by Ed Siegle
‘Your wife is here to see you,’ said the lieutenant, his voice thick with disapproval.
‘My wife!’
‘It’s not for me to question the major’s orders,’ said the lieutenant. ‘But bear in mind that if you rise from your seat you will be shot.’
‘After all the beautiful times,’ Gilberto wrote, ‘it might seem odd, my darling, that I have never felt happier than at that moment: sitting in a chair in clothes which seemed to have grown, with a soldier in the corner watching me with black eyes and a finger on a trigger. How terrible then – you must believe how truly sickening – to hear light footsteps on the tiles and raise my eyes and catch sight, not of you, but of Angelica…’
Angelica said she had come to repay him for the trouble she’d caused. She had thought of the idea while walking in the Botanical Gardens, she said, a place she knew was a favourite haunt of his and Jackie’s. The notion had struck her immediately as being perilous but brilliant; foolhardy, but worthy. How better to repay Gilberto and his poor wife than by typing an order on the major’s headed paper and forging his signature – thus securing permission for Gilberto’s ‘wife’ to visit him, and thereby gifting Gilberto the ability to write a letter? Angelica had brought him paper from Tuscany and a Swiss fountain pen belonging to the major. She pledged to deliver the letter the very next day, swearing she would leave it sealed.
Gilberto wrote that another good thing had come from Angelica’s visit. She’d told him the major was away but would soon be back and would interrogate him personally – and that he knew very little about their friendship, despite what he might claim. If Gilberto answered simply and told the truth – that they were innocent – she was convinced her husband would set him free.
‘He is a fair man,’ she said. ‘He believes that only the deserving should be hurt.’
When Jackie had read the letter, she walked into the bathroom and vomited. She wished she were a witch with sores to unleash upon her rival’s flesh. She paced the Ipanema seafront throughout the following weeks, hoping to catch Angelica leaving her apartment – though she was ignorant of its precise location. She scoured the appointment books at Gilberto’s surgery but found only a phone number, which she called and called. She got through once and screamed curses down the silent phone in her foulest Portuguese.
Jackie heard nothing more that year. 1971 arrived and she became convinced of Gilberto’s death. For the first time in years she thought about returning to England. Life in Brazil without Gilberto could never be the same and she worried the wrath of the major would always hang above them. The regime did not write happy endings. Might it harm the children of its enemies? Even if Gilberto were set free… could she be sure that he and Angelica would leave each other alone? Jackie started to plan for a newer, safer life on the other side of the sea – where Joel could grow up in a town cradled in the Downs, in which the majors were retired and the policemen mostly on your side.
One Sunday afternoon in February 1971, Jackie opened the door and in Gilberto walked. She was reminded of drawings in medical books of muscle and sinew stripped of fat and skin. He had skin, but so much less beneath it. Wrinkles spread from all corners of his face and his eyes were those of another man: darting, angry, beseeching. Most striking of all, his head looked far too small for his giant white teeth.
They stood apart and looked at each other. She knew they ought to hug, but neither of them moved.
‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Joel?’ said Gilberto and moved towards Joel’s room.
‘No,’ she said grabbing his arm. ‘He’s at the Saavedras, he’s fine.’
‘Then what?’
She stood between Gilberto and their bedroom. As if he’d read her thoughts, he tried to pass. She blocked his way. His eyes flared and he pushed her aside so that her hip cracked against a table.
‘If there’s someone,’ he growled, ‘I’ll kill…’
It was impossible to hide the fact of the suitcases, packed and waiting by the bed. Two leather ones of hers and Joel’s Winnie-the-Pooh knapsack.
‘How could you go?’ he said, his voice quiet.
‘I couldn’t bear it any more – the waiting, the –’
‘And take Joel away?’
‘I thought you were dead,’ said Jackie.
‘You hoped I was dead.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘To think: the thought of seeing you both was all that kept me alive.’
