by Luiza Sauma
“You laugh like a donkey!” said Thiago.
“Thi, don’t be rude.”
She covered her face, still laughing, but embarrassed. I could have kissed her then. All of us were giggling. It was contagious. We laughed so hard that we missed most of the program. Once we had calmed down, Thiago made us promise that we wouldn’t ruin the next novela. We then watched the seven o’clock show, Ti Ti Ti, which was about a rivalry between two former best friends in the São Paulo fashion world.
“I don’t like this one as much,” said Thiago.
“Me neither,” said Luana.
“São Paulo’s stupid,” I said, though I had never been there. My contempt for São Paulo had been passed down through generations, like an heirloom.
“It’s the pit of the earth,” said Papai.
We all looked over at the doorway, where he was standing, wearing a gray T-shirt and jeans, leaning against the frame like a nerdy Marlon Brando.
Luana immediately stood up, but he waved her away, tutting under his breath. “Sit, sit. On the sofa.”
She sat back down.
“What’s wrong with São Paulo?” said Thiago.
“It’s ugly, dangerous, and everyone is obsessed with money.”
“Don’t we care about money?” I said.
“We care more about dinner. Luana, do you know … ?”
“Sim, doutor. It’s nearly ready.” She went to the kitchen, looking grateful to be leaving the room. She behaved differently towards Papai. He was her boss and we were not.
“What is this shit?” he said, gesturing at the TV.
“Ti Ti Ti,” said Thiago. “It’s very bad.”
“We’re going to eat now, so turn it off and wash your hands.”
“But Roque Santeiro is on next!”
That was the eight o’clock novela, about a saint who returns to his town to save it from money-grabbing landowners and politicians. The show was popular partly because it had been delayed for ten years by the dictatorship.
“André, don’t you have better things to do than watch this?” said Papai. “Like thinking about the vestibular?”
“Pai, we’re on holiday. The exams are a year away.”
“You’re not going to get into university with that attitude.” He walked over to the mostly empty bookshelf, pulled out a heavy, dog-eared book, and wiped the dust off it.
“Anatomia Humana,” he said, reading the cover.
He threw the book onto the sofa, where it landed with a thud between me and Thiago, who picked it up and started leafing through.
“Your brother is more interested than you,” said Papai.
I wanted to throw the book at his head. Wipe that smirk off his face. For years he had been the invisible man, never asking how school was going, but now he was suddenly interested?
“It’s ready,” said Luana, appearing by Papai’s shoulder. “Come and eat.”
At least I could delay reading the textbook for half an hour. Thiago had lost interest in it and was looking at the television, his eyes round and still. Roque Santeiro had started: the evil landowner and mayor were cackling over their plans.
“You’re too young for this, Thiago.” Papai walked over to the TV and switched it off. “Stick to cartoons.”
In the dining room, the mahogany table had been set with plates and cutlery, and bowls of rice and moqueca. We helped ourselves to the food.
“It looks fantastic, Luana,” said Papai, but she was no longer in the room.
“Thank you, doutor!” she called from the kitchen. “I hope it tastes good too.”
She must have already prepared her own plate and been eating it at the kitchen table.
As I ate Luana’s first moqueca, I remembered an incident a few weeks earlier, in Rio. Struggling with my maths homework on the dining table, I decided to take a break and get a drink. When I returned, with a glass of cold, sweet mate tea, Luana was looking at my math exercise book.
She saw me and jumped back. “Sorry.”
“How’s my homework looking?”
“Well …”
“Go on.” No way can this girl know something I don’t know.
She poked a thin brown finger at the book, pointing to a sum. “That one’s wrong.” Something to do with quadratic equations. I don’t remember exactly, but I remember her smile, which was two-thirds shy, one-third cocky.
“No, it’s not.” I took a sip of mate.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have been looking.”
She walked to the kitchen and turned on the taps. Washing the dishes, or whatever she did in there. I reworked the equation. How embarrassing—she was right.
Eating Luana’s moqueca in the blue house, remembering that conversation, I felt ashamed.
SIX
I met Esther in December, twenty-one years ago, at the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte Street. The pub was covered in tinsel and fairy lights, packed with drunk students, the windows steamed up. Everyone was shouting, giddy with freedom, no more classes till the new year. I was with my friends from UCL, who were all foreign students or the offspring of foreigners. I had lived in London for five years and knew, by then, that most of the natives kept to themselves. They were at home after all. Some of them had been at home for hundreds of years.
I saw her a few meters away, sitting on a sofa: a girl with shoulder-length dark curls, throwing her head back as she laughed. She had large brown eyes and a small mouth, painted red. A glass of red wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Silver tinsel round her wrist.
My friend Matt noticed that I was looking at her. “That’s Esther.”
“You know her?”
“Yeah, a bit.”
Matt was from Massachusetts and studied economics. His mother was Chinese, his father was English, and he had spent two years at an English boarding school, but he was American to the core: cocky and charming, everyone loved him. He now lives in New York. We never see each other.
“You like her?” he said.
“I don’t know her.”
“She’s a medic too—you should meet her. Hey, Esther!” he shouted across the room. She looked up and waved.
