The Air You Breathe

by Frances De Pontes Peebles

  Funny. When I was curled beside Graça in bed, her small, cold hand in mine, I believed I was singing to her.

  * * *

  —

  How long before Dr. Farias and the Blue Moon boys erupted into the suite, ruining our peace? The police report says thirty minutes.

  I remember Vinicius squatting in the corner, his hands over his face. I felt Tiny pulling me, gently, from the bed beside her. I could not move. He and Kitchen carried me, curled as I had been on the bed, to the couch. There was shouting. Police. A forensic investigator brought a camera to document the scene.

  The photographs were leaked to Brazilian magazines and, later, American ones. In those black-and-white pictures she looks serene in her bed. Her skin is clean. Her lips are dark and glossy. Even in death, she is a star.

  In their report, the military police wrote that the deceased was moved from the floor to her bed. It’s a detail that biographers and conspiracy theorists like to bandy about. As if it’s even important. I was asked many times about the pills I’d left with her: What kind, how many, what for? It was later, after the autopsy, that I’d gotten different questions: Was she upset after the Copa performance? Did I notice signs of mental unsteadiness? Why had I left so many pills in her possession? Why had I left her alone? Had she ever tried to hurt herself before?

  There is Graça wading into the dark river, her hand clamped firmly around mine.

  I won’t go in too deep. And you’re as strong as an ox.

  And if I’m not?

  Then we’re both goners.

  You’ll drown.

  I always save you. But you never save me.

  That’s not the story.

  It’s the story I want.

  You can’t do that. That’s not how it goes. I could have obeyed. I could have stayed.

  If you’re not careful you’ll stay here all your life.

  We’ll stay.

  I almost feel real.

  You are real. To me.

  I’m so tired, Dor. How much longer?

  Not long now, amor. Not long at all.

  * * *

  —

  Sofia Salvador received a funeral worthy of a head of state. If in life she was an American puppet, in death she became Brazil’s beloved victim who had escaped a hostile USA and returned home to re-create herself, introducing a new form of samba only to be tragically cut short from seeing it flourish after her death.

  Sofia Salvador could always read a crowd, and she wasn’t wrong about the audience at the Copa: those reporters, socialites, government men, and nationalists had been intent on rejecting her. They were like scorned lovers, wanting to punish Sofia Salvador for leaving them and then for returning so boldly. What Sofia Salvador could not see from the Copa’s stage—what none of us saw—were all those listening, rapt, to the radio broadcast across Brazil. She could not see them in cafés, bars, and living rooms, closing their eyes to better hear her sing. She could not hear their praise or their applause. No one (except for a few avant-garde patrons of a club in Ipanema the night before) had heard samba done in such a way: so moving, so vulnerable, so in need of acceptance and forgiveness. After the broadcast those many listeners across Brazil held Sofia Salvador’s voice in their memories and were ready to accept her back with open arms. This was, in part, why her death was upsetting to so many: they hadn’t been able to buy her records again, to wait in line to see her shows, to call her an innovator, to tell her it was as if she’d never left them. They loved her after all; they just hadn’t shown it in time.

  She was embalmed, a luxury in those days. Her coffin was lined in bronze and covered in the Brazilian flag. A fire truck draped in black cloth carried her through Rio’s streets, to the House of Representatives. For two days she lay wearing her red dress and red lipstick, surrounded by flowers, in the House’s main lobby, where lines of people shuffled by to pay their respects. The lines of mourners snaked past the Odeon movie house and around Floriano Square. Some mourners were puffy-eyed from crying, some were solemn, some simply curious. There were generals, bakers, police, housewives, socialites, famous disc jockeys. Even Aracy Araújo appeared, wearing a black mantilla over her head and with mascara running down her cheeks. I looked at Graça, waiting for her to sit up and laugh out loud at Aracy, who ignored me but grasped Vinicius’s forearm. “How will I be a great artist now?” she asked. “Without the best to compete against, how will I ever get better?”

  I wanted to tear that mantilla from Aracy’s head and slap her. I wanted to slap every last one of them, powerful and poor alike.

