by Luiza Sauma
“What do you senhores do for a living?” I said.
“This and that,” one of them said.
“We make money,” said the tattooed man, laughing.
They ordered steak sandwiches and more cold chopps, tipped fries onto my plate, which I gobbled up, and regaled me with stories about cops and robbers.
“One time, a guy tried to mug me by throwing a coconut at my head. I just kicked it back and it knocked him out. Like goddamn Zico or something.”
“Lies, lies, lies!”
“I swear! A coconut! I had to call an ambulance for him, poor thing.”
“What about you, menino—you ever been mugged?”
I was unbelievably drunk, but somehow I managed to show off a little, telling stories about all the people I knew who had been shot in bungled robberies. (Most of them were acquaintances or acquaintances of acquaintances.) One of them was true, though: one of my teachers had been shot dead in front of his house in Humaitá by a teenage boy, who made off with his cheap watch and almost-empty wallet. This was years before, when I was Thiago’s age.
“Rio de Janeiro,” said the tattooed man, shaking his head. “What a shithole.”
I glanced again at his arm.
He noticed. “Ever seen a tatuagem like this before?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. No, I haven’t.”
“Don’t worry. People are always looking. I thought of having it removed, but what’s the point? It’s not like I’m going to forget about it.”
He looked down at his drink, his lively mood diminished. His friends were silent, heads shaking with sympathy, heard it all before. The man showed me a black-and-white photo of his mother, which he carried in his wallet—a brunette with sad eyes, as though she knew what was coming. He was from Poland, he told me, but had no intention of ever going back. His eyes were moist. They were pale, like hers. My mother is dead too, I nearly said, but I didn’t. We drank more beer and talked about something else.
I woke up to the sound of the ocean, and something poking me in the ribs. When I opened my eyes, an old black guy wearing ragged clothes was standing over me, holding a rubbish-picking stick.
“Menino, wake up,” he said, in a raspy voice. “Wake up.”
My face was in the sand, my body sweaty and stiff. I licked my lips and tasted salt. My right foot hurt. I vaguely remembered kicking the bedside table. Why had I done that? Oh.
“Leave me alone.”
“Are you alive?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
I sat up and looked ahead. It was early morning. I could tell because the sky was white, the beach empty, and the breeze almost cool.
“What are you doing, sleeping out here?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“You should go home before your mother starts to worry.”
I forgot for a second, but then remembered. “My mother is dead.”
“Sorry to hear that. So is mine.”
Well, of course she is, I didn’t say. You’re old.
A foamy gray wave curled in the sea, several meters high, and went smash on the sand. It all looked so dirty—the water, the sand, the sky.
“Don’t worry about it. Can I just sit here for a bit?”
“Of course. I was just checking you weren’t dead. Sometimes we find bodies here.”
“Really?”
“Usually drunks. They drown and get washed up. Sometimes murder victims. Last week, we found two kids—ten years old, maybe younger, both shot dead. It was terrible.” He paused. “Well, at least you’re alive. I’ll leave you now.”
“Thank you.”
When I stood up, I realized that my shoes had gone. Either lost or taken, while I slept. My wallet too—gone—but I still had my keys. No memory of the night beyond drinking with those Jewish guys. No memory of whoever took my things. I walked home barefoot, limping. People stared at me because I looked too rich to be a tramp.
When I walked into my building, the porteiro, Marcelo, looked me up and down, mildly horrified. “Are you OK, André?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“You’re spreading sand all over the place!”
“Sorry about that. I can help you to clean it, once I’ve had a shower.”
“Forget it, I’ll do it,” he said, looking cross. “But you’d better use the service lift.”
The flat was silent. Everyone still asleep, I thought. I threw my clothes in the laundry area, on the ground, had a cold shower, and walked around in my boxer shorts, already sweating again. A heat wave was coming, I could feel it. It was December—summer again. The air was heavy and damp, the flat filled with sunshine, traffic, and birdsong, seeping in through slightly open windows—just the way Rita liked it.
