The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  Behind her, a tall man played guitar. He hunched over his instrument, his eyes closed, as if trying to imagine himself somewhere else. His body was still but his fingers moved wildly across the guitar strings. Hearing him play, I forgot about the shabby bar and Miss Lúcia’s twin wonders. The sound that came from his guitar was crisp and bracing, like walking outside on a cool morning.

  He had dark eyebrows, hound-dog eyes, and a mouth twisted in a sly grin, making a dimple appear on his right cheek. Most Lapa musicians at the time looked tubercular and wore their hair slicked back. He wore his without pomade, and had sideburns before they were ever popular. Halfway through the song, the guitar player looked up, and directly at me. It seemed as if everyone in that club had disappeared except for the two of us; I could not look away from him. He looked like a brawler sizing up an opponent. My neck felt hot. Warmth seeped down into my chest, then into the pit of my stomach. I had never taken notice of a man in this way before, and it confused and frightened me. I remember telling myself not to be afraid; that I was a brawler as well.

  “Close your mouth,” Madame L. said, tapping my arm. “You’ll let the flies in.”

  He guided Graça and me to the bar. At the other end, a very short man in a red suit moved in our direction.

  “Lucifer,” the man said. “These the girls?”

  “Why else would I bring them?” Madame L. replied.

  The man nodded. His arms were so short he could barely cross them. He extended a hand to Graça. “Little Tony,” he said. “Lucifer tells me you’ve got quite a voice. But I didn’t expect you to be so pretty.” Little Tony looked at me and furrowed his forehead. “And you’re a whopper! But you’ve got to get some meat on those bones. You gals ate yet? How about a steak?”

  Behind the bar was a small kitchen where the bartender began to cook for us. The smell of meat drowned out all other scents—smoke, cigarette ash, liquor, a faint note of vomit. Madame Lucifer’s voice shook me from my trance; he was talking money.

  “These girls will bring in a big crowd,” Madame L. said. “More people mean more drink sales. I want a cut of that action.”

  Tony gritted his teeth and nodded.

  Onstage, Miss Lúcia bowed deeply, finishing her act. The men around us whistled and banged their rough hands against tabletops. Those weren’t the obedient cane cutters from Riacho Doce. They were painters, bricklayers, drunks, and street sweepers. Those men wanted spectacle. They wanted winks and laughter and shaking bosoms. They wanted to forget their grueling workdays by drowning themselves in drink and watching girls cavort onstage. And if they didn’t like an act, they wouldn’t keep quiet.

  “But we’re just singers,” I said. “It seems like they want showgirls.”

  Graça glared at me. Madame L.’s heavy-lidded eyes met mine.

  “If you’ve got what it takes, you can win over a pride of hungry lions,” Madame L. said. “You want to be entertainers? Well, this is where you prove it. There’s a thousand good voices out there, but not everyone can charm a crowd.”

  The steak arrived, sizzling and fatty, accompanied by two frosty beers. I’d lost my appetite, but Graça chewed large mouthfuls of meat and washed it down with beer, finishing her portion and mine.

  * * *

  —

  Every great performer in Rio had a stage name; Graça and I decided early on that we would be no different. Long before we stepped into Little Tony’s joint, on hot evenings when we walked home from our lessons at La Femme Chic, or mornings when we huddled in bakeries and sipped coffees, Graça and I imagined the women we would become onstage. We needed names that were elegant; names that gave us confidence; names that, Graça insisted, had pizzazz. She found her name first.

  Of all of Anaïs’s clients, a woman named Sofia was La Femme Chic’s best customer, buying a hat for each day of the year. Graça was impressed by such self-indulgence.

  “Sofia,” she said, as we swept pins from the showroom floor. “It sounds like a queen’s name.”

  Another customer—a woman who was less extravagant but more cultivated, in my opinion, than Graça’s namesake—was Lorena. I liked her name well enough. Since the first halves of our stage names came from elegant women, the second halves, we decided, would come from places we admired. Graça chose the city where we’d stopped during our first boat ride, while I chose Lapa.

