Amazons

by Ellen Levy

  Significantly the word is not a verb but a noun. My Pequeno Dictionario Michaelis beside me tells me that saudades is a feminine noun, meaning “longing, yearning, ardent desire; homesickness, nostalgia.” Saudades is more than mere feeling; it is the capacity to feel, an ability to keep alive and present in our lives what is at risk of slipping from our grip, to keep the beloved with us by means of fierce feeling.

  In December, I flew to Porto Alegre to visit the Simões, the host family with whom I had lived when I was eighteen, and to see Paulinho, whom I’d been in love with then. I had imagined our reunion for years, longed for it, even bought a dress in Salvador for the occasion, hoping—I see now—that by reviving our old love affair I might revive myself, restore my faith in a creed I’d once shared with Paulinho but could no longer credit (faith in order and progress, in conventional notions of failure and success). I was delighted when my former host sister, Luciene, told me that Paulinho would meet me at the airport.

  By the time I saw Paulinho again, a lot had happened: I had been to the Amazon; I had been raped; my good friend had become a prostitute. I was fluent in Portuguese now. I could scare muggers off with my mouth.

  The airport terminal in Porto Alegre was large and the room where I collected my bags was crowded and confusing on that late December afternoon, and I worried, as I looked out toward the lobby where crowds awaited the new arrivals, that I would not recognize Paulinho. But he was a standout even in that crowd. He looked as he always had. Handsome, compact, tanned, still dressed in white, as if four years hadn’t passed. I had to push through strangers to reach him. As I got closer, I could see that he had aged; he was only twenty-four, still young, but he looked older and weary. He looked the same but was somehow no longer beautiful.

  Language should have made it easier between us but it did not. We were more awkward for it. We embraced formally and awkwardly.

  —Thanks for meeting me, I said. It’s kind of you.

  —It’s nothing, Paulinho said. Then he laughed, and added, Você canta bem bahiana. You sing like a real Bahian. It was not a compliment; my regional accent marked me as a hick, and suddenly I was self-conscious. I had not realized that I had an accent, a northern drawl akin to a southern drawl in the States.

  I smiled and shrugged. Sou bem Bahiana mesmo, I said. I am very Bahian.

  He took my bag; I took his arm. I wanted this to go well. I wanted to retrieve the love I’d lost, the girl I’d been. The hope I’d had, the desire I no longer felt for anything. Like Orpheus in the underworld, I sensed that a great deal depended on love’s revival.

  In the car, we lapsed into English. Partly because my vocabulary in Portuguese was limited. The subjunctive especially—that lovely, neglected tense, which allows one to express hope and desire, to speak of the possible that may or may not come to pass—tripped me up, slowed me down. But we used English, too, because what I said in Portuguese, I sensed, alarmed Paulinho, my speech peppered with epithet and street slang, hard sorrow. It was best if we did not understand each other too well.

  —So I hear you’re engaged, I said, repeating what Luciene—my former host sister—had told me by phone a week or two before.

  —Not really, he said. No.

  —Not really? I said, laughing.

  —No, he said.

  —Oh, I said.

  He told me that he was finishing his law degree and that he had taken an apartment of his own in town. When I asked how his parents were, he told me that they separated a few years back.

  —I’m sorry, I said. And I was. I remembered dining with his parents years before: his beautiful mother, who had lent me her mink to wear home, his handsome father, built like a boulder, presiding at dinner like a kindly judge. I did not ask what happened.

  Instead I asked if he saw the Simões much and he said he didn’t; after his family sold the apartment, he’d stopped attending the old church. He hadn’t seen Luciene in a year or more; he hadn’t spoken to her in months until she called to tell him that I was arriving.

  I was pleased when—instead of taking me to the Simões where I was to spend the week—Paulinho asked if I’d like to get a drink.

  —Sure, I said. Years ago we’d frequented nice restaurants. Quiet well-lit places that smelled of roasting meat, where we held hands and talked across a linen tablecloth.

