by Ed Siegle
‘Jesus,’ said Joel.
Nelson stood up. He walked round in circles for a while, rubbing his hand over his mouth. He had to admit there was something comforting about Joel. He was good blood. He couldn’t imagine him deceiving anyone intentionally – there was a lot to be said for that – though Zila used to preach of virtues more serviceable than honesty. True friends were those who would lie to anyone’s face to make your world a better place, she used to say, sometimes even to your own. If they stabbed you in the back every now and again, it was important not to make too big a deal of it. Nobody’s perfect, she would say, and if you’re going to tolerate the imperfections of anyone, who better than your friends? But Joel wasn’t going to stab anyone any time soon, and, though Nelson wished he’d kept a lid on his secrets, there were worse people than Joel to see them.
Nelson turned to Joel and, shaking his head, said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Rule five,’ said Joel.
Nelson laughed and said, ‘Listen, about your father –’
‘Save it for tomorrow,’ said Joel. ‘How about a drink?’
‘It would be a shame to waste a night in this beautiful place.’
They walked back into town. The clouds had cleared and cobbles gleamed beneath a sky which had sprouted stars. They found a bar where a man was playing guitar. Joel kept an eye out for his dad and they talked about Flamengo, Sandro and Brighton. As they listened to choro tunes, Joel thought about Nelson’s question: whether it really would be better with his dad alive. It would be better, he thought, he knew it would. But he couldn’t help thinking of the darker side of his dad – perhaps because of the violence of which Nelson had told – and he wondered what the truth was about his father and mother, and whether their story was really as bleak as Jackie said.
‘It isn’t a story,’ Debbie used to say. ‘If you pretend it’s a story, you’re taking his side.’
He hated it when she said that, because he didn’t want to take sides between his parents; he didn’t want there to be sides between them at all. Over the years he’d decided it was better if he didn’t think about it any more than he had to, but he would not be able to shove it into the dark if he met his dad, that much was certain. So he hoped his dad was not as bad as his mum made out, or that even if he had been, once upon a time, he was improved now, or better still repentant, and that the darker stories – history – could be gradually forgiven.
As the singer played, Joel thought about the idea of his father inflicting pain on his mother and let it loiter in his mind for longer than he usually allowed. Joel held pain in his fingertips every day at the surgery, and sometimes thought of the power this gave him. Only once had he been tempted to use it, on a patient called Mr Lions whom he’d overheard using the word ‘nigger’ in a pub. When Lions next came for an appointment, Joel had made a concerted effort to control his fingers, even though he’d wanted the patient to suffer. He remembered thinking: if I were to slip and cause him pain, could I be certain it was an accident? And this made Joel wonder, then and now, what unseen forces controlled the urges of his fingers. They seemed so detatched at times: wiggling instruments sheathed in rubber, knowing their own mind.
But Joel had not hurt Mr Lions. And, while the shadow of pain was always there in the widening of patients’ eyes and tensing of their muscles, he had never knowingly hurt anyone, at least not since the car crash. In some ways, though, Joel wasn’t against the idea of pain – it wasn’t the devil some painted. Pain was a manifestation of life, a proof against illusion – proof, in his own case, that his dad was more than just a photograph. There’d been a time when Joel found self-inflicted pain cathartic. But pain was not something you dished out along with love – love was supposed to be an antidote. When Joel thought about his dad and the pain he’d caused his mum, he knew there was a sum that didn’t add up, no matter how many times he tried to work it out, though most of the time it was easier not to try. I’ll be able to ask him soon, Joel thought. Hopefully there’ll be a missing number I hadn’t spotted which will make the whole equation balance.
The singer finished his songs and Joel and Nelson headed into the street, where it felt as if their limbs were gliding over the glistening cobbles. They found another bar where they shot some pool, then another where a drunken man from Curitiba bored them about his factory, obliging them to run for it when he went to the gents. They burned their feet round town until there were no more bars to find, when, given no sign of fathers either, they floated home to bed.
Eight
A phone was ringing in Joel’s dream and kept on ringing as it woke him up, until he realised it was not coming from downstairs in Brighton but from next to his bed in Paraty.
‘I’m sorry to call you with the early birds,’ said Zemané. ‘But I have news I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Why does that make my heart sink?’ said Joel.
‘Perhaps your heart has a hole in the bottom? In any case, the good news is, your father has been sighted. It turns out he isn’t in Paraty –’
‘Why am I not surprised?’
‘– but in Rio, after all.’
Joel let silence sit on the line.
‘Wouldn’t you like to know a little more?’ asked Zemané.
‘I’m waiting for the punchline.’
‘Nelson will take you to your father on Thursday. No jokes.’
‘Did you have a sudden premonition?’ asked Joel.
‘A confirmed sighting.’
‘A hundred per cent this time?’
‘Ninety-five,’ said Zemané.
‘Why do I still feel hope? Somebody tell me why I still feel hope.’
‘It must be the Brazilian in you.’
Joel dressed and knocked on Nelson’s door. Nelson was lying with his hands behind his head. His bed was made, his bag packed.