‘I’m sorry, Gil, I was beside myself. I’m glad you’re back, I really –’
‘Save it,’ he said. ‘I need a drink. I’m going out.’
Jackie would never admit it to Joel, but sometimes she thought it would have been easier for them all if Gilberto had died that first time in prison, or if he’d come back that day to find they’d already caught their flight. Perhaps it was harsh to wish away a child’s chance to know his father, but how much simpler it would have been to dig out memories with weaker roots.
Nelson woke at first light, bitten half to death, which was half as much as he’d been expecting. He brushed his fingers through his hair, picked up his plastic bag and headed along the shore of the lake. High on the hill, Cristo was wrapped in a white cloud and Nelson smiled to think that he too might sleep in soft sheets that night. I’m still in the game, he thought. I might be a few goals down but I’m still in the game. He crossed the road into quiet Ipanema streets and soon arrived at Tiffany’s, where Joel was coming out of the high front door. Upon seeing him, Nelson felt a pang of guilt at the ruse he was playing, consoling himself that he would take Joel to his father, just not for a couple of days.
Joel noticed that Nelson’s hair was clumpy and that he wore the same clothes as the night before. He wondered where Nelson might have slept. He put down his small rucksack, gripped Nelson’s outstretched hand and patted him on the back. He had to admit he was glad they were going away. This wasn’t meant to be a holiday, but Joel had always wanted to go to Paraty. Besides the night before he’d dreamt in Portuguese for the first time in decades, and it made him want to dive into Brazil.
They took a yellow taxi to the Novo Rio bus terminal. Joel chatted to Nelson as the city sights flew by, and he could feel Brazilian phrases coming quicker to his tongue and words he didn’t realise he knew sprouting in his sentences. Nelson talked about his Aunt Zila and her eleven commandments, and Joel found his understanding almost always kept pace with the speed of Nelson’s words.
They arrived at the terminal, queued for tickets, then had a folhado and a cafezinho. Nelson disappeared to the bathroom, so Joel sat and watched people of every shape and colour walk loose and fast across the station. The day already had a rhythm, and it made him feel calm to sit quietly in its midst. And he did feel calm, sitting there, watching the world, knowing there was nothing more he could do at that minute to find his father. I might as well enjoy it while I’m here, he thought. So he sat and watched and tried to remember everything he saw.
Joel was unaware of it, but Nelson had darted off because he’d spotted Vasco ordering a large vitamina from a stand. Nelson was fairly sure Vasco hadn’t seen him, but there was no sense in taking chances. He sat on the toilet and said a prayer to all the gods he could remember. Adolfo’s eyes were sharper than Nelson could fathom. They seemed to know his every move. He tried to keep his breathing quiet and pushed his thoughts on to Paraty. He hoped Joel wouldn’t want to ask the police if they knew of his dad. Nelson didn’t fancy setting foot in a police station. It had been thirteen months since his last dealings with the polícia, the longest gap since he was fourteen. He’d enjoyed seeing the back of that particular relationship, but the police, like love, had a habit of biting when you least expected it. The time would come, as surely as the rain he could hear starting to rattle the skylights above his head.
When the departure time was near, Nelson emerged. He darted behind Vasc
o as he turned to buy a hotdog, and ran to where Joel was waiting by a growling bus. If Joel looks at that watch one more time in a place like this, he’ll soon be looking at an empty wrist, Nelson thought. They showed their tickets and boarded.
Rain rapped a thousand heavy fingers on the roof of the bus as it drove through the misted streets of a Rio storm. Joel pressed his face to the glass and watched water pound the street. He wondered if it was raining in Paraty and where his father might be sheltering. He tried to picture himself finding him, perhaps in the porch of a church or under a giant mango tree. Would Gilberto be pleased to see him? Might he run away?
