by Ellen Levy
The sky seemed bluer glimpsed from the bottom of the suburban canyon, a sharp shard wedged between rooftops. Barra had none of the charm of the old city or outlying neighborhoods where narrow single-story houses were painted indigo, emerald, yellow, flamingo pink, extending uninterrupted in a band along narrow cobbled streets. Barra was starched, dentifricial, blazingly white.
The boarding house where I had an appointment that morning was about a block from the beach, and anomalous among the high rises: a squat, two-story house with thick, stucco walls painted pink.
The man who let me in was large—broad and tall, plump and thick chested—and my first impression was of an aging American beatnik. He greeted me wearing knee-length rumpled khaki shorts, flip-flop sandals, and a Hawaiian-print shirt that strained at the buttons to contain his ample Buddha belly. He was in robust middle age: white bearded, florid faced. He had a massive head and wore his shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest; gray and white hairs curlicued out from his open collar. He had peculiarly delicate, pale legs, slender as a woman’s and turnip colored.
—Miss Levy, he said in English, swinging the door wide. Come in, come in. He gestured me into the cool dark foyer.
My sandals slapped against the tiles as I stepped inside.
He closed the door, clasped his broad hands over mine.
—I’m Senhor Oliveira, he said, reverting to Portuguese. It was you I spoke to on the phone the other day?
—Yes, I said, and smiled. It’s cool in here, I said. It’s nice.
He patted the wall affectionately.
—Oh, yes, he said. These walls are a foot thick. Come, I’ll show you the house.
He was delighted to find I was American and eager, at first, to talk. As we toured the kitchen and the sitting room with its mismatched furnishings and old Zenith TV, Oliveira explained that he was a sculptor. He’d begun letting rooms a few years ago for extra income. Only to girls though, he said. He told me repeatedly that he liked Americans.
He asked what I was doing in Salvador, and I told him about my grant. He seemed delighted by this and told me that he’d been in Italy years ago on a Ford Foundation grant to study sculpting. Now, however, he could not travel; he had his boarding house to run.
As he showed me around the courtyard, the cool, dark kitchen, Oliveira’s mood seemed to deflate. The place—or perhaps I—appeared unable to hold his interest, and after five minutes of strained conversation about philanthropy and Ford (who was, I pointed out unthinkingly, among the first to ravage the Amazon, for rubber to equip his automobiles), Oliveira showed me upstairs and into a large room with windows open to the street, where he turned me over to two young boarders—leaving me to them.
—This is Miss Levy, Oliveira said, ushering me inside. She’s considering moving in with us.
I glanced around the room, embarrassed to openly appraise it. The place was like a barracks or a YMCA dorm room, absent of personal decoration. I remember wood floors, pale stucco walls, wooden shutters, windows open to air. I smiled insincerely.
—Tudo bem, said a pretty girl by the mirror. She spoke without interest, without turning to look at me. She was tying her hair up in a handkerchief; looking in the mirror, she raised her chin a bit and cocked her head to the left, then right.
A second, plainer girl watched me from the bed.
—Tudo bom, I said.
Oliveira—evidently satisfied—pulled the door closed behind him to give us privacy, and for a moment we listened to the slap of his sandals against the cement stairs as he descended.
—I’m Nelci, the plain girl said, extending a hand from where she sat on the bed. It was a formal gesture I’d not often seen among kids our age. I reached for her hand and shook it. This is Isa, she said.
—Prazer, I said, Pleasure. I’m Ellen.
—Helen? The girl with the handkerchief said, still facing the mirror.
—No, I said, Ellen.
—Tá bonita, seu nome, Nelci said. It’s pretty, your name.
I shrugged. I hated my name, Midwestern plain as a picket fence, but I appreciated the gesture. I nodded at the room and said, Tá bonita. The place is cute.
—It’s not bad, Nelci said. You can look around if you want.
—Thanks, I said. But there wasn’t much to see: the room was large and unprivate, with four plain beds, an armoire, several dressers.
—É horrível, Isa said. It’s horrible. Isa had the diva’s impeccable sense of timing. Everything she said sent a rustle of drama into the room, as if birds had been released.
