by Ellen Levy
The woman looked surprised.
It took me a moment to realize that he had said yes.
—I can participate? I asked.
—Come back on Monday, he said, at 8 a.m. Do not be late.
I thanked him profusely. You won’t regret it, I said.
—He laughed a huge round laugh and said, Oh, I will.
On my way home, buoyant with success, I stopped in a stationery store—a papelaria—and bought myself a small portable typewriter, a manual Olivetti 440X made of molded plastic, the gold of mangoes, charmed by the Portuguese keyboard’s diacritics. At home, I opened its pale orange case and sat down at the coffee table and slowly, one finger at a time, typed a letter of inquiry to INPA.
At the cooking school the following Monday, I was directed upstairs with the other students to the attic—a cramped space already hot from the morning sun. The university term had been canceled due to the strike, and I was relieved to have somewhere to go each day. But it was more than relief that I felt.
Entering the old baroque building from the cobblestone square of Pelourinho, it seemed as if I’d slipped inside Salvador by some secret door. I, who, till then, had felt so often on the outside even of my own life, looking in, felt like an insider now. The air smelled of burnt sugar and coconut milk, onion and dendê and sun-warmed floorboards—a heavy sweet smell that made me hungry. As I waited on the stairs with the others on our way up to the attic, a magnificently handsome man with a face like a Giotto madonna—with almond-shaped eyes—color of cacao, smiled at me as he went past.
In the low-ceilinged attic, we were split into lines: girls to the left, boys to the right. Everyone was about my age, in their late teens, early twenties. I was not surprised to find that I was a curiosity, being pale-skinned and foreign. As we waited in line, people around me elbowed one another to point me out and whisper.
A beautiful woman, tall, model gaunt, with fabulous cheekbones and white square teeth, her head like a Masai sculpture, long and smooth, turned to me and introduced herself as Yvette.
—You are from the United States, she said.
—Yes, I said.
—Why are you here? It was not a hostile inquiry. She appeared neither impressed nor unimpressed. Merely curious.
I told her of my plans for Amazonian study and how they had gone awry. A few other girls leaned close to listen until Yvette glared at them, and they backed off.
She rolled her eyes.
—Don’t mind them, she said. They don’t mean to be rude. Yvette slapped the nearest girl. Introduce yourself, she said. She treated the others like younger sisters, with affectionate disdain, and I wondered if they’d known each other long. I envied them their intimacy.
Slowly, giggling, the other girls introduced themselves, giving names that, in my nervousness, I’d forget almost immediately. One stocky tough girl held out a limp hand to me, as if to shake, with joking formality. But in the blur of faces, Yvette’s was the only one I would recall clearly, Yvette’s and that of the Giotto madonna who’d smiled at me on the stairs.
When we reached the front of the line, we were sized up by a plump matron seated beside a huge white bag of clothes who, on a guess, issued us a size. We stood in the middle of the low-ceilinged attic room and tried on our uniforms.
The boys were on the other side of a curtain and occasionally someone peeked or threatened to and there was much screaming and laughter. Great hilarity. Girls flopped around like marionettes with sleeves too long. Others —tall girls like me and Yvette—found ourselves in pants that fit like capris, in shirts tight as sailor suits with sleeves that did not even reach our wrists. Yvette clasped a hand to her waist, shoved one hip out and a hand in the air, modeling her elegant attire. People fell over laughing.
Our first day was spent dressing and undressing and getting a tour of the kitchen. The chef and head instructor did not treat me differently from the others and I was grateful for this, that here I was just another student, one of them.
We were each issued a mimeographed recipe book, but mostly we would learn by taste. On that first day, we were introduced to the head cooks in each section and were told what we would study with each one. Then we were taken on a tour through the kitchen, where half a dozen giant steel ranges divided the space into sections. There were ovens where crème caramel was being made in a bain-marie. There were enormous ranges topped by huge aluminum pots, large enough to bathe a child, in which simmered okra and golden vatapá, in which acarajé boiled in palm oil.
