by Rona Jaffe
The beach was always the most active place in Rio, strangely enough. People might be consumed by good-natured apathy everywhere else, but on the beach they suddenly came to life. There was always a soccer game, sometimes in uniform. There were always couples playing an animated game that looked like a cross between ping-pong and handball, with little paddles and no net, leaping about on the hard sand. Helen sat under a beach umbrella, her two children digging sand castles beside her, looking like a model American mother, trying to pretend behind her dark glasses that she had not seen Sergio Leite Braga approach, and that, in any case, he was nothing to her.
“Helen,” he said gravely. He leaned down to take her hand. He introduced her to Carlos Monteiro, whom she remembered. He smiled at her children, who glanced at him curiously.
“Say how-do-you-do to Mr. Leite Braga and Mr. Monteiro,” Helen said to Roger and Julie, feeling so strange as she did so. They were polite children; she was proud of them. Roger stood up and shook hands with Sergio. I wonder what his children look like, she thought suddenly.
Sergio crossed his legs and swooped down beside her like an Indian. He was lean, and golden tan from the sun, his shoulders and neck and upper arms hairless, the skin so smooth she wanted to touch it. She wondered what Sergio had told his friend. What could he have told him? There was nothing to tell.
That was the first day. When she was with Sergio she resented him—his sureness, his spirits, his air of knowing what happiness was and of being able to grasp it whenever he wanted to. What makes him think he’s a good person? she thought resentfully. What makes him … And when she was away from him she felt somehow glowing, beautiful, because he thought being with her was happiness. With her, who no longer knew what happiness was!
The second day he telephoned her. Had she ever seen the Iate Clube? He would take her there.
Oh, yes, she said; she had been to the Iate Clube. Her feeling of resentment arose against him again. The yacht club was where married men met ladies for lunch, Leila had told her, and now Sergio thought he could go there with her. No, Helen said abruptly. She did not want to go to the Iate Clube.
Where would she like to go, then? He did not ask her if, he asked her where. He never gave her the choice of refusing. And Helen felt guiltily grateful for that, because if he had asked her, Would she have lunch with him, she would have been obliged to say no. Had she ever been to the Floresta de Tijuca? he asked. It was so beautiful. “Thank you,” Helen said, more coldly. “I was there one Sunday with Bert and the children.”
“I love it,” Sergio said. “I take my children there very often. It’s so cool there and peaceful.”
By telling her so calmly that he had taken his children there too (and perhaps his wife as well?) Sergio made her feel so helpless in her conflict that she wanted to lash out and hurt him; and then suddenly for the first time she felt the first real tenderness toward him.
“I’d rather go … somewhere new,” Helen said.
Then he told her about the restaurant on top of the hotel, with a view, with air conditioning, and they met. She had the feeling as they talked and picked at their food that he was waiting for something, that he knew her better than she knew herself. She felt herself falling into his control as one falls into weakness from too much wine, a feeling that is safe because it is imperceptible to the other person and easy to disguise. As long as Sergio did not know, she thought, she was safe; and so she smiled, and acted calm, and looked at his curved mouth instead of his eyes, feeling giddy with pleasure and smug with the secret of her deception. She had never been to this restaurant before, and from this height the view of the beach and tiny bathers seemed new. All the people dining in the room were Brazilians, and she had never seen any of them before. It was only a few hours out of her life, harmless, without past or future either if she wished. And because it was so unimportant it became very important.
After lunch she said she had to rush home to take Julie to a birthday party: it was a lie. Sergio accepted the lie and took her home in an ancient taxi, keeping the taxi to go on to his office. She was so pleased with herself at having deceived both Sergio and herself, at having ended this secret luncheon with no incident, that when he kissed her hand and told her he would meet her the next day she accepted before she realized what she had done.
I am a fool, she thought, a fool. But she lay on her bed and got up to close her door and lay there again in a semi-stupor, afraid that if she had left the door to her room open one of her children might wander in and see her secret happiness revealed upon her face.
So today Helen was waiting for Sergio again, and it was the third day since the night they had really met at the Macumba. Bert was coming home that night. She did not feel guilty toward Bert, strangely; she only felt rather sad because she would have to tell Sergio that she could never see him again. She wouldn’t say, Never; she would simply say that Bert was coming back. But she knew she would never telephone Sergio to tell him the next time Bert went away again, and she was sure Sergio would forget about her by then. She looked out at the sky and the beach below, white with heat haze. She was cool in the air-conditioned room and she shivered, clasping her hands together on the tablecloth. Because she was here the second day in a row she felt rather as if it were her special place, hers with Sergio, and she knew that she would never come here again with Bert or any of their friends. No, Helen thought then; she would come here eventually, and that was what was making her feel this wistful loneliness. She would come here some night in the not-so-distant future, for dinner with Bert and another couple or two, and they would all laugh and splurge on the fine French food and wine, and perhaps they would sit across from the small table where she was going to sit now with Sergio and where they had eaten yesterday. There would hardly be any ghosts of herself and Sergio sitting at this small table, she told herself; it wouldn’t mean anything at all. She might even look back at these three days and not be quite sure they had ever happened, like a date one had years ago in college. The thought made her sad.