“Come ’ere.”
She walked over, still smiling, but looking slightly uneasy. Maybe she fancies him, I thought. Of course she does. She was wearing a red tartan dress with knee-high black boots.
“Hi, Matt. How are you?”
“Happy Hanukkah.”
“Thanks.” She laughed. “L’chaim!”
They clinked glasses and drank.
“This is my friend André—he’s from Brazil.”
She looked over and held out a hand. “I’m Esther.” We shook hands. “Are you on holiday in London?”
When I look back, there’s a shimmering aura around her, as if the room were blurred, with only Esther in focus. I was bowled over by her open, beautiful face and the jumpy way she moved.
“No, I’m studying medicine at UCL.”
“Oh, me too! What year are you in?”
“Final year.”
“Me too! Do you know what you want to specialize in?”
“Maybe psychiatry. Or tropical medicine.” I didn’t have a clue, but I thought that sounded impressive. “How about you?”
“Actually, let’s not talk about work, otherwise we’ll never stop.” She brought a palm up to her reddened cheek. “Sorry, I know I started it.”
At some point Matt moved away. I didn’t notice—he just wasn’t there anymore. I bought another round of drinks: red wine for Esther and a pint of lager for me, plus a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps. I was well-versed in English customs and I enjoyed them.
“Is it summer in Rio?”
“Yes. It’s probably thirtysomething degrees today.”
“Christmas on the beach—why would you leave that behind?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I like long stories.”
“It’s not the kind of story you tell someone the first time you meet.”<
br />
“Another time, then.”
“OK.” I grabbed at a safe question, one that English people love asking: “So what are you doing for Christmas? Or is it Hanukkah, like Matt said?”
“Oh, no, we’re terrible Jews and do the whole thing: Christmas tree, turkey, presents. We hide it from my gran because she’d have a heart attack.” Her eyes were shining. I wanted to kiss her. “What are you doing?”
I was planning to spend Christmas in my tiny apartment off Holloway Road, eating a takeaway. Papai had offered to buy me a plane ticket to Rio, as he always did, but this time I refused. I had gone home for Christmas every year since I started university, and each trip depressed me more than the last. The city’s familiarity felt alienating rather than comforting, especially at home, with that new maid working there. What was her name? Edilene, Papai’s second-to-last maid. Friends seemed happy to see me, but it felt like an act. They promised to call the next day, but then they didn’t, so I stopped calling too. They didn’t know why I had left.
“I might spend it with some friends in the countryside,” I lied. “Not sure yet.”
“Sounds nice, but Rio sounds better.”
I lit a cigarette and offered her the pack. “Want one?”
“Yes, thanks.” After she lit it, she inhaled audibly. “It’s so hot in here.” She fanned her face. “Want to get some air?”
We took our cigarettes and drinks outside and stood on Charlotte Street, coatless. It was a mild winter, but still we shivered. The sky was green-black, lit by the city, but I managed to count three stars. Esther pointed out the brightest and told me that it was Venus.
“How do you know that?”
“Someone else pointed it out to me once.” She drained her glass, no longer smiling. Her lipstick was fading, purpled by the wine. “Isn’t it sad, this time of year?” She looked at me and then back at the sky.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, everything about it. The music, the carols …” She was slurring her words, but trying not to. “Every Christmas song just reminds me that I’m not eight years old anymore, and I never will be again. Another year ending, time passing, and we’re just getting old.”
“We’re not old yet.”
“But we will be. It’ll be 1994 in a couple of weeks and, in six years, a new millennium. Can you imagine it? We’ll be thirty and then fifty and then eighty, but Christmas will always be the same. The same songs, the same decorations, the same trees.” She shook her head and laughed. “Sorry! I’m so drunk.”
“Don’t worry, so am I. I see what you mean.”
I put an arm around her and she looked up at me with those wide brown eyes. She was tiny. She made me feel tall. A group of office workers walked by, wearing Santa hats, sharing a bottle of wine, shouting, “Merry Christmas!”
“Merry Christmas,” we said.
When they had passed, I pulled her closer.
In those first sweet months, we told each other about our lives. Mamãe’s death, my life in Rio, Ipanema beach, monkeys skimming along telephone cables. Esther’s adolescence seemed impossibly exotic: the Victorian streets of northwest London, underage drinking by the Regent’s Canal; her all-girls school, full of overachievers. There had been other girls in London, but no one like her. She was clever, introspective, and laughed more than anyone else I knew. She studied too much and worried that it wasn’t enough. It was always enough—she was a perfect student—but she also liked to drink red wine, smoke, talk, and fuck. She told me about her exes and I batted away questions about mine. You’re the only one who matters, I said. Let’s forget the past.
We married in October 1994 at a registry office, with two guests, our witnesses: Matt and Nina, one of Esther’s school friends. Her parents were furious and so was Papai, down the phone from Rio, but we didn’t see the point in waiting. We were in love. Esther breathed life into everything; she breathed life into me. When we got together, I realized how exquisitely lonely I had been. I had struggled with the speedy grayness of London, the drab food and the language, slowly translating myself into someone who could belong. More than anything, I had struggled with my memories. Esther gave me new ones: walking on Hampstead Heath, admiring the view of the city; Sunday lunch, weekends in Europe, marriage; waking up next to her every day, feeling that all would be well.