Nelson sat with one foot on the seat, watching the rain too. ‘Every storm is the chance of a fresh start,’ Zila used to say, which he’d never really understood – but which cheered him up when it rained. Joel looked so serious, staring at the splashes in the street. This father-hunting business was heavy, there was no doubting that. Nelson had no idea what it was like to lose a father, even if he’d said he did. Losing a mother and a sister and an aunt was all very well – perhaps more painful, perhaps less so, it was impossible to say – but mothers and sisters and aunts were not the issue. Nelson made a note to remember as much. ‘Empathy is the fifth virtue,’ he remembered reading in a magazine Zemané had borrowed from his wife because it had an article on Zico. Nelson wasn’t sure what the original four virtues were, and was a little surprised that empathy hadn’t found its way into the starting line-up, but resolved to show as much of it as he could. Joel might be a little obsessed, but he was tenacious; he might be a little dry and picky at times, but at least he didn’t talk down to Nelson and was happy to sit right next to him, like an equal. Nossa! – Nelson had wondered if Joel would want to sit with him at all.
Joel and Nelson sat side by side and, although they didn’t say a lot, neither of them felt the silence. As they looked out of the window, their eyes fell on the same things. And Joel thought how amazing it was to live in the modern age, where a man could catch a plane to a land across the sea, where within a week he could be on a bus with a man whose life was as different as a Martian’s. Yet there were people they both knew – musical gods and film stars – and songs they’d both enjoyed, and jokes they found funny, and opinions of the way the world was run that were not as far apart as their homes or levels of wealth.
Brazil rolled under the wheels of the bus and the two men watched it pass. Hills moved up and down, houses appeared and disappeared, and with them children and women and men and dogs and cars and bicycles. The clouds left too, leaving sharp light on forests that were mostly ever-so-green but which were occasionally dotted bright pink or white or blue by a tree in blossom. Joel wondered how a Brazilian tree knew what season it was. It was the twentieth of June, almost midwinter’s day. There were plenty of rebellious trees which had decided it was spring. As they drove on, they were met by views of the inlets and isles of the tropical coast. Tankers and liners sat squat on the blue, tugs chugged and sail boats were pinned in clusters here and there. They passed forests, docks and rural towns, until, turning from the road, at last they twisted through a few streets and into Paraty bus station.
They walked into the old part of town, where the buildings were white and low, with chunky red brick tiles and flowers in their gutters. The cobbles were as large as tortoise shells and the streets curved in arcs towards the sea – which, Joel had read, had once allowed defenders to ambush invading pirates. As they walked the curves Joel hoped his father would lie round every bend. At a gift shop, Joel bought Nelson a small red rucksack, into which he transferred his plastic bag of worldly goods. Then they walked a couple of streets to the pousada Joel had booked.
Nelson grinned as they filled in their registration cards. Not having an address, he put down that of Bar do Paulo. They walked into a courtyard filled with palms and heliconias, with flowers like sheaves of orange fishes. Hammocks hung beneath verandas close to a swimming pool. There were alcoves in the shade with leather chairs in which a few silent guests sat reading well thumbed paperbacks. Joel and Nelson sat for a while, listening to trickling water, enjoying the sight of a black and white hummingbird dancing over the pale blue.
This father-hunting business is not so bad, thought Nelson. He tried out three hammocks and was on the verge of stripping off his T-shirt and diving into the pool when Joel suggested they should dump their stuff in their rooms then meet in the bar. Joel went off, but Nelson remained swinging to and fro, feeling a bit like he used to when Zila told him to put down his guitar and help her chop vegetables. This place is just the right amount of messy, Nelson thought. He’d been in cheap white hotels and luscious pink love motels, and most of them had a practised cleanliness that reminded him of hospitals: cleaned to be soiled to be cleaned. He’d been in plenty of even cheaper places which had long since given up the battle against filth, with mud in the corners and cockroaches that crunched beneath your feet at night. This place was casually perfect: corners looked dusty, without dust; stems fell about with pretty disorder; even the hummingbirds looked slackly choreographed.
