Hair Side, Flesh Side

by Helen Marshall

  “Today was not good,” Beatriz said at last.

  “Sorry,” Simon muttered. “I’m sorry. It’s. Well. I’m sorry.”

  “They are angry. They want to know who this is they have brought to their country, this man who does not know what art is.”

  “This is Brazil,” he pleaded. Simon could feel the tickle of those soft clumps of hair on the back of his neck. “What do you want me to say to you? How much does it really matter?”

  Something rippled across Beatriz’s face. At first he didn’t know what it was, only that it made her ugly. Then he realized why he didn’t know it.

  Anger.

  No one had shown him anger in six months. Pity, yes. Sadness, yes. Worry. Concern. But not anger.

  He thought she was going to slap him. But she didn’t slap him. Her eyes narrowed.

  “We know what art is,” she said. “In Brazil, we know what art is.”

  Her eyes flicked up, but not at him. Up toward the chicken-scratch silhouette of a bird intersected with black lines. A name, maybe. Or a word.

  “That—” She paused, her mouth twisting. Were the Brazilians beautiful? Had he ever really thought that? He couldn’t imagine this face as ever being beautiful, it was so full of anger. “That is pichação. Wall writings. Not so common here, sim? You find it in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, where the young people are less happy.”

  “I thought everyone was happy here.”

  He knew it was a lie as soon as he said it. Weak. He saw himself suddenly the way Beatriz did, the way the girl in the plane had. A pale-skinned gringo. A stranger. Condescending. Smug. Was that what the cameras saw?

  “What? We Brazilians with our suntans? Our perfect beaches? Our perfect happiness? Fweh. They say everyone in America is happy, yes? That is the dream of your country? No one here is happy.” She gave him a look that might have been disgust. “The city is beautiful. But it is not made for the children. So they write their names on it, in the shape of the city. A giant bird. Pichação.”

  “What does it say? The writing?” Simon asked.

  The sun was just setting behind the crest of the building, sending down blinding showers of light. He squinted as he tried to find the markings again. The jagged silhouette. The toothed wings.

  “It is nothing. Just a name. A name inside the city.”

  Night lowered its blanket across the city, adumbrating the writing in darkness. Simon looked at Beatriz again. Unlovely Beatriz with her hair dark and coarse tied so tightly to her skull. Her face had lost its knife-sharp edge. This should have made her prettier. It didn’t.

  There was a gentle rumbling sound nearby: the car engine. The driver tapped the window, and Beatriz looked away. Gestured to him curtly. “You should sleep now. Tomorrow will be harder.”

  Simon nodded, not trusting his voice. He took his bag out of the car, slung it over his shoulder and began to move toward the hotel door. But he stopped. Turned. There was something about the writing that didn’t make sense. Something absurd about it, some kind of impossibility tugging with fish-hooks at the edges of his mind.

  “How do they do it? How do they get up there?”

  Beatriz hadn’t moved. “The pichadores are very brave. They must go as high as possible if it is to remain. So the city cleaners cannot reach it.”

  “But surely it is dangerous? They must fall?”

  “Com certeza,” she said. “Of course, some of them fall.”

  Simon waited a beat, but there was nothing more forthcoming. He shook his head.

  Most nights, Soledad would go out through her window, and let the great dark night carry her into the city. But as she grew older, she found herself heavier and heavier, her growing body clumsy and leaden on the wind. And so she learned the trick of it: she would strip herself naked of the simple cotton nightgown she wore to bed, and then she would strip off her skin as well, all the heavy, new-grown bits of her and she would lay them in a neat pile underneath the covers of the bed. Then, made light and smooth without her skin on, she would fly easier: a ghost, a ghost of the beautiful city.

  One day when the city had grown silent and drowsy, when Soledad returned to her room, she discovered her mother sitting on the bed, cradling the cotton nightgown and her skin as well, like a baby in her arm. They looked upon each other, mother and daughter. “I do not know you, Soledad,” she said. “You have become a stranger to me.”

