by Rona Jaffe
Then the door to the bedroom was kicked open, and João Alberto came into the room carrying a huge white-frosted birthday cake on a plate in his two outstretched hands. He put the cake on the quilt beside her with a flourish, so happy with the pride of what he had done that he looked like a small boy again.
“Good morning! Happy birthday, my heart!” He kissed her so tenderly that all her homesickness and depression disappeared, evanesced, floated away like the smoke from a blown-out birthday candle. “I brought you a birthday cake for breakfast,” he said.
“We’ll eat it for breakfast, then!” she cried happily. “Bring a knife! No, no, I can’t eat it; I’m too excited.”
Who else could have found a birthday cake in the morning at a hotel, complete with her name written on it in chocolate and a pink, sugary heart? Who else would have crept out of bed while she was still sleeping, to bring it back? Who else would have suspected that even though she was on a vacation in a beautiful city she would be taken with homesickness and loneliness when she awoke on her birthday? On that birthday morning Leila felt there never was a man so sensitive or so kind as her husband, and now, years later, when she remembered it, she held the memory to her heart purely and emotionally, untouched by anything wrong and unhappy which had come afterward or even before.
Oh, what could she do now? All this love, all these beautiful things, were only memories, existing only in her own mind. Probably João Alberto had forgotten them. And if he had forgotten them, and if they had happened so long ago, perhaps they did not exist at all. Everyone was gone—her husband, her mother, her family, and there was no answer, not even from her mother, who loved her still. The only thing that was real was this road and this steering wheel, and later the hours of the night. Leila knew what she was going to do tonight. She would do what she always did when she returned from these terrible eight hours of treacherous driving, and from the more terrible ordeal of trying to see some answer in her mother’s face. She would call up some man and go to a boâte, or to a party. She would dance the samba all night and she would drink champagne. She wanted to do the wildest things she could do, to tear apart the cord between her life up on that mountain and her life below. Her life below was the one she had to live, the one she had to bear. She would drink, and dance, and she would laugh. Perhaps some night she would even have the courage to forget João Alberto, who had forgotten her, and she would make love.
CHAPTER 5
When she came home from her day at the Gavea Golf Club with the children Helen Sinclair remembered that she was going with Bert to a Brazilian’s home, to her first really Brazilian party, and suddenly she was refreshed and delighted. The party seemed to take on an importance beyond reason, as if it were some kind of salvation. All through this long day she had not been able to escape the feeling that she had failed, that soon Mrs. Graham would be taking the children to the club again, sitting beside the pool as custodian of the towels and clothes and chewing gum. Her mind told her this was not such a dreadful thing, that, after all, to be like those placid women who wanted no conversation other than the limited chatter of tiny children would be a hypocrisy and, even worse, an unnecessary one. But her heart told her she had deserted her children and in so doing had herself been cast loose, like a balloon without a hand for its string, left to float purposelessly in the empty sky.
“I only met this Brazilian yesterday, at lunch,” Bert said. “And he invited us to his party. You’ll like him, he’s charming. His name is—believe it or not—Baby Amaral.”
“Baby? He’s either young or a playboy.”
“He’s neither. He’s about fifty years old. A lot of Brazilian men are named Baby; their governesses named them and the name stuck when they grew up. But that’s a lot better than the ones who had German governesses when they were young. They’re apt to be named Bubi.”
“Booby? My lord, I wonder if anyone told them what it means in English.” Helen smiled at Bert, thinking of the odd names, but she could not help feeling a little envious. How much he knew that she did not know, the places he was allowed to go, the people he met! He did not have to sit by a pool all day, with sewing for a hospital his only diversion. “I’m so glad we’re going to this party tonight.”
“To tell you the truth,” Bert said, “I’d rather not go. I’m exhausted. I’m going only because I think it might amuse you.”
“We don’t … have to.”
“No, we’ll go.”
“You’ll enjoy it when you’re there,” Helen said, beginning to feel guilty. “You always love to meet new people.”
“I know,” he said resignedly and went off to the shower.
Why did he have to tell me that, Helen thought unhappily. Now I’ll feel as if I’m driving him to an early grave, like those dreadful women you read articles about in magazines. Now I won’t enjoy the party. This whole day has gone wrong, and I’m tired from doing nothing, and I’ve failed my children, and now I’m failing my husband. What I should really do is give him a quiet little dinner and go to bed early. What’s the matter with me, anyway? I never used to be like this.
She went determinedly into the bedroom and began to choose accessories and jewelry for her dress. They were going to that party and she was going to enjoy it, that was all. It would certainly be a waste of time if neither of them had fun.
They had some difficulty finding the street address in the dark because it was a neighborhood neither of them knew. Great leafy trees lined the street, and behind a wrought-iron fence they could see a lush garden with lights strung among the trees. When they walked up the path through the grass to the house they could hear an orchestra playing on the other side of the house, and the sound of people talking. Bert seemed cheerful, and he looked very handsome in his white summer dinner jacket, and not tired at all. Helen felt happier. There was a kidney-shaped swimming pool in the garden in back of the house, with people gathered around it dressed in evening clothes. The orchestra was in an enclosed porch affair with one open side, which must have been the patio of the bathhouse. They were playing an American popular song with great spirit, and for a moment Helen almost thought they had made a mistake and gone to the wrong party. There were large palm trees in the garden, and white wrought-iron furniture, and stuck into the bark of the palm trees were red, blue, and green pointed glass Christmas balls, bristling with bright glassy colors all the way from the grass to the palm fronds above, like some kind of strange tropical growth.
