Ways to Disappear

by Idra Novey

  Those pictures were very misleading, Emma replied. I assure you, she said. But her te juro came out more like joelho, the word for knee.

  They were all fading now on the balcony—her mother’s beloved persimmon trees. Raquel had tried more water and then less but it didn’t seem to matter. Whatever she had given or withheld, the four fruits whose skin had been ripening to a deep orange in her mother’s care had now wilted to a rotting brown.

  Whether they were dying or not, she’d made Marcus promise to keep tending them after she left this morning for Salvador. If they gave up this fast on her mother’s trees, what was next? What if their mother suddenly came home and found them out there, abandoned?

  You need to piss on them, Thiago had told her yesterday at work. He said his grandfather swore by a little female urine for a failing tree. Something about the hormones in a woman’s pee, especially right after she woke up. You should sleep there and piss all over them first thing in the morning, he’d advised her, and though she had yet to squat over the persimmons, his counsel had been helpful, as she’d realized she was not as upset or determined to save them as she had thought.

  She’d at least solved the problem of Emma before heading to Salvador. As Emma was finally going back to Pittsburgh today, Raquel hadn’t told her about her flight this morning. She didn’t want to risk that Emma might stick around. She was certain that her hunch wasn’t like Emma’s. Her mother had been writing about Salvador just before she vanished and hadn’t finished. Even Thiago had agreed that she should go. It’s an awful time for you to be out, he had said, but you need to go and find your old lady. Tell her to get back in her tree, where she belongs.

  With Thiago’s blessing, Raquel had felt fairly at ease until she reached the airport. At her terminal, she started to feel someone watching her. Or she was getting paranoid. To calm herself, she bought two ham-and-cheese salgados, but they only made her thirsty and bloated. In the Thursday paper there’d been a picture of three women piled like chicken parts in a shopping cart, their limbs so brutally mutilated it was hard to tell where one body ended and another began. It was entirely possible that one of Flamenguinho’s men was here now, would stalk her in Salvador until she found her mother and then slaughter them both.

  On the news, when they reported the deaths, all they’d say was that she was Beatriz Yagoda’s daughter. They’d flash an image of her round, ordinary face for a second, maybe two, before going back to her green-eyed, high-cheekboned mother receiving the Jabuti Prize at twenty-nine on TV. And that would be it, her life over. Thiago would go home to his wife and his children and hire someone younger to replace her.

  Raquel squeezed her head between her palms, unsure of what to do, wondering if she should just go back home. But to what? She’d already taken the days off work and spent four hundred reais on her ticket. It was too late to get back her deposit on the hotel. Balancing the expense against her fear, she boarded the plane. Ahead of her in line was a tall bald man with a thick keloid scar across the back of his neck. A knife scar.

  Or just a scar from a fall from a horse. Or out of a car. She ran a hand over her hot face. Her mouth felt so dry it was an effort to swallow. She was going to have to find some way to stop this paranoia. All day long she dealt with union leaders shouting at her. They got right up in her face, threatening to coerce every miner in Brazil to walk out on PetroXM, and she stared them down. She wasn’t going to fall apart now. She just had to focus on the aisles one at a time, on the chubby little girl who had just peered over the top of a seat and then disappeared. Raquel forced herself to concentrate on that seat, on seeing the round face of that girl again. But when she got closer, there was no child in the row. Only a middle-aged woman picking at her cuticles and reading Have You Tasted the Butterflies by Beatriz Yagoda.

  Have You Tasted the Butterflies by the still-missing Beatriz Yagoda joins her other titles on the best-seller list this week—and here is some other wild news for you Yagoda fans. Radio Globo has just received a report that a second writer has taken refuge in the trees of Rio. A young novelist named Vicente Tourinho was last seen scaling a banyan tree in the lovely Jardim de Alá.

  What’s going on with our writers, Brazil? What’s sending them into our city parks and up into the trees?

  Emma hid behind a pillar in the baggage claim. In the past, the sight of her green valise coming toward her amid the dark heaps of luggage had always brought her pleasure. But then she’d never attempted to hide from anyone arriving on the same flight.

