by Ed Siegle
‘You again, malandro!’ said Selma, though she said it with a girlish smile and kissed Nelson three times on the cheeks instead of two. Nelson was sure her trousers were tighter than he remembered.
‘Chef not in today?’ said Nelson.
‘New chef,’ she said.
‘Not up to the job?’ said Nelson with a wink.
‘Boss caught him being over-familiar with a waitress,’ said Selma.
‘You must have been upset?’
‘The bitch was sacked too,’ she said and touched his forearm softly.
Joel looked at the menu and thought about Nelson. He was thrilled to see the names of forgotten dishes, and pleased to find he understood most of the words. But it was hard to concentrate on choosing when he was trying to judge if Nelson was taking him for a ride. Joel hadn’t the first idea what kind of person he might be – he was written in a language Joel didn’t completely grasp. In Britain he liked to think he could look after himself: he and Liam had been in some dives in their time, and he reckoned he could sense a dangerous man the minute he walked in. Joel had watched dozens of films about Brazil, but he knew next to nothing about the real world of the favela or the street. Nelson played guitar and smiled a lot; he was friendly, but it was impossible to guess his thoughts. The coincidence was great… but could he believe Nelson was simply here to fleece him? Perhaps he didn’t want to believe it.
Nelson looked at Joel and thought about the menu. He wanted everything but knew it was better not to show he was hungry. If he thinks I eat like a king each day then maybe he’ll pay me like one, Nelson thought.
‘What would you recommend?’ said Joel.
‘It’s all good,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having.’
‘Are you hungry?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘I could eat a horse,’ said Joel.
‘We don’t eat a lot of horse round here but there’s always the carne de sol,’ said Nelson, chiding himself for showing his desire.
‘Let’s have two of those, with a caipirinha on the side.’
Joel waved Selma over and ordered. When she left them alone again, Joel asked, ‘So, what’s the story?’
‘The business is the following,’ said Nelson. ‘I am not a hundred per cent certain I know where your father is. I don’t know him exactly. But, from what I can tell from the pictures – and you’ve got to admit they’re not the very best – he looks like a guy I used to see around.’
‘And what’s the deal?’
‘Buy me lunch,’ he said. ‘Pay me to find him.’
‘I’m happy to talk about money,’ said Joel. ‘But please don’t lie to me. I’ve been hoping to find him for twenty-five years, so I could do without being given the runaround.’
Nelson nodded. That was the problem: how to string him along without at least a couple of lies? He supposed it depended a bit on definition – after all, Nelson did know the kind of places a man like that might roam, and he might even have seen Gilberto somewhere, he couldn’t swear he hadn’t – and if he couldn’t swear he hadn’t, surely it wasn’t an utter lie to say he thought he had?
‘If I don’t find him, you stop paying,’ said Nelson.
‘How much do you want?’
‘Say… one hundred and fifty reais a day?’
‘That seems a bit steep,’ Joel said. ‘Where are you going to look?’
‘I’m going to start in Cantagalo.’
‘The favela by Ipanema?’
‘Right.’
‘That’s where you saw him?’
‘Where I might have seen him.’
Cantagalo made some sense, Joel thought: it was the nearest favela to their old flat. Perhaps it was the natural refuge of an Ipanema man fallen on hard times. Only the day before, he’d been standing on Liam’s roof looking towards the very place. It was hard not to wonder if his dad had been gazing back. Joel thought about the money: fifty quid a day. Nelson seemed so loose in the movement of his limbs, so bright in the engagement of his eyes, that Joel found it hard to be certain he had an agenda, though he surely did – the coincidence was just too great. It was a lot of money, but maybe it was worth it for a couple of days – as long as there were results. It wasn’t going to bankrupt him, and in the meantime he could take up Eva’s offer too.
