The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  “Where’d you get all that dough?” Graça asked as we left the undertaker’s.

  “I’ve been saving it,” I replied.

  “For a rainy day, I bet,” Graça said, staring out the taxi window.

  Despite the fancy burial, the funeral itself was a simple affair, with only the Blue Moon boys and a handful of friends in attendance. Anaïs was there along with Graça’s dressmaker, and Madame Lucifer.

  The service was at eleven a.m., which was earlier than Graça and the Blue Moon boys had been awake in months. They all stood, bleary-eyed and solemn in the noonday sun as Senhor Pimentel’s casket was slid into the tomb, as if he was being stored away for eternity in a drawer. Graça wept like one of her movie heroines, her shoulders shaking, her makeup perfect under her black veil. Vinicius held one of her hands while I held the other.

  When the service was over, Vinicius took Graça back to our boardinghouse to rest before playing Urca. Chuck Lindsay would be in the audience again that night, and she insisted she’d rather be onstage than cooped up in our apartment. I stayed behind to tip the cemetery’s caretakers and say good-bye to our guests.

  “You are too skinny,” Anaïs said, resting her gloved hand on my cheek.

  Despite the heat she looked glamorous and lovely in a tight black dress and veiled hat. If she had asked me to run away with her in that moment, I would have gone without hesitation. But she simply lifted her veil and planted a kiss on my mouth before bidding me good-bye.

  Anaïs and the dressmaker chatted near the cemetery entrance, both waiting for Madame Lucifer. He stood before me in a black suit and lavender tie. A fedora shaded his face from the sun.

  “I don’t understand what happened,” I said.

  A few meters away, two cemetery workers cemented the edges of Senhor Pimentel’s tomb shut. Madame L. glanced at them.

  “A funeral happened, Miss Dores. I think you need to get out of this heat,” he replied.

  “I wanted him to leave,” I whispered. “That’s all.”

  My eyes stung. I wiped them with the heel of my hand, wetting my gloves. Madame L. put an arm around me. He smelled of sandalwood and starch.

  “You’ve got to keep your head, friend,” he said, his voice low and soft. “Times like these, it’s easy to get confused. We’re partners. We both care about Graça. We both need her to be a great success.”

  “I didn’t need this,” I said.

  Madame L. sighed. “Do me the favor of not acting surprised. When have we ever done things in half measures? Me and you, we make hard choices so others don’t have to. We get things done, sometimes not in the nicest of ways, but it’s the result that matters, Miss Dores.”

  His grip on my shoulder was firm. The next day there would be four perfectly round bruises where he’d held me.

  But that day, I rode in the backseat of his Lincoln with Anaïs as we zigzagged down hills and back into Lapa. They dropped me in front of my boardinghouse, where I went inside but did not climb the stairs to our room. Graça would be there, asleep in our bed or, worse, awake and in need of consolation. Facing her in the days after Senhor Pimentel’s death had been difficult; every look she gave me felt searching and suspicious. Every question she asked felt loaded with a weight I could not bear. This was why I’d left Vinicius to calm her when the police appeared, to prop her up at the morgue, and to take her home after the funeral. That day, I needed Vinicius myself. I checked to make sure my little notebook was in my purse, then left our boardinghouse and walked quickly to his.

  The door to Vinicius’s room was locked. I knocked. Inside there was shuffling. His voice. Voices. The door opened.

  Vinicius stood on the other side, still in the dress shirt and slacks he’d worn to the funeral. The shirt’s collar was open, too many buttons undone. His tie was gone. He’d never liked ties and took them off as soon as he could. His hair—floppy and too long, and usually slicked into the pompadour he’d taken to wearing—was mussed. A black lock fell into his eyes. His lips were pink and raw-looking.

  “Dor,” he breathed.

  “I thought we could write.”

  Vinicius nodded but made no move to let me inside. Behind him, I heard the creak of bedsprings. Over his shoulder, I saw Graça. She wore her black funeral dress, but it sagged strangely at the bust. Her eyes were still puffy. Her feet were bare and dangled off the bedside, barely reaching the floor. She wiggled her toes; her stockings were off.

