We didn’t know what real success was, of course. We blindly signed away our songs to Victor for a pittance, and in return we got radio play, which got us gigs. We made enough money to pay rent and satisfy Madame Lucifer each week, with enough left over to give Vinicius and the boys their fair cut. We were all still eating rice and beans every day, and the boys couldn’t give up their day jobs, but this was no disappointment. It was, in our naive eyes, a dream come true.
We weren’t the only ones living this dream. After the success of “My Mutt,” record labels assembled a dozen other groups just like ours, with the novelty of a girl singing lead vocals. RCA had Jeisy and the Beats. Odeon had Nina and the Highlights. Parphalon had Valdette and the Folklorists. And, along with us, Victor had Aracy and the Hep Cats. They all looked like us, too: the bands dressed in suits, the lead singers like schoolgirls in white shirts and wide skirts. But their sambas were nothing like ours: biting, aching, tragic, and funny all at once. Most of the sambas that played on the radio after “My Mutt” were exactly like those singers posing as schoolgirls: drab, safe, and completely phony. Aracy Araújo’s song “The Cat’s Meow” was a blatant copy of “My Mutt,” but it didn’t matter—the song quickly got airtime and Aracy competed with us for gigs.
Before we knew what hit us, our songs lost their constant rotation on the radio. We began to play fewer and fewer shows; cabarets had their pick of popular samba songstresses and their bands. Arriving at Victor’s recording studio before dawn, our good moods were often cut short when we found three other samba bands outside, in line, waiting to record their next hit. It was disheartening, to have the tiniest taste of the sweetness of success and then to have that sweetness diluted to the point of insignificance. With fewer gigs, Graça and I went hungry so we could make rent and pay Madame L. For two weeks, we were late with our payments to him. Then, one afternoon, Madame L.’s messenger boy arrived at our boardinghouse. I steeled myself for an order to visit Madame L. in his office. Instead, the boy had another request.
“Meet him at the corner, outside his place,” the boy said. “And dress fancy. Madame L. says no trousers for you, and not too much makeup on the pretty gal. And you’re supposed to bring the other guy—the bandleader. And tell him to wear a good suit.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
The boy shrugged. “He said you’re his guests.”
* * *
—
It was past midnight. In the glow of gas streetlamps, Madame L.’s sharkskin suit shone as if it was wet. Graça, Vinicius, and I followed him far past Carmelita’s Alley and wound our way into a neighborhood I didn’t recognize.
Madame L. whistled, which made me less nervous; perhaps this was simply an excursion and not a punishment for late payment. Vinicius was with us, after all, and he didn’t owe Madame L. a centavo. These were the things I told myself as we moved in a line through unknown streets until Lucifer finally stopped at a rusted metal door. “Here we are,” he said, and knocked.
A peephole slid open. Then several bolts were turned and the door creaked wide. A muscular youth—no older than Graça and I—greeted us. His eyelashes were so long and thick, they nearly touched the arch of his eyebrows. He wore a tuxedo.
“Just in time,” the youth said.
We walked into the empty office of an abandoned factory. The youth guided us through dark corridors until there were voices and light. The cramped hallway opened to a vast, smoky warehouse filled with tables and chairs. Men in tuxedos and women in beaded gowns—people who should have been at the Copacabana Palace—filled the tables and crowded the bar. Upon closer inspection, I saw that several of the elegant women had Adam’s apples bobbing at their necks. Some of the tuxedoed men had full lips and high cheekbones. Waitresses (or were they waiters?) wearing jaunty police costumes darted from table to table, the glasses on their trays rattling. Onstage, a band played samba.
As soon as we were seated, Vinicius asked: “What are we doing here?”
“We’re being entertained,” Madame L. replied before ordering a bottle of sugarcane rum.
The band quickened their pace. Several couples joined the crowd on the floor. Graça swallowed her drink, uncrossed her legs, and stood. “Dance with me, you oaf,” she said, and tugged Vinicius from his chair.
