by Ed Siegle
Nelson carried the guitar through darkening streets until he emerged by the high white arches of the viaduct. He bought an empada from a stall and sat on a step close to the Bar das Terezas. At seven-thirty – to the very second, Nelson wouldn’t have been surprised – he saw the manageress arrive. She wore a tight black suit and her blonde hair in a ponytail. Her roots were dark, her skin was brown, her nails were red. Perhaps the leather folder under her arm held blueprints for the next bar in her trajectory. When she unlocked the door, he reached from behind and pushed it open.
‘That must be Nelson malandro,’ she said, strolling through and switching on the lights. ‘I can tell by the smell of sweat and failure.’
This knocked Nelson, because he knew there were only the odours of beer and victory upon him at that moment, fresh as he was from his triumph on the ants.
‘You have every right to be cruel,’ he said.
‘The truth is sometimes tragic,’ she said, and turned on a heel, not quite as skilfully as she might have liked. ‘If you’ve any sense you’ll grovel quickly then get lost.’
‘Before I apologise for my no-show,’ he said holding up his hands, ‘which I admit is the worst crime a musician can commit, worse even than stealing someone else’s tune – which after all is inevitable given that Mother Music gave birth to only a small family of notes, many of whom do not get along with one another –’
‘Nelson, why are you here? You’re not here when you should be, and you are here when you shouldn’t be. Were you put on earth to wind me up?’
‘I’m here because there’s something I’d like to show you.’
‘I can’t imagine you have anything I’d like to see.’
‘You might be right. But then again… let me ask you one question. Which is more important: the musician or the instrument?’
‘Nelson, I don’t have time for –’
‘Just humour me for a final minute.’
She looked him up and down. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘The instrument.’
‘Are you sure? Surely a good musician is what really counts?’
‘Look, Nelson, I’m not saying you aren’t a good musican. Everybody likes it when you play – I even like it when you play – but nobody likes it, at all, when there’s nobody here to play. That pisses everybody off, especially me. Instruments don’t fail to show up.’
‘So what if your patrons could listen to the finest instrument in the city?’
‘Is there a point to this?’
‘The other night, when I should have been playing here, I was trying to secure the use of the most supreme guitar in Rio de Janeiro: a Spanish guitar, from Spain. I now possess that guitar – the best example of its kind in all Brazil – but the tragic truth is: I’ve been sacked by the very person most deserving of its sound.’
Nelson opened the case and took out the guitar. He sat on a chair in the middle of the stage and started to pick the first notes of ‘Dindi’, a song he knew she always liked to hear. The manageress stood with arms folded, her face still. As he started to sing, Nelson wondered if she could hear the instrument’s quality. She watched his fingers and his face and he thought he saw ambition in her eyes. If this was the finest guitar in the city, perhaps it would give her bar an edge… When the song finished, she came over and studied the guitar. Nelson watched her eye the label inside and run her fingers over the cedar top and along the ebony fingerboard.
She groaned and said, ‘You’ve got one shot. Saturday night: you and the magic guitar. You’d better not let me down again.’
On his way out, Nelson was almost bowled to the ground by a foreigner in a stripy suit with a scalp of tortured pink. As Nelson swayed out of the way, a far more pleasing figure stepped into the light. Yemanjá, Nelson thought, and, though this woman wore a white suit instead of the dress he’d seen in a thousand representations, the spring of her long black hair and the way she rolled like the sea when she walked left him in no doubt. He watched from the doorway as she joked with the manageress and said something he didn’t quite catch about the president or something. The pink man smiled as if he didn’t understand and produced a fold of bills when the goddess touched his arm. The manageress pointed to the centre of the floor in front of the stage and promised the finest guitar in South America. The pink man stuck up two big thumbs.
Four
A trolley wheel squashed Joel’s toe and he woke into a plane bustling with morning readjustments. He pulled a shutter up and saw a broccoli carpet of forest far below. Jesus! He squashed his face to the glass: trees and trees and trees and a brown worm of a river wiggling here and there. He noticed himself grinning. He tried not to grin and grinned at the fact that he couldn’t stop. Brazil!
