Amazons

by Ellen Levy

  According to the Random House dictionary beside me, “Amazon” is a noun that can refer to a river in northern South America, to a race of female warriors, to “a tall, powerful, aggressive woman,” or to “any of several green parrots of the genus Amazona . . . often kept as pets.”

  The Oxford English Dictionary gives the root as Greek—a mazon, meaning “without breast”—in reference to the women warriors’ practice of removing a breast so as to shoot better. Robert Graves maintains that the term more likely derives from an Armenian word meaning moon women (“since the priestesses of the moon goddess on the South-eastern shore of the Black Sea bore arms, as they also did in the Libyan Gulf of Sirite”).

  The source of the Amazon River’s name is more certain: according to the OED, the river takes its name from the “female warriors there seen by the Spaniards.”

  It was a scribe on the earliest European expedition down the Amazon River in 1542 who first called the women warriors seen on the river’s banks the “Amazons.” Perhaps he was referring to the women of Classical mythology, or perhaps the Spaniards were merely repeating what local Indians had said (a similar word in Tupi-Guarani means tidal bore, a name applied to those living in the area as well). The scribe described the women warriors he saw as “very white and tall . . . [with] hair very long and braided and wound about the head . . . very robust and . . . naked . . . with their bows and arrows in their hands, doing as much fighting as ten Indian men.”

  According to one captive’s report, those river women were warriors who remained unmarried but bore children. When men were needed for mating, they were captured and brought to the Amazon village (where no men were allowed to live); once the women were pregnant, the captured men were returned home unharmed. The Amazons’ houses were said to be built of stone; guards patrolled the roads that connected their villages, demanding tolls. They are said to have ridden long-haired, camel-like animals as big as horses (alpaca perhaps, a camel relative), and to worship in places adorned with gold and silver idols fashioned in the form of women.

  No one ever recorded another encounter with the Amazons. When the expedition, led by the Spanish explorer Francisco de Orellana, emerged from the river (then known as the Marañón, later as the Orellana), the scribe could not have known that in time the great river would take its name from the mythic women he claimed to have once seen there: the Amazon.

  When Brazil’s military government first undertook “Operation Amazon,” a large-scale colonization project that relocated impoverished Brazilians to infertile farms in the forest—one of a number of a disastrous policies intended to develop the Amazon basin in the 1960s and 1970s—the Amazon they dreamed of conquering was not a tribe of women but a place, a rain forest in whose mythically verdant expanse they saw an answer to pressing national problems that beset the new government in the wake of a military coup; they saw, in the vast rain forest, a distraction from political repression, an answer to rural poverty, a means to fund industrial development. It was also a possible base from which guerrilla and international threats might come, a wilderness to be feared and conquered.

  An Education

  The first week of March, much to my relief, the university term began, classes started, and I had somewhere to go each day. The economic faculty of the Federal University of Bahia was located on a high hill overlooking the city and bay, in a tony neighborhood behind the American embassy. I took a bus to the base of the hill, got off there among fashionable houses with wide driveways, and walked up a narrow path to class through dense trees heavy with the massive oblong forms of green jackfruit whose sweet yellow flesh smelled like Juicy Fruit gum.

  I could understand more than I could say, but still the classes were challenging. I enrolled in two: a course in Bahian economic history and a second in macroenomics. I’d studied both subjects before, which helped, but still I found it an effort to follow lectures.

  Nel was not in my classes, but I saw her on my way into school one day and we agreed to go home together. As we walked home that afternoon from the bus stop, under the flamboyants, the glinting fronds, Nelci explained that lots of girls here were kept by men. Even Nelci, who knew she was not beautiful, had had her offers. A dentist, she said, a married man, had offered her an apartment not long ago. She wanted to leave the boarding house; she was tempted. She frowned. Shook her head.

  —Feio, she said. Ugly.

  I did not know if she meant the man or the offer or the situation.