Sergio slid on to the leather banquette beside her before she knew he was there. “You look sad,” he said quietly. “Don’t say anything; wait a moment.” He was holding a fresh rose in his hand and he slipped the stem through the top buttonhole of her dress. She could smell the scent of the rose very faintly, fresh and sweet.
“Thank you,” she said. “I never buy roses; they’re so expensive.”
“One?” he said. “É nada.”
“That’s what a housewife I am,” Helen said. “You give me a rose and instead of saying, ‘Thank you, how romantic,’ I say, ‘Thank you, how expensive.’ As if you should have given me butter or cheese instead. Now what in the world would I do with butter and cheese?”
“We have known each other for three days,” he said unexpectedly. He seemed surprised.
“That’s not very long.”
“No.”
“Bert is coming back tonight,” Helen said.
Sergio nodded.
“Three days,” he said again.
“I told you he would be back soon,” she said. “He only went to see a mine. I …”
“Will you see me when he comes back?”
“I never thought of that.”
“I thought of it,” Sergio said. “I didn’t know whether I ought to ask you. I thought, Perhaps she really loves him and can’t be with anyone else. Or perhaps she doesn’t love him enough to make it be everything, but perhaps she’s afraid to be with me. I was thinking about it this morning. I want to see you if it will make you happy. If it will make you unhappy, then I’ll go away. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Helen said. “I don’t know what to say.… I do, I do know what to say, but I … can’t say it.”
“That’s why I never left anything up to you,” Sergio said gently. He took her hand. “We had so little time. I couldn’t wait for you to argue with yourself. But now it’s more important because it involves more than three days. It mea
ns a long time. That’s why I want you to make the choice.”
“The choice?” she asked, frightened.
“I think everyone has a right to have good things happen to him,” Sergio said. “I want things to happen to me and they do. I’m never bored or lonely. You are.”
“Yes. I … was.”
“I’m married too,” he said. “I will always be married to this woman, and you will always be married to this man. You are married. Also you are an American, also you have blond hair. These are all simply facts about you.”
Helen smiled. “When you say it, everything seems so simple.”
“We have an old saying in Brazil,” Sergio said. “According to the law of aerodynamics the bumblebee cannot fly. But the bumblebee does not know the law of aerodynamics and so he flies.”
Helen reached out her hand and touched his lips very lightly and he kissed her fingers. He took hold of her wrist and kissed her palm. He had spoken of love, in terms of what loving someone meant in his life, but neither of them had actually said he loved the other. Even now, Helen could not really think of it. Love, in her terms, meant commitment, promises, responsibilities and serious things. She had loved only one man in her life and she was married to him. But even so, she could not bear to lose this other man who was here beside her. She had never really believed women thought this way until now. She and Sergio had never said they loved each other, even if it were a sort of lie. She could neither bring herself to lie to him about it nor even to ask him about it. There did not seem to be any need. The only need was not to lose him.
“Will you always keep everything simple for us?” she asked. “Will you?”
“Will you?”
“I can’t even keep things simple for myself.”
“You’re very beautiful,” Sergio said.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t ever say thank you when I tell you you’re beautiful.”
“All right.”
The waiter came over and stood by their table holding a menu. Sergio ordered for both of them, and the waiter went away.
“How strange …” Helen said.
“What?”
“When I’m alone with my husband there are always the children there, or the servants, or our friends. And when I’m alone with you there’s a waiter or a taxi driver or a room full of strangers. Do you know that I haven’t been alone with anybody—really alone—for eight years?”
“And you think that’s the way your life has to be?”
“When you grow up you try so hard to keep a little part of your life separate, just so it will belong to you. You don’t think you’ll ever have the luxury of being alone with someone you love until you’re too old to care about it. And we’re all so proud of ourselves for turning ourselves into public property.”
“To be alone with the right person for a little while can be a lifetime,” Sergio said.
“When I said thank you before,” she said, “it wasn’t only because you told me I was beautiful. It was for a lot more.”
“I want to make love to you,” he said.
For an instant Helen thought of how it would be, allowed herself to think of it, and then it seemed too far away, across a bridge she could not cross. She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said very softly. “Please give me time. I don’t know.”
He was looking into her face and she could see his eyes move, like someone reading a page. She had never seen anyone look at her that way before. At first it startled her and she had a moment of resistance; then she was flattered and touched. She felt herself become weak and gentle under the movement of his gaze. She knew then that one person alone looking into a mirror is never beautiful; it is only when two people are together and know they are beautiful to each other that they really are. But she knew too that other forces are at work: the past, the demands and needs of other people, the whole framework of separate lives that meet and part again. She wondered if she would ever find enough courage in the knowledge that Sergio found her beautiful and desirable to make that beauty last when he was gone. Someday he would go away from her; that was inevitable and she was not alone. The tragedy would be that when he left, or when she left him, someone who thought she was a special woman, separate from all others, would be gone, and gone with him the proof that she was.
