All Is Beauty Now

by Sarah Faber

  He is tired of alarming people. A voice says, Go back. His own. He swims toward the shore until he stumbles onto the sand and waves at the group of people higher up on the beach; some wave back before they disperse. Then he walks on for a few minutes until he finds the spot in the sand, the very spot they stood the night of Luiza’s belated birthday celebration. They had watched gulls bob on the water and Luiza said each bird should have a name: Miguel, Felicity, Gordon. Something silly like that. Eventually, they’d gotten up from the sand and walked the thirty minutes back toward the Copacabana Palace Hotel, as he is doing now, and their conversation turned to books, as it often did, because they were usually easier to discuss than life.

  ‘I just finished the diaries of a woman from São Paulo. Children of the Dark,’ Luiza told him, staring off toward the mountains on the other side of the bay. ‘She lived in a favela with three children all by herself. She collected paper in the streets to sell, and some days had no food at all. She talks about a little boy who was so hungry he ate bad meat and his whole body swelled up.’

  ‘Did he live?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She stopped then and turned toward the mountains, the favelas that line their peaks. ‘How can all those desperate people be up there, with nothing, and we’re down here with everything, and everybody just stays where they are?’

  ‘It’s like that everywhere in South America though, isn’t it? We have no special problems here.’ Hugo knew that this was a ridiculous thing to say, but he was tired, and too agitated for one of her heartfelt laments. Normally, it was one of the things he loved about her, but at that moment he felt hollow, scoured out—typical of his ‘in-between’ periods.

  ‘I think we need a revolution here,’ she said, still transported, still staring off into the distance. ‘It’s a wonder they don’t come down from those hills and kill us all in our beds.’

  ‘At least they have a nice view… usually it’s the other way around, and the rich people have the panorama.’ She looked at him then, not with the disgust he knew he deserved but saddened. Something had shifted between them, and now she was the one earnestly asking questions while he was insincere and glib. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, more quietly, ‘don’t wish for revolutions. They are often bloodiest to the poor. Reform is the best we can hope for.’

  She snorted a little, in that way of young people who must endure the tepid aspirations of the middle-aged. Even she had begun to tire of him. This, he thinks now, must have been why she preferred him when he was high. If he’d been high that night, he would have dropped to his knees and drawn out battle plans with her in the sand. For too long he had depended on her admiration of him because, he sees now, he had lost that of his wife. Dora did not want him ill, and Luiza did not want him well; in her eyes, he was better, smarter, more beautiful when he was sick. Maybe he was just one of the tragic, marginal people she liked to imagine herself fighting for. Or was she right—by agreeing to treatment was he giving up the best, most essential part of himself? Again he feels the pull toward the water, toward his promise that if she were to come back, they would stay. Stay in this golden town and never leave.

  But instead he walks, and imagines what he might tell her, what might interest her. Would she be excited by what was happening here now? There were no revolts, no riots in the streets, but there had been some faint rumbles of dissatisfaction: students protesting, unions organizing. He had sometimes mused in the past that the same perfect climate and genial temperament that made Brazilians so warm and open also made them ineffective. There was a joke: No one fought in that revolution—it was during the rainy season. But now: a barely perceptible shift in air currents, a palpable unease among the moneyed people. His people. Somewhere, lately, a serpent’s egg has hatched, and the collective intangible energy of millions of hungry, dissatisfied souls is keeping it warm at night. Another thing he has to leave behind—something was changing in this country, some current beneath the surface. She would have wanted to see this—she never would have wanted to leave.

