Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

  She wrestled out of his grip and started walking. Near the streetlight he caught up with her. He was lugging a suitcase and a huge camera bag, and panting. “They told me to stay with you.”

  “Go home.”

  “Come on, Dee. Have a heart. Don’t leave me out here. There’s no taxis.”

  “The bus comes at six-thirty in the morning.” She strode through the puddle of lamplight. She walked until she noticed that she was walking alone. At the edge of the glow she paused. Roger was sitting on his suitcase under the flood of light, staring into the dark dry plain. A waif.

  “Where are you from?” she called.

  He lifted his head, eyes shorn of hope. “Houston.”

  “No, damn it. I mean where are you from?”

  “Minnesota.”

  Heavy gray skies. White flakes falling like blessings. “It snows there.”

  “Like a motherfucker.”

  Not able to leave him, she called Roger in from the snow, and knew one of them would live to regret it.

  From PBS’s The New Brazil

  Filmed Three Months Prior to launch

  ... her campaign platform was to lease huge sections of the Amazon rain forest and the Mato Grosso pantanal to pharmaceutical companies, a move she promised would protect the environment as well as pay off Brazil’s staggering foreign debt. Four years later, facing reelection, Bonfim apparently tired of waiting and ordered troops to expel the ranchers. When the opposition party pushed for impeachment, she used her power as the Army’s commander and chief, and forcibly disbanded both congressional bodies.

  The Brazilian people accepted this turn of events with their usual aplomb. After all, wild swings from dictatorship to democracy have been the accepted trademark of Brazilian politics since Dom Pedro the First. Congress had been historically corrupt, anyway; and Ana Maria Bonfim at least made good on her promises.

  Today, Brazil leads the world not only in the development of new drugs, but in the creation of groundbreaking technology. It boasts the highest standard of living in Latin America, a sophisticated workforce, and streamlined import/export laws. In the six short years since Bonfim seized full power, she has single—handedly revived Brazil s moribund economy, and made it one of the most stable countries in the hemisphere.

  A KNOCK on the front door shocked Hiroshi from sleep, and he fumbled for the pistol on the nightstand. His wife rolled over, taking the covers with her, muttering in her dreams.

  Quietly, so as not to alert the visitor, Hiroshi slipped on his robe, put the pistol in his pocket, and crept across the cold tiles to the den.

  So quiet he could hear his own heartbeat. So dark that dots swam in his vision. Right index finger on the trigger, he unlatched the lock with an awkward left hand. He aimed the hidden gun muzzle at what should be the visitor’s stomach and flung open the door.

  Kinch. “Hey. You already asleep, you dumb motherfucker?” The American was drunk. And loud.

  Hiroshi’s eyes indexed the background shadows; then he ushered him in. “What time is it?” he asked, turning on the floor lamp.

  “Time to wake up and smell the coffee. Rise and shine! Oops. Got the little woman up.”

  Hiroshi turned. A sleepy form stood in the gloom. He glared at his wife until she withdrew.

  “Satellite’s in place,” Kinch said.

  “You should not come here.” A wail from the back of the house. Kinch’s noise had awakened the baby. Taguchi, head down in shame for her intrusion, shuffled through the den to the hall.

  “Oh, jeez,” Kinch said with drunken sorrow. “Baby’s screaming. I hate when that happens.”

  Hiroshi hissed in an exasperated breath. “It is dangerous for us both that you come here.”

  Kinch’s eyes cut to his, and he realized with a start that the American was stone—cold sober. “Tora, tora, Hirohito,” he whispered. “The nigger cunt’s going down.”

  Hiroshi’s mouth went dry. He pried his cramped finger from the trigger.

  Kinch nodded toward the hall, cocky—drunk again. “Hey. Sweet dreams and everything. Sorry I woke the kid.” He left, closing the door with a bang behind him.

  Taguchi came in, holding the baby. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  He didn’t dare look at her. “I will buy plane tickets for you and the baby tomorrow. You will visit your sister in Osaka.”