She gave a shaky laugh. “I’m thinking about the end already,” she said, “and we haven’t even begun.”
“We have begun,” Sergio said softly and intently. “Oh, yes, we have.”
This time she lifted his hand to her face, as he had lifted her hand many times to his lips, and she laid her cheek against his fingers. It seemed a natural gesture, something she had a right to do. She remembered the thoughts she had had before he entered the restaurant, her resolution to end their meetings, and then she ignored that thought as quickly as she had put away the thought that they would become lovers. She knew they could not remain in this in-between state forever, that the in-between stage was perhaps the shortest of all. But she would not think about it. For the first time she would not think about anything at all; she would only let things happen. If the bumblebee, not knowing he was not able to fly, could therefore fly, then she would be that way too. She did not know yet whether she had changed since she had known Sergio or whether she was for the first time finding out what she really was like. But she knew she was no longer frightened.
“What are you thinking now?” Sergio asked.
“I’m wondering how I could have lied to myself for three days.”
“We all do that. It seems safe.”
“But no more.”
“You’re different, suddenly,” he said. “You’re gentler.”
“I am?”
“Gentler … and lovelier. No more tenseness in your face. Your eyes are different. I can see into them.”
“What do you see?” she asked, trying not to lower her gaze.
“What is the best thing you would want me to see?”
“This may sound odd to you,” Helen said. “I … what I want you to see is … a woman.”
He sounded almost awed. “You are that,” he said. “Oh, you are that.”
CHAPTER 10
During the hot nights in the weeks preceding Carnival, people danced and dined outdoors at the piscina of the Copacabana Palace, ate broiled filet that was cooked on hot coals and skewered on long swords in the tiny back yards of outdoor churrascurias, sat at tables overlooking the mosaic sidewalk and the beach and the stream of cars on Avenida Atlantica and drank beer from heavy glass steins in cafés that looked more like cafés in France or Germany. Rio was filled with tourists, cheerfully paying high prices they thought were low, innocent of spiraling inflation that set angry passengers to overturning and burning buses during the daytime. There were tourists from everywhere, from Europe, from North America, from other parts of South America. There were also the usual Rio café habitués; the handsome, seemingly jobless young men, tanned to the color of a gentled, honeyed cordovan from months of lying on the beach, emerging clean-shaven and white-toothed from bachelor apartments of incredible disorder, of three-legged beds, empty beer cans under the bed, torn sheets with shoeprints on them, cigarette holes burned blackly into the mattress, a whole world of endless young orgy shut away behind locked doors.
Inside Sachas, open “from seven to seven,” the wealthy danced to a lively orchestra in an air-conditioned room and drank real whisky from its original bottle set on the white tablecloth with a bucket of completely transparent ice cubes made of purified water. In the smaller, less expensive boâtes (Brazilian café society loves French words but spells them its own way) there was louder conversation, perhaps guitar music, perhaps air conditioning, and the lights were brighter. And then there were the tiny bars along the beach where an opened door emitted a blast of frigid air and the sound of a phonograph being played, and perhaps the sweet-flower smell of antiseptic. Outside these bars prostitutes sometimes barely into their teens loitered, called out, clutch
ed at a passer-by’s arm, waited all night until they found a customer or perhaps ended up alone, dozing hopelessly on the steps of an apartment house, their heads on their knees, their arms wrapped around their heads.
This was Copacabana, but in other parts of Rio it was quieter. People waited in line to pay twelve cents to see an air-conditioned film, or they sat with their families at late dinner in their apartments, or they put their children to bed. It was summer, which is always a crazy time, different from any other time of the year; but most of all it was before the Carnival, and anything could happen.
In her apartment at Ipanema, Leila Silva e Costa was entertaining Carlos Monteiro at dinner. She had entertained him before, with friends, and several times he had taken her to quiet, obscure restaurants to dine, but she had never before invited him to her apartment alone. He seemed even more nervous than she was. He arrived at eight, having been invited for eight; and this surprised her. Most Brazilians arrived up to an hour and a half late. Being excited, almost like a schoolgirl, Leila had been all ready by eight o’clock herself, so it was no tragedy.
He followed her into her library and stood there admiring her shelves of books, which he had seen before, a glass of whisky in his hand, blinking his eyes nervously. She had put a stack of classical records on the phonograph, but because her children were always getting at the phonograph and record collection trying to play with them, the records were terribly scratched and Leila was ashamed. She knew an intellectual like Carlos would think she was a careless woman who did not take care of beautiful things.