Flesh and Bone and Water

by Luiza Sauma

  I needed to leave.

  “Room fifteen. One flight up.”

  I didn’t leave. I followed Daniela up the darkened stairs, feeling the walls because I could barely see. She was giggling, as though all of it—the darkness, the toothless man, the teenage whore—added to her excitement. Inside the room, she flicked on the lights, which were bright and white, before changing her mind, turning them off, and switching on the red bedside lamp instead. Outside, it had started to rain hard and loud—jungle rain. Even this had been a jungle, once upon a time. So long ago, it didn’t matter anymore. The motel’s neon sign was just beneath our window, and its red light flashed into the room every other second. Daniela pulled the blinds down, but I could still hear the rain and see a glimmer of red neon. The air-conditioning was broken, and sweat was tickling my neck and the sides of my body, running from under my arms.

  She sat on the bed and said, “We should’ve brought a drink.”

  I sat next to her stiffly. She put her hand on my leg and I laughed—at myself, I think.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Do you think Rodrigo and Isabel have fucked on this bed?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “And how many whores, on this very bed?”

  “André, don’t ruin it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Wait here.” She darted off to the bathroom.

  I stayed on the bed, noticing the sticky-looking green walls, the way the mattress sagged, the “erotic” framed drawing on the wall, of a naked woman with her arms wrapped around herself. I heard—from the room next door—a female howl of ecstasy and wondered what the woman’s lover had done to achieve that. I’d never made someone howl. Not even close. I remembered Luana and thought, yes, I will leave now, but then Dani came out of the bathroom, naked. She walked languorously, like a model down a catwalk, her face haughty and confident. She stopped a few inches in front of where I was sitting, small white breasts hovering at my eye line. I grew hard. How easy it was to forget. Dani walked forward an inch and I took one of her breasts in my mouth. She was less shy than Luana, more theatrical. Louder, bossier, unafraid of telling me what to do. I tried not to think about how many people had fucked on those sheets, whether their DNA could really come out in the wash. At times I thought I could smell Luana on my fingers, but that was impossible—we hadn’t had sex in a week. Afterwards, we lay in silence for an hour. I pretended to sleep, hoping that Daniela would get up and leave. Luana, I thought. Luana. The couple next door pierced the silence with torture-chamber screams.

  When we left, we saw that it was an old white guy and a tall transsexual with an eerily perfect body. A hooker, of course. No man can fuck his wife like that.

  TWENTY-TWO

  On Sunday, Papai came back from work just after lunch. Luana and Rita were in the kitchen, eating the same feijoada that Thiago and I had just finished eating. Papai entered my bedroom without knocking, as usual. I was at my desk, trying to study.

  “How are you?” he said.

  “I’m well.”

  He was like a stranger again—back to working seven days a week. Long gone was the Papai who walked down the street in Marajó, his hands on our shoulders. And he was stranger still for not knowing that I had destroyed my life, in this very room.

  “How was work?” I said, which was not the sort of thing I ever asked him.

  “Fine, fine.”

  “You’re working on Sundays again.”

  “We need the money.”

  “Do we?”

  “The way the economy is going? Of course we do.”

  It wasn’t the whole truth. He was the one who needed it—he needed to work, to avoid living at all costs. I don’t blame him. Work is easier than life.

  “We should go back to Pará sometime,” he said. “Our house in Marajó is just sitting there.”

  “I would like that.” I knew we would never go again.

  He nodded unconvincingly and turned to leave.

  “Pai.” I almost winced. “I want to tell you something.”

  “Tell me.” He closed the door behind him.

  “I don’t know how to say this.”

  Luana was a few meters away in the kitchen, preparing our food, as she always did. Nothing would look out of place, but everything had changed. Our child was growing inside her.

  “Go on, this sounds interesting,” said Papai with a small, innocent smile.

  Be quiet, Luana would say. Not now, not like this.

  My mouth was full of saliva. I swallowed it and shivered with disgust.

