São Paulo Noir

by Tony Bellotto

  * * *

  I gave furniture to each child when they moved out and didn’t buy anything new. The house became empty and too large for me, but I can’t manage to sell it for a reasonable price. It’s located on a wide tree-lined avenue that today is very busy. The district is residential, not even bakeries are permitted, which is why no one is interested in buying. I don’t have the money to maintain it; the house is black from bus exhaust. Lately I haven’t had the energy to take care of it; mold has begun growing in the closed-off rooms.

  * * *

  Vacation from everything. Vacation from everyone.

  * * *

  The lot is more than a thousand meters, with pitangas, avocados, guava, ipê-rosa, and a silk-cotton tree, and cannot be subdivided. It’s the law. The trees grew, I stopped trimming them, then stopped raking up the leaves and gathering the ripe fruit rotting on the ground.

  * * *

  I lived with Aunt Flora for six months to stay closer to the treatment I had to have. She took care of me the whole time. Roberta, my cousin, moved to London during this period. Sometimes Mom would go to Rio to stay with my sister, and it would be just Aunt Flora and me. Besides taking me to vision therapy and training me in using my fingers, she would tell me stories and read to me every night. My going from fantasy books to Salinger, Cortázar, Kafka, and Murakami was her doing.

  * * *

  I get home at five thirty in the afternoon, and at night watch American television shows with Miranda; from time to time we have dinner at a pizzeria near here. In the mornings she sleeps, in the afternoons she catches the train on the Marginal, almost two kilometers from here, and visits the subway stations.

  * * *

  It used to not make much difference being in a dark bedroom or out in the sun. Now that I’m better it seems that the light hurts my eyes, not a lot but a little. That’s why I like to spend the day resting and go out at night, after Aunt Flora goes to sleep.

  * * *

  When I arrive home Miranda is reading on the sofa in the empty living room, in T-shirt and underpants, with the ceiling fan on high.

  * * *

  I try reading in the garden, but the smell of flowers and rotting fruit is kind of sickening, like wine, and there the mosquitoes are even worse than in the house.

  * * *

  I know we love each other, but for a while now we’ve barely spoken. Sometimes she tells me stories, most of them made up I think, despite her saying they’re real.

  * * *

  I go out after Aunt Flora falls asleep in front of the TV. I leave my bedroom door closed so she’ll think I’m sleeping. I wear a light jacket to protect me from the mosquitoes; I stroll through the neighborhood streets with Legião Urbana playing loudly in my headphones.

  Walking around here at night reminds me of the times I would walk around during the day and not see anything. I can still smell the different scents of the flowers, not as well as before, but better than other people.

  * * *

  I wake up on the sofa facing the TV, still playing. Miranda has already gone to her room. I switch off the living room lights, spray insecticide in my bedroom, flick on the fan, and toss and turn in bed, unable to sleep. I’m a bit nauseous.

  * * *

  After midnight the streets are deserted and full of watchmen. In front of some of the houses spotlights come on as I pass, in others dogs bark and other dogs, hearing them, start barking too. I go on a little farther—one after another, bright lights snap on. The watchmen in the streets and sentry boxes wave and the electrified tennis rackets that electrocute mosquitoes go bzz-bzz, I smell them burning as I go by. Small red lights of surveillance cameras blink in the low foliage of trees. The storms and lightning of late evening have brought down large branches onto the sidewalks and streets. Swaying branches at the top of trees lash against exposed wires that crackle to the rhythm of the gentle wind, tlec-tlec. I dance to the sound of Legião Urbana, to the barking, the tlec-tlec, the bzz-bzz, illuminated by the spotlights of the surveillance cameras.

  * * *

  The motors of buses, the cracking of branches hitting bare wires, the noise of the persistent frying of mosquitoes against the rackets of the watchmen in the streets, along with dogs barking, keep me in a state of relentless exhaustion. I get up, have some chamomile tea. It works, I sleep, but after an hour I wake up even more nauseated.

  * * *

  I walk, walk, walk, and continue walking. The watchmen know me. I bump into things and stumble—I’m still not fully recovered, there’s still a fog in my brain. Maybe they think, There goes the little drunk. I go on. I stop at the gas station.

