them, but on the contrary she was brilliant, full of stories and games, open to wonder; she became childlike herself. As Elizabeth watched, Lota began to run in ever tightening circles around Cal’s daughter Harriet, faster and faster and at an increasingly precarious angle, until she fell over onto her side in the sand. Harriet pounced upon her, while all the women laughed.
All three in the scope of her binoculars, Elizabeth noted, were mothers. And she, upon the cliff, watching them from behind glass.
“Did you see last night how Harriet stood on a stool to help me cook?” she said. “She’s a little marvel, Cal.”
“I’m totally sold on her. I can die knowing that I made at least one beautiful thing. It’s as if before I’d been lacking some prime faculty, like eyesight or reason. I’m sold on my Lizzie, too. Those two are my anchor.”
“And look at Mary. You didn’t know her earlier, but she was just the driest thing before she adopted Monica. I always wanted a child myself. I wanted one very much.”
“That would be a very lucky child.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, Cal, I’ll always lack some prime faculty. It’s not in me to be a mother. I’m not dependable. Before Lota began on the park, we used to have so many children running around, Kylso’s babies and all those nieces and nephews. It was relentless, and it was paradise, too. But I’m the eccentric aunt, the fairy godmother. I bake cakes and tell stories. I’m not good for much else.”
“Elizabeth, that’s nonsense. If I can rise to the occasion, then you would soar.”
She paused, and then admitted to Cal something she had never breathed aloud to Lota.
“Remember Uncle Sam, my toucan that I adored? A couple of years ago, he had an infestation of some kind, that drove him mad with scratching. He completely lost his beautiful sheen. The man at the pet store gave me a spray. Safe for people, he said, yes, of course, and inoffensive to animals. I didn’t trust him, though. He drank too much, and had a young beautiful wife that he mistreated. Still, I sprayed Sammy with the poison. It killed him in half an hour. He was like a cartoon dead bird, on his back with his blue feet curled in the air. I cried so hard that Lota grew impatient and told me that was enough. The worst, though, is that I did it even when I knew I shouldn’t have. I did it anyway.”
The binoculars rested between them. His attention was fully upon her. “Dear Elizabeth.”
“It may sound silly, but that’s when I gave up the idea of ever having a child of my own.”
THE MORNINGS WERE blue, pure, cool. Rio in winter. On the terrace, Elizabeth swept the view with the binoculars—she couldn’t get enough of them—from the rocky point on the north end of the beach to a Brazilian navy cruiser heading out to sea, full of sailors in blue hats with red pompoms and stubble on their chins, then past the islands tarnished like silverware, and down to the beach below, where a soccer ball made impact with a bare chest, golden hair glistened on an arm, and a swarthy foot caressed the smooth shapely leg beside it. Skin, such a lovely invention.
A year from now, Elizabeth will turn the binoculars Cal gave her away from the ocean to the Morro da Babilonia, the hill’s steep slope dense with the pitiful hovels of the poor, where she will witness the life of the favela close-up. On the first day, she will see a woman slapped by her husband; on the next, three young toughs smoking marijuana cigarettes, and a child slipping down the hill to a precipice, wailing there while his father attempts rescue. Later, Elizabeth will watch a bandit being pursued by the police. He will climb into a tree, and the police will shoot him out of it. Days after, she will draft a poem about the bandit’s demise in one sitting, and it will be the first good thing she’s written since the book on Brazil.
This morning, as she trained the binoculars on the sidewalk in front of the Copacabana Palace, Elizabeth did not have to wait long. Taller than most yet slightly stooped, wearing powder-blue swimming trunks and a white towel slung over his shoulder, Cal emerged into the sunlight and stood in noble profile. Elizabeth ran down to the beach to meet him for their daily swim, ready to plunge into the bracing current at his side.
I tried to persuade him to give up the rest of his trip and go back to New York, she wrote Lizzie. Please remember that I did try to get him to go back. But in fact Elizabeth had felt a sort of sick relief when Cal had left Rio for Buenos Aires.