“Fresh air cures everything,” she used to tell me when I was little.
After I’d thrown a tantrum, she would take me out for a walk towards the Arpoador, buy an ice cream for me and a coconut for herself. I always dodged the black bits on the black-and-white pavement. Even in my sandals, I could feel their heat. Then we would reach the Arpoador, dip our toes into the sea, and watch the surfers being whipped around.
“Feel better?” she’d say, and of course I did.
Maybe the empregadas were out shopping. My father at work. Thiago asleep, perhaps. I looked into the TV room, the living room, the kitchen, and Luana and Rita’s bedroom behind the kitchen, which was bare and neat—two little beds, made up with hand-me-down cartoon sheets. The porcelain Virgin Mary, still looking down over them. One of her hands had snapped off, leaving a hole.
“Rita?” I walked through the corridor. “Luana?”
I didn’t know it yet, but they had gone. I would realize that later, when I came home from lunch with Dani—where I mentioned nothing, absolutely nothing—and noticed that my bed was still unmade. Then my father came home. He told me that they’d moved back to Vidigal, that the baby was dead, that I should move on with my life and we need never talk about it again.
That was hours later.
In the morning, I knew nothing.
I was just a hungover teenage boy in need of breakfast.
I went to the kitchen and moped around for a bit, opening and closing the cupboards and the fridge, poking at the different meats, fruits, breads, and jars of beans. I took a bread roll, butter, and ham out of the fridge, sliced the roll open, and made myself breakfast for the first time in my life.
TWENTY-THREE
A few weeks after Rita and Luana left, the New Year came along—1987—and with it, dreams of escape. Daniela broke up with me, telling me she wanted to start university with a clean slate. We had sex one last time and afterwards she cried. But she was happy, she said. It was just overwhelming, that everything was changing. Papai and I were in silent agreement never to speak about Luana, but she seemed to be in the air, swirling around us. He hired a new empregada, Edilene, who was nice enough, but a stranger. I had passed the entrance exams for UFRJ, but secretly, I was planning a new life. A one-way ticket to Madrid—the city was randomly chosen; what mattered was the continent. Most important, since I turned eighteen, I had access to my inheritance, American dollars kept in a Swiss bank account. Papai had plans for that money—for my future—but it was under my name. I thanked Mamãe every night before bed, the way most people thank God.
I knew that Papai would be against it, so I didn’t say anything. I chose one of Edilene’s days off, a Monday. Unlike Rita and Luana, she had every Sunday and Monday off. Papai was at work, Thiago was at school. I posted letters to Dani and Carlito, explaining nothing, and left another two on the shining round dining table, for Papai and Thiago. I felt the sorriest for Thiago. I was abandoning him to be raised by a man he barely knew and an empregada he didn’t know at all. I said I would soon return and disappeared without a backward glance.
I rarely stayed at the flat again. When I went to Rio I would usually book a hotel, once I could afford it. It upset Papai. I could hear it in his frail voi
ce, during long-distance phone calls, whenever I was planning a trip. After he sold his surgery and retired, he became old—older than his actual age. Gray, plump, and living alone with his empregada. (I can’t remember the name of his last empregada, the one after Edilene.) I visited him at home, but refused to stay the night. Every wall and piece of furniture screamed: the past, the past. The sofa where we had watched novelas, the kitchen where I would watch Luana cook, the round dining table, my single bed, now permanently stripped. The flat hadn’t changed, but we had. When Thiago was a teenager, he came to stay with us in London and I told him the whole story. Most of it didn’t surprise him, but he started crying when I told him that Luana was Papai’s daughter; he’d had no idea. At the end of his trip, he didn’t want to go back to Rio. But he did, and he grew up, moved out, and lived elsewhere, alone. Papai disapproved of him: the way he spoke and moved, the amount of time he spent on Rua Farme de Amoedo with other young men, and, above all, his career as a psychotherapist, inspired by Aunt Lia.