  “I am who I have always been, mother.”

  “Do you love me, Soledad?”

  “Of course.”

  “You are happy, here, in this house?”

  “Of course.”

  “You must be grateful, Soledad. So much has been given for you.”

  Soledad thought upon this. “I will give you my skin,” she said. “I do not need it. It makes me heavy, and I cannot fly so easily.”

  “No, Soledad. You must wear your skin. You must keep it close around you like a blanket. You must make the feijoada, and find a husband.”

  “It is so heavy,” Soledad whispered. “Why must I find a husband? My husband is the city. My husband is the moon. My husband is the great dark night.”

  “Those are not husbands, Soledad,” said her mother. “You must do this if you love me.” And Soledad put on her skin, and the next day it was bigger and heavier than it had ever been. When Soledad went to the kitchen to prepare the daily meal, she saw her mother and her mother saw her, and her mother smiled, watching her cut and scrape and stir. Watching her sweep the floor with the soft-haired broom. Keeping from the edges of the room where the windows looked out onto the beautiful city.

  Beatriz was wrong.

  A full night’s sleep in the icebox air-conditioning of the hotel cooled Simon’s skin. Hardened it into a super-thin shell of protective plastic. He matched the Brazilian intelligentsia stare for stare. Didn’t feel anything. He felt the panic easing. Glibness returned. He smiled for the cameras, shook hands, never mentioned his books, spoke only of the great voice of Brazil, how it deserved an audience, how it needed to be heard.

  “Memory,” he told them, “art is memory, and the city of Brasilia, it has to remember if it is to make art.”

  Then he smiled. It was a confident smile. What Jeremy used to call his bastard smile. And seeing that bastard smile, the crowds smiled too. They applauded. They gave him their hearts.

  Simon felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him.

  The buzz of the day carried over into the evening and then past midnight when the air had gone dusky and flat like cola left out too long. Still, Simon felt buoyant. Triumphant. Generous with his wit. He was a bright sun circled by a handful of satellite planets: dark-haired, dark-eyed artists, grumbling, fawning, earnest as sin or giggly with dope and booze.

  “It’s a disaster,” said Gabriel, a Somebody among the Brazilians—all delicate beauty and aristocratic despair. “The worst city ever. Lucio Costa was a crank, an eccentric.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Simon told him, gamely, kindly. He winked at Julia—some sort of glassblower? or a potter?—who kept trying to find a way to make him properly Brazilian by weaving a fuchsia flower into his hair. Luan, her sister, helped. Pretended to help.

  “No, no,” said Gabriel. “Oh God. It is very bad. It’s not even Brazilian. That’s the problem. It’s not our art, it was not built for us.”

  Luan’s fingers were combing his hair, tying in flowers. Her breath tickled his ear. She was whispering that he was very fofo. That seemed to be a good thing in her estimation.

  But there was Gabriel still—beautiful and dark-haired. A good-looking man. Long eyelashes. A beautiful man’s mouth. Smug and desperate at the same time.

  He pointed an emphatic finger in Simon’s face. “Brasilia was built for the automobile in a society where no one can afford automobiles. It is a failure. The city is a failure.” He said this very triumphantly.

  “Tell me,” Gabriel said, “tell me this city is a failure. Surely you think
it is a failure?”

  “Let me tell you, fofinho,” Luan whispered, “what they say about Brazilian women.” And she did, and Simon tried to keep a poker face while Gabriel’s triumphant finger blurred and doubled in front of his nose.

  “It’s very modern,” he managed in reply.

  “Aha!” Gabriel cried in ecstatic response. “There you have it. Very modern. But who wants to live in a city designed like a modern art exhibit? Who, my friend, wants modern? We want memory. It is like you said. Art is memory, and this city, fweh! This city remembers nothing. You know what they say about Lucio Costa? They say he died like a little bird. A little bird. É mesmo? It is crazy!”

  Now Julia was finished with the flower. She draped her arms around his neck, cat-like, but neither Gabriel nor his sister seemed to notice or care. Simon began to lose track of which limbs and appendages belonged to which artist.