But the room didn’t seem horrible to me, just plain, impersonal, borrowed, and sad because of that. I felt awkward standing by the bed with my arms hanging, so I walked over to the window and leaned out over the courtyard, though there was nothing really to see there, just green branches of the trees behind the house and the cement tiles in the courtyard below.
—You’re not from here, Nel said, evidently noting my accent.
—No, I turned my back to the window; the sun felt heavy on my shoulders. I’m from the United States.
Isa turned from the mirror to look at me for the first time.
—Americana? she smiled; her eyes widened with a look I would later see her turn on handsome men and expensive cars.
—Sou, I said. I am.
Isa crossed her arms under her breasts and studied me. É feio, né, teu nome? Naõ acha? Your name’s kind of ugly, don’t you think?
—Isa, Nel hissed.
—Well it is, Isa said. She stared at me. I’ll call you Elena, all right? É um nome bem Bahiana, viu? It’s a very Bahian name. She had a radiant smile.
Isa was a dead ringer for the Brazilian actress Sonia Braga, Brazil’s Grace Kelly. She had almond-shaped eyes that tilted up at the corners, purple black hair that fell in thick waves past delicate shoulders. Her cheekbones were high, her skin flawlessly smooth. Even I, who wasn’t used to appraising other girls’ bodies, could see hers was terrific.
—Come, Nelci said, patting the bed next to her. Sit here.
I crossed to the bed and sat on its edge, facing Nel.
—So what brought you to Salvador? she asked.
I told them about my grant, how the foundation had sent me here by mistake, how I planned to study at the Federal University for a term then go north, as soon as I could arrange it, to Manaus in the heart of the Amazon rain forest.
I rattled off my lines with ease, pleased with myself for these few phrases I’d memorized. It felt good to be able to converse.
—Are you both from here? I asked.
—I am, Isa said with evident distaste. She yanked off the handkerchief that held her hair and dropped it on the dresser, then she gathered the glossy black mass of hair off her neck and began to twist it in a chignon, pinning it up, bobby pins held between her lips.
—I’m from Feira de Santana, Nelci said. In the interior.
It was the first time I’d heard the countryside west of the coast referred to as the interior. It seemed a poetic phrase, a romantic place to come from—the interior—but Nel didn’t think so. She said she couldn’t wait to leave.
Nelci, like me, had come to study economics at the Federal University, where the term would begin in a few weeks’ time. It would be her second year there. She was clearly very bright and had won some sort of scholarship to cover her expenses while in school.
—I used to have an apartment in Amaralina, Nelci said, referring to a neighborhood farther down the beach, but my father cut me off, so I live here. It’s only temporary though, until we find another place.
—Yeah, I nodded. Me too.
From the first, I liked Nelci better. Nel was the intellectual, the sidekick, the one with plans and brains, but Isa was the one who dazzled.
Isa pulled off her shirt and reached behind her back to unclasp her bra then stood before the bureau mirror, naked to the waist in the cool dim bedroom, the lush plum-colored aureoles of her breasts bunched like unopened blossoms in the chill of the room. She he
ld up to herself a chartreuse bikini top, then one of neon-orange terry cloth, admiring herself in the mirror as she held up first one outfit, then another, while Nelci and I sat on the bed discussing the university faculty.
I could see from the corner of my eye the cinnamon curve of Isa’s breasts, her smooth belly. I could see the shapely bands of muscle as she arched her naked back. And I could see just as plainly that she was watching me to see if I was watching her. She stood dangling a bikini top in her hand. Then she smiled and turned away to fit herself into the suit.
—Por favor, Elena, she said, holding out to me the strings of her bikini. I stood awkwardly to tie them for her.
There are certain people you know only by their first name, know them well and still that name is all you have and is enough. As if they were disburdened of paternity and history, some completely modern thing, as if they moved without relation to a past, to parents, family, could not be traced. Isa was like that.
