Away from Home

by Rona Jaffe

  She glanced at Sergio beside her. He looked bored and he was glancing at her too. “Do you understand it?” he whispered, taking her hand.

  “Some,” she lied.

  “We’ll go out soon,” he whispered guardedly.

  The old man kept falling asleep. Every now and then his head would nod, then fall forward on his chest as if his neck had been broken. But whenever Helen squirmed on the hard chair and turned to look longingly at the exit the old man would wake up again and give her a large, eager smile. He was so pleased that he had his own movie theater, he wanted her to like it. Guillerme was smoking a cigar and watching the movie avidly.

  The pompadoured blonde in blue jeans was shaking everything, as if she were trying to shed a skin. The jerky hopped-up action of the film on the projector only emphasized this, so that her gyrations were something superhuman. Helen found a perverse fascination in this.

  Sergio, in the darkness, put his hand lightly on her breast. She wondered why they were here at all. The shock of his touch traveled pleasurably through her whole body, and when she turned her head to look at him they were so close their lips almost touched. She looked at his mouth and she wanted so badly to kiss it she had to bite her lip and draw away. “We’ll go,” he murmured.

  He leaned across her, with his hand on her thigh, lightly, as if it were only accidental, but she knew he was as acutely conscious of that touch as she was. He spoke across her to his father, in a loud whisper.

  “We’re going to leave now. Helen is tired from the trip.”

  “Good night,” the father said, smiling at her, crinkling up his eyes at her, giving her a pat. “Good night. See you tomorrow.”

  “Good night,” she whispered.

  Guillerme pouted at them around his cigar, his elbows leaning on the railing in front of him, looking like a large, angry baby with a pacifier in its mouth. “Sleep well,” he said nastily.

  Helen and Sergio scrambled around the empty chairs and made their way out of the box and down the stairs to the now empty lobby. She could hear the audience laughing happily at some unintelligible joke. Outside, the rain had stopped. It was a cloudy night, heavy with mist, the stars invisible. The moon was full and white, split across the middle by a shred of cloud. Neither of them spoke.

  Sergio stopped the jeep in front of her house. “I go put the jeep in front of my house,” he said, helping her to climb out. “Then I come back to you and stay all night.”

  “All right.”

  He hooked his finger in the front of the waistband of her skirt and pulled her close to him. “Don’t go anywhere,” he whispered with a little smile.

  “No.”

  He kissed her then, with passion, and suddenly Helen felt a curious resistance in herself, a reluctance and a kind of pride. Who do you think you’re fooling by moving the jeep? she wanted to ask him, and she felt hurt.

  “I tear you to pieces,” he was murmuring, holding her tightly. “You are the most beautiful—wait for me.”

  He was gone, driving the jeep off in a wild shower of rainwater in the muddy driveway. Helen walked slowly into the guesthouse and she felt almost disconnected, lightheaded but with her arms and legs very heavy. The maid had turned down the covers of one twin bed in her bedroom and left a lamp lighted on the table beside it. The shutters at the window had been closed to keep out the rain.

  Helen pushed open the shutters, all of them, and leaned out, breathing the cool, heavy air. She was trembling again, as she had that afternoon when she and Sergio had been on their way here to make love, but this time it was more of a shuddering. She felt very cold, and frighteningly lonely, as if a stranger she had never met before was coming here tonight to rape her.

  I could let him, she thought, and I would like it as soon as I got used to him. She realized with terror what she was thinking. This was not the passionate, uncontrollable coupling of two people who were hopelessly in love with each other; it was a lay. That was all—a lay. I feel like a whore, she thought, and bit into her knuckles, hardly feeling the pain, wanting to feel it, wanting to feel something besides this overwhelming disgust with herself.

  She had had an intimation of this feeling; she had sensed it coming this afternoon. She had known at dinner but she had forbidden herself even to recognize it. At the movies when she and Sergio had excused themselves with the blessings of his father and the jealous farewell of his cousin, she had known. She was his mistress, his woman, and everybody knew it. So what, they thought. He’s lucky. I’d like to get a piece of that myself.