  Now he drove us to a disco. The sort of place we’d never have gone before. Never in a million years. Disco was long dead. The place seemed sad or maybe it was just us. I don’t recall there being any other customers. It was still a bright summer afternoon outside, but inside it was dim as dusk. We were too old for this, I thought, as we took a table near the illuminated floor above which spun a mirrored ball. I felt infinitely old; worse, I felt middle-aged.

  The lights, the music, were too loud. We couldn’t talk and soon we gave up trying. When a slow dance came on, Paulinho stood and offered me his hand. We moved a little stiffly into one another’s arms. We were not so much dancing as leaning on one each other, as if holding each other up. We seemed to me already thwarted at twenty-two, at twenty-four. We were still young, but we were already disappointed. I was filled with sadness because I felt nothing in his arms.

  When he drove up to the Simões, we sat in the car a moment before going in. Paulinho told me that he was leaving town the day after next, going to Florianopolis—a coastal vacation area—with some friends to celebrate the new year and to see his grandparents, who lived there and were ailing. His grandfather might not last long.

  Before he got out of the car, I said, Will I see you before you go?

  —I’d like that, he said, with evident feeling. My sister would like to see you. We’ll go out tomorrow night. Okay? I’ll call you.

  —Okay.

  And then together, like old times, we went in to see the others.

  Years before, when I’d first discovered the pleasures of the body with Paulinho, on my last night in Brazil at the end of my summer stay in Porto Alegre, he and I had been alone in his family’s apartment; we’d been out to dinner and had been talking about seeing a movie but had ended up instead on the floor of the living room, sweaty and breathing fast with our clothes in disarray.

  —Do you want to go there? Paulinho had asked, his breath moist in my ear. Do you want to go there? Over and over he’d asked me this, speaking into my hair, his teeth on the tendons of my neck, his hands moving over my breasts, between my legs, as we lay in a tangle of clothes on his family’s living room floor. He’d meant, did I want to go to his room and make love, on this my last night in his country (to enter the territory of desire with him, to go there, as if desire were a place, another landscape).

  It was clear he’d know how to make love (he may even have told me he’d been reading up; it would have been his style to read up), and I wanted terribly to go with him, but I declined, thinking I might get it wrong, thinking about what nice girls did and didn’t do—morality the thing one clings to in the absence of grace.

  His older sister had come home soon after and we’d scrambled up from the floor pulling up and down various bits of clothing and then we sat on the couch awhile, talking to her as she smirked at us. Paulinho had walked me out and offered to walk me home, but I declined, knowing I wouldn’t manage to say no again. Instead I ran away from him, and from desire, all the way home through empty streets, breathless.

  I supposed that neighborhood gossip had conveyed the story to Xande, my former host brother, who seemed to know now what had happened then, on that night—or rather, what had not happened.

  It was from Xande that I learned that Paulinho had remained chaste since I’d declined to sleep with him three years before, our responses to that one evening sending each of us—in our different ways—away from desire. Paulinho had become celibate; I had become profligate, squandering desire where I felt none.

  I told Xande, as we sat chatting in the Simões’ living room, that I’d be happy to help Paulinho now.

  —It’s not too late,
I said, trying to sound smart and worldly, like one of the boys.

  Xande reminded me that Paulinho was engaged to be married.

  I told him that Paulinho had said he was not.

  Xande raised his eyebrows at this and repeated it to Luciene as she passed through the room.

  Luciene shrugged and rolled her eyes, flashing the international sign of the older sister, a beleaguered frown.

  I made a show of my desire, but what I felt was not desire but its surrogate, its poor cousin—greed. I wanted to acquire Paulinho, to wrest from him some token of affection—a scrap of our old faith in order and progress and love—to replace all I’d lost.

  That afternoon at the Simões’, I imagined that if only Paulinho and I could retrace our steps to that one point of divergence, we might recover passion, for each other, ourselves.

  I tried to be offhand when Paulinho called late the next afternoon to break our date. He said he’d try to stop by later, if he could.

  —He’s afraid of you, Xande said, when I got off the phone.

  —Maybe, I said.

