by Todd Grimson
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Lisa,” Nova said, touched, and he came out of his chair, came over to her and put his hand against her cool cheek, she held his hand tightly and pressed her face against it, closing her eyes. He could have easily improvised something on the theme of how there are strange things, strange powers, phenomena that we sense but cannot pin down … but he said nothing. Wordless, they were in communion.
SEVEN
As Isabel’s first husband had been involved in the music business, and her brother was an executive at Polygram at the present time, she knew plenty of stories about Brazilian musicians, and Lisa had been exposed to enough music through Track that she knew the difference between, say, Caetano Veloso and Jorge Ben. Lisa had been curious enough while in New York to pay attention, and Track loved to tutor her on something new, so she knew enough, and it was still fresh in her mind, to ask plausible questions and be genuinely interested in the answers, as they ate dinner, another of Celina’s Bahian-style dishes, with fish, coconut milk, deridé oil, and hot sauce on the side. Dr. Nova was very liberal with the pimenta, he liked it hot, and he relaxed when he saw Isabel and Lisa getting along.
The night before, Nova had heard from Isabel (who’d been told by Celina) that Lisa had been out until three in the morning with Tavinho Medeiros. Medeiros had at one time been a controversial name in Brazilian politics, Isabel told him. Was this Tavinho related to that branch of the family? he asked. She shrugged, and he took it for a yes.
Tonight Caitlin, perhaps discreetly not wishing to crash the family reunion, had accepted an invitation to dine with some friend up from Sao Paulo, someone she’d met through work. Nova appreciated the evident delicacy of Caitlin’s instincts; tomorrow he’d have to find out if it was true what Lisa had told him, that there was no evidence here of the vine.
Up in the Roraima territory in the wild area where El Dorado had for so long been thought to exist, a vine had been discovered growing in the remains of an ancient village that long ago had been burned to the ground, its inhabitants apparently slaughtered en masse; the vine had also turned up in an abandoned Spanish graveyard and at two other significant sites—one of which, it turned out, was the site of repeated massacres, of Indians by Indians, Indians by conquistadors, and vice versa. The fresh sap of this vine, when ingested in tiny amounts, provided the ingestee with a uniquely powerful experience.
The two volunteers who could talk about it afterward seemed, expressing themselves with difficulty, to believe that they had experienced someone else’s memories, extremely foreign memories … possibly from the bodies who had died at the spot. Three other volunteers had had very different, more decidedly negative experiences. One fellow, a German, had not spoken since and was still being treated with antipsychotics, to no apparent effect. (Naturally, he had signed a waiver beforehand.) The other two had demonstrated signs of terrific torment and screamed and struggled … and then remembered nothing, absolutely nothing of what had gone on in their minds. Otherwise they seemed unimpaired. The ones who remembered the effects also seemed unimpaired, and one of them wanted to try it again.
The Japanese component of Universo’s research and development unit was greatly interested in the possible refinement of this substance. Dr. Nova wondered (crudely, he thought, but it was his instinctive response) if their interest had anything to do with ancestor worship and the like. The notion of a synthetic drug with which one could dare experience some jumbled portion of a mind from out of the past, however incoherent or unsettling this might turn out to be—well, the Japanese were very interested, and as a result the lab was well funded, replete with assistants and equipment. The problem now being that there just didn’t seem to be much of the rare corpsevine around, and it didn’t travel well at all. It lost its potency within a few hours of being cut. And it would not, as of yet, take root anywhere other than exactly where it was found.
In other words, there was a multiplicity of variables, and potential commercial gain from this vine was probably nil.
Nevertheless, Nova’s prestige within the company was greatly enhanced. Once again he had found something where no one else had looked.
Tavinho telephoned. Lisa blushed slightly when told he was on the line.
