“Ruth, Ciro died, yesterday, at Silvestre. They found a really aggressive tumor three months ago. He didn’t make it. It’s over, Ruth,” said Raquel. “Do you want to go to the funeral? I have to take João and I thought I should ask you.”
Ruth was furious at her sister. Her repressed love threatened to well up and spill over. She would never see Ciro again. All that was left was her mistakes, she thought. Ciro would never know that their ten years of marriage continued to mean everything to her. Why hadn’t Raquel told her before? She wanted to slap her, blame her for his murder. Her long training in isolation, the self-control attained at great cost, brought back her rationality. It was for the best, she thought. She wouldn’t have had the courage to see him, to risk losing her sanity once again. She said she’d rather stay home.
Raquel left the room without protest. She had learned to respect her sister’s sovereign will. She had adopted João as her own and had kept on the maid. Ruth required very little; in exchange she asked that no one judge her, and that she be left in peace. Raquel had grown up jealous of her sister’s charms, but now she thanked God that such divine gifts had not been bestowed upon her. She had learned from a young age that the world is unfair and that great joys precede even greater tragedies. She despised her brother-in-law for his weakness and considered not attending the funeral herself, but her sense of duty toward her nephew made her forget the idea.
Ruth opened a cupboard in the living room that hadn’t seen any light since Ciro had left. She took out a dusty cardboard box, placed it on the table, and rummaged through the pile of records looking for the old Dolores Duran LP. The record player, along with the sound system that Ciro had bought in 1978, was still intact in the cabinet. The maid tended to the empty rooms with the same zeal as before. Ruth was always in the bedroom, but that day, after Raquel knocked on her door, she decided to come out of hiding. She opened the curtains of the living room to let in the sun and allow her memory to roam. She saw herself, so different to the person she was now, sitting on that same sofa, Ciro inviting her to dance, João jumping on the cushions, the paintings, the table. The moment required music. She took the record out of its cover, cleaned it carefully, and put it on the turntable. The needle was still there, the crackling before the melody began, the orchestra’s introduction, Dolores.
Don’t let the bad world take you away again
Ruth turned up the volume, sang, danced, and allowed herself to be swept away. The she flopped onto the armchair, out of breath, pensive, and fell silent. She was grateful. She had lived with Ciro’s absence for years. His death had put an end to the unbearable possibility of one day discovering that he was happy with another woman. Dead, he would remain hers, immaterial, eternal.
* * *
Ruth outlived everyone in her generation. She lasted for many years, locked away in her apartment with her imaginary partner. She checked out from reality early, existing somewhere between here and there, more there than here. Alzheimer’s, abulia, dementia, sclerosis—so many names for such similar symptoms. Ruth extinguished herself, watched over by her sister, and passed away one rainy morning at the age of eighty-three, happy with her master.
Célia was there for Ruth throughout her drama, kept her up to date on Ciro’s latest, was present every time she was admitted to the clinic, until she came to the conclusion that her friend’s neurosis was a lost cause.
After the divorce, Célia’s visits to the ground-floor apartment on Rua Maria Angélica came to an end. The ample living room opening onto a well-kept garden, where in the past they’d met for Saturday feijoadas, watched the World Cup, where the children could run free and the adults could play cards and drink all they wanted, became a dark mausoleum. Ruth didn’t open the windows or turn on the light. She inhabited the last bedroom, and no one was allowed in except the maid. But she didn’t consider the maid a person, Célia suspected, judging by the way Ruth addressed her.
“I’m telling you, Irene, Ruth acts like a plantation owner. She treats the maid like a slave and has breakfast in bed. If she’d only fold some clothes or wash some dishes, she wouldn’t be like this, desperate because of that good-for-nothing husband of hers. I know I’m a bother, so I won’t be going back. What for? To listen to her majesty’s tantrums?”
Irene didn’t disagree, although she thought Célia was exaggerating somewhat. She identified more with Ruth than with Célia, the Margaret Thatcher of São Cristóvão. Irene avoided talking about her own marital dissatisfaction with Célia for fear she’d get a lecture.
