Away from Home

by Rona Jaffe

  “Look! Maybe Mort will hand us out a drink.”

  Helen and Bert had already vanished. Margie stood on tiptoe at the edge of the mob trying to find them. Then she saw them, rushing by, bobbing up and down, only their heads visible, like a couple who have been drowned in a great wave and are momentarily revealed on the surface of the force that has destroyed them. She tried to wave and cry out to them, but they did not see her, and then they were gone. She turned and leaned on the edge of the camerote. There were people standing on the railing already; she had to push past someone’s bare legs. No one seemed to mind.

  “Mort!”

  “Hi,” he said. He handed out a bottle of imported Scotch. “Here, quick. Take a drink.”

  “Isn’t there any water?”

  “Water?” He walked around in the box, looking for water among the half-filled glasses people had left on the small table near the wall. There was a silver platter of something that looked like chicken croquettes, getting cold and congealing in their white sauce. There was some limp lettuce and a bowl of melting ice cubes. A man dressed as a scarecrow and a girl dressed as a stripteaser the moment before she vanishes behind the curtain were kissing each other passionately. Mort walked around them as if they were a pillar and reached for a glass. He sniffed at it.

  “Here,” he said. “Water. I think.”

  “I’ll take the Scotch,” Neil said.

  Margie drank the water and sat down on the edge of the railing on a man’s feet. He moved and apologized, and then when he looked down and saw who he was apologizing to he tried to kiss her. He was a middle-aged man, slightly drunk, very happy, and when she pushed him away and scowled at him he looked bewildered. He apologized again and turned away. A moment later he turned back, leaned over her, and asked hopefully, “Will you dance with me?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Some whisky?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Some champagne?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Some food?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You are American?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at Neil. “Your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very fortunate man,” he said gallantly, gave a little bow, and turned away, this time for good.

  Mort came over to her. “What did you tell your admirer?” he asked, grinning.

  Margie took Neil’s hand and smiled. “I said Neil was my lover and very jealous,” she said. She touched the back of Neil’s hand to her cheek.

  “I am,” Neil said. He tilted the bottle of Scotch and took a long drink.

  “Do you know what I would like more than anything in the whole world?” Margie said.

  “What?”

  “A cold bath, and then to go to bed.” She realized, of course, as soon as the words were out, that both of them misunderstood. They thought she meant really Bed, not to sleep. She tossed her head and tried to pass the whole thing off, looking slightly wicked. Back home in New York, young wives had made comments like that all the time, and their husbands had said much worse, and no one had thought it particularly offensive to talk about one’s private life while playing bridge. Perhaps, Margie thought now, some of them had been lying too; crying wolf and talking big so that no one would know everything was not quite kosher at home.

  “Let’s watch the people from the second floor,” Neil said, taking her hand.

  They went out of the ballroom and up the stairs, inching their way past the people who were thronging the narrow corridor. Outside, on the floodlighted ramp, people were still arriving, the ones with such elaborate costumes that they could not dance and could barely walk; they would arrive only for the judging and to show their fantaseas and then they would go home. One woman wore a dress with side panels that opened into a huge silver fan when she held her arms out stiffly to the sides. The ends of the fan were attached to her wrists and she walked slowly and posed for photographers, smiling, her arms held rigidly out all this time as if she had been crucified.

  “How can anyone have fun like that?” Margie asked, but her question was drowned out by the music.

  They made their way to the second floor and tried several of the doors to the boxes until they found one that was unlocked. Margie had a moment of panic. She did not know these Brazilians or, indeed, any Brazilian, and she had no idea what surprised and hostile group they might find on the other side of that door. She glanced at Neil. “I’m afraid.”

  “Come on!”

  He was smiling, he was so happy, he was like a little boy. She could not think of anyone she would rather go to a party with than Neil. And yet, sometimes, she felt he went too far.… They opened the door and slipped in. All the occupants of the camerote were sitting or standing against the rail, leaning out to see, and none of them even turned around when Margie and Neil invaded their box. There was an old matriarch watching the dancers with tolerant amusement. Neil found a straight-backed chair and pulled it toward the front of the box for Margie to stand on.

  “No,” she said, “Really, no.”

  A man dressed as a harlequin left his place at the railing and went to the small table near the door to pour himself another drink. He smiled at Margie, thinking she and Neil were friends of someone else’s. She stood on the chair. Below there seemed to be several thousand people. She saw the bright colors of their costumes and their upturned faces. There was no separation among them or even a pattern; it was only an undulating, moving mass of humanity, bobbing, swirling, almost frightening. There was no longer such a thing as an individual down there. The music played loudly, as if its persuasive beat would continue to give strength to the dancers long after their muscles had given way. Even from this high above them she could see the sheen of perspiration on their faces and the fixed bright smiles that made some of them look like Esther Williams emerging dripping but smiling from under water in one of her movies. People were standing on tables at the side of the room, dancing alone or with others on the white tablecloths, and people were standing solidly side by side on the railings that edged the ring of boxes around the main floor. If someone were to faint and fall, Margie thought in horror, there would be nowhere to fall; he would simply be carried along on the wave, borne along unconscious on the merriment of the others. Some of the dancers looked up and waved happily. The people in the second-floor boxes, who were lucky enough to have chairs, waved back and squirted the dancers with their golden aerosol cans of perfumed ether.

