White Nights in Rio

by
Toe Blake










"People who are 'unfaithful' do not necessarily desert
one person for another, but are simply driven home to themselves." —
Lou Andreas-Salomé

"Who hath no wyf, he is no cokewold." — Chaucer


I expected the coming year to be a bad one. Though it was only Christmas, there were fewer tourists in Rio because of the terrorist attack in New York City only a few months earlier. You always hope that business will improve later at Carnival, the busiest time of the year for us, but there was a certain disquiet because of the economy as well. We often have car bombings in Rio — it's nothing new here — but Brazil was expected to default on its loan from the International Monetary Fund for the building of the Itaupu Dam on the Paraná River. The Brazilians expected the economy to collapse completely, ruining people like me trying to run a small business. With the inflation about four hundred per cent a month, the cruzeiro was practically worthless, so I was accepting American dollars. There was fear of another military coup as well: President Mellor de Collor was becoming increasingly unpopular, because of corruption, but he was eventually impeached by the Senate.

I'm a taxi driver in Rio, I'm my own boss. I drive a dark green 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that my father gave to me before he left for LA ten years ago, when I was sixteen. Every part has been replaced, the engine rebuilt several times. My father was sending money by post, then the money stopped coming. We don't know what happened to him; he could be dead for all we know. So I'm supporting my family, though my mother operates a sewing machine, sewing fantasias for the dancers at Carnival while my woman delivers babies and does abortions on the side.

I could work for one of the Cooperatives, but I prefer to be independent. I can take the tourists where they don't usually go and get them back to their hotels safely, because few people know this city like I do. I have a cell phone, but I mostly wait at the airport for clients. My rates are reasonable: less than one real. I have a meter, since it's required by law, but it's a dangerous job: I shot a kid trying to rob me once. Since the gun was illegal, I didn't go to the police. Nobody registers a gun in Rio, but you could go to prison if you were arrested with an illegal weapon. You don't want go to prison in Brazil — trust me. I'm not permitted to carry a gun because I have been to prison.

My clients are mostly North American tourists. About eleven in the morning, I pick up a man and a woman with two children at the airport and drive them to the Copacabana Palace on the beach. The man is tall and solid, with a full beard, partially grey, a white panama hat on his bald head, between forty-five and fifty years old. He looks like a tourist, with his sunglasses, black sandals and black socks, a Hawaiian shirt tucked out of his khaki shorts — all he needs is a piña colada in his hand.

His wife is a brunette — just gorgeous! — between thirty and thirty-five years old, of average height for a woman. I'm strongly attracted to her — it's the lightning bolt. Possessed of a beauty not easily forgotten, she has the classic French look: a finely chiseled rectangular face and a straight nose, a long and elegant neck. Her dark hair is in a pony tail, with touches of henna; she has beautiful oval brown eyes and thin lips. Her skin is a little pale, but her body is proportional: slender, but not too thin, all the flesh of her body well-distributed. Like her husband, she looks like a tourist: sunglasses, a wide-brimmed straw sun hat, and a sleeveless turquoise cotton blouse neatly tucked into her beige shorts. Her white sandals expose toenails polished red, and she has a black handbag — not a good thing in Rio.

They have a daughter and a son. Their daughter is about ten years old, mousy light brown hair and round light brown eyes like her father, not especially pretty. Her brother, about five years old, resembles his mother — a very handsome little boy. While waiting for a taxi by the curb, his mother will hold out her hand, but he will refuse to take it until his mother insists that he take it. Then he releases his mother's hand again. Some little perverse game on the boy's part, I think.

On the way to the hotel, the man sits down next to me while his wife sits between the kids in the back. "What do you do for a living, senhor?" I ask the man casually. "I'm sorry, but I didn't catch your name..."

"Rousseau," he replies, "Robert Rousseau. I'm a university professor in Montréal. Just published a paper in an academic journal on Shakespeare's use of French in Act III, Scene III of King Henry V. Shakespeare wrote a few scenes of that play in French, you know. I thought he had some understanding of French, but he probably didn't speak it well."

Then he informs me: "French, not Latin was the lingua franca of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; the nobles and the bourgeoisie all spoke French, whether they came from Germany, Spain or France. Latin was only the language of the Catholic Church and the scientific scholars, while the peasants spoke their native tongues..."

"That's interesting, senhor," I reply.

"Hey, I was just writing a paper," he replies, with good humour. "You have to publish the damned things from time to time or you lose your professorship. I've just become a full professor, so we're celebrating. My wife and I have always wanted to go to Rio..."

He's relaxed, not at all arrogant. He explains things well enough without talking to you like you're an idiot. I understand him for the most part, though English isn't my native language. It isn't their native language either: they speak French among themselves. I hear the woman quietly scold the children a couple times: "Arrêtez donc, vous autres..."

Then I ask his wife, smiling at her as I look at her through the rearview mirror: "You are also a professor, senhora?"

She has a certain charm, I think. She laughs agreeably and replies: "No, I'm just a nurse — I help deliver babies. I drive across the border every day to New York State because we live in Canada and I work in the States. But I love my job — it's the most beautiful job in the world..."

Just a nurse? Professors work hard to get their degrees, I know, but his wife is delivering babies. We don't need a Shakespeare like doctors and nurses, as I see it: Canada's entire health care system would collapse overnight without people like Mrs. Rousseau, though she's working in the United States. Probably no one will ever read Dr. Rousseau's paper, except someone else in the field, but Canada has been closing hospitals due to budget cuts, however — or so I have been told by other Canadians. But if there's anything that Canadians care deeply about, I have found, it's health care.

I like them well enough. When we arrive at their hotel, they check in while I take their luggage upstairs to their suite. Once in their suite, their daughter asks her mother, very politely: "Maman, peut-on aller à la plage asteur?"

Their son cries, with all the patience of someone five years old, like him: "Hé, maman, allons à la plage!"

The children are behaving well, but they are clearly getting restless; they want to go to the beach.

Mrs. Rousseau picks up a valise and puts it on the bed in the master bedroom, then calls to her husband, who's inspecting the bathroom and has just turned on the coffee maker: "Robert..."

"Yes, my love..."

"Please take the kids to the beach while I go unpack..."

With a loud voice, Dr. Rousseau shouts: "Hey, you guys, let's go to the beach!"

The children don't have to be told a second time; they quickly change into their swimsuits, then come running to the door, overtaking their father. The girl opens the door wide enough to let her brother go out first before going out too, followed by their father. I don't understand everything that they said, because they speak French, but I can understand a little bit because Portuguese is similar to French. The Brazilians speak Portuguese, not Spanish, you know.

After I finish bringing up the bags, Mrs. Rousseau gives me a tip. She even offers me a cup of coffee from the coffee maker in the bathroom, since her husband has left without drinking a cup. Sitting on the sofa with her in the living room, I look into her brown eyes for the first time as we talk — what playful, mischievous eyes! She flashes a smile that shows the dimples in her cheeks and says, slightly blowing her head: "Merci beaucoup, monsieur."

I bow my head as well, smile and said: "Não há de quê, senhora. The pleasure's mine..."

Oh, I know that she's attracted to me, but I do nothing inappropriate, out of respect for her and her family. Still, I want her very much: she is truly one of the most beautiful women in the world, one that I will always remember. I have never seen a woman so beautiful — I am flustered in her presence, barely able to speak.

After I drop them off, I look out at the ocean from the parking lot at the beach through my binoculars. The ocean has always fascinated me. I want to take a boat and sail across the Atlantic to Africa one day, all alone with a special woman — that's my dream anyway.

I want to get far away from Rio, the reason why I have been saving my money.

*****

I would like to have seen more of Brazil: you know, hike through the rain forest, see Bahia in the northeast with its African-based culture, or visit the more Europeanized south around São Paulo. However, Brazil is a large country, and we were only in Rio fifteen days. Visitors to Rio are often there only for the beaches and the night life. My wife, Chantal, and I could have easily gone dancing at a different club each night without ever leaving Copacabana, but she didn't want to fly to Rio at first because of the bombing in New York City just a few months earlier, in September. Then she insisted on bringing the kids.

I love my children, of course, but I was hoping for a second honeymoon with my wife. We needed the time to be alone, I thought, because my mother and her father had died within the past year. I was able to prepare for my mother's death because she had battled cancer for a year before she succumbed, but Chantal's father died very suddenly of cardiac arrest; she still wasn't over it.

The morning of our second day in Rio, Chantal wanted to go see the Iguazú Falls on the Paraná River. "We have to do it," she insisted. "The falls may disappear in our lifetime, if they decide to build any more dams upstream..."

So we flew from Rio to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, with a stop in Brasilia, over dense jungle and mountains — a distance of about fifteen hundred kilometres. It was crazy. Our airplane was a two-engine fifty-seat Embraer, made in Brazil, what they call a "medium-sized" aircraft. The airplane felt very small to me, however. I was sitting in the seat next to the wing looking out the window when the pilot dipped the right wing about four o'clock to make a sharp turn — it felt like a roller coaster ride for a moment.

For hundreds of kilometres, you could see nothing but the trees and the faint mist suspended above them, since it was still morning. It was very beautiful, serene, but the surrounding mountains and the trees looked invincible, and I felt vulnerable. If our little aircraft crashed among these trees, we would have probably never been found, if there were any survivors after the crash. We were hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town, somewhere above the Mato Grosso, a vast forest at least the size of Québec.

Then we saw some black smoke, and then the source of the smoke: somebody was clearing land by setting a fire. We were soon able to see large tracts that had already been cleared for agriculture. I swear, it looked like you were flying over lonely prairie in Saskatchewan — there was even a single farmhouse. Chantal and I looked at each other with disbelief as we saw the forest burning. "That's a whole forest of mahogany down there," I muttered angrily.

Chantal said nothing in reply, still stunned.

Two summers ago, we went camping in the Notre-Dame Mountains. As we sat around the camp fire, I told Chantal and the kids about how St. Boniface had chopped down a big oak in the Black Forest of Germany in order to convert some pagans. When the old Germanic gods didn't strike St. Boniface dead, the pagans thought that his god was stronger than theirs and immediately converted to Christianity. But maybe the old gods haven't hung up their skates yet: one oak won't make much of a difference, but the whole tropical rain forest? Jesus is only one of many gods in this world, as I see it.

We arrived in Asunción early in the afternoon, about two o'clock. At the airport, we were asked for our visas by the Paraguayan customs officer, but we didn't have any for Paraguay, because we hadn't planned to go there when we left for Brazil. The customs officer could have sent us back, but he asked: "You spend money in Paraguay, right?"

I thought he was asking for a stipend, so I slipped him three twenty-dollar bills US. It pays to have a little US currency in Latin America sometimes, as well as a major credit card. Then we took a little Cessna over mountains and jungle to a little town across the Paraná River from Brazil called Cuidad del Este — "City of the East." The town was one big bargain basement, with shoppers from all over the world. There were prostitutes everywhere as well, circulating among the foreign shoppers like the flotsam and jetsam stirred up by a whirlpool. I kept my wallet in my front pants pocket, while Chantal clutched her handbag with both hands like a football.

These rather sullen girls of joy didn't have much allure for me, because they didn't seem to enjoy their work, and my wife was a beautiful woman. Most of them backed off right away when they saw Chantal, but one of them very boldly approached us and offered to service both of us at the same time — I couldn't believe it! Chantal laughed and asked: "And who's going to watch the kids, eh?"

That one backed off as well. I guess she didn't want to be a baby-sitter.

We ate lunch at a little German restaurant that looked like a Swiss chalet at the edge of the jungle. The meal was nothing special. I had the hassenpfeffer (that is, if the meat was truly rabbit rather than some animal substitute from the jungle, like a capybara) while Chantal had the sauerkraut. I forget what the kids ate, but Avril complained bitterly about the smell of the sauerkraut that her mother was eating. For Avril, everything was either super, dégueullasse or archi-dégueullasse. The sauerkraut that her mother was eating was archi-dégueullasse, really disgusting, though she wasn't eating it.

The waitress only spoke Spanish and Guaraní, which is an Indian language, while the proprietor spoke only Spanish and German. I tried to talk to the owner in German, but he spoke Low German, not the High German that I had learned in secondary school. The two are separate languages, you know, Low German, spoken in the lowlands of Germany, High German, in the mountains. High German is what we know to be German.

Then the owner said to us in broken Spanish: "Stroessner, muy bueno."

Alfredo Stroessner was the dictator of Paraguay thirty or thirty-five years before he was overthrown by the military in 1988 or 1989. The city was originally called Ciudad Alfredo Stroessner when it was first built in the 1950s or 1960s, but the Paraguayans changed its name to Ciudad del Este, because they apparently didn't think that their beloved dictator was muy bueno.

Stroessner was said to be sympathetic with the Nazis, because a lot of Nazis found refuge there after the Second World War. However, the owner was nostalgic for l'ancien régime, because the economy was bad in Paraguay as well as in Brazil: high inflation, and an enormous debt to the International Monetary Fund for the building of a dam.

Then we heard a loud cheer. There were five or six Australians at the bar, watching Australian rules football on satellite TV, though it looked like rugby to me. The Aussies cheered loudly whenever somebody scored, which was often in this game, but they were a lot of fun: they sent a round of Paraguayan lager beer to all of the tables a couple of times, and to all of the people at the bar, though there weren't a lot of people. There was just five or six others at the bar, and a couple from Ypsilanti, Michigan, in their forties, sitting at the table next to us.

The couple was in the area to check out some real estate, they said. They wanted to look at some six hundred square-metre lots that were selling for four thousand US dollars. "The lots don't have a lot of amenities," the man admitted. "No running water, gas lines or electrical hook-ups, but we figure the yuppies will buy up all the real estate and build a shopping mall."

They looked like yuppies to me, the way they were smartly dressed; the woman even had the arms of her sweater tied around her neck. But yuppies seldom admit to being yuppies. When we told them that we were from Canada, the man said: "So you're Canucks, eh?"

"No," I replied, trying not to grimace, "the Canucks play in Vancouver. We're from Montréal..."

The man smiled and replied: "Go Wings."

The Montréal Canadiens didn't have a very good hockey team at the time, while the Detroit Redwings were one of the best, but at least the devil didn't insult the French. A lot of Americans don't seem to like the French or the Québécois, you know, after the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, this couple didn't like George Bush either: "We're just trendy liberals," the woman joked.

From Ciudad del Este, we crossed the Paraná River into Brazil. The town on the Brazilian side of the border was much smaller than Ciudad del Este, mostly a draw for the tourists who wanted to go see the falls rather than a shopping centre. But on the Brazilian side of the border, the women were hot! You thought that they weren't in it just for the money. You could have been with the most beautiful movie star in the world, but it didn't matter to these women of the night, practically waving their sexes at the men from the foreign countries.

Chantal was noticeably silent, seemingly intimidated, when a blonde one boldly approached us, laughed and said to her: "You go stay at the hotel and watch the kids — I take care of your man!"

I thought the blonde was cute, about average size, with a square body, small, round brown eyes, a small nose and a squared face. She looked Italian, like a model who had posed for one of these Roman statues found at Pompeii before the volcano. Then she started caressing my chest in front of my wife and the kids — I couldn't believe it!

Chantal said to her, with some concern, I thought: "You don't look well: have you been tested for AIDS?"

The woman only laughed out loud and replied: "We all have AIDS one day, even you."

Then she said to me gravely: "I'm a teacher, but they don't pay us much money here in the sertões..."

With that, the woman disappeared down some street or some alley, trailing a crazy laugh behind her, like a hyena that had just intercepted a shipment of some marijuana from Colombia. "Maybe there's something in the water," I muttered.

It was really a miserable town, the streets all muddy — an open sewer. The rich people lived in sprawling mansions on the outskirts of town, up in the favelas, or hills, that probably would have sold for a million dollars in Canada or the US. But the houses of the poor near the centre-ville were without plumbing, hydro or gas, haphazardly strewn together as if a strong wind had carried them from somewhere distant and dropped them here.

This was our first real exposure to poverty; we had never seen such hovels, except perhaps on television ads begging for charitable donations — shacks held together by I don't know what, maybe string. Where did these people come from, I asked myself, and where would they end up? Upstream, the Parambel in the Mato Grosso was being destroyed by ranchers, always hungry for more pasture, while the poor were being deposited like silt in towns like this one downstream, without prospects for employment.

"Economic nihilism," I call it. You destroy the earth forever for profit now, and say: "Fuck the world!" We're spending our children's inheritance, you know, and leaving behind destruction.

At dusk, we returned to our hotel back on the Paraguayan side of the border in Ciudad del Este, since you don't want to be walking the streets after dark in this town. Chantal made me forget about the Brazilian whores after the kids were asleep, but she reminded me of the blonde one later: "Thinking of that Brazilian whore, eh?" she asked.

"I was thinking only of you," I replied as I kissed her gently on the lips.

"I was thinking of the Brazilian whore," she admitted. "I was imagining her with you..."

"And?"

"I was imagining her with you..."

She kissed me, then we sent each other again to the sound of a Paraguayan or a Brazilian TV station blaring in the background, so that the kids couldn't hear us. Maybe there was some samba in the background, I don't know, but I wasn't really paying attention to the TV program.

*****


What an awful flight from Montréal! There's a lot of turbulence. On taking off and on landing, the children both complain about the pain in their ears, Patrick in particular. This is my first time on an airplane as well, an Airbus. Only my husband has ever been on an airplane before; he flew to Europe as a university student during summer vacation, then did some backpacking all the way to Istanbul. It was probably a lot of fun, but he doesn't talk about it much.

Me, I don't ever want to fly again, but my husband reassures me: "Not all flights are like this one, mon amour."

I only glare at him. He laughs, kisses me, and says to me in English: "You're beautiful when you're mad..."
I reply: "If that's true, then I must always be beautiful..."
He laughs again and says: "You're always beautiful, Chantal, even when you're not mad. But you're not always mad, eh?"
I relent and we reconcile. Then, after spending the night in Rio, I want to go see the Iguazú Falls all of a sudden. I don't know, I just have to do it. He shrugs and says: "Okay, I feel like hiking in the jungle anyway. Maybe we can do some hiking..."
So we take another airplane, a smaller one, to Asunción in Paraguay. I don't believe it! We fly over hundreds of kilometres of jungle, not very high above the trees. There's nothing but trees all around. Then, seated next to my husband, who's next to the window, I look to the northwest and see a massive cloud of black smoke hundreds of kilometres away. I think to myself in horror: "Wow, that's the rain forest that's burning!"
I point out the fire to my husband, who replies morosely: "That's a whole forest of mahogany down there."
I don't say anything, but I think to myself: "I doubt that there's any more mahogany to burn..."
The life that we know is about to pass away forever. You feel a certain dread, like you're witnessing the destruction of Eden. You fear that the trees that you see underneath you will soon be gone. It's at that moment that you feel like giving up all hope for the human race, but we see a little bit of paradise: the Iguazú Falls. It's three times higher than the Niagara Falls, they say, but not very wide. The water seems to fall in slow motion as you hear strange bird calls all around you. We even see some spider monkeys in the trees — an occasion that is becoming increasingly rare here by the falls.
Then I see some white orchids. On an impulse, I almost pick one and put it behind my ear, but I stop myself. They could be the last of an endangered species; they might even be extinct now, because of the dam. But I have always been impulsive, and I have always liked flowers. However, they say that the dam has changed the whole ecology of the region; the southwest area of Brazil could even become a dust bowl, with tornados — who knows?
We arrive back at Rio after spending the night in Paraguay and take a taxi to our hotel. I think the driver has been checking me out through his rearview window, but he's not too obvious about it.
There's something about this man, a je ne sais quoi. He's wearing an old panama hat, now grey. I'm sure that he has had an interesting life, but he has a haunted and faraway look in his eye. I have since seen soldiers who have been to Afghanistan with a similar look. I ask myself now of what war was he a veteran?
The driver flirts with me a little back at the hotel before he leaves, something about driving me around the block, but nothing serious; he's always a gentleman — he's even a little shy.
At the hotel, my husband takes the children to the beach while I pay the taxi driver and go unpack. After unpacking, I go down to the beach as well. I sweep the beach with my eyes, but there's so many people there that I can't find my family. I'm beginning to worry, until I see my husband openly flirting with a girl on the beach. I don't believe it — he's holding her hand, really singing the apple!
I'm still attractive, I think, thirty-four years old, but that girl is much younger than me, between eighteen and twenty years old, if that old. She's around the same age as me were when my husband and I first met, and she's really beautiful. She's young enough to be one of the students in his classes — young enough to be his daughter. I practically gasp when I look at her myself.
I feel really hurt — betrayed. We had good sex — fantastic sex — until then. I thought that he loved me, I thought that we had a good marriage. I thought that he wanted me because I was attractive to him, that he loved me for myself. I don't know why he would even look at somebody else like that; he could have been more discreet. Oh, he wants me, but that's out of habit, I think, because I'm available to him — we sleep in the same bed, you know. Maybe he wants his students more than me, I ask myself now. I don't know, maybe he even has sex with his students.
Eventually, I find our chairs, our beach towels and our cooler. I get angry because nobody's there to watch our things. When I see the children playing in the ocean without any supervision, I'm furious, because he isn't watching them either — he's too busy with her.
I wait until he and the children come back from the hot dog stand, then I ask, really angry: "Why weren't you watching the kids while they were swimming: one of them could have been drowning. And our things: why wasn't somebody watching our things? Something could have been stolen."
In a very charming manner, he tips his hat and replies: "I'm sorry, my dear, I was very careless..."
Oh, I want to kill him!
While sitting in our chairs, I calm down and ask him: "Who's that girl you were talking to, eh?"
He replies, still reading his book: "Just a girl..."
I hit him on the arm with my hand and say with a derisive laugh: "You were flirting with her! You were practically ready to steal away with her to a magic castle in the sky!"
He's really defensive now: "You're wrong, my dear," he replies angrily. "You're wrong!"
Then he lowers his voice and says quietly: "It's you that I love, Chantal — I only love you. She's nothing to me, just a pretty girl. I see them every day in class, you know that..."
"No, I don't know that," I reply, angry as well. "I don't think I know anything anymore!"
He looks at me, perplexed, not knowing what to say. I don't say anything more either, but I have a lot of resentment now — a whole lot of resentment. He doesn't even apologize for having flirted with her; he doesn't admit that he was wrong.
I have a white night, I don't sleep well that night at all. He tells me that he loves me and wants to make love to me, but I don't have the feeling of being loved. I feel cheapened — I still resent him.
I ask myself if he wasn't thinking of that girl, though he might have been trying to reassure me, trying to make me feel desirable again — I don't know. I only know that he hurt me.
There's nothing in the world worse than wanting to cry after making love — nothing.

