by Ed Siegle
Nelson was worried the reference to fish eyes might put Eva off her meal, and was thinking about steering the conversation on to a finer subject, when Eva asked, ‘Did you ever eat anything you killed?’
‘Only chickens and fish,’ said Nelson.
‘Do they taste any better?’
‘The first few times.’
‘Did it give you a thrill?’ asked Eva, her eyes widening.
‘I can’t say it did.’
‘I could kill a chicken. I just never had to.’
‘Perhaps it’s harder if you don’t really need to,’ said Nelson.
‘You’re probably right.’
‘I could buy a chicken next time, if you like. We could kill it in the yard.’
‘You never know,’ said Eva. ‘I might be good at it. Maybe I could go into the chicken trade. God knows what else I’m going to do when they throw me on the street.’
‘You’ll never be on the street, not a woman like you.’
‘Like me? Like what? They’re talking of making us redundant, Nelson.’
‘So find another job.’
‘It’s not so easy, Nelson, for a woman not far from fifty – I won’t tell you how close because that’s my secret – when the bosses all want younger women to adorn their days.’
‘Not all of them are like that,’ said Nelson. ‘Besides, you have… qualities which younger women don’t.’
‘I’m glad you noticed, Nelson, you’re kind, and I appreciate that, don’t think I don’t, but what chance does a maturing woman really have? Men will tell you the woman is worshipped – don’t shake your head, that’s what you all say – that they love their mother, love their daughter, love their beautiful wife. But they also love the gatas on the beach with their swollen bundas on display, and they’d rather have one of them decorating the office than a woman closer to falling from the tree. What chance is there for a woman in her prime without even a simple husband, let alone a president?’
‘I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with presidents.’
‘Why shouldn’t I have the best? I’d be a president myself, were such a thing allowed, but this is a man’s world, friend, so let’s not even pretend.’
‘Do you really think some rich guy is going to solve all your problems?’
‘It’s about equality,’ said Eva. ‘I want my equal. It’s not about money.’
‘It never is if you have some.’
‘Even the fat can be hungry, friend. But I’m not greedy, not me.’
‘I’m just saying: a president isn’t the only type of man that could make you happy.’
‘Do you think you could make me happy?’ said Eva, raising an eyebrow.
‘You’d need to give me a chance.’
‘There’s no harm dreaming,’ said Eva. ‘You have your dreams and I have mine.’
Nelson browned onions then mixed in eggs, stirring a bit harder than was necessary. He added manioc flour and salt, then when the blend was loose he set it aside and topped up their glasses. Tonight is a pearl, he said to himself; let’s make sure it shines. He raised his glass and said, ‘Stop dreaming, stop breathing, that’s what Zila used to say. Number one of her Eleven Commandments.’
‘Eleven’s a funny kind of number, Nelsinho – weren’t ten enough?’
‘She thought mankind ought to have moved on since Moses.’
‘You’d better tell me what they are,’ said Eva. ‘I might have been breaking some.’
‘Number two: Do unto others what they would do unto you if they didn’t have any shoes either.’
‘What about if their shoes are nicer than yours?’ said Eva. ‘I’d like to put a curse on those witches.’
‘Number three: Life should be a string of pearls. Find as many pearls as you can and string them all together.’
‘Pearls?’
‘Tonight is a pearl,’ said Nelson.
‘I take it one man’s pearl is another’s pebble?’
‘Number four: Never hit a woman.’
‘Bravo!’
‘Did anyone ever hit you, Eva?’ asked Nelson.
‘No, they didn’t. Thank God, they didn’t.’
‘Do you think presidents hit more or less than other men?’
‘I should think about the same. I’m not saying they’re saints.’
‘Number five: Never say sorry for something that’s not your fault.’
‘I need to tell Liam that one.’
‘Six: Believe in no gods before yourself.’
‘I take it Zila wasn’t a religious woman?’
‘She thought gods were mainly for emergencies and special occasions.’ Nelson finished his glass and looked at Eva. She was smiling. It felt good to feel her waiting for the rest of the commandments. She wasn’t about to run away. Whatever might or might not come of the night, some of it had gone his way.
