“Can you believe this folk shit?” Vinicius asked. “Some milk-fed motherfucker up in Santa Teresa picks up a cavaquinho for the first time, calls himself a folklorist, and rakes in the dough thanks to Daddy Gegê.”
“How much do you think they make off recording those songs?” I asked.
Vinicius shrugged. “Enough to keep making them. People are eating them up. Would you look at this café cat? I have a mind to tell him to turn the radio off.”
“People don’t know better,” I said.
“That’s a damn shame.”
My heart beat wildly, a bird trapped in my chest. “We could let people hear some real samba,” I said. “We could cut a record.”
Vinicius cocked his head. “I don’t write songs to make records. It doesn’t work like that.”
“So everything we’re doing, all these songs we’re writing, what’re they for?”
“They’re for the roda.”
“For the boys and Ciata to hear?”
“Sure. Why not? That’s the way it’s always been.”
“Because there weren’t records before, or the radio. We could have a lot of people listening to our sambas. To real sambas.”
“Why would I want that?” Vinicius asked.
“You’d rather have people think samba’s this folk shit?”
“The people that believe this is samba? Hell, I don’t care what they think,” Vinicius replied.
“But you care about Graça, don’t you? And about me?”
Vinicius moved a callused hand through his hair. Waiting for his answer, I felt both giddy and petrified, as if I was back in that Corcovado train, riding away from one life and into another.
“Sure,” he said. “Of course I care.”
“Then help us.”
“By recording a samba?”
“Madame L.’s a businessman—remember you told me that? He wants his cut, whether we’re working at Tony’s or not. If we record a song with you and the boys, and it gets on the radio, people will beg us to perform at their clubs. Nobody else plays samba like us. Nobody else has girls in their band. This can be good for all of us: we can be a real band, and show people what real sambas are.”
Vinicius stared at me for what felt like hours. “I’ll have to convince the boys.”
“They’d follow you off Sugarloaf if you told them you were jumping.”
“I don’t know, Dor. What if people don’t want our kind of music?”
I pulled Vinicius’s hand into mine. “No one knows what they really want. We just pick what’s easiest. So let’s make it easy for them.”
* * *
—
A week later we were in a cramped recording studio in downtown Rio. Yellowed mattresses were nailed to the walls and ceiling. The air was foggy with smoke. Two technicians—their shirts stained at the collars and armpits, a bored expression on their faces—sat behind a pane of glass. The name “Victor Recording Company” was painted on the wall behind them. Between them was a glass ashtray, piled high with the smashed ends of cigarettes.
No musician expected to get rich cutting records; it was radio play that brought gigs, and those gigs brought money. Before our recording session, Vinicius signed a contract making our song, “My Mutt,” the sole property of Victor Recording Company. In return, they paid us the equivalent of fifty U.S. dollars and the honor of cutting a record. At the time, we thought this was something to celebrate.
When Graça and I squeezed into the studio alongside Vinicius and the boys, a technician left his seat and moved to the doorway. He wore a pair of thick-framed glasses, their lenses smudged.
“You gals wait outside,” he ordered. “Your boyfriends are working here.”
“We’re the singers,” I said.
The producer shook his head. “I didn’t hear about any girl singers. What are you, backup?”
Graça gripped my arm before I could reply.
“Something like that,” she said, and flashed him her sweetest smile.
The technician stared through his bottle-cap glasses, then nodded and went back to his chair. “Let’s do a few practice rounds,” he shouted from behind the glass. “Because once I hit ‘record’ you only get one chance, you hear me? There’s five more bands scheduled after you.”
To cut a record there were only two takes allowed. The first was to get the timing of the song. There was a clock on the studio’s wall whose hands ticked off the time limit of three and a half minutes, which was all a ten-inch disk could hold.
We’d rewritten one of our sambas—a fun, snappy number—to fit the three-minute record requirement. A song’s second take would be the real thing. If any of us messed up, the producer made it clear that we’d never be invited back.
There was a single microphone at the front of the studio. We’d never seen a microphone before—in Lapa’s cabarets, a singer relied only on her voice. This particular mike was very wide and covered in holes, like a metal sieve. I pictured my voice falling right through it and dripping onto the record’s wax.
We arranged ourselves. When the singers’ parts were over, the producer explained, we would have to jump back very quietly and press ourselves against the studio wall, getting out of the way so the mike could pick up the band’s sound.
Noel’s tamborim drum went bump, bump, bump. Kitchen scraped his reco-reco: cricka-crack, cricka-crack, cricka-crack. Tiny’s cavaquinho went plink plink, plink plinka plink, like tiny raindrops. Then came the sweet whimper of Bonito’s cuíca: ooo, ah, ooo, ah, ooo. Vinicius’s and Banana’s guitars came in fast and low, tethering all of the sounds together. Graça nodded, and she and I moved quickly toward the microphone, afraid of being pulled away if we didn’t hurry.
“I like mutts!
They live without owners,
free to roam.
They don’t have a time,
when they have to come home.
I like mutts!
Scrappy and free.
Sniffing out the best sambas.
I wish my mutt would find me.”