‘Are you ready to go?’ Nelson said.
‘For someone who’s always dreamed of coming here, you’re in a great hurry to leave.’
They walked to the bus station, bought tickets and ate a few salgadinhos in a café. The bus left as the morning was starting to heat up. They watched Brazil roll by in reverse, as the bus dived in and out of towns and swathes of countryside.
‘So what’s today’s foolproof plan?’ asked Joel.
‘Tomorrow we go to the place where he eats each week.’
‘And you know this because…?’
‘A man told me he saw him there,’ said Nelson.
‘When?’
‘Each week. Every Thursday.’
‘No – when did he tell you?’ asked Joel.
‘Why?’
‘Why did we go to Paraty?’
‘Do you think I’m lying?’ said Nelson.
‘Would you believe you?’
‘I do believe me. I’m telling the truth.’
‘Like you told the truth about Paraty?’ said Joel.
‘Like I told the truth about Zila.’
‘You know, I really hope you aren’t just wasting my time.’
‘Hasn’t it been interesting?’ said Nelson.
‘I didn’t come here for an education.’
‘If I want to rob you, why don’t I just march you to a cashpoint?’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet.’
Nelson looked at Joel with a still face, trying to blink as infrequently as he could, hoping the look would show he was serious. It was true he was deceiving Joel, and yet he wasn’t. It was hard to prove the body was honest when some of its limbs were lies. ‘I promise I will take you to your father tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Maybe Eva will find him.’
‘Maybe she’ll find he’s dead.’
‘At least I’d know the truth,’ said Joel.
‘Sometimes it’s better to be ignorant.’
‘What about your sister? Didn’t you want to know the truth about her?’
‘You don’t know anything about my sister.’
‘I know something pretty bad must have ha
ppened.’
‘You must be right,’ said Nelson. ‘You know all the answers.’
‘But say you didn’t know what happened to her? You’d want to find out, wouldn’t you?’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘Come on, Nelson. Be honest, for once. Imagine if it was your sister. Some truths demand to be known.’
Joel talked and Nelson watched land flee behind the bus. More land rushed to meet them as they drove, then fell behind just like the rest. It was hard to keep his eyes on any particular thing, hard to hear any particular word – though ‘sister’ and ‘truth’ and ‘hunt’ and ‘death’ were certainly repeated. Nelson felt the surge of a feeling inside which made him want to grip that English son of a bitch’s throat and throw his words back in his face. Nelson could imagine Zila wagging a finger at him, reminding him that if you get angry you only screw yourself, a notion Nelson agreed with ninety-nine per cent of the time. For the other one per cent it riled him to see so many people succeed by injecting a little anger, which made him wonder if every now and again he should take a shot at it too.
‘…and if they did kill him,’ Joel was saying, ‘I’m not proposing to take vengeance, but maybe I’ll try to find the men who took his final breath, to see if they can be brought to justice. Those days have gone, I know, now the military aren’t in power, but if there are questions to be answered I’m going to ask them.’
Joel appeared to have finished, so Nelson turned in his seat to face him and, keeping his voice running slow, said, ‘The army don’t rule, but the war isn’t over, my brother – are you understanding? I’ve been in a jail, fifteen to a cell, too many to lie down, sleeping in shifts, beaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The army might not rule but there sure isn’t peace.
‘Not long after Zila died, I lost the job at the American firm. It was too hard to juggle work with looking after little Mariana. One day I stole a wallet from an American in Copacabana – ten dollars it had inside – and they sentenced me to two years. Are you understanding? Zila always said you reap just what you sow, told me never to steal no matter what. Even the hungry must have morals, she said, because if we don’t, how will anyone think we deserve to be fed? But morals don’t fill your stomach. One wallet, two years. Are you understanding? And what was Mariana supposed to do while I was inside? Seven years old and alone in the world. When I came out I couldn’t find her. I checked all the street-kid haunts but nobody seemed to know. You’re right, brother, I didn’t stop, because I too wanted the truth. Are you understanding? So I looked and looked, until one day I found a little boy, Cesar, who wouldn’t look me in the eye when I said Mariana’s name, and it turned out she’d taken this fellow under her wing. He’d been on the street since he was five. At first Cesar wouldn’t talk to me, but I hung around with him for a few days and eventually he told me that he and Mariana had found a group that used to sleep in a bit of park in Glória. He said she’d spoken about me all the time and told him how, when I came out, I’d be the brains behind a scheme she had in mind: to sell sweets on Avenida Rio Branco. They found the perfect spot, with no one selling sweets on any piece of pavement for several streets around. They weren’t sure how to get started and were scared to ask the other sellers. They wanted me to be the boss and my sister said I’d know how to do it right. To familiarise themselves with the area, they started sleeping up there too, in the doorway of an office block where the guard was kinder than some of the other guards and didn’t shout at them or threaten to shoot them. One night a car parked up the street and a guy emerged. Cesar was awake and lifted his head while Mariana slept. Cesar didn’t see the face of the guy but could see he was wearing cowboy boots and carrying something heavy in his hands, which he raised above his head as he staggered the last few steps, and, just as Cesar realised what was going to happen, the man dropped a paving stone on my sleeping sister’s head.