  “Sofia Salvador,” Graça sighed. “Playing exclusively at the Copacabana Palace!”

  “And Lorena Lapa,” I added.

  Our debut wouldn’t be on the Copa’s illustrious stage, but as far as we were concerned, Little Tony’s ramshackle show house was as good as Rio’s finest theater. When we arrived on our first night as performers, the wooden board outside Tony’s had changed.

  TONIGHT! MISS LÚCIA & HER TWIN WONDERS AND THE NYMPHETTES

  Graça gripped my hand. “That’s us,” she said. “We’re on a board at a real club!”

  Backstage was a dark, stuffy area infested with mosquitoes. Miss Lúcia took Graça into the club’s tiny dressing area while I searched for the guitar player. Little Tony didn’t care what we sang, so Graça and I had decided to perform two of the most popular tangos at the time: one upbeat and the other slow and sad. We had to let the guitar player know our choices before the show began, so he could properly accompany us onstage. That night, the musician was nowhere to be found.

  I fretted and paced behind the stage’s curtain. On the other side of that stained velvet, Little Tony’s patrons ordered drinks and dragged chairs near the stage. It was a weekend night and the house was packed. Soon, it would be time for Miss Lúcia to entertain the crowd, and I was still in my street clothes.

  When the guitar player finally appeared backstage, a cigarette dangled from his mouth. A curtain of dark hair obscured his eyes. He walked quickly past me. The guitar case he carried bumped my leg.

  “Excuse me!” I called.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, and continued walking.

  I blocked his path. “You’re the accompanist?”

  With his free hand, the man removed the cigarette stub from his lips and flicked it away.

  “What do I look like, a senator?” he asked. “Who’re you?”

  The cigarette landed near my feet, which were stuffed uncomfortably into the open-toed heels Graça had forced me to wear. I teetered away from the lit butt.

  “I’m one of the Nymphettes,” I replied.

  “What’s that?”

  “The new act.”

  The man sighed. “The new Baby Doll, you mean.”

  “No, the Nymphettes.”

  “That’s just a new name for the same kind of girl,” he said. “The Baby Dolls, the Bonecas, the Nenês, the Bebês. Tony’s had them all, thanks to Madame Lucifer. I think Lucifer wants to be onstage more than the girls he sends over. I bet he could sing better than them, anyway.”

  “We can sing better than anybody,” I said.

  The man laughed. “I’ll believe it when I hear it, querida.”

  “I don’t know who your querida is, but she sure isn’t me,” I replied. Then I told him the songs in our act. “Do you even know how to play them? Or do you need some help?”

  The guitar player grinned. “Everybody knows those songs. They’re not exactly original choices. I could play them with one hand behind my back.”

  “I’ll believe it when I hear it, querido.”

  The guitar player laughed. Behind him, Little Tony ambled backstage. His presence made the small space even more cramped. The guitar player’s arm pressed against mine.

  “Vinicius,” Little Tony said. “Get out there. Play a little ditty before Lúcia goes on. The crowd’s getting restless. And you,” Tony said, eyeing my street clothes. “For God’s sake get dressed. You look like you’re here to bus tables, not sing onstage.”

  In the dressing room, Graça was already tra
nsformed into a Nymphette—hair in pigtails, freckles painted across her rouged cheeks. Her dress was gone and in its place was a body stocking that Miss Lúcia called the “Eve suit.” There were two suits, both of them pink and pale, even compared with Graça’s skin. Graça’s hands and feet stood out, and mine were so much darker than the suit that it looked like I was wearing tan gloves and socks. Sewn onto the front of the flesh-colored stocking were small green leaves that were supposed to cover our “private bits,” as Little Tony called them. The suits, soiled at the elbows and knees from previous performers, had been sized for different girls. Graça was busty, which made the suit pinch and pucker up top. I was straight as a rail, so my suit sagged in several unfortunate places. The little green leaves sat either too high or too low on both of us, making even Graça’s perfect body look strangely lumpy and uneven.