  Yes, now.

  Perhaps Papai thought I was going to reveal my plans to become a plastic surgeon, to take over the business, as he always dreamed I would. No, that wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t a good son, I couldn’t do anything right. I hadn’t planned on saying anything until that very moment, and now I didn’t know what to say. I felt as if I were going to vomit—or scream, “Help me, Papai!”—so I reached, desperately, for a white lie.

  “I’m only telling you this because she’s afraid to tell you herself,” I said as quickly as possible, before I could change my mind, “but Luana got involved with a man and needs our … help.”

  His eyes shot up, his smile vanished. I could feel the blood in my face, like fire on my skin.

  “Which man?”

  “Someone from Vidigal. No one we know.”

  “What do you mean, needs our help?”

  He knew what I meant, but was just wasting time, trying to delay the truth. I could see it in his face; his wrinkles were instantly deeper, the carved lines of an old man.

  “She’s pregnant.”

  “She’s pregnant,” he echoed, not as a question, but as a statement. Then his features sharpened, his eyes went black. “Who the hell did this? I’ll cut his fucking throat.”

  My face was still burning. I looked at my father, terrified but unable to look away. He walked over to my bed, opposite my desk, where I was sitting, sat down, and rested his elbows on his knees. He started shaking, from head to toe, like a tree in a storm, with his hands over his face. It was terrible. I had never seen anything like it, not even when Mamãe died.

  “Papai? Are you OK?”

  He clasped his hands together, trying to regain control. “How—how could this happen?” he said finally.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is there something else you want to tell me?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the identity of this … this man?”

  “No, I don’t know who he is. She had no one else to turn to.”

  “What about Rita?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she was afraid.”

  “You’re lying.”

  I didn’t respond.

  He looked at the wall above my head with drooping, troubled eyes, pondering something—a memory, a question—then shook his head. “There’s something you should know.” He moved his eyes from the wall to my face. He shook his head again. “I thought I would never tell you this. I didn’t think I needed to. But since you’re lying to me—”

  “Pai, I’m not lying.”

  His face glimmered with sweat, but he had regained composure. “Have you ever wondered why I paid for Luana to go to a decent school?”

  “Because you’re a good boss.”

  “Do you know any other empregada who was allowed to raise her child at work?”

  “No, but—”

  “I told you not to screw around with her.”

  “I didn’t screw around with her.”

  “Don’t lie to me!” he shouted, spitting everywhere. “I can see it in both your faces. You think you can hide anything from me? My own children?”

  “She’s not your child. You can’t control her.”

  “My children,” he said, looking up at me.

  We sat in silence as the truth overwhelmed me, making my head spin, burning in my stomach and getting stuck in my throat. The sour taste of bile, at the back of my tongue. I gri
pped my chair. What parallel universe had I stepped into? Had I known, it would never have crossed my mind to … Or would it? It was the most shocking thing anyone had ever said to me, but if you saw us, in that room—if you had been a cockroach on the wall—you would have just seen two miserable people, a middle-aged man and his son, having a staring match. The silence rippled between us. It was something I could almost touch, something that could throttle me if I didn’t speak. Say something, say anything.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  He didn’t respond. It was too shameful to repeat, too revolting to explain. He stared at the ground, completely diminished. I’d never seen him like that, so pathetic. A bead of sweat from his face pinged onto the wooden floor. I thought of Mamãe, dying in the ambulance. I thought, briefly, of my father in bed with Rita (how was it even possible? I couldn’t imagine her with anyone, let alone him), but I immediately buried this image—it was too much.

  “Pai?”

  Again, he didn’t respond. My body filled with adrenaline. Sweat poured from my head, my armpits, my back, like rain into a gutter. I had to do something, I didn’t know what. I jumped to my feet and lurched towards him, but I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t hit Papai—so I kicked my wooden bedside table, shattering the lamp, kicking, kicking, until my schoolbooks were on the floor and the table in pieces.