*****

When we got back to Rio, we got a ride from a taxi driver who was definitely interested in Chantal; they definitely had hooked atoms. Why I left them alone, I still don't know, but I took the kids down to the beach while my wife unpacked and paid the driver. I could swear that Chantal was even blushing!
It was beautiful that day, the sun high on the horizon. It was about thirty degrees Celsius: no snow, no cold, though it was almost Christmas. The beach at Copacabana is about five kilometres of white sand, bordered by kiosks under umbrellas and a mosaic sidewalk of black and white ceramic tiles in a swirling pattern. The beach was really alive that day. There were people of all ages, of all nationalities: Canadians, Americans, Germans, Australians, Japanese, French, as well as native Brazilians. There were people swimming, sunbathing, playing beach volleyball and beach soccer, skimboarding and surfing. There were lots of women, some of them topless — mostly the older ones. There were food vendors and taxis waiting at the edge of the beach and in front of the hotels by the beach. Some young men were doing what looked like a combination of break dancing and karate — capoeira, they called it. Some musicians were playing their guitars and percussion instruments under the shade of some trees by the sidewalk. One of them had a drum with a small hole in the centre that made a squeaky sound when you rubbed a little bamboo stick inside it.
Rio was already getting ready for Carnival, though it was only Christmas. Every year just before Lent, people in Rio wear elaborate — or skimpy — costumes with their tall headdresses and partake in that five-day orgy of excess that makes New Orleans look like the poor US soccer team up against the mighty Brazilian one for the World Cup. By all accounts, New Orleans has never competed well with Rio for the World Cup of Decadence when it comes to Mardi Gras, which is the same as Carnival. In comparison, the New Orleans celebration has a Protestant austerity, particularly since the hurricane, though I have been to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. People in Rio have huge hangovers to nurse every year after Carnival, I'm sure.
While I stood in line at a stand, getting some pizza for the kids, a young woman in a yellow bikini, about twenty years old, was standing next to me. My God, she was beautiful! I had to marvel at her brown and tropical beauty: statuesque and slender. Her dark hair was long and wavy, a little darker than her skin, the colour of cinnamon. She had a pretty rectangular face with round dark eyes and a pretty smile exposing white teeth. Her arms and legs were long and thin, but with good muscle tone, probably from exercise. Her breasts were somewhat small, but young and firm.
The kids played in the ocean while we talked. I tipped my hat and introduced myself: "Hello, mademoiselle, how are you? I'm Robert Rousseau..."
She smiled as well, seemingly amused, and replied: "Bom dia, senhor. I'm Maria da Conceição, muito prazer..."
The people in Rio are very friendly, I have found. Muito prazer means "pleased to me you."
"What a beautiful name!" I replied ebulliently. "Yes, a magnificent name: Maria da Conceição, Mary of the Conception! Yes, you're very beautiful, my dear. I'm charmed, very charmed. Muito prazer!"
She said "thank you," then I extended my hand and she put hers in mine, laughing, but shyly now. Then all of sudden, I held my hat to my chest and recited these lines:

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."

Smiling like a Mona Lisa of the Copacabana, she asked: "What is it, senhor?"
"It's a sonnet from William Shakespeare," I replied. "Would you like to hear the rest? It's only a short one, a few lines..."
She thought about it a moment, then replied, laughing: "Okay, senhor."
So I recited the whole poem from memory, all fourteen lines. When I finished, she applauded and cried: "Bravo!"
There were others who applauded as well. Maybe they were her friends, I don't know. I tipped my hat, bowed and said: "Thank you, thank you! But no applause — just throw money..."
Then I remembered the kids and glanced over at the ocean. I tipped my hat again and said: "Hey, I have to go, ma p'tite, good day. Thank you for indulging an old fool..."
Oh, that one might be young again!
I found the kids and gave them their slices of pizza. We were returning to our place on the beach when I saw Chantal standing next to our towels and our cooler. We had to buy our chairs at the hotel and then sell them back when we went home, because who wants to bring back chairs on the airplane?
I couldn't see Chantal's face at a distance because of her sunglasses, but I asked myself, with a little apprehension: "Oh, no! What's wrong?"
When I approached her, she only said to me angrily, in the presence of the kids: "Why weren't you watching the kids while they were swimming? One of them could have been drowning! And our things: why wasn't somebody watching them? Something could have been stolen..."
Of course, she was angry about something else besides our things on the beach and the kids being unsupervised, I thought. She didn't normally worry about our things being stolen; we even remembered on the airplane that we had forgotten to lock our house before leaving. It was no big thing, the house being unlocked; she just called her friend, Alice, on her cell phone when we switched planes in Miami and asked her to lock it for us. As for the kids, I looked over at them from time to time. But I didn't want to fight about it: I merely tipped my hat, bowed and replied: "Forgive me, my dear, I was careless."
Yes, I was very careless...

*****

I live in the old section of Rio downtown with my woman, Lourdes, and our children in an apartment building that was built around the 1960s. Lourdes is tall and full-figured, about twenty-five years old, with deep brown eyes, light brown skin and medium-brown frizzy hair cut short; she wears a turban and a long flowing skirt. She is slow moving, like a cow grazing contentedly in a pasture, with a placid smile, even-tempered; she seldom makes a scene. Her mother is from the state of Bahia in the north, and also dresses in the manner of the baianas, with a long flowing skirt and a turban on her head. Like most baianas, Lourdes' mother is black. Her father is undoubtedly white, but I don't know who her father is.
Lourdes is secretive about what she does for money. Women often come over to discuss business, then they speak in low voices whenever I'm around. I know that Lourdes delivers babies as a parteira, something she learned from her mother, but I'm sure that she does abortions as well. Lots of women in the favelas have abortions; it's no big thing. I'm sure that Lourdes has had an abortion or two herself, maybe has even done it to herself. However, she could go to prison if she was arrested, because abortion is illegal here in Brazil.
We don't talk very much. When I ask her what she wants, she will tell me, but I have to ask what she wants sometimes. In bed, she's usually willing to do what I want, but sometimes, I wish that she would tell me what she wanted without me having to ask. It's frustrating sometimes. She sometimes says that she's tired, but she's ready to please. But then she will smile slyly and ask: "Can you make me come three times, Jecu?"
I can make her come several times, but I sometimes have to ask her what she wants. Fortunately, I know from past experience — I don't always have to ask, but she's shy. We use condoms, because we don't want anymore children, but condoms aren't always effective. The baby, Minha, was an accident.
Of course, we have our quarrels, then everything comes out. While some women are open, expressing whatever comes to their minds as it comes to their minds, Lourdes swallows her resentment like an anaconda swallows its prey, digesting it slowly. Only she can't always digest her resentment. She has accused me of infidelity a few times. "I know you've been unfaithful, Jecu," she says to me one time, bitterly. "You don't come home at night, and I see other women smile at you like something has happened between you."
What could I say — her accusation was just. With all the tourists in Rio, particularly at Carnival, the opportunity is always there. You check into a "honeymoon motel" for an hour or two, sometimes the woman is even ready to pay. It was a woman from abroad who bought me the pair of Nike shoes. Of course, there are men ready to pay as well, but I don't need money that much — I already do better than most of my neighbours. But it can be dangerous, going on honeymoons: I robbed a few motels when I was younger, with a couple of my friends. You could be robbed and killed, so I always have my gun.
Then, as if to soften the blow of her accusation, Lourdes says: "You've been good to the children, Jecu. Manoel has had no other father..."
We have been raising three children together. We are successful, in part, because Lourdes is a peacemaker. The oldest, Manoel, is from a previous relationship, about eight years old. When I come home from work, he wants to practise his kicks with me; he's really into o futebol, wants to play on the national team with the great Ronaldo some day. The girls, Zina and Minha, are five and two years old. The littlest one, Minha, is still nursing at the breast.
I'm teaching Zina and Manoel to read and write, like my father taught me when I was a child; they are both very intelligent. I read to them from the classificados in O Globo, pretending that we're looking for a car or an apartment. I'm also teaching them to count and do simple mathematics, but I only have a few years' education myself, and Lourdes can't read at all. Lourdes and I want the kids to go to school, but the schools are very crowded here and there's not enough of them; many children in the favelas have never been to school, and many school children play hooky. Like a big lantern to little moths, the streets are a lure to the children, and often no adult is at home to supervise them. That's why I tolerate Lourdes' mother. We don't like each other, but she watches the kids.
In the end, I can probably only teach Manoel my trade, which is driving taxis; he already works on the car with me. The father who doesn't teach his son a trade teaches him to be thief, or worse. Though my father taught me to drive and work on cars, I ran with the gangs for a while as a child, ran numbers for the Animal Game, which is Rio's lottery, but I want something better for my kids.
"Numbers are infinite," I say to Manoel and Zina. "If I was a magician, I could pull numbers out of my hat without ever stopping. You can never count them all."
"Never?" Zina asks, skeptically.
"Never. But if you don't believe me, a minha filha, go ahead and try."
So Zina tries to count to infinity. She gives up after counting to a couple hundred. However, I am very impressed, because many kids in the favela can't even count their fingers and toes. Both Zina and Manoel could be mathematicians or accountants, if we could only get them into a school. "He who masters numbers," I say to Zina and Manoel, "masters the universe. The rich know their numbers..."
Lourdes is heading out the door when she says to me: "Rosa Moraes is due to have her baby soon. I won't be home much over the next few days, because I'll be over at Rosa's..."
"Okay," I reply.
But I'm busy playing with the children, so I'm not really listening.
Our apartments are very crowded, with Lourdes' mother living with us. We could be doing worse, but we could be doing better. Her mother sleeps in one bedroom; Lourdes and I, in the other. Lourdes and I sleep on the mattress of her mother's brass bed, which the children found in a dump and dragged all the way home as a present for their avó, with some help from their friends. Lourdes's mother says that she prefers to sleep on the box spring because of her back, however, so Lourdes and I sleep on the mattress.
The baby, Minha, sleeps in the same bed with her grandmother, while Manoel and Zina sleep in the living room. We take the cushions off the living room couch at night and put them on the floor to make an extra bed, so that either Manoel or Zina will have something to sleep on besides the floor. It's Manoel who usually sleeps on the cushions while Zina sleeps on the couch without the cushions.
We have no running water, because the landlord shut it off to the whole building; we have to drag water in buckets from a single pump in the courtyard used by hundreds of other people in the same complex, or we buy it from a supermarket. But we could be doing worse: lots of people are doing worse than we are. The homeless people living on the streets and the people in the favelas to the north of Corcovado are much worse off than us, and there's more homeless people than ever before. People come from the country to find work, only there isn't any for most of them.
Rio has been called A Cidade Maravilhosa: "the marvelous city." There's even a song by that title, whose refrain probably everybody here knows. If you could build even a modest house on top of Corcovado, or any one of the favelas surrounding Rio, and look out to the wide expanse over Guanabara Bay and Sugar Loaf Mountain, you would feel like a king; there's no better site for a city in all the world, I think. But the hills are of granite: it would be difficult to sink a foundation into them, not to mention dig water pipes and gas lines. There isn't much room to expand because of the favelas to the north; there's over fifty of them — all on mounds of granite. The favelas and the bairros of the working-class people are overcrowded. Even the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana are always crowded with people, most of them tourists.
They say that Rio outgrew its water supply in the 1960s, so there's a severe water shortage now; the hotels draw much of it. Rio was the home of the bossa nova, where the samba and the chôro of the north meets the tango of the south, as well as some North American music forms like jazz. But that was in the 1950s and 1960s: whatever romance Rio may have had for North Americans, it's gone now for cariocas like me. Though I still love Rio, it isn't really a cidade maravilhosa for me anymore, because I have seen the worst of it.
Rio is one great big mess now, and it's getting worse; there's more poverty and more crime now than ever before. However, we cariocas are proud of our subway. Rio has a new subway system, O Metrô, due to be completed by the end of 2002. There are two main lines, which intersect at the Estácio downtown. When it's completed, there will be lines out to Niterói and São Gonzalo as well. You will be able to go anywhere you want in the city then, but it will be harder for independent taxi drivers like me to compete. Then the Cooperatives will take over completely, and the only taxis you will see are the yellow ones with the blue stripes and Radio on the door. But we will be a great city with a new subway system.
I feel useless here, even while driving a taxi for the tourists. I love my children — I even love Lourdes — but I want to get away. I want to do better in life, for myself and for everyone else. If I can drive a taxi here in Rio, why couldn't I do the same in New York or Los Angeles? Then I could send the money back home.
Of course, I would take Lourdes and the children with me, or send for them once I got the money, but Lourdes doesn't want to go: "I don't know English," she says.
"But you could learn," I reply. "I didn't know English either at one time..."
She says nothing; she just doesn't want to leave Rio.
I don't understand why she's content with so little in life, delivering babies and lighting little candles to Jesus and Yemanjá before she prays at the end of the day. To me, that's living in darkness. I don't want to live in darkness. Therefore, I am neither a Christian nor a practitioner of candomblé, but an atheist. This world is all that we have, and we must be open to whatever it offers us. What it doesn't give us, we take. What we can't take, we make from whatever is at hand. Some people are even willing to share what they have. I try to give back as well.
I don't want to live in darkness; light attracts light.

*****

"The kids want to go out to Corcovado," Chantal said, "to see the statue of Christ. Then we're want to ride the lift to Sugar Loaf Mountain. We might even see the old fortress in Ipanema. Are you coming?"
"Is that the one with the arms stretched out," I asked, "the one on Corcovado?"
I held out my arms like the statue that I was talking about. She smiled: "Yes," she replied, "that's the one. What do you say?"
I was about to say yes when I felt a dull throb to my head, what I call "the axe blow." I get these headaches from time to time, when I haven't slept much, when I have been up all night correcting papers, for example. Migraines.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Headache?"
"I didn't sleep well," I admitted, "but it's nothing serious."
"Anything unusual?" she asked. "Are you having double vision? Have you been feeling dizzy?"
"No, not at all," I replied. "It's nothing serious, a little headache — that's all..."
She touched me gently on the forehead and on the cheeks, checking for fever. Then she gently massaged my temples and took my temperature. "You need sleep," she admonished gently, after putting a digital thermometer in my ear. "But maybe you should go see a doctor when we get back, if you keep having the headaches. It's probably nothing, but it could be something more serious: a tumour, or the beginning of a stroke, for example..."
"It's no big deal," I replied, a little irritated.
Then I said: "Hey, I would like to go too, for the kids..."
"You need sleep," she repeated, smiling. "Besides, you're unbearable when you haven't slept..."
I shrugged my shoulders and said: "Okay, I'll try to sleep. For you, I'll try to sleep. But you're the remedy..."
"Behave yourself," she admonished, smiling again. "I'll only be gone a little while..."
We kissed. "Okay, my dear," I replied. "For you, I'll behave myself."
Before she left with the kids, she said: "I love you..."
"I love you too..."
I tried to sleep after they were gone, but I couldn't fall back asleep. I had daydreams, but of nothing specific. The images weren't clear, though there was lots of green in the background, like I was in the jungle of the Mato Grosso, or maybe somewhere in the mountains. In the end, I gave up trying to sleep and got up.
Though the air conditioning was on high, I was still sweating, because the air conditioning wasn't working right. I informed the concierge of the problem, then went down to the beach.
Again, I saw Maria da Conceição, drinking a bottle of guava juice under the umbrella of a stand like before, when we first met. I gazed at her a moment, then approached her, as if in a trance. When she saw me, she smiled and greeted me rather flirtatiously: "Tudo bem, senhor? How are you?"
"Hey, not worse," I replied.
"That's good," she replied, still smiling. "You could always do worse..."
We made some small talk: about the weather, things like that. She was friendly like before. I'm sure that somebody remarked that there were a lot of people on the beach. She told me a little about herself: twenty-three years old, she said, still living with her parents in Copacabana. She was a senior at the Federal University of Rio, about to graduate soon with a degree in international marketing. "How do you like Rio?" she asked.
I thought it was very charming the way she said "Rio." She pronounced it "hee-yew."
"What's there to not like about it?" I replied. "The weather's fine and the people are always friendly."
"That's good..."
I told her a little about myself. "I grew up in Montréal," I said, "the only kid on my block who spoke English, since my mother was from the UK. She died about six months ago, my mother."
"Oh, I'm sorry about your mother," she said, sympathetically.
"Hey, it was cancer," I replied. "She wasn't the same person when she died, you know. In situations like these, you almost want your mother to die, so that she won't suffer anymore. But you feel guilty about wanting your mother to die, because she's your mother..."
She didn't say anything, maybe she didn't understand. I don't know, maybe both of her parents were still living. Then I quoted the words to a Beatles song, "Dear Prudence":
"The sun is up,
the sky is blue.
It's beautiful,
and so are you..."

She evidently didn't know the song, so I told her what song it was, and by whom. She still didn't know it. "I guess it was before your time," I said, smiling. "This was back in the 1960s — a confusing time of long hair on boys and a world gone mad..."
She only nodded her head in agreement. I still don't think she understood.
At some point in our conversation, she said that she was engaged to be married. She and her fiancé wanted to go live in São Paulo after they graduated and got married, though she sighed: "I will miss Rio, but his family lives in São Paulo. So we will go live in São Paulo with his family after we will get married."
"That's too bad," I replied, "but they still have beaches in São Paulo, eh?"
"Yes," she replied, nostalgically, "they have beaches..."
Then we gazed into each other's eyes a moment. She had such beautiful, round, chocolate brown eyes! "You're very beautiful, ma p'tite," I murmured, "very pretty..."
I was about to kiss her when she turned her head away slightly. She saw that I had the demon. "Hey," I said, smiling, "the only difference between the young and the old, ma p'tite, is experience — that's all."
She looked at me and smiled, evidently amused. "Okay, o meu vovô..."
"Vovô?" I asked, confused.
"Yes, it means 'grandfather...'"
I laughed out loud and replied: "Hey, don't let the bald head fool you, eh? I've had a hard life!"
"It's whatever you say, senhor," she replied, also laughing.
Then she smiled mysteriously and said: "I'm sure that you have made a lot of women happy..."
"Yes, and I could make you happy..."
She laughed again, but then turned around and started to walk away slowly, saying over her shoulder flirtatiously: "Adeus, o meu vovozinho..."
Oh, parting is such sweet sorrow, but I think that she was still calling me "grandpa" as she walked away. I guess I'll have to dream the rest.
I soon forgot about Maria da Conceição. About twenty minutes after she left, another woman sat down a few metres to the left of me in a lounge chair that she had brought with her from her hotel. I was sure that she was Brazilian: tall, with an athletic built, almost six feet tall, with long and straight hair, light brown, down to the middle of her back in a braid — she had beautiful hair, and beautiful skin, golden like French fries. She was wearing a royal blue bikini, an orange sarong with a white floral pattern wrapped around her hips. I didn't think she was very pretty, but I was attracted to her anyway. It was her angular beauty, with the narrow eyes and the aquiline nose, that attracted me, though she wasn't really beautiful in the classical sense, like my wife. But she was about thirty-five years old, around the same age as Chantal.
When she saw me checking her out, she smiled at me and said in English: "Hello, how are you?"
I smiled back and replied, "Not bad, mademoiselle, and you?"
She laughed and replied, in French: "Oh, I'm doing fine, monsieur, but I'm married, no longer a mademoiselle..."
"Hey, that's too bad," I replied, also in French. "I was hoping that you were still single. What a disappointment!"
She laughed and asked: "But why, monsieur? It's no big thing to be married. Nearly everyone makes that mistake..."
Oh, her eyes! She had such beautiful light brown eyes, like a cat — devouring me with those eyes! We introduced ourselves. Her name was Flora, on vacation with her family like me. She was married to a German man, she said, with whom she had lived in San Francisco, California, where they met, until recently. They now lived in Curitiba, in the southern state of Paraná, with their two children, ages ten and four. She said that she had learned to speak French while living in the South of France for the summer as a student; she spoke it well, I thought. She also spoke Italian, because her father was from Florence while her mother was from Brazil. Therefore, I thought, she could have got her angular features from either her father or her mother, if her mother was part Native American.
I talked about myself as well: what I did for a living, where I grew up, and the dissertation that I had written for my full professorship. I told her that I was working on a translation of Rilke as well. I didn't conceal anything, but even told her that I was married with children, that I had been married twice, in fact. (My first wife was Katrina, my love like a hurricane, but that's another pair of sleeves, my first wife.) Then Flora smiled at me and said: "What do you say we go back to my hotel, senhor? I would like to welcome you to Brazil..."
I walked with her back to her hotel as if in a trance. I don't remember what we said, though our conversation was quite animated. It was the fact that I was a foreign tourist in Rio while she was a native Brazilian from another city on vacation too. Though she was a stranger, we were stripping naked together while kissing. Flora was quite original, a student of the classics or something, because she said in Italian, while entering her hotel suite with me: "Lasciate ogni speranza, ogni ch'entrate!"
She spoke beautiful Italian, I thought, but she was quoting Dante's Inferno like we were entering hell: "Abandon all hope, all who enter..."
A strange thing to say, I thought, but she told me afterwards that she didn't remember having said anything — a non sequitur, perhaps. She also liked the size of my penis, apparently: "Oh, you're so big!"
Definitely not a non sequitur, what she said about my penis.
After we were done, Flora asked: "Who's Maria?"
"Did I call you Maria?" I asked.
She nodded. "But that's okay," she said. "You can call me whatever you want. I will be your Calypso while you will be my brave Ulysses who will return to his Penelope. I will gladly change into your Maria like a new set of clothes..."
Then she told me about her husband: "The problem with Kurt is that he's very efficient. If he has twenty minutes, and he can fit me into his busy schedule, we might do it. But we could never mate like eagles in flight because he's an ox — he would crash against the rocks or fall to the earth or something. Me, I'm more spontaneous. It just happened; that's what was so good about it. That's why I used to ride the cable cars in San Francisco: you can meet interesting people that way, you know..."
The sex was good, because anonymous encounters have never been hateful to me. The way she moaned in Portuguese a few times, things like "sim" and "ô Deus!" That was the best part, hearing her cry out in a language that I had never heard before while having sex. The only thing else I remember is taking her from behind, en lèvrette. I wanted to have her ass bronzed, I wanted to bite into it like a sandwich! But everything else was just white or black — depending on how you look at the world; it was like a dream. Or a white night in the summer in the Arctic, when the sun never sets and you can never sleep anyway.
After we were done, she said: "I think I've seen you with your wife. She's a very beautiful woman..."
When she described the woman that she had seen, I was sure that she had seen me with Chantal. Then she smiled and added: "I've had sex with the taxi driver who dropped you off at your hotel as well. He's almost as good as you..."
After she related that piece of information, it felt like I was eating leftovers at the taxi driver's banquet table, like Lazarus underneath the table of the rich man in the Bible.
That was the first time that I had ever been unfaithful to Chantal, I swear it! I felt bad about it later, really bad. At first, I justified it with Chantal's accusations of infidelity in the past, but I don't know why I did it, except that Flora was available. It must be that I really had the demon, because I loved Chantal — really loved her. I would have never hurt her for anything, but Flora was an Amazon in bed.
There's a difference between love and sex, but Chantal couldn't separate the two while Flora apparently could. Chantal didn't understand that she was my friend as well as my wife and my lover. I loved her — I loved no one but her.
It's easy to blame an exotic locale in a foreign country, I know, but I doubt that we would have committed adultery either in Montréal or Curitiba, somewhere closer to home — at least not with each other. It was just an anonymous encounter, that's it, no love between me and Flora.
Then Flora's cell phone rang. After she answered it, she told me that it was her husband. She smiled and said: "Your Penelope is waiting for you. The gods have decreed that I must let you go..."
We got dressed, then she kissed me as I headed out the door, almost pushed me out the door. I returned to the beach with the smell of her sex on my body and in my beard — you can never get rid of it completely. I swam in the ocean, hoping that the brine and the salt water would conceal it at least somewhat. However, the taste of a woman can be even more briny, more bitter, than even the sea.
We're talking about the Delta of Venus here...