  Maybe she’d get lucky and Raquel’s luggage would emerge first.

  But no, there was her green valise now, spitting out from behind the rubber flaps and moving around the carousel toward Raquel, who was staring at it as if she’d just discovered a thick hair growing back on her chin.

  When Raquel reached down and yanked the valise off the carousel, Emma decided she had no choice but to step out sheepishly from behind the post. Before she left, she’d told Marcus where she was headed but asked him not to tell Raquel, not until she had something to report to redeem herself. The night before, she’d made a point of putting her things by the door to make it clear that she was leaving in the morning. And she had left for the airport. If she’d lied about her destination, it was to avoid irritating Raquel further. Traduttore, tradittore—that tired, tortured Italian cliché.

  If only she’d been born a man in Babylon when translators had been celebrated as the makers of new language. Or during the Renaissance, when translation was briefly seen as a pursuit as visionary as writing. She would have been in her element then. During the Renaissance, no translator had to apologize for following her instincts to champion the work of one of the most extraordinary, under-recognized writers of her time.

  The seconds it took to reach Raquel felt like each one had a century folded inside it. Look, Emma said, coming to a stop in front of her. This isn’t what it seems. I know it looks like I followed you here, but honestly—

  You said you were going to finally leave us alone. You said you were going to Pittsburgh. Raquel’s voice was getting shriller with each word.

  I won’t be here long, I swear. I’ll just find Rocha and—

  Rocha? What’s he doing here?

  He came to Salvador yesterday, Emma said. Isn’t that why you’re here?

  I don’t have to tell you why I’m here.

  No, of course not. Emma reached for her green valise but Raquel stuck out her foot to stop the wheels.

  Where’s Rocha staying?

  I don’t know, Emma said. When I find him, I’ll call you.

  Oh, you will. Raquel crossed her arms. And what are you going to do for my mother if you find her? Are you going to pay off her debt? Are you going to protect her from the loan shark you thought was her friend?

  I… Well, I was thinking I might…

  You have no idea. Raquel snorted. Admit it, and you should keep in mind that they’ll kill you same as they would me and Marcus. They won’t care that you’re American.

  I’m aware of that possibility, Emma said, though in truth she was aware of it only the way a person might hear a faint rumble of thunder on a dry day and find its menacing sound exciting without believing there was any real reason to go inside. If you need me for anything, she offered Raquel, I gave the number of my hotel to your brother.

  And with that, she wheeled her bright valise toward the exit and the midday sun waiting outside. By noon, Beatriz had written in her first novel, the heat in Brazil was an animal’s mouth. It would swallow anything to feed itself.

  To: eneufeld@pitt.edu

  Subject: Re: Re: alive?

  Emma, you have to stop this. Are you still upset about what my mother said? I should have defended you, I recognize that, but honestly, I thought it would be easier to just move on and talk about something else. My mother had her first kid at twenty. She doesn’t understand. I won’t let her drive you crazy over the wedding plans, I promise. We don’t even have to do the wedding. We can elope or
wait, whatever. Just call, Emma. These people in Brazil are not your life.

  Emma checked the bolt on the lock. The showerhead in the bathroom was loose, which had increased her anxiety about the door. In her panic, she’d called Marcus and then finally written to Miles with the name of her hotel in case she disappeared.

  The lock on her door felt solid enough, however, and besides the faulty showerhead, the room was fine. The carpet had no stains and there was a welcoming wooden desk in the corner. Wide and sturdy, it was the sort of place where a person might sit and get her thoughts to stop spewing like hot rocks out of a volcano. Emma pulled out the chair and sat down. At first, all she could do was stare at the wall and feel futile, but that was something. Wasn’t the despair of feeling useless central to the modern human condition? Wasn’t that what Don Quijote was all about?

  To shore up what sense of self-regard she had left, she opened her notebook. Perhaps it was time for her alter-haze to speak on the stand.

