Lota had also mentioned in passing that at the palace they watched movies of an inspiring nature.
“You watch movies?” Elizabeth asked, with the hint of a shriek.
“Yes.”
“Inspiring like It’s a Wonderful Life or like The Guns of Navarone?”
Lota stared blankly. She’d completely lost her sense of humor.
Perhaps she was watching a movie at this very minute about extraordinary people accomplishing extraordinary feats, such as the one Elizabeth was accomplishing now in her own home: cooking dinner for her predecessor in Lota’s affections while Lota herself was absent. Mary had come down from Samambaia with Monica and to show off her second daughter, Martinha. Having to play hostess to Mary and her children, well, that was when Elizabeth needed the inspiration only a glass of wine could provide. Instant relief! One unfortunate effect, however, was that she began chattering like a parakeet.
“First the sewing girl arrived, feeling very blue,” she said, “so I set her up with a soap opera on the radio. Then big tears began rolling down the maid’s cheeks for a reason that was not entirely clear to me. It was either for love or for liver, with Brazilians it’s almost always one or the other, as you know. Her second cousin is staying with us until his hand heals—he cut it badly working for Lota at the park—and he wants to help out so much around the house that he began washing the terrace, very vigorously, until water flooded into my study from underneath the door. An absolute tidal wave. Then his wife, who caught him with another woman not long ago, arrived and went into hysterics as soon as she saw him. Finally, once everyone had calmed down, I made them all sit in a circle like schoolchildren while I read aloud from the newspaper about how we’re living in an atmosphere of irrational delirium unleashed by extremists on both the right and the left. They nodded their heads and said, ‘We’re all going to the workers’ rally on Friday, Dona Elizabeechy, aren’t you?’ And people wonder why we refer to them as the lower orders!”
Mary gazed down at her new daughter asleep in the bassinet. She tucked a blanket around Martinha and told a story of her own. Some friends lived in an apartment that backed up on Widow’s Hill, one of the steepest inclines in Rio. Returning home one night, they’d heard terrible noises inside and had opened the door fearing thieves, only to discover that a horse had fallen from an outcropping on the hill directly onto their terrace and was crashing around in the living room!
The world had certainly turned upside down of late. On this they could agree.
The meal was not one of Elizabeth’s best efforts. The pork was overcooked, the greens soggy. Mary didn’t touch her wine. They picked over their dinner by candlelight while all across Copacabana each window glowed with the same soft, flickering warmth. The nightly fires were going in the streets around the encampment. There was beauty to a blackout, Elizabeth thought. At least there was that silver lining.
Silence between them had never been comfortable. They resorted to the one topic on which neither ceased to hold opinions: the dazzling, the maddening Dona Lota.
“She’s killing herself with work,” Elizabeth said. “Her teeth have started to fall out, if you can believe it, and she never stops complaining about some new ache or pain.”
“But she’s recovered from the typhoid?”
“I suppose so.”
“Did she tell you that Affonso Reidy has been diagnosed with lung cancer?”
“Yes, isn’t it awful? He’s so kind, and he’s the only real ally she has left on the working group. She’s alienated practically everyone else.”
“It’s true. Even many of her friends who have nothing to do with the aterro.”
“She doesn’t have any sense of proportion anymore.”
Mary smiled and at last reached for her wine glass. “When did she ever?”
Elizabeth almost warmed to the woman in moments like this. “Not long ago,” she confessed, as if it were something for which she should feel guilty, “I received an invitation from the University of Washington in Seattle. They’ve asked me to come teach there for six months. The letter came out of the blue, and at first I nearly threw it in the trash. I’m frightened even to mention it to Lota. Do you think she would consider it?”
Mary laughed. “Surely that’s a joke.”
“It could get us out of this insanity, if only for a little while. Maybe that’s all we need, just a break.”
“You can’t even get her to Samambaia for the weekend. She wouldn’t leave Rio in a million years. And she’ll forbid you to go alone.”
“I wouldn’t go without her, of course. But last year she took two months off, and it wasn’t the end of the world.”