  Why hadn’t they swarmed the airport to welcome her back? Why hadn’t they applauded her that night at the Copa? Why hadn’t they shown her this affection when she’d really needed it?

  If Graça had died an old woman, having lived a life full of music and several incarnations of Sofia Salvadors, would she have received such love and adoration? Or is losing life more acceptable than losing your youth? And had Graça, always so attuned to her audience, sensed this, and given them exactly what they’d wanted: a star who’d returned to them for her final show; who was always young, always beautiful, and always theirs in their memories? As I sat and watched those mourners edge by, I’d never before felt so much hate.

  When they finally closed the coffin, the Blue Moon boys and I carried her back to the fire truck. We stood side by side as we drove slowly past the crowds. Who would have thought there were so many people in Rio? As we edged past Flamengo Beach, Oswaldo Cruz Avenue, Botafogo Beach, and beyond, all the way to Saint John the Baptist Cemetery, people lined the streets. Only, unlike the lines of mourners in the House’s dreadfully hot chamber, these were not silent. Some played cuícas, others banged drums, others scraped reco-recos. All of them sang. “My Mutt,” “Clara,” “We Are from Samba,” “Air You Breathe”—there wasn’t a Sofia Salvador song they didn’t know.

  Atop the fire truck, Little Noel cried like a baby. Banana and Bonito propped him up. And then we heard Kitchen’s voice—as deep and startling as a siren—join the crowd’s song. One by one, the Blue Moon boys and I forgot our anger and our hurt, and we sang along, too. It became a Carnaval like no other. What a shame Graça didn’t see it.

  * * *

  —

  Most of Blue Moon stayed in Brazil. Only Vinicius and, surprisingly, Kitchen returned to Los Angeles with me. Kitchen made it clear that returning to the United States wasn’t an act of kindness toward me but one of defiance to Brazil—he couldn’t take being there anymore, living beside those so-called fans who had betrayed Graça when she was alive, onstage in front of them, and now heralded her talent after death.

  Kitchen moved to Chicago, where he played samba-infused jazz and blues until 1965, when he had a stroke and died in a rented room. Banana, Bonito, Little Noel, and Tiny had some small successes as musicians, but nothing like they’d had with Blue Moon. The bulk of our best songs belonged to the Victor Recording Company, and immediately after Graça’s funeral, I hired a lawyer and took Victor to court. The case took nearly a decade to decide but eventually came out in our favor. We were all suddenly rich, but by then I was too numb to notice. I had, in Vinicius’s words, checked out.

  Those first months after Graça died, when I was still relatively sober, Vinicius helped me pack up the Bedford Drive house and insisted I go with him to Las Vegas.

  What was Vegas back then but a new land, ripe with possibility for every singer, gangster, showgirl, musician, waiter, and gambler? Vegas was, during the war, famous for being the place for quickie divorces, where estranged couples stayed at casinos that resembled Old West saloons with sawdust on the floors. The Flamingo Hotel changed all that, with its forty acres of air-conditioned rooms, crystal chandeliers, golf courses, and health spas. After the war, Hollywood became a land of morality and blacklists. Las Vegas was the haven for every star exiled for being a suspected communist or homosex
ual or both. Vegas was a kind of Lapa in the middle of the desert, but it was not an escape. Not for me.

  Memories of my life before Las Vegas were achingly vivid; it was as if the emptiness of the desert revived every smell, every taste, every conversation, every pause, every touch, every emotion I’d experienced in my brief time on this earth. And it was too much. I was a product of those memories and suddenly, like a mother holding its child too tightly to its bosom, they were smothering me.

  Before his second term, President Dutra was ousted in free and fair elections. The people used their secret ballots to put old Getúlio back in office. It was around this time that Vinicius appeared, unshaven and red-eyed, sitting beside my hospital bed. My forearms and legs were strapped down; they did this back then, to patients they believed were a danger to themselves. I felt more ashamed of those straps than of the wide ribbons of gauze around my wrists. It was Vinicius who’d found me on the floor of my Las Vegas apartment. It was Vinicius who convinced the doctors to unbuckle me.

