by Ed Siegle
Five
On Sunday morning, Nelson played guitar in front of the blazing windows, but his mind wouldn’t settle on a tune. There had to be a way to earn some real money. He’d made ninety-eight reais from his fee and tips, which wasn’t bad, though hardly enough to change his fortunes. A couple of gigs a week might keep the rumbles from his belly, but there was no chance of earning enough to sate Adolfo. The foreigners are the ticket, he thought. Yemanjá has led them to me. It’s just a question of making the right moves.
He thought about the moment the goddess arrived at the gig, just as the chairs were starting to fill, slipping through the curtains with her two male sidekicks. The brown one – Joel – was a riddle. He looked so like a Carioca but his shirt screamed ‘gringo’ and he walked with glue in his legs. Joel and Eva didn’t seem to know each other well, and yet sometimes they left the pink man looking as lonely as a fish in a bucket. More to the point, Joel had sounded interested in meeting up, which might have served the double purpose of earning
Nelson some money and securing him more goddess time, had opportunities not been thwarted by the manageress. Nelson had been saddened to see the goddess in black, though perhaps it meant there were games to be played – and what was the point if there weren’t a few of those? Eva, she was called. She had looked far too little at Nelson and far too much at the other members of the band – who were excellent musicians but not romantic prospects for a deity. Nelson had done his best to grab her attention in the gaps between songs: talking about his love for Yemanjá; touching on the triumph of good over evil – as exemplified by Flamengo’s victory; stressing the importance of sticking to a straight path – like the truest racing ant. Eva had seemed more intent on conversations with the foreigners, so Nelson had moved closer to the edge – and heard her talk about the president, Nelson thought, so he hoped he wasn’t falling for a politician. He wanted action as well as talk from his lover, and only as many lies as were reasonable.
He also remembered Joel saying he was hunting for his father, though it wasn’t clear what his father had done. From what he’d been able to overhear as he passed by, it had something to do with poor Sandro, and Joel had put Wanted posters up around Jardim Botânico. Nelson couldn’t help but hope his father got away. But then again… if Joel wanted to search for his dad, maybe Nelson could be his eyes – and earn a few reais. Nelson might even find him – with Yemanjá guiding his every move, there had to be a chance. The posters were the key: with a little more information he was certain he could spin a simple plan.
He left the house, skipped down the street and jumped on to a tram as it slowed to take a bend. He walked through Centro, down Sunday streets of offices with frozen windows, past banks and dormant sandwich bars. He passed the church of Candelária and thought about Sandro and the massacre on those steps. What kind of a life had that boy led? To live in the shadows of the streets, with half the people ignoring you and the rest wishing you didn’t exist. On a radio show that morning, the callers had been burning Sandro: he was just another drugged-up marginal, a criminal who got what he deserved. Of course, it was tragic to have seen his mother’s head severed before his eyes, the callers said, but these kids have choices just like all of us. They don’t have to live on the street and not all of them end up killing pregnant women. Look at João X and José Y, the office boys in our company – born in the gutter but making a living the honest way, not like those rats with knives down in Copacabana. It annoyed Nelson to hear them equate street kids with drug gang members, favela inhabitants with criminals, as if they were one and the same. And Nelson asked himself: if a child of seven must live on the street, who’s the criminal? He walked faster and faster, chasing thoughts of his sister from his head because now was not the time to be coming to a boil.
He boarded a bus at Praça Mauá. He noticed the driver’s gaze lingering on the eyes of arriving passengers. Every man and woman on every bus was wondering if it could happen to them this time, and they studied the others a bit more closely than before. There was something good about that, Nelson thought. Through half-closed eyelids, he viewed the bay, parks with thick green leaves, shops and apartment blocks. Women in long T-shirts walked dogs; men with bare chests begged for change. A bus wasn’t a bad place to spend part of the day, he thought, going round and round the city catching episodes. Nelson dreamed himself into the lives of beautiful passers-by until his eyes closed, and when he awoke he found the bus was quivering to a halt near the Jockey Club. He jumped off. Nearby, rich kids and red-faced foreigners stood on the pavements and in the road, drinking beer and admiring one another. Nelson considered blending with this gallery but, though he was sure to be bought a few drinks for his oh-so-zany-Brazilian act, he needed money not beer, and the idea forming required his full attention. He imagined Zemané pointing a stubby cigar at him, pressing the merits of careful planning. Zemané said he had a map of the future in his mind and often strolled around the remaining years of his life – no doubt in cayman-skin loafers. Nelson had trouble imagining much beyond tomorrow, but for the first time in a while a plan was taking shape.
Nelson strolled alongside the Botanical Gardens until the road ran past the Parque Lage and he found the junction where the hijacked bus had stopped. He crossed and looked at the shrine to Geisa, which made him think of his little sister Mariana again, so he snatched his mind from melancholy thoughts and hunted around for one of Joel’s posters. Sure enough, taped to a tree a few yards down the road was a piece of paper, which read:
Son seeks long-lost father – Gilberto Cabral
REWARD OFFERED
If you have seen this man please call
Ask for Joel Cabral
Thanks
What was the right thing to do? He could feel his aunt Zila watching and knew he shouldn’t really just take Joel for a ride. But he thought of what Zemané might say – ‘When I have a need and you have a need, that’s business’ – and besides, how could Joel hope to find a father in a city like this when he couldn’t look in half the places one might live?
