by Ed Siegle
The taxi drove through a tunnel and soon was pulling up outside a tall block. Liam skipped up the steps, spun through a revolving door, and took a lift to the twenty-third floor. He said ‘Oi!’ to the office-boy, José, who said, ‘Hi!’ back. As Liam was starting his computer, Eva arrived.
‘The bus, the bus, the bus,’ said Eva, dropping a bursting handbag on to her desk. ‘Oh, Liaminho, you don’t know what it’s like – to have to kick my son out of bed and make him breakfast – he should make me breakfast at my age, would that be too much? Then I board the bus and the driver is new, so he goes the wrong way, so we all get off and have to find another bus to take us back to where we started. Then another bus with a driver who thinks he is Ayrton Senna and nearly kills us twice. And every time a black man boards the passengers breathe in – and all because that maniac on Monday night has everyone terrified of being the next victim.
‘You’ve got it all wrong, Eva,’ said Liam. ‘Sérgio’s the victim – didn’t you hear?’
‘What a joke, friend! Imagine! A malandro shoots a pregnant teacher and they call him a victim.’
‘They’re saying the police were to blame.’
‘Next they’ll be making him Saint Sérgio!’ said Eva.
‘The cops had done no shooting practice for a year, I read. No training. They didn’t even have walkie-talkies – they ran the whole show by sign language.’
‘Don’t talk to me about the police,’ said Eva. ‘My husband was an officer – I divorced that subject long ago.’
‘So I guess you’re not looking for a presidential cop?’
‘Oh, Liam, friend, when are you going to find my president?’
‘I’m doing my best,’ said Liam. ‘They’re pretty thin on the ground.’
‘Oh, my God!’ said Eva, suddenly looking at him. ‘What have you done to your head? I’ve never seen a head so red!’
‘I might have overcooked it a little,’ he said, opening his briefcase and taking out a present. ‘But that aside, happy birthday.’
‘You remembered!’ she said, and kissed him on each cheek. ‘Forty-six, can you imagine? Before you know it I’ll be fifty and not a president in sight.’
‘Forty-six is nothing, Eva – what’s that expression you taught me?’
‘An old hen makes good soup, but a young chicken makes an old cock crow?’
‘That wasn’t the one I was thinking of.’
Eva tore off the wrapping paper and examined a purple handbag, which Liam had bought at a market. She set the new bag next to her old one and stood back.
‘Your time has come,’ she said to her old bag. ‘Your successor is fit to become the bag of a president’s wife.’
‘Let’s take it president-hunting on Joel’s first night,’ said Liam.
‘Let’s go dancing!’
‘Let’s take him to Lapa. He was born for Lapa.’
‘You know the best place on a Saturday night?’ said Eva.
‘Bar das Terezas?’
‘You’re learning, Liaminho!’
‘Let’s give them a call.’
‘You can’t book like that. It’s not the Royal Alfred Hall.’
‘Let’s drop by later, then,’ Liam proposed. ‘Before it all goes pear-shaped, the least we can do is show the man a proper night.’
Jackie drove Joel through town in her small white car, past shoppers and down-and-outs on London Road, past Preston Park – full of lush trees and summer sports – until they were curving through the Downs and into the carefully rural fields of Sussex. At Heathrow, Joel checked in while Jackie went for a wander. He found her drinking a glass of red wine, playing a fruit machine.
‘I’d better go through,’ he said.
‘Still time to change your mind,’ she joked.
‘Can’t let the old git escape again.’
‘Just don’t bring him back, whatever you do.’
‘I might throttle him, you never know,’ said Joel.
‘I shan’t pretend I’d disapprove.’
They stood and looked at one another.
‘Give your old mum a hug, then.’
They hugged then walked to the queue at Departures.
‘Send us a postcard.’
‘Better go,’ he said.
‘Go on!’
