‘Things OK in the city?’ said Silvio, regarding me over the cup, the steam playing around the dark laugh lines at his eyes. Fumes from his customary slug of brandy reached my nose. It was a smell I had known all my life.
‘They’re fine,’ I said. ‘Different.’
‘You’ve got a nice, comfortable bed there? You’re sleeping well?’
‘It’s pretty good.’
He took a sip of coffee, and kept his eyes on me. ‘Hasn’t that crazy place taught you anything yet?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t been there long.’
‘So you can’t help me answer my question?’
‘I’ll try. What is the question?’
He regarded me seriously. ‘What did the priest say when he came home to find two whores and a monkey in his bed?’
Thank God for Silvio, especially since what had happened must have been playing havoc with his sense of feudal propriety. I was never more grateful for his jokes than now.
‘While we’re talking about beds,’ my mother said, interrupting. ‘There was an instruction to make up an extra one at the house. You’ll be sleeping up there from now on?’
Silvio’s laughter sent a hot spray of coffee over the plate of empadas in front of him. ‘Looks like city boy has got himself a taste for comfy beds after all!’ he shouted, before wheezing uncontrollably for several minutes.
‘And he asks me why he can’t be trusted with the good china,’ muttered my mother, whisking the plate out of danger and fetching a cloth to clean the mess. It was too late for me to point out that I had in fact requested to stay with her.
But I did. I spent the afternoon cursing Zé for offering me the choice but not acting on my decision, and later that day, as I watched her ladling fish stock into a moqueca pot, I told my mother that when Zé had put the question to me, I had asked not to be moved. She stroked my cheek with her strong, tough palm.
‘I’m sure you did,’ she said. ‘But you should sleep up there. I’ve been making those wonderful beds for years—one of us might as well enjoy sleeping in them.’
Somehow, time made it OK—time, and the fact that everyone wanted it to work. And in fact, the physical distance between us brought with it great benefits. Far earlier than for most, my mother became a proper friend, an equal. Now she had relinquished her pastoral responsibilities, I could complain or enthuse without moderation about my new life, in the way you might to a grandparent or an uncle, or anyone else who loves you but isn’t saddled with the worry of being principally responsible.
The character of the weekends changed. Now that I was the one bounding out of the helicopter, I saw less of Melissa and the family, and spent all my time in the kitchen with my mother. I ate with her instead of with the others. And in so doing I got to know her better than I would otherwise have done.
The downside was the occasional feeling that conditions had been placed on her mother’s love. From that point on, she made no attempt to hide it when she was itching to get on with whatever she had been doing when my phone call interrupted her, or when she was falling asleep after a hard day. Our worlds were moving apart.
What seemed outrageous at first became natural in no time: multiple homes, two wardrobes of clothes, staff. And now that home had stopped being home, the process of assimilation into Angel Park could gather pace.
To start with, I didn’t help myself. In my third week, a guard pulled over to investigate something suspicious in one of the ornamental ponds. He feared, or hoped for, a dead body. What he found was me, floating face down and contemplating the depths, as had been my habit in the forgotten pools of the farm. The usual fray of drawn pistols and aggressive shouts ensued, before I managed to convince the man that I was a resident.
‘That pond is ornamental,’ said the guard, holstering his weapon as I trudged dripping up the bank. ‘You can’t swim in it. There are other pools for swimming in.’
‘Why can’t I swim in this one?’ I asked.
‘I told you, it’s ornamental,’ he said, as if saying the word louder would make me understand him better. ‘It’s not a swimming pool.’ He helped me on to the bank. ‘Also, some of the sewage pipes round here don’t carry so well: it’s probably chock-full of Angel Shit.’
‘That is a reason I can relate to,’ I breathed, wishing I’d kept my mouth closed underwater, but smiling in spite of this as my head instantly filled with Silvio’s jokes about rich turds clogging up the water chute.
School was a grand academy in extensive grounds, shielded from the favela on its doorstep by high walls and gatehouses. At dropping-off and picking-up time the street was impassable, blocked by ranks of chauffeur-driven vehicles, their engines ticking over as they queued up to relinquish or collect their charges as near to the door as possible. Had Melissa not been fearless enough to leave the compound, her kidnappers would never have succeeded. They were crazy to think they had a chance of grabbing a pupil from that place—but the high walls and the blacked-out cars must have told them their prize would be worth the risk.
Although skyscrapers still towered in every direction, behind the gates the school was a refuge of whitewashed walls and cool corridors. Its windows had dark green shutters to keep out the light and the heat; to focus the pupils inwards, on their learning, and not outwards at the reeking injustice beyond the gates.
Every day, as Melissa and I were dropped off, I glimpsed kids my own age in the favela across the street. Un-shirted, unselfconscious, underweight, they seemed always to be laughing. I swung between guilt at the thought that I should be among them, and envy at their apparently simple, joyful existence. Some days I wished I could join in—playing with stuff they had salvaged from the rubbish, or kicking around a rag football; others, I was grateful for the safety of the compound, with its water-polo lessons, its basketball courts, its chilled drinking fountains.
