Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

“Not only no, but fuck no.”

  McNatt sighed. “Dr. Lintenberg ...”

  “No. Sorry, I’m tired.”

  “Have you relayed any classified information the CIA has given you to the Brazilian government?”

  “No. Can we stop now?”

  “Do you believe in spirit communication?”

  Roger’s heart knocked his chest wall once, hard. He listened for sounds behind him: the threading of a silencer, the well—oiled click of an automatic’s slide. Through the doorway, the broad blue sky was empty.

  “Do you believe in spirit communication?”

  The sun on the prairie was too bright. Roger’s eyes watered. “No.”

  “Do you intend to give the Brazilian government any classified information?”

  “No.”

  A pause, then, “That’s it.” The voice sounded resigned. McNatt unhooked the strap from Roger’s chest.

  “Did I pass?”

  McNatt took off the blood pressure cuff, folded it.

  “Hey. I passed, right?”

  “Get up,” the major said..

  His knees wouldn’t lock. Roger dropped into the chair again. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take you back to Dolores Sims’s house.”

  Kinch gave Roger a glass of water. “Just relax. We’re taking you back now.”

  His throat was tight. The water wouldn’t go down. “Look. Okay? It doesn’t matter what the test showed. Please. I’m telling you the truth. Swear to God.”

  McNatt helped him to his feet. Two steps past the door, Roger wobbled. His knees gave way. He sat down hard in the dirt.

  “See you around,” Kinch said to the other three agents. He waved, got in his car, and drove off, the Chrysler raising a rooster tail of dust.

  When Kinch was gone, McNatt asked Roger if he could get up.

  “Yeah.” But three steps later, Roger collapsed. McNatt, Jerry, and the interrogator walked over to the car and waited. Jerry was humming “The Love Boat.”

  If he could just get his legs to work, Roger would run. Still, they’d shoot him before he got twenty yards. The middle of Brazil, and there weren’t any goddamned trees.

  “You ready now?” McNatt asked. He opened the door.

  Roger felt absurdly proud that he made it up and to the car. That he didn’t beg for mercy. Because for each second of the forty long minutes it took go drive to Dolores Sims’s house, he believed he was about to die.

  * * *

  “You comfortable?” The uniformed woman standing in the cell’s doorway was short and broad and warm sienna brown. She was holding a box in her arms. “Are you listening? I asked if you were comfortable.”

  “The door to the entranceway’s locked,” Dolores said.

  A spark of amusement in that impassive face. “But you’re under arrest.”

  “I’m being ignored.”

  “They didn’t feed you.” The woman put the cardboard box on the table, and for the first time Dolores saw the uniform’s insignia: police captain. “Mother of Christ. My officers didn’t feed you. Together they have the sense of a turd.” She wiped her huge hands down her pants legs. “Muller, too. I told him you needed some things. The ass said he’d pack your toothbrush and a dress. Chicken all right?”

  The captain left. Dolores got up from the cot and peered into the box. Faded, shapeless jeans. Smudged sweatshirts so worn by washing that they felt like flannel. She touched her painting clothes piece by soft, aged piece. Held a cotton shirt to her face to breathe the smells of lye soap and linseed oil. Memory nearly sent her to her knees.

  A discreet cough. The captain was in the doorway with another box. “I’m Madalena.”

  The name didn’t suit her. It was a willowy, delicate name. “Captain.”

  The smile ignited slowly and faded, light without warmth, like a defective match. “Yes. Captain Madalena Correa Prado, Domestic Violence Division.” She put the carton she carried beside the first. “Muller tells me you’re a patriot. That if it were known what you were doing for us, we’d raise a statue in your honor.”

  “I’m hungry,” Dolores said.

  “I sent a boy to the restaurant. I’ll bring you a beer.” She walked out of the cell.

  Dolores pulled the second box close and looked into it. Everything that mattered was there: a plush stuffed frog from Jack. The note her agent sent after the Chicago Museum of Fine Art’s acquisition: Now you’re too big to spank. Her first invitation to a State dinner, and across it Ana’s scrawl: Wear shoes!