  He wanted it to be good for us, he wanted it all to be beautiful, she thought, and she began to cry. The tears spilled out of her eyes before she even knew that she was crying. Her throat closed with the held-in, unspoken sounds of weeping. He doesn’t know me at all, he doesn’t understand me, nor I him. I can’t do it, this way, I can’t. Oh, Sergio, I can’t do it. It’s all gone.

  Was it because of Bert? She thought of Bert, as he had been that night two days ago when she had almost hated him, as he had been all those other days and nights when she had loved him very much. She still loved him, but it was a deep part of her, a quiet thing, not like her heart, but like … her spine perhaps. Bert had been right; their love had changed. But whatever it was, quiet or unquiet, she loved him more. She was simply attached to him by something more than emotion or words or even love itself, whatever that was. She was attached to him by a life. As long as she lived Bert would be part of her whether he was with her or had left her forever, whether he loved her or was indifferent. Even when she forgot him, as she had all this long day with Sergio, she needed him. Bert was still there.

  Oh, Sergio, she thought, and she still wanted to kiss him, but in a different way. It was no longer with passion or even hope of passion, but with tenderness and regret. For the first time, knowing she no longer loved him, if she ever really had, she almost loved him just for that. She was almost afraid to look at him again, because his face and body were beautiful to her, because they would still stir her, but only lightly, hopelessly, as dead leaves stir in wind, as that old man in the great house with his pictures of young girls might be hopelessly and weakly stirred by the sight of beauty he could no longer want. If we had only gone off somewhere sordid and secret, she thought, wiping the tears away with her hands. There were tears between her lips; they were salty. He had kissed her, he had touched her, and she had wanted him. I could have done it secretly and hurriedly in some hotel room, with guilt. Am I crazy? I would have liked doing it guiltily, secretly. I can’t do it this way, openly. It’s all wrong.

  She heard Sergio’s footsteps on the driveway outside and she felt weak with fright. She didn’t know what to say to him now.

  He came into the bedroom, and he had such a happy look of belonging on his face that it frightened her more. She felt that he was not the outsider here; she was. She realized for the first time how strong he was, that his gentleness and tenderness had been for her and their love. It had never been a sign of softness but only of the attitude a man displays toward the weakness of woman. He was carrying a bottle of champagne in his hand, the green glass streaked with water drops from the cold place where it had been chilled. In the other hand he carried one champagne glass for them to share.

  “Where … did you get that?” she asked, for lack of anything else to say except the truth.

  “I took it from the liquor cabinet when we were having cocktails.” He smiled with the delight of a romantic conspirator. “I put it into the refrigerator for us until now.”

  He brought a small hand towel from her bathroom, wrapped it around the bottle, and deftly loosened the wires that held the cork. Helen watched him, hugging her elbows, her fingers clutching her flesh. Sergio loosened the cork with his thumb and it sailed to the ceiling with a small explosion. The champagne fizzed over the neck of the bottle in white foam. He let the champagne waste itself, delighted with his own profligacy, and when it had stopped foaming he poured the glass full to the top. He held the glas
s up in a toast.

  “To you,” he said. He looked at her. “You’re so far away. Come here.”

  She took a deep breath and could not say anything. She walked to him slowly, her heart thumping, and let him hold the glass of champagne to her lips. She tasted it and tried to smile.

  “Why were you crying?”

  “For … for you,” she whispered. “I …”

  “My darling … my love.” He put away the encumberments of the champagne and glass in an instant, he had his arms around her, he was stroking her and kissing her, and Helen suddenly knew that he thought she had been crying for him and their love, for the romantic hopelessness of it, for its poignancy, and that being able to comfort her this way only made him feel this moment was more painfully their own. She tried to get out of his embrace.

  “Please listen.”