He followed the snake of barriers, gave his papers to a woman in uniform and turned to see Jackie had gone. He passed through security and sat by a window near his gate watching planes come and go as daylight faded. Twenty-five years since their plane had landed on one of those strips out there. Twenty-five years since three had become two. Although Joel knew several kids who were better with one sorted mum or dad than they would have been with the feuding pair of them, the subtraction still hurt. Nevertheless he had to admit they’d done OK, he and his mother. It was odd to think he’d ever been at war with her, and it made him wonder how common it was to fight the person who fought for you. There was no formula that balanced a mother’s love for a child with the love a child returned, and yet whatever he’d given had always seemed to be enough for her, no matter how minuscule. He felt a touch of shame at having been anything other than her champion. Perhaps antagonism was easier for a mother to bear than indifference; perhaps a greater fear was that a child should disappear or fade into a person she couldn’t understand. He was glad that, for all his adolescent truculence, he’d stayed close to her, and that ever since his car crash their conflict had been jovial, in the main.
Joel boarded, squeezed into his seat and buckled up. The plane took off and he looked out of the window at the disappearing land below with its patches of dark woods and clusters of glowing orange and filaments of flowing lights. He thought about Jackie again and how he’d started to view her properly only after the accident. He remembered being released from hospital and telling her he saw more clearly. He continued to look at the contents of the shoebox now and again, touching the photographs with a smile and reverent fingers. It was funny to think he’d ever talked to a photograph. ‘My dad’s dead,’ he’d say, and after a while he could say it with hardly a pause.
From then on, life had started to slide on smoother rails. He did better than expected in his O-levels, especially in the sciences. He took particular care over cross-section diagrams of the eye, the heart, the jaw. He knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. He and his mum grew closer. They came to love the differences between them. He started to look after her chaotic finances: he opened savings accounts on her behalf, and they agreed allowances for her vices. Jackie refused to talk about the possibility of a love life, though Joel said he felt differently about it now. He even called Mack once, but the phone went dead as soon as Joel said his name. Jackie talked about their old life in Brazil, bought imported bossa nova LPs and began to cultivate a kind of tropical exoticism – dressing in animal prints, filling the house with thick-leaved plants, blessing the living-room with a Rousseau print of a tiger creeping through jungle on the eve of a storm. Joel sent away for Brazilian Portuguese language tapes and would sit at the kitchen table as his tongue traced lost routines: shushing the ‘x’ of abacaxi, enjoying the soft final ‘d’ of bittersweet saudade. He felt that if he kept the words alive the things they represented would continue to exist; as if mentioning Ipanema beach would ensure Atlantic waves continued to stroke its sand. They talked about Gilberto, and, while Jackie omitted some details of the darker years, she told him about the times which followed the first night she saw him at A Gaiola, when he stepped into a circle of light and music flowed into her life. Their conversations never spoke of a live Gilberto, and neither did Joel’s dreams – not often, at least.
As Joel stared out of the window to where the illuminated outline of departing Britain was giving way to a dark sea, it was hard to believe he was finally on this flight – not finally after the length of the week, but finally after the whole of his life. Brazil! If only Gilberto knew Joel was speeding towards him. He whistled ‘Samba do Avãio’ to himself, ordered half a bottle of ch
ampagne and said, ‘Obrigado,’ to a British stewardess, who looked a bit puzzled. He changed his watch to Brazilian time. Joel wondered how many miles he was closing every minute. Far away on the other side of the sea Liam would be stocking up the Velho Barreiro, a taxi would be winding its way round town ready to make its way to the airport, and his dad would be spending his final afternoon on a different side of the ocean from his son.
When all was black outside but for blinking lights, Joel pulled down the shade and closed his eyes.
Jackie drove the motorway alone. Cars sped by on the outside. She listened to the radio then turned it off. She enjoyed the occasional noise of the indicators. She wondered how long it would be before she went back to pick Joel up. He will return, she thought, he will come back. She tried to remember some of the advice she’d been given in her life. There was something almost comforting about the way it never did any good. How could advice really help when some apparently important decisions were without lasting consequence, while others – made casually one day – changed the course of your whole future. She had simply decided to go to Brazil. Not the smallest decision – granted – but never one meant to herald irreversible change. Yet it had scarred her life and was lacerating her son’s.