  She heard Madalena walk in, and kept her head down, stroking the purple frog. The frog wore a silly, hedonistic grin. How many years ago? They had been outside, she remembered, in the shade of the orange tree. Harry, as he had been for a decade, dying on the hospital bed within. The smell of dust and citrus. The buzzsaw of cicadas. Jack spreading his jeaned thighs, forcing her palm over his erection. I grin like that frog when you pet me. Her whispering We’re too old for this even as her resistance surrendered.

  Footsteps of Madalena’s exit. Another entrance. The smell of oil paint.

  Dolores looked up. Madalena had set two recent paintings against the wall and was studying them. What would she call the newest: “Futile Attempt to Capture Winter and An Old Woman’s Rage?” The brown and white didn’t look cold, merely dingy; the red was more candy cane than blood.

  “I like this one,” Madalena said, stroking an edge of the second with a blunt brown finger. Then she shrugged. “But I don’t know what it means.”

  Two shapes, two colors: beige desert cupping cobalt heavens, like the bowl of the National Congress building. Dolores painted it in a single frenzied afternoon, and only vague impressions remained. What the hell did it mean? Something about the masculine sky, the feminine earth. Oh, no. Had she really? What banal crap.

  “Do you want it?”

  Surprise altered Madalena’s face so much that she looked like another woman. “Your paintings are expensive. I couldn’t—”

  “Yes or no. If you don’t want it, I’ll regesso the canvas.”

  “Why? It’s so pretty.”

  “Too romantic.”

  Madalena, brow furrowed, was searching the canvas for romance when a barefoot urchin arrived with the package of chicken. “The news people!”

  Absently, the captain rummaged in her pants pocket, came up with a handful of hard candies. “Here,” she offered without taking her gaze from the painting.

  The boy took the candy. He didn’t leave. “Hundreds of news people! And they asked me questions, but I didn’t answer. I could hardly get to the restaurant.”

  “I paid for salad, too.”

  “I dropped it when they shoved me.”

  Madalena searched her pockets again, came up with a palmful of varied aluminum coins. “The change from the chicken and this. No more.” And she shooed him away.

  The chicken was wrapped in pink paper, spotted translucent with grease, fragrant with lemon and garlic. Dolores untied the string and pulled a roasted leg free of its socket, loosening an avalanche of toasted mandioca. She took a sip of the beer.

  “You’re friends with the president.” Madalena was sorting through the box of mementos.

  “Those are my things. Put them down.”

  A brief, wry glance. “What’s left to hide? Tell me about Presidente Ana.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at my color. And don’t I have breasts? Ana is a particular hero of mine.”

  “She owes everything to me. Didn’t Muller tell you?”

  “I know what the reporters are saying. Dirty money to her political campaign. Everyone in bed with the CIA.” Madalena didn’t sound impressed. “And there are rumors around Operações Sigilosas about you and a murder.”

  Dolores walked out of the cell, picked up the vacant chair from the
guard station, and brought it back. She sat down and began on the chicken and stuffing in earnest. “You believe everything you hear?”

  Madalena sat on Dolores’s cot, leafed through a picture album. She shrugged.

  “Edson Carvalho will eventually have to kill me. I know too much.”

  Madalena flipped the page.

  “The CIA will leak more dirty little stories about Ana to the press.”

  Madalena snorted. “What do I care? Ô.” With the tip of her forefinger, she pulled down her lower eyelid. “So Presidente Ana is shrewd. Everyone has secrets. Especially women have secrets. What matters is that I’m a police captain. What matters is that I don’t have to take crap off anyone anymore. You think I care she took money? That she was involved in murder? She can fuck pigs at high noon at the Palace of Itamaraty if she wants.”

  Madalena went back to the photo album: Dolores to the chicken. When Dolores glanced at the captain again, the woman was looking at an 8x10 black and white photo. The disappointment in her face was wrenching.

  They’d been so young, Ana and Paulo and Dolores and Harry. The men sat shoulder to shoulder in the first dim—witted, cheerful phase of inebriation. On Paulo’s right sat Ana, a tense smile on her face, her eyes panicked.