‘So I learned the truth about Mariana – are you understanding? But behind every truth another lies hidden. I wanted the truth about that man, but there are a lot of men in cowboy boots in the world. I begged the police to hunt for him, but what did they care about another dead street kid without any papers? With a brother freshly out of jail – surprise, surprise. One less invisible kid in the city – not there one day, not there the next. Maybe the guy with boots was even a cop, just like the ones who shot up Vigário Geral, just like the ones who killed the kids at Candelária, just like the cops that squashed Sandro in the back of that van last week. Are you understanding, my brother?’
Joel looked at Nelson’s face and saw that his bottom lip was fighting a quiver. He wished he could put his words back in his mouth. Silence split the two of them as their eyes fixed on different aspects of the world outside. Joel could think of nothing but a man in cowboy boots with a paving stone and a sweet girl dreaming of her brother’s return.
After a while they reached Rio, and the bus crept through the city, hitting a midday rush-hour, though there didn’t seem much rush. Off a flyover it crawled, past a railway station littered with people, then round the back of sheds from which the multicoloured limbs of Carnival animals waggled into the air. When the bus reached the station, Joel said, ‘I’m really sorry –’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ Nelson said, finding a smile. ‘My words escaped my intentions for a minute, same as yours.’
Nelson glanced round as they left the bus. It was almost impossible to believe, but over by a hotdog stand, cramming three-quarters of a frankfurter into his mouth, was Vasco, with ketchup running down his chin and a look of pleasure on his face. Nelson was glad Joel looked fairly Carioca. With a little ducking and keeping still, Nelson managed to keep out of sight, and by the time Vasco realised the bus was empty, Nelson and Joel were reclining on the back seat of a taxi which eased into the traffic of early afternoon.
Eva arrived at the Confeitaria Colombo at two o’clock and was shown to an old accordion lift which took her to the first floor, where tables in the gallery gave a view on to the heads of patrons far below. Her heels clicked across the tiles, as she walked in a manner she hoped was elegant towards a round table dressed in fine white cloth, where Zemané sat talking on his phone. A smart young waiter pulled out her chair. Eva sat down and looked at the stained glass ceiling above, admiring a cherub framed in a heart of roses, scolding herself for having a sentimental turn.
Zemané ended his conversation, apologising with a roll of the eyes. ‘Thank you for coming, Eva,’ he said.
The man was more corpulent than Eva had expected, but taller. He had slightly more hair but it was longer and darker. He looked less like a rodent and smiled more. He looked almost elegant in a white shirt, trousers and waistcoat. He wore a wedding ring.
‘I have a soft spot for this place,’ said Zemané.
‘So do I… though my ex-husband used to bring his mistress here.’
‘We can walk down the block if you like. I know another –’
‘It’s fine, really,’ said Eva, touching his hand. ‘Every time I’m here without him it becomes a little more mine.’
‘Had I known you before, I could have poisoned his food.’
‘Now you’re just trying to butter me up.’
‘That’s the idea of this meeting, after all,’ said Zemané.
‘I should warn you – I’m not a woman easily buttered.’
‘Would a little wine increase my chances?’
‘No, but it might make my refusal easier for you to swallow.’
Zemané ordered a bottle of Miolo Reserva and sparkling water. Eva regretted mentioning her husband. She didn’t want to seem any kind of victim, and although she knew she would never be totally cured of her divorce she tried not to advertise the fact, especially to strangers. But sometimes a feeling simply popped out, as if of its own accord, and she supposed there was a reason this occurred, some healing benefit perhaps, so she tried not to be hard on herself when it happened.
‘So,’ said Eva. ‘You’d like to buy my silen
ce?’
‘We hoped you might keep a secret for a day or two, but what we’d really like to buy is…’
‘Is?’
‘The certificate,’ said Zemané.
‘The death certificate?’
‘The death certificate.’
‘I thought for a moment you might be frightened of the word,’ said Eva.
‘Certificate?’
‘Can one be frightened of those?’
‘If you don’t have the right ones it can be terrifying,’ said Zemané.
‘And why do you want it?’
‘If the man at the restaurant isn’t Joel’s father, I’d like Nelson to give it to Joel.’
‘How do I know you won’t just burn it?’
‘What would be the point?’ said Zemané. ‘You’ll tell Joel anyway, if Nelson doesn’t.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time Joel knew the truth?’
‘A boy like Nelson doesn’t fall upon many chances to earn two thousand reais. A chance encounter with a foreigner who won’t notice the absence of the money – is he supposed to turn his back in the name of Truth? He could be dead inside two days. That’s another truth. He wants to help Joel, but in the process he’d like to help himself, because he’s no fool.’
‘He’s looking a lot wiser from where I’m sitting, there’s no denying that.’
‘This was his idea, not mine.’
‘So why doesn’t he ask me himself?’ asked Eva.
‘He doesn’t have anything you want.’
‘And you do?’
‘That’s what I’m here to find out,’ said Zemané.