  “When will I come back?”

  “I don’t know.” The gun felt heavy and useless in his pocket. War was coming. There would not be one target, but a hundred and fifty million. And the Americans would make a mess of it.

  * * *

  Something soft pressed down on her mouth, her nose. It shut off her air. Dolores woke, flailing. The bedroom was empty. The clock shone a bilious green 1:35 A.M.

  Heartbeat booming in her ears, she rose, shivering in the dry high—altitude chill. She felt for the cheap homemade alarm she had placed by the door. With both hands, she picked the Coke can up and set it aside, her palms softening the clink of the nuts and bolts inside. She crept downstairs.

  The guest room door was ajar, she saw to her surprise. The inside was dark but for a sliver of light that angled from the floodlamp outside the window. It glinted against the aluminum walker, the oxygen bottle. A form sprawled across the bed where Harry had died. The glow illuminated a trouser cuff, a single herringbone sock.

  Quietly she took a blanket from the armoire and tucked it around him. Even more quietly she took the suitcase and camera bag from the room and carried them into the kitchen. She shut the door and turned on the light.

  She searched the outside of the suitcase for simple traps: a hair—thin wire, a telltale thread. Nothing. The snaps of the latches were loud as twin gunshots. Dolores froze, alert. The night was so silent she could hear the creak of the lemon tree in the wind.

  Pants. Jockey shorts. Shirts fresh—folded from an American laundry. She gently squeezed the rolls of socks. Shook his can of shaving cream. Peered through his amber bottle of Aramis, opened the cap, and sniffed the liquid. She was careful to return everything to its place.

  She ran her fingers through his pockets. Searched by touch for hidden compartments. Unzipped the camera bag. Opened the back of his Canon AE1.

  Her thighs ached from crouching. Grasping the edge of the kitchen counter, she pulled herself stiffly to her feet.

  Maybe they were cleverer than she thought. Maybe Roger was trained in hands—on wet work. She was getting old, and it wouldn’t take much: a karate chop to the back of the neck, strangulation. Smothering.

  That’s right. She’d had the dream again: Harry, holding a pillow to her face. She lifted the receiver from the wall phone and dialed.

  “Palácio da Alvorada,” a voice answered.

  “President Bonfim.”

  “The president is asleep and cannot be disturbed. May I ask who is calling?”

  Dolores looked at the black square that was the kitchen window. Snow, she thought she remembered, always made the nights bright. “A friend. Give her a message, will you? Tell her she’s wrong. Tell her I don’t miss him at all. Ask if she spoke from experience.” A pause, then. “Can you remember all that?”

  “I’ll tell her.” There was a click, and the hum of an empty line.

  Dolores replaced the items in Roger’s suitcase the exact way he had packed them. The spy game honed short—term memory. It was in long—term memory that she failed. Ice storms. Leafless twigs dipped in glass. If she closed her eyes she could hear the sound—stage quality of snapping branches, like walking through a winter war movie.

  The phone rang. Dolores lunged for the receiver before it could ring again. “Hello?”

  That familiar sleepy voice, a burble of laughter in it. “You lie, you bitch. I know you too well.”

  Dolores sat cross—legged on the floor, her back against the cabinet, and
pulled her robe about her knees. “If you loved me, you’d make it snow.”

  “It’s snowing now. Go to the window and look. The Germans brought it with them. I think, querida, that I made a mistake.”

  Dolores twisted the phone cord around her fingers till it cut off circulation. She held onto it for dear life. “It’ll be all right, Ana, I promise. You don’t have to tell them everything.”

  “Too late. It’s snowing already.”

  “No, listen! They just want some assurances. Throw them a bone. A little bone. Something to chew on, something to keep them ...”

  “Did you kill Harry?”

  ... to keep them away from me.

  The tick of the clock on the kitchen wall. The slow dirge of a dripping faucet. “I didn’t need to kill him.”

  And a single soft noise. A chuckle? “You lie. You hated him, and couldn’t leave him. You didn’t have the courage. I speak from experience,” she said.