She swung round a slip-road on to the M23. When Joel was born she’d had such hopes for another chance to wipe the grime of history away and fashion something clean again. How wonderful to feel a baby look at you as if you were a goddess; how terrible to find you carried on making a dirty mess. One day the little angel would see the truth – the gap between you and godliness being as infinite as it was obvious. It was only a matter of time. The question was: had she made Joel’s life better or worse than it would have been with another mother or no mother at all? Romulus hadn’t done too badly with a wolf. Jackie laughed. A man in an overtaking car frowned. Laughing alone in an empty car – lock me up, she thought. She wondered what good motherhood even meant. Was it better to throw them out of the nest and expect them to flap, or to coddle them and hope they weren’t chewed to bits the minute they left?
In the darkness, she drove round twisting bends. The road shed lanes. She wondered which versions of history would be unlocked: the good years or the bad years; the mad father or the tender one. She squeezed the car into a space outside her house, and looked in the rear-view mirror to see if her mascara had run. She sat for a while and thought about going to the Rusty Axe but didn’t feel like being with people. She didn’t feel like being alone either, that was the trouble. She tutted, hauled herself out of the car and entered the house.
‘I’m ho-ome,’ she said to no one.
Jackie poured a glass of red wine from the end of a bottle, drained it then fetched a wet flannel. She lay back on the sofa under a tiger-print blanket and put the cold cloth over her eyes. She tried to imagine meeting a resurrected Gilberto but the images refused to segue into a narrative. She couldn’t believe it was the remotest prospect. She wondered what Tony was doing. She wondered what his late wife would say about their affair. ‘I knew he’d go to pot,’ most probably. Jackie poked her tongue out. A week ago she’d been expecting to melt into the rest of her life without major challenges. Perhaps her affair with Tony would really soar; perhaps she’d wake one day to find a lump. She’d assumed she would accept her fate, good or bad, and slip away with plenty of tears and plenty of laughs.
What if Joel was right? The whole world would change. Her life was full to the brim without Gilberto, so everything would be squeezed. The mere fact of his being alive, in Joel’s life, even if she tried to repel him to the very edges of hers, would take up so much space. She wondered if Tony would be able to find room; if he would even try.
She stood in the kitchen looking across the dark garden at the lights of Brighton. You couldn’t call the view over the valley pretty: some houses, the rooftops of commercial buildings, the odd church, a couple of high-rises. She sat down on the sofa. She could feel the beat of her heart. The silence seemed to hum. There was still hope for Joel and Debbie. She had no god to pray to, so she screwed her eyes tight and made wishes to nothing: that Gilberto was lying peacefully and permanently in his grave; that Brazil would give Joel answers to his vital questions, dead dad or not; that Joel and Debbie would see sense, settle down and give her grandchildren. By the time the buggers were old enough to see the balls-up she’d made of her life she’d be long dead. I’ll drink to that, she thought.
Nelson observed his racing ant. He wondered if the creature knew it was being watched. It certainly seemed unaware it was in a race. Fat Paulo’s ant looked more alert and, though it wasn’t exactly sprinting towards the finish, at least it was scuttling in the right direction. The eyes of ten men were glued to the ants and there was a hush between the exhortations of the start and the crescendo of the finish. Nelson perceived an unusual tension. Fat Paulo hadn’t raced since Carnaval when Zemané beat him seven times in a row, triggering rumours he was an ant whisperer. But today Paulo had been more than keen to pick an ant and lay down a cool twenty. Nelson didn’t turn up every day with crisp banknotes, and he was kicking himself for making his change of fortune so apparent. The tension reflected questions to which he hadn’t yet invented answers. Zemané – sitting on his stool, smoking a thick cigar, twisting a wedding ring round a finger – would be the one to phrase them.