She’d borrowed an evening gown from Anaïs: a long silk frock with a nipped waistline that looked as if it had been poured onto her. Graça and Vinicius joined the cluster of couples near the stage. Vinicius was clumsy, staring at his feet and bumping into the dancers around him. He sighed, then pulled away from Graça. He began to leave the floor but Graça gripped his arm. They both stood very still, the only ones who weren’t moving. Graça whispered in his ear and Vinicius stared at her, incredulous. Then a smile slowly spread across his face, brightening it. I’d never seen him look so happy, not even after we’d written our best sambas.
I grabbed my cocktail glass and emptied it in one swallow. Madame L. refilled it and pushed the glass back toward me.
“How long did it take for that to happen?” he asked, nodding at the dance floor where Graça and Vinicius now moved in perfect unison.
“What?”
“The bandleader and the singer,” he said. “What a tired old story! I’d hoped your act would avoid it, but we’re all animals, aren’t we?”
I felt the room tilt. On the dance floor, Graça’s hair was plastered to her head. Vinicius’s shirt stuck to his chest.
“They aren’t together,” I said.
Madame L. laughed. “Not yet. Your Graçinha doesn’t let good sense prevail over whatever she wants in the moment. She doesn’t take the long view, does she? You’re more that type.”
He refilled my glass again.
“What type?”
“The type with ambition.”
“Graça’s got more ambition in one hair on her head than all the fools in this club.”
“She’s got needs,” Madame L. said. “Ambitions have planning and thought behind them. Needs are just instincts we feed. And they’re always hungry, querida. Needs make us into buckets with holes in them.”
The band stopped playing. A spotlight hit the beaded curtain.
“I promised we’d be entertained,” Madame L. said. “Here it comes.”
The dance floor emptied. Graça and Vinicius returned. We sat in silence, the air heavy with cigarette smoke. Then the curtain parted and a man appeared. His skin was as dark and shining as a plum’s. His arms were roped with veins and muscle. He wore a headdress of blue and purple feathers, and his dress was studded with pearls and clasped over one shoulder. His face and body were dusted with a glittering powder that sparkled under the light, as if he had just emerged from the sea and was beaded with water.
The band played. The performer strutted and sang. I was dazzled by his movement, his costume, the sheer size of him, the hypnotic force of his energy. He moved away from the stage and into the crowd. Men, women, waiters and waitresses danced enthusiastically alongside him, as if in a trance. I closed my eyes. Without his image before me, the performer’s effect was lost—his voice was average, his band members not professionals. I opened my eyes just as the act finished and the club’s patrons fell back into their chairs.
“What a number!” Graça said.
Madame L. nodded. “Onstage you must be a dream. And you must make people fall into that dream with you.”
“If you’ve got talent you don’t need make-believe,” Vinicius said.
Lucifer laughed. “Everyone needs make-believe. Talent only takes you so far. You all know this firsthand, with those copycats stealing your gigs.”
“Those other bands won’t last,” Vinicius said, glancing at me. “Our songs are better.”
Graça crossed her arms. “My voice is better.”
“Neither is good enough to keep you cats working,” Lucifer replied. “You think l
ittle girls listening to you on the radio know the difference between Sofia Salvador and Aracy Araújo? Shit, I don’t even know the difference. You cats might’ve been the first and the best, but that doesn’t mean shit if no one knows you. You need to find something those other bands can’t ever copy. You need girls across Rio to want to dress like Sofia, act like Sofia, sound like Sofia, but never actually be Sofia. Sofia Salvador’s got to be impressive. She’s not a schoolgirl, she’s a dream. She’s got to burn herself so deep into people’s memories that if any tramp singer tries to copy her, it’ll look pathetic.”
Graça nodded. “I won’t be lumped with a bunch of floozies that can’t even hum a tune.”
“What matters is our music, not our looks,” Vinicius said. “You need to believe in your talent, not in some costume. Come on, Dor, talk some sense into her.”