  As we waited in the wings for our act to begin, beads of sweat pushed their way through the thick layer of makeup on Graça’s face. Her forehead glistened.

  “I’m going to vomit,” she said.

  “Here?”

  “Of course here!” she snapped, then nodded toward the stage, where Miss Lúcia traipsed back and forth. “I can’t do it out there!”

  “All right,” I replied, and grabbed a garbage bin. “Go ahead.”

  Graça took the bin and eyed me. She expected some kind of reassurance, but what could I give? If I told her we’d be a hit on that stage, she would hear the hesitation in my voice. The only crowd we’d ever performed for were her father’s employees; even if we’d been awful, they would have clapped for us. I thought of Vinicius, the guitar player, and what he’d said about the previous Nymphettes and Baby Dolls: they weren’t singers at all. I imagined those Nymphettes wearing our Eve suits and kicking up their legs, giggling, and shaking their rumps for the crowd. They were not artists and probably hadn’t pretended to be. What, then, was Madame Lucifer thinking, putting us in front of that gang of Lapa men?

  I took Graça’s clammy hand in mine and told her the one thing I did believe: “Pretend those men don’t exist. We don’t need them. We sing for ourselves.”

  Graça tilted her head, confused. “But Dor, we do need them. There’s no point in singing if no one hears you.”

  Miss Lúcia left the stage. Vinicius began to pluck the first notes of our tango. Without any introductions or welcomes, Graça ran onto the stage. I scurried behind her.

  There were catcalls, whistles, and drunk hoots. My hands grew numb. Beside us onstage, Vinicius stubbornly continued to play the first notes of our song, but Graça and I were silent. In the back, at the bar, I caught sight of Madame Lucifer’s finger-waved hair, his watchful gaze. A tingling sensation crept over my scalp. I felt as if someone was tugging my hair by the root, pulling me offstage. My breath came too quickly. I opened my mouth but no sound came.

  There were boos. Stomping feet.

  Come on, girlies! Give us a twirl!

  Someone gripped my hand. With more force than I’d ever expected from her, Graça tugged me close, until we faced each other.

  Woo hoo! Fiu fiu! Now we’re talking!

  Graça’s eyes locked on mine. Her neck lengthened, her chest puffed out, she opened her mouth, and her voice—so sure and sweet—worked its way into me, parting my lips until my own mouth opened and released the same song.

  “I was your heart’s slave.

  I bowed to your whims, O Love!

  With you I came to know,

  love’s intoxicating delights.

  But then you left me, little girl.

  And I feel my soul shrinking, little by little.”

  Our voices poured into every dark corner of that miserable club. There was no more whistling, no more chatter, no more sound except our own. And Vinicius’s playing, of course. As we sang, his guitar buoyed us. His notes pressed Graça and me forward when the song demanded it, then pulled us back to be softer and milder in the tune’s more tender moments. We sang the song’s chorus over and over, but each time it sounded different, and better, than before.

  Nena used to say: “God protects drunks, fools, and dogs.” That night, Graça and I were the fools. We walked onto that dimly lit stage without any kind of rehearsal, wearing dirty and ill-fitting jumpsuits, and faced an audience who wanted things we could not deliver. Or so we thought. Something I learned that night—and would recall forever afterward—was to never underestimate your audience. Those lowly bricklayers, clerks, trolley drivers, and shoe shiners that crowded Tony’s bar were born-and-bred Lapans, and in Lapa, music was faith, it was a healing balm, it was how you spoke to your gods and your lovers, it was how you respected your dead loves and courted your living ones, it was what you turned to in your darkest moments, and how you celebrated your best ones.

  Those men may have been expecting two silly and lewd girls with poor voices, but they did not object when they got two serious ones. Of course, if we’d been mediocre, they would have pelted us with limes and bottles. But Graça’s voice was perfection and mine was imperfection. Hers was triumph and mine was loss. Together with Vinicius’s guitar playing, there was a perfect synchronicity among the three of us.

  At the end of our set, there were no catcalls, no whistles, only clapping.