Melissa and Ernesto were casually indifferent to the facilities at their disposal. It had never occurred to them that an education could transform a life. And they did not, like me, feel the constant burden of how much had been sacrificed on their behalf. So I did their homework for them, and I paid attention, and I did well. I was a successful experiment—one that justified every gram of Rebecca’s compassion and Zé’s magnanimity—whatever effect it may have had on my relationship with my real mother, on my perception of what constituted ‘home,’ and on my state of mind.
It took a careless joke from Zé for me to realise what was happening back on the farm, something said over dinner one Thursday, about how he wondered whether everything would be ready for the guests he had staying that weekend, or whether the ‘hot young lovers’ would be too distracted.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘He’s joking,’ said Melissa, shooting her father a look.
‘Am I?’ said Zé, his nostrils flaring. ‘Love is no joke, Meli.’
‘Well, I think it’s wonderful,’ said Rebecca. ‘They deserve to be very happy.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I said.
Rebecca cleared her throat. ‘Zé thinks that your mother and Silvio might be having some sort of romance.’
‘Is that right?’ I asked.
Zé contained his smile. ‘I think it might be, Ludo. But it’s a good thing, isn’t it? It’s good that your mother might no longer be alone.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
‘She probably hasn’t told you because she’s been waiting for the right time,’ Rebecca said. ‘And we don’t know for sure. Zé is just making mischief.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘From what I saw they might not have had much time yet to speak to anyone,’ Zé muttered, sniggering to himself. ‘They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Silvio looked like a dog caught humping the sofa.’
Everyone laughed, including me, before I remembered at whom I was laughing. Even now it’s difficult to articulate how I felt that evening.
SEA URCHIN
My life is a maze with ever-narrow
ing paths. It’s only a matter of time before the walls hem me in so completely that I won’t be able to move at all. Ernesto is the client; but of course he is. I should have known that even his self-righteous sanctimony would yield eventually to Zé’s irresistible, steamrolling desire to include. This family—it is walled in, blind to the majority. It’s how their connections stay strong. The inevitability of it all makes me weary.
Oscar stands back to watch the embrace between me and my brother-in-law, pleased with himself and the trick he’s played.
‘You knew about this?’ I say.
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ he replies, and turns to his client. ‘Didn’t I tell you I had just the guy for you on this project?’
‘You did,’ says Ernesto, beaming.
After the meeting, which flies by unnoticed, Ernesto takes me aside and embraces me again.
‘It’s good to see you! How long has it been? Are you hungry?’
‘All the time.’
‘Let me take you to lunch, on me. Or rather, on Zé.’
Since Ernesto’s paying I direct the taxi to one of my favourite restaurants, a Japanese place on the top floor of a new bank. Its walls are clad in clean, rustic-looking wood, as if you were eating in a rural ryokan and not capping off a resplendent skyscraper. Its longest wall is entirely taken up by an ice bar heaped with sea creatures, dead or dying.
And here he is. Ernesto, struggling with his table manners as usual, spilling stuff all over the place, eating like a child. I’d forgotten his enthusiasm, how he eats like a big bear with poorly coordinated paws. Watching him grapple with the chopsticks, I remember how, when Melissa and I were still living together, I used to set his place with a smaller set of cutlery when he came for dinner. Childish perhaps, but I wanted to watch his big hands fumbling around, trying to cope, to make him feel as out of proportion and awkward as possible. Forks laden with my rich sauces would clatter to the polished wood floor from his hands, and he’d mumble his apologies as he crammed his frame under the table to collect them.
How could I have blamed those phone messages on him? As well as scanning pruriently for information about how regularly he fucks his wife, I’ve also dipped into Ernesto’s diary to see if there was any hint of negativity about me, some snobbery that was there from the beginning, which he’s concealed out of respect for Melissa, and which I can use to justify deceiving him. I’ve found nothing. He appears to love me, and judge me only for who I am. He doesn’t even call me a sellout for what I do for a living. How I could have imagined that he had somehow changed completely and started leaving me hate voice-mail, I do not know.
We’re distracted by the range and quantity of dishes that I order—tartares of salmon and tuna, glistening heaps of roe from three different species, a mosaic of raw fish and a stack of vegetable tempura—so at first we restrict ourselves to a post-mortem on the meeting. But even down on this conversational level there’s a lot going unsaid. I order a carafe of chilled sake to try and loosen him up.
‘Think about it,’ he says. ‘The way these communities work is that everything is hijacked. Their cable TV is siphoned off everybody else’s. Their electricity, their water, and even, these days, their internet access. It’s all “unofficial.” Their entire lives are unofficial. And what happens with their shopping isn’t that different. The way to get the freshest meat is to buy a live animal and kill it yourself at home. You don’t want the spoiled cut that’s been hanging above the butcher’s block crawling with flies for six hours. With MaxiBudget, we’re going in after them—to take food to them. Affordable food. Designated food. Official food.’
‘To stop them from coming and staring hungrily through the windows of our own supermarkets.’