  After my discharge from the hospital, each time a memory rose in me I reached for a drink.

  Getúlio’s second spell in office didn’t last long. Even in my drunken stupor I kept up with news from Brazil, like a spurned lover sniffs out stories about an ex, hoping to hear of their failures rather than their successes. Despite his flaws, I felt a strange comfort knowing that Old Gegê—the man we’d always called by his first name, and who fought for the presidency since Graça and I were girls at Riacho Doce—was back in Catete Palace. Once again there was scandal, a grab for power, and Getúlio was again on the verge of being ousted, by force, from office. Instead of retreating, he sat at his desk, loaded his favorite pistol, and shot himself in the heart. “I leave life to enter History,” he wrote in a note left beside his body. Vinicius told me the news.

  “Old Getúlio’s killed himself,” he said, his hands shaking as he lifted a cigarette to his mouth. I wasn’t surprised. For some it’s easier to imagine death than to face the person who the choices and burdens of life have forced you to become. But death robs us of many things, including the chance to redeem ourselves.

  * * *

  —

  Sleep doesn’t come easily now, if at all. The nurse says I need my rest; I can’t listen to my records at night anymore. So I write in secret, or sit in the dark and listen to the murmur of my hospital bed’s motor. The bed was installed in my home after a fall I had recently. It lowers itself so that the night nurse can help me onto it like a child.

  I close my eyes and listen: my heart sounds sluggish, as if it is pumping syrup, not blood.

  I press a button. With a groan and a puff of air, my bed lowers.

  “This is it,” I say, out loud. “Here goes nothing.”

  I heave myself up and out.

  The night nurse is asleep in the room next to mine, her mouth open, her head tilted at an odd angle. I shuffle past her, as silent as a lizard. When I reach the den, I squeeze through the maze of boxes and clothing racks until I come to the record player. And there, behind it—yes—there it is. I lift the guitar easily, instilled with a strength I didn’t have just hours before. All its strings are intact, though probably out of tune. I carry it, like a thief in the night, outside. In the courtyard I find a metal chair and collapse into it, shaking and sweating in the dark.

  I can smell the salt air. The strangler fig’s leaves—thick and shiny like leather—bump against one another in the breeze. I hold the guitar close. After he forgot how to play it, Vinicius never again asked for his guitar, not even to hold in his lap.

  “We can’t take anything with us, why keep it now?” he liked to proclaim before he got sick. He allowed many musicians to cover and sample our songs without paying us a dime. “Let them have the music,” he said. “We can’t keep it when we go.”

  “Where are we going?” I’d ask.

  Vinicius shrugged. “Hell if I know.”

  Did he mean he didn’t know where we’d go after we’d shed these husks of our bodies, or did Vinicius truly think we’d go to hell—the both of us?

  Go to hell, Dor.

  Hell’s too far away.

  From what?

  From you.

  Write that down. That’s a good line.

  Nena had a saints’ altar where she lit candles and muttered requests. Prayer for Nena was bartering: I do this for you, and you keep me safe in return. She never spoke of heaven or of souls. If I’d mentioned such things to Nena I’m sure she would have hit me.

  During my year of school the nuns spoke of creation and original sin, of confessions and purgatory and the nine different kinds of angels. Even the goddamn angels had a pecking order! If the nuns’ heaven is as petty and mean as our own world, I want no part in it. Not that I’d be allowed through those pearled gates anyway.

  It’s the result that matters.

  Madame Lucifer died in jail, stabbed inside Ilha Grande, but for all of his misdeeds I can’t imagine him there. I see him tall and robed and glorious, dancing atop a Carnaval float, forever in motion.

  There was, not long ago, a story on the radio about parallel universes, about how time can fold on itself again and again, giving us many versions of our lives, each with a different outcome. Surely there exists the life where I stay with her that night in the Palace. The life where I give her my songs. The life where I open my fists—closed for so long—and understand, before it’s too late, what Graça knew all along: When we create, it is not to prove, but to share.