  “You escroto,” I said under my breath, feeling thrilled and terrified because I had never spoken to him like that. “You filho da puta.”

  “Stop it,” he said in a weak voice I had never heard before.

  “Who are you?” I shouted, inches from his face. “Who the hell are you?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t know.

  “What about Mamãe?”

  “She didn’t know. It was a mistake to keep them here, I can see that now. I just wanted …” He sighed and shook his head. “I wanted to see her grow up.”

  Several cars beeped outside. Someone shouted. People were stuck in traffic, trying to get somewhere. The world was going on, but for me it had ended. Fix it, Papai. Fix it, I wanted to say. He stayed with his eyes on the floor, his collar soaked with sweat.

  I sat back at my desk, with my head down. “Does Luana know?”

  “No,” he said, “Rita swore she wouldn’t say anything.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’ll deal with it. They need to leave as soon as possible. This baby—”

  “I know.”

  “It can’t be born.”

  He got up to leave. I couldn’t believe what had just passed between us. I hoped that it was a nightmare, that I would wake up in my bed hearing Mamãe’s voice in the next room.

  “I know that Mamãe was ill,” I said. “It was your fault. You made her that way.”

  Papai didn’t react. He just walked to the door. “I could see it in both of your eyes,” he said. “A while ago, in Marajó, but I hoped I was wrong. I—I hoped that you were just becoming friends.” He left the room.

  I put my head in my hands and wept. Snot ran into my mouth, salty and thick. I listened to Papai’s heavy footsteps going down the corridor. My humiliation was complete. It was the plot of a cheap novela. I sat in silence, straining to hear his conversation with the empregadas, but the kitchen was too far away. Already I could feel Luana’s absence. Coconut, perfume, and sweat. Sweetness and rot. What kind of baby would it be, if it lived? A mangled, incestuous mess, 50 percent Matheus Cabral.

  The kitchen door slammed. I went to the living-room balcony and saw Papai, Rita, and Luana—five floors down—walking out of the building, opening the gates, walking down the street. Behind them, the sea was unusually still and the sky was bright. Both searingly blue, unreal. Thousands of people on the beach, unaware of me watching them. They were an odd sight: a man in a suit followed by two empregadas, neither of them carrying anything or pushing a pram or holding the hand of a child. What a comfort Rita had been, when I was younger. How many years had passed since I last held her hand? That’s what I longed to do as I watched them walking away, casting long shadows across the mosaic pavement: hold Rita’s hand and hear that everything was going to be OK.

  The living room was growing dark, but I didn’t turn the lights on. I stayed on the balcony for several hours, watching as the streetlamps turned on, all at once. Thiago came outside and asked, “What are you doing?” I couldn’t respond. I tried to hug him and he pushed me away—he was getting too old for that—and returned to his bedroom. People left the beach. I heard American voices, talking too loudly, saying repeatedly that something was “amaaaazing!” I longed to be them, with their simple lives. The beach bar across the road was still busy, people drinking away the dregs of the weekend, before work began again the next day.

  Out of the darkness came a figure in white: Rita, walking back alone. I leaned back from the balcony, so that she wouldn’t see me. I couldn’t see the expression on her face as she approached the building. I went back to my bedroom. A few minutes passed, in which she would be taking the service lift, the shitty one with no mirror. I heard her greet Thiago. His high voice saying “Rita!” and something else, which I couldn’t make out. She was being professional, that’s all it was. Poor Thiago. He loved Rita just as I had done at his age, and he was going to lose her. Somehow, I fell asleep. I don’t know how long for, but I woke when Rita poked her head into my bedroom. In the darkness, I couldn’t see her expression.

  “Dinner is ready,” she said, as though nothing had happened.

  “I’ll come in a minute.”

  I went to the living room after splashing water on my face. Everything was set out on the dining table—fried fish, rice, and salad—and the kitchen door was closed. I couldn’t hear any voices behind it. I ate with Thiago. He was reading another of those comics, eating noisily and wriggling his legs under the table. I covered the fish in lime juice, but it tasted like nothing. My senses had dulled.