  “She didn’t want to be alone,” Vinicius said.

  “I’ll go,” I replied, my voice too loud in my head, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton.

  Vinicius caught my hand gently. “Later, we’ll meet at the roda.”

  “Sure,” I mumbled.

  “I’m beat,” Graça purred. “Zip me up, amor. I’ll go with her.”

  Vinicius glanced at me, then moved toward Graça. I looked away, staring at the floor, its tiles cracked. I heard the crunch of a zipper’s teeth grinding closed. Graça sighed. There were whispers. The wet clicks of kisses. Then she was beside me, stuffing her black stockings into her purse, her perfume sickeningly sweet. I had the urge to run away, down the stairs, across the street, through the alleys, and never stop. Graça hooked my arm in her own and suddenly we were out on the street, squinting in the afternoon sun.

  “Don’t be mad, Dor. I know you’re surprised,” Graça said. “I was, too, at first. Well, a little surprised—I’d always suspected he liked me, but he was too hardheaded to admit it. After Papai . . . that night, when the police came, Vinicius was there, holding me. It was like we’d had a door between us this whole time, and then someone opened it and let him through.”

  It’s the result that matters. That is what Madame L. said and what I told Graça years later, during our last, terrible argument. It’s always easier to think that your intentions are just as important as the outcome, but this isn’t true. The outcome is everything. The outcome is what you live with.

  SAMBA, FOR A TIME YOU WERE MINE

  For a time you were mine.

  My love, we played so well!

  I held the curve of your guitar,

  I coaxed rhythm from your agogô bells.

  Your pandeiro drum

  had the smoothest skin.

  And in the moan of your cuíca,

  I forgot every sin.

  Well, I made a mistake,

  and thought you were my creation.

  Oh, Samba! Oh, Samba!

  Now you’re another’s inspiration.

  I traveled far away from you,

  to a land of ice and snow.

  I courted Rumba, Fox Trot,

  Jazz, Swing, and Tango.

  No matter where I landed,

  no matter how many trips,

  the sweetness of your melody,

  was always on my lips.

  When I sought you out again,

  you weren’t at any destination.

  Oh, Samba! Oh, Samba!

  Now you’re another’s inspiration.

  There is no one left who knew me in my youth; no one to resurrect the tall, dark-haired lapa of a girl I used to be. I do not imagine myself as being young, but I am still startled by the woman who faces me in the mirror: her spine curled like a shrimp’s, her skin as mottled as porridge. Her hair is so thin, you can see bits of scalp. She squints. She does not even look quite like a she at all, but like a collection of bones in an ill-fitting sack of skin.

  We are, all of us, trapped in bodies that cannot contain us. We are defined by these bodies and their parts. People’s voices can only go so high or so low. Their fingers can only stretch so far across a series of strings. Their lips and tongues vibrate only so fast against a metal mouthpiece. And even the finest instruments have shortcomings: a string can only be stretched so taut, a plank of wood carved only so thin, a sheet of metal bent only so far. But the music
in our minds can do anything. It can hit any note, move at any speed, play as loudly or as softly as our imaginations allow. In the deepest, purest parts of our imaginations there is no male or female, no bad or good, no villain or hero, no you or I. There is only feeling, and the exhilaration of feeling.

  When I remember our songs, this kind of purity returns to me. In my memory, I replay our sambas and it’s as if we are speaking urgently to someone we hold dear, giving them a message that is important, its delivery flawless. When I remember our music, there is the delicious perfection of fantasy, and also fantasy’s emptiness. To truly experience a song, you must actually hear it. So I faithfully put our records on my turntable, and listen to Noel’s tamborim drum occasionally drowning out Graça’s voice; Kitchen’s percussion competing with the soft melody line; Vinicius starting a song too hard on his guitar and making us lose the gentle moan of Bonito’s cuíca. If there was perfection, it was only in my imagination. But those imperfections return me to cramped studios and long nights, to that slippery, unknowable magic that occurred when we sat in a circle, without pride or expectations, and found a groove that we could ride into the morning. The real music always returns me to the girl I once was. It is treacherous for this very reason.