*****

I first lied down with a girl under the southern stars on New Year's Eve on the wet grass of a field outside one of the favelas of Rio after a summer's rain. You could see the moon and all the constellations perfectly: Canis Major and Canis Minor, Capricorn and the Southern Cross, several other constellations — no clouds in the sky. And the hills looked so beautiful: in the distance, even the favela looked beautiful, almost like Bethlehem on a Christmas card.
It was supposed to be a romantic evening, but the girl who was with me wasn't very comfortable; she complained bitterly about the wet grass underneath her. It wasn't a lot of fun for me either — a beautiful night wasted! I feel neither the buildup of sexual tension before the release, nor the feeling of euphoria afterwards — only the sensation in my pinto, that's it. There's only a little squirt of semen rather than a torrent of liquid fire. It is an orgasm without really being an orgasm, reduced to a bodily function like urinating.
It might be amusing now, but she was really angry afterwards: "If you ever try to touch me again, Jecu," she warned, "I'll castrate you!"
She was around the same age as me, fourteen years old. I was a virgin, she was a virgin — she didn't even know how to kiss properly. What a disappointment! I don't even remember her name now, it's probably just as well. It was one of the few times that I have ever apologized for ineptitude, but she only hit me on the arm with her hand and stalked off.
If I had impregnated her, I would have become a priest! At least that would have been the wise thing to do. However, a certain woman showed me compassion: it was Dona Linda who saved me from the priesthood. I had known her since childhood, had been in love with her since I was small. She was nice and friendly. All the kids on our block liked her, because she was nice to all the kids, like an older sister.
She was a small woman, cute, with light brown skin and long medium brown hair in braids, with laughing almost-black slanted eyes and thick sensuous lips, an oval face and a nice round little ass. She was between twenty-five and thirty, the mother of two or three children, while I was fifteen. I was easily able to carry her in my arms to the bed in her bedroom, I carried her many times.
"I can't change you into a man overnight, Jecu," she said, "because it's a question of time and maturity. But if you listen to me, you'll know how to please me. You'll be a better lover, even a Don Juan, but you must listen; you must know how to communicate..."
I learned to communicate. To do the trick, I had to discover what pleased her — I had to ask sometimes.
The first time, we spent a lot of time just kissing. I thought I knew how to kiss, but not with Linda, because every woman is different. Dona Linda wanted to kiss a long time, without removing any clothes. She wanted to laugh and play; she wanted fun without a lot of passion, at least in the beginning. But eventually, we didn't waste a lot of time, because we didn't want to be surprised by somebody, like her man.
Ever the paqueradora, she gives me little pecks like a bird: on the lips, on the cheek, on the chin; her kisses fall everywhere like the gentle rain just before a mudslide. She flirts, laughing through her nose as we kiss, a light touch here and there. Then she kisses me hard on the mouth. She takes my upper lip in hers while I do the same with her lower lip. Then she slides her tongue inside my mouth. When I place my hand on her small breast, I do it without even thinking, kissing her the whole time without her responding verbally to my touch. Then she stands up to remove her simple dress; it's only a slight interruption as she slides back onto the bed, with bare breasts but still in her panties. Then, after some more kissing, when I am all excited, she stands up again and asks me to remove her panties. Then she laughs and says: "Take off your clothes, Jecu — you have to be naked!"
I grin bashfully, and stand up quickly to remove my clothes while she waits, then I lays back down on the bed.
It was only the second time in my life that I had had sex, awkward like the first time, but much better the second time. She even said she enjoyed it. Eventually, I knew she that wasn't lying just to spare my feelings...

*****

My father, while changing the oil in his car, saw the little marks on my neck. He smiled and asked: "Are those rope burns you have there?"
When I only grinned, he teased: "Hey, the boy's becoming a man!"
"I'm already a man..."
My father laughed and said: "And I'll be the next president of Brazil. So who's the lucky woman, eh?"
I smiled bashfully and told him. My father stopped laughing. "She has a man, you know," he said with disapproval. "If he catches you guys together, he'll kill you both. Oi, it's a good thing I have more than one son!"
Linda and her man, Oswaldo, weren't legally married, because people didn't usually marry where we lived, but they had been together a long time; they had children together. I knew Oswaldo, but not well. We might have said hello to each other, or nodded when we saw each other, but that was it. I'd seen him often around the favela ever since I was young. He was tall and muscular, like a circus weightlifter, bald on top of his head with a handlebar mustache. He was much older than Linda, but making money like water as a longshoreman at the docks in the South Zone. I hardly ever saw him, hardly ever talked to him, because he took a bus to work early in the morning and came back at night. I didn't know him well, but I understood that my father was probably right: it was dangerous to see Dona Linda again, because of Oswaldo.
Brazilian men can be very jealous, you know. Like in the Middle East, we have honour killings in Latin America. In marriage, jealousy is sacred; the murder of the unfaithful one and his or her lover a rite, despite civilization and its laws. If a woman suddenly takes an interest in her appearance, her man might get jealous and kill or maim her. He might do the same if somebody even flirts with her. Men in Brazil have been known to murder their women even after they have been raped by somebody else.
Not every man does this in Brazil, of course, but there was a story in O Globo about a university professor who set fire to his wife because she wanted to join a health club. He didn't suspect her of being unfaithful, only of wanting to be unfaithful; that was sufficient for him.
These killings occurred in a great wave everywhere in Brazil during the 1980s: among the rich, the poor, and the middle class, among all races. Understandably, the feminists demanded stricter penalties, but the rest of the country was perplexed. Therefore, men convicted of such crimes usually received only light sentences, maybe a few years in prison. The magistrates, almost all men, could perhaps see in those that they sentenced someone like themselves: normal, not criminal. Married themselves, they might have thought: "There I go, if not for the grace of God..."
However, I continued to see Dona Linda anyway. Once, after having had sex with me, she admitted: "I've been waiting for you to grow up, Jecu. You were a nice little boy..."
I wasn't a nice little boy, but a malandro who smuggled drugs and betting slips under the wheel guards of his bicycle, which an older malandro called Broadway Joe had bought for me. I was even a sicário, riding up to people on my bicycle and shooting them — I always killed with one shot. I had been engaged in criminal activity from the time I was very small.
But like my father, my mother warned me about Dona Linda: "She's just a whore, José," she said, "and Oswaldo's a bastard. He'll kill you both if he catches you guys together..."
However, I didn't listen to my mother's advice either, because I thought my mother was a whore too; she was soon sleeping with other guys after my father left home for North America. My father wasn't always so faithful either, I'm sure, but my brothers and I condemned our mother while my sisters defended her.
My mother has had a lot of children: a few stillbirths and newborns who died soon after birth, as well as the ones that survived. My brother, Jorginho, was shot by the police during the gang wars of 1987 — he wasn't very smart, Jorginho. My mother has had a few abortions as well. A lot of women in the favelas have abortions; people just don't talk about it. Women sometimes die having abortions, or present themselves to hospital emergency rooms with internal bleeding and infection. Occasionally, they are prosecuted.
My mother had two or three children by Bruno, a drunk who was also abusive, until my brother Tom and I made him move out. He'd come on to my sister, Lina, who was beautiful like my mother when she was young, while he was drunk.
While my father was still at home, my mother bought a sewing machine and made money sewing, particularly during Carnival, when she sewed the fantasias for the dancers at the samba school in our favela. Several of our neighbours were less fortunate then us, but we sometimes had trouble making ends meet as well.
The economy was usually bad, with inflation sometimes over four-hundred per cent a month — not unusual in Latin America. The Brazilian government was constantly changing or devaluing the currency so that the cruzeiro soon become worthless, like the real and the cruzado before it. Now the currency is the real again. Even the rich were getting anxious, putting their money into foreign banks. Then there were the periodic gun battles between the police and the gangs in Rio and São Paulo. Sometimes, some malandros would even attack a police station. It happened in São Paulo as well as Rio.
Since I was now driving my father's taxi, I felt independent, so I ignored my mother's advice and continued to see Dona Linda. We were in the middle of a morning rendezvous — it was always in the morning — when Dona Linda's daughter rushed home to warn us that Oswaldo was coming. Someone had given us away, it seems, and he had left work early, or maybe one of their children had told him about their mother's "friend."
The little girl probably saved our lives, because Linda and I had time to decide what to do. If the little one had let events take their course and done nothing, Oswaldo would have probably surprised us and killed us both on the spot, because he was armed with his pistol. However, we were arguing even as Oswaldo approached, only a few houses away.
With her dress in hand, Dona Linda pleads: "Please go away, José — he'll kill you!"
"He'll kill you too, Linda," I protest, whispering hoarsely. "He already knows!"
It's probably each man for himself, but I prefer to do battle with Oswaldo, a jealous husband who's much bigger than me, rather than abandon Linda even to save myself. I probably should have listened to her, but I can't abandon her now because I'm in love with her and I think of myself as a man.
Then Oswaldo bursts into the little cinder block house that he's sharing with Linda and their children, very enraged. Linda has already put on her dress, but I'm standing in front of Oswaldo in my underwear, that's it. However, Oswaldo makes a fatal mistake: he takes aim at me when Linda is much closer, no more than a few steps away. As Oswaldo points his pistol at me, Linda stabs him in the heart with a long knife from the kitchen table, killing him instantly. There's blood everywhere in the little kitchen — what a mess!
Her little daughter has seen the whole thing and is rendered temporarily unable to speak. The image of Linda stroking her daughter's face with a bloodstained hand will be with me always: "You mustn't tell nobody, Ofeia," Linda says soothingly to her daughter. "You didn't see nothing, okay?"
Then she kisses and hugs her daughter.
I put on my clothes, then we think of what to do with the body. You can't call the police, because they probably won't come anyway. If they come out, there will be a whole phalanx of them in riot gear, ready to do battle. If some little criança throws a rock, there could be a riot and a lot of people killed. Therefore, we think of how to dispose of the body ourselves while we clean up.
The body is very heavy, since Oswaldo was a big man, well over a hundred-fifty kilos. So I get a few of my friends, as well as my brother, Tom. Together, after dark, we all try to lift the body into the trunk of my father's Beetle, which is in the front, but it's much too heavy to lift, much too big to fit into the trunk. Too bad we don't have a Camping Bus! We don't have a bone saw to cut it up either, so we tie his legs to the rear bumper of the car and dragging him to a dump. If you had seen us, you might have thought that we had lynched somebody, dragging him until he was dead, since this is a favourite method of lynching people, if somebody has a car. Except that nobody is celebrating.
Somebody might have found the body at the dump the next day and called the police, but the police never question any suspects. Most of the homicides in Rio go unsolved, you know. In the meantime, Linda has cleaned up the place, which takes a long time, with some of the blood dried up before she's finished.
When word gets around of Oswaldo's death, Linda's neighbours suspect immediately that she was involved and shun her. Even though Oswaldo was trying to kill her, people have sympathy for Oswaldo, because people know that Linda was cheating on him and think she's only a whore. Myself, I doubt that she was any more of a whore than any other woman; she just got caught by her man. Sure, she was a little tease, but I don't think she was seeing anybody else but me at the time.
But my mother summed up what a lot of people thought: "She'll get what she deserves, the puta!"
However, I thought that my mother was just a hypocrite, since she was seeing Bruno at the time. I was waiting for her to get what she deserved too, because I thought, at the time, that my father would eventually come back home.
Dona Linda and I broke up after Oswaldo's death, because I couldn't go back to that place, not after what had happened. I just stopped coming. We remained friendly, but she eventually found another man and moved in with him. I was soon driving my father's taxi and seeing other women, but I learned from Dona Linda more than just sex: I learned about jealousy as well, that there's a fine line between love and hate, between bliss and despair, between making love and rape. A woman knows when she's being raped, but a man can't always tell the difference.
Love and hate are like two islands in a stream that rest side by side, like two hands put out in front of you. When you quarrel with a lover, there may be no other person in the world that you hate more than that lover. And when that lover is unfaithful, you may be driven to commit murder, like Oswaldo — like me later on.
My one regret was that I wasn't the one that stabbed Oswaldo: it's better that a man do such things; it's a question of honour, of self-respect. As I see it, the man was put here to defend the woman, to protect her, and I failed to do that.
Ofeia, the little girl, rendered speechless by her father's murder, talks again eventually, because in the end, the child belongs to the mother: she knows that her mother loves her. But she's never the same, always quiet, taciturn — a marose little sentinel, waiting for something dreadful to happen.

*****

That night, I still had the demon — worse than the night before. As Chantal stripped to put on a nightie, I wanted to throw her down on the bed and plough her like a field. Fortunately, she was in the mood too. Just when the sex was starting to get predictable, the tigress would be unleashed in her: she still liked to slide down bannisters at home, à la Mary Poppins, you know — just like a child.
While we were doing it, I put my mouth over hers to muffle her cries, because of the kids. If she tasted Flora on my lips, smelled Flora in my beard, she didn't say anything about it then. Maybe she only tasted and smelled the sea.
After we were done, she snuggled up to me and purred: "Oh, you're an animal..."
"You too, ma chérie."
We kissed twice on the lips. "My headache's gone," I said.
She turned around in my arms, her back to me, but I was still drunk on her body, nibbling the nape of her neck while she moaned softly. We did it again, nice and slow this time. Oh, God, how I wanted her, spread out like the Eve before me, the tattoo of the butterfly just above the mons puberis! I felt that I was imploding, that I was disappearing into her, both physically and spiritually, and that I didn't want to come back. It was beautiful — it must have been the Viagra!
She sniffled after we were done. Chantal is the only woman that I have ever had who sniffled right after having sex. That's how I can tell that she has enjoyed it. Then she fell asleep in my arms.
Afterwards, I was thinking of Maria da Conceição. I loved Chantal still, but I realized it was Maria that I had wanted, even though I had been sent off by Flora in the afternoon and then by Chantal that night.
It was those deep brown eyes, that brown body, those small brown breasts. It was Maria's bare back as she was walking away from me that I wanted to cover with kisses. But we always want what we can't have: Maria was the fantasy that I couldn't possess but possessed me; Flora, the liaison that was already receding into memory, beyond memory and forever into the subconscious, along with all the other women in my past.
But that night, when Chantal tasted my pine, I was sure that she knew. But she only looked up at me without stopping...

*****

I have killed several people in my life, the first time when I was six years old. It all started when I was talking numbers with my friends, Gilberto and Rodrigo. Gilberto, who was black, said: "Numbers are infinite, Jecu. No matter how high you count, you'll never run out of numbers. He who masters numbers masters the universe. It's the whites who control everything, because they know numbers."
In a childish attempt to master numbers, and therefore master the universe, Rodrigo and I tried to count to infinity. Rodrigo, Gilberto's younger brother, only counted to about fifteen before he concluded that he had reached infinity. I counted up to six hundred before I realized that Gilberto was right, that numbers were indeed infinite.
"Wow, Jecu!" Gilberto exclaimed, impressed. "Most kids that don't go to school can barely count their fingers and toes."
Gilberto was smarter than me and actually went to school for a while. He was surprised that I could count that high because I was never in school, but my father had taught me to read and count. However, I still don't know how to write very well, because I never had much practise writing. But even at the age of eight, Gilberto already understood the numbers game, because his skin was black.
The rich and the middle-class might deny that racism exists in Brazil, but opportunities are limited for people of colour like Gilberto — for mixed people like me. Gilberto had two older brothers by different fathers: one, whose father was black; the other, whose father was white or mestiço. Both brothers had done well enough in school, so they apply for a government position after finishing secondary school. Only one position had initially been open, but the government hires both brothers. However, the position that they seek goes to a white person. The lighter-skinned brother is given a different clerical position at a lower salary while the black one is hired as a messenger. The black one is hired only because he has a bicycle, which he only got from his family because he's the oldest. It happens all the time in Brazil.
Gilberto, eight years old, reiterates his assertion: "He who masters numbers masters the world, because that's how the rich make their money — by mastering the numbers. Just like the Animal Bankers control the numbers racket here in Rio."
The Animals Bank is the lottery here in Rio; the Bankers are the malandros that run it. It gets its name from the lottery tickets, each one of which has the face of some kind of zoo animal: a lion, giraffe or elephant — whatever.
Of course, Gilberto is only repeating what he heard some adult say, probably, so I say: "We can get some money, filho."
"How, Jecu?" he asks skeptically.
"We can get some guns," I reply.
Gilberto's eyes open wide with astonishment. "Where can we get guns?" he asks.
"Anybody can get guns," I reply, astonished at his naïveté.
He'd apparently been reading too many books and looking at the maps of distant countries to know his own neighbourhood like me, though he probably knows where all of the countries in South America are located on a map.
"What are you thinking, Jecu?" Gilberto asks with certain dread.
"We can rob Meném," I reply, as if in a trance.
Meném is an Arab, a Christian from Lebanon or Iraq who owns a grocery store just south of Corcovado; he has a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima behind the counter. There's a lot of crime around Corcovado, and businesses there are robbed frequently; store owners are usually armed. Everybody knows that Meném is armed, because he once shot and killed a robber, about twelve years old, while the kid was running away. He just left the body lying there without calling the police. We know it's dangerous to rob him, but we think it's the best way to get some money without having to master numbers like the rich, or the Animal Bankers.
Rodrigo is enthusiastic about the plan; he's in right away. Gilberto, more sensible than us, however, is naturally hesitant. "You're not serious, are you?" he asks, astonished.
"Yes, I'm serious," I reply. "Are you in or not, filho?"
Gilberto is afraid to back down, afraid to lose respect with me and Rodrigo, so he says, very reluctantly: "Sure, I'm in..."
So Gilberto and I walk into Meném's store, with Rodrigo as lookout, because I'm afraid that Gilberto will run away if he's lookout. The robbery doesn't go well, however, because it's our first one. Meném reaches for his pistol, but I shoot him in the chest at close range. Meném stumbles back against the wall behind him, knocking over his shrine to Our Lady of Fatima, and falls to the floor. There isn't very much blood, but the bullet must have pierced his heart because I kill him with just one shot — I always killed with one shot. Gilberto and I then take the little bit of money in the till, then flee with Rodrigo.
I didn't want to kill him, but I didn't want me, Gilberto or Rodrigo to die either — it was either us or him. So at the age of six, I was a murderer.

*****

Our lives as malandros really began when an older kid we called "Broadway Joe" bought us bicycles. He was tall and thin, pale, with russet hair, about twelve years old, with a ready smile but a cruel look in his grey-blue eyes. I didn't trust him — there had to be a reason for his generosity. After a few days of letting us "break in" our new bikes, we find out: "I need you to take this to some friends," he says. "I owe them some money. I'd do it myself, but I have other things to do..."
He has a brown paper bag with some slips of paper. He counts out the slips, puts some under the wheel guards of our new bicycles, then tells each of us where to go. I deliver some slips to an old woman who lives on top of a hill, an old baiana in her sixties. Since this is a business transaction, she doesn't smile, say hello, or offer me sweets, but merely counts the slips, then gives me about ten thousand cruzados, not a lot of money. She looks at me hard and says: "Give this to Jecu. Tell him that I want my receipts..."
Of course, I understand what's transpiring: the woman is buying lottery tickets for the Animal Game. I put the money under the front wheel guard of my bicycle, then ride back to Broadway Joe's. I'm tempted to skim some money off the top, but I understand immediately that Broadway Joe knows how much money he is to receive; he will killed me if any of the money is missing, I'm sure.
When I come back, Broadway Joe counts the money, gives some of it to me as a stipend, then gives me more "receipts" to deliver to the old woman. It becomes a regular thing.
Gilberto and Rodrigo comes back from their deliveries without incident. It's official: we are now working for Broadway Joe as number runners. It seems like an easy way to make money — right? Well, one day, Rodrigo comes back from his run without the money. Of course, Broadway Joe thinks right away that Rodrigo is hiding it somewhere, but Rodrigo protests his innocence: "I must have lost it," he claims, frightened now. "I put it above the wheel like you told us to!"
With two bigger kids backing him up, Broadway Joe searches Rodrigo, but doesn't find any money on him; maybe Rodrigo did lose the money, I think. Broadway Joe only sighs with regret and says: "Ah, bem, you send a boy to do a man's work, this is what happens."
For a moment, Gilberto and I think that Broadway Joe is going to forgive Rodrigo his carelessness, but that's not what happens. Instead, he hands me a pistol and says calmly: "Take care of him, Jecu. He has to learn his lesson..."
I don't believe it! I am so horrified that, for a moment, I don't understand what he's telling me to do. When I look at Gilberto, I see the same panic in his face that must be in mine; he doesn't believe what's happening either.
But Broadway Joe gently puts the gun in my hand and points me towards Rodrigo, who's now pleading for his life: "Please, Jecu, I'm your friend..."
"You know what you have to do," Broadway Joe says softly. "You know what you have to do..."
Yes, I have to do it. If I don't shoot Rodrigo now, Broadway Joe will have his friends shoot both me and Gilberto, as well as Rodrigo — I know that.
Then, as Rodrigo pleas for his life, my pity turns to contempt, because he's pleading for his life. I say as I pull the trigger: "I have to do it, o meu amigo, I have to do it..."
Then, after I have shot my friend, Broadway Joe and his friends put their arms around me and hug me, congratulating me like I have scored a goal in a football game. I don't believe it!
I have committed other crimes: running numbers, robbing stores, selling drugs, pimping prostitutes, hijacking trucks, but I lost my soul that day, the day that I shot one of my friends. I live now as though nothing mattered.
But I am now a sicário, Broadway Joe's hired assassin.