  Luisa, my neighbor, was the first kept woman I’d ever met; she lived at the far end the hall, where a small glass window looked out onto the rooftop of a neighboring building. She came by to introduce herself not long after I moved in. She knocked on the door and when I opened it, there she was—very pretty, a little plump, dressed that first day, as I would learn she always was, in a satin robe that barely closed, a robe that ended high on her thighs, crossed over her shapely hips and breasts, a robe always—it seemed—on the verge of falling open.

  I never once saw Luisa in street clothes; I never saw her leave the second floor of the apartment building where we lived. She was like someone exiled from the larger world to this small place. She was sweet tempered, gentle, bawdy, motherly, flirtatious, underneath it all a little shy, perhaps. She had lustrous black hair that curled wonderfully as it fell to her shoulders. From that first day we met, she made me think of 1940s movie stars—Rosalind Russell, Ingrid Bergman—she had that same kind of glamour, the opulence those women had, a voluptuous innocence.

  When she entered my apartment that first day, she brought with her a scent of floral talcum that I would later come to associate with her visits. That day, as later, she came in full makeup, wearing slippers and her robe, as if every hour of the day she were readying herself to go out, as if each time I saw her she was caught midway through her toilette.

  I invited her in, apologizing that I had nothing to offer by way of a drink or food.

  —Não me importa. No problem, she said, smiling as she came in. I showed her my rooms with their spare furnishings—flipping on the light in the bathroom, walking her into the closet-sized kitchen. The apartment looked shabbier when I saw it through the eyes of a stranger, and I felt embarrassed that I had made of it no more than this, but Luisa was reassuring. She said that her place was exactly like mine, the same layout, just reversed.

  After our brief tour, she took a seat on the coffee table beside the phone, and I sat on the mattress, and we chatted a bit. She asked what had brought me to Bahia, and I told her, and I asked what she did here. She was vague about her work, said only that she wasn’t working now. Her family, she said when I asked, didn’t live in Salvador.

  Before she left, she gave me a big talcum-scented hug and said I should come up the hall and knock on her door if I ever needed anything. She was always home, she said.

  I visited her apartment only once and then briefly. She seemed nervous about inviting Nel and me in and did not invite us to stay. I recall being impressed by the apartment’s opulence—how full the small room was. There was a little dining area with a table and chairs, a television set and a few comfortable overstuffed chairs set with lace-edged pillows, lace doilies on good polished furniture that looked old and costly, a massive bed with a down comforter and heaps of satin pillows in pink and red. The whole room seemed to be made of lace and satin, in pink, white, red. Like a child’s room, or a doll’s house.

  The Monkey

  The day I went looking to buy a companion, there was only one monkey vendor in the market. He was set up at the far end of the small cobblestone praça between Pelourinho and the Ladeira, known as the Terreiro de Jesus. The praça was always crowded with vendors and on that day there was also a small roda—or circle—of capoeiristas performing awkwardly for French and American tourists who did not know the difference.

  I made my way among the tables to the monkey vendor. The man sat curled on his stool beside a staff from which tiny squirrel monkeys walked about on chains. I thought it
was cruel to take them from the trees to sell to tourists like me, but at least I would not keep it on a chain. I could not pretend to be a simian liberator, but I told myself I’d treat my monkey better than this. I wanted someone to come home to, something to love, and I imagined an exotic pet might lend me a daring and romantic air that I too plainly lacked.

  Micos—as the little squirrel monkeys are called—fill the trees in Salvador, looking like something designed by Dr. Seuss: small, furry, with thin striped tails and quizzical faces; white tufts of hair spring from their cheeks and a small pad of white fur lies between their brows, above grave bright eyes. They travel in groups, squat together in the trees in city parks, screaming in high shrill calls. (I didn’t yet know the Brazilian expression—pegar um mico—which literally means “to grab a monkey” but is slang for getting in trouble, making a mess of things.)

  The squirrel monkey I chose was small, with brown-gray silky fur and a tiny old man’s face. The runt of the litter. The others had the unfocused gaze of animals, wild and abstracted. The monkey I chose had a vengeful glare, intelligent, furious. The vendor assured me that the little mico would grow if I fed it well, so I paid him and took it home on the bus, a string tied round its neck, his soft body cupped in my hands.