“That’s only because she was hospitalized in the intensive care unit!”
“At least there’s a precedent.”
Last winter, Lota had come home one night complaining of a stomachache, and by morning she was undergoing emergency surgery for an intestinal occlusion. She had insisted on returning to the Shack within two weeks, refusing to take time off, then was back in the hospital immediately with typhoid fever. Elizabeth had taken the opportunity to check into a clinic herself, for ten days or so, to indulge in a rest cure and reclaim a modicum of balance.
“It doesn’t really matter what either of us thinks, does it?” Mary said. “She’s going to do exactly what she pleases, no matter what. We just have to stand by, and if she falls ill again we’ll be here to take care of her.” Mary gave one of her thin smiles and gathered the plates from the table. Elizabeth suspected that in some peculiar way she actually enjoyed Lota’s illnesses. When Lota was rushed to the hospital, it was little Miss Mary who came to pack her bags and who parked herself day and night at Lota’s bedside, sleeping on a pallet on the hospital floor. Lota lapped up the attention, of course. But really, hadn’t the woman a life of her own?
“This country is enough to send all of us to the hospital,” Elizabeth remarked, pouring another glass of wine.
“Yes, but Lota was ill with something she could not control.”
FOR DAYS, WORKERS poured into the city on trucks and ferries. They came from São Paulo, Sergipe, Pernambuco, and Minas Gerais to attend the rally of Goulart loyalists. Over a hundred thousand people were expected. Most congregated in Cristiano Otoni square, across from the central railroad station, but bands of workers roamed through all the neighborhoods of the city, wearing packs on their backs and carrying water bottles or banners with revolutionary slogans. For the first time, Elizabeth was afraid of the strikers in the Copacabana encampment, who had grown restive and excitable with the arrival of their comrades. She feared the communists’ rally might finally ignite them into a flare of violence. It was under circumstances such as these that one became familiar with one’s inner fascist. She finally agreed with Carlos and Lota. She, too, wanted the army to come clear out the protestors and restore order by whatever means necessary.
“CARLOS IS AN imbecile!” Lota yelled as she slammed down the phone. “He won’t take my calls.”
“I thought you were one of his closest advisors,” Elizabeth said.
“He is no longer available to me.”
“These days he’s probably spending all his time trying not to get kidnapped or killed. That last time was a near miss.”
“Maybe I will go on strike myself. Then he will see all I do for him. He will not take me for granted.” Lota came to the corner of the Shack where Elizabeth had spread out her papers. She rested her hands on Elizabeth’s shoulders and surprised her with gentleness. “I like it when you are here, Cookie. You look after me.”
Uncomfortable alone in the Copacabana apartment, Elizabeth had begun to accompany Lota to her workplace. She fiddled with a poem while Lota rushed between meetings and inspections and planning sessions. Oddly, her concentration did not suffer from the constant high pitch inside the Shack, nor by the escalating political unrest outside of it. The poetry was neither inspired by, nor a respite from, the craziness in which she lived and breathed. It simp
ly was what it was, and by whatever lucky alignment of the stars, it seemed to be going well. Her next book of poems was scheduled for publication in a little over a year, and though it might end up a slim collection, for once she believed she would actually make her deadline.
Mostly, Elizabeth liked coming to the Shack because she liked having Lota in her sights. She’d forgotten how remarkable it was to witness the woman in action—how she bullied, cajoled, and flirted to get her way, whatever the matter under discussion. This was the Lota of old, rather than the depleted shell who made occasional appearances at home between the hours of midnight and 6:00 am. Here in the Shack, while Brazil cannibalized itself, the park director trounced one spoiled, temperamental man after another, and Elizabeth took note from her corner, speechless with admiration.