‘I’ve forgotten the others,’ he lied, because he didn’t want to give all his secrets away on the first date. ‘But let’s drink to number eleven: Never forget your aunt Zila.’
Nelson led Eva into the living room and swept out an arm to indicate the door in the corner. As she stepped down into the hexagonal room she squealed, ‘Caraca!’
The room was lit by dozens of candles – their flames reflected in the windows – and outside a thousand lights of the city shone. In the centre of the floor was a round table laid with a white tablecloth and gleaming cutlery. Nelson pulled out a chair and Eva sat down. She touched her cutlery and the stem of her glass, then looked up at a grinning Nelson, who stood apart, his hands behind his back.
‘Is everything to your satisfaction, madam?’
‘Oh, my little malandro!’ she said. ‘Show me a president’s wife who dines in half the style!’
Nelson brought the food on a silver platter and served Eva, then switched sides to fill her glass. For a while they sat and ate without a word, and Nelson recalled his wonder at the silence of dining couples he’d waited upon. He used to think rich people must have so much to be excited about, yet there they would sit, eyeing other diners, twiddling their wedding rings, swapping diluted smiles. He guessed money couldn’t buy you conversation. But Nelson and Eva’s silence felt like one of indulgence rather than emptiness, and in any case it was never going to last.
‘Would you like to know a secret?’ Eva said. ‘Subordinates are the death of the imagination: as soon as you have someone to run around for you, you lose your spark. Believe me, I’ve seen presidents in action: ordering this for their wife, ordering that for their mistress. A monkey can order.’
‘It must be nice to order, to have things ordered.’
‘Nice but chato. Boring, boring, boring. What I wouldn’t give for a president with your imagination.’
‘Imagination can also get you into a lot of trouble.’
Eva put down her glass and looked at him for a moment.
‘You surprise me, Nelson. I didn’t have you down as a pragmatist.’
‘I guess I’ve dreamed myself into a lot of situations over the years.’
‘It can get you out of trouble too, querido.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Nelson. ‘Some troubles cannot be dreamed away, you know that, don’t you? Like those problems of your own.’
‘I can’t see how a little imagination can do any harm, no matter the predicament.’
‘It didn’t help Sandro much, did it? He showed plenty of imagination on that bus.’
‘Does it take imagination to put a gun in a woman’s mouth?’ asked Eva.
‘Maybe he was imagining how it would feel to have a little power for once, to feel the eyes of the world upon him for a change, to be a star.’
‘I think you may be the one imagining things.’
‘Can you put yourself in his shoes for a moment, Eva? Is his predicament so hard to see?’
‘All I see is a girl killed because of him.’
‘And what about Sandro?’
‘I see a marginal who go
t what he deserved.’
‘I see a black man strangled in the back of a van,’ said Nelson.
‘Not every picture is in black and white, Nelson. Have you thought there might be a different story here?’
There was silence for a while, then Eva started talking. Nelson watched her talk about her lazy son, her shaky job, her gorgeous handbag. She told stories about Liam and Joel to which he half listened. There was every chance they could be friends, but nothing more, he knew that now. They viewed the world in different colours and he liked the shades he saw. He was sure she felt the same. He thought about playing one of the songs he’d rehearsed, but it didn’t feel right any more. He wasn’t in the mood to sing for friendship. So he listened and laughed and told her jokes, until there were only bones on their plates.
Nelson cleared the table and made a cafezinho. They stood before the windows, eating beijinhos, looking at the nightscape of the city. Lights chequered distant offices. Neon logos were printed on the sky. As Eva talked, Nelson wondered what the pinnacle of the dream had been: perhaps the tram ride, perhaps cooking, maybe seeing her reaction to the candlelit table. When Eva appeared to have run out of words, he said, ‘I’ll call you a taxi.’
‘A taxi! Now who’s acting like a rich man?’
‘You can pay me back when you find that president.’
Eva realised she’d quite forgotten to cross-examine him about Gilberto. She felt annoyed with herself for a second, then realised there was no need. Did crooks prepare feasts and pay for taxis? More than anything, he was a man who listened, Eva thought, and she wasn’t going to hinder one of those.
‘Here,’ she said, opening her bag. ‘Have the money back.’
