by Luiza Sauma
I went to the beach every morning and was taken out by Thiago and Jesse nearly every night. At times I envied their child-free lives. They took me to restaurants in Zona Sul and bars in Lapa, and to exhibitions at shiny new museums. Rio had changed.
On Christmas Eve, we had dinner at their friend Luciana’s mansion up in Santa Teresa, overlooking the city. The area had cleaned up, Thiago told me. It hadn’t returned to its nineteenth-century heyday, but it was relatively safe.
“Yes,” said Luciana. “I never hear gunfire anymore. I can’t even remember the last time, to be honest, but I always sleep wearing earplugs, so I wouldn’t know.”
Luciana was an elegant, lively woman in her forties who reminded me of Mamãe. Thiago and she couldn’t work out how they knew each other—they just did. She had long dark hair and a husky, humorous voice, her expressive hands and wrists shimmering with gold jewelry. Only her wedding finger was bare. She was a jewelry designer—a typical nonjob for a rich carioca—but she cooked the meal herself, no empregada in sight. After dinner, we drank cocktails next to her pool. Luciana lit a citronella candle to keep away the mosquitoes, then a cigarette. I knew Thiago would be wanting one, but he abstained so as not to offend Jesse. Down below were the twinkling favelas, almost within reach. Cicadas droned around us.
It reminded me of our end-of-school celebration in December 1986, when we saw the sun rise from Rodrigo’s cousin’s house in Santa. I was fairly quiet during dinner—I didn’t think anyone wanted to hear about the life of an almost-divorced GP—but I’d had a few drinks by then, so I told them about the party.
“The view was so similar. My friend’s cousin must have been your neighbor.”
“Who was your friend?” said Luciana.
“Rodrigo Morais.”
“Rodrigo!”
“You know him?” said Thiago.
“He’s my cousin—it was my party! Ai, meu Deus, André Cabral, of course! I remember you. Where have your glasses gone?”
“I wear contact lenses. You’re still living here?”
“I came back eleven years ago. Zona Sul just didn’t compare. I’m a Santa girl at heart, I need to be up in the hills. Plus, my mother got lonely after my father died. Better lonely together than lonely apart—but she’s dead, now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that… . You’re really Rodrigo’s cousin?”
“Yes! Am I that forgettable?”
“No, it’s just been so many years.”
“Saúde,” she said, and we raised our glasses.
Though I didn’t recognize Luciana, I remembered her well. Lulu, as we called her, was younger than us by a year or two, already beautiful with her waist-length hair and morena skin. As Rodrigo’s priminha, she was off-limits to us, which heightened her appeal. That morning in 1986, she had passed out on one of the sunbeds in a fetal position, just wearing a bikini, her curves new and unripe. I couldn’t see fresh, young Lulu in chic, chain-smoking Luciana, her olive skin creased from decades in the sun. She hadn’t recognized me either. Was I better or worse?
That was last week. At the airport in Belém, I look around, searching for my daughter. Two months is nothing for me, but for a teenager, it’s enough for a transformation. I spot her: a lanky, tanned young woman walking towards me, in T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. Her hair in a ponytail, aviator sunglasses pushed back. Despite her bronzed skin, she looks so English.
“Dad! Over here!”
A few men turn to look at her, this tall, lovely gringa. I want to tell them to look the other way, but Bia is oblivious. She runs up to me like a child and hugs me tightly, so that I have to drop my bags on the floor. Her eyes glitter with the mania of someone who hasn’t seen a familiar face in a while.
“How are you, querida?”
“I’m so excited that you’re here!”
I’m a little nervous, not entirely used to being alone with my children. I picked them up from friends’ houses, took them to music classes, and read stories to them at night when Esther was too tired. But she did everything else: dressing them in the morning, telling them to do their homework, having hysterical, screaming arguments, while I was the neutral go-between. Sometimes I felt like a trespasser in a house of women.