The head chef walked us through each section of the massive kitchen, sampling the pots we passed: first brushing the fragrance under his nose, he then borrowed a spoon and tested on the heel of his palm—like a mother testing the temperature of formula on a wrist—the flavor of this dish or that. He approved, praised, suggested. Here, in the coming weeks, we would learn how to chop an onion with our fingers curled, so the blade could race through the white flesh without taking a fingertip. We would learn how to blend into a magnificent paste the ingredients of vatapá—cashew and onion, tomato and palm oil, garlic and small dried shrimp. How to mix and boil acarajé—bean balls made of black-eyed peas. How to flavor a moqueca, a Bahian stew of palm oil and coconut milk, cilantro and lime, thinly sliced tomato and sweet onion, in which are poached shrimp, fish, chicken or eggs.
We were shown the door that led into the dining room where tourists would come to eat each day, and for whom we would be preparing our food.
No one talked about calories; no one even mentioned them: instead they talked about flavor—sabor.
Probably this is where my conversion began—though I didn’t know it then, would not recognize the shift for years, until at twenty-five my life had changed, become a marvelous feast—there in that industrial-sized kitchen, where cooking was raised to the level of a calling and the body’s sustenance was not a matter of clinical calculation but of taste. In the coming weeks, I would arrive each morning at 8 and work till 4 to help prepare the daily of-ferings; I would immerse myself in flavors, textures, heat, scent, sweet, and spice.
The Economy of Beauty
As I grew more at ease in Salvador, Nelci seemed less. We talked less and less about her plans, as if they had blown off like morning haze. In the hard bright heat of the apartment, she would lie on her back and read. When I went out, she rarely came with. Her only request was that I bring back tiny sanitary pads from the pharmacy; she was not bleeding, but she liked to wear them anyway, to mask her own scent. When I arranged for a manicurist to come by to give us pedicures, a special treat to cheer her up, the woman inadvertently cut Nel’s cuticle too close and Nelci screamed at her and threw her out. She told me later that her grandmother had died from such a cut. More and more Nelci’s unhappiness felt like an accusation. A sign that I, too, had failed her.
Isa was spending more and more time on the island and we saw her less and less. Sometimes Nel brought home another friend, but these girls struck me as incongruous companions for her. One, in particular, alarmed me. She was nice enough, young, tomboyish, with a compact, plush muscly little body, well tanned, with a mop of short hair bleached blond. Po—a crude slang, comparable to fuck (literally “sperm”)—ornamented her every phrase, the way certain kids in the States used “like.” She spoke in a slang so idiomatic that I often could not make out what she’d said.
But I could not mistake this: she said the man in the apartment across the street was an admirer of mine; he’d watched me—in the days I lived alone—parade naked around my place; he’d dubbed me mulherona, big woman. I felt queasy at the news. It was not just that I’d been watched, observed in the one place I’d imagined myself free of observation, but something in the way Nel’s friend delivered the news made me wonder who the man was to her. From the way she spoke it was clear he was no relative, no boyfriend, no friend. Just a guy she knew.
I kept my clothes on after that, undressing only in the bathroom, safely behind closed doors.
On Saturday, after capoe
ira, several of us hung around in the hall to chat. Barbara was there and several of the best capoeiristas. The handsome lanky blue-eyed Paulista, the prettiest man in class, who had never so much as given me a smile, flirted with me; he said we should go out some night. Why not? I replied, as if such invitations were commonplace.
On the way home, I felt pretty and hopeful. But Barbara seemed annoyed, and when I mentioned the Paulista’s invitation, she said that he was mean to lead me on like that. He was just trying to make her jealous because she’d refused to go out with him. I wanted to believe that she was jealous, but I knew that she was right. Of course he wouldn’t be interested in me. Of course not.
—I knew that, I said, as if I had.
At twenty-one, I was not plain, but I was in possession of that handsome Anglo-American beauty that does not translate well. Five feet nine and lanky, I was not considered beautiful in Salvador, a city—like Rio—known for its beautiful women: delicately voluptuous, dark-eyed, black-haired, cinnamon-skinned.
