The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  “I’m heading to Auntie Ciata’s,” he said. “Want to come?”

  I stood, looped my arm through Vinicius’s (startling him and me), and said with confidence, as if I knew exactly what Auntie Ciata’s was, “I’d love to.”

  Vinicius loped toward the door. He was in his late twenties like Anaïs but I considered Vinicius ancient. I suppose it was because of the way he carried himself; each time I saw him I remembered Bruxa’s lessons on gravity and wondered if that invisible weight pressed him more than the rest of us.

  I let go of his arm as soon as we left Tony’s, but as Vinicius and I walked along Lapa’s dark alleyways, I felt triumphant; Graça wouldn’t find me waiting pathetically at home after her date.

  “Hold this, would you?” Vinicius asked, handing me his guitar case. It was heavy but I obliged. He slipped a metal cigarette case from his jacket pocket. “Want a smoke?”

  “Yes,” I said, not knowing what I was accepting.

  Back then, Vinicius smoked hand-rolled cigarettes made with Onyx tobacco that made me dizzy after just two puffs. (Even now I get a craving for those cigarettes, a craving for those first few puffs that made my lungs burn and my ears buzz.) Vinicius pulled two from his case and placed them both in his mouth. He passed me a lit cigarette, its end wet from his lips, and I felt a secret thrill to be placing that cigarette between mine. Vinicius took his guitar case back. We continued walking.

  “So how’d Lucifer get his hooks into you two?” Vinicius asked. “What do you owe him?”

  “Why do you think we owe him anything?”

  Vinicius shrugged. “Everybody’s got a debt to pay.”

  I remembered the cigarette Vinicius had given me and took a long drag. My chest felt as if it was on fire. “Madame L. heard us sing and liked us,” I replied. “Simple as that.”

  “Nothing’s simple around here,” Vinicius said. “Except for those tangos you sing. You girls ever hear a proper samba in your lives?”

  “What’s a proper samba?” I asked. “Why’s that any better than our music?”

  Vinicius laughed. “No offense, but the ditties you sing at Tony’s aren’t music, they’re shit. Graça’s got a heck of a voice, though. Plenty of girls want to be cabaret stars, but it’s not enough to be a good singer, you know. You’ve got to have something different. I hear that in her voice. It’s like she wants something but can’t have it.”

  “You can hear that?” I asked, slowing my stride.

  “Sure,” Vinicius said. “Your voice is different—sadder, rougher—but not in a bad way. It’s like you’ve been around longer than seventeen years, or however old you are. Everyone hears different things in different singers. When a singer’s really good, you hear yourself in them. You know what I mean.”

  He said the last sentence not as a question, but as a statement. And it was flattering, to be held in such regard, to have him believe I understood.

  We were quiet for the rest of our walk. It wasn’t an awkward quiet but a reassuring one, as if we knew all there was to know about each other and didn’t need conversation to draw it out.

  * * *

  —

  When Vinicius arrived at Ciata’s with me in tow, the men in her yard exchanged smiles.

  Years after Auntie Ciata’s place was torn down, some fools claimed that her house was the birthplace of samba. Others said it was a terreiro, where pagans went to practice their candomblé religion. And some historians even claimed that Auntie Ciata never existed—that she and her house were representative of many houses and many Baianas who allowed samba to evolve in Rio. I can quash all of those theories: samba was not born in Auntie Ciata’s house, but she did exist and she never separated music from faith.