  I named him Tiago for a character in a film, Bye Bye Brazil, about a down-on-their-luck circus troupe in the Amazon; Tiago was their ringleader. The name sounded Brazilian, exotic. It didn’t occur to me to name him for someone I knew or loved; movie characters were more romantic to me then than people I knew.

  But it didn’t grow as the vendor said it would. I brought it bananas, expensive apples, peeled grapes, but it only sniffed the chunks I set before it and jumped to the windowsill, at the end of its rope. On the sill, it screamed. Screamed. Then it waited. A shriek would come from the forest behind the apartment building across the street. The mico screamed again. I fancied sometimes that his was a cry for help and I cooed to him that I could not let him go, that he would only die in the trees, that he wasn’t strong enough, his body was too frail. One fall and his bones would snap like toothpicks. But he only looked at me with moist green eyes, stared into my face, opened his mouth, and shrieked.

  At night, I tried to set him on my stomach beneath the blankets to keep him warm and calm, but he would crawl away to the other end of the mattress.

  Occasionally, though, Tiago came to me and climbed into my lap. He would sit and clean himself like a cat, licking his paws and bringing them down over his face again and again. If I sat motionless, when he was done cleaning himself, he might stretch out along my forearm, his face buried in the crook of my elbow, beneath one paw, and sleep. Only after his body was still, just the fur on his side parting and closing, parting and closing in rhythm with his breath, could I reach over and scratch the back of his neck, stroke it slowly, dreamily, feeling the silky ruff, the tiny ribs, and rest my eyes unfocused on the windowsill—less alone.

  Focco

  Not long after I’d bought the monkey, Nel and Isa came for a visit. They were talking, as was their custom, about men. Isa was dating several, choosing among them like fruit in a market. She seemed unimpressed, never mentioned names. No one evidently merited a proper noun. She spoke not of the men themselves but of the places they took her.

  When Isa saw Tiago on his tether by the window, she clapped her hands in delight and trilled, Que joia, Elena. What a joy. I was proud for a moment to possess something that had the power to impress her. (She had met Barbara and greatly admired her beauty, but I had the feeling I’d failed to impress.) Isa reached out a hand to stroke the little mico, and his head rose—following her movements as she moved toward him, then, as her fingers rested lightly on his head, he bit her, hard. She screamed. Sorry, I said and went to make us coffee.

  When I returned to the living room, Isa was trying on several outfits she’d bought that day, trying to decide which to wear that night, modeling for us. Nel seemed distracted. She answered Isa in a bored flat tone as Isa held up one black dress, another brightly colored one, a skirt, a shirt.

  —The black one, Nel said. Definitely more sophisticated.

  —Are you sure, Isa asked. You think? Isa bit her lower lip. I have to look very good, she said. He says he’s taking me to the Othon Palace for dinner.

  The Othon Palace was the most expensive hotel in Salvador, set on a promontory in the same exclusive tony neighborhood as the American embassy. I’d only seen it from the street, in passing.

  —I can see if he has a friend for you, Nel, Isa said. We could go together.

  Nel frowned. I don’t know, she said. For the first time Nel seemed indifferent to the offer. Anyway, I have a date. Focco is going to take me to a boite.

  —Focco? Isa made a face.

  Nel shrugged.

  —That should be fun, I said. I’d love to go to a boite sometime. I had noticed them while walking home from the embassy a month ago, and while riding the bus back from school—discreet private clubs tucked into the lush greenery along the beach road. I knew that nightclubs were often for members only, and their exclusivity appealed to me.

  —Let Elena go with Focco, Isa proposed. You can come with me.

  —I don’t know, Nel said.

  —Who’s Focco? I asked.

  —You wouldn’t like him, Elena, Nel said.

  —He’s rich, Isa said. He drives a red sports car.

  —He’s a fat and ugly old man, Nel said.

  —Then why are you going? I asked.

  Nel shrugged. Because Isa didn’t want to go, she said.