Later, familiarity would make her ugly to me, but I try to remember what it was like to see her that first time. In the boarding house that morning. The thick walls of the upstairs room, where the young women slept in narrow beds without screens or any sort of privacy. The cool plank floor of the room. The windows open to the tree tops and the sound of squirrel monkeys in the trees. The pale tint of the walls. Outside, the blaze of January light filling the street like a river.
Black violet hair. Skin the color of burnt sugar. Something about her made me think of white summer sheets, of palm oil, cravo e canela, clove and cinnamon.
—O Gordo is horrible, Isa said, calling the landlord by their private name for him, The Fat.
—He’s not so bad, Nel told me.
—He seemed nice, I said.
—He seems nice enough now, Isa said, but if you live here, you’ll see. Isa spoke of O Gordo with the eager condescension that young women lavish on old men who court them and the young who don’t merit serious consideration—men whose attentions are discussed as if they were an insult but which are nonetheless entered in the ledger of self worth. Isa’s tone suggested that O Gordo had taken an undue interest in his tenants at one time but had failed to interest them.
Isa pulled an enormous array of clothes from the armoire and set them at the foot of the bed beside us.
—Did I tell you, Nel, that I found cockroaches in the refrigerator on Saturday?
—It’s not so bad, Nel assured me.
Isa pulled out a denim skirt and wide lavender belt from the pile of clothes.
—What do you think? she asked, holding up the outfit.
Nel shrugged. It’s cute.
—You think? Isa looked back at the mirror. She bit her lip.
—Where are you staying now? Nel asked me.
—The Bahia do Sol, I said.
—That’s expensive, Isa said. She looked up from the mirror.
—It’s only temporary, I said. Until I find a place.
I told them about the places I’d seen and that I had an appointment at eleven to see an apartment on Rua João Pondé.
—That’s just up the street, Isa said. We can show you when we go out.
—You can afford a place of your own? Nelci asked.
—It’s just a kitchenette. Not too expensive.
—I wish I could get a place of my own, Nel said. She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She sighed.
—How much do they want? Isa asked. Her voice was sharp and it occurred to me that she was annoyed that I, not she, was the center of attention. Clearly this was not often the case.
—The rent is 80,000 cruzeiros, I said. This was roughly $40 dollars per month. By U.S. standards, this was tremendously cheap, and I could easily accommodate it with my grant (some $15,000, in addition to a few thousand for travel, as I recall), but in Salvador that year the average annual income was CR 200,000—about $100 American dollars—and $40 was a small fortune.
Nelci whistled through her teeth in admiration.
—You can afford that? Isa asked. She looked at me as if she thought I might be lying.
—When they give me my bolsa, I can.
—It’s your money, Isa said, matter-of-factly. They should give it to you. She pulled her hair out of its bobby pins and ran a brush through it, hard, over and over and over and over.
—They will, I said, trying to sound sure.
I admired Isa’s certitude. Certainty was not a thing I possessed. Perhaps because I’d never had to fight for my place, I’d never had to figure out what—if anything—was mine, and how to claim it.
—If you can afford a place of your own, Nel asked, why would you want to live here?
—I don’t know anyone in Salvador, I said. I thought maybe I’d meet people at a boarding house.
—You know us, Isa said, her eyes met mine.
I understood that this was an invitation, though I wasn’t sure what I’d been invited to.
—If you can get your own apartment, Nelci said, with feeling, sitting up on her elbows, Don’t live here.
In the single photograph I have of Nel—taken perhaps six months after we met, a head shot, too close and slightly out of focus—she wears a yellow bikini top. You can’t tell from the shot, which shows only her head and shoulders, that she is tall and lanky, perhaps five feet six. Though shapely, she considers herself too thin; magra is the word she uses, its very sound suggesting strain, onomatopoetic as gaunt is.
I can see in the photograph that Nel had all it took to be pretty; I can see that she almost is: she has fine high cheekbones, intelligent brown eyes. But I can see from the photo that she is not: her gaze is unfocused; her lips pursed in a prissy way, as if she were holding back some unkind phrase. There is something off-putting about her face. Perhaps it is her almost handsome jaw, her broad shoulders drawn back, her direct gaze, the absence of tenderness in those eyes turned on the camera. The refusal to smile. The anger evident in that photograph. Evident even now.