*****

Zaca and Cabeludo unite and attack a police station in Rio. For a time, it's them who rule Cidade de Deus, the worst of the favelas. Then the gangs start fighting each other, and the army is called in. Thousands are killed, including my brother, Jorghinho. My mother is almost hit by a stray shot while holding my baby sister, Zazu.
Then, during the fighting, some puta shoots me in the stomach. Gilberto and I shoot him dead, but I'm seriously wounded. I need to go to a hospital, but I prefer to die rather than wait for the police to come arrest me in a hospital bed, because the police are arresting kids in the hospital who have been shot on the suspicion of them being gang members. However, I am too weak to resist both Gilberto and my mother; they take me to the hospital anyway. Gilberto, always the realist, knows that the gangs aren't going to win: "You weren't meant to die like this, Jecu," he says. "You can be more than a malandro..."
Before I recover completely from the stomach wound, the police arrest me and transport me to the prison in an ambulance with someone holding an intravenous bag. I spend some time in the prison hospital before being transferred to a cell.
You don't want to be in a Brazilian prison: I was kept in a dungeon, basically. From the outside, the building looks like a beautiful old fortress from the colonial era: grey, built of solid granite. Inside, however, my cell is musty and humid, particularly in the summer months. There's no electricity, no sunlight, except for a sunbeam coming in through a top window certain times of the day. They don't have clocks in jail cells, so you lose track of the time at first, though I realize eventually that the sun enters my cell just before dusk.
I am kept in solitary confinement in a narrow cell with black mold at the base of the walls, fed moldy bread and given stagnant water. Sometimes, I think they're feeding me every hour just to confuse me. The police interrogate me and beat me several times over what seems like many weeks; the beatings seem endless. I am manacled for long periods of time, given shocks from electrodes hooked up to a car battery. I am naked for long periods of time, but the guards hit me whenever I cover my testicles with my hands.
One time, they put a wet bag over my head until I can't breathe. Another time, I am suspended from the ceiling by the wrists and the ankles and spun around like the propeller of a helicopter. One guard likes to snap a wet wash cloth at naked prisoners in the shower room, like he's swatting at flies. Another one lines up a group of prisoners and makes each one stomp the foot of the kid next to him — I will always remember the look of sadistic glee in his face.
The guards take care not to leave any bruises or scars on the face, or any broken bones — any physical evidence. They always hit prisoners on the fleshy parts of the body, never in the face. They hit me on the ass until I can't sit, or on the soles of the feet until I can't stand, then force me to sit or stand afterwards. They play loud samba music at all hours of the day, to prevent you from sleeping and drive you crazy.
They know that what they're doing is illegal; we have habeas corpus even in Brazil, you know. But what good is the law if the judges and the politicians are unable to enforce it? Brazil doesn't have the death penalty, probably has never had it since independence. Therefore, the courts can't sentence a man or a woman to death. However, there's little to prevent the police from beating somebody to death or shooting somebody in the head once they make an arrest; it happens all the time. There must be honour even among police officers.
When they are off duty, many police officers become vigilantes and prey upon the favelas at night. However, the police only enter the favelas in riot formation in the daytime, because they're afraid; they don't walk beats in the favelas like they do downtown. They usually only arrest people downtown, homeless people, or somebody caught breaking into a rich man's house in the suburbs. The police are always on hand for those with money.
Then there's justice in the favelas; we have our own way of dealing with things. Whereas the government can't legally put someone to death, the favelados do it all the time. We have our own way of dealing with rapists and child molesters, for example, not to mention murderers and thieves. Of course, suspected informants suffer the same fate as suspected rapists and child molesters — death.
I tried to save somebody from being lynched once, because I thought he was innocent. I don't know, it was just a hunch. Unfortunately, his accusers don't agree, and I can't save him. Sometimes, mobs only follow their hunches too; they sometimes accuse somebody without knowing for sure if the accused is really guilty. If someone has a car, they might drag the accused behind it until he or she is dead.
As a gang member, I have found that torture was usually unnecessary, because people have a tendency to confess or to brag. It's always difficult to maintain a story based on fabrications without being inconsistent somewhere in your story, or too consistent to be credible. Then there's body language: you can tell by looking at someone whether he or she is lying, if you understand body language. You can often tell somebody's intentions beforehand when they are about to commit a crime as well. I always know when some little puta is going to rob me by the way he shifts acts beforehand.
Therefore, those who break under torture will usually break under less extreme measures. As both a torturer and someone who has been tortured, however, I have found that some people will never talk, no matter what. Those people, you either have to release or kill. In the end, the torturer is only a sadist — I could be a sadist sometimes.
I enjoy torturing a certain numbers runner called Broadway Joe, because I hate him — everybody hates him — though he's my conselheiro. A boy accuses Broadway Joe of having sexually molested him. Broadway Joe denies the accusation. Defiant to the end, he never confesses, but we kill him anyway. Only he never gives us the satisfaction of pleading for his life: he even tells us to go fuck ourselves before six or seven of us shoot him.
Even in death, however, Broadway Joe is a mentor for me — especially in death. I try to follow his example while in jail. But if I don't talk, it's only because the police don't ask the right questions. They never realize who I am: they never realize that I am O Xeque, the Sheik, the dreaded sicário who works for Broadway Joe. Probably, they didn't even know that our gang, the "Invisible Gang," even existed, because our gang was never big like Zaca's or Cabeludo's, and the police avoided the favelas.
One police inspector, Porfirio, who is young, even says to me, with apparent sincerity: "We want to save your soul, o meu filho, while you still have a conscience..."
I am so moved by his apparent concern that I would talk, if he was asking the right questions. Thinking like a child willing to obey, I only tell him what I think he wants to know. He has no idea that he's interrogating a small-time gang member who has killed several people. To him, I'm only a kid, only arrested because I had presented myself to emergency with a stomach wound. Porfirio only wants to know why I was shot, but I can't tell him because I don't know why I was shot — I didn't know the kid who did it.
I tell Porfirio only one lie: when he asks me what happened to the kid who shot me, I tell him that he ran away. He doesn't challenge my answer, but I confess anyway, because I have come to trust him. I think he already knows anyway. However, I can't tell the inspector who I had killed, because I never knew my attacker.
The inspector has me look through the bodies in the morgue, but I can't identify any of them. Maybe he thinks I'm only making it up. Because the police never find the body, there isn't any evidence.
Then I tell Porfirio about robbing Meném's store. I don't know why I tell him, but I tell him. Porfirio asks me for details, but, much to my surprise, I have trouble remembering details. For example, I can't tell him whether the robbery and the murder took place during the day or the night. I can't tell him what I said to Meném, or what Meném said to me. I don't even remember if there were others inside the store besides me and Rodrigo. I only remember that Meném reached for his gun, and I shot him.
However, you can't legally call it self-defence because I was committing a crime. Yet it was self-defence, because Meném was trying to kill me, though he was defending himself too.
"Are there any witnesses?" Porfirio asks.
I nod my head: "There were two: Gilberto and Rodrigo, but Rodrigo is dead..."
He talks to Gilberto, who's willing to cooperate, but Gilberto can't tell him much, because he doesn't remember much either. So Porfirio takes me and Gilberto to the crime scene, but Meném's store is no longer there; it's a different store, under different owners — we don't recognize it. The counter is even in a different part of the store, up against the south wall of the store by the door. (Meném's counter was against the east wall facing the door.) In the end, Gilberto and I are no longer sure if this was the store that we robbed: the place is completely different.
"Are you sure that you want to make a confession?" Porfirio asks.
Gilberto shakes his head. "I'm sorry, inspector," he says, "but I don't recognize this place..."
I withdraw my confession as well. "I don't think this is the place," I say to the inspector.
I think Porfirio understands that we killed a store owner in a robbery, but we can't make a confession: too much time has elapsed, and Gilberto and I were both small then. As well, I think we were both high from smoking bazeado or sniffing gasoline fumes in a plastic garbage bag.
The first principle of habeas corpus: there has to be a body before there's a case; there has to be evidence. The evidence is gone. The police don't want to investigate, probably because there are other more current crimes for them to investigate. The majority of crimes in Rio de Janeiro go unsolved, because there are too many crimes and not enough police.
Before they release me, they admit me to the prison hospital because of an upper respiratory infection — I am allergic to the black mold in my cell. They also want me to recover from the beatings, probably.
After I am released, a man and a woman from North America or Europe — I don't know what country — interview me in English through an interpreter. Of course, I tell them that I am innocent of any wrongdoing. I even cry for the camera — it's all on video.
I am really crying, however, because I feel victimized when I realize what has been done to me. However, it's the journalists for O Globo who break the story; the human rights organizations and the journalists in other countries merely pick up on it. Today, the name Cidade de Deus is synonymous with the war that the police and the army made on the homeless street children who take to crime only to survive. Only you can't be a child in a place like Cidade de Deus. What can children do when they have to run away from abusive or drunk parents at home, or their parents throw them out on the streets — what can they do?
Though I am about twelve years old then, I look younger. I realize now that children in Latin America are often smaller than children the same age in North America and Europe — something a certain tourist told me. I had considered myself a man, but I don't always act like one in jail, because I'm not a man. I sometimes cry like a child, and I'm ashamed of myself for it, but I was only a child then.
Porfirio, the young police inspector, understood that, I think, but most of the other police only saw me as the enemy.
I learned English from a leftist English teacher who was jailed on the suspicion of being an urban guerrilla. He was surprised that I could read and write, because I had never been to school. But I became radicalized, because the people who reached out to me, those suspected of being leftist guerrillas, were fighting the system. I consider myself an anarchist today. I have never accepted completely the socialist vision of worldwide revolution and a classless society, but I understand better than most of the leftists the poverty and the injustice that my people face every day in the favelas, having faced it myself. I know that it's not only possible that there are single individuals who make more money than all the people in the favelas combined, but that this is indeed the case. People in Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, or Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, drive around in Mercedes Benzes and BMWs while those in Cidade de Deus, Dona Marta and Mangueira are hungry and live in shacks without gas, running water and electricity.
But if I can never be part of the white bourgeoisie that live in the suburbs by the beaches, I'm not really a favelado either. The world from which I came — os sertões — will be gone one day. I am a sertanejo from the backwoods rapidly disappearing through deforestation, through the greed of ranchers— some from North America looking for cheap land — who live in large fazendas while their workers are hungry. They mostly grow soya or raise beef cattle for people in North America.
My people are being displaced from a land being destroyed and then corralled in slums in the cities where they go to find work; only there isn't any work for most of them.
However, the leftists give me a new identity: I leave the jail with a clean record and a birth certificate for the first time in my life. As a price for my new identity, they expect me to give back to the community once I start working. I give money for school lunches, for example, for the samba school at O Palácio do Samba as well. But sometimes we hide somebody who is wanted by the police. My family never turns away anybody who needs something to eat or a place to stay until their next pay cheque; we have always tried to be good neighbours even before the leftists reached out to us.
My life as a malandro ended when my father gave me the keys to his taxi and handed it over to me and said: "You don't have to be a malandro, Jecu. Maybe you can never be a millionaire like the people of Ipanema or Copacabana, but you can do better in life, even if you put only a few cruzeiros in the bank every week..."
The last person I shot was a kid who tried to rob me near Corcovado when I was a taxi driver; he was about ten years old. I drove off rather than reported the crime, because I had been to prison, and the gun that I had was illegal. Most of the guns in Rio are illegal, you know.
My father believed that any man who didn't teach his son a trade taught him to be a criminal. He taught me to drive and repair cars, only I learned to be a numbers runner and a murderer despite my father's efforts. I had two fathers: my father, and Broadway Joe, who was my mentor — my conselheiro. I still see Broadway Joe kneeling before an altar that he had consecrated to Xango, one of the candomblé gods, though Broadway Joe is no longer living.
I didn't think about killing Meném and Rodrigo for many years, until after I had become a man. Only then I felt remorse, after having killed many others besides Meném and Rodrigo. I start thinking about it again after 9/11, when I start having nightmares. I have nightmares now: post-traumatic stress, they call it. I now see the people that I have killed in my sleep. I don't always remember their names when I wake up, but I always remember the places where I killed them.
In a sense, I am haunted by ghosts, the ghosts of the people that I have killed. I always expect to be shot one day, like all the people that I have shot, because I drive a taxi.
It's an exciting life, running the streets of Cidade de Deus with my friends — never a dull moment. But you never see any old malandros in Cidade de Deus: a lot of them don't make it to the age of fifteen. Broadway Joe was only about fourteen or fifteen when we killed him.
My father was right, I realized: I could do better in life than end up dead before I was fifteen.

*****

You have seen the taxi driver twice today. The first time was outside the old fortress in Copacabana; the second time, by the statue of Christ on Corcovado. Is it just coincidence, or has he been following you? Maybe you should feel threatened, but you don't feel threatened. Rather, you find his presence reassuring, like he's there to protect you. You think that he would help you, if there was any trouble, but this one seems shy. Maybe he doesn't know what to say, or maybe he respects the sanctity of marriage, knowing that you're married. You don't know.
Right away, you're struck by how good-looking he is: thin, of average size, with wavy medium-dark hair, brown skin the colour of caramel, and narrow dark green eyes. There's a faraway look in his eyes — that's what really gets you. You like his smile; he has a beautiful smile, you think, and brilliant white teeth. He could be an Arab or a Moor, since his features are Iberian but his skin is dark. He has faded blue jeans with a hole in the right knee, and old white Nike tennis shoes — definitely casual. He's wearing a grey panama hat and a yellow Brazilian national soccer team jersey with Brasil in green letters across the chest, to which he has clipped his sunglasses.
He looks like Kurt Cobain, but with dark features — you think he's a Pisces. He's young in years without really being young. He has probably never really been young, you think, but he's polite; he knows how to treat a lady. He has the look of someone who has known suffering, who thinks that he can't escape it. Yet there's a certain fatalism but not a melancholy, a joie de vivre despite his situation.
When another taxi takes you and the children from the fortress to Corcovado, you see him pull up behind you with another client, though you pretend not to notice. You settle with the first driver, then begin your ascent to the top of Corcovado, a tall hill overlooking Rio — a climb of about a kilometre. The children run ahead of you, but you keep a steady pace, stopping only when they stop and you catch up to them. You're in good shape from swimming many years, but it's good exercise, climbing to the top of Corcovado. By the time you get to the top, the children are tired, but so are you. But the climb is worth the trouble: from Corcovado, you can see Guanabara Bay perfectly.
What a splendid view, the vastness of it all — it all looks new to you! You can see Sugar Loaf Mountain in the morning mist, a lake, Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, and the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. You have the strong urge to fly. You would like to spread your wings and soar over Guanabara Bay. If you could, you would fly to Sugar Loaf Mountain and beyond, out to the sea, like a tern or a sea gull.
Then there's O Cristo Redentor, the statue of Christ, facing the bay and the city. This is not a religious statue of Christ, you don't think, since he isn't being crucified, but a secular one, embodying the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity — those of the French Revolution. Nevertheless, you're moved by it. Everybody has their own Jesus, you know. With arms spread wide, this Jesus wants to take the whole world in an embrace, it seems. For you, it's a mystical experience: you want to take the whole world in a loving embrace as well. You feel a love for everybody. You're not a religious person, but you consider yourself spiritual.
Immersed in your thoughts, overcome with emotion, you forget the taxi driver for a while, until he comes up from behind and speaks to you: "Bon dia, senhora," he says.
You look at him and say good morning as well. He likes the lilt of your voice, the way your voice trails off at the end of a phrase. He suspects that you're not from the United States, but from somewhere else, like maybe Canada.
His voice is calm, self-assured. He speaks English well enough, in measured tones. "I'm sorry, senhora," he says, smiling, "but I don't remember your name, though I remember you..."
"Chantal," you remind him, "my name is Chantal..."
"I am José..."
He pronounces his name like the French, not like the Spanish. He pronounces your name correctly as well, since those who speak Portuguese pronounce the ch-sound like the French. But he pronounces Rio "hee-yew," and your family name "hoo-so." You think it's a pleasant little eccentricity, the way he aspirates the letter r like the English letter h on words that begin with the letter r. But the Brazilians are different than the Latin Americans who speak Spanish, because they speak Portuguese, which is softer, less emphatic, than Spanish — more like French. You like the way he speaks.
Then he reminds you that he drives a taxi and offers to take you anywhere you want to go: "I've been around the block a few times," he tells you, smiling again.
You accept his offer. You talk about yourselves as you walk down to his car. You tell him that you and your family flew to Paraguay, then crossed back to Brazil to see the falls on the Iguazú River. He relates that his paternal grandmother was a Guaraní Indian from Paraguay while his grandfather was German. "Maybe it was the Guaraní who built the dam," he says, "since they live on both sides of the river..."
His father was born in the Parambel in the Mato Grosso, where his grandparents met and presumably got married. Both of his paternal grandparents were refugees. His grandfather came to Brazil from Germany to escape the Nazis while his grandmother and her family fled a terrible war in the Gran Chaco of Paraguay during the 1930s. You react with horror when he says that most of the men in the Gran Chaco were killed in that war.
"My father was a fazendeiro for a while," he says, "with a herd of cattle on fifteen-hundred acres, hacked from the jungle by machete. But he was forced from his land at gunpoint by a richer and more powerful fazendeiro..."
Again, you react with horror, but there's no bitterness in his voice, no sense of injustice, nor any haste to tell his story. That's life, he seems to say: the bigger fish will devour the smaller fish. The price for pressing your claim could be death, you know. He who has a gun and some bodyguards can expropriate the land of smaller landowners, no matter what — it happens all the time in Brazil.
Eventually, he relates, his father came to Rio, where he drove a taxi, but the economy was much better in the 1960s. His mother was from the state of Bahia, to the north of Rio. His mother was a beautiful black woman, he says, who had lots of children. Then his parents split up: "My father went to North America to find work," he says, "but the money stopped after a while, and we never heard from him again. He's probably dead. Maybe he was killed by a robber, I don't know."
Of course, you feel sorry for him. You touch his hand and tell him: "That's too bad about your father, José."
He shrugs his shoulders and replies: "It happens, senhora. I might have to leave home too some day. My woman and I live with her mother and our three children in two very crowded apartments. We aren't married, but a casimento in Brazil is not the same as a marriage in the North American sense, because people here don't usually get married legally. That's to say, it's a middle class thing, something that people who want to be respectable might do. So we aren't married, though it's like we're married. My woman is uma parteira..."
"A parteira?" you ask, interested. "I'm sorry, but I don't understand..."
"It's not a bad thing, senhora," he replies slowly, "but we don't talk about what parteiras do in Brazil, because it concerns women. Let us just say that it has something to do with babies..."
You don't know, maybe he's trying to tell you that his friend is a nurse. Again, there's no haste to tell his story, but he doesn't seem comfortable talking about parteiras.
At the bottom of Corcovado, he asks: "Where would senhora like to go now?"
"The children want to ride the lift up Sugar Loaf Mountain," you reply.
He smiles and asks: "And what does senhora want to do?"
You laugh and reply: "Senhora wants to ride the lift with the children..."
He laughs as well and says: "It's whatever you say, senhora, but it's a long walk to the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain — at least a couple kilometres."
"Then the children will be tired," you reply. "The little one, Patrick, he was a rocket in a previous life, I think — he has so much energy!"
It's a joke, your son being a rocket, but he doesn't seem to understand. He only replies: "You have a pretty smile, senhora. You could be a movie star..."
You thank him for the compliment, but he doesn't talk much after that, perhaps because of the children, but you squeeze his hand furtively one time on the way down to the bottom of Corcovado. However, you sit in the back seat of his car, a dark green Volkswagen Beetle from the 1960s, between the children while talking with him.
When you arrive at Sugar Loaf Mountain, he waits while you ride the lift with the children, then he takes you back to your hotel. Since their father already has gone down at the beach, you let the children go down to the beach too, but you call your husband on your cell phone first. After the children are gone, the taxi driver says: "I like you, senhora. You are simpática..."
He takes your hands and lightly kisses your fingers. He admires your hands with their long and elegant fingers and asks if you play the piano. You tell him that you have played since you were a child; you can play Beethoven and Rachmaninoff. "I can play the Appassionata," you say with some pride. "It's very fast, but maybe I could be a concert pianist..."
Then he notices that you aren't wearing a wedding ring. He sees no mark from any ring on your ring finger at all and asks, surprised: "You don't have a wedding ring, senhora?"
You shake your head. "I lost it," you reply vaguely. "I was heartbroken for a long time..."
You go prepare some coffee in the coffee maker in the bathroom, as if in a trance, then you kiss the taxi driver. In the bedroom, you are simpáticos — you surrender to him completely. Then you raise a cry to the ceiling of your bedroom. You cry out in a voice that you don't even recognize as your own.
Some men are invasive, but he encourages you to open up like a flower, little by little, until you take your foot. Then he involuntarily jerks his penis hard the moment that he ejaculates. It hurts a little, but your face and the upper part of your body are flush — you have a glow.
You tell him "thank you" when you're done. He replies: "Não há de quê, senhora..."
Stretched out lazily on the bed with the sun coming in through the window, like a model in a painting by Modigliani or Riopelle, you don't feel like getting up and getting dressed, but your husband and your children will soon come back. Reality intrudes, so you get dressed. You extend your hand and squeeze his before you get up. You put on a robe and have a cup of coffee with him afterwards. Then he kisses you tenderly on the hands and on the lips one more time before he leaves.
It has been a pleasant afternoon, but you have trouble making sense of it after he's gone: his hand in your hair and on your breast, his mouth to yours... You feel him inside you even after he's gone, but you have trouble making sense of it now. It shouldn't have been beautiful, because he isn't your husband, but it was beautiful for you — that's why it doesn't make sense. You think of throwing yourself off the balcony to your hotel suite for a moment, but there isn't one, so the moment passes.
Is it that you are supposed to want to commit suicide, out of shame and guilt? Would it satisfy the world if you threw yourself under a train in the Metro to expiate your sin, if everybody else knew?
But you don't feel ashamed or guilty at all, only content. Some kind of transformation is taking place, you think, but you don't know what it is yet.
Then, with your hand on your heart, you become aware of your own heartbeat. You had a heart murmur as a child, but your heartbeat is slow and regular now.
When your husband and your children come back from the beach, they find you downstairs, playing a polonaise or a mazurka by Chopin on the piano, content.
You play the piano every day. You even play the Appassionata.