Célia had studied at a public school, was a swimming champion in junior high, and knew how to stand up for herself. Her Portuguese father had been abandoned by his mother, who had become widowed early and, preferring the company of her oldest son, had sent the younger one to boarding school. Her rejection gave the boy a trade. He learned carpentry at school and, once he was fully grown and the master of his own destiny, did well for himself in furniture-making. He married his shop’s cleaner, a beautiful black woman with very white teeth, who turned out to be a splendid business manager. Célia grew up near the São Cristóvão Club soccer field. She liked to go to Quinta da Boa Vista Park after Sunday mass, to games at Maracanã Stadium, and for ice cream and a movie at Saenz Peña Square. Rio’s North Zone was her territory. But prosperity and the purchase of a large shop in Catete made the family move to Flamengo when she was eighteen. This social ascension was terrible for Célia. She didn’t recognize herself in that amoral paradise—she was from the working class. When she finished technical school, she didn’t even consider going to university, as she despised academic pride. They like to rub those scrolls in our faces, she used to say. Célia wanted a job, a wage, and independence. She took a typing course and was hired as a trainee with the state traffic department. She prospered in that bureaucratic cesspool, surrounded by underhanded schemes, the buying of driver’s licenses, kickbacks, expediters, dust, and no air conditioning. She treated the rich and the poor with equal steeliness. She did justice. She didn’t turn in her colleagues, and hated snitches, but she refused to take part in their thievery. Deep down, they’re all no good, she thought.
She had never trusted men; she’d been brought up not to. Tall and athletic, the only reason she didn’t have more suitors was because young men were intimidated by that Charles de Gaulle in a skirt. The opposite sex was a potential enemy and she looked down on them from the heights of her fortress. Only a saint could get to her. The saint, in this case, was Neto.
Célia swam from one end of Copacabana to the other on a regular basis. From the sand near Fort Copacabana, Neto saw Calypso emerge from the waves. Of mixed ancestry, like himself, a giant, extraordinary. He fell for her there and then.
Lover boy had a degree in business management. His father, a public servant, had brought his son up to be someone. He drank in moderation and was a good kid, good-humored, and brilliant at soccer. Álvaro attributed Neto’s excessive normality to his skin color. His theory wasn’t unfounded. Whenever a more raucous celebration ended with the police at the door, Neto was always the one hauled down to the station. This unspoken racism made him pursue an exemplary life. He married young, had children young, and died young.
He had met Ciro and Álvaro at university. Business Management had a few subjects in common with Law and Accounting. Together, they’d started a samba-jazz band, with Neto on drums and Ciro on the guitar. Álvaro had tried the tambourine, but had ended up on the shaker.
They were united by male allegiance, women, and the beach, in that order. Copacabana was home to various tribes. Álvaro had known Ribeiro since he was a child. They had both lived on Ministro Rocha Azevedo and had gone to the beach at the end of Rua Miguel Lemos. Ribeiro was friends with the crowd there, some rough types who ran amok in the nice neighborhood. He was always surrounded by women, unlike Álvaro, who frightened them away even when he still had hair. Sílvio was drawn to the group by Ciro’s charms, and took everyone’s virginity in psychoactives. Sílvio was
a myth in Copacabana. He was said to be the youngest person ever accepted into the famous Jackass Club, and had participated in the cowardly act of hanging a transvestite by the foot from a tenth-floor window on Rua Barata Ribeiro.
The first Carnival of the 1960s was the big turning point in their friendship. Sílvio told them about some Italians he’d met in the diplomatic service, who pretended to be gay to get close to virgins and women who were hard to get. “They loosen up because they think they’re safe… after two drinks you’re in!” he assured them. He proposed they use their musical talents to found their own Carnival block of cross-dressing men. The idea was greeted with unconditional enthusiasm. They spent the entire month of February putting together their costumes. Ciro, the most beautiful of them all, played a sexy intellectual and launched the miniskirt way before Mary Quant, with boots and a wig with a fringe. Álvaro was a housewife with watermelon breasts, and Neto let out his inner samba queen in a dazzling gold-sequined bikini, with a boa around his shoulders and feathers on his head. Sílvio went as Carmen Miranda, and Ribeiro paid tribute to Norma Bengell’s Bardot. They laid half the city and consolidated their friendship.