Baby Amaral came bounding out of the patio to greet them. He was short and plump and easily fifty, with a kind, eager face. “Ah,” he said, “How are you? Well?” holding out his hands. “How are you?” He shook hands with Bert with one hand and put the other arm about Bert’s shoulders, rocking back and forth in that embrace as if they were a pair of tango dancers. Bert patted Baby Amaral on the back too, and rocked and smiled and laughed, and the two of them looked more like long-lost brothers who had finally been reunited than two people who had only met for the first time the day before at lunch.
“How are you?” Bert said. “Ah, fine, fine.” He turned to introduce Helen. “This is my wife, Helen.”
Baby Amaral lifted her hand to his lips briskly, all respectful formality. “A very great pleasure. I’m glad you came.”
“So are we,” Helen said. “Thank you.”
“Listen to the orchestra,” Baby said. “They’re going to play all American tunes tonight. I bought the sheet music for them. And we’re having American food later. I love America.”
“We love Brazil,” Bert said.
“You do?” he asked happily. “You too, Helen? Do you like Brazil?”
“I love it.”
“You love it! It’s a wonderful country. I’m glad you love it.” Baby beamed at her. “Everyone at this party is Brazilian, but most of them speak English very well. You won’t have any trouble.”
“I speak Portuguese,” Helen said.
“You speak Portuguese! How wonderful! It’s a very difficult language for Americans.”<
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“Yes,” Helen said. “It is hard, at first.”
“Very difficult,” Baby said. “You must be a very intelligent woman. Come, I’ll introduce you to some of my friends. You must speak to them in Portuguese.”
Helen glanced at Bert as they followed Baby to the first knot of people. Bert already had that avid expression on his face, like a cub reporter at his first fire, and she knew he was going to have a good time. She smiled at him lovingly and he winked at her.
“This is Leila Silva e Costa, Helen and Bert Sinclair.” Baby went on, introducing members of the group, but Helen was lost in the maze of Brazilian names. Everyone seemed to have at least three names, many of them combinations of the same names and most of them unpronounceable. She looked at the first woman she had met. How extraordinarily beautiful she was! There was something more Parisian than Latin about upper-class Brazilian women—their hair styles, their clothes, even their finely cut profiles. And something about the light eyes many of them had seemed almost Egyptian.
“Excuse me,” Helen said in Portuguese. “Please tell me your name again.”
“Leila, And you?”
“Helen.”
“You are American.”
Helen laughed. “You can tell immediately, of course.”
“Oh, please speak English,” Leila said, in English. “I want to learn to improve my English. My English is too bad.”
“No, it isn’t bad at all.”
“No? You don’t think it’s funny? I am taking lessons now.”
A waiter came by with glasses of champagne. They each took one. “Do you want to sit down?” Leila asked. “It’s very hot in this patio. Let’s sit in the garden.”
“Wonderful idea.”
They sat in small white wrought-iron chairs beside the lighted pool. Helen looked down at the water longingly. “I’d like to jump in.”
“We will, later. Do you have your bikini?”
“No. I never thought—”
“They will find one for you,” Leila said. “Don’t worry.” When she smiled, her remarkable cat’s eyes did not crinkle half shut the way most people’s did but, rather, they opened wider, glittering, giving her an expression that was mischievous and young. Helen guessed Leila was about the same age as she was, perhaps younger. “Later we’ll dance in the pool.”
“My lord,” Helen said. “It’s like Hollywood.”
“Have you been to Hollywood?”
“No. I’ve only read about it.”
“I would like to go to New York,” Leila said. “I know I would love New York. I want to go there to go to college. Perhaps I will someday.” She lowered her voice and looked at Helen with concern. “Tell me—am I too old to go to college in the United States?”
“Too old?” Helen said. “Of course not. Grandmothers go to college in America, after their children are grown. Anybody can go.”
“They won’t laugh at me?”
“Not at all.”
Leila looked pained, but she did not try to drop her gaze from Helen’s face. “I never had any education,” she said. “I was married at seventeen and I was so ignorant. The women here marry too young, I think. It’s not good. I think that’s why my marriage failed. I didn’t know you have to work for a good marriage, and even if I had known, I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
“You’re very honest,” Helen said.
“Maybe too much?”
“No. Could we see each other sometime? Have lunch together one day?”
“Of course!” Leila said. “Tomorrow I can’t, because I go up to the favellas. But after tomorrow. You come to my house for lunch.”
“You go up to the favellas?” Helen asked. “To those shacks on the mountain?”