She was a little nervous about having spoken to her father. Though what she had told Dr. Nova was essentially the truth as she knew it, there had been many significant omissions along the way. She had not told him, for instance, about the tattoo that had appeared on her ass while she was in Seattle. Nor had she mentioned how Roy Hardway had become zombie chow. And she had not even been able to imagine telling of her near-constant state of sexual arousal, the swollen ache she felt in her clit. But the conversation had turned out satisfactorily, she felt closer to him than in years, the blood bond was there, and no doubt those details and others really didn’t add much to the picture as a whole.
EIGHT
The pervasive stink had an aspect of sickly sweetness to it, it was a complicated smell, incorporating many other factors within the dominant, deep, earthy odor of shit. Dead flowers, rotting fruit, papaya, mango … Lisa held Tavinho’s hand, glad that she, physically, could pass for a Brazilian. Coming downhill they had passed teenagers listening to loud American rap, some of whom might be numbers runners, any of them might be thieves—Tavinho had told her about the death squads, hired by local businessmen, who cruised the downtown area at night and picked up conspicuous criminal-types or young prostitutes of either sex, at the lowest level, twelve-year-olds, kids without a home … they’d put a bullet through their heads. Almost every morning a few more new corpses were found. The death squads were unofficial, usually ex-military or police, maybe veterans of the years of torture and linha dura (hard-line) repression against whatever could be found (or invented) of the left.
It was a naive, touristy, American thing to do, to want to see the poor, and she was ashamed of her voyeurism, her curiosity, she should be handing out twenty-dollar bills or something, though that too would be patronizing, interfering…. She had hardly visited the rougher areas of East L.A., she had driven through Compton once, as a mistake … in New York, back in film school, she had been in a car with two blacks and her then-girlfriend Sukie, they had driven through areas of Harlem where it looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off; Jerome, the middle-class black from Long Island at the wheel, hadn’t wanted to stop at a red light. They’d all been scared. Here too she and Tavinho got some mean stares, but no one followed them. Tavinho, serene, unhurried, casually spoke of the inflation and the decisions way back in the sixties, under the military, to opt for production but no redistribution, growth for the big companies, tax breaks, while keeping down the minimum wage.
That sound of angry blacks from L.A. promising to kill and fuck, that hard, smacking shuffling hiphop beat. Tavinho and Lisa turned a corner and came upon a group of ten young guys, two ghetto
blasters on the same station—they were smoking dope, using a long bamboo bong. Tavinho greeted them, and one kid with dreadlocks replied to him, Lisa couldn’t follow it, Tavinho answered, and the guy said something else, then grinned a big grin. A couple of the others laughed, one lightly punched his friend in the shoulder. The dreadlocked one wore an unbuttoned bright blue and cerise Hawaiian shirt over his café au lait skin.
“Que bom” Tavinho said, and the kid gave him the peace sign. Lisa found herself smiling, as they went by—the grin was infectious—she gave him the peace sign in return and thought that he had no future at all. Nothing that anyone would consciously want or seek. Dead flowers on a garbage heap. Wasn’t that a line from an ancient song by some punks?
Lisa wondered if anyone was worried yet about the disappearance of Roy Hardway. Were her name and number written down in his house? Oh well. She felt safe here. She should send postcards to Adrian and Christine. For a while now she’d been angry at Christine, holding an unspecified grudge, no doubt unfairly; she couldn’t disentangle why.
Tavinho took her home after a while. Lis
a felt a little bad, but then thought, Why should I? It’s not like we’re in love, and yet … she didn’t want to be mean to him.
She had to let him know she had a date with someone else (Errol). He said, “I don’t get jealous. That machao shit is so old.”
When he pulled up to the gate and stopped the car, she came over to him and they kissed, innocently at first, then harder, tongue to tongue. His hand, under her blouse, located her tender breast.
When she got out of the car, she lingered for a moment, looking at his face, interested in him, not analyzing anything, feeling strangely defenseless, even sad. “Call me tomorrow, OK?”