  Every night Ciata sat outside her front door in full Baiana garb: white turban, white blouse lined with lace at the sleeves and neck, white hoop skirt, and so much beaded jewelry around her neck and wrists one wondered how she could walk with all of that weight on her small frame. Ciata did a brisk business frying acarajé on her front stoop and selling the bean fritters to late-night revelers who craved salty foods, and to those tourists who wanted to prove they’d had an adventurous night in Lapa that ended in meeting a “real” Baiana. (A “real” Baiana still evoked a sense of danger and magic in the minds of those who did not understand the tradition. In an attempt to disguise this fear, people mocked the Baiana once a year, during Carnaval. Wealthy revelers who invaded Lapa during Carnaval’s four days and nights often chose the Baiana as their costume, and hundreds of “fake” Baianas—both men and women—drunkenly danced in hoop skirts and crooked turbans.) Rain and shine Auntie Ciata sat, as quiet and watchful as an ancient tortoise, and cooked for drunks and tourists. Some visitors, however, didn’t come to Ciata’s for food. They carried instruments and liquor, and they kissed the old woman’s sunken cheek before entering her backyard, which she’d set up as a makeshift bar. These men had finished their shifts as waiters, doormen, busboys, bellhops, and cabaret players, but did not return home to their families or their beds, if they had such comforts.

  “You’re late, Professor,” said a heavy man with bulging eyes.

  Vinicius set down his guitar. “Since when do we worry about time?”

  “Time is a figment of the imagination,” said a young man with so many dark freckles scattered across his face, it looked as if his skin had ripened like the peel of a banana.

  “Tell that to my boss!” the heavy one said, and laughed. His whole body jiggled.

  “This is Dores,” Vinicius said. “I thought she should hear us play.”

  His choice of words surprised me. I should hear them play—as if their music would be good for me, or I would be good for it.

  A few of the men nodded but did not make room in their circle of chairs.

  “I thought you said no girlfriends,” the freckled boy said.

  “I’m nobody’s girlfriend,” I said.

  The hefty man with the frog’s eyes smiled. “Well then, pull up a seat, sister.”

  They called him Tiny. His sheer bulk, his easygoing authority, and the fact that, outside the roda, there were always women on his arms made Tiny seem like the impresario of some secret casino. He was Auntie Ciata’s actual nephew, and he played the cavaquinho, a little guitar similar to a ukulele. Despite his bulk, Tiny had small, deft hands that moved quickly across his instrument’s strings.

  The Brothers, Banana and Bonito, were from Bahia. Banana was the freckled one, and played the six-string guitar. Bonito was, as his nickname implied, dashingly handsome. He was the color of Banana’s freckles and had a long, regal nose and dark, soulful eyes like a puppy dog’s. Bonito played the cuíca, that mix of drum and percussion instrument that I’d first seen in the cane cutters’ circles. Tiny called Bonito “the decoy” because while his good looks drew in the ladies, his shyness made it hard for them to stay interested. This is when Tiny swooped in with his charm and humor.

  The very tall man in the corner with the sharp cheekbones and stern expression called himself Kitchen. He played percussion—the agogô, tambourine, reco-reco, and anything else that made the shaking and rattling sounds he needed. He got his nickname because, he said: “I’m always the cat in back, sweating, cooking, giving this band its flavor.” If Tiny was the band’s jolly showman and the Brothers its shy princes, then Kitchen was its warrior. His shirt collars were always crisp and his shoes always polished. He liked to shuffle cards in his long fingers and he carried a stiletto strapped to his calf, though I never saw him use it.

  The band’s last member was Little Noel, the earnest youngster of the group. A birth defect had mildly stunted the growth of his lower jaw, making it seem as if he had no chin, just neck. It was difficult for Little Noel to chew certain foods, which made his meals consist of soft fruits and porridge. This diet gave him a pale, tubercular look associated with tortured artists and, consequentially, c
onsidered very chic in those days. Little Noel occasionally played the banjo, but his true love was the small tamborim drum.

  Over the years, all of us in the Blue Moon Band changed—some for better, most for worse. But when I think of the boys, I always see them as they were that first night at Auntie Ciata’s. They had no set list. No rehearsals or costumes. No audience to please, except for me. And I was forgotten as soon as they played their first note.

  I’d heard samba day and night since arriving in Lapa. But nothing was like the samba the Blue Moon boys played in their circle. Their music was lush yet controlled. It frolicked and soared and then glided, like the huge birds that floated around Sugarloaf Mountain, opening their wings and coasting on air. The boys’ music carried me far from Lapa and from Anaïs and from Graça and even from my own, sickening dread that my talents were paltry and unremarkable, and that I was, too. Caught in the drift of their music, I was without boundaries or burdens. I was everything and I was nothing at all. This, I learned, was the effect of the roda.