  “I will let you cry for me, but only in love. Never alone. Never from any sad thoughts.” His hands on her body frightened her more than they aroused her, and his words that a few hours ago might have made her cry again for gratitude now made her shudder. He was kissing her neck, her ears, biting her with tiny, soft bites, licking her skin.

  “Beautiful,” he said, looking at her. “Beautiful …” And suddenly his voice was the voice of his father, saying, “Beautiful Hawaii,” glancing with old, wicked eyes at the pictures of young naked girls on his wall. “Beautiful,” the voice said, Sergio’s voice and his father’s, and it was no longer a compliment or a gift but an amused prelude to the taking of pleasure. Bert’s face rose up before her closed eyes, his humanness, his loyalty to her, and he seemed at that moment the only thing in that room that was beautiful at all. She pulled away from Sergio’s arms.

  “Please listen to me!”

  “What is it?” Quickly all the expression on his face withdrew from her; it was a mask of controlled waiting. She had no idea what he was thinking.

  “Please don’t hate me. Please understand. I … I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t.”

  “You can’t what?”

  She felt like a tease, worse than a whore, and she looked desperately into his eyes searching there for any understanding, even though it might be more than she deserved to expect. “I have to go home,” she said.

  He smiled then, and she almost fainted with relief. “You’re afraid,” he said softly and wonderingly. “Why?”

  “No,” she said, “It’s not that. I’m afraid, but not of you. Oh, everything I’m going to say is going to sound so pompous, so banal, as if I think I’m virtuous or better than anyone else, and I don’t think that. I think I’m worse. I don’t even know myself any more. Don’t you think I wanted you to make love to me? Oh, God, I did want to, and I still do. But I can’t, I can’t; in the middle of it I’d think I was a prostitute. I’d lie there looking at myself from somewhere else, like two people. I can’t do that to you.”

  “You are crazy,” he said calmly. But the light of his eyes had withdrawn from her and they looked very hard and black. She had never noticed how dark his eyes were; she had always thought they were light.

  “Maybe I am crazy. I don’t even understand myself. But I have to go home to my husband.”

  “To him? Why to him? He isn’t in your house. He’s away somewhere with his girlfriend; what do you think, he sleeps with his hand on his cock?”

  “Stop it!”

  “You are a stupid woman,” Sergio said.

  “Let me go home,” she said. Her voice sounded dead.

  “I don’t care what you do,” he said. He picked up the glass of champagne and drank nearly all of it in continuous swallows. Then he stopped and looked at the little that was left in the bottom of the glass. He held it out to her. “Champagne?”

  She nodded, unable to speak, and he handed her the glass at arm’s length. She drank the champagne quickly and it tasted like vinegar.

  “That’s all you get,” Sergio said quietly. “The left-overs. That’s all you get from life. You know why? You don’t want anything better. You want to live this way? Go ahead. I tried to give you something better. I would have given you something beautiful. Now I don’t want you. You are a dishonest woman. You cheated me, and your husband, and yourself. What are you going to tell your husband? That you and I played cards here all night?”

  “I told you the truth,” Helen said.

  He poured the glass full again with champagne and drank it. He left a little for her again at the bottom of the glass, but this time she refused it. He smiled and finished it himself. “I feel pity for you,” he said.

  “I really loved you, Sergio. I know you don’t believe me, but I did love you very much until … I hated myself so much I couldn’t love anybody any more.”

  “Love! That’s your word for everything. If you knew love …” He turned away from her and finished the champagne without looking at her. “I take you home tomorrow.”

  “I want to go tonight. Can you take me to where the bus stops?”

  “I go to the house and find out the bus schedule.”

  “Thank you.” She looked at him for some sign of friendliness, but there was nothing. He looked at her as dispassionately as if she had been some worker woman on the farm who had suddenly gone harmlessly insane.

  At the door he stopped. “You want to sit up all night on an uncomfortable bus? Perhaps you won’t get a seat. You could sleep here and I will take you to the bus in the morning.”