Nelson wondered if it was easier to lie to foreigners than Brazilians. Cantagalo had been a flash of inspiration. Nelson had never actually been there, but its location would make it easier to meet Joel without having to run all over the city. He could still look for the missing father where he chose, but it was better to put somewhere in Joel’s mind as the searching ground. Nelson suspected he was the type to ask lots of questions and be picky about the answers. He didn’t really plan to go to Cantagalo – whoever ran that hill might not appreciate a stranger turning up with a photo asking questions. But since Joel wouldn’t be able to go there either, it didn’t matter much.
‘OK,’ said Joel. ‘A hundred and fifty.’
‘Beleza!’ Nelson said.
‘But I come with you.’
‘We’ll never find him if you do.’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘A stranger asking questions in a place like that can only be a cop.’
‘Even if I’m with you?’
‘They’d probably shoot me too,’ said Nelson.
Joel smiled at Nelson and took out his wallet. ‘OK. Half now, half tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what you’ve managed to find out. But if I’m not happy then, we’ll call it quits.’
‘OK,’ said Nelson. ‘A hundred and fifty now, and a hundred and fifty tomorrow.’
‘Wait a minute, I make it seventy-five?’
‘You’re forgetting today, cara. The meter’s already running.’
Joel paused for a second before counting out the money.
‘No progress, no more cash,’ he said as he handed the bills to Nelson.
‘Be tranquil, my brother,’ said Nelson. ‘I might even bring your father tomorrow night.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Joel, raising his glass. ‘So where shall we meet?’
‘How about Porcão? The one in Ipanema, nine o’clock.’
‘OK. Sounds good.’
The two men observed each other. Joel wondered if he’d ever see Nelson again, though he supposed he might be able to trace him through the bar where they’d seen him sing. If he didn’t show up at Porcão there wasn’t a lot of point. Nelson looked at Joel and wondered if he’d ever see another real of his money. How could he show progress when he was more likely to find a polar bear in Copacabana? Especially if Joel’s father didn’t want to be found.
‘So why do you want to find him, anyway?’ asked Nelson.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What did he do?’
‘Do?’
‘He must have done something or you wouldn’t be after him.’
‘He died,’ said Joel. ‘At least I thought he had, until –’
‘Bummer,’ said Nelson. ‘My mother died and my aunt died – and then my sister too, that was the worst.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Joel.
‘Do you have a sister?’
‘I’m an only child.’
‘Well, I guess you can’t have everything,’ said Nelson. ‘You never had a sister and I never had a father. We might not have a full team but we still have to play ball.’
They finished their food and ordered cafezinhos. Joel asked Nelson how he learnt to play guitar and Nelson told him about the one Zila saved to buy. And Joel understood most of the story Nelson told, if not every word, and he hoped that as days went by he’d come to understand everything he said.
Nelson wanted to tell Joel that Adolfo had taken the very guitar Zila bought for him, but he wasn’t sure where the story might end, and feared he’d tell Joel about the house, the Spanish guitar and the money from the fat man’s trousers – because, once Nelson started, he sometim
es couldn’t stop. It felt strange to be keeping so many secrets, even from a stranger like Joel, but he suspected that if he said too much he’d wind up on the poor end of the deal.
‘Keep your eyes awake and your mouth asleep,’ Zemané had told him once. ‘The loser always talks the most.’
They left the restaurant and stood awkwardly by the tram stop. Nelson patted Joel on the back, grasped his hand and said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ then walked up the hill and round the corner. Joel caught the tram to Centro where he took a taxi. He sat in the back with his head leaning against the glass, listening to a Chico Buarque song on the radio, watching sights slide by as he thought about Nelson’s question. He’s my father, he said to himself, of course I want to find him.
Jackie took a taxi to Tony’s. She wore a red dress with a plunging top and a rearing bottom, new heels and tiger-print knickers. She wondered if he’d made an effort. How did a man of his ilk ready himself for a date? She imagined him lathering his face with a badger-hair brush, running a black comb he’d owned since childhood through his hair, ironing a stripy shirt in his socks and Y-fronts. She wondered if he wished his wife were still alive to iron for him. He wouldn’t look in the mirror to see if he looked all right, nor fret over whether the shirt he’d chosen would find favour. He’d just prepare himself the way he always had, in a manner he deemed proper, without any fuss.