Nelson’s hand was desperate to dart towards the bills, but he kept it motionless. Eva put the money on the table, smiled and said, ‘Take it. I had you wrong, Nelsinho. I’ll tell Joel to rest assured.’
Now the cash was sitting there, Nelson felt a little ashamed to be taking the money back when he really hadn’t a clue how to help Joel. Still, it was nice to be trusted, even if he didn’t deserve it. He could almost feel Zila’s eyes opening to give him one of her looks, so he told himself he really would earn Joel’s money. He couldn’t see how, but he’d find a way.
The taxi came, they kissed twice on the cheeks and said goodbye. Eva said she’d see him at Bar das Terezas – and that he must come to dinner – soon! He closed the taxi door and watched the car round a bend.
Nelson went into the music room and snuffed out all but a couple of candles. He picked up the guitar and played ‘Chega de Saudade’. The night had been a little pearl but it was time to thread the next. He could feel the money in his pocket and for a moment he wished she’d kept it, but then he thought: I’m going to find Gilberto. I’ll look for him and I’ll find him. I’ll earn this money and then some more. There are other goddesses. I’ll make a meal for one who wants to savour every morsel. I’ll play a song for one who wants to listen to every note. How hard can it be to find something if you really open your eyes?
Six
When the light of Monday morning woke him, Joel opened the door to his balcony and looked out towards the beach, then back up the block towards the body of Ipanema. Cantagalo lay not far away and soon Nelson would be up there looking. The sky was blue and the air already bright. He could hear breaking waves, Liam singing badly in the shower, CNN from the living room.
He washed, dressed and joined Liam for breakfast.
‘So,’ said Liam. ‘All set?’
‘Raring to go,’ said Joel.
‘I’ll talk to Eva,’ said Liam. ‘See about her friend at the ministry.’
‘Cool. If you have any other bright ideas, let me know.’
Joel stuffed a few posters in a shoulder bag and left the flat. Standing outside the aparthotel, he could already feel the direction of the old flat. With his back towards the sea it lay away to the left, at about ten o’clock. He wondered if he could reach it blindfold.
He turned right, into Praça General Osório, resolving to find his way there slowly, hoping to wind up a pleasant tension until the moment when his finger would hover over a buzzer which might not have changed for twenty-five years – a buzzer his father’s finger also used to touch. Joel wondered if such objects still held fragments of his dad – skin flakes or dead cells or molecules of flesh. For how long did traces remain? Perhaps his dad was present throughout these streets, layering pavements he’d once trodden, his particles floating in the Ipanema air.
Joel bought a vitamina shake at a juice bar studded with rows of fruit. He walked along Visconde de Pirajá, past a supermarket, clothes shops, restaurants. He turned towards the lake, aware the flat was away to his left now, and closer. The streets looked similar to those he recalled and yet they were shorter or longer, or lined with more trees, or set at slightly different angles. Little by little, reality reshaped crumpled memories – until the roads welled with their original colours and looked just like those he remembered. He saw the quiet street down which he used to ride his bicycle, the corner on which he used to wait when his dad was due home from work. Some of the buildings had changed, but many were the same. Finally he turned into their old street.
The trees were thicker with foliage than he recalled and the road didn’t seem as wide. The flat was down on the right-hand side, a block and a half from the lake. He walked a few yards then crossed for a better view. Further up, he could see the spot where his father had been shoved into a van on the day of his second arrest, Joel’s last day in Brazil. He walked closer, his eyes on the very patch of tarmac, trying to focus on the solemnity of the occasion: here he was in the last place he’d seen his father. He felt hungry and cursed his stomach. He stood for a while, refusing to let the moment end. It felt peculiar to be standing in a memory. A soft breeze moved the leaves. A car passed. A woman walking an ornamental dog eyed him.
He reached their old apartment building. There was a new electric gate and a sentry-box, inside which a guard sat reading a paper. The block looked almost the same, although the flats seemed to have new windows. Joel approached the gate, wondering what he should say. He’d expected an old porteiro, someone like Senhor Neves who used to let Joel sit behind the desk and buzz in residents.
‘Bom dia,’ said Joel through the bars.
The guard came out of his box and stood on the other side of the gate. ‘Yes?’ he said in Portuguese.