The horizon still held dawn’s multicoloured stripes. As light brightened on to the trees they became patched with scrubby pasture and red earth. A shack, a road, a village, pasture, savannah, forest, a village, a factory, towns – until the whole earth seemed to be covered in tiny cells. Joel’s vision scurried across every detail and he was suddenly conscious of a multitude of lives ticking along on this side of the ocean, as his life once had also ticked. And he was aware that Brazil had not been frozen for all these years in which he’d dreamed of it, but warm and alive and getting on perfectly well without him. He felt he had a lifetime of catching-up to do, as if he was duty-bound to find out everything Brazil had been up to since the last time they met.
After what seemed an age, the cells spread along a plain and into a valley, filling a basin fringed by ridges and plum-stone mountains, until suddenly there was the sea shining beneath the brightest blue of the sky, then a glimpse of Guanabara Bay, as the plane sank circling like a bird, turning the landscape on its side, until it was running faster over water and green land and the wheels bounced on to the ground. Brazil! Joel thought, and applause swept through the plane.
He stood in the aisle with his bag – come on, come on – then the plane unclogged and he ducked from the door into thick Brazilian air. Brazil! As he took the steps, his eyes roamed over the edges of the airport and he tried to match this arrival with his memories of departure. A few palm trees waved fingers beyond the tarmac. Low buildings looked asleep. The blue sky was disappearing over the mountains leaving a soft grey. Then, with a step he wanted to proclaim like Armstrong, Joel stepped on to Brazil for the first time in twenty-five years. Brazil! Such a simple thing – walking on Brazil – but Joel enjoyed every glorious stride towards the terminal.
At Passport Control the guard looked long at Joel’s photograph. He can’t see too many brown Englishmen in Flamengo shirts, thought Joel. As Joel waited for his suitcase he realised the glances of locals dwelt on other foreign passengers, while the foreigners’ eyes were careful how they alighted on him, unsure if he was friend or foe. The doors slid open and taxi offers rained on pallid passengers, while Joel cruised through. Just as he was starting to think there really was a touch of samba in his stride, he heard a voice shout, ‘Joel!’
‘Liam!’ said Joel and the two men hugged.
‘Ready to roll?’ said Liam.
‘Never readier.’
They lounged on the leather back seat of a yellow cab as it hurtled towards the city. They drove past mangroves, over flyovers, passing close to the da Penha church on its little mount – Joel talking nineteen to the dozen of this or that forgotten feature as he feasted on the view. Past thousands of red-brick boxes, then tower blocks and offices, and suddenly it was a city Joel remembered as with a shout he caught a glimpse of the Maracanã away to the right. Then through a long tunnel until they shot out in front of the lake to career round its shore, with Cristo Redentor high on his hill at their backs. Finally, they darted into the tree thick streets of Ipanema.
The cab slid up a ramp in front of Tiffany’s. Joel and Liam got out, Joel paid the driver with a cheery ‘Tchau!’, then they pushed through huge glass doors into a marble lobby. The desk clerks spoke to Joel in Portuguese and slapped his back and smiled a lot and complim
ented him on his choice of football team.
Up in his flat, Liam showed Joel his weedy hibiscus plant and the slice of sea visible from his balcony. Joel took a shower and changed into a Brazil shirt, long shorts and flip-flops. He put his compass in his pocket. They took the lift to where a pool sat under a retractable roof. From the terrace outside was a view of the length of Ipanema beach, at the end of which the twin mountains of Dois Irmãos nestled against one another, low cloud hanging over their shoulders. Joel wondered if he would be able to see the giant outline of Pedra da Gávea beyond, if it weren’t for the cloud. Liam talked about a place called Bar das Terezas, where they mixed a mean caipirinha and barmen crushed the ice with pestles in the palms of their hands. Joel leaned on a rail and looked at the sweep of the waves. He’d always imagined this view with a blue sky and sharp lines, but instead the air was moist and the edges of buildings looked almost soft.