Neto’s friends were his only sin.
The five were lolling in the sand when the goddess emerged from the waves and strode to the shade of the beach tent next to theirs. The skin on muscle, the sway of her hips, and her hard thighs were an arrow through Neto’s heart. His friends noticed and began to egg him on. Neto approached her. Célia was aloof and kept him on ice for months. She didn’t give him the time of day, but she didn’t discourage him either. His extreme patience was proof of his love. Then she tortured him with a year of courting and a three-year engagement. A virgin. The bride’s parents only gave their consent to the marriage after the groom was given a promotion at the hospital supply company he worked for. Neto bravely resisted the urge to swallow Célia alive, to be alone with her, without her mother, nieces, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Without clothes. He could barely wait. At the wedding ceremony he was so anxious, so thankful to finally have the right to be with his own wife, that he sobbed at the altar. The long wait annulled his performance that first night. His blood pressure dropped and he had to lie down. Exhausted from all the anticipation, he fell asleep. Célia didn’t mind leaving consummation until the next morning. She hugged her trophy husband and took a while to nod off. You only became a grown-up when you were married, and now she was. Married and a grown-up.
Her father had a meltdown at the church. He started muttering inaudibly in the sacristy. Then he began to roll his head around, gesticulating and flinging his arms wide.
“That bastard… that bastard’s going to steal my daughter…”
Family members tried to reassure him, but he lost his composure, repeating that they were taking his baby girl. The mother, worried that his deep-seated jealousy would ruin the occasion, gave him a tranquilizer, told him to splash some water on his face, and went back to enjoy her day of glory. She had been born in the neighborhood of Mangueira, had lost her parents at a young age, and had helped bring up her brothers and sisters. She had never imagined that she would be able to give her daughter a wedding like that. She had a photograph of the bride and groom framed and hung it in the living room over the couch. Poverty, the death of her parents and many other relatives, it was all behind her now. All she had to do was sit and wait for grandchildren.
They took a while to come. A boy and a girl, Murilo and Dalva. Célia put together a spreadsheet of their expenses and calculated that it would be wise to wait three years before having a child. Every month, she would set aside part of their earnings for the future endeavor and, in the meantime, enjoyed her prince consort.
They were happy together.
Célia put up with Neto’s friends’ mischief until their children were born. Then she removed them all from her circle of trust. She was suspicious of Sílvio’s fetishes and Ribeiro’s pedophilia. Her father died begging her not to let down her guard. “Sons-in-law aren’t relatives,” he insisted. Her mother argued with him, defending her daughter’s choice, but thought it didn’t hurt to stay alert.
Serial divorces, youths on drugs, hippies in dirty pants: Célia hated the new ways of the world. She never forgot the day she saw Ney Matogrosso on television for the first time. At first she admired the folk singer with the beautiful voice, with a splendid feather boa around her shoulders and a vulture mask on her face. Célia thought she was a little hairy, but the pitch of her voice was unmistakable: it was a woman. In a more daring dance move, the mysterious peacock thrust its hips this way, while the breast baubles went that way, revealing that there were no breasts there.
“It’s a man!” she cried. “Good Lord! It’s a man!”
Célia made the children leave the room.
“The world’s gone crazy,” she said to Neto that evening, and redoubled her watch over her children.
She admired President Médici and General Geisel, and shared their horror of communists. They wanted to take over Brazil, she was sure of it. What, share my home with others? Let them do it at their own place! And she would turn her back, refusing to give it any more thought. Her two biggest fears were that Dalva would lose her virginity and that Murilo would be gay. Her paranoia about external threats ended up molding her appearance. She became dour. The tension around her mouth creased her cheeks, and worry etched out lines in her forehead and grooves between her eyebrows. Célia grew ugly. Neto didn’t notice. To him, she would always be Calypso.