He’d waited until the end of his visit to go completely mad before her eyes. By then, Lizzie and Harriet had already boarded a ship home; Cal was to continue to Argentina for a series of readings before following them a week or so later. This time it was particularly bad. The reports that filtered back to Elizabeth from Buenos Aires—the drunkenness, the political ravings, the scuffles, the hospitalization, the awful flight back to the States under sedation with his arms and legs bound—served to confirm her suspicion that in some way she was at fault for his collapse.
But what more could she have done? It was only looking back that she recognized the warning signs. Cal had become terribly overwrought after the departure of his wife and daughter. In her own defense, trying to understand the hows and whys of insanity had really lost its allure of late, and what she didn’t have the resources or gumption to see, Elizabeth pushed from her mind.
It was during the last dinner, on Brocoió Island, that Cal’s disintegrating state became impossible to ignore. The entire meal was deranged, but Cal was more deranged than the rest. Even so, everything turned on its head so quickly.
On the speedboat out to the governor’s residence, her friend appeared in fine spirits. Elizabeth remarked on how distinguished he looked in evening dress, standing at the vessel’s bow like an elegant sea captain. All around them, Guanabara Bay was unbelievably beautiful in the setting sun, the folds of mountains and city limned in gold. She’d loved Cal’s visit, and told him so. Even Rio hadn’t seemed so terrible in his company. As they looked at it now from the water, the city was spectacular. A marvelous city, or at least a marvelous setting for a city.
She amused him with gossip about Carlos.
“Did you know he actually chooses his wife’s clothes for public appearances? Not only does Leticia have to put up with a controlling, paranoid gasbag for a husband, but the poor thing also has hearing problems. Constant noise in one ear, a buzzing or a humming, I can’t remember. Maybe that’s how that marriage has survived. She simply can’t hear him!”
“I’m sensitive to sound myself,” Cal said, smiling.
“Who knows what state we’ll find Lota in,” Elizabeth went on. “She’s been out here all day with Carlos, plotting the overthrow of the president. If I didn’t know their main intrigue was political, I’d worry it might be amorous.”
“You needn’t worry. It’s obvious she’s hooked on you. Deeply, deeply hooked.”
Perhaps, but it was as Elizabeth had suspected. By the time the boat docked on the island, Lota and Carlos had worked themselves into quite a state, like two alcoholics who’d spent the whole day drinking together. Leticia drew Elizabeth and Cal into the foyer, where she helped remove their coats and offered them drinks and a tray of canapés, while the two conspirators found it impossible to desist from their conversation. They remained apart, speaking in angry bursts.
Looking especially beautiful, Leticia took Cal’s arm to provide a tour of the governor’s residence. Elizabeth drifted along in their wake, thinking that Carlos had to be commended: He’d done an excellent job on his wife’s presentation. She also noticed that Cal was answering their hostess’s quest
ions in a near murmur, leaning down to speak directly to her bad ear. There was something strangely purposeful to it—as if he were flirting with Leticia, or worse, taunting her—that made Elizabeth suddenly desire to hold a glass in her hand.
By the time they reconvened with Carlos and Lota, Elizabeth was in fact holding one. She sipped daintily from a glass of claret. She wasn’t going to hide it. Lota gave her a hard stare but otherwise said nothing. She had already made the only comment she was going to make, for the time being. So, you are off the Antabuse? she had asked the first time she’d seen Elizabeth drinking, with resignation rather than anger. When Elizabeth had tried to explain, Lota interrupted. I don’t want to hear your reasons. If you so desire to kill yourself, I cannot stop you.
“President Goulart’s style of communism,” Carlos pronounced, “calls itself pacifist and only promotes war, speaks to the humble and only robs them, even of their right to think, speaks of self-determination and instead creates a new totalitarian imperialism.”