“Stop!” the producer shouted.
The boys obeyed. I moved away from the mike. We’d been caught—Graça and me—we weren’t backups and never intended to be.
Once again, the eyeglassed technician came to the doorway.
“I don’t care if you cats hire a fucking goat to sing on your track, as long as it sounds right,” he said. “You gals are canceling each other out. You’ve got two singers duking it out on a song that needs one. It’s ‘I like mutts,’ not ‘We like mutts.’ Let’s do this again, with one of you. Who’s it going to be?”
Graça and I looked at each other, then at Vinicius. He glanced at Tiny. Banana and Bonito wouldn’t meet my eyes. Little Noel blushed. Kitchen stared at his instruments. When I shifted my gaze back to Vinicius, he looked stricken, as if I was a puppy dog he’d just run over.
I realized in that moment just how much I wanted my voice on a record. I wanted to be imprinted in wax and copied again and again, to invade parlors and cafés, to wind my way into people’s ears and stake a claim in their memories. I wanted to be heard. And hadn’t I been the one to insist on recording? Hadn’t I written “My Mutt”? None of that mattered, of course; we all knew whose voice was the strongest. I resolved to save myself the embarrassment of being asked to step away from the mike.
“Graça will do it,” I said, and moved to the back of the studio.
Graça put her mouth very close to the mike, her lips brushing the metal with every word. Through the sieve of that microphone, Graça’s voice was both sweet and malicious. It winked at you. “I like mutts,” she growled, and you knew she was not talking about dogs, but men. She wasn’t one of those forbidding tango singers, who treated their songs like marathons, their notes like hurdles they leapt over. Graça sounded like she was having fun, like sh
e and the listener were sharing a great night out on the town.
The process of making a record was the same every time: the master disk was made right there, in the studio, with shellac and carnauba wax. One disk, with two sides, A and B, could be made in twenty minutes. After Graça and the boys recorded side A, the producer rubbed his hands.
“You have another original number?” he asked, excited. “I’d planned to have you play a stock marchinha for the B face, but let’s see what you got.”
Graça turned to Vinicius. “What about Dor’s other song? The one about the air you breathe.”
“It’s too slow for you,” I called from the back of the room. We’d only ever performed that song—my song—with me singing it.
“We can up the tempo,” Vinicius said. “Try to make it in three minutes. Let’s give it a try?”
The technician nodded and began the rehearsal. On cue, Graça purred: “Here I am, Love. Always by your side. I buy your food. I make your bed. I place the pillow under your head.”
In our rodas my voice was a plea, making the song tragic. But in the studio, Graça’s voice made the lyrics playfully malicious, almost threatening: “What would happen, if I were to leave? No one notices the air they breathe.”
Between a few lines of the song, Graça gasped little breaths in time to the band’s faster beat. Her inhalations were smooth and quick. Her exhalations bore a hint of pleasure. She’d made the song better than I ever could.
After just a few bars, the producer smiled and clapped his hands, approving “Air You Breathe” as the B side. Ten minutes later, my first song was recorded, though my name was nowhere on the record. When the producer asked for a name, Graça and the boys didn’t hesitate.
“Sofia Salvador and the Blue Moon Band!” they replied, almost in unison, as if they’d been practicing forever.
* * *
—
Auntie Ciata’s was riotous that night. Graça and the boys performed our recorded songs again and again. Tiny found two cabaret girls to sit on his lap and kiss his neck as he played. Kitchen, Bonito, and Banana snorted so much sweet flour that they played their instruments frantically, our songs moving so fast that it made me nervous to listen to them. Little Noel eventually passed out under a table. I envied him.
I did my best to guzzle our entire stock of beer and cane rum in an attempt to stir myself into elation. We’d cut our first record, after all. I’d helped write the songs. Yet I felt satisfaction but not happiness. I’d given up my place beside Graça in the recording studio and she hadn’t objected; she’d gone on to sing even better than before. And afterward, as we walked to Ciata’s, she’d linked arms with Little Noel. In the roda she’d sat between Tiny and Kitchen and sung without even a glance in my direction, as if the songs and the roda had always only been hers. Only Vinicius seemed to remember me, clapping me hard on the back as if I was a Blue Moon boy.
“We’re recording artists thanks to you,” he said. “Why don’t you come sing? We can’t have a roda without you.”
I was about to agree when the singing stopped. Graça moved to the center of the Blue Moon boys’ circle and held out her hands. Tiny bumped the cabaret girls off his knees and stood, then circled an arm around Graça’s waist. They moved to the beat with the fluid, watchful ease of two cats, their hips shimmying in perfect harmony. Bonito whistled. The cabaret girls, annoyed at first, now clapped and cheered. Kitchen ground out the song’s beat faster, then faster still, but Tiny and Graça did not tire or misstep. Plumes of dirt rose from the floor around them. Graça tilted her head back and laughed.
I smiled despite myself. Then I looked at Vinicius and saw he was smiling, too. On his face was a kind of dumbstruck awe, as if he’d just set eyes on a mermaid or a unicorn or some other mythical creature forgotten since childhood. I knew that look. I’d seen men in the audience at Tony’s wear it night after night. But seeing it on Vinicius? It made something inside me wither and fall away, like the last petal on a flower.