Nelson’s ant swerved to the right and darted towards the finish. Paulo’s ant, upon which the bulk had been wagered, responded with a spurt of pace. A moan rose in the throats of the audience and turned into whoops and laughs. Nelson started to grin as faces crowded in and the tumult rose. His ant started to sprint over the glass but, just as it was on the verge of crossing the line, a glass spilled a tide of beer over the field and washed the ants into oblivion.
Stools toppled, fingers were pointed and arms waved as the argument fell into the street. Nelson swore he’d seen Fat Paulo nudge the errant glass; Paulo grinned and claimed that in the event of an abandoned race all money reverted to the bar. There was shouting and a shaking of heads, until voices were silenced by the chinking of a lighter against a glass. Zemané put the lighter back in the top pocket of his short-sleeved shirt, threw a cigar stub into the road and said, ‘Nelson won, so pay the man.’
Paulo watched Nelson as he skipped from man to man holding out his hand, into which bills were reluctantly slapped. When all the money had been paid, Nelson spun to the bar and said, ‘Two beers for everyone!’ – sparking smiles and slaps on the back. Zemané drank his first beer in one swig, then sipped his second with his eyes fixed on Nelson, who was starting to look for another ant.
When his glass was empty, Zemané stood up and said, ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
Nelson drained his second beer, picked up the guitar and tried to catch up with Zemané without looking like a child summoned by its mother. They wove through vendors on the pavement selling sweets, bootleg CDs, plastic pens, leather bracelets, toy cars made from tin cans. They walked along a street lined with trees with thick waxy leaves, until they came to a scrubby square with a bench which overlooked parked cars.
The light was starting to fade as they sat down.
‘What you need, Nelson, my friend, is someone to take care of you.’
Nelson knew the dirty response to this, but not the serious one, and it was hard to find the right remark when his vanity was swollen by the word ‘friend’.
‘That’s probably true,’ said Nelson nodding in a manner he hoped appeared wise.
‘And none of those popozudas I’ve seen you chasing at Carnaval. A woman who’ll stop you spending that money on fools and ants.’
‘Look,’ said Nelson, ‘the money –’
‘Doesn’t belong to you. Those notes are cashpoint-smooth and I don’t believe you have an account. You must have… inherited them since I saw you yesterday, because you’re far too happy. I don’t think you’ve mugged anybody – there’s not enough guilt under that smile –’
‘You’re right,’ Nelson
started. ‘I’ve found –’
‘Don’t tell me. If you tell me I’ll want to stop you or help you or get a percentage. But let me give you some advice: if this is any kind of chance, then stay away from the bar until you’ve made the most of it. Those bobos will ruin everything they can.’
‘Not if I ruin it first,’ said Nelson, hoping his friend would laugh.
‘Find a woman to give your life a spine. It doesn’t even have to be a woman – I’m not old-fashioned – a man or a woman, it doesn’t make any difference. A man alone is a fish without bones, isn’t that what they say?’
Perhaps Zemané was right. Nelson had to admit a little rala-e-rola would be nice, but not with some dead-fly girl who did what she was told. It would take a fine fish to fill his plate. Nelson thought about the house and wished plans came to him as easily as melodies.
‘I have to take my wife to her class,’ said Zemané, standing up. ‘Remember, word has a habit of getting around. Adolfo was asking after you. Came by the bar with that Vasco shit. If he finds out about your fortune…’
Zemané rolled off down the street.
At first Nelson had been careful to record the rent he owed Adolfo, confident that a few more gigs would balance the books. But one day he’d whistled up the stairs only to receive a lecture from Adolfo on interest rates, payment penalties and the threat to his bunda if he didn’t start earning faster. Nelson had made three quick payments, enough to keep Adolfo happy – until Adolfo had discovered it wasn’t Nelson’s skill with a guitar that was earning him sheaves of reais, but the sale of his own furniture. Nelson wasn’t surprised Adolfo had kicked him out, but it was strange he hadn’t taken the opportunity to dispense a little violence. In the days before Zemané bought Bar do Paulo, Vasco had knifed a man before the eyes of the regulars, while Adolfo stood by with his hands in his pockets.