*****

I came up behind her, kissed her on the nape of her neck, and cupped her breasts with my hands as she stood at the window of the bedroom with the curtains open, taking in the moonlight. She looked so beautiful there in the moonlight, her body naked and white, the tattoo of the butterfly just above her pubic hairs. She moaned yes a few times as I kissed her bare shoulders and her long and elegant neck, and squeezed her breasts gently. With her eyes closed, transported by desire, she moaned softly, half pleading: "Please take me now..."
We made love in silence, because of the kids in the next room, except for the sound of our breathing. She would open her mouth from time to time, but nothing came out. There was only the sight of her lungs gasping for air, of her face, neck and breasts the colour of the moon, which shone into our room.
Then, some rapid eye movement, her eyelids fluttering wildly. I thought that she was about to cry out when she opened her mouth and arched her back, but she was silent. When she took her foot, there was nothing but the sound of a little gasp, of a little moan, that's it.
After we were done, I held her in my arms, still drunk on her body, drunk on the smell of her body, its taste. I was kissing her on the nape of her neck again when she asked drowsily, still intoxicated herself: "Who's Maria?"
I replied, still kissing her, not really listening: "I don't know anybody named Maria..."
I didn't remember calling her anything. If I had ever called her Maria, it must have been a different time, like the night that I was thinking of Maria da Conceição while making love with her. I wasn't thinking consciously of Maria or anything else this time — only Chantal and her pale skin in the moonlight, remembering how it was bathed by its rays, not Maria's skin the colour of nutmeg. But maybe I had called her Maria a different time, I didn't know.
"You called me Maria," she said, no longer aroused. She was facing me, angry now.
"Me?"
"Yes, you. There's nobody else in this room..."
"When did I call you that?" I asked.
"A few nights ago," she replied, "the day we checked in after we went to Paraguay..."
"Well, Maria is part of your name," I offered weakly, "isn't it?"
Her first name is Marie-Thérèse, not Chantal, because she was born between the feast days of St. Theresa of Lisieux and St. Theresa of Avila, in October. Her parents were religious Catholics, particularly her mother.
"Nobody calls me that and you know it," she replied curtly, turning her back to me in anger. I kissed her on the cheek, because I still wanted her, because I loved her.
"Hey, maybe I was thinking of Maria de Chapdelaine," I offered. "I don't know..."
She turned her head toward at me and asked skeptically: "You have fantasies of making love to a character in a bad movie?"
"Hey, I have lots of fantasies," I replied. "You do too, don't you?"
"Say my name," she said angrily, "or don't say anything. I'm not Maria de Chapdelaine or anybody else."
She turned her back on me again. I smiled, though she obviously thought that this was no joke, and whispered in her ear: "Chantal..."
It didn't have the desired effect: she almost hit me in the mouth when she turned around. She was angry now while I was perplexed. It was jealousy.
"I love you," I ventured cautiously.
"Then why do you hurt me?"
"Hey, I'm sorry if I hurt you," I said. "I don't mean to hurt you. I only love you. I've never loved anybody like I love you — never!"
"Omnia vincet amor, eh?" she said sardonically.
I was taken aback. I knew what it meant, but I had never said that to her, for fear of belittling her because she didn't know Latin like me. But she apparently thought that I didn't know what it meant and said sarcastically: "It's Latin, but you're supposed to be the intellectual, not me."
Then she wept bitterly. "You're cheating on me," she sobbed.
I denied it vehemently, but we both knew the truth: I was compulsively drawn to Maria da Conceição. Right now, our marriage was like a hockey puck trapped in the neutral zone — that was why I had wanted to go to Rio.
I tried to console her, but she was inconsolable. "I only love you," I repeated. "There's nobody else. There's never been anybody else!"
But it was like she didn't hear me: she only continued to sob.
"Hey," I cried, "you hate me, you despise me?"
She didn't answer me but only continued to cry. When I tried to put my arms around her from behind, to console her — to show her how much I loved her — she elbowed me right in the mouth; she broke the skin on the lip. She apologized the next morning and said that it was an accident, but right now, she was still sobbing.
The next morning, down at the beach, I was confronted by two very frightened children, Avril and Patrick. "Why was maman crying?" Avril asked.
"She was sad," I replied evasively. "Your mother always cries when she's sad..."
"What does 'despise' mean?" Avril asked.
"Don't worry about it," I muttered. "Your mother was just sad..."
Patrick had said nothing, but in my son's sad little eyes, I saw his mother accusing me of betrayal, because he looked so much like his mother that I used to joke that he started life as a self-fertilized ovum.
I felt like a goblet of shit.

*****

When I was seventeen, I met a waitress at a diner downtown in Rio named Cristina during a lunch break. She was a year or two older than me, short, with black hair, olive skin, and round dark eyes. Her face was shaped like the moon, and she had a short, slightly upturned nose, with large breasts and the ass of a sambista. She wasn't very pretty, I thought, but she was quite the tease, quite adventurous in bed. I was eventually taking her to my place when nobody was home.
I liked her at first, because I thought she was independent, willing to help support a family, if necessary. But she was just a whore, looking for somebody to magically steal her away from the bairro where she lived so that she could sit on her ass all day and get fat while her man worked. She was only interested in me, I think, because I was now a taxi driver making good money rather than a sicário shooting other kids from a bicycle. We were fighting a lot in the end.
We quarreled, in part, because I gave money or table scraps to beggars outside the diner where she worked whenever I ate there. Beggars make waiters and waitresses very nervous, you know, because people who wait on tables for a living don't make a lot of money themselves. If they lose their jobs and can't find another, they could be beggars themselves or prostitutes, so beggars are a reminder to the working poor that they could end up out on the street. As well, beggars drive away customers, and waiters and waitresses rely on tips, like taxi drivers.
However, Cristina and her family tolerated my generosity in the end, because I used my connections to keep their place from being robbed. I had friends come provide security in return for a free meal, sitting down at the counter or at a booth for a few hours while armed. Cristina met several of my friends that way; that was how she met Gilberto.
I go over to Gilberto's and walk in unannounced, since I often walk in without even thinking about it. I am shocked by what I see: my best friend and my girl friend in bed together, fucking like two dogs! It's like one of them had ripped out my heart bare-handed while the other held me down. So I shout, pull out my revolver, and aim first at Gilberto, then at Cristina.
It's a question of honour for me: I can't spare either of them, or nobody will ever respect me again. Any woman will think she can cheat on me without anything happening to her if she gets caught, while any man will think he can steal my woman. So they both have to die.
Cristina covers her breasts with the sheet and begs for mercy. The tears are streaming down her face, the whore, because she knows that she is going to die. "Don't shoot, Jecu," she bawls. "Please don't shoot — I'm sorry!"
The idiot, Gilberto, could jump out the window to save himself, but he stands to face me — like a man. He tries to reason with me. He says to me calmly, though very much afraid: "I know I deserve to be shot, Jecu, but this is your fault too. You accuse a woman of cheating, and before you know it, she cheats on you. You accuse a woman of being a whore, she becomes a whore..."
I can't believe it! I'm even more enraged now, because he's now implying that I'm stupid for thinking that Cristina is a whore when we both know it all along.
Then he confesses: "I love her, Jecu — I love her..."
Instead of shooting him, I decide to beat him to death. So I grab my pistol by the barrel to strike him across the face with the handle. I'm sure that I have broken his jaw, knocking out some teeth with the first blow, because there's teeth and blood on the floor.
I'm about to hit Gilberto again when Cristina grabs something heavy and hits me over the head with it, knocking me out. I regain consciousness at my mother's with my head still ringing from the blow. They have dragged there, put me on my bed, and left me there. They have taken my gun, I'm sure, because I never find it again.
For a few days, I lay in bed, not wanting to eat, not wanting to do anything. I'm humiliated, sure that I can never face the world again. I have lost both my girlfriend and my best friend at the same time, and I have nothing to show for it but a big headache. Sometimes, I want revenge, not only because Cristina and Gilberto have betrayed me, but because they have tricked me and avoided their just reward. Other times, I'm just depressed. But I can't get out of bed for a while, and Gilberto and Cristina have taken my gun away.
Finally, my mother says: "You have to start working again, Jecu. Otherwise, the kids in the neighbourhood are going to steal that car piece by piece, then we'll really be in trouble. You have to forget about her — you have to forget about them. Your brothers and your sisters can't always watch that car..."
So I start driving my taxi again. After the incident with Gilberto and Cristina, I'm not home much anymore but always working. For several months, I'm always in a bad mood, unless I get laid. I find solace mostly in my work, in the fact that I'm making some change and helping my family. I'm not making money like water, but I'm useful to my family. I avoid women from the favelas now, thinking that they are all whores.
The women that I see now are either foreign tourists or girls from other bairros that I meet on the beach. I was seeing a pretty little patricinha named Maria da Conceição for a while, but she broke it off after she told me that she had become engaged to somebody else. I don't worry very much about AIDS with girls from places like Ipanema, Leblon and Copacabana, because they are cleaner than girls from the favelas.
It's after 9/11 that I begin to have bad dreams and wake up sweating. I think the terrorist bombing in New York City was a trigger, or rather, the magnitude of it. I start to see the faces of those that I have killed, people whose faces I can no longer remember while awake but see again while asleep.
Night after night, I play out the robbery of Meném's store in my dreams, but sometimes, Meném shoots Gilberto or Rodrigo, or he has his gun pointed at me before I can draw mine. Then I see Rodrigo, Gilberto's brother, sobbing and pleading for his life, before Broadway Joe makes me shoot. But most of the others, I can't remember them, though the places where I killed them are always familiar. Then there are the walls of my prison cell, the prison hospital, and the room where I was tortured. I remember Porfirio, the young inspector who said that he wanted to save my soul.
Sometimes, I have flashbacks when I hear samba music, since the interrogators often played samba. I am beginning to dread Carnival, because of the flashbacks that its music sometimes triggers. Loud noises, particularly anything that resembles gunfire — like the backfire of a car or a motorcycle — make me jump.
Sometimes, I fall to the floor to take cover with a gun drawn — I always have a gun with me. I'm always embarrassed afterwards when I do it in front of others, but I have been shot at several times in my life: you learn to take cover if you want to survive in the favelas, because you don't ever want to give anybody a second chance.
The last time that I kill somebody, I'm driving my taxi. A kid about ten years old comes up to me and pulls a gun, but I shoot first because I have mine ready. I don't report the crime because the gun is illegal. You could go to prison for having an illegal firearm, so I shoot the kid and drive off like a criminal.
That's probably the reason why I have survived rather than ended up dead like Meném — killed by a six-year-old — or the kid that pulled a gun on me: I'm thinking like a criminal when the kid tries to rob me or kill me. I still think like the kid that pulled a gun on me — like a malandro. I'm still a criminal, still a malandro.
When I start drinking, my mother nags me about it, but I keep a bottle of vodka beside my bed in case I can't sleep at night. My mother is aware that I use other drugs, like marijuana and cocaine, but I smoke marijuana only with my friends and do cocaine only with the tourists. Getting drugs has never been a problem for me, because I still have connections in the favelas, and the tourists pay while I buy for them. I drink alcohol only when I'm home alone.
I want to leave Rio and head towards o norte, but you need money for that. However, I'm now in my twenties, with a woman and children: I will have to leave Rio soon, or I will never leave.
But how am I to get the money?

*****

About six months after I caught them together, around Easter, Gilberto and Cristina showed up, Cristina, visibly pregnant. I'm living with another woman, Lourdes, who is already pregnant with our first child. (She has a son from a previous relationship, Manoel.)
It's Lourdes who lets them in. I feel a cold fury, but I decide to listen to them anyway, though I don't know why I don't just shoot them. "We're sorry, Jecu," Gilberto begins. "We were wrong, and we ask forgiveness..."
Cristina shouts: "Hey!"
It's Gilberto who mostly speaks. Cristina mostly listens, but interrupts from to time by shouting: "Hey!" Each time Cristina shouts, Gilberto waits until the moment passes, then continues with what he has to say.
"Why do you need my forgiveness?" I ask coldly at one point.
"We would like to make amends with everybody that we have wronged," he replies, "though it's not always possible. For example, we can't bring back the people that we have murdered, Jecu. Only Christ can do that at the resurrection..."
Again, Cristina shouts: "Hey!"
Nobody says anything for a moment. There's obviously a purpose to their visit; they aren't here just to say they that are sorry. I soon ascertain that they are here to bear witness that a change has come over them, but at one point, I just glare at them and ask: "Do you love each other?"
"Yes, we love each other," Gilberto replies firmly.
"Then you haven't done anything wrong..."
Again, Cristina interrupts by shouting: "Hey!"
Then she speaks for the first time: "We know that we have hurt you, and we're sorry. We want to get married, Jecu. We're asking you for your blessing so that everybody can move on."
"My blessing?" I shout. "You want my blessing? Hey, I'm not a priest!"
"We're all priests," Gilberto replies quietly, "if we serve him..."
Then he quotes something from the Bible: "'For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that all who believe in him should not perish but have eternal life...'"
"I won't serve him," I shout. "if it means going to heaven with either of you. I'd rather go to hell!"
Cristina touches my arm and says gently: "You're already in hell, Jecu. You're just not aware of it yet..."
I draw my gun and point it at them — I am going to shoot them, I swear it! But they just stand there mute, like a pair of oxen yoked together. It's like they don't understand the danger. I don't know even now if they are brave or extremely foolish — crazy — but it's evident that they aren't very attached to their lives. If I kill them, they probably think that I have given them a pass to heaven.
I understand now that Gilberto and Cristina know very well what they are doing. On some level, they understand that if they show fear again, that if they beg for their lives, it would make them look cowardly in my eyes and goad me to commit murder. Gilberto still understands the code of the bairro, part of which is to never show weakness or you will lose respect and die. Yes, he who loves his life may indeed lose it. So it's all the same to them now if I kill them or not.
"We want your blessing, Jecu," Gilberto repeats, "because we want to make peace. We want to get married. It says in the Bible that Cristina and I can't make our offering at the altar until we try to make peace with you, because we have done you wrong. We betrayed you."
"You don't need my blessing," I tell them malevolently. "I'm a devil, and a devil can only curse..."
In the favelas, people shack up rather than get married, because few people can afford the marriage license, the blood tests or the marriage ceremony. As for the wedding rings, that's out of the question — too expensive. So people live together until they break up, then they move on. I don't think my parents were ever married. Lourdes and I aren't married now.
So I ask them why they are going to the trouble of getting married. Cristina says simply that they love each other, that they don't want to live in sin. They have been going to a Pentecostalist temple, where both of them have done a religious conversion, firstCristina, then Gilberto — uma epifania, they call it. Cristina now speaks in tongues, babbling like an idiot at their temple during Sunday services. She will shout "hey!" for no apparent reason, like she has Turette's syndrome.
She's aware of this eccentricity and very self-conscious about it. She knows that people think it strange — even she thinks it strange — but she can't help it. She has been doing it since she "received the Holy Spirit," so she might shout at any time.
The Pentacostalists believe in "spirit possession," just like the practitioners of candomblé, but the Pentacostalists believe candomblé and macumba (which is similar to candomblé) to be satanic, that their practitioners seek out evil spirits. But to me it's all the same: religion and the occult are both the same to me. So neither Gilberto nor Cristina are really stranger than before, just different — trying to appear respectable, as I see it.
Then I ask Cristina: "Whose baby are you carrying?"
Cristina shouts: "Hey!"
Then she looks up at Gilberto, who replies: "Mine, Jecu. She's carrying mine now..."
They are apparently dedicated to a life together serving Christ. Their temple is taking up a collection and paying for nearly everything: the marriage license, the blood tests, the wedding. They only have to pay for the wedding rings, which they aren't buying, at least right now. Cristina no longer has her job at the diner because she's showing and her family has disowned her, but Gilberto has found a full-time job at a supermarket downtown as a stock boy.
It's evident that Gilberto loves Cristina, because of the concern that he shows her, very solicitous: "Tudo bem?" he asks from time to time. "Are you all right? Would you like to sit down..."
Therefore, I give them my blessing. There's no point in withholding it now because they love each other, and I am with Lourdes.
Since they are Pentacostalists, they have stopped participating in the Carnival festivities; they think it a pagan holiday, and the behaviour of the celebrators sinful. Gilberto has started preaching in the favelas, often approaching gangs of armed kids with their marijuana cigarettes and bags of gasoline to sniff while unarmed himself. Though he's a big man, it's soon evident that he has become gentle as a lamb, posing no threat. He's putting himself at risk, however, because he no longer carries a gun. But a bullet to the head would be a pass to heaven for him anyway, as he sees it: he has overcome his fear of death.
Cristina later has a son, who doesn't look at all like Gilberto. I suspect now that the baby is mine, light like me and Cristina. Anybody could be the father, except Gilberto, or someone black like him. However, Gilberto is raising the baby as his own son.
But maybe Cristina has been faithful to Gilberto, because they have two or three more children, all of them darker than her but lighter than him. Maybe people can change — maybe a leopard can change its spots.
The day that I caught them together, I lost everything: a friend, a girlfriend — everything. They found each other, then Christ. They might even go to heaven when they die. By committing murder, maybe life would have made sense for me again, but Cristina even cheated me out of my revenge by knocking me out with a frying pan when I was about to kill them. By admitting that they had done wrong, by asking forgiveness, Cristina and Gilberto became more virtuous — at least in their own minds — but what good was it to me?
Maybe there are angels to watch over people, to watch over fools, because I don't understand why I didn't shoot them even today — I don't know what stopped me. They were either very foolish or very brave, showing up at my place like that, because they gave me another chance to kill them.
I have spared Gilberto twice: when I caught him with Cristina, and when they came back to ask forgiveness. I could have shot them when I caught them in bed, but I hesitated, letting Gilberto speak his mind before I merely struck him in the face with my pistol. Why didn't I kill them when I had the chance? They weren't meant to die by my hand, it seems. But I owed Gilberto my life as well: he rushed me to the hospital with my mother when I was shot in the stomach, though I hadn't wanted him to do that. As well, he has shown me no bad will for killing his brother, because he understood that I had to do it.
The last time I saw them together, they looked happy, so maybe it was for the best. If Cristina had to run off with somebody else, maybe it was better that it be with Gilberto. He didn't mean to betray me, I realize now; he was really in love with her, but Cristina was a piranha: there for him, but not for me.
With the passage of time, I have probably forgiven them to the extent that I am able. I don't hate them like I used to, I'm just not over it yet. There's no "safe sex." You can use condoms to minimize the risk of herpes or HIV, but sex is a dark and mysterious force, potentially deadly, with the power to unleash jealousy and violence, even rape and murder. Sex can also come between friends. Then there's the risk of pregnancy. There's nothing safe about it — I know better now.
It was then that I was lost to the favela, because I showed them mercy instead of favela justice. But eventually the killing has to stop, because you can only kill so many people before you're fed up with the whole damned thing. I decided to let it stop with me, I gave them my blessing in the end. Besides, Lourdes and I were about to start a family, so were Gilberto and Cristina.
I'm no longer a sicário, Broadway Joe's little hired assassin, no longer a child who needs two hands to hold a pistol. I'm now haunted by the ghosts of the people that I have murdered, because what are those that we see in our dreams if not ghosts from our past?
But I am still a malandro, because of my past.

*****

Sitting in a chair at the beach, I checked out the girls discreetly as they passed while strolling across the white sand. There was a lot of them here — everywhere. I had already seen hundreds that day, strolling at the edge of the beach, playing volleyball, or lying in the sun. I thought of Maria da Conceição whenever I was at the beach with the kids, which was nearly every day. I waxed over her poetically like King Solomon in The Song of Songs — I felt young again. I would make love with my wife but see Maria's bronzed body: the slender form, the bare shoulders and small breasts like towers. But mostly it was the frizzy hair and brown skin. I wanted to give her the benefit of my experience, but I doubted that I would see her again, because she seemed to have stopped coming to the beach. She might have been attracted to me, but I understood: she didn't want to ruin the opportunity for a good marriage with a young man of good family.
I was obsessed, struck by the lightning bolt, which is different than love. I loved Chantal — would have never hurt her for the world — but I was really attracted to Maria, obsessed with her. It wasn't love but a strong attraction, what they call the demon of middle age — a desire to hold onto youth and get out of life what you can while you still can, no matter the cost.
I would forget Maria, but I always remembered her again whenever I saw someone else who vaguely resembled her: someone with the same hair, the same colour skin, the same body type. Once, I was sure that I had seen her when I saw a girl with a yellow bikini like Maria's walk by, with the same basic features, about the same height, but it wasn't her. She was attractive enough, worth a second look, but she wasn't as beautiful as Maria da Conceição — nowhere near it.
Maria would have done well to find a lover like me, I thought, about my age, with my experience. I was sure that I could have loved her if I knew her better, if I didn't have a wife — or if I was rich enough to afford a mistress and a wife at the same time. In Latin America, I'm sure that beautiful girls like Maria find rich souteneurs all the time.
Maybe Maria was somewhere else on the beach, but I didn't see her: there was no Maria da Conceição.
Chantal could attest that I was a better lover now than when I was younger, but it gets harder to keep up with a woman like her. She was still young and beautiful, and she wanted it as much as ever too, but stamina wasn't a problem for her. If she wanted to work for it, if she wasn't feeling lazy, she could outlast any man. In the end, no man can keep up with a woman, or no man can keep up with Chantal. I know from experience.
I still wanted it as much as ever, but the mind is willing while the flesh is weak sometimes. Instead of stamina, I have experience — lots of experience. But you have to win a woman's love over and over again, it seems. I didn't mind it when she wanted it, but having to reassure her all the time wears you down in the end. I loved no one but her, but her jealousy was too much sometimes. Sometimes, I just wanted to say: "I only love you, but if you want to leave me, I won't stop you — I'll understand..."
But there are some things that you can't say to your wife, because women don't understand. What they mistake for not caring is often just weariness. Whenever her friend, Alice, came over, Chantal really wanted it then, because she was even jealous of Alice, a buxom blonde with beautiful blue eyes, like she was jealous of Maria. That was probably why she wanted it the night before in Rio — jealousy.
Then Chantal called me from her cell phone early in the afternoon while I was at the beach with the kids. She had been gone since morning, before the kids and I woke up. She had left a note on the night stand, but I thought it very strange, her calling like that.
She said that she had come across a midwife and a woman about to have a baby. "The midwife needs my help," she explained. "The expectant mother's in bad shape. She could die, you know. The hospitals are far away — near the centre-ville. We're in a shantytown..."
"A shantytown!" I exclaimed, dumbstruck.
"Yes, a shantytown. You wouldn't know this was Rio."
"How did you end up there?" I asked, incredulous.
"Later, I'll explain later, okay?"
"Okay," I said, still perplexed. Then I said: "I love you, ma chérie..."
"I love you too," she replied quietly.
Then she said again: "I love you, but I have to go, eh? Bye-bye..."
"This is curious," I muttered to myself after she hung up.
Something about this whole thing wasn't right. She was behaving very strangely...