NINE
Many years ago, at the state university in Sao Paulo, when he’d been a student, Ariel Mendoza had been confused with another Mendoza. They weren’t related and they didn’t resemble each other in the least. But the informant for the security police had pointed out Ariel … and he had been tortured, they wore hoods, he’d never seen their
faces. Eventually they realized he knew nothing of subversive political organizations or mimeographed illegal newsletters, but once having suffered the parrot’s perch, the dragon’s chair, pleading as he had, seeing himself robbed of something dear—it changed him forever. When released, he did not go back to school. He eventually had to find work, but he no longer had ambition, he didn’t care what he did as long as he could be left mostly alone.
He read books. Difficult books. Joyce, Musil, Proust, and Broch. But fiction, always. Once every few months he relieved the recurring minor urge in his mind and belly by visiting a whore. He moved from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, because in Sao Paulo he still ran into some people he knew, and he preferred to be a stranger, without risk. He eventually, after years of various employments, came to work for a detective agency. He was very good at following people without ever being seen, and he didn’t mind waiting for many hours at a time, he was never restless or bored. He was thin, with electrical burn scars he did not want anyone to see. Except, occasionally, a prostitute. If they were disgusted, well, overcoming disgust was part of their job.
He was convinced he had cancer all through his bowels. It was pointless to go to a doctor; he would just go on until it was too late, and then he would die. They had done it to him, the specific introduction of negative energy via a cattle prod. They had actually laughed, it was a joke, as they put it in his ass. It was the worst thing they had done to him, and now, whenever he had diarrhea, or sudden, severe pains in his rectum, it was obvious what had been done. When it hurt, he resorted to heroin. The best painkiller known. They had murdered him, torturing him nine different times—senselessly, the wrong guy—and he had been a dead man ever since.
Ariel Mendoza could interact with people, he was attentive, polite, and, if suffused with an underlying melancholy, might also at times seem warm, with a sense of humor. He was very good at his job. He was the chief operative (or “research associate”) of Oliveires Confidential. Manfredo Oliveires had been a lawyer; when he was disbarred, peripherally implicated in a bribery scandal, he had turned immediately (well, after a vacation during which he and his wife considered what options were available to him) to the detective business, where, with diligence, he had become highly successful. In the last few years, many of the cases involved industrial espionage, and Manfredo had an ex-CIA contact up in the United States, in St. Petersburg, Florida, who supplied him with the latest in electronic gadgetry, from sophisticated bugging equipment to cameras that watched you from inside your TV screen. More and more information, of course, was entered into the computer. But still, in many cases, you needed a man on the street. And here, as Manfredo well realized, Ariel Mendoza was the best.
So when Martinho Vidal called him and asked for someone who could handle a delicate, possibly eccentric affair, Manfredo decided to offer it to Ariel, see if he wanted to deal with this scientist and his whims. It might involve travel, Martinho had said.
Dr. Nova received Ariel courteously, offering him a variety of beverages; Ariel went for iced mate. Nova requested that the maid bring two, and then he began explaining the nature of the proposed quest. He said (in excellent Portuguese) that he had reason to believe there might exist, somewhere in the world, a couch made from an albino jaguar skin. He did not know precisely how old this piece of furniture might be, but his guess was that it had originated in Honduras, Guatemala, or Yucatan. The obvious first focus of inquiries, it would seem, might be antique dealers or museums. Alfredo Nova shrugged.
“If it is findable, I want it found. If it can be purchased, I want to buy it. Any problems you might have with travel vouchers, expenses—you may contact me directly, it’s not necessary, now that we’ve been introduced, to go through Vidal. This is a private matter, nothing to do with Universo. Either here in Rio or when I return to Boa Vista, I can always be reached. Naturally, I’ll expect you to account for your activities and whatever you spend along the way, but I don’t expect you to travel second-class or keep me informed of your every movement. If you find nothing at all, no trace within, say, three weeks, then we’ll reevaluate the situation.”
Ariel had a few questions. He lit a cigarette. No, Dr. Nova knew of no previous owner of this couch. In fact, he said, if Ariel heard of a large albino jaguar skin, perhaps made into a rug, that would be of interest as well. He realized it was an unusual assignment, Nova said.