  —Focco’s fine, Isa said. He’s harmless. Come on, Nel, let Elena go. You can come with me.

  —You don’t even know if your date has a friend, Nel reasoned.

  —I’ll call and see, Isa said, and picked up my phone and dialed.

  —I’d like to see a boite, I told Nel.

  She didn’t argue, but she looked a little sorry.

  I’d rarely been out at night in Salvador and I was excited by the prospect. Salvador seemed a city of night, a place that revealed itself after sunset, that unfolded by dark; I felt that I was missing that life. In those days I often felt that life was happening somewhere else, at the next table, behind a closed door.

  I dressed for the boite as if I were going to a Rotary luncheon, in an indigo silk dress and high heels that (unbeknownst to me) would set me towering ridiculously over the squat Focco. I aimed to look attractive but modest. I curled my eyelashes in a metal clamp, I brushed on mascara, powdered on rouge, rolled on lip gloss (never having got the hang of actual lipstick, I clung to the habits of seventh grade when shiny lips sufficed).

  Egberto, the door man, gave me a worried look as I came down to meet Focco in the foyer. Focco was, as Nel had promised, both feio e gordo—fat and ugly. But I was impressed by Focco’s ugliness, which given its extremity had the quality of an attainment. He was singularly the ugliest man I’d ever been out with. He had a head like a small keg, barrel shaped and bulbous, thickening at the cheeks. His faced had the unhealthy flush of high blood pressure. His lips were enormous, purplish and ichthyic, like a grouper’s. His body was bulbous, held in by the gray suit he wore. I remember that he wore an expensive and beautiful slate-blue silk tie. He was the first person I’d ever met who made me pity his clothes, the waste of their beauty.

  Egberto held the door open for us, nodded at Focco, wished me a good night.

  Out on the street, Focco opened the car door for me, and—once I was seated—slammed it. It was, just as Isa had said, a lovely car. Small and round as Focco himself. But shiny and red. Focco said little as he drove. Perhaps he, like I, felt gypped. Perhaps he’d been led to believe I was a beautiful American, blond or busty, sophisticated, a woman of the world. It must’ve been obvious at a glance that I was not.

  Probably he asked me what I was doing in Salvador. Probably he asked me what I was studying at the university. Perhaps he discovered quickly that I did not speak his language well. I remember that
we drove in silence and darkness to the nightclub along some beach.

  The club was small, low-ceilinged, crowded. Mirrors lined the walls and a mirrored ball spun over the small dance floor. There was a lot of smoke. Small costly drinks. A leather banquette into which I was wedged between Focco and some others who did not appear to be his friends.

  I felt sorry for Focco. He seemed stiff in his suit and hot. Sweat beaded on his brow and at his temples. He took off his suit coat and laid it over the back of the banquette; patches of sweat were evident beneath his arms. No one seemed to want to talk to him or me. We sat, mutually bored, ignored, waiting for the jet set to arrive. I kept yawning and then smiling in apology.

  Somehow I had gotten it into my head, perhaps from some misguided guidebook, that the Brazilian musicians and artists for which Bahia was famous frequented clubs like this. I was under the impression that I might see Caetano Veloso or Gilberto Gil here, or perhaps an American or European celebrity, Sting or Jagger.

  At around midnight, a scrawny, deeply tanned pair arrived, followed by a small phalanx of associates. The man and woman were both slender, hair bleached, streaked blond. They had great teeth and wore things that caught the light—gold watches and chains, black leather pants that clung to their narrow hips. This, alas, evidently, was the jet set, flown in like out-of-season fruit.

  I had hoped for the famous—Michael Jackson or Maria Bethania—I had hoped that their glamour might be contagious, that I might catch it like a cold, but they turned out to be nothing really; they were merely rich, bearing cocaine, which Focco offered me and which I declined.

  The couple invited us to join them for drinks at the Othon Palace. But I said I had to get home. I had classes the next morning.

  —It’s still early, Focco objected. It was only 1 a.m. What do you have to get home for?

  The blond woman laughed. It’s past her bedtime, she said.