*****

I picked up a couple from East Rutherford, New Jersey, at the airport. Marvin is an insurance agent while Ruth is a housewife and a grandmother. Marvin is tall and stocky, about fifty-five or sixty years old, a full head of curly hair that's mostly grey, and a voice rough from drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. He has a space between his two front upper teeth.
His wife, Ruth, is short and plump with short curly hair dyed brown and a nasally voice, about the same age as Marvin, maybe five years younger. She walks with a slight waddle — you know, how heavier middle-aged women often walk. She reminds me a little bit of Lourdes, my woman, except that she's older, and much more risqué. She isn't at all shy about expressing her opinion.
Marvin leans over, rests his hand on my shoulder, and says: "Hey, it's my wife's birthday and she wants to have a threesome. Whaddya say?"
I look at him in my rearview window with some suspicion and see him smiling. When I don't answer right away, he asks again, impatiently: "Well, whaddya say?"
"Are you serious, senhor?" I ask, shocked.
"Sure, he's serious!" Ruth answers, smiling roguishly. "You've had threesomes before, haven't you?"
"Hey, hasn't everybody?" I reply, also smiling.
They roll around in the back seat, laughing and slapping their thighs; they are easily amused, it seems. Marvin shouts in his rough voice: "Hey, I like this kid!"
Then he asks again, impatiently: "Well, whaddya say?"
I shrug and reply: "Okay."
"Now you're talking!" Marvin shouts.
Then I glare at Marvin in my rearview window and say firmly: "But I don't do it with other men — okay?"
They laugh out loud again as Marvin shouts: "Whaddya think I am — some kinda pervert?"
Ruth screams with laughter while Marvin shouts: "Hey, don't answer that question, kid!"
We check into a honeymoon motel somewhere downtown. When we get to their room, Ruth goes into the room first and slowly strips while Marvin and I wait outside in the hall. Marvin whispers to me: "Show me what you got, kid."
"Here?!!"
"Don't worry, kid — there's nobody out here!"
When I hesitate, Marvin says impatiently: "Come on, kid — andale, andale, before someone comes out..."
So I look around, then pull out my pants at the waste. When he sees what I have, he says: "I'm bigger than you, kid, and you're uncircumcised. But hey, you're a goy."
"Whatever," I mutter.
Then he whispers: "So this is the plan: liquor up front, poker in the rear — get it?"
I don't get it. He raises his eyes towards heaven and mutters: "Ai-yi-yi!"
Then he explains slowly: "Lick her up front, poke her in the rear. Look, kid, since you're smaller than me, you're going to have to take her from behind while I do her in the front, okay? She likes it in both ends, if ya know what I mean..."
I nod my head. I'm not sure about the whole thing all of a sudden, but I say: "Okay, senhor, it's whatever you say..."
"Now you're talking!"
When Ruth is under the covers, she shouts that's okay to enter. First, we smoke some bazeado, which I have with me, then we pass around a bottle of vodka. It is, shall we say, interesting. I'm willing to do what they want me to do — within reason, of course — since I'm getting paid for it, but Ruth has something different in mind. Ruth tells us what she wants, then Marvin gives me directions like he's a general on a battlefield, or the director of a film — a porno film, of course. Maybe he thinks that I need of an interpreter, like I don't speak English, I don't know.
Then Ruth gets fed up, charges at Marvin like an enraged bull, and chases him out of the room. She bars the door, because she wants me all to herself; she apparently doesn't need a director. We can hear Marvin banging on the door and shouting from the hall, dressed like somebody from the Amazon rain forest: "Hey, lemme in!"
Ruth laughs and motions with her eyes towards the living room and says: "Marvin out there's a Leo — always giving directions. He's a back-seat driver. He was an Adonis when he was younger, but he's so vain, thinks he's still got it."
She has to explain to me what a back-seat driver is. I also don't know what an Adonis is either. When she sees that I have misgivings about being alone with her, she says: "Whaddya think he's gonna do — we've been married thirty-three years. I would get a lot of alimony if we divorced."
Then she looks at my piça and cries: "Whaddya do with that thing — break walnuts?"
I laugh when I understand. She's funny — that's why I like her. She had mentioned that she was a comedian, that she did open-mike nights on Mondays somewhere. I bet she had a lot of stories to tell.
"When I was a child," she says slyly, "I thought men kept candy in there, what with that bulge in their pants. Turns out I was right..."
She has a seductive smile now. She lays on her side, propping her head up with her hand, trying to look sexy — probably feeling sexy. She doesn't look too bad, actually.
"What's your sign?" she asks in a low voice, slowly rubbing my arm as I lay down next to her.
"I don't know."
"Whaddya mean you don't know? When were you born?"
"The 18th of February, I think," I reply, shrugging my shoulders. "I don't know for sure, because I was born at home, not in a hospital. There's no record of my birth, so I don't know where or when I was born. My mother doesn't remember the day either, because people don't always have calendars. According to the government, I don't exist, but I was probably born around St. Valentine's Day."
"That makes you an Aquarius— I think," she says, amused. "Though you could be a Pisces — no, I think you're a Pisces. You're definitely a Rudy Valentino — you could have been in silent movies as The Sheik. But since you don't legally exist, you could be any sign you want. You can be anybody you want, José — anybody. You can do anything you want."
Then she suggests: "Maybe you should find yourself a nice Scorpio — one that can handle you."
"Like you?" I ask, smiling.
She smiles confidently and replies: "Yeah, like me. Anybody who can handle him can handle anyone."
Then she says: "It isn't really my birthday; Marvin was just saying that. My birthday's on Halloween, which is sort of like the American Carnival, only not as wild. Only Mardi Gras in New Orleans comes even close to Carnival in Rio. On Halloween Night, people pass out candy to the kids who come to the door in their costumes and yell 'trick or treat.' My kids went trick-or-treating when they were little. Their kids do the same thing now, though we're Jewish and it's a Christian holiday. I like to see the little kids in their costumes; some of them are really adorable."
Then she smiles and says: "Now if you do me wrong, you're in for a bad trick, but if you treat me right, you're in for a treat. I was named after both a baseball player and a candy bar, you know. I speak softly but carry a Louisville Slugger."
Then she smiles again and says: "Talk to me in Portuguese."
So I smile and say: "Quero tomar-te como um animal."
She laughs and says: "I understand the 'animal' part..."
Even though Ruth is about fifty-five, if not older, she doesn't look too bad after a while — I have seen worse. Her body is proportional, everything somewhat large — hips, thighs, ass, belly, breasts — but not too large. From a distance, from across a beach, you might not think that she's particularly beautiful, but up close, or with some binoculars, she has a certain allure: her brown eyes almost black with desire, her smile, her full sensuous mouth turned slightly downward at the corners. Some women, for reasons you don't understand, are attractive; they have what the French call a je ne sais quoi. I find her attractive, despite her age — I like her eyes best. She insists that it's because we are both water signs that we are compatible: her, a Scorpio; me, a Pisces — if I am a Pisces.
"Pisces is a sign of duality," she says. "They either break water like a swordfish, or crawl abound on the bottom like a catfish, eating garbage. It's better to follow your dream, José. Chasing a dream is easier than giving up and dying a slow death from bitterness and frustration. Don't be a bottom feeder!"
She's a different person in the bedroom. Her voice in the bedroom is even and low, not grating and high-pitched like it was in the car. And she keeps her promise: she gives me a treat; she's able to handle me — I'm sure that Marvin can hear from outside the bedroom. And no, I don't have to "poke her in the rear."
We cariocas are not as hung up on youth as norteamericanos, it seems. Ruth is like my mother, that's to say, having had younger lovers. Among my people, it's no big thing for an older woman to have sex with a younger man — sometimes a much younger man. The first woman that I had sex with was at least ten years older than me, with children, while I was fifteen, but I have already told you about Dona Linda.
After we are done, Ruth groans: "Youth is wasted on the young, but not you kid: you take full advantage of it!"
"Thank you, senhora."
"Next year in Jerusalem, kid."
"Okay," I reply.
It's some kind of password among the Jews, I think: "Next year in Jerusalem." Somebody who was Jewish later explained to me that they all hope to meet there when the Messiah comes again. I don't know, maybe she thought I might be Jewish. I have thought so myself, except that your mother has to be Jewish for you to be accepted as a Jew. I didn't understand at the time, but I realize now that she must have liked me.
Then it's Marvin's turn. He gives me a dirty look, like Ruth and I have violated some rule that they had agreed upon. They let me take a shower, then he passes me some money with haste, signaling that he wants me to leave quickly.
"Take it from an insurance agent," he says. "Don't get old! It's harder to buy life insurance, and you might lose your health insurance when you retire. It's a rat race out there!"
Then Ruth interrupts him and reminds him that this honeymoon motel isn't their hotel: their hotel is by the beach in Ipanema or Copacabana — I don't remember which one now. So they need me to take them back to their hotel. Ruth was chattering all the way back to the hotel, while Marvin was steamed.
Marvin tips generously, but that was a strange couple.

*****

Rio de Janeiro is the only city in the world that has a national park inside its environs: the Tijuca Forest in the São João Mountains. Would that Laval, to the north of Montréal, was a national park as well! Chantal was out shopping, so she didn't make the trip with us. Rather than spend another day at the beach, however, I persuaded the kids to go hiking with me through a part of the Tijuca Forest, though I think they probably preferred the beach.
With some of the trees over two hundred metres tall, you'd have never believed that this park was once a huge coffee plantation, about 50 square kilometres, but the owner, Manuel Gomes Archer, planted trees in the nineteenth century in order to help protect Rio's water table. Now there are dozens of species of plants here, several species of monkeys and birds, several waterfalls as well, most notably, the Cascatinha Falls. Then there are the natural rock formations, like the Mesa do Emperador, which is flat like a table, and the Pedra de Gávea, a huge granite bluff overlooking the park and the city. The Pedra de Gávea looks almost like a human face, though the elements have been eroding it little by little, since there's no vegetation on top. People like to go hang gliding from it. Chances are, it will be the first thing you see when your airplane makes its approach to Rio from the Atlantic Ocean. You can also see Corcovado from several places, since Corcovado is inside the park, accessible by several footpaths.
Think how this forest will look in nine-hundred years, if this planet is around that long! The New Forest outside London was once an estate of William the Conqueror, until he planted some trees and made it a forest. I admire people like Archer and William the Conqueror, because they give back to the future what they may have taken from the past when they do something like plant a forest. To plant even one tree is to have hope for the future, but a whole forest? It is to say to people like that axe-wielding fanatic, St. Boniface: "You can chop down a big oak in Germany for Christ, but never this one!"
But more importantly, you are giving back what you took from nature.
Unfortunately, we started our hike late, so we couldn't do much hiking; it's always better to start in the morning, before the sun is very high on the horizon, than early in the afternoon. Therefore, we didn't see very many birds, didn't see many monkeys. As far as I could see, there aren't a lot of large animals here either — no giant tapirs, for instance. However, it was good to get away from the beach, good to get away from the city. It even took my mind off Chantal for a while.
Chantal was the missing element, however; she should have been there with us. I felt like a divorced father with custody of the kids for the weekend. I thought of her as we toured the Mayrink Chapel and looked at the murals by Cândido Portinari, because she liked to tour art museums and look at paintings. Avril even mentioned her when we were at the Chinese pagoda, and once or twice afterwards. Only Patrick seemed not to have noticed her absence: he wanted to go rock climbing on the Pedra de Grávea, and would have wanted to do so regardless, because he had dreams of conquering Mount Everest one day, and this rock was a good place for him to start.
The mother is the soul of the family. We all gravitated towards Chantal like planets orbiting a star in the galaxy, only I now sensed that that star was careening off course, about to crash.
It was a very scary feeling.

*****

I can say without arrogance that I have always had a lot of success with the other sex. It's just a fact: I'm young and good-looking, and the women like me sometimes. I always try to be nice.
Donna is from Toronto, about thirty years old. She's in Rio on business, she says, but obviously looking for a good time as well. Her family was from the state of Kerala in southern India, therefore the dark features: black hair, large dark brown eyes, and skin the colour of mahogany. However, she was raised a Catholic and has a Portuguese family name, Ferreira. The Portuguese were the first to try to convert the Indians to Christianity, she says, so many Christians in southern India have Portuguese family names today.
She isn't particularly pretty, but she's nice — I like her a lot. She has a crazy laugh; once she starts laughing, you can't help but laugh too. We book a room at a honeymoon motel for an hour and end up staying the whole night. I don't normally play my guitar for the tourists, but I sing and play my guitar for her in our motel room the second time we meet, some bossa nova while she dances — we both like the old stuff.
We spend the night together a few times while she's in Rio. We even see a movie together in a darkened cinema, an American film with Portuguese subtitles. "Maybe you should come to Canada," she suggests, while we're in bed together.
"Why?"
"Then I wouldn't have to fly down to Rio," she replies, "but also because you would make more money in Canada. I'm from Woodstock, a small town in Ontario, but Toronto wasn't at all threatening for me — I fell in love Toronto. There's so much happening on Yongh Street, for example. It's said to be the longest street in the world. It's so long and it's got so many people that you could drive your taxi up and down Yongh Street and probably never have to leave it — you'd always find clients. You'd fit right in, José, I know you would."
I shrug and reply: "If I came to Toronto, I would only be living the same as I do here in Rio. I would just be paid in Canadian dollars, that's all. I don't see myself living in a big apartment off the beach like you..."
"You can't start in the executive suite," she replies. "Everybody has to start at the bottom, even you. But where do you live, if you don't mind my asking..."
"I live almost at the bottom," I reply. "I live in the Old City in two very crowded apartments with my mother and a lot of brothers and sisters. I'm the oldest one, so I help support the family."
I'm lying about living with my mother and my brothers and sisters, of course: I'm really living with Lourdes and our children, as well as Lourdes' mother rather than my own.
"It's none of my business," she says, "but with the money you'd make in Toronto, you could still support your family without having to live with all those people. You could turn your cab over to one of your brothers here and drive a cab there — like your father turned his cab over to you. You could make it in Toronto, José, I know you could. You speak English well enough, and you know how to drive..."
Then she makes an offer: "If you want to come to Canada, I'll sponsor you as a permanent resident until you get your citizenship — that is, if you want to be a citizen, of course..."
"What do you want out of this?"
"Sex," she replied, smiling. "Lots of sex..."
But she relents and replies, with her head on my chest: "I don't know, José, but I think it could work. If it doesn't work, we'll cry, hug each other, and say good-bye."
I decide to tell her about Lourdes and my children — I tell her everything. She listens, surprised, as I tell her that I love Lourdes and the children, even though Lourdes and I aren't married, but that I feel trapped here in Rio. I know that there's a better life somewhere outside of Rio, I say, but I don't want to just abandon my family.
"Immigrants have always had to leave their families," she replies, "but you can bring your children and Lourdes, once you become a citizen..."
I was initially interested in her offer. I liked her well enough, but I was hesitant, because we didn't know each other. So I say that I have to think about it. Then I smile and ask: "Would you like to do it again?"
She kisses me, and we do it again. Oh, I have a good time with her — we're compatible. When I take her to the airport the next morning, we trade business cards. I give her mine in case she's in Rio again; she gives me hers, she says, in case I decide to try my luck in Toronto.
About a month later, I receive a post card of the CN Tower with a kiss in red lipstick on the back. I keep the post card now in an old cigar box marked "Rio," along with some photos and a pendant that I received from another tourist. Women sometimes give me things as mementos, you know.
After I drop Donna off at the airport, I park at the edge of the Copacabana beach, get out of my car, and buy a cup of coffee and a newspaper at a kiosk. I never finish reading the newspaper, an edition of O Globo or O Dia, though I sometimes read USA Today.
While looking out at the beach through some binoculars, I see a woman at a distance of about a hundred metres. I watch as she walks across the beach from her hotel, a plastic lounge chair under her right arm and a handbag over her left shoulder. It's the hat that makes me notice her: a straw sun hat, like a gardener's hat.
My God, she's beautiful — the most beautiful that I have ever seen! She's a beautiful woman in the classic sense, a beauty that you find only on the statues in museums or in the movies. Without a doubt, she's older than me, about thirty years old, but her face is magnificent — so perfect that I will never forget it. The dimples on her cheeks give her face a placid appearance. Her skin is a little pale — she's obviously from a northern climate — but she's so beautiful: somewhat slender, but not too thin; yet not fat or soft like a lot of the norteamericanas that I have seen, like Ruth, for example.
Then she stops to strip down to a black bikini, putting her shorts in the bag and the blouse on the back of her chair. She rubs some suntan oil on her pale skin, then sits down to read. Though some of the women on the beach are topless, this one doesn't remove her top. To me, that means that she's modest, if not a little bit shy. She is of medium size, with firm and slender arms and legs, a lean but strong body. She has a little bit of a belly, though not much, but I don't mind that on a woman — I'm in love with her anyway. I don't like the supermodel types, all anorexic. I like the curves of a woman's body.
When I approach a woman of a certain age, she's often grateful for the attention, if she thinks that it's sincere. But that one there: why would she be grateful? She's still young, so why would she be interested in me? But she's so beautiful, so magnificent, though without a doubt older than me — she's the pearl. It's the lightning bolt — I'm in love with her. I have sex with the tourists, in part, to enjoy the comfort of a big bed in a luxurious hotel suite, or the more modest bed of a honeymoon motel, and forget about life for a while. But that one, I would have sex with her on a bed of nails, if that was what she wanted.
So I approach her as she sits down to read...

*****

When you have anxiety, you can't sleep, then you're depressed and you hate yourself and want to die. It's all a vicious circle, like a Chinese dragon trying to swallow its tail. But your husband has told you that there's no perfect circles in nature, only vicious ones.
You wake up early, about nine o'clock in the morning after another white night. Unable to go back to sleep, you get up to brush your teeth and get dressed. Before you go down to the beach, you leave a note on top of the night table in your suite, and a message with the concierge, in case your husband hasn't seen the note.
You stand on the beach for a moment, looking out at the ocean. With the waves rolling in with the tide, it's so quiet, so peaceful. Then you close your eyes and spread out your arms like a cross. You stand there for some minutes. Since it's still early and not very hot yet, there's hardly anybody at the beach: only a few people, some mosquitos, and some hungry seagulls scrounging for something to eat. However, it's already humid and you're beginning to sweat.
You unfold your lounge chair and strip to your swimsuit. You think briefly of swimming away from the shore and letting the tide carry you out to sea, but the thought soon passes. You sit down and start to read instead, but you have your eyes in the grease of the bins — you can barely keep awake.
Then, while you're about to fall asleep with your book on your knees, somebody says something to you in Portuguese. Startled, you raise your eyes to look at him, momentarily flustered, unable to speak. Then you remember him: it's the taxi driver who had picked up your family and you at the airport on Christmas, then took you and the kids to Sugar Loaf Mountain. When you realize that he's saying "good morning," you say "good morning" in return and ask him to please sit down. You reintroduce yourselves and talk for a while.
He's reserved but friendly. He speaks English well enough for you to understand him. You know what he wants; this beach is his playground. He soon sings the apple, without losing that reserve, for the most part. He reminds you that he's a taxi driver, smiles and says: "I can take you down to the corner, senhora. I've been around the block a few times..."
The people in Rio are very friendly, very relaxed, you know. You feel comfortable around him as you talk about yourselves. He even tells you about catching his girlfriend in bed with his best friend. He says that he has never told anyone about his girlfriend. You're sure that he has never told people a lot of things about himself. "That's too bad," you tell him. "It must have hurt you very much for you to actually want to kill somebody..."
"Yes, senhora," he replies, all emotional. "I was going to shoot them, but Gilberto said to me: 'Go ahead, Jecu, I deserve it.' Then he says, 'You can kill me if you want, but I love her.' I didn't shoot them. Instead, I hit him across the face with my pistol and broke his jaw. Then Cristina hit me over the head with a pan and knocked me out. I think she was pregnant with my child at the time, though nobody knew it at the time..."
What a horrifying tale! You know that you should be afraid of him, since he almost committed murder, but you're not afraid. You know that he's capable of violence, but all men are capable of violence, you think — that's why you're afraid of men. Sex with any man can turn into rape at any time, you know; you have even had to tell your husband to stop a few times. But you doubt that the taxi driver would be very violent if he had grown up in a less hostile environment than a shantytown in Rio: it's just that he has seen people murdered from a very early age.
You're sure now that he has probably committed murder — maybe several times — but you feel sorry for him. He says that he carries a gun because everybody carries a gun in Rio, but you don't think he's a bad devil despite everything. You touch his arm gently and say: "I don't think you really wanted to kill them, José, or you would have done it. You had a gun aimed at them, you know..."
Then you tell him a little bit about your best friend, Alice, what a flirt she is. Alice had light thighs when she was younger, you tell him confidentially. You know that your husband is attracted to her. He has even said, while drunk, that he had fantasies of doing both of you at the same time in a ménage à trois, if it was okay with you. But it wasn't okay with you, so he said that it was only a joke. However, the taxi drivers asks: "Do you think your husband has been unfaithful, senhora?"
You think that your husband has been unfaithful several times, but you shrug and say: "I don't know, José, but if they really wanted to do it, I'm sure they could find a way..."
Strange to say, you almost wish that Alice had cheated with your husband, so that the taxi driver and you might have something in common, because he understands. He knows that anybody could have an unfaithful spouse or an unfaithful lover, because it happened to him.
You talk about everything, no matter what, you flirt a little bit. No, you flirt a lot. Then he smiles, stares you in the eyes and says: "I want to fuck you like an animal."
Your eyes open wide with astonishment — you don't believe it! You're astounded that a stranger would talk to you like that, shocked, but you laugh hard because you don't know what else to do. When you see his face, how perplexed he is, you laugh even harder, because he's really embarrassed now. You laugh until you almost cry.
The other people at the beach must think you're crazy, all looking at you, but you don't care. While laughing still, you manage to say to him: "You need a better line, José, or you'll always be alone..."
You think now that he has always been alone, even if he has had a lot of success with the other sex, even if he's living with a woman and has children by her.
There's something about him that separates him from other people...