  There are stages to drunks, like stages to grief. Ana pled from the picture: save me from what comes next.

  Of course. This photo. This was the painting she’d given to the captain—parched beige soil and thieving blue sky. The earth wasn’t cupping herself to receive; she was recoiling.

  The time we went to Rio together. That was the way Harry remembered it. He looked at the photo album a great deal, especially in the last year, but had never seen Ana’s eyes. He’d reminisce, and he would cry—never for Ana, who had been terrified for so long; not even for Paulo, who from that photo—instant on would have three months to live. Harry couldn’t be tender; he was simply maudlin.

  Madalena had seen enough brutes, enough cowed women. She knew. The captain ran a forefinger up and down Paulo’s handsome, grinning face, gently rubbing him out.

  “He died three months after that photo was taken.”

  Madalena’s head rose, her expression under control.

  “The car crash,” Dolores said. “On BR—351.”

  “History.”

  “No. Ana prettied him up. I knew them when he whored around. When he gave her the clap. When he beat her. He was drunk and doing nearly two hundred kilometers an hour when that tire blew. It took him five hard hours to die. The asshole deserved every minute of it.”

  What was it the captain had said about secrets? Women held them best. For every William Casey who went to his deathbed silenced by patriotism, a thousand women died silenced by disgrace.

  “Give me that picture!” Dolores snatched the book from Madalena’s hands and finally, after forty years, tore Harry into shreds. From the ruins her own face fell intact, a study in calm gray.

  That’s why she’d had to kill Paulo. Because Ana couldn’t. Turn the painting upside down, and it was dirty sky and blue eternal sea. Harry spat on Dolores, shit and pissed, and had not altered her one drop. He’d envied her vastness, feared her tranquility. Married a lifetime, he never explored more than her shallows.

  “I hear he died of Chagas.”

  Dolores sat, photo confetti in her lap, her fingers plucking at Harry’s corpse. “So?”

  A sniff that wasn’t quite laughter. A somber shake of the head. “You never recover from Chagas once the worms start eating the heart. A slow, terrible death. If someone put him out of misery with a pillow, is that murder? I don’t care, and I don’t want to know.” Madalena picked up her painting and left the room.

  Dolores looked down at Ana’s single frightened eye. Did you hear that? She thinks I killed Harry. But I’ve always been so goddamned self—sacrificing. If I had to set someone free, of course it would be you.

  She brushed the tatters of the photograph from her lap. They landed on the floor willy—nilly, pieces hidden, pieces revealed. Because it’s easier, sometimes even men take disgrace to the grave. Sometimes for women silence isn’t compliance, but complicity. She had killed Harry—that was her secret. He died with each and every rendezvous in the garden: her hands on Jack, his on her. Something pale as death at the window. Yet she never warned Jack they should move out of sight. Never told him to stop.

  Press Presidential Conference

  Thank you all for coming. I will read a brief statement first. I have, ah, been informed by intelligence sources that, at 3:02 A.M. today, Eastern Standard Time, the Brazilian government placed a nuclear device in orbit—Wait. Please. I’ll answer your questions in a moment—an allegation that President Bonfim vigorously denies. I have spoken with the members of the U.N. Security Council, and we are in agreement that Brazil must, without delay, open up its secret military base at Cabeceiras to U.N. inspectors. President Bonfim has refused.

  Therefore, we are issuing an ultimatum. As time is of the essence, this ultimatum will expire four days hence. midnight, Brasília time. Now I’ll, um, take questions. Only a few. Sandy?

  Are you saying the United States is in imminent peril?

  No. Intelligence is pretty sure that the Brazilians need more hardware up there, uh, before the satellite becomes viable.

  What is its orbit, Mr. President?

  Ah ... classified.

  But does the orbit send it over the U.S.?

  That’s three, Sandy. Bob?

  Are we talking air strikes? Invasion?

  Yes.

  Which? Air—Mr. President?

  Thank you. No. No more. Thank you.

