by Ed Siegle
But she didn’t rush upstairs. She remained on the sofa enjoying the flannel even though it was hardly cool any more. She groped on the table for her cigarettes and lit one. She smoked it then climbed the stairs. In the bathroom she ran the taps and washed her face with soap and cold water. My face looks old, she thought, too old to be playing games. If Tony didn’t call soon, she pledged to brush her hair and put on her tatty coat, to go and tell him everything – apologising for the twists and turns. Perhaps this was the start of something, she thought, not the end.
‘Perhaps it’s just the start,’ she said to the mirror.
She sat in the lounge with the TV off. She looked at the phone but she couldn’t pick it up. If she called and he said it was over, then… it would be over. She dreaded bringing on that moment. Joel was in Brazil and perhaps he wouldn’t come back and then she’d have lost him too and what would she have? She’d always imagined life would be perfect one day. She was running out of days.
Nelson went to sleep with Joel’s money under the pillow and dreamed of walking the streets of Paraty with a woman in a white dress, who was not anything like Eva, who talked a lot less than her and looked at Nelson with pretty monkey eyes while a choro band played soothing tunes. It felt divine to be in Paraty, a place he’d always wanted to visit, though after a while it became uncomfortable because the sunlight became painfully bright. As the light shone more insistently, he saw a man in a Vasco shirt holding a torch, a man who had no right to be in his dreams and certainly no business slapping him round the face and throwing him on the floor.
‘You’re in big trouble, Flamengo,’ Vasco said.
Adolfo stood over Nelson with his hands in his pockets. He wore a white shirt rolled to the elbows and shiny shoes. He didn’t look a violent man, with his almost delicate build, tidy black hair and eyebrows neat enough to have been plucked.
‘A man who owes me money has no place ordering taxis,’ he said. ‘If it weren’t for Zemané, you’d already be in the boot of a car. I know a lovely spot across the bay where they say the water is deeper than the ocean.’
‘I have some money,’ said Nelson. ‘And more on the way. I can pay back hundreds by the end of the week.’
‘Two thousand reais you owe me,’ said Adolfo. ‘And you can thank Zemané for persuading me to charge a preferential interest rate. Your bunda is mine, my new delivery boy, until you work off that sum or die – whichever comes later.’
‘Surely even a delivery boy is allowed to dress in private?’ said Nelson.
‘Five minutes,’ said Adolfo, and to Vasco, ‘Guard the door.’
Vasco stood outside, but it was no great testament to the intelligence of the mountain nor his boss that they neglected to think of the balcony. Nelson slipped into black shorts and yellow T-shirt, stuffed his cash in his pocket, took the photo of his sister from the mirror, shoved belongings into a carrier bag, shinned from the balcony, bolted through the gate and ran as fast as he could. As light started to tinge the edges of the sky, his feet seemed to glide over the cobbles. Once he was sure he wasn’t being pursued, he strolled towards Centro, reaching it as the sun was blaring white through the gaps between buildings. There was a trickle of shoeshine boys and street vendors with bags stuffed full of wares. The shutters of cafés and kiosks were winding into position and the first cars and buses of the morning tide were rolling down the road, still able to go at a pace they chose because of the emptiness of the streets. As light bloomed he saw the first suit, then two, and soon the pavements were full of people with purposeful strides. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the fact that he had a mission. It wasn’t every day you had the chance to bring a man back from the grave. He joined the morning flow down Avenida Rio Branco, stopping for a misto quente and a cafezinho at a corner café.
As he ate, he tried to think about how to find Gilberto. There was no point chasing his lie to Cantagalo. Perhaps he should start instead where it all began, he thought. So he caught a bus back to the hijack spot, found one of Joel’s posters taped to a tree and took it down. He set about talking to concierges, maids and security men, to people walking down the street and waiters in bars and restaurants.
After a couple of hours he was about to find a place to eat and think of another plan, when a concierge said, ‘Yeah, I know him.’
‘You know him?’ said Nelson with a grin.
‘I’ve seen him, yes.’
Edinho was thin, with white hair and a white moustache. Behind his counter were pictures of his wife, two granddaughters and a dog with a red bow.
‘Round here?’ asked Nelson.
‘Not far away.’
‘Recently?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘A man with money.’
‘You don’t look like a man with money,’ Edinho said, glancing at Nelson’s plastic bag.
‘I’m working for him,’ said Nelson.
‘So what kind of money are we talking about?’
‘That depends what you have to tell me.’
‘I know a place he goes at the same time every week,’ said Edinho.
‘A place round here?’
‘That would be telling.’
‘I’ll give you a hundred reais if you tell me where,’ said Nelson.
‘That’s not a lot of money for a man with money.’
‘It’s not bad for sitting on your bunda.’
Edinho looked at Nelson and shrugged.
‘A hundred reais?’
‘Fifty now, and fifty if he’s where you say.’
‘How about a hundred now and fifty if he’s there? That way I don’t have to worry if you forget about the fifty.’
‘All right,’ said Nelson. ‘Where does he go?’
‘A restaurant on the other side of the lake: O Paraiso,’ said Edinho. ‘He goes there on Thursdays at lunch.’