She had all but given up on men of Tony’s age. The embers barely glowed in most of them. Many liked the idea of sex, but not the reality. They made a good enough fist of it in the early stages but, as soon as there was a semblance of a relationship, out came the slippers. Jackie might have written off Tony too, had he not been quite so beautiful – it was the only word for him. She felt challenged to prove that an animal lurked inside even such a preposterously decent man. The second time she’d been to his house in Hove, he’d been planting a row of runner beans. He’d wanted to stop, change into something smarter and take her to ‘a wonderful French place he knew’, but she’d insisted he carry on, and sat in a deckchair while he pushed tools into the earth. She’d poured him caipirinhas from a Thermos flask, which they’d drunk from crystal glasses as she admired his brown arms and clinging gardening slacks.
For three dates he’d failed to lay a finger. The anticipation might have been something to relish, had she been surer there was anything to anticipate. She wasn’t going to jump on him: she didn’t mind taking charge once they were off, but she wanted him to do her the honour of a first move. Then, on their last rendezvous, the day she’d fled the wretched video clip, as they were walking along the seafront past Hove Lawns, Tony had placed his hand on the very small of her back and pressed, all without so much as a flicker in his lips, as he talked of tickets he’d bought for a Stoppard play. Then he’d slid his hand across her back and smoothly into her palm – as if he had been doing the same for aeons. The plunge was close.
As the taxi crawled through traffic, Jackie thought of Joel and hoped he was being careful, of course, but taking time to have fun, no matter why he was there. He knew how to enjoy himself, that was for certain, and she couldn’t think of any greater blessing. There could hardly be a better place than Rio for that, and what was the sense in going there only to think about the past?
Jackie tried not to think about Gilberto but, Joel’s mission aside, she was going on a date – and she always found it impossible to think about a new lover without old lovers posing questions. The most awkward ones were set by thoughts of the good times with Gilberto. She couldn’t kid herself such times had never existed, but how much easier if they could be forgotten. It was hard to live with the fact that her life was so defined by him, someone she’d known so many years ago, a person with such significance that he’d split her life into Before and After. When she thought of it like this, she sometimes wondered upon which instant the irrevocable change in her life had found its pivot. Hours before she had first seen Gilberto at A Gaiola, sitting with Miriam on a plane to Brazil, there had been no possibility of a connection between Gilberto and herself. Later that night, as she’d lain in his bed, there could never again be any doubt of one. When had it swivelled? Had it started the moment he opened his mouth to sing ‘A Quiet Night of Quiet Stars’? Had it been the second their eyes first met? Joel liked to joke that it was when she first saw his teeth. Initially he’d appeared to be singing to everyone and no one, as he gazed into the sea of the crowd, but gradually his vision had seemed to focus closer and closer to Jackie – until his songs became their songs, until even when he moved his eyes to others, for the sake of politeness if nothing else, she could not take her eyes from him. She would swear it was certainly sealed before he stepped down from the stage and Frank presented them to one another.
They had kissed cheeks and she’d moved her lips closer to his than she would normally have done. Later that night in his room she’d put these same questions to him as she tapped the rhythm of ‘Love Me Do’ on his smooth brown chest with bright pink fingernails.
‘It didn’t start tonight at all,’ Gilberto had replied. ‘We’ve always been connected, like two fishes on the same piece of line. We just needed to reel each other in, my angel fish.’