  Emma collapsed on the first bench in the shade. She’d thought it wouldn’t take more than a morning or two to find where Rocha was lodging, but she’d already gone into fifteen five-star establishments and on every block there were more. Once again, she’d overestimated her grasp of Brazil. Sunburned and hungry, she felt a wave of dizziness and lowered her head between her knees.

  Under the shade of the same banyan tree, a Bahian woman with a deep purple feather in her head wrap was selling fried, steaming mounds of acarajé. Emma could smell the dendê oil, the onions and yucca stewing in the sauce. Some lunch, senhora? the woman asked without looking up.

  Please, Emma said, eyeing the woman’s feather again. It was the black-purple of wet beets, of rubies gleaming in the back of a drawer.

  Is that feather from a shop nearby, by any chance? Emma asked.

  Eh, the woman said. See the hat man behind the Aram Yamí Hotel, over on Santo Antônio Street.

  Emma repeated the name of the hotel and the woman nodded, handing her a plastic-based napkin to accompany her acarajé. Emma took a bite and her eyes bulged at the sudden blaze in her mouth. Everything had an infernal aspect in Salvador. The hot pepper, the heat. Her mouth in flames, she unfolded her map to see where she was. She hadn’t come here to go wandering after feathers.

  Unless she had.

  In any case, there was Santo Antônio, a mere two blocks away.

  The hat man gestured for her to step closer. They were alone in the dim store and Emma wasn’t sure she wanted to get any closer. In his stained undershirt, the hat man was holding out to her what he said were the rare purple feathers of a macaw, but they weren’t really purple at all. They were blood-colored.

  Maybe you prefer the feathers of the jabiru, he said. Do you have a particular hat in mind?

  No, not yet, Emma admitted, and he motioned to the forest of hat stands crowding the back of the store. There was a whole stand of the white fedoras that samba musicians wore, another of the jaunty banana-shaped hats for forró. But also a rack of floppy cotton sun visors and stiff, colorful straw hats with wide, flamboyant rims. Emma didn’t know if she had enough charisma to pull off any of them, but this trip she hadn’t been able to avoid the sun as she had in the past. On other trips, she’d carefully orchestrated her days so she could be inside or in the shade by midday for fear that she’d burn. And she’d been right. Out in the hottest hours now, she could feel on her face and arms how irreparably she was burning.

  From the nearest stand, she picked up a cream-colored hat with a wide brim and put it on. Miles would have found it a ridiculous choice, destined to end up crumpled at the back of their closet with her other impulse buys from Brazil. Behind her, she heard the hat man shuffling closer. She turned to him.

  May I? He slipped a thin dark feather into the band. I don’t get martins that often, he said. They only winter here.

  Emma stepped in front of the grimy mirror on the far wall. The feather was not the one the woman at the acarajé stand had been wearing. This one was longer and had a steely bluish sheen. Between the dark feather and the giant white brim of the hat, she looked like a woman who was slightly off her rocker, or maybe just a woman with a sense of humor, who wasn’t willing to wait for some impossible alignment of the stars to enjoy her life.

  I can pull out some other feathers for you to try. The hat man eyed her, making it clear that he would be happy to pull out a few other things for her as well. But she said the martin was purple enough.

  After settling the bill, she gave a little tilt to the brim and, restored, found her way across the hot street into the lobby of the Aram Yamí Hotel.

  The Aram Yamí suited Roberto Rocha impeccably. Upscale and colonial, it was the sort of hotel in which Alessandro would have gone on about his grandmothers scrubbing the floors of such a place for Rocha’s grandmothers.

  But Alessandro was not here. And in his absence, Rocha had no problem indulging his love of rosewood tables with cabriole legs and the heavy giltwood mirrors in the halls. The voluptuousness of it all enchanted him. Every old object could be a correlative to an injustice if one wanted to see the world that way. But what for? A meticulously carved mahogany settee was still a marvelous settee. Its elegance didn’t have to be tainted by the thought of his grandmother’s staff on their knees, rubbing in the oil to preserve the gleam of the wood.

