Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

  “We are friends. This is what everyone thinks. Smile, Dr. Kinch. Smile and nod as if we are having a good time. I relied on your information, and you assured me the rocket could not fly.”

  Don’t worry. No problem, Kinch had promised. And Hiroshi had promised Kasahara. And Kasahara had promised the ambassador, who in turn promised the prime minister.

  “Shit happens. When I find out more, I’ll tell you, okay?”

  Industrial secrets were Hiroshi’s stock—in—trade, political espionage mere hobby. Still, he knew Kinch was in over his head. The CIA had betrayed Hiroshi’s trust. Now Kinch treated him like an agent of the Third World country Japan was fast becoming.

  Hiroshi took a deep breath. By the green—and—white striped pavilion, a receiving line had formed. Through the open wall of the blue—and—white buffet tent, he saw Edson Carvalho on his hands and knees, vomiting. A maid was throwing towels on the mess. Caterers scurried in with buckets. Typical Brazilian confusion.

  He looked away. “Was the announcement true? Has it actually reached orbit?”

  “Don’t be a pain in the ass, Hirohito. I told you. When I get word, I’ll pass it on.”

  Kinch started to leave. Hiroshi, expression still impassive, grabbed his arm. Like most Americans, Kinch was all potato—fed muscle. But Hiroshi knew how to squeeze. The American sucked in a breath. His shoulders straightened. His pond—scum eyes grew wide.

  Hiroshi drove his thumb into the nerve at Kinch’s elbow. He dug until he sensed the taller man’s knees going weak. Then he smiled politely. “That would please me very much, Dr. Kinch.”

  * * *

  If Dolores hadn’t been standing beside Roger, she would never have seen it happen. The American military attaché walked smartly down the outside of the receiving line. His eyes cut neither left nor right. His toffee—brown face never changed expression. His regulation Marine jaw did not slacken. “Can the goddamned color commentary,” he muttered. Then he smiled and, as if that had been his sole objective, he stopped to exchange pleasantries with the Latvians.

  Roger leaned over her shoulder. “I think I fucked up.”

  Too late for replies. Three steps. She smiled and put out her hand to the German cultural attaché, who mouthed compliments on her retrospective at the Whitney. Another step brought her to the pale and trembling CEO of Siemens. Next in line was the German ambassador, who had been trained to mask surprise.

  “Congratulations,” she told him.

  A perfunctory bow. The hand shot forward. “We are pleased to be working with our new Brazilian partners.” But he had not been trained well enough. Cool in the tent, yet his forehead and palm were damp.

  Two more steps. Edson Carvalho should have been beside his president. The mysterious farmer was there, instead. Had Ana found a lover at this late and middle—aged date? A shame. Dolores had fought so hard to win her her freedom.

  He was older than she had thought. Anyone’s poor country uncle in a borrowed suit. His gaze floated to the tent’s ceiling. His grip was awkward, as if he had never quite learned how to shake hands.

  Dolores told him, “I don’t think I caught your name.”

  His middle finger traced a clandestine line down her palm. At the unexpected intimacy, electricity arced through her. Her thigh muscles turned to water. She realized, to her chagrin, that she was blushing.

  “Dolores Sims,” he said. He aimed dark eyes at her. “You are a painter.”

  He drew her close, loomed over, and engulfed her. His body heat was suffocating; his breath tickled her cheek. “You must tell me about painting sometime.” His whisper probed her ear like a tongue. “We can talk together. I would like to—”

  “We must not hold up the receiving line.”

  At Ana’s voice, his grip loosened. Dolores jerked free. God. Why hadn’t she shoved him away? Damn it, she just stood there and—

  “Dolores?” Ana said. “So good to see you again.”

  Stood there and let him.

  She saw the man pull Roger close, and heard him whisper intimately, “Roger Lintenberg?”

  “Dolores?” Ana. Puzzled now.

  Dolores tore her attention free. “Yes, Ana. Good to see you, too. It’s been too long. Why don’t we get together? Just the two of us.”