  * * *

  —

  The roda was a ritual. It was an event, not a show. What’s the difference? A show’s done for those watching. The roda was done for those of us playing and singing and composing. If you weren’t part of the roda, you didn’t exist. The roda was a conversation among musicians, into which you had to be invited. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of rodas in Lapa every night. But every samba roda had the same rules.

  Newcomers were always treated with indifference. Even if you were the best guitar player, or cuíca player, or composer, or cavaquinho player, in the world, you had to be invited to join the circle. Don’t even think about joining and fighting to set the pace right away—newcomers only follow. The batucada—that glorious, improvised roda sound—was like a school of fish, sometimes floating serenely together, sometimes darting faster than you could keep up with, but you had to earn the right to lead that school. And the songs? Don’t even think about playing a lighthearted marchinha—those were for once a year, for Carnaval, for outsiders. Samba in the roda had mirth but it wasn’t a party; it was a lament. When you play samba in the roda, you laugh at your own misery. You and your loneliness hold hands and traipse through the music, in awe of how pathetic and glorious you both are.

  Even after the record deals and radio play and endorsement contracts; even after samba was declared Brazil’s national music, the roda remained a sacred space. There, it was blasphemy to speak of a song’s catchiness, or to call it a hit. In order to be a “true sambista” you were required to pretend that samba was not a product. Sure, individual songs could be recorded and sold, but samba itself could not be soiled by such mundane transactions. If you were true to your art, you did not seek success but stumbled upon it.

  I was allowed into the roda’s embrace each night, but not into the roda itself.

  The boys poured me beers, offered me smokes, pulled a chair behind Vinicius for me each night, and then shut me out of the circle. They played long instrumentals, making up songs as they went along. Occasionally they toyed around with the lyrics of a few traditional sambas that everyone already knew. Vinicius always sang the leads, and his voice was clear and plain, as if he’d sat his listeners down for a frank talk.

  One night, after a week of visiting Ciata’s, I tapped my nails against the metal table in time to the boys’ music. Another night, I clinked the tip of a beer bottle against my empty glass. On another night, I shook a box of matches. Each night I pulled my chair closer to the circle, then closer still. Until, one day, I wasn’t sitting behind Vinicius anymore but beside him, ticking away the beat, moving in time with the men around me. No one looked up from their instruments. The music did not stop, the boys did not complain. To mask my elation, I focused even harder on keeping the beat.

  I’d felt this same, giddy happiness only a few times before: after hearing our first concert in Saint Isabel; at the cutters’ circles, when workers applauded my imitation of the radio hour; and during our first Nymphette show. Graça had shared each of those moments with me, but the roda was mine alone. Mine, and Vinicius’s.

  One night, we stayed so late at Ciata’s that Lapa grew quiet. There were only four of us left outside: me, Vinicius, Tiny, and Kitchen. My backside ached from the wooden folding chair. My throat stung from all of the cigarettes I’d smoked. Tiny snored in his chair. Kitchen rolled us a fat cigarette filled with what he called “his herbs.” Vinicius strummed a tune on his guitar. In the early-morning quiet, the notes sounded crisp and startling. I closed my eyes. In my head, those notes formed words:

  I’m here, they said. Always by your side. I buy your food. I make your bed. I place the pillow under your head. But you don’t notice. You don’t care. You seem to think I’ll always be there. What would happen, if I were to leave? No one notices the air they breathe.

  “What’s wrong?” Vinicius asked. He stopping playing and placed a cool hand over mine. I opened my eyes.

  “You don’t like it?” he asked. “The tune’s no good.”

  “No, it is good,” I whispered, hoping Kitchen wouldn’t hear. “It’s just . . . I heard something in it.” I shook my head, embarrassed. “It’s nothing. Keep going.”

  “No,” Vinicius said, quite stern. “Tell me what you hear.”