  She, like him, always saw traces, bits of ephemera, strange things in the margins: a headless chicken in an alleyway tied up in red string, an empty bottle of wine beside it. Witchcraft, someone would explain casually. Maybe macumba, or voodoo. Things other people seemed to ignore. And if he pivots in the sand, he can see the apartment building where a friend of hers lives, facing the beach. Luiza told him she’d once stood on its fifteenth-floor balcony and saw something red and glowing in the sand. Something radioactive had washed up, she feared, or maybe it was just a new breed of phosphorescent jellyfish. But she could not stop staring and finally took the elevator down, walked between cars and across the street and onto the sand. A single red candle placed in a hand-dug pit. More voodoo. It unnerved her for days. ‘Why can’t they keep it up in the hills?’ Dora had sighed. ‘That used to be such a classy neighbourhood.’ Every monkey on his own branch. He jerks around now, sure he will see that same candle, sure that his memory has conjured it, but there are just some people stretched out in the sand smoking and laughing, others fifty yards away playing a game of futebol in the twilight. Beyond them he can see the hills that overlook Guanabara Bay, and still, even now, wet and tired and drugged, he sees the threads, the connections between things—Luiza and this city and the people who came before them and everything he’ll leave behind.

  ‘It’s true,’ he says to no one. To her.

  It’s true we are all steeped in longing, and wish for that golden time. That is the curse they brought when they came, Cabral’s men, who sailed from Portugal in search of gold and coffee, sugar and rubber. They entered the bay in January and thought it was the mouth of a great river. They called it Rio de Janeiro. The River of January. And they gazed upon the Tupi people and were themselves warmed by their naked, red, sun-covered bodies. And they wrote letters home, wrote of the beauty of these people who felt no shame, and their generosity, for the men gave freely of their weapons and fruit, and the women laid down with them (they said) and fucked them sweetly and were not dishonoured. And as darkness gathered over Europe, reformations and counter-reformations, these men attained in this bay a paradise here on earth for which they neither had to atone nor die, and after they learned from the men and impregnated the women, they enslaved them and then longed forever for those first, innocent days, free and without shame. This is what he should have told her, that night on the beach.

  So the masses come now, down from the hills and from the drylands of the northeast, and they want back in, want their little bit of the beach, and they edge out The Copacabana Way of Life, just as she would have wanted, and he is a monster to ever grieve for it because it was always its own kind of lie, and maybe something better, something more will corrode the golden sheen and replace it, red and seething and alive. But he does, he does miss it—like Cabral’s bloody conquerors, he aches for the time before, their before. Before he was ill, before she saw him pull his own hair from his bleeding scalp, before he broke her heart. Before she was gone.

  He could keep walking, past the hospital, beyond the city limits, into the mountains. Away from the harbour and its waiting ships. No amount of speaking to Luiza in his mind has brought her back, but maybe this is not the right time—he is medicated. His senses, his receptors, are dulled. If he ran from the hospital, hid in the hills, waited until he was high again—maybe then he could hear her.

  But before the next high there will be a low. When this nascent clarity clouds over, he will begin to slide downward, and on his way down he will have just enough time to feel it: a perverse nostalgia for this moment right now. For this moment of understanding, at last, that despite all his futile seeking, she really is gone, and soon he too must leave. And for his grief, for the capacity to miss and love Luiza in the normal, human way. Grief, after all, will eventually respond to solace. Grief can be consoled by love, by literature, by the childish belief that they’ll be reunited someday. But depression will follow eventually, and when it does, he won’t be a
ble to grieve for her. He’ll barely be able to imagine her. The once-dazzling ideas will be too numerous, come too fast, crowding out the light until they suffocate and there is nothing. Frenetic, confused, feral, he’ll pace the halls at night, trying to remember her face. Trying to retrieve this deep, aching feeling of mourning her.

  DORA

  Dora wakes to the sound of bells and sunlight flooding through the white curtains. She feels groggy and bloated—she’s overslept. It must be late. She’s embarrassed, even though at first she can’t remember where she is. But soon images take shape, arrange themselves into a memory: last night, one of the sisters making up a bed for her, though Dora can’t recall any arrangements being made, any discussions had about where she would stay or for how long. She doesn’t even know when she left that perfect garden. She does remember being desperate to stop thinking, stop feeling, and then quickly swallowing a sleeping pill from the bottle in her purse while Sister Medeiros pulled back the blanket and sheets at a perfect angle and laid out a clean, white nightgown for her. Dora had to resist the impulse to ask her to stay and tuck her in. She thought then of her years at Catholic school, how comforting the routine had been, bells ringing out, rationing the day. It startled her how grateful she was, almost thirty years later, to again feel voided of autonomy, guided by a reassuring pattern of actions and rituals.