  “Staying with someone because they’re helpless is one thing. Clinging to someone because you can’t live alone, Ana—that’s different.”

  “Clinging. Do you think that’s how Jaje feels?”

  “I didn’t mean ...”

  A sigh. “I saw snow once. The nice thing about it—it eventually covers everything.”

  “Ana ...”

  “Go to bed,” she said, and hung up.

  When Dolores walked out of the kitchen, the suitcase and camera bag in hand, she saw Roger standing in the darkened dining room.

  “I can take the bags from here. They’re pretty heavy.”

  She put them on the floor and started up the stairs. He called after her. “I’m sorry they dropped me on you like this. Without warning and everything, I mean.”

  “Not your fault.”

  “I met a guy at Camp Pearcy who knew you. He said you killed somebody once.”

  She halted, her palm on the cold metal of the bannister, her fingers clenched.

  “He said you did it against Company orders.” He stood in the rectangular glow from the kitchen, his expression innocent.

  She forced her cramped fingers to relax. Took a breath. “A tire blew. That was all.”

  “They told me you put something in that tire. Were they lying?”

  “Everybody lies, all the time. They tell us assassination is never authorized; then they teach us wet work.”

  “Hey. Not me, okay?” He spread his hand over his chest as if she had shot him in the heart. “Six weeks ago I didn’t even know what ‘wet work’ meant. I was at Pearcy for two days—two big deal days—and it rained the whole time. I just came to Brazil because I’m curious about the UFOs. I’m from fucking NASA, Dee.”

  But an innocent would have been irked at the invasion of his privacy. A poorly trained spy would have asked what she had found.

  “See you in the morning,” she said.

  Without another word, Roger carried his bags back to the guest room. He was a good Company man.

  Crossfire

  ... just because I treat Bonfim like any other politician—

  Really, Bob? You criticize Newt Gingrich’s hairdo?

  Can I please make this one point? And just because Bonfim’s a woman—a black woman—all of a sudden I’m a sexist and a racist. Well, that’s politics. She knew how the game worked before she got in it. And if you can’t stand the heat ... Besides, Bonfim went to Palmer Bank for her campaign money, Martha. Palmer Bank. You remember Palmer Bank? The CIA? The Contras? Sort of tarnishes her liberal, feminist halo.

  Give me proof.

  When are you going to admit this is no saint we’re talking about? She puts tanks around Congress. She halts Brazil’s democracy in its tracks. Her goons are snatching people off the streets. If a conservative did that—

  There go the innuendos.

  Talk to the Brazilian students, then. Hear why they’re protesting. Gee. And I thought you were fond of the 60’s. Which is more important to you: feminism or freedom?

  I don’t see Brazilians sleeping on the streets.

  Which means?

  Which means I don’t see Brazilians sleeping on the streets. I don’t see Brazilians beating their wives anymore.

  Are you saying tyranny is acceptable?

  I don’t know, Bob. What are you saying is acceptable?

  THE SÃO PAULO agent—Edson couldn’t remember his name—leaned across the car seat to put that morning’s Folha into his lap. “This story here,” he said.

  Four column inches below the fold on page eight. No byline. Palmer National Bank Contributed to Bonfim’s 1987 Campaign.

  Edson put the newspaper on the velour and opened the window. The alley of Butantã Reptile Institute was dank, red brick walls to either side pied green with mold. Silent, of course. Snakes were silent. But still, it smelled like a zoo. “I want monkeys.”

  “Sir?”

  “And tigers. And birds. Birds make a lot of noise. They feed the snakes mice, I suppose. Mice don’t make noise, either.”

  Endless brick buildings, sun—dappled by overhanging trees. Near the eaves, long barred windows. A calm morning in Auschwitz. Were they afraid the snakes would escape? Or robbers would try to get in?

  “What do you think about the story, sir?”

  Dr. Lizette Andrade de Morais, who studied snakes. Edson hoped she wasn’t pretty. Wasn’t young. It was harder when they were young.

