Cradle of Splendor

by Patricia Anthony

  He stole into the living room. The candle smell was stronger here. From where he stood, he could see that the front door’s chain was still fastened, the dead bolt securely locked. The window, overlooking a sheer drop of four stories, let in a sluggish night breeze.

  Onward. Down the short hall into the dining room. The jackhammer beat of his heart. An air—thieving tightness in his chest. An oppressive silence, as if the air was too thick for sound. Walls, floor were a dim, flickering orange.

  Gun leading, he crept around another corner to the kitchen, where yellow light tongued the walls. A single black candle sat atop the counter, guttering in the draft.

  Hiroshi’s sweat turned to ice. His eyes teared. He forgot how heroes in movies acted. He waved the pistol wildly into each corner. Nothing. No one.

  Vatapá and beer churned. He backed out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the bathroom, where a cloying odor brought him to a halt. He turned on the light.

  The toilet was clotted with blood.

  * * *

  Captain Madalena awakened Dolores before dawn and brought her to the interrogation room where Muller was waiting. He pushed a paper across the tabletop. “Memorize the confession.” And the demands started again.

  This time the discussion was subdued. They drank coffee and even laughed a little. They ate guava paste and white cheese and bread. Madalena leaned against the closed door, her arms folded, and watched.

  “Why not?” Muller sounded so reasonable. “You can’t expect to go back to your house. The press would never leave you alone. Neither would the CIA. To both countries you are now a traitor. Do you think you could return to the States without facing a congressional subcommittee? Or, now that you have been arrested, we would be able to free you from jail?”

  Odd how bureaucracies murdered. They rarely stabbed, they stung: the death of a thousand paper cuts.

  He sat back in his chair. “You’ve been a spy for over twenty years. You know how the game is played. Don’t tell me you have become an idealist now. Or an American patriot.”

  She stopped herself before the automatic “Of course not.” Answers were never that easy. The tawny sweeps of Montana; the autumn seclusion of small—town New England; the Smokies rising to the morning like humpbacked whales from the sea. Was love of country why she had gone into espionage? Or the titillation of having a secret she could keep from Harry?

  When Dolores didn’t answer, he told her, “I have been ordered not to let you leave this room without recording the videotape.”

  At the edge of her vision Dolores saw Madalena’s arms drop. Dolores reduced Muller’s face to strong, downturned pencil strokes, then to planes of light and shadow. The room simplified into space and form.

  “Do you understand what I am saying?” Muller asked.

  The ceiling’s fluorescents washed the shelf of Muller’s cheekbones in bluish light, and threw shadows of ash. The wall behind him was oyster—beige. Muller needed a cigarette, a single contrasting dot of crimson.

  A sigh. “I am a reasonable man. Edson Carvalho is not. And when he tells me to come back with a videotaped confession, I will do whatever it takes. There is nothing personal, neh?”

  Captain Madalena tugged fretfully on her ear, took a step forward. She looked at Muller, then at Dolores.

  Muller didn’t turn. “Leave the room, Captain.”

  A hesitation. Madalena walked across the floor noiselessly, shut the door behind her.

  “Dolores?” Muller asked.

  Sometimes Dolores felt if she tried hard enough, she could walk out of the three—dimensional world into one whose depths were harmless illusion.

  “You must hate Ana Maria a great deal, if you would destroy Brazil to hurt her.”

  Destroy Brazil? Hate Ana? No. Dolores’s emotions didn’t run that deep. “You’re asking me to stop painting.”

  “You can still paint. Don’t be silly.”

  “Paint where?”

  A neat fold of confusion between Muller’s eyebrows. She fought the urge to reach out and feel of it. He would think the gesture affectionate, or worse, seductive. “Here. We will bring you anything you want.”

  Her work would flatten into rectangles: walls and ceilings and floors. “I can’t.”

  “I will help you through it. It’s a short statement, really. We can do as many takes as you ...”

  “I can’t paint here.”

  He let go his breath in a puh of exasperation. “Of course you can.”

  “I can’t paint in here.”