  All at once, it was too much.

  He made his excuses while he found the men’s room. Inside it was empty and the air was blessedly cool, free of smoke and the city’s humidity. He splashed water on his face.

  The door swung open lazily: it was Gabriel. Beautiful, long-lashed Gabriel.

  “Ah, here you are,” he said. His voice too loud in the small space. “The sisters, they worry. Americans are their favourites. They are happy when the tourists come. The tourists buy many things. Americans, they like Brazil, do they not?” He took position at the urinal and unzipped, comfortable, unabashed.

  Simon turned away. Cupped more water in hands.

  “But it is not the sisters, is it, my American friend? No. You would not like the sisters.”

  A creeping heat gumshoed up Simon’s body. He kept his eyes locked on the mirrored reflection of himself. The water slid off the curve of his chin. He could hear the steady noise of Gabriel urinating.

  “I wonder, what is it that you come to Brazil for? Escape, maybe? Or is it just that you are looking for something? Something beautiful? Something to remember Brasilia?”

  The words were a tangle in Simon’s throat. He wanted to run. He didn’t want to run. He could feel the heat ballooning his cock, and he coughed. Doused his face with water again.

  “I have embarrassed you?”

  There was the sound of a zipper, and then that beautiful face appeared in the mirror reflection beside Simon’s own.

  “You are like a little bird, and I have put you to flight. Do not be embarrassed, my friend. We are artists, you and I.”

  Then Simon was alone again with only his erection and the scent of something musky and male in the space like a shadow where Gabriel had stood, very close, beside him. He suddenly very much wanted to be back in the car with its gloriously tinted windows. Happy in the knowledge that none of these people could likely afford one to follow him.

  He fled back into the night air. Found Beatriz quickly, thank God, and seeing his panic she took his arm and led him away. Made the appropriate signals to the group that they were finished, the night was at an end, her charge had very important things to do in the morning that required him to sleep.

  “They are foolish, those people,” Beatriz said as she steered him, weak-legged, from the courtyard. “Do not mind them.”

  “I don’t,” Simon said. Tried to say. “They’re just artists. They’re all like that, artists. It doesn’t matter.”

  He settled heavily in the car, and wiped pink petals from his jacket. His body was sticky with sweat, made suddenly frigid by the air-conditioning.

  “God, it’s like this everywhere, isn’t it? It never changes.” He shook his head. “I could write the story of Brasilia and it would be easy: in 1957, Lucio Costa envisioned the city of Brasilia in the shape of a giant bird. But Lucio Costa—he couldn’t see his way into it. A bird is a lousy metaphor for a city.”

  Simon mopped sweat from his forehead. Put his hand to his lip. Tasted the salt of it, and the faint ichor of damp cigarette smoke still clinging to his fingers. Imagined briefly, vividly, what it might be like to have Gabriel lick it off him.

  That damned erection again.

  There was quiet for a time. Simon was surprised to find his face was wet. Tears. God, he hated crying.

  “Damnit,” he said at last. Beatriz’s eyes flicked to him. He looked away. Cursed more softly. “Just goddamn it, okay? Leave me alone, would you? Just. I don’t know. Stop staring.”

  Her eyes flicked away from him.

  This is it, he thought. Here I am, the voice of my generation. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Who says that about a person?

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said at last. “It’s just. You look at that writing—the, what, the wall writing—you look at those kids and you think they are terribly brave because they believe so strongly, they want their art so badly.” This time it was Simon staring. Simon growing angry. Angry or something like anger. “Some of them fall. Of course some of them fall. But the thing is. The thing is that we want them to fall. That’s the fucking truth of it. We want them to fall. We want them to fall. Why the hell shouldn’t they fall?”

  He stared through the tinted glass out at the city, the grand promenades, the carefully orchestrated and arranged city blocks, planned perfectly. Planned to be what? A plane? A bird? Something with vast wings of bone shedding chemo hair as it flew?