  “I want to get down now,” Margie murmured.

  Neil put his arms around her hips to help her jump off the chair, and when she was standing beside him he did not open his arms but slid them up to her waist and held her against him.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” he whispered. “Margie?”

  She shook her head; she couldn’t speak. She was too hot, she was perspiring, she was tired, and she suddenly felt such a constriction in her throat that she could not have answered him even if she knew what to say.

  “After all this is over,” he said. “Then what? We have to wake up some time, don’t we?”

  She didn’t know what he was talking about, but there was genuine suffering on his face. For the first time in all the years they had been married, she suddenly realized, she had not the faintest idea what was in Neil’s mind. “Of course,” she whispered, not sure whether or not that was what he wanted to hear.

  It seemed it was not. “Yes,” he said dully, and he let go of her at last, his arms falling heavily to his sides. “Let’s go find the bar.”

  They pushed their way into a room which had a bar in it and fought through the crowd until they were standing againt the bar. Neil bought whisky for both of them. She drank hers as quickly as she could, as she had in the old days, and she noticed he had done the same.

  “Let’s get drunk,” she said. “Let’s get plastered together.”

  “I’ll match you.”

  She felt happier after the second dr
ink and she wondered why she had needed it. Neil looked rather grim. She had thought it would be fun to match drinks with him, sort of in the party spirit which she seemed to be so lacking tonight, but from the desperate way he looked he did not seem to need her to keep him company at all. She smiled at him. “Good luck.”

  “Same to you.” They drank.

  “Health.”

  “Happiness.” They drank another.

  “This,” Margie said, rather fuzzy now, “must be what they call Togetherness.”

  “To togetherness.”

  “Never apart.” They drank.

  “Perfect couple,” Neil said.

  “Perfect young couple. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “That’s right.”

  She tried to keep the words precise, although her tongue seemed to refuse to say what her mind told it to. “Such … a … lovely young couple, Margie and Neil.”

  There was a stirring now among the crowd and cries that the costume parade was about to begin. Neil tipped the bartender and helped Margie to follow the other people back into the main ballroom. She saw the backs of the people in front of her as if through a mist, but with the colors very bright. Her eyes felt hot and she realized with some gentle surprise that she was crying. She was not exactly sure why she was crying because she did not feel very sad, only very drunk. From far away she heard herself speaking, and she was not exactly sure whether she was speaking out loud or only to herself.

  “I hate them all,” she was saying. “I hate them.”

  “Who?” Neil said. “These nice, lovely people?”

  “No,” she said. “No, those other ones. The ones who call us a perfect young couple. Those are the ones I hate. I hate them.”

  “Don’t hate them,” Neil said. He patted her shoulder. “Don’t hate them.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “No. No percentage.”

  “They’re far away,” she said. “Why can’t I hate them?”

  “Ignore them.”

  There was a small space between two girls who were standing on the railing of a camerote and Margie was able to squeeze her way up there too. They put their arms around her in a friendly way to help support her and smiled at her happily. Neil stood in front of her and she leaned against his back a little and looked up to where the movable catwalk had been lowered so that it made a bridge across the room, up high, for the contestants to parade across. She wondered why they were neither afraid nor airsick.

  A man was announcing the title of each entry in rolling, resonant tones, through a loud-speaker, with over-enunciation. First there were the groups. “Ar-le-cam,” he enunciated. “Ar-le-cam.”

  A group of harlequins, shiny with satin stripes of many colors and tinkling with little silver bells, rushed across the catwalk, bobbing their heads and whirling gaily to wave at the people on both sides far below them. There was applause.

  Then there were scarecrows, shaggy and fantastic and identical, and then there was a group of men dressed as Far Eastern temple dancers. After each group there was applause. Then there were the single entries.

  “Dragon of Gold,” the announcer intoned. “Dragon of Gold.” As if we didn’t have eyes, Margie thought. But the dragon was impressive. It was a young woman, her dragon’s body covered entirely in stiff, gleaming golden scales. Her head was a dragon’s head, rather like a golden prehistoric monster from the Museum of Natural History, with an open mouth showing a red tongue. The eyes were green and lighted up. The tail trailed behind for at least six feet, and on the ends of the fingers were golden claws. There was applause from the crowd. A devil came out then, dressed in red, with a wicked grin. He bowed and swirled his cape, and tossed handfuls of gunpowder on to the catwalk, surrounding himself with small explosions and puffs of gray smoke. He ran by so fast Margie wished he would come back and explode some more gunpowder.

  A blue and white clown paraded across the catwalk, bowing to the people. “He had that costume made in Paris by Jacques Heim!” one of the girls exclaimed to Margie, nearly pushing her off the railing in her excitement. “He came to Rio just to wear that costume to Carnival!” Everyone was much impressed by the cost of the Parisian costume and there was wild applause.