Outside, we catch a cab to the hotel. The air is steamy and the sun harshly bright, but inside the car it’s as cold as a fridge.
“Rua Henrique Gurjão, por favor,” says Bia, her accent confident and foreign. She booked the hotel and has already spent a night there after arriving from Maranhão by bus.
“I hope you’ll like the hotel. It’s quite simple.”
“Anything’s fine for me. How was Maranhão?”
She talks excitedly about the Lençóis Maranhenses, a national park of white sand dunes and lagoons. In pictures it looks unreal, a beach from another planet.
“Have you ever been?”
“No, but I’d like to go. I think my grandmother was from Maranhão.” I remember how her name was crossed out on Papai’s birth certificate. “I never knew her, though.”
“Really? God, it’s unbelievable.” She sits back, blinking at the sunlight.
“What is?”
“I barely know anything about you.”
“This isn’t me—I’m not from here.”
The driver—a sturdy man in his late thirties, with a native face—glances at us in the rearview mirror. “Where are you from?” he says.
“Inglaterra,” says Bia.
“But the senhor looks Brazilian.”
“I’m Brazilian, my daughter is English,” I say. “We live in Londres.”
“You’re a carioca?”
“Yes.”
“How come you moved to Londres?”
By this point, I don’t think Bia can understand much, but I can see that she’s concentrating, breaking the sentences down in her head.
“To study, and then I met my wife and didn’t come back.”
“You’re a lucky guy, living over there. I have a cousin who managed to get a Portuguese passport, so he moved to Inglaterra. He couldn’t get a job in Londres, so he went to Manchester instead.” It’s funny to hear that word—Manchester—in the back of a cab in the Amazon. “He works as a taxidriver too. He says it’s unbelievably cold but he loves it.”
I lean back in my seat. “He has a cousin in Manchester,” I tell Bia. “Can you believe it?”
“Urgh, I know where I’d rather be.”
“In Belém? Not a chance.”
We’re in the city for just two nights. Belém wasn’t interesting to me in 1985, and now it’s just depressing. Those old colonial houses in the Cidade Velha are older still. Once they housed hopeful men who got rich on sugar and rubber, but now some of them are just walls with no windows, roofs, or floors. Shoddy memorials for a golden age. Our hotel, as Bia said, is simple and clean, but half-empty, with not a single foreign guest other than my daughter. The new Brazil that gringos are clamoring for—sex and beaches, art and wealth—hasn’t quite reached the Amazon.
We eat fried fish with lime and acaí at the riverside market, followed by cupuaçu ice cream. Then we walk around, sweating in the sun, feeling sorry for all the panting, passed-out animals on sale: rodents, parrots, rabbits, and chickens. Some of them look half-dead, their little tongues hanging out. At night we see a solo guitar performance at the pink Theatro da Paz, which I remember from last time—a grand European theater dropped into the Amazon, but with wicker seats instead of red velvet. Rain pounds the roof, like thousands of fists.
On our last evening in Belém, we eat pato no tucupi at a restaurant housed in an old Portuguese palace. Bia chose it from her guidebook. Apparently it’s famous. Is this the one? Is this where he died? No, there must be several restaurants by the river. Our table is outside, ten meters from the water’s edge. The jambu works its magic, making our mouths go numb. Even with the garden lit up, the river is black and endless. No line between sky and water. I don’t say what’s on my mind. I can feel my heart again. We drink b
eer and I watch Bia smoke a cigarette. I know that she smokes because I sometimes smell it on her, but I’ve never seen it myself. There are worse things in life than smoking when you’re nineteen, and few better. I don’t ask for a drag.
TWENTY-NINE
It takes a moment for me to figure out where I am. A white room, a fan whirring fast and loud above my bed. The hotel room in Belém.
As a child, I was frightened of fans. They seemed precarious to me, especially the old ones at my grandparents’ flat in Rio, which always seemed on the verge of spinning off the ceiling, turning us into sliced salami. Aged six, during lunch, I once laughed out loud at the thought of the fan falling down and slicing Papai’s head off—and I told everyone about it.