Her admiration was in full bloom later in the day as she walked with Lota through the park grounds to check on preparations for that evening’s ceremony. While President Goulart was preaching revolution across town, they were to inaugurate one of the first park projects to reach completion, a model airplane field. Three years earlier, this landscape had been nothing more than an expanse of gravel and dust. After so many meetings, so much bureaucracy, so much nervous energy, Lota’s beautiful vision had begun to take shape. She had created a mile-long beach, now covered with bathers and colorful umbrellas. Palm trees towered overhead; the warehouse near the Shack was full of hundreds more trees Burle Marx had collected from the Amazon, ready to go into the ground. To think of the headaches it had taken just to get the dirt! And now everything around them was turning green.
She turned to Lota to congratulate her, but the exclamation died in her throat. Lota stared down at the path as she walked. Elizabeth knew the look, she knew that Lota’s mind was churning and growing more befouled with her own thoughts and suspicions. Elizabeth could also guess what was disturbing her. In recent days, the park grounds had acquired some low contours, hills and dales that not all members of the working group had been in favor of. In best Rio fashion, the argument had spilled into the daily papers. One colleague was quoted as saying that Dona Lota had railroaded the entire process against the wishes of the majority. There really was no event too small for these people to get hysterical over.
Lota had done so much, but at such cost to herself.
“Look around you,” Elizabeth pleaded.
“What?” Lota said, with great irritation.
“Look at that beach, and those trees. At those children over there, playing soccer. You made all this, and it’s beautiful. Why are you blind to it?”
“Carlos has one more year as governor. After that, how do I know what will happen? You look. Look out there in the world, at the thousands of people eager to pull this country apart. This park, too, will become politicized. I have worked too hard to have a government full of small minds come and destroy it. There has got to be a way to protect it from the whims of all those stupid sheep.”
To Elizabeth’s surprise, at least a thousand people showed up that evening for the ceremony. For a model airplane field! That’s how desperate they all were for something nice. Along with the aterro team, she and Lota took their places on a wobbly stage, sitting in wobbly chairs. Carlos sat to Lota’s left, but she treated him coldly throughout the interminable remarks. First came the director of SURSAN; next, the president of the city’s model airplane club. For a humorous touch, the head of the Rio airport. Affonso, pale and thin from his illness, turned to Elizabeth with a kind look and shrugged.
Beyond Christ the Redeemer rose the mountaintop where Elizabeth had gone to the clinic last year after Lota’s surgery. She could see it now from her seat. Up there, the blue and green undulations of Rio had looked so beautiful; its crookedness and waste were invisible, as were the millions of poor whom everyone but Goulart preferred to ignore, and the workers’ encampments, and even Lota’s park. Each evening, the Seventh Day Adventists who ran the clinic sang hymns—it was really very sweet; she had even sung herself—but as the days had progressed, Elizabeth had begun to long for home, for Lota. By the end she’d been desperate to escape the shrieking children and cockroaches. Still, the visit had accomplished its purpose: to break her nasty habit of filling up the empty hours beside the liquor cabinet. After Lota got so sick with typhoid, Elizabeth had determined she would not add to her troubles.
The two months of Lota’s convalescence they’d spent in a Samambaia dream. Lota had slept ten hours at a stretch, and they’d drifted through languorous hours of reading and playing cards and enjoying one another’s company. Why, Elizabeth wondered, did they both have to draw so near the precipice before they could find this peaceful accord?
Concluding his remarks, the airport director called Lota into the limelight. To enthusiastic applause she untied the ceremonial ribbon on the airplane field, and her arms were weighed down with so many white roses, all you could see were her big round eyes peeking over the flowers. She said nothing into the microphone, just gazed at the people clapping and cheering wildly. Dona Lota was famous now, she was beloved. Yet she looked as traumatized as a prisoner of war.
When she returned to her seat, Elizabeth squeezed her hand. Carlos stood at the podium to give the final address, and she prepared herself for the certain hour or more of grandstanding against his political enemies massing on the other side of the city. Yet all of his words were reserved for Lota. He praised her energy, her devotion, her vision, her humanity, her wicked humor, her unselfishness, her relentlessness, her moral courage, and, most of all, her long-standing, loyal friendship. None of this around them, Carlos said—this great, enduring gift to all the citizens of Rio, young, old, rich, poor, black, and white—would have been possible without Dona Lota.