  “You just haven’t tried it. Great works of art have been done in prison.” Poor Muller, trying so hard. His forehead knotted again. “All I can think of is Mein Kampf. I’m sure there are more. Didn’t Dostoyevsky ... ah! I know! Solzhenitsyn! And maybe Pasternak. The Russians do well in custody, don’t they? You could do a series of paintings like—”

  “I have to be able to see.”

  “Dolores. Edson wants a statement.”

  “You named writers. I’m a painter. I have to see!”

  His voice rose. “I will get you a window!”

  “The same view, day after day—”

  “Dolores. Dolores. I don’t trust you. You know that. But I’ve always liked you just the same. If you do not cooperate, Edson would have me kill you, and then what?”

  She shrugged.

  He shook his head. His fingertips patted a melancholy rhythm against the tabletop. “Edson is not himself lately. He drinks too much. His mind wanders. Please. Just help me, and we will work something out.”

  Dolores opened her mouth. The words that emerged surprised her. “If I can’t paint, I’ll die.”

  * * *

  Hiroshi shuffled down the wide aisle of the mercado, string bag in hand. His head was lowered so as not to draw attention. He looked neither right nor left, walking like a conscientious wife.

  He listened for footsteps behind him. Under the tin roof, sound carried: laughter, the bang of wood against metal, the whine of a butcher’s saw on bone. The air was heavy with the smell of raw meat and fish and coffee.

  He stopped where flounder basked wide—eyed on an ice beach. Looking into the stainless steel sides of the bin, he indexed the hazy reflections. Nothing.

  He walked on, confused by the household chore. He was accustomed to meals being handed to him, ready—made: cafe plate lunches; upscale restaurant dinners. Taguchi always served fruit for breakfast, but now the fruit was all soft rot.

  He passed scalloped fruta—do—conde. Pudgy finger bananas. Red candy oranges. A box of carambola, like a gathering of translucent orange stars. What would Taguchi buy? How much? What would she pay? Knowing he must have something fresh to eat, he stopped to purchase half a kilo of grape—purple jabuticaba. This time he could feel someone watching. He whirled. Nothing seemed out of place.

  “You all right?” the stall keeper asked.

  “Fine, thank you. I am fine.” But Hiroshi’s hand shook as he accepted his change.

  Because of the candle left in his kitchen that morning, he knew that he would be followed. And not by Japanese.

  The CIA would play first. Then kill him.

  Holding the string bag tight, he hurried past a fringe of skinned, dangling rabbits.

  Kengo’s doing. He had told the CIA what Hiroshi said. How he had made light of them. Now they would prove that they were not so stale in tradecraft, after all.

  Stalls of baskets. Of pottery. Of cookware. Suddenly Hiroshi noticed he was alone. The lighting in this aisle was dim, the stalls too narrow.

  A cold adrenaline—rush of alarm. He took refuge inside the next doorway. “Hello?”

  Whispery flutters from caged birds.

  “Hello? Please? I would like to know how much is a parrot.”

  Odors of seed and shit. In its bamboo house an azulão, feathers
a supernatural black, chirped sweetly. An owl, no larger than a sparrow, blinked somber yellow eyes.

  The scrape of shoe against concrete.

  Hiroshi spun. “Hello?”

  “Hello. Hello. Hello.” A scarlet macaw cocked its head, spat out a sunflower husk.

  “Please? Who is there?”

  A dry snap, a rustle. The huge parrot spread its wings, bobbed its head, and anxiously paced its perch.

  Hiroshi would leave. Push past whoever was there. They wouldn’t dare stop him. Wouldn’t be crazy enough to shoot him. Or would they?

  The azulão twittered and hopped like a jolly demon. The macaw abruptly craned its neck, peered over the neighboring cages. “Hello.”

  He would make a run for his car. Then what? Did he dare put the key into the ignition?

  Beyond the stall the sound of something small, something fleshy, hitting the floor. The macaw agitatedly began to preen.

  Hiroshi grabbed the hooked wooden pole used to raise and lower the cages. He should have brought his pistol. He was a diplomat, wasn’t he? The police wouldn’t search him. Next time, then. Yes. If there were a next time, he would bring his gun.