‘No!’ He smiles, knowing I’m being deliberately provocative. ‘To nurture their communities. To acknowledge what the government has spent years ignoring. So we can turn them away from things “unofficial” and start them down the road of becoming integrated citizens. Why is that so difficult for you, of all people, to accept?’
I slam down my cup. ‘I wish people would stop saying “You, of all people”! Why am I supposed to know more about this than anybody else?’
There’s an uncomfortable pause. I’m breathing heavily. Plates and chopsticks clink around us. Two diners look over. Then the tension is broken by the noise of a huge crab clattering off the ice bar and on to the floor. Whether it fell off because the ice is melting under it, or whether it is still alive and making a bid for freedom, I don’t know. Two waiters leap over to replace it.
‘Remember when you took me shooting on my first morning in Angel Park?’ I ask, trying to recover my cool.
‘I’ve grown up since then.’
‘So have I.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, Ludo—’
‘I overreacted. But listen, fill me in, because I don’t understand. How long have you been working for Zé?’
‘A couple of months now.’
‘Nobody told me.’
‘You know how bad the family is at communicating things.’
‘But I . . . I spoke to Melissa yesterday, and she didn’t seem to know you were working on it. She hadn’t even heard of it. Your own wife doesn’t know where you work?’
‘I haven’t told her yet,’ he says. ‘I hate keeping things from her, but I haven’t had the courage.’
‘Why not?’
He drops a beautifully assembled piece of sushi into his dish of soy sauce, splashing flecks of brown all over his shirt, then, abandoning all pretence of eating with the chopsticks, rescues it with his hand.
‘I suppose I’m ashamed,’ he says. ‘I spent years telling Melissa I wouldn’t work for her father.’
‘But it’s a good cause, as you keep telling me. There’s no shame in it.’
‘It’s not that, it’s the nepotism. I’ve always hated the way Zé has to keep everybody pinned down. All that control-freakery. I fought off his job offers for ages, but with this project, because it’s charitable, he finally found a way to get me to say yes. The trouble is that no matter how worthy it is, I feel uncomfortable. There’s something almost. . . incestuous about it.’
My throat feels dry. I drain my cup of sake too quickly, so that the alcohol overwhelms the taste, and order another carafe straight away.
‘You’re different,’ he goes on. ‘You’ve managed to escape it somehow. But I’ve married into it.’
I think about Zé threatening to take away Oscar’s biggest account if he didn’t give me my job, and say nothing.
There’s a pause as the new sake is delivered. I top him off.
‘We haven’t seen much of each other lately,’ he says. ‘And I know it’s been years now, but I don’t think I have ever told you in person how sorry I was about what happened to your mother.’
‘Thanks.’
Pause.
‘I didn’t know you were in touch with Melissa,’ he says, noticing in a burst of empathy that the previous topic was unwelcome.
‘We speak on the phone from time to time. She doesn’t tell you?’
‘To be honest, she doesn’t tell me a great deal.’
Here we go.
‘You’ve known her all your life,’ he says. ‘You know how difficult she can be. She closes everything down and goes into herself. And—I’m sorry, listen to me. It’s been so long. I’m sure you’ve got problems of your own.’
‘I want to hear this. Honestly.’
‘All her secrecy. I think it’s contagious. That’s probably another reason why I haven’t told her about this job. Especially because I think that her secrecy is also hypocritical. I don’t think she respects my right to privacy at all.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s unfair of me to talk to you about this. You’re her brother.’
‘I’m your brother too. I promise I’ll keep it to myself.’
‘I think she’s been reading my diary. It’s no big deal, of course. I have nothing to hide. But the thing i
s, I wouldn’t even know she’d read it if I hadn’t noticed that sometimes the date on the file name changes, which means she must be . . . altering it as well.’
‘You must be imagining that. She probably doesn’t even know you keep a diary.’
He tips sake into his cup. ‘She’s so odd sometimes. She leaves these cryptic messages written in steam on the bathroom mirror. I have no idea what they’re supposed to mean. And there’s another, more worrying thing.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I’m probably being paranoid.’
‘Tell me, and I’ll tell you whether I think you’re paranoid.’
‘I think she might be seeing someone else. Sometimes, after I’ve been away, I find—strange hair in the bed. Black. Wiry. Definitely not hers or mine.’ He leans across the thin wooden table, and gestures with the chopsticks that are tiny in his hands. ‘But you want to know what the worst thing is?’
This is it. He’s going to say, The worst thing is that it’s you she’s doing it with, and that will be that.
‘What’s that?’ I say.
‘The worst thing is that I can’t even drum up any sympathy for myself, because I think I probably deserve all this.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I’m a bad person.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘This job.’
‘For the love of God! What’s wrong with working for your father-in-law?’
‘That’s not what I mean.’
‘How does an anthropologist come to be working for a supermarket chain, anyway?’
‘He said that my studies of the favelas could help him set up his subsidised supermarkets—which are funded, incidentally, by the Uproot Foundation as well as by the companies whose products are on sale. It’s basically a charitable venture.’
‘But if working for a charity was your only stipulation, Zé could have got you working for him years ago.’
Heliopolis Page 14