He introduced Ariel to his daughter when she arrived late in the afternoon. Nova’s affection for her was obvious, even though he was a man of natural reserve. Ariel observed her, unable to meet for more than a moment her burning dark liquescent eyes.
She rattled him a bit, just for an instant, he had no idea why Nova informed her, in English, who Mendoza was, what mission he was about to undertake. Lisa took it all in at once, she must have known about it before. She asked, “Where will he begin?”
“Tegucigalpa,” Ariel said, showing them his English. “Then Mexico City. Or, if you prefer, the other way around.”
“The skin is very old,” Lisa said. “Who knows? It may have been destroyed. But if there’s any story of such a thing, any record …”
“Yes,” Dr. Nova said. “A reference in an old history, anything.”
‘I’ll see what I can find out,” Ariel said, already detached, contemplating the many possible approaches, receiving the advance, in American dollars, lighting another cigarette as he said goodbye and left.
TEN
Lisa was thinking, in the taxicab, about this guy who’d been at the School of Visual Arts with her, two years older, how he’d done this half-hour documentary and sold it to London’s Channel Four. Just like that he’d gotten hot, and the next thing you knew, he had a three-picture deal. She’d heard that since then he’d gotten fucked up. His first feature hadn’t even been released theatrically, instead going direct to video and whatever it could do overseas. Males, though, if someone thought they had talent, tended to get that second and even third chance. If you were a woman, you could find yourself, very quickly, working as an office PA, taking people’s cars to the car wash and shit like that.
She was lucky. The deal with Popcorn had evaporated, it had been a mirage, but she’d been given another break via Jules Brandenberg. She might still get a chance to impose her vision on the world. She wanted to seduce and subvert, jab a needle so irresistibly that they didn’t even realize their illusions were being pricked, inflatable dolls collapsing into sad rubber husks … demonstrating—Tavinho’s phrase—the “metaphysical strangeness of existence.” Was that her wisdom? Was that something she knew well enough to illustrate via the play of colored lights and sound? If she couldn’t really communicate it, maybe she could deceive them, play some tricks, fuck up their heads.
LA. Ripper II was her big chance, if she could pull it off. Tonight, before dinner—which wasn’t until about nine—she’d worked on the
script. The basic premise was the same as in so many of these films: A young woman is stalked by a maniac, we see things mostly from
her point of view; after the others are killed, she’s the only one left. It looks hopeless. Things get worse and worse.
Lisa hadn’t been so preoccupied with the screenplay that she’d been insensible to the disapproval her father and Isabel were trying not to show when they learned that she was going out this time of night. Surely, though, they knew very well that things started late in Rio. It was no big deal.
The Ya Ya Club was in Copacabana, some distance from the beach. When she got out of the cab, she saw some prostitutes; for transvestites, they were very good. She felt brazen—or rather, brave, adventurous—as she used her limited Portuguese to get into the club. Live music, a reggae band.
The lighting was red, sort of a bluish red, glints of purple … it didn’t really change much. She was warm in here; outside it had been cool, there was an evening breeze. If Errol wasn’t here, she’d have one drink and then go. The fucker, if he stood her up. Oh well, it was all material. Her eyes were adjusting to the crimson glow covering everyone, all the bodies, the mouths and eyes, the dark and lighter skin. This pseudoinfernal, easily erotic glow. The energy patterns. If you were stoned, it would be a productive place to hallucinate. All these bodies. She wasn’t frightened, she was OK being here alone. It was cool, ordering a drink at the bar, using the language, putting out cruzados—the caiprinha (lime slices crushed with sugar, cachaca over ice) tasted great. The music … drew her attention. She found herself identifying with the keyboard player’s part, it was simple—the real star was the drummer, with his little accents and offbeats, choking his hi-hat unexpectedly, expressively, once in a while getting around to eloquently smacking the center of the snare.