“Oedipus complex,” said Aunt Lia, smiling and nodding as though it were the cutest thing I’d ever said.
This morning, after showering and dressing, I go downstairs and knock on Bia’s door. A low murmur comes from inside.
“Bia, we have to catch the boat—time to get up.”
“Hmmm, OK.”
“See you in the lobby in twenty minutes.”
“All right, Dad!” she says, muffled by the walls, but obviously irritated.
The hotel doesn’t serve breakfast this early, so I go and sit by the swimming pool, in the courtyard, surrounded by little palm trees. The sun is barely up, but it’s not cool. Later it will be humid as hell. A cleaner walks past, holding a mop and bucket.
“Good morning, senhor,” she says.
“Good morning.”
“You’re up early.”
“I’m getting the boat to Marajó.”
“Have you been before?”
“Once, a long time ago.”
“It never changes.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Look.” She points at the pool.
A yellow bird with black wings and black-ringed eyes is hopping towards the pool. It opens its wings and flies, dips momentarily into the water, then rests on the side, shaking its wings, before taking another dip.
“They come here every morning. Ei, amarelinho, you love your chlorine bath, don’t you?”
The bird looks at her and cocks its head. Another bird, just like it, flies down and also takes a bath. The cleaner reaches into her pocket and pulls out a bag of seeds. She scatters them on the paving stones.
“So that’s the reason they come.”
She laughs. “They started coming for the pool, but they returned for the food. Have a good time in Marajó, senhor.”
The ferry to Marajó has two types of tickets: air-conditioned and open-air. I spot some gringos heading straight for the air-conditioned section, on the top floor of the boat, but Bia and I stay outside in the heat, for the better view. We drink small cups of strong coffee and sit on plastic seats near the side. The sky is pale and golden, the clouds clearing, the sun getting ready to make us sweat.
“It’s amazing that you can’t see the other side,” she says. “It’s like an ocean.”
We stand up, leaving our bags on our seats, and lean on the edge of the deck, looking out. The same river as thirty years ago, but Bia didn’t exist back then. I can barely remember what it was like to be childless. I have the memories, but I don’t remember how it felt. As though I were always aware of Bia and Hannah, waiting around the corner, for me to become their father.
“Everything’s bigger over here,” I say. “The river, the jungle, the land, the portions—”
“The people.”
“The people?”
“They seem to take up more space and time.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“In London nobody has time for anyone.”
I step back from the side of the boat and look at my daughter. There’s an air of unhappiness around her, in the downward planes of her face. Probably my fault.
“Even at your age?”
“At any age,” she says a bit abruptly. She reaches into the pocket of her khaki shorts and pulls out a pack of Hollywoods, takes one out, and lights it.
“You’re going to university soon and it’s not going to be like that.”
“It’s going to be a lot of work.”
“Work is good for you. My relatives don’t work enough. They’re idle.”
“They’re happy.”
“Brazilians are good at performing happiness. It’s what they do.”
“Why did you leave, honestly?”
“It’s in the blood.”
“What do you mean?”
“Most of my ancestors weren’t from Brazil. They were from Portugal, Lebanon, Italy. All that moving around the world—it’s hard to stop.”
Bia nods, her face shiny and bright. Her tanned arm, leaning against the rail, is thin and muscled. It has become unbearably humid. We sit down. She reads a book—John Updike’s Brazil, which is terrible, but I don’t tell her—while I flick through her copy of Lonely Planet Brazil. Seven hundred pages of places that I will never visit.
“Bom dia.”
I look up. It’s one of the gringos I had seen scurrying off to the air-conditioned lounge—a man about my age, with gray hair, shorts, T-shirt, and a bumbag. He leans over us, one foot hiked up on a chair. His white face is red from the heat.
“Bom dia,” I say.