‘Every Thursday?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘And how do you know?’ asked Nelson.
‘I go there sometimes. It’s a bit of a walk from here, but the doctor told me I have to exercise. And I like the pizzas. They make them properly, with lots of tomato.’
‘You’re sure it’s a Thursday? You’re sure it’s him?’
‘It’s not the best photo, but I’d say so,’ said Edinho.
‘He doesn’t look like the type to lunch.’
‘No, but there you go. I guess he helps them out or something, and they feed him. Maybe they just feel sorry for him, I don’t know – I never asked. Always sits at a table at the back by the kitchen.’
‘Do you know his name?’ asked Nelson.
‘Gilberto Cabral.’
‘That’s amazing! Oh, I can’t tell you –’
‘That’s what it says on the poster,’ chuckled Edinho. ‘That’s who you’re looking for, right?’
Nelson gave him a hundred reais, promising to pay the rest at the end of the week, then walked up and down the block and around the surrounding streets, taking posters down from lamp-posts, phone boxes and bars. When he’d removed all the posters he could find, he strolled round the lake until he found O Paraiso. There were three tables on the pavement and a couple of dozen inside. Nelson sat at the bar, drank a beer and studied the layout. There was indeed a table at the back by the kitchen, though no one was sitting there today. He considered showing the poster to a waiter, to check Edinho’s story – but what if they told Gilberto his son was looking for him? Perhaps he’d disappear for good. This is my fish to land, Nelson thought.
He wandered from the bar and found a bench by the waterside. Across the lake, the pale tower blocks of Leblon spread before the peaks of Dois Irmãos. Nelson counted his money – forty-three reais. If he was going to solve his problems with Adolfo, it was time to raise the stakes. It was a pity to take advantage of Joel’s situation, regrettable to give him the run-around until Thursday, but what else could he do? It might be Nelson’s only chance to save his skin. Besides, one could argue it was only right for
Joel to gain a sense that they were really searching. Having travelled across an ocean, it might be an anticlimax to find treasure under the very first X. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of a little journey out of town, and it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to leave the city for a day or two, now that Adolfo had a spot marked out for him at the bottom of the bay.
Nelson found a phone booth and called Bar do Paulo. He heard stools scrape and voices hush as Zemané came to the phone. ‘So he hasn’t killed you yet…’ said Zemané.
‘Thanks to you,’ said Nelson.
‘But now you’ve run. Even I have only so many favours.’
‘I understand… and if you turn me down, well, who would blame you? But I wondered… if you could help me one last time… I’ve thought of a way to solve everything.’
‘Will it cost me?’ asked Zemané.
‘No.’
‘Will it stop me having to bail you out every half an hour?’
‘One thousand per cent!’ said Nelson.
‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’
‘There’s a free dinner in it too – a churrasco, at Porcão.’
‘I’m listening,’ said Zemané.
In the afternoon, Jackie went for a rare walk. She headed along Queen’s Park Road to Race Hill, then past the hospital and the allotments above the cemetery, skirting the side of the racetrack with the grandstand to her right looking over the valley in which sat Whitehawk. She turned across the track and there in front of her was the sea, impossible to escape and seemingly larger from this height, with patches of light falling on it through the clouds. She walked down through Sheepcote, alone in the scrub of the valley but for occasional dog-walkers.
Jackie couldn’t chase Brazil from her thoughts. As a younger woman she would never have imagined the scabs would last for decades. She supposed some people simply healed more quickly, just as some ran faster or ate more. She wondered if there was still a trace of hatred in her heart. That curdling of love was the saddest thing: so impossible to foresee, so very hard to reverse. Those Angelica days had been the hardest; that was when it had really turned.
Gilberto’s concert had been a success, so he’d said. He’d been allowed to sing his song, and the record company boys had seemed impressed by his vision for the Minas sound. It was true they’d talked a lot about Tropicália and yê-yê-yê, but they’d been very much on his wavelength, Gilberto told her. The television people had promised to be in touch. Angelica had the nerve to call Jackie and purr that he’d been marvellous.
Gilberto had dinner with Angelica frequently and the news she relayed was always positive. Sometimes they would meet first at an apartment she kept on Vieira Souto, overlooking Ipanema beach, so he could sing songs he was developing for an album, to be called Jardim! The record companies were still keen, she said. It was a matter of timing: selecting a slot between releases, estimating when the public was ready for his radical sound, finding the perfect date on which to let a single fly like a hot balloon.
Jackie began to enjoy hating him. She tried to ensure she and Joel were out when he came home from work, leaving vague notes about their whereabouts and time of return. She wore long skirts with Gilberto and short skirts without him. She cut her hair. She took tennis lessons with a coach with a reputation for pillaging wives. She became friends with a sculptress from Bahia and hung out with people from the artistic left. When Gilberto dined with Angelica, Jackie left Joel with the maid and went to Le Bateau or Sucata, where she saw the Bahians play.
One night she came home late to find Gilberto on the balcony swigging a glass of whisky. She poured one for herself, sat across the table, lit a cigarette and waited for him to start one of his rants.
‘She’s robbed me,’ he said.