They walked round to the back of the terrace where the view across the rooftops was of the lake, backed by forested ridges which jagged along to where Cristo stood on his peak. Closer to them, not much more than a couple of blocks away, stood a small hill covered in a favela. Joel looked beyond the hill towards the lake. Somewhere across the other side the hijacked bus had stopped, though buildings blocked the view of that section of the shore.
‘You know where the hijack happened?’ he asked Liam.
‘Near the Parque Lage, wasn’t it?’ he replied. ‘Over that way somewhere.’
‘Do you have a map?’ asked Joel.
‘There’s an A–Z in the flat.’
‘I wrote down the street names from the news clip.’
‘Nasty business, that hijack,’ said Liam. ‘Why they didn’t just shoot the maniac I’ll never know.’
‘Were you watching it live?’
‘I think the whole country was.’
‘Well, there’s your answer,’ said Joel.
‘I didn’t think they cared enough to pass up a chance to shoot a nutter. It’s not like people don’t know the cops shoot people.’
‘Yes, but live on TV?’
‘So why didn’t they clear the cameras and then shoot him?’ asked Liam.
‘They ballsed it up, there’s no doubt about that.’
‘Still the guy got what he deserved in the end.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Joel. ‘Sounds like he had a tough life: he’d been living on the streets since he was seven.’
‘Um… maybe – but did you notice he shot a pregnant woman?’
‘Well, he didn’t exactly, did he? I mean, the police shot her first.’
‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ said Liam. ‘The man was a lunatic. He’d already been inside loads of times. Drug-dealing, armed robbery, assault –’
‘Yeah, but not till after he escaped being shot with all those kids at Candelária.’
‘I don’t see how that makes any difference. His life wasn’t all bad. They say he was an orphan, but what about that woman – Elza – who says she’s his mother?’
‘They don’t know if she is his mother,’ said Joel. ‘They don’t even know his real name.’
‘And that makes it all right for him to shoot the place up?’
‘It makes it lot easier for them to wipe him out.’
Liam shook his head and smiled.
‘So, did you come all this way to stick up for a dead man?’ he said.
‘You’re right,’ said Joel. ‘Let’s go and look for a live one.’
Joel and Liam took the lift to the ground floor and stood in the street, where the leaves looked swollen on the trees and the air was thickening into rain. They hailed a cab and soon were riding along the curve of Ipanema, passing cyclists and joggers running in lanes by the fringes of the beach, where serious men and women in trunks and bikinis hurled themselves on volleyball courts. They drove past kiosks hung with coconuts like giant bunches of grapes, at which locals lounged in singlets and flip-flops sipping a beer or reading a newspaper. As the soft points of the mountain Dois Irmãos were looming above, the taxi swung to the right into Leblon, where brown people shopped and walked dogs or strolled dressed only in bathers towards the beach. Joel studied the face of every man he saw, and twisted round once to let his vision follow one old fellow. On they drove, past the white back of the Jockey Club, past rows of Imperial Palms in the Botanical Gardens, until they reached the Parque Lage. The taxi slowed to a halt.
Joel paid the driver with a ‘Tchau, ’brigado!’ and stepped on to the kerb.
Liam and Joel stood beside a telephone box next to which the hijacked bus had parked five days before. Nearby on the pavement there were flowers, candles and messages on cards. A postcard of Sugarloaf sat on top of a wreath. There were drawings of the dead girl Geisa on the pavement, underneath one of which had been written ‘Cause of death: incompetence’. Some people stopped and looked at the spot where she died and crossed themselves; others crouched with heads bowed, lips moving and eyes closed.
Joel scanned the scene, walking around, trying to merge the details of the real place with his memory of the clip. One of the cameras must have been here, a motorbike somewhere there, the crowd standing not far back. Joel looked over at a place on the pavement, near some trees.
‘That’s where Dad was, I think,’ Joel said.
He stood on the spot and looked at the ground, wondering where Gilberto’s feet had taken him when the crowd dispersed. He looked up and down the street, across the road, over at the people looking at the tributes to Geisa. If only his compass had his father for a pole.