  I tried to take comfort in Xande’s hypothesis. But I did not feel for Paulinho what I once had. Desire was gone between us and perhaps he knew this too. His life was here in southern Brazil, running in a park, practicing law, having children with Sylvana; my life lay elsewhere, among people I’d not yet met. But I felt a shaky emptiness inside, panicked.

  I couldn’t imagine then what kind of life I might lead if I left this one behind; I couldn’t conceive of a passion more intense than what I’d known with him, that powerful present-tense, a relief from relentless teleology. With Paulinho the world had seemed intelligible, reduced to a few clear rules—like the Air Force calisthenics he’d given me back then.

  I was surprised when Paulinho came by around 10:30 that night. We sat out talking by his car. The metal would have been hot from the heat of the day and we would have leaned against it and looked up into night and stars, into the cool blue of a summer evening. He was supposed to leave the next morning for Florianopolis. We would not see each other again.

  —I’m sorry to be going, he said. I don’t want to go, but I feel I should, for my grandparents’ sake.

  —Of course, I said. I just wish we had more time.

  —Me too, he said.

  —I’ve never been to Florianopolis, I said. Can I come? I was joking and not joking.

  —Would you want to come? he asked.

  —Yes, I said. I would.

  —What about your flight?

  —I can change it, I said. Do you want me to come?

  He looked me in the eye and said, Yes. I’d like that.

  —Then I’ll come, I said.

  But the more we talked, the more complicated it became. He must consult with his friends, the others were not bringing girls, it would only be guys and me; maybe it was not such a good idea. I wanted to argue, but there was nothing to say.

  —No, he said. It won’t work.

  I was heartbroken. I could not figure out why this hurt so much. Why I felt as if this romance had never ended, though it had ended years ago.

  Probably I cried. I was crying a lot by then. Not really knowing why or what for.

  Perhaps out of pity, he proposed to take me out on my last night in Porto Alegre, even though it meant he would miss going to Florianopolis, since his friends would be leaving for that trip before I was scheduled to leave there. Probably, I should have declined the offer, but I didn’t. I wanted a chance with him. One last night.

  I spent the next day, my last in Porto Alegre, playing chess with Xande at the dining room table. I dressed in a soft sherbet green dress I’d bought in Salvador a few weeks before especially for this occasion. Xande told me that I looked beautiful and that Paulinho wouldn’t be able to resist me; we laughed and I felt hopeful.

  Luciene and I had hardly seen each other since I’d arrived. I declined to go out with her and her friends on my last night for fear of missing Paulinho’s call, for fear of looking dumb with people I did not know. I preferred to look dumb among intimates.

  I waited all day for Paulinho to come by, only to have him call at 6 to say that he wouldn’t be coming. I was scheduled to leave the next morning and it was our last chance. He apologized, said he had plans he couldn’t break, said he’d call later when he got back, if it wasn’t too late.

  I waited all night, but he never showed. I called his apartment and let the phone ring until the operator disconnected the line. I wrote letters to him that I rewrote.

  A little before 2 in the morning, I reached Paulinho. He had just arrived home.

  —I didn’t come by because it’s so late, he said. His words were a little fuzzy, soft; he was drunk.

  —You could’ve called, I said softly.

  —I didn’t call because, because . . . he seems to lose his train of thought. You’re right, Ellen. I was wrong.

  —I don’t want to be right, I said. I want to see you.

  —You can come over now, he said, almost whispering. You can come now.

  To talk. No one’s here.

  I hesitated. It was not exactly how I’d imagined it would be, but then, almost nothing was.

  —Will you come get me? I said. I’ll wait outside.

  —I drank too much at the churrasco, he said. I can’t go driving around the city in this condition. You can call a cab.

  —I’m not going to call a cab, I said.

  —Fine, he said.

  —Fine, I said. When I hung up, I was numb except for the swell of grief in my throat, which made it hard to swallow.

  Mãe came in the bedroom in her quilted robe and scolded me for making a fuss and a fool of myself in the middle of the night and waking the others up.

  —It is too late to be on the phone, she said, arms crossed in evident annoyance.