  ‘There is always a sister available for counsel if you should need it,’ the sister said, taking her hand. ‘Day or night.’ Her palm was dry and warm, and Dora held it up to her cheek for a moment while the woman kindly said nothing.

  ‘Luiza.’ It comes out of her mouth before she’s even formed the thought in her head, before she has time to remember that she didn’t find her. Then something cold floods her spine, her stomach. Now, she tells herself, let go. Collect the girls, discharge Hugo, embrace the maids, Bechelli, even Georges. Say goodbye. But how will she get back home? She sits immobilized on the bed and waits for someone to come and show her where to go next.

  And soon someone does come. There is a gentle knock at the door and Sister Medeiros pokes her head in, speaking softly. ‘Senhora? Could you please come with me?’

  ‘Sim, sim. I’m coming.’

  The sister waits outside as Dora rises and dresses quickly, too relieved to have something to do to ask why.

  Fifteen minutes later, Dora sits on a lacquered pew, alone now, late-morning light spilling in through the chapel’s stained glass windows. Despite the bright rays of light, she feels herself slipping away again. The sleeping pills have made her fuzzy, unable to keep her eyes open. There is something damp around her mouth. Drool. Wipe it away. Then a shape. Female. Blood orange sun behind her, multicoloured spots going by like tiny comets. They shrink as Dora’s eyes adjust to the brightness, but the shape is still there, faceless, the filtered light a corona behind it. She will be our angel.

  The last one had the right hair but the wrong face. This one has the wrong hair but the right face.

  This one says, ‘Hello, Mother.’

  Dora doesn’t shout or cry. She just reaches out to touch Luiza’s face, to make sure it’s real. But the touch doesn’t reassure her, because her hand doesn’t feel like it belongs to her body. They sit like this in the chapel for several minutes, her daughter’s hand lying over her own, still cupping her cheek, until Luiza begins to shift uncomfortably.

  ‘I don’t think I can explain it all now, but I promise I will.’ Luiza gently slides a thumb under her mother’s eye, wiping away tears Dora hadn’t known she was crying. ‘Will you come with me to Midday Prayers?’

  Now Dora is in another room, full of people. She is shivering, being touched, Luiza’s warm hands on her upper arms, guiding her. Now she is being manoeuvred into another hard, shiny pew, as Luiza takes her place at the front of the room with the other sisters, facing Dora. Now they are singing, Luiza’s mouth a perfect, untrembling O.

  I will praise you Lord… I will wake the dawn.

  Psalms fill the chapel and Dora feels something knotted inside her loosen. Watching Luiza sing, standing perfectly still, not even looking at her, Dora has trouble breathing and has to close her eyes and focus on the singing until she can hear her own thoughts again. She has everything she wanted now, she tells herself, everything she needs. She has her daughter back.

  EVIE

  ‘What do you mean, bust him out?’ asks Magda, riding her bicycle back and forth along the sidewalk just outside their front gate. She’s too prickly from boredom to bother hiding her contempt for Brigitta, who either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

  ‘Like you bust someone out of prison!’ says Brigitta, with the bursting energy that, just a few days ago, Evie had wanted so much for herself. Maybe Evie is misremembering Brigitta’s prodding gaze upon the mute man at the hospital, her fitful kindnesses, how her eyes have turned cold and hard as enamel. Brigitta is the only one who imagined they could get her father out of hospital, who is brave enough to do it. Doesn’t that prove she still wants to protect people?

  ‘E. and I saw this poor, dreadful man there. I bet they’re all getting shock therapy. Haven’t you read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? It’s basically torture.’

  Evie cringes every time she thinks of the man—the boy?—at the hospital, with his collapsed face, his silent cry. He may not even have been as old as Luiza. They left him alone in that room, disoriented and raw, to fight against his own body. Did he scream inside? Beg them to stop? How much damage had they done?

  ‘We’ll pretend we’re just going to visit and then we’ll bust him out!’ Brigitta continues. ‘He is your dad.’

  ‘I know he’s my dad,’ says Magda.

  ‘Well, I would do it for my dad.’