Graça laughed. “I’m center stage, not Dor. I’m who people see. You and the boys can wear your boring tuxedos but Madame L.’s right: I have to be different.”
Vinicius stood. “And I have to get some air.”
He left through the curtained doorway. Graça sighed.
“He’s got to be on our side, or the band won’t be,” Graça said. “Dor, go talk to him? He listens to you.”
Madame L. smiled as if I’d suddenly become the evening’s entertainment. I stood and made my way through the curtain.
In the alley, Vinicius paced and smoked. Seeing me, he held out his cigarette and I accepted, smoking half before speaking.
“There’re samba girls on every corner now. Sofia Salvador needs to be different.”
“Real sambistas don’t need costumes,” Vinicius said, still pacing. “We’re not some vaudeville act. I want people to know our songs, Dor! When I’m dead, I want people to remember our music, not how we looked playing it.”
“How can people know our songs if they never hear them in the first place?” I asked. “We’re the best in the city, and we’re being drowned out. We need something to set us apart.”
Vinicius snorted. “A gimmick.”
“No, a style. Something to keep us in people’s memories.”
“If our music doesn’t set us apart, then we don’t deserve to be playing,” Vinicius snapped. “And if people can’t appreciate our songs for what they’re worth, they don’t deserve to be listening.”
“So you get to decide who’s deserving and who’s not?” I asked. “Who’s good enough to hear us and who’s too dumb? You’re as bad as those wet cats at Copacabana Palace. You’re a goddamn snob.”
Vinicius snatched back his cigarette. “You don’t understand, Dor.”
“Then maybe I don’t deserve to hear your music, either? Maybe I shouldn’t be in your precious roda.”
“You didn’t grow up playing samba. You and Graça hear it for a few months and think you can change it to suit yourselves.”
I drew a sharp breath, as if I still had his cigarette between my lips. “We want to make it better. To make it ours. Not play the same damn songs over and over, or be like you and write tearjerkers every damn day because you’re pining.”
Vinicius’s chest rose and fell as if he was short of breath. He looked away from me. “She’s a wreck waiting to happen. I’ve had prettier girls. And I’ve sure as hell had nicer ones.”
“Me too.”
“You’re better than all that.”
“All what?”
“That tomcatting you do.”
I laughed. “No one lectures Tiny about being ‘better than all that.’ You congratulate him.”
“Because Tiny enjoys his nights out.”
“And I don’t?”
Vinicius shook his head. “I’m not the only one pining around here.”
The building’s brick wall met my shoulder, warm and rough. I closed my eyes and let it hold me as I leaned. In front of me, Vinicius leaned, too, so we were mirrors to each other, eye to eye in that poorly lit alley. He fumbled for another cigarette.
“What did she say to you in there?” I asked, my voice a whisper. “On the dance floor. How’d she make you stay with her?”
Vinicius shook his head. “She said she’d take care of me, like she always does when we play together onstage. It’s just . . . it’s funny because she’s right. I trust her up there, onstage, more than I ever do out here, in life. When we play together, she’s different. All her selfishness just goes away. Poof! She gives everything. Everything inside herself; she’s not afraid of it, and neither am I. And I know she’s not just giving it to me—she’s giving it to everyone out there listening. If she puts on some costume, she might not be the same when we play together. She might not give herself up like she does now. And I don’t want to lose that feeling, Dor.”
Vinicius looked at me, afraid, like a child caught stealing. I wanted to punish him and, at the same time, wrap him in my arms.
Not long ago, I’d basked in Graça’s intoxicating generosity onstage. She challenged you without malice, making you a better performer, making you reach deeper within yourself, just as she reached. And what she brought out of herself seemed like an offering she made only to you—not to the dozens or hundreds who also watched her alongside you. This, not singing, was Graça’s talent: making a person feel special in her presence when, in fact, you weren’t special at all. Vinicius felt this as sharply as I did. A shared affliction can rope two people together tighter than any physical bond. But envy also welled up inside me, bitter and insistent. The stage was where Graça felt most real, and Vinicius got to share in the thrill of that reality with her. And, conversely, Graça got to bring our songs to life with Vinicius in a way I never could with him, in our writing roda.