Everywhere I went, I was conscious of this one fact, the fact that I was unbeautiful, unwanted by men whose wanting, I believed disastrously then, was my measure.
Walking with Barbara in the street, I heard men call out to her, sweetly, entreatingly: fofinha, fluffy. At me, they shouted tesão, erection. After a while, I grew accustomed to being treated differently—as I supposed the poor must grow accustomed to being treated less well than the rich—but I never really got used to it. And when, later, I grew nut brown and easy in my body and vendors in the street called out to me fofinha, I would hate them and hate myself for feeling grateful.
Of all of us, Barbara was the one I would have guessed might eventually make money from her looks. But I was wrong about that.
As we walked home from capoeira, our talk turned to movies. We began discussing Lina Wertmuller’s Swept Away, a film about an aristocratic woman stranded on an island with her boat’s captain, who for a time becomes her sexual master. I was trying to claim that the film was feminist in its portrayal of fierce female desire. Barbara was having none of it; she knew better.
Barbara said her responses to movies were often perverse: she often laughed in very serious movies, cried at what others found funny.
I told her that I was usually trying to figure out how I was supposed to respond.
—I never do anything I don’t want to do, Barbara said.
It hadn’t occurred to me that this might be an option.
—Really? I asked, incredulous.
—Really, she smiled.
Nel’s presence encouraged me to go out more. On the days I did not have to go to the cooking school, I found other reasons to go out. Partly to have solitude, partly to give her time alone, some scrap of privacy, I began to go to the beach in the mornings in hope of developing a tan. I knew now what to bring and what to leave behind—I knew not to carry money or a passport, to bring only a towel and tanning oil, maybe a book to read. I was often bored at the beach and self-conscious, but my absence from the apartment gave Nel time to sleep on the mattress, which she would not do when I was there. So I went.
I was at the beach, laying face down on my towel, when I felt a hand on my back. When I looked up, it was the guy I’d met in the street weeks ago. Chequinho.
—Where have you been, boneca? he asked, squatting beside me. I’ve been looking for you.
—I’ve been busy, I said, pleased to be remembered and to be busy. I’m in cooking school now.
—You still joga capoeira? he asked.
—Of course, I said.
As we chatted, I wondered if he noticed my pale skin, my fleshy thighs, my too-small breasts, my soft belly.
He said he’d missed me and though I knew this was not true, it was flattering nonetheless to have someone go to the trouble of lying.
—Come take a swim, he said.
—I think I’ll stay here, I said, afraid to get up and expose still more of my body.
—C’mon, he said. A quick swim, to cool you off.
—Okay, I said, suspecting that he would not go until I did. Pushing up from my towel, I hoped my thighs wouldn’t wobble. I didn’t realize that at 5 feet 9 inches, 135 pounds, I was not fat. Not at all. At the time, I had no idea what I was. I was waiting to find out. I was waiting for someone—anyone—to tell me.
We waded out into the water, the lukewarm, bottle-green waves. I waded up to my chest, the water around his shoulders; he told me I looked beautiful, that he had been hoping to see me here. I told him I’d been busy. For a while we stood in the water talking, then he cupped my chin and kissed me, a not unpleasant taste of cigarettes and salt water, the brush of stubble. He drew me to him and held me in his arms. I leaned back, held up by him, the water stretching out to Africa, the sun a bright disk over head.
I was not attracted to Chequinho, but I was flattered. Someone wanted me after all. His hands moved over my back, my ass, inside the back of my swim suit, and I let this happen because I thought being wanted was the most important thing, and besides it was not unpleasant. And I did not want to seem a prude.
I told myself there was nothing to fear. We were not in so deep as to be in danger; we were not alone, there were people everywhere; there was nothing to fear in this, nothing to fear.
Not until I felt his hand pull the crotch of my swim suit aside and press his hips to mine did I say, No.
—No one can see us in the water.