  * * *

  Miranda is pretty, she seems to float, the owner of the space in which she moves. When she walks, without realizing it she dances, spins, and goes back to walking. Her beauty, her smile, and the attention with which she listens to us are irresistible. Sometimes I get home and, instead of finding her reading, she’s dancing and singing in the living room with her headphones on; I am hypnotized.

  * * *

  Faces are still a problem for me. If I don’t know the person, he seems very much like anyone else, especially if he’s immobile or silent, like passengers on a subway car. But if the person speaks, moves his cheekbones, opens and closes his mouth, his head leans a little, his hair stirs. These small things begin to form a face in my mind and then he becomes a unique person, never again will I confuse him with another. That’s why I recognize the street watchmen, the workers at the gas station, the cashier at the store, and some of the customers whom I’ve seen around here more than once.

  * * *

  I had such fears about her eyesight that her treatment came to be my North Star.

  An adolescent in darkness seemed too cruel a solitude. Estela, my sister, dedicated herself completely to all possible treatments and instruments to keep Miranda in our world, even during the years in which she could see almost nothing. Estela was successful; Miranda never lost her light or her sweetness.

  Perhaps only now is she seeking, of her own free will, a bit of calm in the dark. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s me or her. Maybe it’s what she’s looking for in me. Or in this abandoned house that belonged to her grandparents—they were always happy and festive, like Estela. Whether in the district filled with silence, or in São Paulo.

  * * *

  Next to the gas station there’s a supermarket. They’re both in a place called Panamericana Square, which is actually just an immense traffic circle. The station is right beside where the trucks unload their merchandise for the supermarket. While the stevedores unload, the drivers have a sandwich in the station’s store. Or they just have a coffee and stay there in the air-conditioning that cools them and keeps the mosquitoes away. Most of them are old and fat. Today there’s one who’s good-looking.

  * * *

  Three months ago the first cases of dengue showed up here in Alto de Pinheiros. Yesterday, at the supermarket, people were talking about zika. There’s no way to avoid mosquitoes. As recently as two years ago they could be shooed away with repellent, but now they seem to have developed a resistance. People living on the block by the river say that it’s even worse there, but I don’t know how it could be any worse than here, six blocks away. There are niches of mosquitoes in every dark corner, underneath the table, behind the curtains, inside the closet. The thing to do is close all the windows in the TV room and the bedrooms—the only spaces we live in, or in which I live when I am home—spray insecticide, and turn on the fan. It gets hot, because the air that circulates is the same, but it’s the only way to keep the mosquitoes from biting us. You can’t use the bathroom during the night; when I open the door a swarm of mosquitoes invades the bedroom. Then I have to spray again and cover myself completely until the poison and the wind repel the insects.

  * * *

  Before the accident I believed in a magical world. Peter Pan, Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, Divergent, Percy Jackson, St
ar Wars. It wasn’t just that I read, I truly believed it. It wasn’t actually the existence of a magical “world” that I believed in but the logic of magical thinking. It’s hard to explain—I’ve always had the Force with me, me and my country. It seems silly, but that’s how I thought of the world. To tell the truth, even now I don’t completely disbelieve in the Force. It’s something that helps me do good; if I’m doing that—good—I know that nothing bad will happen to me.

  I walk, dance, and eat a ham-and-cheese sandwich late at night and nothing bad is going to happen to me. That’s a little bit of what I think, and I want to test it by walking at night like this. I’m a little afraid, of course, but I want to put it to the test. To see if I’m good, that nothing bad will happen to me. To be happy, to think cool things about people, about everybody.

  * * *

  Having Miranda here with me at night is making me think about how nice it would be to have friends, to go out to the movies, to be interested in what I read in the newspaper. I don’t know when I stopped being interested. I’m lazy, the house is far away from everything, too large and too empty. Suddenly, with Miranda, it makes more sense. I want to believe it’s the house that’s empty and not my life. And I think I’m right. I don’t need to occupy spaces I don’t use, but they still exist in their emptiness. When Miranda is here, and I occupy them, the house becomes less heavy. I don’t have the feeling that I must drag bedrooms, living rooms, and bathrooms with me every day like I do when I’m alone and wake up and intuit, more than see, its many unused areas.