  He felt light—headed, as if the car was still moving. That flight from Brasília—what did the Americans call it? Oh, yes. A red—eye.

  “I think that no one has the experience of the Americans when it comes to managing political scandal,” Edson said. “I think that in a few days we’ll see the story move from four inches on page eight to sixteen inches on page one. Find out who the reporter is.”

  The São Paulo agent, really just a boy, nodded. “We’ll contain it.”

  Ana had committed the unforgivable sin. Jealousy had been loosed from the deep—no one could contain it. Edson closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw Muller coming, a woman in tow. Young. Dark cascades of curls. Nice legs. A shame.

  “Where’s Donato?” she asked when Muller opened the car door.

  “We’re taking you to him.” Muller firmly helped her inside.

  She turned around in her seat to look at Edson. “Where’s Donato?”

  Muller got behind the wheel. There was a quiet, well—oiled slam from the Volvo’s door.

  “In Brasília. Is Donato your boyfriend?” Edson asked.

  “No.” She whipped her head to Muller. The car drove down the alley, picking up speed. “Yes. Brasília? Who are you?”

  “Friends of Donato,” Edson said.

  She stiffened as the Volvo left the gates and turned into the morning traffic. “Is he in some sort of trouble?” Her voice was reedy, her movements agitated. Angry? She would cause a scene at the airport. Or hysterical? She might try to jump from the car.

  “Are you gangsters?” she demanded. “Is that what you are?”

  The São Paulo boy laughed.

  “Donato was injured,” Edson said.

  Her coffee eyes widened.

  “Don’t worry. He was just a little injured, working on a government project. He asked for you. We thought we would take you to him.”

  “He never told me about a government project.”

  “Of course not.” Edson winked. “It’s a secret.”

  * * *

  Too dull. The new painting should look brooding, but it simply looked dull. Gray. More gray. Dead leaf brown. Colors she barely remembered. Was that the truth about winter?

  A sound from the living room. Roger was up, studying the photos on her walls. Finally he wandered into the studio.

  “Morning.” In one fist was a coffee mug, in the other a Coke. He tossed the can to her.
A poor throw, but she caught it left—handed. The can was empty. No rattle of bolts. So it wasn’t the one from her room.

  “I thought you might want to read the message.”

  She crushed the can, top to bottom. “You’re kidding, right?” When he didn’t answer, she threw it back hard. “I told you: I know what it says.”

  Roger didn’t make a move to catch it. The can hit the plaster with a sharp clank. “Great arm. You don’t throw like a girl. I was noticing the pictures ...” He tipped his head toward the living room. “Hiking through the jungle. Boating down the Amazon. Was that the Andes you were climbing?”

  “In Bolivia. A long time ago.”

  “Hey. You were a good—looking chick.”

  “Up yours, Roger,” she said tiredly. She jabbed a paintbrush in his direction. “You know the problem with men? They have tunnel vision. It comes from looking at everything through their dicks.”

  “Oh. Oh, hey, I didn’t ... I mean, well? You have that great bone structure, you know? They say you never lose the cheekbones.” He grimaced charmingly. “Have I dug myself out yet?”

  “A little bitty hole, Roger. The penis has this little bitty hole. The Amazon jungle. The Andes. And all it lets you see is a good—looking chick in khakis. You have a girlfriend?”

  Red—faced now, he shot back, “No. Do you?”

  She felt her own face go hot. So, back at the Company, the rumors about her and Ana were still flying. Roger, hands in his pockets, was studying her sculpture as if gauging how much strength it might have taken to lift the blocks of peroba wood and the granite to their perches.

  “I was never very good at it,” she said.

  His eyes met hers. He hadn’t been thinking of sculpture at all, but of relationships.

  She laughed. “Jesus. Let’s call a cease—fire.”

  He sat on a paint—splattered stool. She liked the careless, childish way he plunked himself down, neglecting to check if the paint was wet. Roger would be interesting to draw: his face a simple circle, with complex intelligent eyes.