  Rocha had despised his grandmother, always tinkling her silver service bells and telling him what an odd boy he was, how he had something in his voice that made people nervous.

  His loafers removed, Rocha lowered himself onto the bed. It creaked under his weight. Down the hall, a group of American tourists had begun to natter outside the elevator, making it impossible to take a proper rest. Soon, thankfully, the elevator ferried them away and he was almost asleep when the room phone rang.

  I’m sorry to disturb you, Senhor Roberto, the receptionist said, but we have a woman in the lobby here to see you.

  Is that so? Well, tell her I’ll be right down.

  He slid his loafers on again, lifted his bifocals from the bedside table. It was so like Beatriz to be the one to find him. And on the very day he arrived. Surely he’d be able to shake something out of her—a novella or a handful of new stories. She knew he would respect her privacy, wouldn’t give away her whereabouts to anyone.

  Bing.

  The elevator doors parted and Roberto Rocha summoned his most confident, admiring smile. Where was she? The only woman he spotted in the quiet lobby was a gangly tourist wearing a giant cream-colored hat that gave her something of the air of a flapper. When the woman with the hat got up and started to move in his direction, he thought it must be a coincidence.

  Boa tarde, the woman said. I’m Beatriz’s American translator.

  He made the face he reserved for vinegar. Was it you who just called? Did you just ask reception to ring my room and rouse me from my nap?

  I’m terribly sorry, she said. I can come back later. I was just hoping I could speak to you for a few minutes about Beatriz.

  Is her son here with you as well?

  Marcus? Oh, no, I came alone. The translator blushed under her broad hat. Her Portuguese wasn’t terrible for an American, but she was a nervous girl and too tall. She made him feel absurd, lifting his face to her like a schoolboy, exposing all the rolls of flesh under his chin.

  He took a step back to regain control of the conversation. I presume you’ve spoken with Beatriz.

  Well, no… I—well, are you here to meet with her?

  Of course, Rocha said.

  So she’s definitely here, in Bahia.

  I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose her location, he said.

  Well, perhaps you could relay a message. The translator stepped closer, towering over him again. It’s about her safety. If she wants to leave Brazil, I want her to know I can help her. She could get a residency in Iowa at the International Writing Program there, or I could get her a longer-term teaching job with—

  Because teaching at an American
university, he interrupted, is the pot of gold at the end of every writer’s rainbow?

  I just want to help her get out of danger.

  And into the sanctuary of one of your just American institutions.

  Senhor Roberto, all I want to do is help.

  Oh, I have no doubt, he said. All Americans ever want to do is help. If you’ll excuse me, I’m really quite tired. He gave the translator a nod as he turned away and felt her blanch behind him. For months, Alessandro had been warning him that he was turning into a dried-up lemon of a man. It wouldn’t have killed him to admit that he had no idea where to find Beatriz either, that the day before he’d arrived she’d vanished from the hotel where she’d registered as S. Martins, having persuaded the hotel to give her cash for the remaining nights he’d paid for her to stay there. He’d been furious at such a blatant manipulation of his generosity, and furious at her for making him travel all this way for nothing.

  Although that didn’t give him a reason to be rude to her translator, whose name he’d already forgotten.

  Beatriz had written a curious story once about five brothers who had trouble remembering names, even each other’s. At dinner, to get one another’s attention, they’d throw bits of bread crust or sausage across the table. As grown men, they had trouble staying in love. They’d turn to touch the women beside them in bed and realize they had no memory of what their names were. In middle age, they struggled to recall their own names and had to call their parents for a reminder. However, by then their parents were hard of hearing and couldn’t differentiate among their sons’ voices on the phone. Whoever called, they would reply, Bruno—your name is Bruno, sweetheart. Their sons would then murmur the name to themselves as they buttoned their coats, trying to hold on to it until they got out the door. When they saw one another on the street, they’d shout, It’s me—Bruno! But I’m Bruno, the other would answer. Mother just told me. And the two brothers would stare at each other with—what had Beatriz called it?—the terrifying conviction of lost men.