Jackie laughed. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘That bitch has robbed me.’
‘Don’t tell me – stole your heart and sold it cheap –’
‘Money, you idiot,’ he said. ‘She’s taken my money.’
‘You were paying her?’
‘It was for the record company. She told me there were costs.’
‘And you’re calling me an idiot?’
‘She said there was a lot of competition.’ Gilberto’s voice trembled. ‘They liked the sound, there was never any doubt about that. There were ways of jumping the queue…’
Jackie started to laugh. ‘To think I thought you were screwing her… and she was shafting you!’
‘I rang them. I thought it would help if I rang them – the record company boys. They said they would have called had they been interested. They said they liked my voice but they were looking for something a bit more revolutionary. They mentioned Caetano and Gil. They said the Minas angle was already being covered by Milton Nascimento – his sound is black gold, they said. I asked them about the money, but they didn’t know what I was talking about.’
There was despair in the wideness of his eyes, desperation in his broken voice.
‘I went to her flat,’ he said, on his feet now. ‘The concierge wouldn’t let me up. He gave me an envelope with my name on it. Inside was a card: “My husband suspects”.’
‘So much suspicion upon such innocents!’
‘She robbed me! Don’t you see? I’ve been conned! My dreams –’
‘What about our dreams?’ sad Jackie, jumping up, slamming down her hand.
‘They were our dreams! I wrote those songs for you, for you and Joel.’
‘And you fucked her for us too, I suppose?’
Gilberto turned in his stride and swung at Jackie, though she managed to sway backwards so that he missed. She remembered thinking, he just tried to hit me. Did he just try to hit me?
She clenched her fists and screamed at him, ‘It’s over, you son of a bitch! I’m going back home!’
‘Don’t say that!’ Gilberto took a step towards Jackie, who backed against the rail. ‘All I want is you, my love!’
‘Well, I’m all you can never have, filho da puta!’
‘I never slept with her, I swear to God. I never even kissed her. You must believe me, honey, say you believe me –’
‘Oh, pull the other one!’
‘Not once!’
‘A frigid thief – you know how to pick ’em!’
‘I’ll make it up to you, you’ll see. I’ve been negligent, I can see that. I was blind. I’ll work hard for you both. I’ll give up singing –’
‘I’m not asking you to give up singing.’
‘I will, I’ll give it up. I’ll give it up for you –’
‘I’m not asking you to give up singing.’
Weeks passed. Gilberto rose early every day and went for a swim on Ipanema beach. He brought Jackie tea and fruit in bed, gave Joel his breakfast and set off early for work. He squeezed a couple more patients into his day and ceased stopping at the botequim for a beer on the way home. He would cook or they’d dine out. He stayed away from the clubs. Only once did Jackie see him rabid. In December ’68, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso were arrested. The night they heard the news, Gilberto bought a bottle of old cachaça to celebrate. He sat on the balcony sipping golden liquid from a tumbler.
‘Where’s their Tropicália now?’ he said. ‘“Be a criminal, be a hero” – isn’t that what they said? Let’s see how they like it in a cell full of heroes.’
Jackie couldn’t deny that things were on the up. Joel turned four in the summer of ’69 and Gilberto spent a lot more time with him. They would kick a football around in a square, or spend hours playing in the surf. Jackie remembered glorious afternoons beneath the umbrellas of Castelinho on the Ipanema seafront, wearing a favourite white bikini Gilberto had bought her, watching the buzz of the beach. 1970 also started well, with Joel at school and Jackie starting to work part time in an office on Visconde de Pirajá. At times it was frightening to hear friends talk of the abduction of a cousin, the torture of an acquaintance. It made Jackie angry that Joel should have to grow up in a land where the police
were to be feared more than criminals. But no matter how dark the regime, the sun still shone and Gilberto could take Joel to the Maracanã and forget about the troubles of the world as they cheered a goal by Liminha or Doval. Jackie and Gilberto talked about having more children, and Jackie agreed that it was time, feeling proud to have a man with the strength to defeat the devil inside.
One May morning at the surgery, Gilberto picked up his daylist to find Angelica’s name at the top. He kept his back to her as his nurse prepared her in the chair, then filled a tooth of hers with gold without meeting her eyes. Her bottom lip was swollen and split. When the procedure was complete, the nurse left. Gilberto washed his hands in the corner and prayed Angelica would leave.
‘I wish we’d really given the bastard something to be jealous about,’ Angelica said in a quiet voice.
‘If you’re selling sympathy, I’m not buying,’ said Gilberto without turning round.
‘We could have had a ball, darling.’
‘If I’d fucked you for the money you stole – wouldn’t that make you a whore?’
‘Is that what they told you, querido? Those record company boys are smarter than alligators.’
Gilberto turned round.
‘Even if I had the time, which I don’t, you’d be wasting your breath. I’m happy, Angelica. Can you understand that? I’m happy. You’ve taken quite enough already, you and your alligators. Leave me alone.’
At least, that was the version he recounted to Jackie that night. She didn’t believe it was the whole truth… but there was little she could do and, well, they were happy, weren’t they? Whatever had or hadn’t happened. The present truth was the only truth that mattered, wasn’t it?