  Could Ana sense her desperation? Did they pass loneliness, palm to palm? “We can watch a movie and eat popcorn and then call Jaje. How is the university treating her?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t have time for her mother.” Bitterness flirted with Ana’s mouth. “Strange she hasn’t called you, though. Oh, by the way, I heard you suffered a loss.” She leaned forward and hissed, “You’ll miss him.”

  Dolores shook her head.

  A grip so tight it bruised. “You will. No matter how you hated him. Like me, you now have no one.”

  Ana coolly moved her attentions to Roger.

  The line, inevitable as the tide, pushed Dolores onward. She floated amid a vast sea of guests. The current swept her into the food pavilion, among the whirl pooled cliques and the gossipy eddies. There she drifted, drowning.

  A tug on her sleeve brought her head around. Roger asked, “Hey. Couldn’t help but overhear. Who died?”

  You’ll miss him.

  “Just my husband,” she said.

  Crossfire

  ... as you Americans say, we are along only for the ride.

  So it was—

  I’m not finished, Michael. Come on, Mr. Ambassador. Surely you can see the implications of Brazil and Germany together—

  No, I cannot see. It was a business decision of Siemens. Germany merely gave permiss—

  Your ambassador, sir, was on that podium, right next to Bonfim. I believe his presence constitutes support. We went through this before, didn’t we, with Iraq? Isn’t this sort of a déjà vu?

  May I please to finish a—

  German companies got rich selling arms to Saddam Hussein, and all the while ...

  We have not sold—

  ... the German government sat there with its eyes—

  Let me explain! This was a bidding situation! Your own press reported on the agreement. I must tell you, I resent—

  Resent all you want, sir.

  Hey, Bob. Bob! You really believe Brazil’s a threat to the security of the United States?

  We sat here and saw them do the impossible again, Michael. Didn’t it scare you? Power like that in some banana republic dictator’s hands should scare the pants off every American.

  HE WAS THERE in the dark of the downstairs bedroom, on the stained hospital mattress. He was trapped in the bottles on the nightstand and in the menthol reek of the air.

  Dolores flung the window open to the breeze, to the torpid scent of flowering ginger.

  “I didn’t hear you come in.” The maid stood in the doorway, string bag in hand, sweater on, ready to leave for the day. Her eyes were wide with hero-worship. “Did you see her? A presidente?”

  “We shook hands. She was very busy.”

  “Oh, don’t I know! I watched everything on television. The Globo anchor sounded like he was announcing a Botafogo game. Going up going up going up—go-o-o-oal!” She laughed, red-faced with excitement. “And then the rocket went into the cloud and he got very quiet and Irací from three houses down—their television is broken—went to crossing herself, and Savio, her sixteen-year-old, gets the remote control and turns to CNN and Irací is screaming at him, and right at that moment it comes out of the cloud—such a thing of beauty, neh? The CNN announcer stops talking. I would think there is something wrong with the sound, but I can hear people yelling in the background. He looks upset—the American announcer I mean—as if he has lost his notes.” A pause in the verbal deluge. Then, defensively, “But it was wonderful, neh? In spite of the Americans later saying it was impossible. So the rocket flame goes
out, so what? Brazilians always make do.”

  Dolores nodded absently.

  “Presidente Ana looks tired. She is not taking care of herself. When you see her again, tell her, will you, that garlic is good for the blood. Tell her to drink maracujá juice with plenty of sugar. She will sleep like a baby.”

  “I will.”

  “And you! You must close the window. It is getting cold.”

  “Not cold enough.” In the garden the guava tree gathered twilight under its branches like a hen gathering chicks. Amid the black-green leaves of a coffee tree white flowers gleamed like Christmas lights. “It’s never, ever cold enough.”

  “Ah.” The maid smiled knowingly. “Saudades.”

  A keen nostalgia that only the Portuguese language dares name. It was a long time ago, and she couldn’t quite remember, but it seemed that she loved the memory of Virginia far more than she had ever loved Harry. You’ll miss him. Dolores’s voice was decisive. “I miss the snow.”

  “It snows in the mountains in Santa Catarina. Maybe this winter you can go there.”