*****


*****

If you think I'm a suave gigolo, then think again. The way she's laughing, it's definitely a mistake, what I have just said. So I stand up and excuse myself, thinking that maybe I should leave right away, but she stops laughing and says: "Oh, please sit back down — you're a lot of fun!"
But before I sit down, I apologize: "Pardon me, senhora, I don't know why I said that..."
"Oh, I know why," she replies, laughing again.
Then she says: "You need a better line, José, or you'll always be lonely..."
"What shall I say, senhora?" I ask, flirting with her again.
"I can't tell you," she replies, "you'll have to surprise me. But if you want to say something risqué, maybe you should say it in Portuguese. I don't speak Portuguese, you know, but I like the way it sounds..."
So I smile and say softly: "Quero tomar a senhora como um animal."
She laughs again, but this time, her laugh is agreeable, not crazy. It starts in her nose and spreads across her whole face and her upper body like a handheld fan opening up little by little. The upper part of her body has a glow to it; her face and her chest, soon flush from laughing.
I have to laugh at myself, because I deserve her ridicule after what I had just said, I think. I don't know, maybe I offended her, but we talk some more. Then I remember her book and ask what she's reading. She shows me a title in French and replies: "L'Insoutenable légèrté de l'être by Milan Kundera. I've seen the movie a few times, read the book several times, but now I'm reading it again because it's my best book — that, and The Diary of Anne Frank. I also like Khalil Gibran and Rainer Maria Rilke. My husband has been translating Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus from German into French, you know..."
She tells me that she's French-Canadian, from Québec. "Our parish is west of Montréal," she says. "There isn't another one for some kilometres, but much of Canada is still isolated, particularly the Northwest Territories. Québec is very big, with lots of mountains, forests and streams, and all kinds of animals, but not a lot of people. We call it la belle province. I think you'd like it there, unless you're frilieux..."
She's smiling now, arching an eyebrow.
"Frilieux?" I ask, smiling back, because now she's flirting with me.
"Yes," she replies, still gazing at me. "The winters are long and hard in Canada, you know. But don't worry, I keep you warm..."
But I misunderstand, however: "Are you saying I'm repressed?" I ask, shocked. I had never thought that anybody would call me that, unless she was really strange.
"No, not at all," she replies, laughing again. "Frilieux just means 'chilly,' that's it. The French word for 'repressed' is frustré, but I doubt that you're frustré..."
I gaze back into her brown eyes and say: "We don't have to worry about the winters here, senhora. There's no frilieux people in Rio, and no, I'm not frustré..."
"Yes, but I like the winter," she replies, meeting my gaze. "I like variety..."
Then she looks out at the ocean in front of her, like someone in a daydream now. "The world looks pretty when it first snows," she says, "after the first snowfall, but we get it en masse. But in the spring, you can the hear the loon in the little lakes and the marshes: its cry is haunting, beautiful, but the source of its cry is sometimes difficult to find. We get the Aurora Borealis too, where the sky lights up in all different colours — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. The colours all blend into one near the earth, mostly green, but up in the sky, you can see the patches of different colours very distinctly. It's magic — I never get tired of it. It makes me think that there must be a God..."
We don't see the Aurora Borealis in Brazil, of course, but I could imagine it. She was talking about a rainbow run amok, basically, because both the rainbow and the Aurora Borealis are caused by the reflection of the sun's ultraviolet rays. Except that the northern lights are caused by sunspots while the rainbow is caused by the reflection of ultraviolet rays from water drops after it has rained.
"I like all the seasons," she continues, "the spring with its flowers, because I like gardening, and the autumn with its dead leaves, as well as winter and summer. Summers usually aren't too hot in Canada, and it gets cooler at night. It's good for lying down, for sleeping..."
Then she turns around in her chair, takes something from her blouse on the back of the chair, and shows me a pin with a flag of Canada in the centre of a leaf. She wears it because of the events of this past September. "The terrorists might think I was American," she says. "I'm truly sorry about what happened to all those people, but I hope they don't attack Canadians..."
I shrug and reply: "We have terrorist attacks here in Brazil, senhora — it's no big deal. Sometimes, an urban guerrilla will leave a bomb in a car on the street. But we have never had anything like what happened in New York, of course..."
When I ask her about the gold pendant around her neck, she says it's a fleur-de-lis1, the provincial symbol of Quebec. It's supposed to be a flower, but it looks more like the tip of spear. I'm aware of a separatist movement in Québec, so I wonder if she isn't a separatist herself, but she only says of the pendant: "I like flowers. I have four fleurs-de-lis in my backyard, one for each member of my family, including myself..."
I glance once more at the fleur-de-lis around her neck, as well as the top part of her body, at her arms and her shoulders and her neck as well. It seems like she's offering me her breasts; she has beautiful round breasts, the right size for my hands. I want to feel her arms and her shoulders as I hold her in my arms. I want to feel her breasts up against me as I kiss her neck and nibble her lips and her ears.
She's looking at me again, making beautiful eyes. I will always remember those playful, flirtatious brown eyes! And when we speak, we speak in low voices, like lovers. But I like her personality as well as her beauty: she's nice, not at all conceited, though she's very beautiful — I like her. If she wasn't married, if she didn't live in another country, who knows what we might have had? Maybe we could have had something, because she was a lot of fun — I really liked her.
Then she tells me about her family. Her daughter, Avril, she says, is quiet and shy, like a sheep, while her son, Patrick, is more outgoing — impulsive like her, she says. "I do things for no apparent reason," she says. "When I see children play cache-cache in a store, I want to go join them. I have to stop myself from hiding under some CD bins in a music store, for example, even though I'm an adult and I'm with my children."
Then she looks at me and says: "I'm not a woman who's neglected by her husband, you know. We made love last night, and it was fantastic. I've always had a good sexual life..."
"Then why are you interested in me, senhora?" I ask, also smiling.
She retreats a little. "I didn't say that I was interested in you, tiguidou?" she replies, still smiling. "I only said that I've always had good sex..."
"Tiguidou," I replied.
I decide to back off a little bit, because I'm not sure about this one now. I think that she's attracted to me, that she's thinking about doing it again, but not sure if she will act on her feelings. Women don't always act on their feelings, you know. As well, I don't want to say something else risqué either.
Then, when she stands up, I stand up too, thinking that she's about to return to her hotel. But she suddenly runs to the ocean and jumps in head first, swimming around in the waves for a few minutes, until the bottom of her bikini slips off. She sits down in the water to put it back on, then swims around a few minutes more, the front crawl and the backstroke, while I sit at the edge of the water on the dry sand, watching.
Then her bottom slides off again. "Come on in," she says, as she put her bottom back on. "The water's beautiful!"
I think about it a minute, then I take off my shoes and socks and remove my wallet from my pants before jumping in, fully clothed. She's a good swimmer, with powerful strokes, a powerful kick. Whenever I approach her, however, she always splashes water at me, then swims away. She does this a couple of times, so I splash her back.
She lets me catch her only when the bottom of her swimsuit comes off again. We hold each other in our arms a few moments, up to the chest in the water, just looking at each other. Then she kisses me, the bottom of her swimsuit in her hand, but she breaks away the moment she feels a wandering hand on her bare ass — what a tease!
After a few minutes, we get out. I get my wallet and put on my shoes, then she walks with me slowly back to her spot at the beach, a satisfied look on her face, and dries herself off with her towel. When she puts on her blouse, she places her left hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she pulled her shorts over her legs with her other hand. "I have weak ankles," she says flirtatiously.
She's close enough for me to put my arms around her, so I put my arms around her gorgeous body again. When she doesn't resist me, I try to kiss her, but she touches me on the lips with her index finger and says: "I would like to go shopping, if you please, but I have need of a taxi..."
Then she kisses me lightly on the lips and touches the tip of my nose with the tip of her tongue. I kiss her in return before I release her.
She smiles seductively as we walk slowly back to her hotel, talking, with me carrying her chair like she was my girlfriend at school...

*****

I go back to the hotel and change into a white print dress with a pattern of little blue flowers, then I leave a note on the night table next to the bed, and a message at the desk, in case my husband doesn't see the note, telling him that I have gone shopping with José. I'm still wearing my straw sun hat, since it's the only one that I have. I will be gone more than a whole day, but there's a reason for me being gone so long.
He takes me to the old quarter near the centre-ville of Rio. The Old City is quite beautiful. The side streets are so narrow that cars can't pass through them. Some of the buildings here are three or four hundred years old, mostly of solid granite, though many wouldn't look out of place in the Côte d'Azure of France in the nineteenth century. There's lots of granite around Rio; the hills to the north are all granite.
He takes me to a market place in the Old City whose entrance looks like a dirty little side street, impossible for cars to pass through. You think that you might be entering, never to leave again. I like people, but not crowds, so I put my arm around his so that we aren't separated. He has never taken a tourist there before, he says, has never even thought of it. Since the people that I meet speak only Portuguese, I have need of him as an interpreter.
By noon, a native indolence will have set in; it's already too hot and too humid to do much of anything. Everybody takes their time because of the heat and the humidity. The vendors and the shoppers, mostly women, negotiate the price, the children looking suitably grave while the men try to look menacing. Yet many of the women here are quite tall — Amazons. They have a certain self-confidence while the men seem to shrink into the background. Even José is wary, never completely at ease; he has his gun ready at all times.
A crowd has already formed, since the people shop mostly in the morning here, but what an experience: the foreign voices, the exotic foods for sale, the animals everywhere: chickens, pigs, crabs and lots of salted fish. There's several fruit juices for sale here that I have never tasted; guava juice is almost as popular as Coke-a-Cola here in Brazil. There's fruits and vegetables of all kinds, apples and oranges, cucumbers and bananas, as well as several exotic fruits and vegetables that I have never seen before: cajás, graviolas, and mangabas, for example. While the cajá is very small, the graviola is enormous. If you cut into the mangaba, it has a white milky liquid. The cajá looks like a little orange or a yellow plum, but more acidic in taste than the orange; inside there's a nut — a cashew.
There's several vendors with dried cashews in large flat baskets for sale. The bakers sell both cassava bread — very poisonous unless squeezed properly of its juice — as well as wheat bread. There's lots of meats for sale as well, but the butchers here don't have frigidaires. Legs of beef hang from large hooks, where the flies are free to walk across without interference. Though other animal parts are hidden from view, there's liver and other internal organs on the counters, neatly stacked for the customers — and the flies. There's dried shrimp and dried fish in baskets, especially peixe do cobre, some live crabs with their legs still covered with mud, live chickens as well. I feel sorry for the crabs and the chickens; I'm a vegetarian, you know.
When we see a chicken about to be slaughtered, José quickly leads me away. However, you can still hear the chicken flapping its wings and squawking loudly her protestations before the butcher kills her — it's hideous! That's why I'm a vegetarian, because animals suffer when being slaughtered, they suffer in captivity. I have seen kittens soon after they were born and chicks soon after being hatched, so I could never hurt an animal.
There's more than just food stuffs for sale here: large strings of tobacco that look like dried intestines, for example, as well as herbs and spices. There's so many herbs for sale here that a pharmacist from abroad could probably never identify all of them. Some are garnishes for food, but others are used as medicines. It's impossible to know which herbs have any medicinal value, all of them unknown to me, so the buyer must therefore beware or risk being cheated.
The Brazilians as a whole are very religious, I think, though not all are Catholic. Some practise macumba, or candomblé, a combination of Catholicism and some pagan rites from Africa and the Amazon. There's several religious items for sale: crosses, rosary beads, votive candles and icons, like a little painting of a black man that José identifies as Xango, or "Black Anthony." I see lots of icons to St. Sebastian, the patron saint of Rio, as well.
Then I see the name São Francisco de Assis under a prayer in Portuguese framed in a little tableau. The prayer:

"O Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace:
Where there is hate, let me sow love;
where there is injury, forgiveness;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope..."

It's in Portuguese, but I know the prayer. I buy the tableau, I'm so moved by this simple little prayer.
Then we meet a large middle-aged black woman with a red turban and a bright red dress, a flowing skirt in the style of Bahia in northern Brazil. Of a certain age, she nevertheless has a certain beauty, with handsome features and a pleasant smile, her face kind and gentle. I would recognize her instantly if I ever saw her again — I'll never forget her. She smiles and offers me some black beans and rice, so I try some without any meat while drinking some guava juice that I had bought earlier, then I buy a plate from her.
José introduces me to her. She's his mother; her name is Jurema. Before we leave her, she kisses him on the lips twice and gives him a hug before we leave. "Tem cuidade, o meu filho," she says lovingly. "Take care, my son..."
Then Jurema and I kiss each other on both cheeks. "Tenha cuidade, senhora," she says. "Take care, senhora."
It's like we're in Africa, because of all the black people and their style of dress. There's many baianas, women from the state of Bahia north of Rio; they all wear turbans and long and flowing skirts. In Copacabana and in other suburbs of Rio, lots of middle-class white people shop at supermarkets, but not in the favelas in the hills to the north, far from the centre-ville; most of the people that you see in the market place are black, from the favelas.
I understand now that there's racial segregation in Brazil. Blacks and whites may have equality before the law, but socially and economically, the blacks are inferior to the whites and they live separate lives. José himself is a mixture of several races: part white, part black and part native American. But if he looks like anything, he looks like a Moor — that's what sets him apart from these people, I think.
José is really into history, though much of it is anecdotal. "It was illegal to kill runaway slaves while Dom Pedro II was emperor," he says, "illegal to kill black people as well as white people. So when they caught a runaway slave, they dunked him in blue dye and hung him or shot him. Because the law apparently never said anything about killing people who were blue..."
How horrible! I will always have a love for the people of Rio, because of the way that I was treated, because of the way they are, but I'm amazed at how cruel people can be to one another. However, racism exists in Brazil; blacks and whites live completely separate lives, though I see few overt signs of hostility. I know now that racism probably exists everywhere in the world, including Canada. As for the poverty, the people in the market are very poor in comparison to North Americans and Europeans, but everyone knows that — nobody is completely unaware today. A lot of the children, those around the ages of ten or eleven, are physically stunted because of malnutrition.
The real Rio de Janeiro is the favelas and the working-class bairros, and the shaded shopping stalls and stands under umbrellas in the market place where the people of the favelas and bairros go. This is the Third World, the real world for most of the world on earth, where most of the people are poor by North American standards. The hotels near the beaches and the night clubs of Copacabana, those aren't the real Brazil, but only for the tourists. But the tourists are on vacation from real life anyway.
I have a certain awareness that I didn't have before. Seeing the poverty in Brazil has made me more concerned about the world besides my hometown, my province or my country. I love Rio, especially beyond the beaches and the night clubs. Walking around with José, I want to take the world here in the market place in a loving embrace, like the statue of Christ on Corcovado. I want to give strangers in the market place a hug, but they wouldn't understand.
I feel comfortable with José. We could both be robbed and killed, but I don't care now. I'm not worried about anything, walking arm in arm with him in the old quarter of Rio. I could die and be happy, because I feel safe with him — I'm with the angels.
He stops to kiss me in doorways a few times — very romantic — but up close, this place isn't all romantic. There's homeless people everywhere. They wait in the parks underneath the jacaranda trees and in the narrow alleys behind the restaurants and the cafés, begging for change or table scraps. Many of the apartment buildings are abandoned, José says, inhabited by squatters. Many of the landlords have stopped paying the hydro and the water, he says, because they don't have the money.
Then a gaunt and haggard woman with a small child approaches us. The woman is extremely thin, with meager arms, the corners of her mouth chalky. She looks like a grandmother with her grandchild, but the woman says that she has HIV. Many have AIDS or HIV here in Rio, José says, both adults and children; Rio is in the midst of a horrible AIDS epidemic, just like much of the Third World. The woman says that she has been thrown out by her family.
José silently gives the woman a handful of cruzeiros. I give them all of the money that I have left in my purse, I'm so moved by her plight, as well as some of the fruit that I have bought, but it isn't really a lot of money with the inflation.
"What good is it?" you might ask. They will soon be hungry again, tomorrow or the day after, and they will probably die on the streets, unwanted by everybody. But that's why you give a homeless person money and food — isn't it? — so that they will live at least until tomorrow, when maybe they can find a more permanent shelter.
"The inflation has hurt everybody," José says simply, after we leave them.
Afterwards, he takes me to St. Benedict's monastery, a white baroque structure from the seventeenth or eighteenth century near the Avenida Rio Branco. The exterior, with its twin towers of green pyramid-shaped roofs, is impressive enough in its austerity, but it doesn't prepare you for the riches inside. There's an oriental splendour here; you almost expect to see a golden statue of a woman with six arms, like the Hindu goddess Kali. There's the statues of St. Scholastica and St. Benedict, all gilded with gold, and other equally beautiful and impressive statues as well: the statue of the Virgin Mary in the Chapel of the Conception, for example, and the statue of Our Lady of Montserrat, also gilded with gold.
I have never seen so much gold in my whole life! No matter where you go, there's always something gilded in gold, even if only the picture frames in the sacristy. Once outside the monastery again, José asks knowingly: "How do you like our São Bento?"
"The beauty of the baroque cathedral," I reply, "is different than that of the gothic. The purpose of the gothic cathedral, with its arched spires and stained glass windows, is to make the soul want to fly up to heaven like an angel. The baroque cathedral, with its gold and its marble statues and purple drapes, wants to give the soul a taste of what she will find in paradise once she gets there — if she gets there. You can't compare the two, José, because each is beautiful in its own way, like two women completely different than each other — built, I hope, with the appropriate love of God in mind..."
"That's interesting," he replies thoughtfully. "I thought that architects and builders only thought of building materials and angles."
"Hey," I reply, shrugging my shoulders, "I've taken a class in architecture at university, but I'm not an expert. I don't know much of anything..."
"Oh, you know a lot of things, senhora," he says, "but you must be careful of what you know. You are aberta — open to new things. I think that I could fly you to the moon — if we had the time — and you would experience it fully. That's what I like about you. Above all, you have an open heart. We cariocas admire those who have an open heart..."
I thank him for the compliment, because I have always been nervous about being in crowds, though I like people. If I have an open heart now, it's because I'm with him — I trust him with my life.
José and I walk back to his car. When we get in, I sit down next to him in the front seat. He smiles at me and asks: "Tudo bem, senhora?"
He's asking if everything's all right, but everything is not all right, not at all. My heart is racing at all speed — I can barely speak. He knows what's happening, but he smiles again and asks: "Where would senhora like to go now?"
My heart bursting against the inside of my chest, I reply: "You're place..."
We kiss in the front seat of his taxi before he starts the motor. "Okay, senhora," he replies. "My place it is..."

*****

Oh, I know it's very impulsive to have said what I have said, but we're really attracted to each other — we really click. I have never been so attracted to anyone before, not even my husband, though I would crawl for my husband. But we have to do it — it's meant to be. The words "your place" will change my life forever, but right now, we're in a hurry to get to his place. However, he lives across town: we have to fight the traffic to get there.
The traffic is the worst that I have ever seen, nothing like what I have ever seen in Montréal. The word "terrible" can't describe what we face that day. They're still building the subway, so there's some roadwork. On the Avenida Presidente Vargas, there's cars everywhere but going nowhere; José drives at less than twenty kilometres an hour. There's a police officer directing traffic on the Avenida Presidente Vargas with its ten lanes, because of an accident on the west side of the street near the Sambadrome that they haven't cleared up yet, but José says with some dread, I think: "Maybe there's been a bombing..."
But where's the explosion? We didn't hear one.
Rio is larger than Montréal, about five or six million people, but without the infrastructure of Montréal. The city's main mode of transportation is by bus, but the ones that we see are all packed with people at rush hour. There's lots of yellow taxis with the blue stripe on the doors as well — they're everywhere. José is an independent operator, him, driving a green Volkswagen Beetle from the 1960s. Maybe he isn't a legally licensed driver, but he has a meter up front.
Hemmed in by the mountains to the north, there's little room for the city to grow; the city has outgrown its water supply. It's difficult to sink foundations in the hills to the north, because of the granite under the soil, so the hills have never been developed. Then there's the favelas that cling to the hillsides like vines overrunning an untended vineyard; you can see some of them from far away in the distance. In other Latin American cities, the upper and middle classes live in the hills, whereas the poor live in the older sections of town in what was once a fertile valley. In Rio, however, the more affluent people live in the suburbs by the beaches, or clustered around Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, which is a lake. Those who live in the favelas live farthest away from the beaches, with the working people living in the bairros somewhere in between the beaches and the favelas.
Like cities everywhere, Rio has experienced urban sprawl. The isolated towns and villages a century ago are now the bairros and suburbs of metropolitan Rio de Janeiro. The favelas that are redefining Rio because of the poor people there lie in hills that were once wilderness — shantytowns haphazardly thrown up on the hillsides practically overnight since the 1950s and 1960s.
The heat and the humidity are unbearable. Since Rio is south of the equator, it gets really hot and humid around Christmas, when summer is just beginning. The top of my dress is soon sticking to me, I'm sweating so much — I want to take it off. José's car has no air conditioning, he says, because the old Volkswagen Beetles don't have it. Maybe that's why people here prefer the yellow taxis; they have air conditioning.
However, we eventually arrive at his place. I have no idea where we are, because José has taken so many detours because of the traffic and the road work. I lose all sense of direction; I think I would be lost, if I had to drive in this city by myself.
Before we enter his apartments, he takes his revolver from the glove compartment, then leads me by the hand up a dark and dank stairway to the fourth floor. The bannister is made of solid granite, but there's no light in the hallways — the electricity doesn't work. Like I'm Eurydice and he's Orpheus, afraid that I will disappear and fall back to the underworld if he turns around even one time, he never once looks back at me as he leads me up the stairs by the hand, until the heel of my sandal gets caught on a step and I stumble.
"Shit!" I curse.
"Are you all right, senhora?" he asks in a low voice.
"Yes," I reply, "but the heel is broken..."
He holds out his hand again and I take it again after I remove my sandals. Then we enter his apartments. José lives in apartments, probably built in the 1960s or 1970s, that would be in the slums in Montréal. He says that many of the buildings here are abandoned, that many of the tenants are squatters. The water has been shut off to the whole building because the landlord hasn't paid it. The sun shining through the windows of the sliding door to the balcony provides the only light, because the hydro has been shut off as well, José says.
Certainly, José is working class rather than indigent, but I would have never slept with my husband at his place, when we first met, if he had lived in apartments as miserable as these. There's some water spots on the ceiling, some holes in the walls. He has some old furnishings: an old armchair with tears in the imitation leather, a beat-up old coffee table with notches in the legs, a sofa with cushions still on the floor and covered with blankets. In the kitchen and dining room, there's a sink full of dirty dishes and white plastic patio chairs around an old table with cigarette burns in the top. The table top needs to be cleared of dirty dishes and wiped off, as well as the kitchen counters. His bedroom has a dresser and a dirty old mattress that he must have retrieved from a garbage dump instead of a bed — that's it. I don't want to be mean, but I'm sure that there must be cockroaches, maybe even rats, in this building.
I decide then that I don't want to do it — at least not here. This is not my idea of a love nest, but a very miserable baisodrome.2 These are the apartments of those in poverty, who have need of a housekeeper as well. I'm about to tell him to take me back to my hotel when I think to myself: "If I say no and he says yes..."
Oh, he's been nice to me, always the gentleman, but I'm in his lair now — I could be in danger. I'm a little afraid of being raped or getting pregnant, because I remember that I have no protection against pregnancy — no condoms. I hadn't planned on doing anything, at least when I left the hotel — I was undecided then. In case of rape, would the police believe me — me, a foreign tourist? I doubt it. The police would ask what I was doing in his apartments, if they came out at all. I'd have to tell them the truth — I'd have to tell everybody the truth. Then I remember what I said to myself in the market place: "This is the Third World."
This is how people live, where people come together in many parts of the world. Besides, this is the second time, not the first. So we kiss, all drenched in sweat. In these miserable apartments, on an old mattress in a filthy bedroom, we do it, and it's fantastic despite everything — effrayant! I feel my spirit flying up to heaven like an angel. Despite the poverty of his dismal surroundings, I forget where I am at the moment. Then he makes me come again, several times — I take my foot over and over again.
Oh, it's fantastic! I'm blinded by the sunlight coming through his window at the moment of ecstasy — the reason why it's so beautiful for me. I remember the sunlight shining through the window of his bedroom, and a white-crowned sparrow landing on the window ledge with a twig in its beak, like it's an omen, like he's a messenger from the gods. There's crowned sparrows in Canada as well as in Rio, where they apparently migrate for the winter.
I sniffle as I watch the bird, before he flies away...