‘I wondered if you could help me – I’m looking for someone who used to live here.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Gilberto Cabral.’
‘Where did he live?’ asked the guard.
‘Apartamento 203.’
‘That’s Miss Albuquerque’s flat.’
‘Would it be all right if I spoke to her?’
‘It would, but she’s at work. You could come back later.’
‘Do you have her number?’ asked Joel.
‘Yes. But I can’t give it to you without her permission.’
‘Can I leave her a note?’
‘Sure.’
Joel took out a poster and wrote on the back of it: ‘Dear Miss Albuquerque. I used to live in your apartment when I was a child – until 1975. As the poster says: I’m looking for this man, my father. If you happen to know anything about his whereabouts, please call.’
The guard took the poster through the bars and read the note. ‘You used to live here too, brother? Why didn’t you say so?’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Joel, and told him some details.
‘I’ll make sure she gets it, no problem.’
Joel asked about some of their old friends in the block, the Saavedras and the Soleres, but the guard hadn’t heard of them. The young man ran through the names of other residents, but they weren’t familiar to Joel.
‘Could you put a poster up in the lobby?’ Joel asked.
‘Of course,’ said the guard. He took a poster from Joel. A phone rang in his box and he went to pick it up. J
oel hung around until the guard was off the phone, but he didn’t come back. Joel called ‘thanks’ through the bars. The guard flicked up a little thumb and said, ‘Valeu,’ without raising his eyes from his paper.
Joel walked back towards the sea and caught a glimpse of the red-brick boxes of Cantagalo to the left, crowning the hill. Nelson will be up there now, he thought. He might already have found Gilberto. Joel turned that way, and walked a couple of blocks until the shacks were nearer, almost above his head. There were some trees down at the end, near the foot of the hill, and it looked as if there might be a way up – though he could almost feel a line, at the entrance to that world, which he knew he had better not cross. It was strange to be so close to a place and yet to feel it lay so very far away. He had flown 5,000 miles but he couldn’t walk the final hundred yards. There it was, Cantagalo, right before his eyes, and yet his father might as well be on the moon, for all that Joel could venture there. He wondered how he’d search in such a place if Nelson weren’t looking on his behalf.
Joel walked back to Rua Visconde de Pirajá, busy with morning shoppers and workers and traffic. He found a phone booth by a bikini shop and called Liam but there were no new messages. He bought a passion-fruit juice and ate a pastry at a place on a corner, sitting out of the rising heat of the day. He watched people walk by – black, white, rich, poor – and made guesses about their lives he knew would not be right. When they were away on holiday, Debbie always liked to prophesise about the secret lives of sunbathers or hotel waiters. Joel watched women looking in shop windows, men in shorts and flip-flops walking dogs, taxi upon yellow taxi gliding by.
Since he wasn’t sure where to look specifically, he started to walk. Maybe I’ll just happen upon him, Joel thought. He walked through Ipanema, turning left and right as it took his fancy, then on into Leblon. After a couple of hours he thought he owed his feet some lunch, so he headed back to Garota de Ipanema restaurant, where he took a table at the edge by a wooden balustrade which looked down on to the pavement. Outside, a group of street kids were playing music with home-made instruments and he leant down and handed them a couple of reais. He ordered a beer and a steak. He could see the beach a street away and it made him think of Sundays in the early seventies, when a million brown bodies crowded on the sand. He wished he could remember those days with more precision. He had a few memories of the good times, but now he was in Brazil he expected reinforcements. Would finding his father loose a great stampede? It was maddening the way he remembered such apparently random, trivial things: a peculiar ant he’d watched roll along on a hillside outside Tiradentes, a toy car he would play with on the swirling black and white pavement of the Ipanema seafront. Much of the big stuff seemed to have gone missing – how many rollable, bounceable memories did Joel really have of his dad? From a torrent of bedside lullabies he could pan only half a dozen songs; from dozens of Flamengo games, he could picture his father celebrating only two of Zico’s goals. He wished he’d made more of an effort at the time to fix significant happenings in his mind. If only someone had told him he’d leave Brazil when he was ten years old, he could have acted as if the clock were ticking towards the hour – instead of assuming the hand would sweep round forever.