  I glanced at Tiny and Kitchen, then at my hands. Vinicius put down his guitar, stood, and loped to the bar, where he found a scrap of paper and a pencil.

  “Put it here,” he ordered.

  Vinicius played the tune again and I wrote down the words I’d heard in his notes. The boys looked on. When I showed Vinicius the paper, he stuck out his bottom lip and bopped his head from one side to the other.

  “It could be a chorus,” Vinicius said. “No one notices the air they breathe. That’s pretty good, kid.”

  Of the few compliments I’ve ever received in my life, this remains the finest. Sure, years later, when Vinicius came up with a heart-stopping beat or an incredible melody for our songs, I’d nudge him and joke: That’s pretty good, kid! And we’d both laugh. But in that moment in Ciata’s yard, there was no joking. Tiny, Kitchen, the house, the street, even Lapa itself disappeared. The universe was made of only Vinicius and me. Staring at him, I knew he didn’t see a kid, or a hangeron, or some girl he could woo with pretty words. He saw me. He saw what I’d just made, and what we could make, together.

  That is how our first song was born.

  In the beginning, composing was like this for us: I’d listen to Vinicius play the initial bits of a tune and look for the emotion behind the sound—some tunes were angry, some hurt, some malicious, some pleased with themselves, some trying hard to be convincing. By listening, words came to me. With those words, I made stories. With those stories, Vinicius and I began to make songs. Night and day I carried the little notebook Senhora Pimentel had given me, filling it with images of things I saw around Lapa, with lines the Blue Moon boys used about pretty girls, with feelings I had but could never say aloud. They went into our songs.

  Some songs were easy to work with—we took the lyrics and hung them on the melody like decorating a tree for Christmas. Others were thrilling and frustrating at the same time, like trying to undress a gorgeous dame who won’t stop dancing. Some songs were like pouring ether on a hankie and taking a sniff: an amazing high that was over too quickly, and didn’t satisfy. And some songs were like having honey poured all over you—sweet, but a goddamn mess.

  After we made that first song, it was hard not to tempt fate and make more. It was a temptation because there was something illicit and slightly dangerous about our working together—girls weren’t composers. Tiny and Kitchen never talked about that morning at Ciata’s, when Vinicius praised my lyrics. I suppose they thought (in the beginning at least) that those lyrics were a fluke, or a bit of silliness brought on by Kitchen’s herbal cigarette. If Blue Moon or any other musician got wind that Vinicius was actually wr
iting music with a dame, he’d be the butt of every joke.

  I stopped spending my afternoons in dark bookstores, nursing my wounds about my poor voice and Graça’s late nights. Instead, I met Vinicius. We went to cafés and talked about things we couldn’t share at Ciata’s in front of the other Blue Moon boys. Vinicius asked questions about Graça’s and my old life. Where was Riacho Doce, exactly? What did the air smell like when cane was boiled in the mill? What were the Pimentels like? What was Graça like as a little girl? Did she always want to be a singer?

  I asked questions about Vinicius, too. Like me, he was an orphan, growing up in the care of his aunt Carmen. She played piano in the Odeon cinema, providing sound tracks for silent films as they played. Vinicius spent his childhood in that dark theater, watching heroes and heroines with glossed lips and kohl-lined eyes move on the screen, in time to his aunt’s piano. Later, he was the one who played the piano, with his stern aunt watching him.

  “It was in the dark that I learned to love music,” he liked to say.

  Eventually, he escaped his strict aunt and stumbled upon Auntie Ciata’s little house.

  “That was where I heard my first true samba,” he said.

  Samba; it always came back to that. During our talks, I would inevitably say, “That’s a hell of a line for a song.” Then Vinicius would start to whistle. Vinicius had a lovely whistle; smoother and richer than a bird’s. Or he clinked a glass with his knife. Some days, he even brought Tiny’s little cavaquinho and plucked at its strings while I drummed softly on the café’s table. We moved tentatively, afraid of making too much noise. We whispered the song’s words like secrets shared between us.