I slowly lost touch with most of my friends. Sometimes, when I visited Rio, I would run into them in the street in Zona Sul. We laughed, remembered the old days, and made plans that never transpired. I had coffee with Daniela a couple of times, but it felt as if there were a wall between us. She wanted to talk about the past, and I didn’t.
“When we were going out,” she once said, “I thought you had a crush on your empregada.”
“What are you talking about?”
She laughed. “You did, I could tell.”
A few years later I saw her walking on Rua Visconde de Pirajá, hand in hand with Gabriel. They didn’t see me. I kept walking.
I saw Carlito on a few of my trips to Rio, but each time we seemed to have a little less in common. He worked for his dad and lived at home, looked after by his mother and their empregada. He surprised me, a couple of weeks after my wedding, with a long-distance phone call. He must have got the number from Papai.
“You got married?” he said before even saying hello, the same old friendliness jangling in his voice. “Where was my invitation, cara?” We hadn’t spoken in a while.
“It was a small wedding. We only had two guests.”
“What a drag, sounds boring!” he joked. “OK, you’re forgiven, but next time you’re in Rio, I want to meet this gringa.”
“You will, you will.”
And he did, some months later, when I took Esther to Rio for the first time. She was charmed by Carlito, as everyone always was. We talked for hours over sushi in Copacabana. I was glad to have her there, to show him that I had turned out all right.
By the time he died in a botched mugging—a single shot to the head—we hadn’t spoken in over a decade. Thiago told me about it in an email. I didn’t know whom to send my condolences to. I didn’t know Carlito’s wife and children—didn’t even know their names—so I addressed a card to his parents and sent it to their old flat on Rua Farme de Amoedo. I told Esther and she burst into tears, even though she had only met him once. She encouraged me to go to the funeral, but I couldn’t do it. They wouldn’t want me there. I had abandoned him.
TWENTY-FOUR
I
I was standing at a phone booth in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Paris. The wet European winter was giving way to spring: blossoms on trees, young people laughing in the streets. But I still wore my winter coat. I found Paris enchanting for the same reasons that everyone else does. I dialed my old number and listened to the foreign tone, those long rings. It rang twice.
“Alô?”
Hearing Papai’s voice, I felt as if I needed to take a shit. A joyful panic. “Pai, it’s me.”
Silence. For a moment, I wondered if he had forgotten the sound of my voice.
“It’s me, André.”
“I know who it is.” He sounded out of breath. There wasn’t even a hint of warmth in his voice.
“I’m in Paris.”
“Well, that’s very nice for you.”
“Don’t you want to ask me anything?”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. It’s been a while. How are you?”
“What do you want to know, André? Have we been worried about you? Yes, obviously. Thiago is devastated. And so are your friends. Daniela came over the week you disappeared, looking for you, and collapsed on the floor of our living room. Is that what you want to know?”
“Did you tell her?”
“No, of course not.”
“It wasn’t an easy decision.”
“It sounds easy to me, giving up on life and gallivanting in Paris. That money was for your future.”
“This is the future.”
“No, it’s your youth. When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
I wanted to ask about Luana—did he know where she worked, now?—but it was too early for that. Some other time.
“André, you did a stupid thing, but it’s over. Do you hear me? It’s over, filho. We are your family. We’re waiting for you.”
“Is Thi there?”
“No, he’s out. I’ll tell him you called. He’ll be sad to have missed you. Where have you been, anyway? Just Paris?”
“Madrid, Barcelona, Andalusia, the Sierra Nevada, all over Spain. And then Portugal. It’s cold, not the right time of year.”
“They have winter over there.” Papai’s voice softened. “You didn’t think of that, did you?”
“Not really.”
“What’s your phone number?”
“I’m on a pay phone.”