But he’s not a gringo—just one of those strange southerners who doesn’t seem Brazilian. Not just in his German pallor, but in his foreign manners. “Did you know that there’s a room with air-conditioning up there?” he says.
“I’m aware of that.”
“You two should sit there, not down here.”
“Should I?”
“I was surprised that you and your daughter stayed down here, so I thought I’d come and tell you about it.”
“We chose to sit here.”
I look around at the other people on the open deck. Their bags of produce. Their dark, work-worn faces.
“You’ll be more comfortable up there.”
“We want to sit here and enjoy the view. Thanks, but we’re going to stay here.”
His eyebrows come closer together. Against his pink skin, they’re as gray as dust. His mouth hangs open, perhaps in embarrassment or just because of the heat. “OK, no worries.” He slopes back to his first-class lounge on the top floor, walking with an exaggerated casualness, as though our exchange had been nothing.
“What was that?” says Bia.
“Some idiot gaúcho.”
“What’s a gaúcho?”
“A southerner. Descended from Germans—you see how they look like gringos? But in all my years in London, I’ve never seen a gringo behave like that. He’s one hundred percent Brazilian, that filho da puta.”
“What the hell did he say?”
“He thinks we should sit upstairs with the other white people.”
“Are you kidding?”
How did he come to the decision, one hour into the trip, to come and rescue us from the commoners? The man obviously felt a kinship with me, not so much for my whiteness—I’m hardly white—but for all those other signifiers: Ray-Ban sunglasses, deck shoes, an iPhone in my shirt pocket, and a daughter who speaks to me in English.
“What a cock,” she says.
Unfortunately, I do have one thing in common with the gaúchos: a taste for rustic boutique guesthouses. We’re staying at the same one, Pousada Laranja in Salvaterra. They send a minibus to collect us from the ferry so we don’t have to contend with the local taxis and the same smell of jungle and chicken shit from thirty years ago. But this is beside the point. There is a small piece of paper in my pocket and on it is the address of Luana’s pousada, which she emailed to me. I wrote it down, despite having already memorized it, as though putting it on paper made it more real. Casa da Luana, number 10 on Rua Décima Segunda. I looked it up online, but it didn’t have a website yet—just two reviews on TripAdvisor, and a photo of a buffet breakfast. I found Salvaterra and its numerical street names on a map: Rua Primeira, Rua Segunda, Rua
Terceira, Rua Quarta, and so on. She is on the twelfth road and is expecting me later today. Last night, in Belém, I told Bia that I was going to see an old friend in Marajó. She seemed unbothered. Perhaps she was relieved not to be invited or maybe she was just too tipsy, after several rounds of beer, to point out that her old dad didn’t have any old friends, anywhere.
Pousada Laranja is right on the beach: a cluster of pastel orange huts surrounding a small pool, should guests tire of swimming in the river. Our van delivers us just before noon. The poor gaúcho, sitting at the back of the bus, seems the most eager to get off, to run away from me. For lunch, Bia and I eat an excellent fish stew, right on the sand. There was no pousada here in 1985. Some things have changed, but not the river—it’s just as endless and gently murky. I remember swimming out, from this same beach, leaving Papai and Thiago far behind me. Floating on my back, thinking of the past, but I had no past back then. Somehow I’m the same person, in crummier packaging, accompanied by this lovely girl, whom I created.
Another thing that hasn’t changed: it’s burningly hot. I can already see red patches appearing on Bia’s face.
“You should only wear factor thirty,” I say as a waiter starts to clear our plates from the table on the beach.
“You shud on-lee wear fack-tor tirty,” says Bia, mimicking my accent. “OK, I’m not twelve.”
“When you’re my age, you’ll be thanking me because you’ll still be a beautiful lady and not a wrinkled old prune.”
“I’ll never be your age.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. Just wishful thinking.” She takes a sip from her coconut. “Dad, are you OK?”
“Yes, why?”
“Your mouth is twitching.”
I touch my mouth. A small throb. “I’m just tired from all the traveling. I should probably get going.”