  “One more!” a gruff voice cried. The applause grew louder.

  There was a saying in Lapa that went like this: As long as you have a song inside you, you are never alone. That night, so many songs rose within me they felt as necessary and unwavering as a heartbeat. On one side of me was Graça, flushed and glowing with confidence. On the other was Vinicius, gentle and wise. Until that moment, I had never had a home or a family. I hadn’t even known I’d wanted such things. But that night I found my place in the world—there, on that stage, alongside Vinicius and Graça. I believed my loneliest days were behind me.

  WE ARE FROM SAMBA

  Before we can get serious, girl,

  you’ll have to meet my family.

  So I’ll take you to a roda,

  to see who raised me.

  I’m not from Santa Teresa or Lapa,

  Copacabana or Tijuca,

  I’m not from Botafogo,

  Praça Onze or Urca.

  I am from samba, my love.

  She was my only mother.

  My father may have been the batacuda,

  but she could have had others.

  In the circle you’ll meet my brothers

  and some sisters, too.

  There’s Tiny playing his cavaquinho,

  he’ll try to flirt with you.

  That’s handsome Bonito on the cuíca.

  And ugly Noel, beating his pandeiro drum.

  Kitchen can hit the agogô bells,

  and scrape the reco-reco with his thumb!

  The serious girl is Dores,

  who can make lyrics for any tune.

  The smiling one is Graçinha,

  her voice will send you to the moon.

  Banana is the snappy dresser,

  who plays the guitar with seven strings.

  The tall one’s the Professor,

  who can play anything.

  We’re not from Santa Teresa or Lapa,

  Copacabana or Tijuca.

  We’re not from Botafogo,

  Praça Onze or Urca.

  We are from samba,

  she is our only mother.

  And the roda is our family,

  we’ll never have another.

  All of the songs we have ever heard and all we will ever hear are made of twelve simple notes. Complexity comes when these notes are put together in an infinite number of combinations and then played slower or faster, repeated or not. Music is highly organized sound. It is a language we learn without even realizing it. We hear our first song and decipher its repetitions, its orderliness. The song teaches us what to expect and when to expect it
. We learn to associate low notes with sadness and high ones with pep. Soon, we hear a brand-new song and its notes collide with our memories of past tunes. We have expectations for this new song. Even if we don’t entirely know what is coming next, our instincts tell us where the song might take us, and what memories it might unearth.

  The year before Vinicius turned seventy-six and became housebound because of his illness, we took a trip to the Grand Canyon. By then we were living in Miami, married to each other for nearly twelve years and mourning Graça for forty-two.

  At the canyon, there was a viewpoint with a man-made stone barrier; Vinicius and I stood at the edge and stared into the crevasse, at the many layers of rock and the blue shadows of clouds. The other side of the canyon was visible, but well beyond our reach. Vinicius set his hand on my shoulder. “Makes me feel small,” he said. “Insignificant in the story of the world.”

  I put my hand over his. “It makes me feel right at home.”

  There is a gap between our reality and our desires. If we are lucky, we live safely on one side and spy the other. Sometimes, we are able to bridge the gap, to cross the void, but only for a short while. When Vinicius and I made music, when we forgot the world and were lost inside our songs, it was as if we’d held hands and jumped the divide, together.

  After Graça died, the leap was too wide. We both fell into the void, though Vinicius would never admit it. In his mind, he was left behind and dutifully tried to clean the mess. And me? I was the mess.

  I walked through the world as if I was wading through concrete. Food had no appeal to me. Attraction to another human being never crossed my mind. I grew skinny and unkempt in middle age. I drank too much. I tried the patience of the few loyal people who still considered me a friend. Vinicius was one of them. We both lived in Las Vegas during those years, but not together. When I was kicked out of an apartment he always got me a new one. He paid my rent. He visited. During his first visits Vinicius turned on the radio, trying to get me to hear some newfangled music or other. I’d tell him to shut it off. One day he arrived carrying an old record player. I told him I didn’t want it. He told me to throw it in the trash myself then. The machine was heavy, so it stayed.