“Please, Carlos,” Elizabeth said. “You’re not being interviewed on the radio.You’re among friends.” To Cal, she explained, “The last president was a big triumph over the Vargas dictatorship, but he resigned after a few months, thanks to Carlos’s attacks. We’re not sure why Carlos disliked him so; they had once been great allies. Now we have Goulart, an old crook from the dictator gang, but he calls himself a reformer.”
“Which is only a disguise,” Carlos said. “We won’t tolerate his concept of reform either in the shape of terrorism or false populism.”
“When everyone around you is disguised,” Cal said, “it is difficult to know who to trust.”
“I trust my friends,” Carlos responded.
“Your true friends, you mean.”
“Of course. They are the ones—”
“Yes,” Cal interrupted, “but do you always know your true friends?”
Impatiently, Lota broke in. “Your true friends are those who agree inflation of 40 percent is not acceptable, who believe that people rioting because of food shortages and sacking stores so that the army has to come in and the result is forty-two people dead is not acceptable, and who think that a president encouraging constant strikes of railroad, port, and maritime workers is not acceptable.”
“And when every rant is disguised as civilized conversation,” Elizabeth said to no one in particular, “it is difficult to know when to listen.”
Leticia ushered them into the dining room. Mercifully, at least for the beginning of the meal, they spoke of Cal’s reading and lecture schedule in Buenos Aires, his impressions of Rio, parenthood. Leticia became animated describing her eldest son’s wedding preparations. It was all quite pleasant. However, Elizabeth could set her watch by the instant at which Carlos steered the conversation back to the only subject he had any real passion for. Twenty-two minutes, no longer. He ignored dinner-party etiquette altogether, directing his comments to Lota alone. Ever since Elizabeth had washed onto Brazilian shores, and probably for long before, in social settings Carlos and Lota had alternated opinions at an increasing level of volume that excluded everyone else and made talking around them impossible. Either you joined in the fray, at your own peril, or you absented yourself completely. When those two really got going, Leticia’s placid expression was an advertisement for the blessings of deafness.
Did it matter who said what? Lota and Carlos simply parroted each other.
“The nation is struggling against two powerful forces that want to destroy it: inflation and the fifth column.”
“It is difficult to see any option but for the military to reestablish order.”
“Yes, Goulart has begun openly preaching revolutionary war. Expropriation of private property. Nationalization of petroleum refineries.”
“He must be suppressed.”
“You want a military government?” Elizabeth said, unable to prevent herself. “Surely you can’t mean that.”
“Historically, the military has always intervened when the country becomes ungovernable.”
“It will return Brazil to democracy, as it has done in the past.”
“Goulart has unleashed the tide of communism, and we are all drowning in it.”
“The communists are like children. They have no discipline.”
“But they are very dangerous children.”
“Yes, bring in the army,” Cal said in a near shout. “Round up those commie bastards!”
The wonder of Cal’s outburst was that Lota and Carlos actually fell silent. Both eyed him with suspicion. You could not honestly tell if he was ridiculing their fervor or if he was actually caught up in it. What was apparent, at least to Elizabeth, was that Cal had grown much more agitated than he’d been on the boat. He jiggled one knee and gripped his fork so tightly that the knuckles had turned white. He was amping up for more when she spoke in his stead.
“I think what Cal is trying to say . . .” Elizabeth began, and then had little idea how to conclude that particular opinion. “Well, the debate has become so incredibly polarized, hasn’t it, that no one listens to anyone anymore. On one side, communism is pure evil, and on the other, lacerdismo is totally fascist. There’s nothing in between. How are we to achieve any sort of balance when no one seems to value it? Every channel on television has a different politician giving a hysterical speech.”
Her comments fell on a general lack of reception. Lota did not even bother to look in her direction. Could it be that they were all deaf?
“Yesterday there was an interesting item on the news,” Carlos said thoughtfully. “It now appears that I am being held responsible for the prime minister’s brain hemorrhage. According to reports, his death was due to the hatred and inhuman malice of the cold-blooded and vile Carlos Lacerda.”