  Magda looks startled, like Evie, by the thought of their father suffering some violent electric treatment. Shock therapy. She doesn’t actually know what that is, but it does sound painful and wrong, and like a lie—shot through with lightning like Frankenstein’s monster in the movie they saw, deformed and terrifying. Terrified. Like he was in Florida.

  ‘And when I told Brigitta about how we saw Mom with Carmichael, she said it sounds like Mom’s just shunting Dad off so she can have our last weeks here all to herself.’ Even as Evie says it, she can feel herself blinking too much, not believing it. But she needs Brigitta to inflame Magda, and herself. She needs Brigitta to make the plan and Magda to come along, to protect her and their father as they all move, perfectly and powerlessly, toward his rescue.

  ‘Okay. Fine,’ says Magda, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back on her bicycle. ‘But you don’t get to talk to him. He doesn’t even know you.’

  At lunchtime, Brigitta forges another note and this time their counsellor barely glances out the window to make sure Bechelli is there.

  On the stairwell landing, Brigitta swings out her arms, stopping Evie and Magda before they can head toward the exit. ‘As soon as we get down the stairs, we peel out of here for dear life, okay? So your driver doesn’t see us.’

  ‘Wait, why?’ demands Magda. Brigitta hasn’t said anything about avoiding Bechelli before now.

  ‘We need to do this on our own. We can’t keep relying on the help. Besides, how will the chauffeur react when he sees that your dad is escaping? Even if he were willing to help, wouldn’t that get him into trouble?’

  ‘Fine,’ says Magda. ‘We’ll just go the other way. He always reads the paper while he waits anyway.’

  Evie gapes at her sister. ‘What happens when we’re not here at pick-up time? Won’t he get in even more trouble? And what about Maricota and Odete? They’ll flip.’

  But Magda’s jaw is set and Evie knows she’s already lost. ‘In a couple of weeks, we’ll never see Maricota and Odete again. We have to think about Dad first, not them.’

  Once they exit the building, they turn quickly away from the parked Silver Cloud. As they walk, they match up their strides, each leading with her left leg, and together count out their lunch money to pay for a taxi, whi
ch they hail on the tree-lined street on the far side of the YWCA building. Evie vibrates inside—this is so forbidden and foreign and thrilling.

  ‘Can he take the scenic route?’ asks Brigitta. ‘My aunt and uncle never want to bring me into the city. Ask him to take the scenic route.’

  ‘Você poderia pegar o caminho mais bonito?’ asks Evie, and Brigitta gives her arm an approving squeeze.

  ‘It’s like you’re a different person when you speak Portuguese. Like having a whole new friend!’

  The windows are rolled down and Brigitta leans her face out. Soon they find themselves on the coast, driving once again along Copacabana Beach.

  ‘Is it far from here?’ asks Brigitta urgently. ‘Ask him if it’s far from here.’

  Evie asks and the driver answers, gesturing with a loose hand. ‘He says it’s at the other end of the beach. It’s a pretty long walk.’

  ‘Tell him to let us off here,’ says Brigitta.

  ‘No way,’ says Magda. ‘It’s a really long walk.’

  ‘Don’t worry—we won’t have to walk.’ Brigitta is looking toward the beach, and once out of the taxi, she strides ahead of them, across the mosaic sidewalk, and onto the sand. ‘It’s so strange,’ she says, stopping to pick up some sand. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange, that the sidewalk ends and the beach just begins? No dunes, no parking lot, just street and then beach. I’ve never seen that before.’

  Evie and Magda don’t answer because to them it doesn’t seem strange. But Brigitta’s attention has turned to some women playing peteca, hitting a feathered shuttlecock with their hands. She jumps up and down excitedly for a few minutes until someone bats the shuttlecock in her direction and she flails about wildly, uselessly trying to get it back into the air. Laughing, one of the women walks over to retrieve the peteca from Brigitta, who gives her a hug, making everyone laugh. Evie has never met anyone like her, someone who seems both older and younger than she really is, who, like Luiza, cares so little about what other people think. And now she remembers how it feels to be on the precipice of loving her.