The sun was smarting on his skin and his stomach was starting to complain. He entered a phone box, slipped a coin into the slot and dialled. A foreign voice came on the line.
‘Hello? Um – bom dia?’
‘Joel Cabral?’
‘One moment! I’ll get him.’
Nelson heard a foreign man call, ‘JOEL! For you, quick!’
A new voice said, ‘Alô?’
‘Joel Cabral?’ repeated Nelson.
‘Sim!’ said Joel.
‘I’m calling about your poster,’ said Nelson in Portuguese.
‘That’s what I was hoping!’
‘The man in the picture? I think I might know where to find him.’
‘You’re joking! That’s amazing! Have you seen him, then? Do you know him? Is he all right – ?’
‘The business is the following: I know a place where they cook for the gods. Buy me lunch and I’ll tell you everything.’
‘It’s a deal… but listen, can you tell me a bit more? I mean, how come you – ?’
‘All in good time, brother… How are you fixed for today?’
‘Today is good, very good.’
‘Largo dos Guimarães, Santa Teresa. You know where that is?’
‘Sure.’
‘Wait on the corner by the tram stop, around one o’clock.’
‘How will I know you?’
‘I’ll know you,’ said Nelson.
Nelson hung up, walked to the square, found an empty table outside a bar and ordered a beer. Time for one, he thought, to rouse persuasive spirits. He watched happy youngsters tucking into feijoada stew while their foreign friends picked out the bits they didn’t fancy. His stomach, roused by the beer, could smell the black beans. In a little while we’ll eat like kings, he told it. As he savoured the cold liquid Nelson mulled over the main wrinkle in his plan: the issue of coincidence. Was it absurd that one day he should be playing guitar in front of Joel and
the next should happen, purely by chance, to see his poster? On the face of it, yes. But coincidences made the world go round – if the lucky Earth hadn’t chanced across a ball of fire, people wouldn’t be bumping into each other at all. He wasn’t sure Joel would believe his innocence and he was almost certain Eva wouldn’t, but it had to be worth a try.
He finished his beer, ordered another for the sake of harmony – one was a lonely number – realised he’d better hurry up, drained the glass, paid, ran to a bus on the point of closing its doors, boarded and sailed across town.
Debbie lay flat on her back with her head lolling to the side and concentrated on a small tear in the curtain which was allowing a ray of light into the room. It had not been many minutes since fixing her vision on that spot, and that spot alone, had been the only way to fend off spinning nausea, and she still felt an attachment to that ray of light, so she resolved to keep her eyes on the tear for a little longer.
Her mouth tasted of chewed cigarettes and Tuaca. She wondered what Joel and Liam had got up to last night and hoped they were feeling similarly afflicted. Two single boys in South America. She and Joel might no longer be together, but she hoped he’d consider how she might feel. Thinking of him now, as she lay there sick and low, she felt blind and without rights. Twenty years must surely leave a legacy; she hoped he’d act accordingly. Liam was pretty together now. They had plenty of friends who still burned the oil like a well on fire, and others whom mid-life angst had panicked into setting themselves alight. But Liam was far too sorted these days to feel any obligation to lead Joel astray. She and Joel had joked, only the other week, that Liam’s progression was a kind of microcosm of the ascent of man: from banging bits of iron against trees to working for a corporation in Rio de Janeiro. None of his friends knew what he did, and he said it was too dull to explain, but they seemed to pay him for whatever it was and the present gig was particularly good: living in Ipanema, all expenses paid.
Even in her current state, she had to acknowledge she liked Liam, on the whole. There was a bond between them, a kind of equal opposition and attraction that held them at a comfortable distance, a connection maintained by a combination of affection and suspicion that went with loving the same person from a different vantage point. They’d spoken about it on various drunken nights. She couldn’t think of a better best mate for Joel, and yet Liam had got Joel into a lot of trouble in his time. Liam had told her he couldn’t imagine Joel with anyone else, but that sometimes the ways in which she’d tried to shape Joel had annoyed him. Fortunately, Liam hadn’t managed to kill Joel and Debbie hadn’t managed to change him much at all, so they were both pretty happy in the end. She knew Liam would be equally worried about the current predicament – much had been spoken and unspoken on that subject over the years – and she felt pretty sure he’d be keeping a close eye on Joel. If she couldn’t be there, it was the next best thing.
Debbie reached over the edge of her bed, grabbed a magazine, rolled it into a tube – all without moving her eyes from the tear in the curtain – and lashed out at a fly that had just stopped buzzing around the room and settled on the wall. Then she used the magazine to fan herself a few times, hoping it might change things for the better, which it didn’t. She dropped the magazine on the floor. The fly took to the air again. It was going to be one of those days.
‘Let me speak to him!’ said Eva.
Liam put down the phone and fetched Joel from his room, where he was was trying to look as Brazilian as he could. He’d bought a bead necklace at the hippy fair in Praça General Osório, which he wore with his Flamengo shirt, long board shorts, flip-flops and a pair of wraparound shades.