  “I want to go, Sergio.”

  “I suggested it only to be kind to you.”

  “I know. I …” She tried to say something light and ironic, at least to make him laugh at her instead of this icy politeness. “Wouldn’t it serve me right if I were attacked on the bus by some strange man, instead of staying here comfortably with you!”

  Sergio glanced at her with distaste and his voice was cold. “Nobody has to rape anybody in Brazil,” he said. And he was gone.

  The bus stopped outside the gate to the fazenda at a little after ten o’clock. It was an old bus, not the Cometa, and not air conditioned. It rocked from side to side like an old ship. Sergio helped Helen climb up the steps and handed her overnight case to her. She wanted terribly to say something meaningful to him, something that could make them part as friends, at least. She wondered if he would think all Americans were like she was, all the wives unsatisfied and searching, and running away at the last moment because they were confused and guilty. It seemed paradoxical to her to be thinking of foreign relations at a moment like this, when she should be thinking of her own with her ex-and-never lover, but Helen felt as if her own self had vanished during this night. She did not even think she was a hypocrite; she felt empty. She missed Bert and her children and their apartment so passionately that it made her feel emptier than ever.

  “Please say goodbye to your father for me,” she said to Sergio. “Tell him I said thank you. I’ve never seen such a beautiful farm. Tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t wait to say goodbye.”

  “I will.”

  She held out her hand, expecting him to shake it. Instead he lifted it quickly to his lips and kissed it. It was an automatic salute; his eyes above her hand were already disinterested in her.

  “Goodbye,” she said softly.

  “Goodbye.”

  The doors closed, and she went to a seat near the front of the bus. The bus was nearly empty, most of the passengers sleeping fitfully. The bus went swaying and rumbling down the rough road, turned on to the highway, headed toward Rio, a clumsy creature lighting its own way through the dark night. No one paid any attention to her. She knew that the bus would not get to the city until nearly four in the morning. It didn’t matter. Time didn’t matter any more. She needed more time to think than she could ever have on this bus, even have at home in Rio again. Relief to have escaped filled her with happiness, but through it she felt the emergence of a new kind of fright. Nothing was really settled. She knew now she could not run away from Bert and their marriage, but the things that had made her run away were still there.<
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  CHAPTER 19

  On a hot afternoon at the end of February Leila Silva e Costa and Mariza Leite Braga, the wife of Sergio, were at the dressmaker’s together. In the friendship cycle, which was more peculiar to Rio than to most small towns and colonies, the two women were currently very close. Everyone always had one best friend and confidante, but with the boredom and petty gossip and intrigue of small colony life there was often an emotional argument followed by an estrangement, the loyal merging with another best friend, eventually followed by a breaking off and a resumption with the first best friend. Feuds and finishes never lasted long. X might be heard to say that Y was disloyal, immoral, too possessive, or deceitful; she might continue by stating that she would never allow Y into her house again; but a month or so later X and Y would be observed behaving like loving sisters. So it was with Leila and Mariza.

  Mariza was a year older than Leila and they had known each other ever since they could remember. They had never been particularly friendly until both were married; then they became very close. Part of this was because Leila liked Sergio. She found him charming and amusing. She had never considered him even remotely as a lover for herself, but she liked him in a sisterly way, and this warmth extended to her feelings for his wife. Mariza was extraordinarily chic. She wore clothes well, she was very thin, and it meant a great deal to her (and to everyone else in Rio café society) that she was often named as one of “The Ten Best Dressed.” Her hair was bleached to a fashionable grayish blond, she had beautiful jewels, she never wore a dress more than twice in public and then she gave it away to her maid. She looked more French or Italian than Brazilian. There was a local magazine that interviewed a debutante in each issue and asked the girl, among other questions about her schoolwork and hobbies, who was the woman she would most wish to be like. Madame, the President’s wife? A cinema star? Most of the debutantes answered: Mariza Leite Braga.