  * * *

  I also go into the station to escape the mosquitoes. I order a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and the good-looking guy laughs at my Rio accent and invites me to sit with him and a friend. He speaks of a flower festival in Ceasa, close to there, five minutes by car. It starts late at night.

  “Want to go with me?” he asks.

  His friend gets kind of peeved; it’s going to get in the way of their job. But the good-looking one is the boss and I go with them to the flower festival.

  * * *

  I fear I’m not a good companion for her—we barely speak, because I don’t have much to say. Even quiet, she is so alive.

  * * *

  Their vehicle isn’t a truck and has nothing to do with the supermarket. It’s a dilapidated pickup parked in front of the gas station. It has a bunch of trash bags in the bed.

  “What’s that—garbage?”

  “More or less,” he says, “it’s material for recycling.”

  * * *

  The mosquitoes are a tiresome subject. They remain, but there’s not much to be said about them, and you can’t say the same thing day after day.

  * * *

  I sit between the two of them, kind of crowded, and it’s only then, when the good-looking one, whose name is Diego, starts the engine, that I realize my blunder. I’m very afraid, feel like vomiting. I suck it up, keep quiet, and try not to imagine the worst things in the world. I look at Diego and think I may not have read his face correctly. I start to panic. What if I’m not seeing the person he really is? What else is there in his face? Does he have a weird way of laughing? I can’t tell—the more nervous I get, the less I see.

  * * *

  Three a.m., the nausea increases, a headache begins.

  * * *

  He turns on the Marginal highway and accelerates. The taillights of the cars become red lines flowing like a river of fire. Diego switches on the turn signal, a small red light inside the cabin, blink-blink, and he cuts rather sharply to the right, the movement throwing me into his friend, who holds onto my thigh. “No, no,” I say softly.

  * * *

  I can’t help but go to the bathroom, I think I drank too much water, it’s too hot, everything is too much, including my sleepiness, but I can’t sleep. I wasn’t able to vomit, I return to my bedroom, the headache gets worse. I remember I forgot to spray Miranda’s room with insecticide. I’m sleepy and decide she’ll know how to get by; actually, she prefers to use repellent cream on her skin, says it works better. I lie down, sleep doesn’t come, the mosquitoes attack, I’m sweating a lot. My head throbs in a way that’s never happened before. I get up again, the room spins. I sit down on the bed, everything aches, and I think I’m not going to make it to the kitchen. I need water, my mouth is dry. It’s not possible for zika to be so immediate, but I think it must be that, or dengue, every bone in my body aches. I knock on Miranda’s door to ask for help. I don’t know what she can do, but I’m afraid I’m dying. She doesn’t answer, I knock harder, she doesn’t answer. I try opening the door, it’s not locked. Miranda isn’t in bed, she’s not in the room or in the bath. I support myself along the walls till I make it to the kitchen. Miranda’s not in the kitchen. I’m burning up with fever, I can’t think straight.

  * * *

  Diego stops the pickup in a parking area full of trucks. He and I get out. His friend says he’ll stay right there. I have to figure out how to run away. Diego pulls me by the hand and we go between tall trucks. The first thing I smell is diesel, then I see we really are in a place filled with flowers, flowers I’m not familiar with, scents I’ve never smelled. It’s half dark and bright at the same time. The lights on the Ceasa lampposts are strong but tightly focused, here and there I make out trucks full of flowers and, in the middle of them, dark spaces with tall shapes, only from close up do I see they’re more trucks. We go through those narrow passageways. A few boys are wheeling plants on wooden carts, which they drag without looking out for anyone, almost running into one another. Inside a large shed, stands are already set up with many different kinds of flowers. Here inside I manage to see better and distinguish between the various flowers and foliage. Diego’s face is handsome and I think he’s good, that I wasn’t mistaken.

  * * *

  Where is Miranda? What have I gotten myself into? I fell, I fall. When am I going to get up? How? What can I use for support? Metaphorically and really, where are we? Everything gets foggy and I can’t see well, my eyes are swollen and teary.