  “Maybe this winter I can go home.”

  A long-suffering sigh from the shadows. How many times had they held this conversation?

  “Clean this mess up tomorrow.” Dolores gestured angrily toward the armoire, toward the bed. “Give it all away. Give it to the Spiritist church. They’ll pick it up.”

  “His clothes? The bed? Everything?”

  The house wasn’t empty yet. Freezing in the room, and it would never be cold enough. Dolores walked out, pushing her way past the maid. “Everything,” she said.

  * * *

  Edson woke with a start. His stomach burned. His head pounded. He was lying on a straw bed in an unfamiliar room. Gilberto Muller stood by the window, looking mildly annoyed. The agent took a syringe from his jacket pocket. “Roll up your sleeve, sir.”

  “Where am I?”

  “The Villanova safe house. You remember the one. East of town. Please, sir. If you don’t mind, roll up your sleeve.”

  The corners of the room were in shadow. An indigo sky peered through the window. Dusk or dawn? “Is it still Tuesday?”

  The agent came closer, turned on a bedside lamp. The brilliance drove splinters of pain into Edson’s eyes.

  “Still Tuesday, sir.”

  Squinting, Edson rolled up his cuff. “What happened after the reception?”

  “You were incoherent for a while, and then you slept, sir.”

  Too many gaps in his memory lately—a life become defective tape. “Time’s a whore, Muller.”

  “Yes, sir. I quite understand.”

  The needle stung. The vitamin B-complex ached exquisitely going in. Muller sat at the edge of the bed and waited. He waited until Edson began to gulp for air. Until his muscles spasmed and his skin slicked with sweat. Until he was sober.

  “Better, sir?”

  Edson couldn’t move his arm without groaning. “You fuck sheep, Muller. All you dim-witted gauchos fuck sheep.”

  “Thank you, sir. Are you feeling well enough to talk to the president?”

  “No. Send the mulatta cunt in.”

  Muller got up. Rusted springs squealed. He returned with two wooden chairs. Two. These days she never went anyplace without him.

  “So. Edson. How are you feeling?” The president’s drowsy contralto preceded her. She bent down and peered into his face. “I can invite several hundred guests over for dinner. We can watch you puke.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t lie,” she said pleasantly. “You’re not sorry at all. When God was kind enough to answer my prayers, he was cruel enough to give me you.”

  She sat. More footsteps. The creak of worn floorboards. Edson swallowed hard as Freitas came up and stood over Ana, his belly pressed to the back of her chair. When he stroked her shoulder, Ana gently pushed his hand away.

  Freitas’s jaw knotted, his fists clenched. Muller started to rise, to do what? Surely he wouldn’t dare stop him.

  But petulance overcame fury. “Everyone was impressed today. Didn’t you see that?” One last glare, and Freitas crossed to the window. In the dusk, beyond a stand of bamboo, a rooster crowed a death omen.

  “Oh, everyone was certainly impressed.” Edson sat up and patted his pockets in vain search of a mint. “We surprised the Americans mute, terrified the Germans, and awed the Japanese—things not easy to do. I warned you, Ana, that engineering team would make a mess of things. Let’s send them up in one of their own rockets. We’ll make bets on how far above five thousand feet they can get. And while we’re at it, let’s put those damned astronauts in with them. We told them not to turn on the antigravity before they were out of sight of the cameras, didn’t we? Didn’t we? Now look what has happened. We should shoot them all for cowards when they land.”

  Freitas said, “Tell him.”

  An instinct that must have taken years to develop, one that she had learned first from her husband: Ana ducked her head between her shoulders to shield her face. “They want someone else.”

  Edson sighed. “Who?”

  Freitas’s gaze caressed the curve of Edson’s cheek with detached, generic longing. “We invite Dr. Lizette Andrade de Morais.”

  * * *

  Light was dying. The clay road was a glimmering path into limbo.

  You think there’s more? Harry had asked her.

  More what?

  More than life. He’d been afraid of death. Afraid of Dolores. Afraid of everything.