  I tremble when I slip Samba, for a Time You Were Mine out of its album sleeve, but I drop it onto the turntable, let the needle fall, and brace myself. It is a strange kind of devotion, like I am lashing myself with my own belt.

  Riacho Doce doesn’t exist anymore; I’ve made calls. The fields are owned by a conglomerate that bulldozed the Great House and the mill and the chapel to make room for more cane to make ethanol and rum. Machines are the harvesters now. There is no burning. There is no trace of the Pimentels or of anyone who worked in the fields or the house. This gives me no solace.

  Does he come to me at night, like a ghost in the movies, leaving puddles around my house, his fancy suit soaking wet, a gash on his head and fish in his pockets? That would be easier to bear.

  We all carry our burdens differently, and in ways that surprise us. The choices we make, in life as in the studio, are never isolated, though they might appear to be as we are making them. Nothing stands alone—no note, no melody, no beat, no decision—they all flow together in the end. They must.

  Why do I listen to these songs that make me tremble, make me weak, make me feel like I am being held underwater and cannot come up for air? Because I prefer them to that voice that speaks—even now—calling me Jega, hissing that I will be found out, that I am nothing but a messed-up kid, that I have nothing to give, that I am a hindrance and a hanger-on. His is a whisper so low that, for a long while, I believed it was my own. So I cut every record. I booked every show. I filed every copyright. I signed every contract. I befriended gossip columnists. I negotiated with agents and studio heads. I guaranteed that Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon made every call time and went to every premiere, even if I had to drag them kicking and screaming. I cleared every path with the grim determination of the best cane cutters. I heard only the parts, not the whole.

  SAMBA, FOR A TIME YOU WERE MINE

  Graça and Vinicius showed all of the common and irritating signs of early coupledom. They found excuses to touch each other: wiping a crumb from the corner of a mouth, patting a leg, fixing a tie, straightening a hat. Every trivial discovery about each other (You sleep on your side! You don’t like coconut milk, either!) brought with it a rapture between them, as if they’d just discovered the secrets of the universe. They walked arm in arm through Lapa as if floating through a fog and, during rodas, they stared at each other like only the two of them existed. They created a private language between them—a set of cues made up of smiles, raised eyebrows, pats, and the biting of lips that the rest of us saw but could not decipher. Onstage, this language increased. Sofia Salvador still danced and sang, but her focus had shifted. Her audience sensed this and, like Blue Moon and me, spent the entire show feeling as if they were watching a private dialogue in a code they couldn’t crack. Afterward, Graça and Vinicius raced into the dressing room, locking the rest of us out.

  The Blue Moon boys had varying reactions to Graça and Vinicius’s pairing off. The Brothers—Banana and Bonito—made jokes at the couple’s expense. Tiny was inspired, and romanced cocktail waitresses and cabaret girls with impressive fervor. Little Noel was brokenhearted and began drinking heavily. Kitchen was stoic, like an elder statesman who knew trouble was coming but wasn’t about to warn anyone.

  And me? I was annoyed that Vinicius skipped our songwriting sessions or, worse, brought Graça along and made doe eyes at her the entire time instead of truly working. After Urca shows no one except Vinicius went into Graça’s dressing room, and I wondered who was helping her remove her Sofia Salvador makeup—slathering cold cream over her face and neck, and then carefully wiping it away with a hot towel and rubbing her skin with witch hazel, like I used to do. Staring at the closed dressing room door, I wondered if Graça had taken on this task herself, or if she had Vinicius do it. They left our rodas arm in arm and went back to Vinicius’s place, where he’d sneak Graça inside. I did not go back to our empty room but hit the town. I’d wake in some stranger’s bed, or on the floor of one of the Blue Moon boys’ rooms after they’d let me crash there, my head throbbing, one of my eyes swollen shut and my hand unable to close from some bar fight or other. A few times I woke on the beach outside the Copacabana Palace. I’d be barefoot—how many pairs of shoes did I lose in those weeks?—with sand in my ears and stuck to my cheek, and I’d stare up at the Palace’s white towers and think: It’s only a matter of time.