Joel took a wad of papers from his bag and handed half to Liam. On each sheet were two photos of Gilberto – a faded photograph from the end of their time in Rio, and a blurred shot from the newsreel. Underneath were Liam’s phone numbers, and a message in Portuguese and English:
Son seeks long-lost father – Gilberto Cabral
REWARD OFFERED
If you have seen this man please call
Ask for Joel Cabral
Thanks
Joel taped a poster to the trunk of a tree and Liam fixed one to a lamp-post. For the next couple of hours they visited houses and apartment blocks on nearby streets, giving the sheets to desk clerks, maids and delivery boys, to passers-by and taxi drivers playing cards at a table by a rank. They taped copies in phone boxes and left others under the wipers of cars parked across pavements. They found a small café and watched the owner pin one on the wall. He stood them a beer, and they ate a couple of savoury pastries, before he sent them on their way, saying, ‘A full stomach has sharper eyes.’
Joel bought some lilies from a kiosk and laid them by Geisa’s shrine. He wondered if there were flowers anywhere for Sandro. Two kids came along, black boys in faded T-shirts and bare feet. One juggled tennis balls then balanced one on his forehead while the other inspected Joel’s poster. Liam gave the juggler five reais and they grinned and ran off.
They searched the Botanical Gardens, lest a down-and-out-man with a gap in his teeth was sleeping on a bench. Joel imagined his nine-year-old self darting between the trees. They walked around the lake, handing posters to passing people, until they arrived back in Ipanema again. By now it was five o’clock and dusk had started to colour the air, so they strolled along the beach in the falling evening, admiring the shawl of twinkling favela lights which lay across a shoulder of Dois Irmãos. At the Leblon end of the beach, they came to the Caneca 70 bar, where they drank a few beers and watched the Flamengo game. Vasco scored before half-time to many cries of ‘Brincadeira!’ – what a joke! – but Flamengo equalised after the break and Tuta sealed victory for the red and black tribe, so that soon passing cars were blaring their horns as patrons sang ‘Meeeeeengoooo!’. Joel and Liam toasted the win with caipirinhas, and shared a colossal steak served on a metal platter.
And all the while Joel watched the faces of men that passed, in case his dad should happen by, and listened to the Portuguese the locals spoke, to try to get in tune. It was hard to believ
e he was finally here, and wonderful to watch a Flamengo game again in the city the team was from, and to laugh as the locals larked in the afterglow of victory. There were half a dozen foreigners in the bar, some of them wearing Flamengo shirts, and the locals taught them amusing phrases and bits of chants, only some of which they grasped. Joel got the gist of everything, though he found there were also words he didn’t understand and one of the waiters spoke to him in English, which he hoped was more for Liam’s benefit than his own. When they’d finished their drinks they paid the bill, bid tchau to the waiter, and wandered back along the shore to get ready to go out.
Jackie awoke late on Saturday morning and lay in bed with her eyes glued shut beneath a leopard-print eye-mask. Her mouth longed for anything wet, her teeth for minty smoothness. Half of her wanted to wallow in tortured thoughts of her Brazilian past, the other to run outside and allow a busy day to chase them from her mind. But she could tell it would be bright outside, that was the trouble with day, and she dreaded her hangover slightly more than her memories. She hadn’t thought about her own voyage to Brazil for a long time. She could hardly believe that Joel was really there. Besides, Brazil would be easier to forget completely if she could deny that the early days in the Marvellous City had been the happiest of her life.
In 1962 Miriam and Jackie had been nineteen – nineteen! – and both working as secretaries in a firm of chartered accountants. Miriam didn’t have a bloke but Jackie was entertaining two: Malcolm, sporter of starved ties and skinny suits, and Edward Squires, the boss’s nephew, a twenty-six-year-old graduate of Cambridge University, destined for brilliance in the accountancy firmament. Then Miriam met a man called Frank at a do for clients. Frank was pushing his forties, he said – though they were never sure from which side of forty he meant. He was a large man with fingers like sausages, with which he loved to maul piano keys into a ragtime tune. He sang in a barbershop quartet and wrote poetry.