  He put down his bag and stepped quietly into the aisle. Two meters away a boy sat eating a mango, a knife in his hand, a sagüi astride his shoulder. The bandit—masked monkey held a guava in its dainty black fingers. A second guava lay, fallen, at the boy’s feet. Aloof as a Siamese cat, the sagüi bit into the fruit’s pink meat.

  Then the boy looked up. His chestnut hair was filthy. His clothes were ragged. His eyes were a hot blue.

  Hiroshi’s thighs weakened. He had forgotten Piehl.

  The anxiety that had rumbled all morning in his bowels eased. Everything would be all right now. The KGB would know how to protect him.

  “Are you ready to discuss terms?” Hiroshi asked.

  In one fluid motion, the boy was up and striding quickly down the aisle. Hiroshi put down the pole and followed, afraid he would walk too slow and lose him, afraid he would walk too fast and be obvious. They strode past reaching hands of green bananas, past tomatoes and okra and flats of quail eggs. Then Piehl’s son stopped, bent, and put the monkey down. He swayed, clapped. In a bell—like tenor he began singing Odilé, Odilá.

  The sagüi tugged on passing trouser legs, its other hand begging for coins.

  Hiroshi spotted the father. Piehl was sitting at a counter, back to the wall, hat pulled low, a cafezinho in his hand. So professional, Hiroshi thought in admiration. The KGB agent looked as if he had not bathed in a week. Piehl grinned an inane grin. Flashed artificially discolored teeth. “Ô, Doctor.” The slow, dim—witted cadence of the caipira. A nod toward his son. “Ô.” As if all that could be said about singing and dance was contained in that one syllable.

  Piehl’s son had gathered a crowd. He spun, slapping the rhythm against his bare belly. His open shirt flapped. Exuberant samba darkened, became a deadly, high—kicking capoeira. The monkey gathered coins in a pile, hugged the five and ten—cruzeiro bills to its cream—colored chest.

  Hiroshi sat down at the counter, leaving a stool’s distance between himself and Piehl. He could play the professional, too. He bought his own cafezinho and waited.

  When the barkeep walked back toward the center of the U—shaped counter, he heard Piehl say, “I found out.”

  Expression impassive, Hiroshi pulled the small white cup close. He poured sugar into the dark roast coffee until it became syrup.

  “I cannot work for you.”

  At first Hiroshi thought that he had not heard correctly. Then, for a comforting moment, he was certain that the words meant something else.

  “But I believe in the courtesy of a yes or no.”

  Hiroshi fumbled for the child—sized spoon. Into his cup he whispered, “Please. I need your assistance.”

  “Ask in the Valley.”

  “The Valley?”

  “The president’s friend is a medium.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  A man in a maroon—smeared butcher’s apron sat at the opposite bend of the counter’s U, mumbled something, gestured. The barkeep nodded, poured cashew fruit juice and cachaça into a blender. The motor ground and whined.

  Piehl said, “Blood gods.”

  What was Piehl talking about? The butcher? Or did he know about the black—red gore in the bathroom? Hiroshi was paralyzed by fear. He couldn’t go on alone; it was too late to go back. “I don’t understand. Please.”

  Piehl’s son halted the whirling dervish of the capoeira and, slapping an upbeat rhythm on his chest, began singing, in a clear falsetto, “Vem Morena” the song for Brazil’s most famous “brown girl,” Ana Maria Bonfim.

  Two dozen spectators, two dozen reactions. Half were singing along. A sad—faced business—suited woman clutched her toddler’s hand. A man in a knit shirt played matchbox percussion. A teenage girl laughed and danced, clinking a ballpoint pen rhythm against an empty Coke bottle. The sagüi climbed a very ancient, very black woman’s skirt, and her laugh echoed to the rafters.

  “I will pay you anything. Please.”

  “Afraid.” Piehl abruptly slapped the flat of his hand on the counter, boomed out a laugh. The song ended. The KGB agent hoisted himself to his feet.

  As he limped past Hiroshi he muttered, “Quimbanda.”

  * * *

  How long had she been in the darkness? Dolores wasn’t sure. Madalena had confiscated her watch; Muller had stolen the light. She sat in a corner of the interrogation room, staring at the glowing strip that lined the underside of the door.