“But where are you staying?” He sounded so old and sad. He was only in his forties, though. Maybe it was just in my mind.
I gave him the phone number of my hostel. “But I won’t be there for long. I’m going to keep moving.”
“One day you will stop.”
“One day, yes.”
“Pelo amor de Deus, keep in touch.”
II
London was cold, even in June. I stayed at a hostel in King’s Cross. Back then, the area was full of prostitutes, homeless people, and cars passing through. I was propositioned every time I left the tube station, but I preferred the company of an Argentinean girl at my hostel, Violeta, who was traveling with two friends. She had curious brown eyes, dark hair, and a round bum-bum that reminded me of girls in Ipanema. We communicated in Portuñol, fucked in the showers, and saw the sights together: the British Museum, the V&A, the Natural History Museum, the river, the Tower of London, the river—I always wanted to return to the river. It was nothing like the Amazon. Thinner, shorter, and dirtier, with old buildings on either side. History in London goes further back. It’s easier to get lost, to slip yourself in.
We spent two weeks like this, idling. Violeta’s friends got sick of us and flew out to Granada for the next leg of their trip. All of them rich kids, like me, wanting to drag out their youth for a bit longer. None of us were thinking much of home. At the end of our month together, Violeta left at dawn, leaving me a note and a taste of my own medicine. I flew back to the Continent.
III
The Berlin Wall. The French Alps in summer. White yachts shining on the Côte d’Azur. Venice, Sicily, Florence. Rome was as hot as Rio, but somehow less bearable. I stuck to the shadows and cooled my arms in water fountains. Drank a beer, alone, by the Trevi Fountain—what a cliché—but La Dolce Vita was one of Mamãe’s favorite films, and nothing feels like a cliché when you’re nineteen. In Athens, I bought contact lenses and left my glasses at the bottom of my bag, till they snapped in two. The Acropolis, the Ionian Islands, Corfu. There weren’t many Brazilians in Europe, back then—with their suffocating stink of home—but the few that I came across, I avoided. Italian girls reminded me of Brazil. I went back to Italy. My English improved. Whenever I thought of Luana, I distracted myself. I got drunk. I read books and went to museums. I swam in the Mediterranean, in rivers and lakes and crowded swimming pools. I smoked weed for the first time. I went to bed with other girls. The gap between the pa
st and present expanded until I barely thought of her anymore.
At the beginning of autumn, in Venice, I met two girls at a bar. One dark-haired, Irish, and slightly bucktoothed, the other blond, German, and healthy looking. Both in their twenties—older women! They were traveling around Europe, wasting time, no end in sight. Around 2:00 a.m., I came back from the bathroom and the German girl had gone somewhere else—how disappointing—and then the Irish girl invited me back to her room.
My head clamped between thick white thighs. Her voice light and high. Birds were waking up, light was filtering in through the venetian blinds. Venetian blinds in Venice! When I let go inside her, the room blurred and sparkled. She fell asleep quickly—a curved pale mass, rising and falling. I can’t remember her name. I doubt she remembers mine. I walked back to my hostel, on bridges over dark green canals, marveling at my adult life, pushing back feelings of guilt and shame. It was early morning in Europe, and I was young and knew everything.
IV
A telephone booth in Byron Bay, a few hundred meters from the ocean. I was wearing shorts, flip-flops, and an old T-shirt. It was February, the following year. The tail end of the Australian summer. Since leaving Europe, I hadn’t come across a single Brazilian. Not in Thailand, where the girls weren’t interested in me—unless I was prepared to pay. Nor in Goa, though a hotel worker did try to speak to me in a strange, mangled Portuguese. The colonial buildings looked the same as the ones at home; the weather was the same, too. One day, as I walked through Old Goa, I felt as if I could taste Rio in the air—green and wet, a sweet hint of rot. I didn’t stay long.
“Where are you now?” said Papai.
“Australia.”