The next day he’d surprised her by turning up in his starched white tunic to take her walking along the seafront in the sun, where he was the subject of admiring glances from many a local woman, making Jackie feel the luckiest girl in the Latin world. He was a dentist by day and a singer by night, a cocktail of light and dark. He was the first man she didn’t have to guide, the first to give her more pleasure than she knew how to give herself. It made her skin crawl to think of the limpness of English men with their clattering rock and roll, their skinny trousers and ties, hanging about with drooping fags in their lips, like so many mangy cats.
She had to admit those first few months were the finest of her life. She felt like a renegade, thousands of miles from home in the bed of a man who sang like a nightingale, living through the infancy of a religion: as the God Samba raised the Holy Son, Bossa Nova, in the Holy Land of Rio de Janeiro. And as the world dreamed of the Girl from Ipanema, Jackie was that girl right there, tall and tanned and young and lovely, walking to the beach by day, listening to the Nightingale by night.
Soon it was 1964 and even the coup seemed gentle, stealing in on April 1st, baring only baby teeth. They read of tanks in the streets that year – but also of Bardot in Búzios, where Jackie and Gilberto would spend weekends in a place with windows that opened over the waves. Gilberto had mostly sung covers of Sinatra and Davis, Bennett and Presley, but now he took to singing the compositions of Lyra or Lobo, Vinícius and Jobim, Menescal and Bôscoli. And, even if his own songs did not go down so well, it was great to carouse the city by night and see Nara or Bethânia singing in a show, to feel Gilberto was part of a scene to rival any in the world.
As Jackie’s taxi cruised through Hove, she asked herself: how could you truly love again when you’d had a time that could never be beaten? No matter how distant an island those months were, no matter how bad the years which followed, you could not alter the fact of them. She was a different person now, she told herself – as different from the person she was then as one woman is from another.
She knew this was only partly true, but there wasn’t a way to make it look any better, so this line of thinking did the trick, most of the time.
Jackie stepped carefully out of the cab and asked the driver if her seams were straight. She stood at the end of the gravel drive and smoked a final cigarette. Tony had never mentioned her smoking, but she somehow imagined he disapproved. She crunched up to the door of the detached red-brick house and pressed a finger to the bell. Beyond circles in the panes she saw a distorted shape move through the hall and after a few beats he opened the door. He smiled and kissed her upon one cheek, then the other (on their first date he’d shaken her hand). He wore a dark suit, shiny shoes and a lilac shirt without a tie, revealing a hint of a sandy curl. He smelled faintly of citrus. They crunc
hed down the drive to where a black car purred. Tony opened the door for her. They settled into the cream leather back seat.
‘To the marina, please,’ Tony said.
Tony’s instruction induced mild panic in Jackie, and she hoped its ripples didn’t show. Carlo ran a bar at the marina. Tony frequented three restaurants where the waiters used his Christian name, all far from the marina; she’d assumed they would dine at one of them tonight. Although it was not too late to request an alternative, she couldn’t do so without raising questions, and with their affair so deliciously poised she feared a deviation might set them back weeks. Jackie took Tony’s hand and squeezed. The risk of discovery might even sprinkle the evening with a sugar of excitement. Besides, what were the chances of actually meeting Carlo? She made a mental note: tomorrow I’ll tell him it’s over.
The Palace Pier slid by. Golden drops of electric light streamed down the helter-skelter as the evening sky turned peachy. The car smoothly rode a bend and Jackie swayed closer to Tony. Tall white Regency houses made everything look grand. She felt a lifting inside. Of course, you could never again feel twenty-one, but not so long ago she’d thought all relatives of such sensations had died with the carefree Jackie who boarded that plane in ’63.
The car rolled to a halt next to the less than fashionable shops of a marina arcade. Jackie and Tony entered a hotel and took a lift to the second-floor restaurant, where they were shown to a table with a view over the marina. The sun had set and the masts of sailboats were painted with dark bright colours. They ordered kir royales, chinked glasses and took a sip.
‘So, what are we going to do about Joel?’ said Tony.
Jackie took his hand.
‘We’ll have to tell him about us sooner or later,’ she said.