He found his room, which was white with old brown furniture and an en-suite bathroom. He turned a knob on the wall and classical music seeped into the air. Nelson laughed and jumped about. Wait till I tell the guys, he thought; they’ll call me President Nelson. He unpacked his bag and put all his possessions in a drawer. He rather liked his rucksack, particularly the newness of it. Only something new could be that red. When was the last time someone had given him something new? When was the last time anyone had given him anything? Nelson checked out the complimentary toiletries, brushed his teeth with a free toothbrush, rearranged some tufts of hair in the mirror then went to meet Joel in the bar.
Down the corridor, Joel dumped his own bag by the bed. The hotel was truly beautiful. Debbie would love it. He wished she could see him in Brazil, where he felt another side of himself was coming alive. He loved the way that speaking another language changed the way he moved, making Joel feel like an actor playing himself in a slightly different way. He checked out the bathroom. He looked in the mirror and wondered if this was the last time he would see himself before he saw his dad. He flicked a little thumbs-up at himself. When you start grinning in the mirror, he thought, it can only mean trouble, so he went to find Nelson.
Joel found him reclining in a leather chair with his hands behind his head. He was looking at the menu for room service and laughing to himself. ‘Are you hungry?’ asked Joel.
‘Let’s eat on the paw,’ said Nelson.
‘You know where Zemané saw my dad?’
‘I can see the very street before my eyes.’
Nelson didn’t know the street because there wasn’t a street to be known, so he reasoned it could be whichever street he chose. They turned left out of the pousada towards the centre of town and came across a wide street with a church at the end. Nelson stopped. ‘This is the place, my brother.’
‘Have you been here before?’
‘Never.’
‘Then how do you know?’ asked Joel.
‘He told me.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Must you be so English?’
‘It’s hardly peculiar to look in the right place.’
‘There’s looking and looking, my brother,’ said Nelson. ‘Go ahead. Be all scientific. You won’t find anything by science here. You’re looking for a Brazilian man in a Brazilian town, and he’s going to be lost and found in a Brazilian way.’
‘So what do we do, just hang around till he shows up?’
‘Didn’t you meet most of the people in your life that way?’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘You just don’t want it to.’
Joel took some posters out of his bag and handed them to Nelson. ‘Let’s do it my way for now,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the left, you take the right.’
Joel walked towards a bar on the left side of the street. He looked over his shoulder and was pleased to se
e Nelson enter the first place on the right. Joel talked to the barman for a couple of minutes but the barman didn’t recognise the man in the picture, so Joel left him with a poster and the number of the pousada. He did the same in the next place and the next. Back in the street there was no sign of Nelson, so Joel crossed to see which bar he was in. He found him in the very first one, sitting on a stool towards the back grinning at a waitress, who had folded one of Joel’s posters into a fan with which she was cooling her burning cheeks. On the table was a plate of fresh pasteis and three beers, one of which Nelson indicated was for Joel.
‘Look –’ started Joel.
‘Just listen,’ said Nelson. ‘Rosa here has seven little brothers and sisters. Give each kid some posters and five reais and you’ll have a flock of detectives flying to all the bars in town. We sit here and wait for the mountain.’
‘That’s very kind of her, but I can’t not look for him –’
‘What if they bring him here and you’re out there?’
‘I haven’t agreed they can help. ‘
‘They’re already on their way.’
‘I’d be happier if we looked too.’
‘We are looking – with eyes more likely to see than our own. What if he doesn’t want to be found? It’d be easy to hide from you. You’re so evident.’
Joel stood up. ‘Humour me,’ he said.
Nelson followed him outside. There was a dusty smell in the air, a swollen look to the clouds that slid across the sky.
‘The kids will be here any minute,’ implored Nelson.
No sooner had he spoken than a boy came running round the corner of the church, followed seconds later by a stream of kids of smaller sizes. They came to a halt in front of the bar and stood close around Joel and Nelson.
‘Which one’s the American?’ said the eldest boy.
‘The one that isn’t smiling,’ said a girl.
‘He’s English,’ said Rosa from the doorway.