“Yes,” Lota said with a laugh. “I read in the paper that Lacerda is uncivilized and deserving of condemnation.”
“He is a killer of beggars.”
“He is Paleolithic!”
The two of them chuckled. Cal muttered into Leticia’s ear.
“Lacerda is intemperate,” added Elizabeth, an observation of her own.
“Carlos is not corrupt, Elizabeth,” Lota said seriously. “He is the only one. That is why they will try to drag him down.”
Cal raised his glass. “Governor, you are a brave man. You also have an extremely beautiful wife.” He turned to Leticia, studying the side of her face. “With the most delicate, lovely earlobe.”
Leticia’s eyes did not seem to know where to rest.
“All I can say about the current situation,” Elizabeth said with desperate cheer, “is that the food shortages make it very difficult to bake cakes. Now that Lota’s on the city council, maybe she can do something about that.”
“I intend to.” But she did not match Elizabeth’s attempt at humor.
“Lota got on the Rio city council last May,” Elizabeth told Cal, “along with a rhinoceros.”
He began to laugh.
“It’s true. People were so fed up with politics, they actually elected a rhinoceros from the zoo as a write-in candidate.”
Cal’s laughter did not stop but escalated in pitch until it became a high, hysterical scream. Then it passed out of the register of human hearing. His body continued to quake while his face became crimson and wet with tears.
Elizabeth put a hand upon his back. “Cal?”
He stood abruptly and left the room.
Carlos and Lota turned to her in alarm, at last understanding that something was not right with him.
Elizabeth went after her friend. She found Cal in the front hall, rubbing his face with his hands.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m just very tired. I miss my family.”
“Of course you do.” She stood beside him and placed a hand on his arm. For several moments he made no response, then abruptly he turned and caught her in an embrace. Cal pressed his lips to hers and then released her so quickly, pushing her away from him, that Elizabeth
hardly had time to register surprise.
They stood looking at one another, both breathing heavily, as if from a tide of passion. It was beginning again, the whole nightmare. There was only one way the story between them ever ended.
“Tomorrow we’ll go see a doctor,” Elizabeth said. “I know someone good. I can take you to see him.”
“All right, Elizabeth.” Inexplicably, he appeared calm again. “If you want me to, I’ll go.”
“It’s best to get help now, don’t you think? Before it gets worse.”
“It comes in waves. It’s like a big, vulgar blast of enthusiasm. It’s not a bad feeling at all, not while it’s happening. Everything is very clear and focused. There’s so much I want to make happen.”
“You have to take care of yourself, Cal.You must think of those who love you and depend on you.”
“I will, Elizabeth. I want to.”
They returned to the dining room, where he did not speak through the rest of the meal. Even the political diatribe had lost its conviction. Elizabeth brought the evening to a conclusion as rapidly as politeness made possible. They stood in a group at the front entrance, where Leticia bade them goodnight and retired upstairs. Lota stepped into the vacant place at Carlos’s side.
“Lota, dear, where’s your jacket? It’s chilly on the boat.”
“I will stay here tonight,” Lota said.
“What on earth do you mean? You’ve been here all day.”
“Carlos and I still have much to discuss.”
“Really, Lota, I have to insist you come home.”
“I will be there first thing in the morning.”
Surely Lota understood exactly what was happening with Cal. Why would she not relent? “Please come now.”
It must have been the desperation in her voice that caused Lota to harden further. “I’m sure the two of you will be fine without me.”
By night, Guanabara Bay was even more beautiful than it had been at sunset. Elizabeth shivered from the chill until Cal put his arm around her, and she leaned into his warmth. Perhaps she had overreacted after all. He appeared fine now, though quiet, chastened. Lota was so maddening—she disguised her work as some kind of noble sacrifice, when really she was addicted to the insanity. If she was not engaged in mortal combat with a behemoth, then she did not know if she was truly alive. All of it was her own creation—not of course the absurd politics, but the hysteria in which the two of them had come to live and breathe.
The More I Owe You Page 22