—No, I said again, and then, more gently, Not here, as if location were the problem. I did not want to seem undesiring, reticent as girls are said to be. I was more ashamed of my lack of desire, of being found without desire, than to be subject to the desires of some man I did not want. In truth, I was beginning to doubt that I desired anything at all, and this, above all else, frightened me. The Buddhists have it wrong, I will think years later: desire is not the source of all suffering; its lack is what torments us.
On the beach, Chequinho asked if he could walk me home.
—I’m going to stay here awhile, I said, though the sun was too hot now for tanning.
—Some other time, he said.
—Some other time.
When he left the beach, I was glad that he did not know where I lived.
When I got back to the apartment, Isa was there with Nel. They were seated on the couch, talking.
—Tudo bem, Elena, Isa said, standing and coming over to give me a kiss.
—Tá um pouco mais preto, Nel said, appraisingly. You are a tiny bit darker. She held out her arm. I can’t go the beach, she said. I become black as an African.
I asked them if they wanted a suco and went to make one for myself from the maracujá in the fridge. When I came back into the living room, I sat on the coffee table and told them about meeting Chequinho at the beach. I told them he was cute, that he called me boneca (they laughed at this), that he’d tried to take me in the water.
—What, Nel asked. In the water?
—With people around?
—They couldn’t see, I said. We were under the water.
—Oh, Elena, Isa said, admiring and disapproving both.
—Be careful, Nel said, gravely.
—Where did you meet him? Isa asked.
—In the street, I said. In Avenida Isabella coming home from capoeira.
They howled with laughter, as if this were the punch line to a very very big joke.
Another word for territory
Probably it was while I was swimming at the beach that I picked up conjunctivitis. By Friday, my eye was swollen shut and I called the cooking school and left a message for the head chef that I would be out sick. I spent the day on the mattress, wearing sunglasses against the glare of light, rinsing my eyes with chilled saline I kept in the fridge. My eyes itched and I lay there waiting to see clearly again. The apartment was small for two people and I felt the edgy annoyance of constant company, though Nel and I tried to approximate solitude and spaciousness by not speaking to each other most of the morning, pretending
we were each alone. When the afternoon heat grew intense in the uncurtained room, I went down to the garage and lay on the low cement wall that edged the open-air room, because it was cooler there and because I desperately needed some privacy.
I was lying there on the cement wall, saline at my side and my sunglasses on, when I heard footsteps approaching and sat up.
—Hey, doll, Chequinho said, coming toward me across the garage. Your doorman said I’d find you here.
For a moment I was startled. How did he know where I lived? But I said, instead, Stay back. I’m sick.
—You don’t look sick, he said, smiling, imagining—I suppose—that this was some coquettish game.
—It’s my eyes, I said.
—Your eyes? You have beautiful eyes.
He leaned down to kiss me, but I pulled back. I shifted away from him and removed my sunglasses. When he saw my red and rheumy eyes, he drew back.
—What is it? he asked.
—Conjunctivitis, I said. It’s highly contagious.
He took a step back. I’ll come by another time, he said, when you feel better. How long will it last? he asked.
—How should I know? I said.
—You look beautiful, he said, recovering himself a bit, and I understood then, though only dimly, that he hated me, this little man. Only someone who hated a woman would lie like this. Only a man who hated women would attend to them this way. With such obvious insincerity.
—No, I said, coldly, I don’t.
—I’ll come back, he said. His tone was not friendly. I’ll come by another time.
—Do what you want, I said, hoping I didn’t sound afraid.
But he did come back, a week or so later, when you and Nel were in the apartment one afternoon. When he comes in the open door, you introduce him to Nel and she recognizes his name from your story of the beach, and trying to be helpful, she chats with you for a moment, then contrives to go across the hall to have some of Zé’s famous rice.
After Nel leaves, you two sit on the mattress that serves as a couch and talk. You try to make this ordinary, a visit by a friend, an expected thing. When he leans over to kiss you, you stand up, and offer him a cafezinho—the sugary local coffee brewed strong as tar—and a shower, because this is the Bahian way, the normal thing to do. It is polite to offer coffee and a shower to your guest.