And then it wasn’t. The euphoria of love dissolved as the years went by. We were no longer mysterious to each other. We had children. I suppose I didn’t help out much. We had a series of cleaners—from Poland, the Philippines—who came weekly, but Esther did everything else. The complaints started small, after Bia was born: a creased forehead, a look of distaste, a sigh. I didn’t spend enough time with the baby, I didn’t like to change nappies, I didn’t clean up after dinner, I didn’t make dinner, ever.
“Don’t men do anything in Brazil?”
“No, I told you—we had maids.”
“Maids!” She’d laugh, still in love. “For God’s sake.”
I tried to do better. I learned how to iron, which was a personal victory—my parents had never done housework in their lives. I put dishes in the dishwasher and pressed Start on the microwave. Hannah came along and I changed her nappies once in a while. But then Esther quit her job—she was a pediatrician—to look after our daughters and ended up doing everything herself, even when she returned to work part-time, some years later.
She knew what she was getting into. She could have settled down with any of the affable English medics who were half in love with her—men who liked to cook, men who assumed pitifully sincere expressions when talking about feminism (I have nothing against such men, but I’m not one of them)—but she chose me, the unknown. She liked my foreignness and I liked hers.
After a few years, the haze lifted. We were just people after all. We still loved each other, but it was a quiet sort of love, not the lunacy of youth. That’s the nature of love; there’s no way around it—time rubs away the shine, like gold leaf from wood.
But everything was fine until that singer, Luana’s double, came to my birthday party. After that night, after we made love in the morning, I became frighteningly detached. I had breakfast, I laughed with the girls about the night before, I got dressed and went to the supermarket; I went to work the next day, saw my patients, and talked to colleagues about our weekends—but my movements felt robotic, my mind slow and panicky, caving in like a blown-up building. Somehow I held it together. I remember looking at a patient’s records while she sat next to me, crying, her husband was dying of cancer and she wanted something for her sadness, to help her cope—so I told her, in my best caring-doctor voice, that I could write her a prescription, but she might be better off without it, because the grief was inevitable, something she had to work through, and she agreed and thanked me sincerely—but I was on autopilot, not really there, an anchor cut off from its boat, watching the world from below, through a mile of ocean. No one would notice, I thought, no one would know. And then the letter came.
“I think you should leave,” said Esther, that night in June.
“Leave?”
“Yes, for a few months. Or forever. I don’t know.”
It was a Monday. We were in the bathroom, getting ready for bed. The evening sky, through the half-open blinds, still had a touch of light in it. I tried to take her hand, but she withdrew it, behind her back.
“I’m not joking.”
“Come on, let’s go to bed.”
I was trying to be playful, jovial—anything to change her mind. It was all an act. Almost a year had passed since my birthday, and three months since the letter arrived. I had transferred it from my blazer pocket to a shoebox at the back of my wardrobe, and read it several times a week. It still smelled like Brazil.
Earlier on, at dinner, I had drunk a few glasses of wine as Esther watched me, seething. We used to get drunk together—blindingly drunk, till the world disappeared—but now I was on my own. The girls were quiet, which was unusual, and I caught Bia rolling
her eyes at her sister. I was talking too much, too loudly, about work, my patients, things they weren’t interested in. After the girls left the kitchen, Esther washed up while I finished off the bottle. I carried on talking, but the tap water drowned me out, gushing into the sink. Then she walked out, without a word, and joined the girls in the living room. I sat for a while, listening to the musical hum of the TV and their laughter—all three of them. I went upstairs and did a few hours of work.
“You didn’t used to drink like this,” she said later in the bathroom, as we got ready for bed.
“Not this again.”
“Seriously, you didn’t. What happened?”
I considered telling her about the singer, the letter, the dream I’d been having, about Luana—but, no, I couldn’t. “It just helps me to relax.”
“You don’t look relaxed, you look drunk and mad. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”
Whoosh, went the ocean in my ears, blocking her out. Esther was above me, on the boat, sailing away. I was the lost anchor. “There’s nothing going on. We’ve been through this before.”
“You think I can’t tell that you’re hiding something? I know you. You’re not really here; you haven’t been for the past year. I mean, your body’s here, and you’re busy filling it with alcohol and talking nonsense, but your mind is elsewhere. Where have you gone to?”
“Esther, what are you talking about?” I laughed, though my heart was slamming against my chest. “I’m right here.”
“It wasn’t a literal question, for God’s sake!”
“Don’t shout, the girls will hear.”
“Like they haven’t heard it a million times. The other day Hannah asked me if we were getting divorced.”
“And what did you say?”
Esther stared back. “I told her not to worry”—she looked at the floor—“but I’ve changed my mind. You, your secrecy—I can’t deal with it anymore.” She turned her back to me.
“I’m not hiding anything.”
She laughed bitterly. I tried to touch her shoulder and she shrugged me off. I could see us in the mirror: older and unhappier than we once were. She started to brush her teeth with an electric toothbrush.