  * * *

  Diego knows, or makes up, the names of all the flowers. I find it funny because I think he’s making them up, but I like the names he says as we quickly pass through more and more stands. We stop at one with strange and pretty flowers, and he buys a super bouquet of “moon purple,” a lilac-colored flower with pink stripes. Moon purple! The bouquet is wrapped in thick paper lined with aluminum foil so the flowers can survive the trip to the florists. He takes that enormous bouquet of moon purple, there must be five dozen, and gives it all to an old legless lady who begs around there. But first he removes one and gives it to me: “The most beautiful and most purple moon purple, to the most lunar and luminous girl I’ve ever known.”

  His voice is deep, he’s joking but speaking seriously, he likes me, his face is full of light. We return to the pickup and his friend is smoking a joint. He offers it; Diego takes a drag and tries to pass it to me. I’ve never smoked marijuana. I’m curious but I didn’t want it to be like this. Diego offers it to me again, looks deep into my eyes, the joint has a strong smell, I take a deep drag and choke—I’ve never even smoked a cigarette. Naturally they laugh, and I decide to take another puff just to show them I know how. I hold the smoke in my mouth and let it out, proud of myself.

  * * *

  I have to buy medicine, the Panamericana Pharmacy should be open. I can’t even walk as far as the door, but I need to get to the pharmacy. Miranda went out for a walk, that’s all. What do I mean, that’s all? Four in the morning and Miranda went out for a walk? That’s crazy! I have to go after her. I have to survive to find her. I can’t think, I’m burning up with fever and shivering from cold.

  * * *

  We get in the pickup, I ask him to take me back to the station. His friend says no way, they’re already behind on their delivery and the boss is going to be mad.

  “Boss?” I ask. “Delivery?” I think, This late at night, who can be in a hurry to receive garbage for recycling?


  We get back on the Marginal, continue a bit more in the opposite direction from the station; the trip takes time, becomes a journey, I’ve lost my sense of time, it stretches out like chewing gum in a small space, a second and an hour get mixed together in my head. We cross a bridge over a large river and continue until we stop in front of the gate of a very big lot—everything is big around here. A boy about twelve opens the gate. He’s carrying a weapon, and that makes no sense to me. The weapon becomes a green plastic machine gun with which a boy dressed like an American soldier plays at firing by making noise with his mouth, Bang-bang, then it goes back to being a real gun in the hand of a real boy. Diego waves; the boy gets out of the way and lets the pickup enter.

  * * *

  I open the gate to the house and go to the street watchman at the closest corner.

  “Mr. Expedito, can you help me get to the pharmacy?” I lean against him and we go together. “Have you seen Miranda?” I ask.

  He replies, “She dances every night in the streets.” I don’t have the strength to ask what he’s saying. Something scary that I can’t deal with right now.

  * * *

  Diego parks in a cement courtyard in front of a half-abandoned warehouse. There are piles of crates made of cheap wood everywhere. I see people wrapped in blankets sleeping in the middle of the crates, a baby’s cry that seems endless enters my head and won’t stop. Afterward, either it already stopped long ago, or didn’t even exist. Maybe they’re not people but dark sacks and wolf cubs howling. Diego’s friend gets out of the pickup, Diego kisses me on the lips, caresses my cheek, brushes against my chest, it’s enjoyable, he gets out and I stay behind. I don’t feel like moving, I sit there on the front seat of the pickup. I don’t know where I am. Sometimes I don’t know where I am in the most absolute sense, like when you wake up in a hotel room without any idea of how you got there. It seems strange to be in São Paulo, to be alive, to speak Portuguese. I look behind me and see some hundred-reais bills inside a half-open bag. Lots of hundred-reais bills. I don’t know if I’m hallucinating. The lighter belonging to Diego’s friend is on top of the bag. It seems natural to burn the money so it can’t be used to buy weapons that end up in the hands of twelve-year-old boys. I’m more afraid than ever, but at the same time I have no doubt that it’s what I need to do. The Force is with me—if I concentrate I’ll manage to blow up the pickup, run away, past the armed boy, somehow overcome the kilometers that separate me from home, jump over the wall, enter my room, and go to sleep.