  “Finished!” shouted Thiago, putting his fork down.

  He sprinted to the TV room, and a few seconds later the television came on—a comedy show with canned laughter. I heard him giggling along. Rita came into the room to collect the plates. She had an odd, faraway look. I longed for her to hold me in her arms, to tell me what a wonderful child I was.

  “Wasn’t it good? You hardly ate any.”

  “It was great.” I felt my body go cold with fear.

  “Not hungry?”

  “Yes, just not hungry.”

  She avoided my gaze and concentrated on the plates. Her smile had gone, and hatred emanated from her averted eyes, expressionless face, quick movements. I could feel her judgment, burning me. But she was a good actress—she had always been. I stood up to help her clear the table and she jumped in surprise.

  “Hey, don’t do my job for me.”

  “Was it your job to sleep with my father?”

  Her head shot up and she squinted. She had never looked at me like that before, with such contempt. Then she looked back down and stacked the plates and bowls, one on top of the other.

  “You think you and your father are the first? You’re not the first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lucky that times have changed. We’re not owned by you, and neither is the baby.”

  “It’s gone, though, the baby. Hasn’t it?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Hasn’t it?”

  Rita walked towards the kitchen holding the plates, her flip-flops smacking against the floor. A bead of sweat ran from my armpit to my waist, under my T-shirt.

  At the door to the kitchen, she paused and looked back. “I’m a real Christian, not like your father.”

  “She’s going to have it? Please, Rita, I need to know.”

  “Just forget about it. Forget about us. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  She went into the kitchen and starting humming a song, as though she were in a bright mood. Maybe it helped her to forget. I needed to forget too. Just for one night. So
I phoned up Daniela and asked her to come out with me.

  “Sorry, I’m studying.”

  “Just take a break—I want to see you.”

  “I can’t. We’ve already gone out two days in a row.”

  “Come on, I just want to have some fun.”

  “What happened to you?” She laughed. “Usually you never want to come out.”

  “Fine, don’t worry about it.”

  “Sorry, amor!”

  I winced at that word.

  After hanging up the phone, I walked out of the flat. I didn’t tell Thiago or Rita that I was going out. I walked down the road, away from the beach, and went into a little bar that I’d walked past thousands of times but never entered. The kind of bar you’d find on any corner in Ipanema—at least you would in 1986. Inside, the usual array of men and women, but mostly men, were sitting at chairs and tables that spilled out onto the pavement, drinking cold beers, eating, smoking, and laughing. Most of them a bit bedraggled, middle-aged or older, apart from a little girl having dinner with her parents. Outside it was hot, but inside it was hotter, and an ineffectual fan twirled on the ceiling, stirring up the hot air. I sat outside and ordered a chopp—draft beer. People glanced over at me, drinking alone, but soon returned to their conversations, which veered from hushed and urgent to hysterical and deafening. I finished my beer quickly and ordered another. That one went down nicely too. I tried to ignore the faint smell of piss that hummed up from the pavement.

  When I was halfway through my fourth chopp, I saw them walking down the street: Papai and Luana. She was still wearing her uniform, but it was rumpled and her face was tired. She walked uncomfortably, an arm around my father’s arm—the strangest thing I had ever seen. So she had done it. Rita had lied. I raised the menu over my face so they wouldn’t see me, but they didn’t even look over. They just walked on.

  Later in the night I found myself sitting at another table, laughing uproariously with a trio of guys in their fifties and sixties, all of them dressed casually in T-shirts and shorts, but the smell of money hung around them—something about their portly confidence, their nasal Yiddish accents, and the brusque way they ordered their drinks. One of them, the oldest, had a concentration-camp tattoo on his left forearm and curly white hair sprouting from the neck of his T-shirt. I couldn’t remember sitting down with them or being called over—I was suddenly just there.