“You look like you’re starving,” I said, interrupting his reverie. “And she’s a steak on a plate.”
Vinicius, startled, shook his head. “She’s the most selfish person I’ve ever known. She’s impossible.”
“Why in hell would we want something that’s possible?” I asked.
Vinicius blinked, then backed away, claiming he needed the restroom. He walked quickly inside Ciata’s.
“Where’s the Dinosaur running off to?”
Graça slid beside me, her chest glistening with sweat, the underarms of her dress dark.
“He’s sick of all this. He’s probably going to throw up,” I replied.
Graça stared at me, her smile rigid. “We’re trying to celebrate, you know.”
“Then celebrate.”
“It’s hard when you’re over here in the corner, frowning like a fucking nun at a whorehouse.”
“Everyone’s paying attention to you, not me. It’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”
“Stop boohooing,” Graça said. “Be happy for once in your life. I didn’t steal the record from you.”
“You didn’t lift a finger to keep me on it, either,” I said. “So much for saving each other. It’s fine—I don’t want to be on a common Carnaval marchinha anyway.”
“What do you mean, common?” Graça asked.
“Easy.”
“Well you wrote it, sister.”
“You got that right. And I’m not your sister.”
The music had stopped. The yard was quiet. Red splotches bloomed across Graça’s chest. “No, you’re a goddamn wet rag! You’re as fun as a cemetery. You smell like fucking marigolds! What a bore you always are.”
I forced out a laugh. “Everybody bores you because you’re such a star. And then you know what happens? Everybody leaves you.”
Then I stumbled out of Auntie Ciata’s yard and into the street.
I roamed Lapa until I found myself at the shuttered storefront of La Femme Chic. I rang the buzzer. Upstairs, a light came on. I took off my beret and combed my hair with my fingers. The door’s peephole slid open. The bolt turned and Anaïs stood before me, holding a metal pitcher of water.
“I thought you were a drunk playing with my buzzer. I was going to douse you.”
“I am drunk,” I said.
Anaïs used her free hand to fidget with the flaps of her robe. It was a flimsy silk affair. The lace of her slip peeked from under the robe’s short hem.
“I should pour this on you,” she said. “To make you go away.”
I thought of Tiny, of his charm, of his confidence. I smiled. “You want me to go away? I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Anaïs stared over my shoulder. “Where is the other one?”
“She’s not here.”
“Well, that is a change. You are never without her, or that musician.”
“Vinicius,” I said. His name made my mouth pucker.
“You are here alone?” Anaïs asked.
“No,” I replied. “I’m with you.”
Anaïs laughed and opened the door. I followed her upstairs.
Her flat was tiny but elegant, with a bouquet of flowers on the windowsill and a radio in the corner. A thick curtain divided the main room from the bedroom.
“I would offer a drink, but I do not think that is a good idea,” she said.
“Coffee?” I asked, and Anaïs looked puzzled, as if she hadn’t quite understood my request.
She turned to the stove and put a kettle to boil. She was barefoot. Her robe barely covered her thighs. Her legs were long and smooth; I pictured her in the bath, shaving them with a man’s razor.
“I do not let students up here,” she said, facing me again.
“I’m not your student,” I replied. “You told me I couldn’t sing, remember?”
Anaïs’s smile disa
ppeared. “I did not say such a thing. I said your voice would not withstand the pressures of the stage.”
I shook my head. “Same thing.”
“Do you hold a grudge against me? I am sorry. I know you want to sing for a crowd, but I think it is best you know the truth.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Some wants are like fashions, Dores,” she said, taking the kettle from the stove. “They change with time. Yours will as well.”
“What if they don’t?” I asked. “What if they only get stronger?”
I looked at her hands and remembered how they’d pressed against Graça’s stomach. How her thumb had traced my mouth. Her slip was pink with straps as thin as guitar wire. I imagined how easy it would be to pluck those straps from her shoulders. I moved toward Anaïs, getting so close that I could smell her: a mixture of soap and coffee. Then the bravery I’d pretended to have suddenly vanished. I stepped away. Anaïs caught my hand.
“Now you are afraid of me?” she said, smiling. “Do not be.”
She leaned into me, her mouth pressing against my neck, my earlobe, my jaw. Then she slid her lips across my cheek until our mouths met.
Men and women all have lips, teeth, tongues. Technically there should be no difference between one person’s kiss and another’s, since both use identical parts. But this is like saying a song is simply a collection of notes on a page, and that the same song will sound alike even if played by two different musicians. In reality, each musician gives the same notes distinct lives. Kisses are no different.
On that night and many after it, Anaïs made me realize that I, too, could be wanted. That the desires I felt could be shared and even reciprocated; that they did not have to be locked away to wither inside myself. It was a frightening discovery at first, but I wasn’t afraid for long.
MEANT TO BE
I don’t want to be
the sun that lights your days.
Oh no, my love.
The sun is much too far away.
The Air You Breathe Page 20