  And she was right. It was too late.

  I apologized and took off my dress and went to bed.

  I lay on the bed listening to the sound of traffic passing in the street. Hoping he’d come for me. The neighbor’s air conditioner hummed. The sherbet green dress that I’d bought with Paulinho in mind, knowing it cost too much, hung by its collar on the closet door. A street lamp outside the window threw figures on the wall, grotesque and yellow. There was a screech of breaks and honking. Could it be that he ran a light at the corner? Years ago there was no stoplight there. He used to tear through that intersection without hesitating.

  At 9 a.m., the following morning, when I was scheduled to be on my way back to Salvador, in midair, Paulinho called, regretting his refusal to see me the night before, knowing that I’d already gone to the airport.

  He was shocked to find I was still there.

  I told him that I’d changed my flight; I told him that I’d overstayed my welcome at the Simões’; I asked if I might stay the night at his apartment. My flight was the day after tomorrow. What could he do but agree?

  I remember a car ride through the city at night. I remember picking his sister up at work. That she and I sat in the back seat, while Paulinho drove. In truth, it is she who interested me now. Quick and dry and beautiful as Paulinho once was, with a spark, a sensuality he used to have, and a smartness that I liked; together we argued with Paulinho as he drove, about politics and international banks. She looked like him but was shorter, slighter of build, in a trim black suit; her long glossy hair fell straight to the middle of her back; her skin was brown and smooth. She seemed to like me and I liked her. Paulinho seemed vaguely to disapprove of us both.

  After we dropped his sister at home, Paulinho took me to his apartment and showed me around. It was spacious and modern and seemed grown-up, with a study, a nice kitchen, a dining room with glass doors that opened onto a balcony, a bedroom. He told me I could sleep in his bedroom. He’d sleep in the study across the hall.

  I told him we could share the bed.

  He shook his head, no.

  —Why not? I asked.

  —What happens if you get pr
egnant? he said.

  —I’ll have an abortion, I said, shocking him into silence.

  We were standing on the balcony, overlooking a street. He leaned his arms on the railing and looked out. For a while, we were quiet together.

  He told me he’d thought of me a lot during these last years, he’d admired that I had refused to sleep with him years ago.

  —I was stupid, I said. I was wrong.

  —No, he said. You were right. I respected you.

  I noted his use of the past tense. I knew he meant he did not respect me now.

  —I don’t want respect, I said. I put my hand on his arm. Make love to me, I said quietly.

  —I can’t.

  —It’s no big deal, I said. Sex.

  —It wouldn’t be just sex, he said.

  —Because of Sylvana? I said, dropping my hand from his arm, as I mentioned the girlfriend he never did.

  —Not only that.

  —Not only that? I said. I imagined that he meant that I was undesirable now, that my desire precluded his. That I was no longer beautiful, as he’d once thought I was. If we slept together, I thought, it would mean I was beautiful, desirable, all right.

  I argued with him for a while. I made an idiot of myself trying to convince this man I’d once declined to sleep with to sleep with me.

  I was exhausted and went to bed early. When I was in bed, Paulinho came into my room and tucked me in. He kissed me on the forehead. Then he went across the hall to his study with a highlighter.

  If Jane Austen were writing Paulinho she might write of his good but conventional turn of mind. His faith in ordem e progresso. His lack of imagination. That he was a young man made old by an unexamined sense of right and wrong. Propriety took the place of ethical considerations. He languished in the shade of convention that protected him from the bracing light of experience. But he was kind and good and wished to do right and one could hardly fault him for such virtues. But I did: they made him dull. Nevertheless I spent my days in Porto Alegre wooing him.

  In the morning, we did not speak much; we did not discuss the previous evening. We passed the morning reading together in his apartment. He read the newspaper with a yellow highlighter, highlighting the main points, and I pretended to read the book I was pretending to read in those days, a book on the mid-Atlantic slave trade. When he turned on the TV and started to watch cartoons, I went for a walk. When I got home, he was readying himself to play tennis at the club, a military club where I’d watched him train years ago.