  ROGER PERCHED on the car fender to wait. Cabeceiras reminded him of Nevada: the big lilac sky, the breathless dry air, that rim of gold at the horizon. Now that the sun had set, the wind was turning chill. Anxious, he rapped out a fast finger rhythm against the Zeiss binoculars while the percussion of an escola de samba thumped from the radio.

  Sounds of footsteps in the dry grass. In 1990 by the black mailbox, Roger had been rousted by Wackenhut security. No one would scare him away, not this time. He turned.

  It was a farmer, probably the owner of the frame house whose lights Roger could see in the distance. The man bobbed his head in greeting. “Doctor.” The title wasn’t a good guess—merely generic respect. “Read the sign?” He leaned on the sagging wooden gate. There was just enough of the day’s afterglow to pick out the seamed face; enough of a smile to see the gap of a missing incisor.

  “Government thinks they’ll scare us with anthrax. I got cows. They don’t scare me much. They usually come on weekends. Tourists.” He took a pouch from his shirt pocket and deftly rolled a palha cigarette. Struck a match. “Today’s Monday. Lots of spies come through here. I can tell.” He dropped the conversational ball at Roger’s feet.

  A pause, and Roger picked it up. “How?”

  Quick grin. “Foreigners don’t like music.”

  The samba ended and another began. “Aaaah—maaah—zooonha,” the escola sang exuberantly, accompanied by what sounded like a band of kitchen utensils.

  “And if they like it, they have no rhythm.”

  Roger stopped tapping the binoculars.

  “Every night the Chinese set up a tent a kilometer or so south of here. The British park a van north. They have telephoto lenses, and the Chinese have big guns. Helicopters fly over once in a while. I suppose the helicopters are ours. I like Americans.” The farmer pointed his cigarette at Roger’s chest. “NASA. Florida. Lots of ocean.”

  Roger slid off the fender, walked over, and put his elbows on the gate. “Houston.”

  “Eh?”

  “I work at NASA in Houston, Texas.”

  “Why? Don’t you know the ocean’s magic? Florida has ocean on three sides.”

  “Well, there’s sort of an ocean near Houston, too. Dr
y as this place is, you guys must be shit out of luck.”

  The farmer laughed. “Juscelino knew better,” he said, as if he and the long—dead president were best buddies. “He knew lights come out of the ground here. And spirits speak.”

  Roger’s pulse quickened. He wondered if his Portuguese had suddenly failed. “Lights?”

  The farmer touched a fingertip to the side of his eye. “Flying saucers. Turn off your radio and come. No need to lock your car. I’ll show you.”

  During the walk to the house, Roger wanted to talk about the saucers. He never had the chance. The farmer announced that his name was Flavio, that the boss would put another chicken on for dinner—no, no, he insisted on it—and that they were keeping the kids for his daughter who worked in the city—no one farmed anymore, although to be truthful, there wasn’t much farming to be done in the desert, and he’d been thinking lately about dates—Moroccan dates.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well—”

  “Here we are. It’s not much. Humble people; a humble house.” They walked up the steps, through the front door. “It’s nice that you learned Portuguese, even though you talk it funny. The Chinese squeak like cockroaches. The Brits mumble out their assholes. Like I said, Americans are easy to get along with.”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “Wait here. I’ll take care of it.” Flavio walked into a neighboring lighted doorway, leaving Roger standing in the dark living room. Uncomfortable, Roger looked around. Framed Sacred Heart on the wall next to a glow—in—the—dark cross. Woven rug, swaybacked sofa. Couple of straight—backed chairs. Clean, but excruciatingly cheap. All but the new Mitsubishi television. On its gleaming top sat something odd. It looked like the television had sprouted.

  A child screeched in the back of the house.

  “Guest for dinner,” he heard Flavio say.

  From the bright kitchen a woman’s reply went on and on, higher and higher, louder and louder.

  Then Flavio said reverently, “He’s from Florida.”

  Roger closed his eyes. Aw, jeez.

  Kids’ shouts. A resonant bang that shook the thin walls. Neither grandparent went to check.