  She always wondered what it would be like to be blind. Painting was so splendid a gift, in fact, that she feared God would demand her sight as payment. But lately creation had become drudgery, and she didn’t know why.

  Early in her career, she became bored with the representational; now she wearied of the abstract. What was left but blindness? At least that would give her an excuse not to work.

  Then what? Pray that her hearing would be taken to save her from chatter about children and grandchildren, cooking and fashion? Dear God, how she disliked tedium, and the squawling of infants.

  Dolores smiled when she realized that, aside from wanting to paint again, she probably most wanted to die.

  I don’t know you anymore! The enfeebled Harry had complained.

  Dolores long ago accepted that she was two—dimensional. Odd how Harry had problems with that. Still, she had gestured toward a stack of paintings being readied for shipment to the States. There I am, stark naked. What else do you want to know?

  As Harry often did in the years just prior to his death, he burst into tears. We never talk.

  Of course not. If she could talk, why would she have to paint? Harry never discussed things, either. He lectured. “Why the United States Needs a Third Party” or “Why Brazilians Can’t Make Decent Wine” or “Teal Is Green, Not Blue.” After a few years of marriage, she gave up trying to exchange views with her art critic vintner political analyst.

  There had been no last words between them, although she had had the opportunity when the respirator finally shut him up. Now she drew Harry on the blackboard of her imagination, and told him, “I’m in jail. But you’re dead.”

  Guffaws became chortles. Chortles softened to chuckles. Merriment went the way of all things, even of Harry. Dolores sat, glum. And when she figured out the one thing that would save her from videotaping the confession, she knelt and fumbled her way through the darkness to the table. She ran her hand up the steel leg to the metal—cased Formica corner, and froze in indecision.

  Don’t be a girl. Isn’t that what she had said to Ana, and Ana had said to her, for courage? Suck it up and be a woman. Still, thinking about what she was about to do made her wince.

  So don’t think. That’s what Ana would have told her. Dolores brought h
er head down on the table corner fast.

  A crack. A white—hot explosion of pain. When she could catch her breath, she hissed, “Shit, shit, shit.”

  A feverish throb above her right eye. A rush of sticky warmth. “Shit,” she said, and aimed her forehead at the table again.

  She misjudged, hit mouth—first. Impact came too soon, too hard. Her bottom teeth dug into the meat of her lower lip. Pain blinded her. Her mouth filled with blood. Spitting, choking, she flung her arm out to grab the chair, knocked it over instead.

  Startled noises in the hall. A clank of keys. The click of a lock. The overhead lights were so bright that Dolores squeezed her eyes shut. Through her split lip, she mumbled, “Get the video recorder,” and received silence in reply.

  Had it worked? Dolores opened her eyes. Muller stood in the doorway, caught between fury and shock. Madalena was frowning in consternation. And the drab room was festive with red.

  C—SPAN, Live Coverage of the Senate

  ... review the situation. Let the president hand over these intelligence reports.

  Time! There’s no time! Nuclear bombs are hanging over our heads. We’ve got to do something! We owe it to the American people.

  Come to order. Chair recognizes the gentleman from New—

  Senator, all I’m saying—

  The Soviets never put arms in space. Well, hell. With what we know about their state of technology, they probably couldn’t. The Brazilians can. Look. If they don’t have anything to hide, they should let the inspectors in.

  Order. New York has the floor.

  All I want to do—

  Imagine nukes in the hands of Perón and his ilk. Nuclear missiles in El Salvador during the 80’s. Think about it. If Bonfim would murder her own people, how do you think she’d treat us?

  Sit down, Senator.

  Well? Answer me.

  Sen—

  Don’t turn away like that. Come back here. Answer my question. If she’d murder her own people, how do you think she’d treat us?

  FRIGHT BROUGHT Roger to a standstill. Two men in ski masks were sitting on Dee’s sofa. At his entrance, they stood. Black tee shirts, high—top Adidas, jeans with pistols in the waistbands. The CIA was back for mind games, and wanted Roger to come out and play.