  “Chinese Merchant. Chinese Merchant.” Very small, skimming lightly and whirling across the catwalk, the Chinese Merchant came, his head entirely shaved and his face and head covered with shining gold paint. His hands, too, were painted gold. On his shoulders was a bamboo pole, and hanging from it were an exquisite birdcage with bright-feathered birds in it and a basket of flowers. His gown was thickly embroidered in wondrous colors, all glittering, and from the bamboo pole were fluttering scarves of chiffon in pale shades of every color, pink, blue, green, yellow, violet. There was so much applause that he had to walk across the catwalk twice.

  “Every year he is a Chinese Merchant,” the girl said. “But each year he is dressed even more beautifully.”

  There was a woman who called her costume Ninotchka, dripping great, silver fox tails, dozens of them, even a headdress of fox furs, like the rays of the sun. “That fantasea cost a hundred thousand cruzeiros!” the girl said, smiling as delightedly as if the owner were planning to sew all the fox tails together afterward and present them to her.

  “It must be very hot,” Margie murmured.

  “Ah, but how beautiful!”

  There was a woman pretending to be a bird of paradise, covered in a brief costume of bright feathers, feathers springing from her head, her bare legs entirely painted silver. She stopped in the center of the catwalk and posed with a bird attached to her wrist. Everyone applauded.

  It was over. The catwalk was raised slowly and disappeared into the shadows of the ceiling; the judges were deliberating. Margie’s heels hurt from trying to keep her balance on the narrow wooden railing. She jumped down and rubbed her foot. The judgments were confusing; it seemed as if everyone had won something or other. The first prizes were a trip to New York and a trip to Paris. I wonder which one I’d like, Margie thought. I think Paris. I’m so far away from home now, nothing else seems strange. I’m going to feel this way for years and years—maybe for the rest of my life.

  “Let’s go and beat the crowd,” Neil said. The people had begun to dance again, but many of them were leaving, evidently with the same idea Neil had, and the mass was visibly thinner. Margie looked for Helen and Bert and finally saw them looking for her. None of them really wanted to go, and yet they did not want to stay and dance any more either. They all knew this was the climax of Carnival, the last and greatest ball, the last night they would be caught up in this madness. There would be other things; parades, die-hard parties, street dancing, the dwindling smoke of a firecracker, but this had been the explosion. They were exhausted, their costumes were soiled and damp and even torn, Helen had lost a string of her beads, but they were somehow reluctant, now that it was all over, to take off these rags and say it was over for good. These were still not quite rags; they were still the clothing of a Bahiana, a bullfighter, a Greek athlete, a Greek boy; and until they were actually in the hand and flung away they still carried magic.

  They looked for Mort but he was gone. Margie wanted to stay a little longer until they found him, she felt that everything would be spoiled if he was not there too.

  “Oh, come on,” Helen said. “Mort isn’t a little boy. He can take care of himself.”

  Margie felt a stab of resentment. How smug Helen was! Everybody in his own place, according to his own function, two by two, Noah’s Ark. And Mort the bachelor off with a girl somewhere, perhaps in an all-night café, if there was one during Carnival, or perhaps even on the beach making love. She wondered if he would be making love to a girl, on all that gritty sand, and if it were a girl he had known for a long time or one he had met only tonight.

  Neil drove to the Sinclairs’ apartment house and parked his car alongside the beach. The sky was already light. They all got out and stood there watching the sunrise, streaks of pink and gold abo
ve the blue line of the sea. There was no one on the beach at all, not a soul, nor on the sidewalk. The sand looked very pale and clean. There were the goal posts for the futebol team on the sand, and in the distance the glowing outlines of the hills. The sun hit all the windows of the apartment houses on the long crescent of beach. A milkman came by with a wooden wagon drawn by a brown horse. He took some bottles of milk into an apartment house.

  An ancient taxi struggled up to the curb behind the milk wagon, and Mort jumped out and reached in to pull out a slender girl dressed as a tigress. She was shaking her head.

  “Look,” Mort said, pointing at the milk wagon. “There’s breakfast.”

  He ran to the milk wagon and helped himself to two bottles of milk, carrying them in his arms fondly as if they were newborn twin babies. He came over to the others smiling a big smile. “Good morning.”

  “Good night,” the tigress girl said in Portuguese. “I don’t have your strength.”

  “This is Lucia,” said Mort. “Helen and Bert. Margie and Neil. Lucia doesn’t speak English.”

  Neil was looking fixedly at the Brazilian girl, a sad, tired expression on his face. Then he smiled at her. “That’s a pretty fantasea.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mort opened the milk and began drinking it and passing it around. “First-quality water,” he said, “with a new flavor thrill milk flavor. Guaranteed to contain not over two per cent milk. Especially recommended to allergic patients, Hindus, Brahmins, and untouchables.”

  A policeman, dressed in khakis and a sun helmet, emerged from the alley between the two apartment houses and looked at them suspiciously. Then he made a decision and marched resolutely over to Mort.

  “Did you steal this milk?”

  “Steal?” Mort said, his eyes opened wide in innocence. “I was going to buy it.” He took a handful of paper money out of the pocket of his shorts. “I am waiting for the man to come back.”

  “I will take the money,” the policeman said.