  Beatriz touched his hand. He looked away from the window, met her eyes. They were not wide and unblinking. There were lines of something—pain, perhaps—around them and her face was soft, softer than he had seen it, but her hand was strong: the veins thick and ropelike under the papery skin.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  Soledad’s body grew thicker and heavier until her mother brought her to see the doctor, and the doctor said that Soledad had something inside of her.

  “It is a bird, mother,” Soledad wanted to say. “There is a bird living inside my ribcage, and it sings to me in the great dark night. It teaches me to fly.”

  “It is a baby,” said the doctor. And Soledad’s mother smiled very fiercely.

  “No, no, mamãe,” Soledad said. “I am afraid. I am afraid of it. How will I fly without my little bird?”

  Beatriz took him away from the Esplanade—away from the Cathedral and the statues, away from the civic buildings and theatres and hotels. They passed row after row of clean, white buildings, each identical. And then she led him to the top of one, identical to all the others. It looked older. Worn but clean.

  The air was cold. It sucked and pulled at the thin linen shirt Simon had worn to the party. He didn’t like heights. Never had. Didn’t like the way they made you feel like something else. The way that the empty space suddenly seemed like a living thing drawing you closer to it until you could just step off over the edge.

  See if you hung in space. See if you plummeted.

  But across that living thing, the vast summoning chasm, across it, on the building opposite, were strata of angular black lines punctuated with windows and balconies.

  “My mother lived here many years ago. It was not so good back then. It was hard for my family. Wide streets, they are also good for tanks. They are good for armies. This has not always been a happy country. We do not always live easily with our neighbours.”

  She sniffed, and the sound was almost lost in the whistling breath of the night.

  “My grandmother used to tell me about her: that when my mother was born, there was a bird, and the bird was always trapped inside of her. She died when I was very young, but I remember her. Happy. And not happy.”

  Darkness falling. The sky a peculiar shade of grey somewhere between pewter and gunmetal, darkening. Lights came on in the windows across the gap. Bodies outlined against the light. Silhouettes moved. Arms black and crooked.

  “I have seen them,” Beatriz murmured. “The boys, the poor ones who climb. I have seen them drop from the sky.”

  They were very close to the edge. Too close. He could see the shape of a bird, jagged, bla
ck against the white superblock. And in it a name. He thought he could read it. Soledad, it said. I am alone, it said.

  “I don’t understand. Aren’t they afraid of falling?”

  “Afraid?” Her eyes were very wide, very dark. “Com certeza. Of course they are afraid. Of course they might fall. But this is how we know we are not alone in the city.”

  “Come away from the window,” said Soledad’s mother. “The child is crying for you.”

  “But I do not want a child,” she said. “Let it be a bird for me. Let it be the great dark night.”

  “No,” said her mother. “I had a bird inside me once. I named her Soledad, because she was so beautiful and I was so lonely. But no one should be as lonely as you are, anjinho. There are so many ways to live in the high places of the world. The baby is beautiful.”

  Soledad did not turn; she dreamed she was free of her skin out there over the city.

  This is how Simon learned to fly:

  He hung in the air as the wind whipped around him. Beatriz, peculiarly graceful, beside him. Muscles strained. Pulled and slacked. Her form, incandescent. Alive. Beautiful in a way that only pure movement could be beautiful. The kind of movement that seemed to throw off sparks. She was at home with the bright city laid out beneath her. She was at home in the air.

  The rope pulled tight against Simon’s paunching stomach, grabbed up between his legs, cradled his crotch. It hardly felt secure, hardly felt safe, but that was the point, wasn’t it? It shuddered, held as he swung out after her.

  His fingers rubbed raw against the concrete of the wall, but he planted his feet. The solvent smell of the paint burned and twitched in his nostrils, but the wind tore it away from him. Left him feeling clean and empty. He flicked his wrist and now there was a wing. Jagged. Toothed feathers cutting the concrete. And another wing. The sleek shape of its breast, body, flanks, tarsus.