They fought, it is true, many times, and even came to blows once or twice, but breaking up was never a possibility. Célia was the guard dog of the family. She died without enjoying an old age, at sixty, of a stroke. It would have been an exemplary death if she hadn’t been so young. She said goodnight to her husband, went to bed, and didn’t wake up.
Neto’s desperation at his wife’s wake was a sign of what was to come. He doubled over in anguish. He knelt on the ground, tried to tear off his clothes, gnashed his teeth, kicked, and shouted. His children ran to restrain him. Neto’s howling diminished, his fury abated, and Murilo and Dalva sat him down once again in the chairs beside their mother, but the calm didn’t last. The queue of condolence-givers had barely begun to move again when Neto had another wild fit. He seized Célia and tried to carry her out of there, to take her home. Help was needed to get him to put her body down. At Murilo’s request, Álvaro and Ribeiro dragged him off to the infirmary. Sedated, he followed the coffin, leaning on two of the sidekicks his wife had so vehemently disliked.
Neto never recovered. Of his own accord, he continued taking the tranquilizers he’d been given at São João Batista Cemetery. “I can’t take this sober,” he said. When his speech became so slurred that no one could understand what he was saying, Murilo took him to a psychiatrist and Neto began the merry-go-round of trial and error with mood regulators. None worked very well. The cocktail turned him into a walking bundle of side effects. He would swing from euphoria to depression, more depressed than euphoric. Murilo tried homeopathy, massage, acupuncture, and insisted on psychoanalysis, but nothing could put a dent in Neto’s fixation with Célia.
He was in permanent mourning.
Neto
* December 27, 1929
† April 30, 1992
Célia watched the evening news and went to lie down. “It’s early,” I argued, but she wasn’t feeling well. I watched a war movie and went to bed too. The next day I was surprised to find her still in bed when I woke up. Célia usually rose before me to fix breakfast. I showered and dressed, but she didn’t move. When I tried to wake her, I realized that she was stiff. Célia had died in the middle of the night, beside me; an aneurysm took her without me noticing. That very instant, all the bad times disappeared: her moods, her aversion to my friends, her nagging our daughter-in-law, her surliness toward our son-in-law, her chronic unhappiness, the disagreements, the slaps. I was washed over with unconditional love for the two of us, for our years together. I was par
alyzed, sitting on the bed, reminiscing, without the courage to be practical.
My son arranged everything: funeral home, mass, chapel. He chose a beautiful coffin. I was unfit for anything. I sat beside her at the wake, and people came to talk to me, but I wasn’t there, I wasn’t anywhere. I wanted to step out of my own skin, step out of me. I roared, shouted, blasphemed, but it didn’t help—I haven’t come down to this day. Sober, never again. I refuse to start all over; I’ve lost the illusion you need to be able to reinvent the days.
I had to be carried at the funeral. Álvaro and Ribeiro propped me up. A bell rang to announce that the coffin was leaving and we dragged ourselves through the cemetery. Good God, it’s sad. Afterward, I hugged my children and grandchildren and came home to the apartment I’d lived in with Célia for over thirty years. The silence was piercing, I ran to turn on the TV. Murilo thought he’d better sleep with me that first night. It was as weird for him as it was for me. The next day I sent him home. I had to learn to be on my own, I told him while looking him in the eye, pretending to have come to my senses.
I’ve been trying for a year, but it all seems artificial: going out, catching a movie, having dinner. I have no one to talk to about the news anymore, it’s as if there were no more facts. The sun rises and sets in a sequence of hours that are all the same. Célia was the connection, our home existed thanks to her. She was paranoid, mistrustful, and critical of Ciro, Sílvio, Álvaro, and Ribeiro from the day she met them. What does it matter? I didn’t know it until I saw her body lying there on the bed—I didn’t know it but Célia was my pillar, my mast, my rock.
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