  At the corner, in the pool of light near the streetlamp, an empty Coke can lay. Nestled among the dun weeds, its crimson was shocking. Dolores hurried her stride, and she didn’t look back. The Company had been trying to contact her for days.

  Somewhere in the darkness cowbells clanked. Birds chirped vespers. Past the shuttered corner store. Ten more steps, and she halted.

  She didn’t know what to do, but she knew how she would paint it: cobalt for the night; jet black, straight from the tube, for the bridge and the waiting figure.

  She should have brought her gun. The silhouette was small, but lithe. If she ran, he’d catch her. A knife, to make it look like a robbery? A garotte? They were used to working that way. Or a silenced .22, an American finger on the trigger, a Brazilian bullet? All because Ana Maria refused to talk.

  She took a breath and walked forward purposefully. Not as Harry would have. Not afraid.

  The shadow shifted its weight. “Dolores? That you?”

  She recognized the voice and her heart sank. She reached him. Stood beside him in the gloom of the bridge.

  Roger said, “I gave the taxi driver your address, and he left me here. I couldn’t see any houses. The store’s closed. There wasn’t anyone around to ask. Christ, it’s dark out here. I thought I’d have to spend the night in the road.”

  “Ponto final do ônibus, Roger.” He knew that. And if she hadn’t come to him, he would have come to her later, tiptoeing through the silence of the house.

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Our mailing address. The last bus stop in Quedas Brancas. We pick up our letters at the store.”

  No “we” anymore, she remembered. Just her. Marriage, like lying, was a difficult habit to break.

  “Oh. I get it. Anyway, you haven’t picked up the Coke can. You’re blowing their minds.”

  “I know what they want.” She walked away fast, her back tensed for the shock of the bullet.

  “Hey!”

  At the edge of the bridge she halted. In the darkness below, a rainy-season stream hissed over rocks.

  “Can I call you Dee? They tell me your American friends do.”

  “I don’t have any American friends.”

  “Hey, look. I’m just an engineer, okay? I work for NASA, but I’m on loan. The Company’s not so bad. really. They knew y
ou were tired of the spook types.” A pause. “You mad?”

  She sat on the cement guardrail and looked down the road to the streetlight. Her vision blurred. Not tears, but the foggy aftermath of fear. She heard him sit beside her.

  “Wow. Look at the stars. You can’t see stars like this in the States. Not even in the desert. Brazil looks right into the fucking Milky Way.”

  The reverence in his voice made her lift her head. Her eyes traced the dazzling stars in the Southern Cross.

  “It’s in orbit,” he told her. “Satellites tracked it. You know? When I was in college I used to go out to the black mailbox and watch lights zip around Area 51. When I graduated, and NASA hired me, they sent me right smack inside Dreamland. But all I found there was good human engineering.”

  She heard him shift his weight. Heard him sigh.

  “God, Dee. Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to see a UFO. I finally saw one this morning. And it had a Brazilian flag on its fat white butt.”

  She got to her feet. “I’m going in.”

  He reached for her. “Listen.” Strong fingers clamped her wrist. “Just listen, okay? A year and a half ago Brazil patents room-temperature superconductivity. Fourteen months ago they come up with cheap fusion, and payoff their foreign debt. Then Bonfim tells us to get fucked just about the time the CIA starts hearing rumors that she’s developing orbital weapons. And today a Brazilian rocket makes it into space without benefit of any goddamned technology we know. This is scary.”

  “Brazil? Scary? Isn’t that a punch line?”

  His grip hurt. “ ‘Order and Progress’ used to be the punch line, too. But people are disappearing, Dee. Over a hundred Brazilians and counting. Everything’s starting to unravel, just like fucking Argentina in the 70’s. What’s Bonfim doing? She’s your friend, damn it. What is she, a saint or some kind of nutcase? You’re the only one she’ll talk to. Come on. You’re still an American, aren’t you?”

  Slate gray skies. Cold humid scent. The dreamlike fall of white. It was so long ago she couldn’t be sure what part was memory, and what imagination. “Leave me alone, Roger.”