Carlos was never more charming than to a crowd of a thousand. The people in the audience were enthralled. Throughout, Lota sat perfectly still in her chair beneath the mound of roses, which were beginning to wilt in the heat, and watched him with the most hideous scowl.
“Try to look nice,” Elizabeth whispered. “Everyone has their eyes on you.”
At the edge of the stage, two little mulattoes were trying to climb onto the shaky platform.
“She is a lover of children,” Carlos continued, “a champion of the less fortunate.”
Lota hissed at the boys to get off the stage, then began kicking out at them wildly with one foot. The white roses cascaded from her arms to the ground.
Jan-go! Jan-go! Jan-go! A hundred thousand workers roared the president’s name as he took the stage.
Elizabeth was not by nature a rubbernecker. On the mountain road to Petropolis, she turned away from the not infrequent automobile casualties, the sheet pulled over the prone body on the asphalt. But that night she sat before the television until very late, watching the live newscast of the Goulart rally. It was debatable whether the man outdid Carlos in the monomania department. But how could you tell who was more deluded—Goulart, with his dreams of a workers’ state, or those who denied the lure of his promises and the desperation of the country’s poor? The president was surrounded onstage by men of power—labor leaders, governors, admirals, and congressmen—and his speech showed no faintness of heart. He vowed to expropriate private lands, nationalize petroleum plants, and rewrite the Constitution, granting himself greater powers to challenge the entrenched cronyism in the government. I hope you are listening up there in the White House, he cried. We are no longer here to do your bidding.
As Goulart went on, Elizabeth felt a perverse pleasure in picturing the American ambassador frantically dialing the number to Washington.
But our worst enemies are on our own soil, he said. Governor Lacerda is a traitor to the nation, a pawn of the elites and the Yankees.
And so on in that vein.
The crowd was frenzied; one notch higher, and they’d become a mob. But in Brazil you could usually count on any sense of peril to be tempered by the comedic touch. From below the podium, a farmer handed up a mandioca root of enormous proportions,
easily twenty-five pounds. The president accepted the offering and finished his speech holding the huge phallus under his arm.
The following day, the streets were deceptively quiet. “Those delinquents should be massacred,” Lota said.
“Don’t say that! Even in jest.”
Unrepentant, Lota continued. “Well, they must be answered. The governor of São Paulo is organizing an anticommunism rally for this weekend, to show Goulart what the people of Brazil really want. He has invited Carlos to speak. Carlos has invited me.”
“So you have his ear again?”
“I never lost it. Would you like to come?”
“I’d rather drink kerosene, to be honest.”
“As I suspected.”
“I think I’ll go to Samambaia instead.”
“If so, you will not be alone. Luiz Cusi is staying there.”
“I don’t need a babysitter, Lota.”
“He did not want to stay in São Paulo for the rally either, so I invited him to Samambaia. Besides, I am not going to babysit you anymore. You may poison yourself drinking whatever liquid you wish.”
SOLDIERS WERE STOPPING cars on the road to Petropolis. Elizabeth had never seen that before. With the delay, the trip took three hours instead of one. Even so, once she reached Samambaia, Elizabeth felt no desire to poison herself drinking any of the variety of liquids at her disposal. Amidst the tranquility of birds, beasts, and flowers, she could forget that the rest of the world was going up in flames. Luiz had already arrived and was at work on the prototype of a new chair, a strange and uncomfortable-looking contraption made of steel rods onto which he wove and knotted rope. Lota’s twenty-year-old nephew, Flavio, had also come to stay at Samambaia, needing a break, he explained, from his mother. A fellow asthmatic and bookish from an early age, Flavio had been Elizabeth’s favorite of Lota’s relations ever since he was a child. For three days straight, Elizabeth cooked, listened to jazz recordings, and happily tuned out Brazilian politics in the company of her misfit confederates—then came Sunday afternoon, when the three found themselves seated around the radio to listen to the São Paulo rally.
The More I Owe You Page 24