But I did not notice that anger the day we met. Perhaps it wasn’t there yet.
As Nelci and I sat conversing on the bed that morning, Isa dressing and undressing beside us, I saw only Nel’s kind face and the hope—still in her then—that things would only get better.
—Didn’t I tell you, said Nelci, sitting up. Didn’t I say something was going to happen today, Isa? I felt it. Didn’t I? I felt it.
By the time the three of us stepped out the front door of the boarding house into the bright mid-morning light, I knew I wouldn’t live there, though I wanted to. I didn’t want to live alone; I never had, and the idea frightened me, but I was embarrassed to admit this, as if feeling were a fault.
Nelci and Isa were heading to the port to catch a bus to visit Isa’s family, but they offered to walk me to Rua João Pondé first, to the apartment building where I had my appointment. Out on the street, Isa adopted a carefully blank expression, slipping on dark glasses, like a movie star.
I was aware, as we walked up Avenida Princesa Isabel, as I would often be aware in her company, of the calculations she was making: whether she was the prettiest woman present, who had money or power, what she wore and bared.
As we walked, Isa spoke of her family in Salvador, her mother and sisters, and I got the impression that her mother was worried about her. She wanted Isa to live at home, worried about her daughter living by herself in the city. She wanted Isa to marry, to have security, children, but Isa disdained her mother’s ambitions. Children would ruin her figure, she said, stretch her belly, leave marks, make her breasts hang. She liked to be admired by men, did not want to limit herself to one. She wanted to find a handsome man to support her, but she wanted to be free to choose and choose again. She did not want to be tied down.
Contrary to popular mythology, in our experience men were the ones who wanted to marry. Young women hardly ever did. Nel, Isa, and I had all been asked by the time we met; we had all declined our offers. Marriage seemed a poor prize to us, an end of possibility. It seemed the amorou
s equivalent of being a company man: signing on for a lifetime of labor in the hope of retiring with a fat pension. We were twenty-one then, and couldn’t imagine making it to the lofty age of thirty. We didn’t want security; we wanted to live, to know the world, to have adventures and our independence. We wanted to make something of ourselves.
The kitchenette I visited after the boarding house that morning was small but new and very clean. A single room with bright white walls and a tiny kitchen and bath. Two large sliding windows took up half of one wall and overlooked a window box of shriveled stems that once bore flowers, and the quiet curve of the street. Across the street was a similar apartment building, less new, behind which rose thick green trees.
The landlord was a small, pink man; he watched me as I looked around. He walked me into the closet-sized kitchen, showed me the brand-new faucet fixtures in the bath. He wore a white cotton shirt; he looked like a priest or a schoolteacher. Mild, shy, suspicious.
I told him about my grant, and about myself—that I was a student, an American. I told him that I’d like to rent the place, that I hoped to be departing for the Amazon soon, but that I would pay the rent even then, unless he found another tenant. He seemed pleased but said nonetheless that he’d require a countersignator for my lease. I told him I’d ask my fellowship sponsors.
Downstairs the landlord introduced me to the doorman as the new tenant. The doorman was slender, handsome, young, with a long ebony face and an easygoing smile. He wore black slacks with a neat crease, a short-sleeved white shirt, a tie, and a name tag that read Egberto. He sat behind a desk inside the glass entrance, and when he stood to greet me I saw that he was very tall, mantis-like, all limbs; it seemed remarkable that he could be contained behind that tiny desk, a feat of origami, careful folds. We exchanged smiles, names, shook hands; I liked him immediately. I hoped I would be, as the landlord said, the new tenant.
When I arrived at the bank in Barra the next morning, I was relieved to step inside, to pull back the heavy glass doors and slip into the cool, comforting, air-conditioned patter, the familiar retort of typists coming to the end of a line, the smell of cash and carpeting, the bright surfaces of polished marble and glass coffee tables, solid mahogany desks, the beautiful clerks with powder-blue eye shadow and red lips, to immerse myself in that reassuring sameness, the emotional détente declared by money.