“At least you get to be onstage, together,” I said.
“I miss you up there,” Vinicius replied. “You made me feel safe, somehow. Like every show wasn’t going to be the end of me.”
“But being safe’s no fun, is it?”
Vinicius gave me a sad little smile. I returned it.
I slipped my hand into Vinicius’s, finding his thumb and stroking the callus on its fingertip, the skin so thick I wondered if he even felt me there, moving my thumb against his, back and forth. How many songs had built that callus? How many guitars had it already outlived? A great heat rose from the pit of my belly and bloomed into my chest. Vinicius straightened. Could he feel this heat, emanating from me?
I was prepared for him to make a joke, or pull away, or maneuver us back inside. I was not prepared to feel his hands—those large, callused, guitar player’s mitts—press against my hips. His fingers dug into my sides and pulled me toward him. I didn’t know if he would hug me or kiss me, and I felt both petrified and thrilled, wondering which it might be.
Behind us, a door creaked open. A shaft of light brightened Vinicius’s face. He squinted. His hands quickly fell from me. Too quickly, as if he was ashamed of people seeing us in any kind of embrace, friendly or otherwise. I felt as if I’d stepped back into the ice-cold showers at Sion School—my body rigid, my chest so tight it was hard to breathe, but my mind suddenly clear. Two couples stumbled from the club and walked past us. The young bouncer held the club’s door open.
“You two coming back in?” he asked.
“Yes,” I called, then turned to Vinicius. “A costume’s just a set of clothes. If you really want to keep her, you’ll give her what she wants. Or she’ll find someone else who will.”
“Dor, wait,” Vinicius pleaded, but I didn’t let him finish. I was already halfway through the door.
We were, all of us, strivers. Vinicius wanted his music to be remembered. Graça wanted to be known and, through this knowing, loved. And Madame L. and I strove for a similar goal, though I wouldn’t realize it until many years later, when I visited him in prison: both of us refused to be cast away by a world that had little interest in keeping us. I can’t moan about my lot, given how
far I’ve risen. But I can state facts: I was born a girl with skin a touch too dark, nearly thrown into a cane field to die like a useless animal. I had no family, no money, little looks, and a tendency to enjoy both women and men. Some, like Graça and Vinicius, are never required to question their existence. But I have always had to prove my worth. Madame L. fought to prove his worth, too, just using different methods. Madame L. held a stake in our success not simply because he wanted to fill his pockets—he could do that selling sweet flour and girls—but because he saw in Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon a glimmer of what Graça, Vinicius, and I also saw: the possibility of transformation, and of escape. So while he was a danger to us, he was also a benefactor, helping to transform a schoolgirl into a dream, and then putting her in a contest where she would annihilate either her competition or herself.
* * *
—
After our night out, Madame L. paid a visit to our producers at Victor Records. Every record company in Rio—Columbia, Parphalon, Victor, and others—had been asked to nominate an act for Rádio Mayrink’s annual Showcase, which would be broadcast live to all of Brazil. Victor had chosen our rival Aracy Araújo to perform two songs. After Madame L.’s visit, Aracy was limited to one. Sofia Salvador and Blue Moon took the other three-minute time slot.
The Showcase would be in the once shabby Urca Casino, known to be worn and moldy, its plaster ceiling stained from leaks and its chandeliers missing crystals. But Urca had been bought by Joaquim Rolla and immediately closed for renovations. Some speculated that Urca would be transformed into the swankiest casino in Rio. Others called Rolla a con man, and predicted that the renovation would be abandoned because of money woes. Either way, the casino’s transformation was shrouded in mystery, making all of Rio curious about its grand reopening, and the Mayrink Showcase quickly became the hottest ticket in town.
The Air You Breathe Page 22