  I believed I knew Graça and Vinicius better than they knew themselves. All of her life, Graça was never stingy with physical affection; she thrived on it. With friends and lovers alike she sat on laps, planted kisses on cheeks, danced too close, whispered in ears, held hands. At first, after being lavished with such attention, you might believe there was a bond between you and her. And there was; Graça was sincere in her affections but she cast them widely. Everyone was special to her, which made no one special. The sooner you realized this, the better. Now, if she decided to suddenly lavish you and only you with her attentions, you might feel as if you were different. As if you had won her. In order to keep this fixed attention, you would give in to her demands. You would serve her, and by serving her, you would take away any fear she might feel: of rejection, of disappointment, of betrayal. Stripped of fear, desire becomes comfort. And comfort was something Graça could get easily and from anyone. By giving her exactly what she wanted, you’d lost her for good.

  So I waited for the moment when Graça would use me as an excuse to get away from Vinicius, dragging me into the dressing room instead of him and saying, Oh boy, do I need a break from that old sock. Vinicius might pine for her, but in the end his pride would win out, and eventually he’d come back to our afternoon song sessions with more melodies than ever, and we would all laugh at their little romance. Life would return to how it was before, only better because, thanks to me, Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon were going to be movie stars.

  This was the story I told to console myself, even as Graça and Vinicius made a show of kissing each other on the SS Uruguay’s deck, as crowds of cheering fans and government-approved photographers watched from Rio’s docks.

  In her black dress, pearls, and black turban, Graça looked more like a chic society girl than the crowd’s dear Sofia Salvador. After Senhor Pimentel’s burial, Graça insisted on wearing black every day, even to Sofia Salvador’s farewell celebration at Rio’s port. A few days before our trip she’d dyed her hair coal black; Graça was a mess because of it. “I look like a vulture!” she’d wailed, and nearly canceled our trip to Los Angeles. I moved to console her but it was Vinicius who’d held her, told her she was the most beautiful vulture he’d ever seen, and convinced her to pack her bags for North America.

  Going abroad wasn’t a hard choice. The Blue Moon boys and Graça we
re bored playing Urca shows and living in the bubble of their fame. We were all tired of recording song after song for Victor, like every other samba band. And, after Senhor Pimentel’s death, we were ready for a change of scenery, me most of all. Every time a waitress or an overzealous fan rapped on the band’s dressing room door, I froze, wondering if it was police. Alone in our little boardinghouse room, I could not sleep, wondering if Madame Lucifer would appear at my door and warn me to change my name and move to Buenos Aires to avoid being caught. They were exaggerated fears, born of guilt and watching too many Hollywood films. Still, Senhor Pimentel’s sugar cube remained in Madame L.’s possession, and I felt exposed by that diamond pin as if it was a weight in my own pocket. So, when Chuck Lindsay proposed a bit part for Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon in a picture called Bye Bye, Buenos Aires, we all jumped at the chance.

  It was a turn of events that, months earlier, would have petrified me: giving up fame and steady income to travel into the unknown. We’d make a pittance on that first film—fifty dollars a week plus lodging—but Chuck said this was common. The studio was testing us out, seeing if we could hack movie work. While we were away, Madame L. wouldn’t receive his weekly cut of our earnings, but he was excited for our trip; he knew a golden goose when he saw one. Even if we made only one successful picture, upon our return to Brazil every casino and cabaret and recording company would pay top dollar for Sofia Salvador and her Blue Moon Band, Brazil’s greatest exports! Madame L., like the rest of us, like the entire nation, believed our stint in Hollywood would be not only successful but also temporary.

  The majority of the Uruguay’s passengers were North American tourists who could not comprehend the hubbub. They stared, confused, at our little group as we waved and blew kisses to the crowds.

  “Who’s famous?” a tourist beside me asked in English. “What’s happening?”