‘How do I look?’
‘Like you’re trying a bit too hard,’ said Liam.
Joel removed the sunglasses.
‘Eva’s on the phone,’ said Liam. ‘Wants to talk you out of it.’
Joel picked up. ‘Eva, listen –’
‘Go,’ she said. ‘Go and meet this marginal you know nothing about. Let him take you down an alley and shoot you!’
‘Look, I’ll be careful, but what can –’
‘I bet he’s not even seen your father. Nossa! Just make sure he kills you today so I don’t have to worry when it’s going to happen.’
‘We’re just having lunch. I’ll be careful, I swear. I’m going to listen to what he has to say, that’s all. No alleys, I promise.’
‘But you don’t know anything about him. You didn’t even ask his name, who he is, what he does, why he is wandering about the place looking at posters then wanting to meet you in Santa Teresa – one minute he is by the lake, then he is in the hills – it doesn’t make any sense, querido.’
‘Maybe my dad is in Santa Teresa. I pay this guy a few reais and he takes me to him…’
‘Joel, I can help you, like I said. I know people – maybe not presidents, but we can find him without lunches with malandros in parts of town you don’t know –’
‘It’s Santa Teresa in broad daylight, not Rocinha.’
‘A gun doesn’t care what part of town it’s in, not in this city, my friend.’
‘I really don’t think he’s going to shoot me, Eva.’
‘Well, however he does it, I just hope he makes it quick!’
Joel took a cab to Carioca station and caught a tram. As the yellow tramcar reached the end of the arches and started to climb, three black kids sprinted along then jumped up and clung on to the side. Joel almost leapt from his seat, expecting some kind of assault, but the kids just hung on as the car took the twists of the roads. Soon the tram was running over cobbles high above the city. A few shops and cafés appeared on the right, the kids jumped running into the road behind and the car drew to a halt. Joel stepped down and stood at the stop. A few people ambled by but no one seemed to be waiting. Joel wondered from which direction the caller would come or if he was already watching. His eyes followed a couple of men as they walked along the road but they continued on their way. He looked at windows and doorways. He looked up and down the tram lines, feigning waiting for a tram. Joel thought of Eva’s comments about him looking foreign, and wondered if it was true that the locals could see he wasn’t one of them. It occurred to him that the harder he tried to look natural, the less natural he’d look. So he tried not to try, which he suspected would make things even worse.
Nelson saw Joel on the corner. He was standing with his hands in his pockets looking like a man who was trying not to look as if he was waiting. His body was still, but his eyes shot this way and that. Nelson looked at Joel and wondered what kind of deal he might be able to cut. He hadn’t really thought about figures.
‘Think of a price and treble it,’ Zemané would say.
He could see Joel moving from foot to foot now, his eyes roving. He suspected Zemané would eat a man like Joel alive. Nelson walked slowly closer and stood on the pavement opposite him. Joel’s eyes settled upon him and Nelson grinned at Joel and crossed the road.
Joel watched a man approaching. As he came closer, Joel thought he recognised him. It looked a lot like the singer from the bar. What a coincidence! Joel felt a tiny bit pleased but also a rush of irritation: now was precisely not the time to be making friends. What if Nelson’s presence scared the caller away?
‘Joel?’ said Nelson, taking Joel’s hand and patting him on the back.
‘Nelson?’
‘What a coincidence!’
‘Great to see you!’ said Joel, trying to ensure his eyes were attentive, at the same time as glancing round. ‘Look, I’d love to talk but – I feel really bad about this – I’m meeting someone, right now, and it’s really important… do you have a number, or…’
‘Hey – I’m meeting someone too – isn’t that weird? I saw this Wanted poster when I was hanging out in my old neighbourhood. Turns out –’
‘Wait a minute – you’ve come to meet a guy about a poster?’
‘Sure.’
‘It’s my poster.’
‘You’
ve got to be kidding!’
‘This is incredible…’
‘Now that really is a coincidence!’ said Nelson. ‘You see me play… I see your poster!’
‘Coincidence isn’t even close.’
‘There’s magic on every block of the Marvellous City,’ Nelson replied with a smile.
Sometimes Joel had the feeling life possessed a will of its own. He far preferred it when it followed his own plans. Events sold as Fate were usually pure coincidence, but happenings sold as coincidence were mostly nothing of the sort. The trouble was, he couldn’t discount the possibility that he wasn’t being taken for a ride. At least they were going to sit down – weren’t they? – in a place full of people. Nelson could hardly shoot him over lunch. He would sit, listen and try to work out the angles. If he didn’t believe the story Nelson told, he’d tell him to get lost.
‘OK, so what’s the plan?’ Joel asked.
‘Let’s go and eat and I’ll tell you what I know.’
They walked down the street and through swing doors into a restaurant with checked tablecloths and photographs of footballers on the walls. The tables were full of brown locals and foreigners slowly devouring cod balls or chicken à passarinho or sucking drinks through straws. A radio played forró. A waitress wiggled through a beaded curtain and showed them to a table.