  The songs aren’t important, I say.

  I’m lying, and she knows it. She sees the pain of my lie and the gift of it. A gift always and only for her. And she gives me one in return: I am her only audience now, and she loves me as she’s always loved them, finally, and completely.

  My chest feels warm and terribly tender, as if I’ve been stung there. I hold the guitar closer. The metal chair wobbles beneath me.

  In Lapa no one talked about heaven or hell; we were all too busy living and playing music. My Lapa’s just a place in the history books now, but I let myself imagine it still exists. I strum Vinicius’s guitar. Yes. There it is.

  Graça and Vinicius and the boys are sitting in Ciata’s yard, waiting. The roda can’t begin until we’re all there—that’s the rule—and they’ve been waiting awhile. I push open the creaky gate, feel the packed dirt floor under my sandals, smell the smoke from Vinicius’s Onyx cigarettes. And there they are: Tiny holds his cavaquinho on his soft belly; Kitchen winks; Noel smiles as brightly as a child; Banana nods; Bonito pours me a generous drink; Vinicius’s large, dark eyes take my breath away; and Graça—oh, my heart—with her dimpled smile and her impatience. The chair next to her is wide open.

  We are all beautiful in our youth. And we are all forgiven. In the roda, there are no grudges that can’t be put aside, no wounds that can’t be healed. Music is the greatest kind of reciprocity. For a taut string to make sound, it must be pulled from its stillness. The musician plucks the string, and the string expands as it strives to return to its original place. And in this return is vibration, and in this vibration is sound. A song couldn’t exist without first having stillness. Music couldn’t exist without a steady disruption, and a continuous return to what was, and what can be.

  I can hear my heartbeat, yes, and in it, the drums from the cutters’ circles. The words to those songs return to me like an ache, words I’d thought I’d forgotten, words that spin tales of infatuation, pain, revenge, regret, mercy, and, yes, even grace. I look at Graça and she nods to me; it’s my turn to start us off. I feel something ancient rising within me: a breath of the impossible, a whisper of a truth I’ve always known but could not name. I pluck a string and its sound fills the circle.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book went through many incarnations. Mika Tanner, Deanna Fei, and Cristina Henríquez read nearly all of them, never shying from telling me the truth
, never letting me quit, and always being the smartest and most generous readers (and friends) I could ever hope for. My agent, Dorian Karchmar, has been an unwavering advocate and a source of encouragement for fourteen years and counting. Thank you to everyone at Riverhead for giving this book your support and belief. Thanks especially to Danya Kukafka and the amazing Sarah McGrath, whose wise letters and thoughtful edits were my lifelines. Thanks to my copy editors—your diligence helped me bring this book across the finish line.

  No mother can be an artist without support from a tribe of women who listen, care, and help clean up life’s messes. Thanks to Kate, Bahareh, Logan, Tatiana, Maria (Abegunde), Ashley (Tee-Tee), Ruth, and all of my daughter’s teachers and caregivers. Thanks, always, to my first caregivers: my parents, David and Lúcia. Thank you to the readers of this book for being partners in its creation by bringing Dores, Graça, and the Blue Moon boys to life in your imaginations.

  My deepest thanks go to the members of my own little roda: my husband and daughter. James, I’m eternally grateful for your calm, your steadfast belief, and your willingness to take this ride through life with me. Emília, meu amor, you were inside my belly when I started writing this book. I’d listen to music as I wrote, putting one earbud in my ear and taping the other to my stomach so you could hear Cartola, Otis Redding, Marisa Monte, Carmen Miranda, Kanye, Tom Jobim, Paulinho da Viola, Édith Piaf, and so many others. Thank you, minha filha querida, for keeping me company back then and now, and for teaching me to improvise, to play, and, especially, to listen.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Frances de Pontes Peebles is the author of the novel The Seamstress, which was translated into nine languages and won the Elle Grand Prix for fiction, the Friends of American Writers Award, and the James Michener-Copernicus Society of America Fellowship. Born in Pernambuco, Brazil, she is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.