“It’s a kind of social work,” Leila said. “Some of the women do it. The people who live there are so poor, it’s something terrible. The police won’t let them build any more houses because there are too many already. So during the night when it’s very dark the people put up a house, very quickly, all in one night. And in the morning if the police come, they just say, What house? This house was here always.”
“How can anyone put up a house overnight?”
Leila opened her eyes wide. “They’re something terrible, those houses. Old pieces of wood, old gasoline tins, cardboard. When there is a big rain they disappear and the people drown, their chickens drown and float in the rain water, the—how you say—big black birds come—”
“Buzzards?”
“Yes. The black birds that eat people. So I go up there one day every week and bring clothes and food and sometimes medicine if the people need it.”
“You’re not afraid?” Helen said.
“Afraid? In the daylight? No! Not so many people can do this,” Leila added rather proudly, “because you have to be a very good driver to go up those roads. Most of the time there aren’t even any roads.”
“Could I go with you tomorrow?” Helen asked. “Please.”
“You want to go?”
“Yes. I do.”
“With pleasure,” Leila said. “I’ll come for you in the morning. Around eleven o’clock.” She began to search through her small purse. “Give me your address and telephone number. And if you have some old things, some clothing, maybe clothes for children, you could bring them.”
“I’m sure I do.” She thought of the clothes the children had outgrown, put away in a box on top of a closet, and of all the things she had which, although she never seemed able to wear them out, seemed old to her and worn and tiresome. In her mind she was already categorizing all this booty and was filled with a rising excitement. Perhaps we’ll become friends, she thought. I’d like to have a Brazilian friend in Brazil. And then it struck her for an instant how somehow ridiculous it was that although she had been living in this country for almost a year now the only Brazilians she knew well were maids and shopkeepers and her massagista and her hairdresser. And she only knew them as well as one knows people with whom one has lengthy discussions about the weather.
“I’m glad we met,” Helen said.
“I too,” Leila said warmly. “In Rio you always see the same people, every day, all the time, all your life from the time you are children. You go to parties and it’s always the same people. Whatever you do, they know it before you know it yourself! And they are always gossiping. They call you on the telephone: ‘Ah, I saw your husband on the street talking to a woman!’ It’s something terrible, this gossip. I’m glad I met you, too.”
Although it was late it was still too hot for anyone but the most energetic to try to dance. The orchestra played, and people strolled by the pool, looking longingly at the electrically lighted blue water. Helen and Leila walked through the crowd, all of whom Leila knew and none of whom Helen had ever seen before. “That girl over there was Miss Brazil a few years ago,” Leila said. “And that girl is engaged. To the man next to her. And that woman—isn’t she beautiful?—is married to the tall man next to her. She’s very intelligent too.”
“It’s funny,” Helen said, “people actually standing with the people they’re married to. At our parties, the first thing you do is get away from your husband or wife.”
“Really?”
“In fact, when there’s a dinner party with place cards you never sit next to the person you’re married to.”
Leila laughed mischievously. “The husbands and wives in Brazil are very polite to each other,” she said. “When they are in public they never look at anyone else. But most of the men here have mistresses, and most of the women have had lovers.”
Helen looked around her, not able to restrain herself from feeling shocked. How carefree all these women looked, and how poised. She had been friendly with a married woman in Westport who had been having an affair, but this woman had always looked harried, as if the strain of furtive meetings and a grand passion of the heart were too much for her to handle along with the running of a home and the care of a husband and two children. And she had another neighb
or who suspected her husband was having an affair with someone in the city, and Helen remembered a horrible evening when she and Bert had sat with this wife waiting for her husband to come home for a dinner to which she and Bert had been invited. The husband had missed a train, and then telephoned, and then missed another; harmless enough; but Helen had watched the wife get herself systematically drunk on five martinis, and then she had known. Finally the three of them had sat down to the table in order that the roast not dry to a crisp. The conversation had been strained, full of forced gaiety and pointedly innocuous anecdotes. At moments like that everything you say seems to take on a terrifying unintended double meaning. Finally the husband had appeared, all humble thirty-five-year-old boyish charm. Helen remembered thinking at the time, Who would want to go to bed with him? But evidently at least two women did.
“The wives know about the husbands’ mistresses?” Helen said.
“In time the wife always knows,” Leila said. “You can’t help finding out.”
“But what do they do then?”
Leila shrugged. “Nothing. Sometimes take a lover and say nothing. Sometimes accuse the husband; and then he buys her a new bracelet or something she has been wanting and she forgives him. They fight and make up. A married woman has no rights in Brazil. We have no legal divorce. If a husband leaves his wife he doesn’t have to give her any money, even for the children. So what can a wife do? It’s better to be married than to be alone.”
“How awful!”
“Yes,” Leila said grimly. “It is.”
Helen saw Bert standing against the bar in the patio talking to some men, and she went to him and took hold of his hand, feeling gratitude and tenderness toward him. He turned for an instant and gave her a brief smile. She felt Leila’s fingers lightly on her arm.
“I must go and speak to that man over there,” Leila whispered. “I like him very much.” She smiled, this time a smile full of radiance that altered her entire appearance. She seemed like a child bursting with the secret of some forbidden trick she is going to play. She disappeared into the crowd.