*****

I probably should have taken her to a motel, because of Lourdes and the children, but for her, it's worth the risk. However, it will take two or three hours to get to my place, because of the traffic and the roadwork; they are building new stations to the Metro.
I stroke her thigh from time to time, when traffic is at a standstill. It's a game: she lets me slide my hand slowly up the inside of her thigh while talking, then shuts her legs tight after a certain point and turns her legs away. She does it a few times. Once, I'm sure that she will let my hand find her sex, but she closes her legs at the last moment and traps my hand. "I can't let you do that," she laughs naughtily.
I kiss her and ask: "Why not?"
She pretends to be surprised and replies: "You know why: there's cars all around us..."
"But nobody will notice," I reply.
She smiles at me and says: "Somebody always notices, José. That's why God made children: they are his eyes."
I remove my hand but kiss her. She's making beautiful eyes at me again. I will kiss her or stroke her thigh whenever the traffic stops, anything to keep her excited. I don't want the traffic to kill the mood.
Eventually we arrive at my place; fortunately, there's no one home. You can tell by the look on her face that she's not very impressed with my apartments, because they are a mess, but since I have brought her this far...
We sit on the couch, do some cocaine and smoke some bazeado. After a few touches, she presses her lips up to mine, blows some smoke into my mouth and giggles. She's very relaxed now. I play my guitar for her, singing a song by Jobim:
"Agua de beber, agua de beber camará,
agua de beber, agua de beber camará..."

Then she stands in the middle of the living room, throws off her hat, and lets her brown hair fall to her shoulders; her hair had been in a queue until then. Then we kiss — oh, how she kisses!
She wipes a few strands of hair away from her face, then steps back to take off her dress, leaving just the black bikini. You can see part of a faded blue, red and yellow tattoo that was partially covered by her bikini bottom. Then she closes her eyes and spreads her arms out wide like a cross, like O Redentor at Corcovado. "Won't you do the rest, senhor?" she asks, smiling, eyes still closed and arms spread out.
First, I strip. Then I silently approach her, reach behind her, and untie the top of her bikini while kissing her, letting the top fall to the floor. She laughs, but her eyes are still closed, so I come up behind her, cup both of her breasts with my hands, and run my lips up and down her neck and shoulders as she moans with contentment. Then I slide in front of her and kiss her on the mouth while gently squeezing her right breast with my left hand.
Her eyes are still closed, so I fall to my knees and untie the bottom, her hands, now on my shoulders. When the bottom falls to the floor, I see the tattoo more clearly: a butterfly in blue, red and yellow ink. I will always remember the tattoo of the butterfly, because she came to me only to fly away again, like a butterfly. She cries out with surprise as I touch her one time with my tongue. Then I pick her up in my arms and carry her over to the bed in my bedroom. We do it three times that afternoon. The first time, it seems that she's a little timid, that she isn't completely satisfied, but she smiles afterwards and says: "Encore, monsieur!"
So we do it again, starting with little kisses like gentle breezes, then the preliminaries. The second time, she really lets go; she likes to be on top, I soon discover. I'm able to judge for myself, the way she grinds herself hard into me and squeezes hard with her sex that she has had a very intense orgasm. I'm looking at her face and her breasts the moment that she opens her mouth and cries out; it's beautiful for me — sublime. Then I cry out as well and explode into her. It's an experience that I will never forget.
I remember the pendant around her neck as well, the one with the fleur-de-lis.
That afternoon, it's like a dream. Her brown hair, how it sticks to her face, because it's hot and humid even for Rio. I remember the sweat from her body, the taste of sweat over and under her magnificent breasts, which I lapped up with my tongue like dew. There's a light film of sweat on her face, like a masque.
After we're done for the second time, she kisses me full on the lips, falls on top of me, and lays down next to me. Her face and her upper body are still flush. It's one of the few times that I have ever found pale skin on a woman attractive. "Obrigada, senhor," she says, with her head in the curve of my arm, her hand to my heart. "Thank you..."
"Não há de quê," I reply, kissing her hair. That means: "You're welcome."
While we hold each other in our arms, we speak in low voices, like there are children in the next room — our children. Then, while walking her first two fingers like a spider up my arm, she says: "Surely, you must have a little friend..."
I tell her about Lourdes, but she smiles and says: "Surely you must have other women à la carte..."
"I don't have the time," I reply, laughing. "I'm always working."
"That's too bad..."
"How is that?"
She's caressing my chest now. You can tell that she's still high, the way her pupils are all dilated. She looks up at me with those beautiful brown eyes and her hair all messed up, all sweaty: "It's good to have somebody to come home to at night, José," she replies.
"Then why are you with me?" I ask.
She stops rubbing my chest and says, gently but firmly: "Don't judge me, eh? You don't have the right. All I'm saying is that you have Lourdes, and who knows how many others every day, but you're all alone. If I wasn't here with you, you'd be all alone in these apartments — without a woman, without your children. When you come home at night or in the morning, who's there for you? Sometimes, nobody — am I not right? And it's the same for Lourdes, except that she has to take care of the children."
"We have to face our demons alone, Chantal," I reply. "One of those demons is loneliness."
"I'm never alone," she jokes. "I'm the woman with seven demons..."
She puts her ear to my chest and says quietly: "I love my husband, and I think he loves me, but he plays me like a toy. Who knows what he does when I'm not there? I don't know — I never know."
Then she looks up, smiles and says: "Besides, I'm on vacation too!"
Then she sees the scar on my stomach from the bullet wound. She gently puts her index finger on it and looks up at me. "I was shot," I explain. "I almost died..."
"My Lord and My God," she whispers.
She listens as I tell her about being tortured by the police as a child. I also confess to having committed murder as well. When I tell about shooting my childhood friend, Rodrigo, she listens without condemning me. She wraps her arms around me, holds my head against her breasts and comforts me as we sit on the mattress; it's very emotional for me. When I tell her about the nightmares, she says: "You could have post-traumatic stress, José. Rape victims and soldiers who have been to war often suffer from it. Maybe children who have been gang members will suffer from it as well. Maybe the police officers who tortured you will suffer from it..."
Then she confesses her own psychiatric problems: "I have anxiety and depression," she said. "Fifty years ago, I probably would have been in and out of psychiatric hospitals my whole life. If I didn't take any medication, I might jump off a balcony or drown myself, because I have impulse disorder as well. My husband has stopped me from killing myself a few times; it hasn't been easy for him either.
"But we don't have to suffer, José: you can't always avoid the physical pain of life or its problems, but you can decide not to suffer emotional and mental anguish from it. If we suffer, mon amour, it's because we choose to suffer — because we think we deserve it..."
I realize now that she's right, that you don't have to suffer, so I start to see a therapist later, one who prescribes for me a sleeping pill.
Then she tells me about her past. She confesses to having kissed a boy for the first time when she was six years old: "That was the first one that stole my heart," she says. "His name was Gilles. He was a shy, sweet little boy, but then he drowned and his family moved away. I was devastated by the whole thing, because we had a fight and I told him that I hated him and wished he was dead — but I didn't mean it.
"Then I had a crush on a priest as well, when I was fifteen. He was young, in his twenties. In confession, I always confessed to only one sin: not loving God and my neighbour enough, because everything else comes from that one sin. I told him in confession3 that I loved him; he said that he loved me too. We were supposed to meet in a field somewhere, but he never showed up. Instead, there was an aurora borealis that night; it was beautiful — otherworldly. He ended up leaving the parish. That really hurt, because I was willing to do anything for him."
Then she said, very casually: "I've kissed a lot of boys, and a few girls as well. I'm probably bisexual, you know. I like to look at the ones on the beach, though I don't have sex with other woman — only kissed a few. I've only had sex with you and my husband, that's it. And my best friend — I always forget about Alice, maybe because we were young..."
Then she stops.
"Well?" I ask.
"Well, what?" she asks, looking up.
"Aren't you going to tell me about your best friend?"
"What's there to tell, eh?" she asks slyly.
"I don't know, you tell me..."
When she hesitates, I reassure her: "It's all right, Chantal, you can tell me anything. People have told me worse, I'm sure..."
She starts to blush, then she smiles and says: "Well, actually, Alice and I sleep together only one time. We're only girls, you know — not yet fifteen. Her mother has died and her father runs off to Florida and leaves her all alone, so she's depressed — almost suicidal. She calls me up, crying, and I spend the night with her. We drink some wine from her father's wine cellar, smoke some ganja, and sleep together. Winters are long and cold in Québec, you know...
"I like some of the things that we do — kissing, things like that — but it feels a little strange, making love with another girl. I'm not an expert, but the very idea of it! But I have no regrets now: two women making love, they're like balls of cotton rubbing against each other — very soft. Two men, they're like sandpaper, rough and hard. I can't see two men doing it."
"What's the best part of having sex with another woman?" I ask, curious.
She smiles and replies: "The best part is cuddling after we're done. I adore cuddling — I need lots of affection, you know. I hold her in my arms and talk to her like I'm the mother and she's the child; she even talks in baby talk. It's a game that we played as children. I tell her several times: 'Maman loves you.'"
She looks up at me and says seriously: "We only sleep together one time, but I always tell her that I love her, and she tells me the same, because we love each other — really love each other. Afterwards, she showed me where my praline4 was — I didn't know I had one."
Then she looked at me and said in all seriousness: "She's my best, José. I'm not a lesbian, but if one of us was the man..."
"That makes you almost a virgin," I tell her, smiling. "If you have only had sex with your husband, Alice and me, that makes you almost a virgin..."
She squeezes my pau, looks up at me and smiles slyly. "I'll show you what a 'virgin' can do..."
Then she shows me. We kiss again — my God, the way she kisses! She has a whole repertoire of kisses. She will gently rub my cheeks with her eyelashes — "butterflies," she calls them — or flick my nipples or my navel with her tongue — coups de fouette.5 She sucks on my nipples — I even like it. Her kisses range from short, affectionate little kisses on the lips to hard, passionate kisses on the mouth; she knows how to kiss a child, a lover, or a friend. If she's a Scorpio, like Ruth, then she knows to handle me. And once I'm inside her...
Physically, we're a good fit. Some women are too deep or too shallow, you know, but we fit together just right. If we were animals, I would say that we were either horses or deer, or maybe zebras. I want to spend the rest of the day with her, maybe even the rest of my life.
When we are finished, I hold her in my arms in the spoon position and plant a little kiss on the back of her long and elegant neck. She puts my left hand on her heart and holds it there with both hands. I can still feel the beating of her heart underneath my hand to this day; it's very moving for me.
I wish now that I was all alone with her on that boat to Africa. Together, we have grasped eternity in an hour.

*****

You and José are both high from smoking marijuana, so you don't know what's happening at first when a woman suddenly barges into the bedroom, like a trapeze artist bursting through a circus poster. At first, you ask yourself if the police aren't raiding the place. Then you ask yourself if she isn't his wife or his mother.
You're really embarrassed, because both of you are naked and there's no covers on the bed. A little boy, about the same age as your son, is watching the whole thing, laughing his ass off. A woman old enough to be his mother is there too, scowling. So is the rest of his family, all three of his children.
José and the woman are really arguing — you're almost hit with a flying shoe. You don't speak Portuguese, but you understand the venom, the contempt, in her voice; you don't need an interpreter. You know that she has called you a whore, because the Portuguese puta and the French putain mean the same thing. José has called you uma turista, evidently defending you, though you don't understand most of what they're saying.
Then the woman starts sobbing. You feel really bad about it, because you and José have hurt her. She's a large black woman, about twenty-five years old, with light skin and short kinky brown hair. She would freeze in the winter in Montréal, you think, because she has so little clothing, only a simple dress without sleeves, some worn-out sandals. Her shins and her feet are muddy, because it rains this time of year, and it has been raining nails. You can tell that she has lived a hard life, but if she wasn't so angry right now, you might think that her square face with the dimples in her cheeks was pleasant to look at. Embarrassed, José tells you that the woman lives with him; she's the mother of his children. They have one son and two daughters, all of them with her right now, watching the whole spectacle.
You and José dress quickly while his woman shouts at him, throwing things at him. Then she says something in an urgent voice. José tells you, with some embarrassment: "I can't take you back to your hotel right now, senhora, because she has to deliver a baby. I have to drive her first, but I can't say for sure how long it will take..."
You understand now what he had meant when he said that his friend was uma parteira: she's a midwife. She delivers babies as well as does abortions, José tells you later. You can't help but see the irony: a wise woman and a maker of angels at the same time. But you suspect now that many midwives in the Third World do abortions on the side, because abortions are illegal in most countries of the Third World, though many women still have them. Most women in the favelas have had abortions too, Lourdes later tells you through José, including her.
Then you tell José that you're an obstetric nurse and offer to help his friend. He's astonished that you would volunteer to help like that, but he translates for you. The woman looks surprised, then skeptical. She doesn't say anything at first, but you tell her, through José: "I don't doubt your ability, senhora, but I would want some help, if it was offered — I can help. I'm a nurse."
Then you promise to do whatever she tells you, saying: "You're the doctor, senhora..."
She accepts your help reluctantly, perhaps doubting your ability, but she introduces herself: "Chamo-me Lourdes."
You introduce yourself as well, but she's already rushing out the door to José's car. Throughout this entire episode, Lourdes' mother has said nothing, but she has an angry look on her face. She leaves her three children, who look between the ages of seven and two, with their grandmother. They're cute, though they don't say much in your presence, apparently shy with strangers. But the littlest one, a daughter about two years old, is so adorable, you think; you almost want to kidnap her.
You know that you'll have to explain to your husband how you were in a shantytown in Rio, helping a midwife deliver a baby while you were high. What can you say — that you were with your lover, the taxi driver, beforehand? Yes, you had gone shopping, but how do you meet a midwife in one of the worst neighbourhoods in Rio? You'll have to answer that question, it will take a lot of explanations. You may even have to tell your husband the truth, and you dread it — really dread it.
You could ask José to drive you back to your hotel while Lourdes delivers the baby herself so that your husband might never find out, but delivering babies is your life, as well as being a wife and a mother. Of course, you don't want your husband to find out about you and José, but it's your mission in life to help women give birth — to help people — as you see it. How can you justify yourself if you don't do it? What if the mother and the baby die when you could have helped prevent their deaths? Though you may be an adulteress, you're also a nurse.
So you will help José's friend and suffer the consequences, it's that simple. You know that it's reckless, but you have to do it, even at the cost of your reputation, even at the cost of your marriage. You will help a midwife deliver a baby in one of the favelas of Rio, and you will never be the same because of it — never.
You call your husband on your cell phone to tell him what's happening — without mentioning your indiscretion, of course. When you ask him, he tells you that he got your message at the desk. You tell him that you love him, he tells you that he loves you too. He tells you so sweetly that you're afraid of confronting him, you're ashamed of yourself.
You and your husband are speaking French, so José doesn't understand you for the most part, but the taxi driver hears you say: "Je t'aime..."
José knows what those words mean, and he thinks: "How ironic!"
Of course, he realizes that you can't possibly love him like your husband, because he's a stranger to you: there's nothing between you; he has no claim. Your life is on the other end of that cellular phone, not with him. You're from a foreign country, and in the end, you're only a tourist, another man's wife. However, he still wants you; he's jealous of her husband.
No, he thinks to himself, you're not a whore, but an angel — a phantom that still haunts him from time to time. In the morning, when he's most vulnerable, he will dream of you sometimes. He will even think of going all the way to Montréal just to look for you, except that you're married; he doesn't think he has the right to disrupt your life because of a brief moment that you had together in Rio. But he will always want you, he thinks, even though you will eventually change beyond all recognition, many years from now — when you're both old — so that this woman that he knew only briefly here in Rio will no longer exist, except in his memory — except in his fantasy.
An angel can drive you mad, if you're not careful.

*****

José stops at the bottom of a steep hill, then we all follow little Vladimir, the expectant mother's son, up to the little shack where she's going to have her baby. José has hired some kids to watch the car so that it isn't vandalized or stolen, though it's still daylight, because he has to be ready to interpret for me and Lourdes. However, he goes outside from time to time to smoke a cigarette and check on the kids watching his car — to make sure that they haven't abandoned the car. Some of the people here seem to know him and are a little afraid of him.
I find the street children threatening, because they aren't kids in the normal sense, that is, like school children in Canada. Some of them are involved in adult crimes; some are even hired assassins. I'm sure now that José was one of those kids at one time, but I doubt that you could have a normal childhood in a place like this. José says that the kids outside speak their own language: you couldn't understand them even if you spoke Portuguese; it sounds like baby-talk even to me. I'm glad that he has a gun now, though I hate guns. Lourdes has only a knife to cut the umbilical cord while the kids outside all have guns. Me, I have nothing but a hand bag: I have only my passport and my visa, but not much else. The incessant beat of the samba is everywhere. There's loud music from radios and batteries of drummers, because everybody is getting ready for Carnival, though only Christmas has just passed. There are people selling drugs out in the open as well. Prostitutes, some of them very young, boldly offer themselves from doorways and from windows, in the little plazas or on the street. You can hear the sounds of people arguing and fighting, people shouting their threats, even gunshots.
One who lives in a country like Canada can never be prepared for what I have seen here. I feel really out of place, all alone and frightened, with the ugliness and the odour of urine and excrement everywhere. Vladimir, the little boy, leads us through a maze of shacks, cement-block houses and tenements; alleys, clothes lines, and walls covered with graffiti. The shacks are built in a haphazard manner of whatever materials are on hand, some of them on the steep sides of hills on stilts, the entrances facing in all directions: north, east, south, west. There's little plazas here and there, where gangs of children gather and smoke marijuana or sniff plastic bags of gasoline, all kinds of animals wandering about: dogs, cats, chickens, pigs. There's agoutis everywhere — rodents the size of rabbits or cats. People here eat them, according to José, their flesh considered a delicacy.
Outside the expectant mother's house, a pig puts his head through a gaping hole in the wall of the shack next door, a smile on his face, it seems. The pig only makes this place seem even more bizarre — surreal. If I painted it myself, you would think I was a cheap imitator of Salvador Dali, but pregnant women in the favelas like to chew on pig fat, Lourdes says through José. It's for the salt, probably.
O the misery! The expectant mother lives in a little wooden shack on stilts with a metal roof, without hydro, water or gas, whose entrance you have to approach through a rotting wooden stairway. There's two small children bathing in an old rusty wash tub on the porch.
Then I get a big sliver in my heel from one of the steps, and I have to sit down to remove it. I have no shoes, because I broke the heel of one of my sandals when José and I were climbing the stairs to his apartments. One of the children actually gives me a pair of sandals.
When we enter the shack, we're soon overcome by the stench — I feel myself becoming nauseous. There's just one apartment: no bedrooms, no toilet, no kitchen. The people here sleep around a fire in the middle of the hut. Inside, there's no door, only a few furnishings: no beds, no tables, no sofas, no armchairs — just a few crude benches, some stools and a footstool. There's a cradle for the baby about to be born, about ten centimetres high, like a doll's cradle — like one that my father made for me when I was a little girl. There's several unpacked boxes of clothes and dishes up against the walls, because the people who live here have nowhere else to put them. Boxes of food stuffs are hung from the ceiling in wicker baskets, probably to keep them away from the rodents.
The woman and her neighbours live on what was once a garbage dump; the city of Rio used to dump its garbage here, according to José. There's trash everywhere, and the people here get their fuel from digging through garbage, and their water from a communal tap far away. One tap serves thousands of people, José tells me, since nobody here has running water in their home.
Against the wall to the right of the entrance, there's a little altar with several votive candles that are lit. At the centre of the altar is a picture of Jesus with a face sweet and kind. To the right of Jesus, a white plastic figurine of Our Lady with open arms, probably made in China. To the left, an icon of a saint that José identifies as Oxósso or St. Sebastian, the patron saint of Rio.
However, this altar looks occultic — African. The religion that these people practise is probably some mixture of Christianity and paganism rather than Catholicism. But it's a beautiful little altar, with a certain dignity — I am moved by its simple piety. I remember the altar today as if it is still right in front of me. I even dream of it from time to time now — I dream in colour. It's always beautiful, with the candles always lit. So I kneel and say a little prayer, Lourdes too. I get dirt on my knees.
While Lourdes and I deliver the baby, José stands by as an interpreter. You might think that Rosa, the expectant mother, would be uncomfortable with José around, seeing her have a baby, but she doesn't seem to care. The woman is in the middle of labour under the most difficult of conditions, I'm about to find out. She has been lying in a fœtal position on top of some old blankets. She will give birth in this position, gradually rolling on her stomach in order to push the baby out. I find out later that this is how they do it in many countries of the Third World, particularly in Africa. Maybe they do it this way because the baby is often dead before it's born, I don't know, but I have never seen a baby born in this manner, until now. The woman is black, like she's from Africa; her name is Rosa.
The conditions here are very primitive, unsanitary; there's the danger of infection for the mother because of our surroundings. You can't wash your hands because there's no water, so I ask Vladimir, Rosa's son, to go get some water from the tap. Lourdes looks at me inscrutably, though she must know that doctors and nurses wash their hands. When Vladimir comes back, I put the water over the fire to boil it.
We have no sheets, clean or dirty, but Lourdes has some string to tie off the umbilical cord before she cuts it. If Rosa contracted sepsis, she would face a slow and agonizing death unless we got her to a hospital emergency room. But how could we get there? We're far from a hospital, and we would have to fight the traffic in José's car to get her there. (People in the favelas have to commute a long way to get to work, you know, because the jobs are in the southern suburbs of the city, what the cariocas call "The South Zone," not in "The North Zone," where the favelas are, farthest from the beach.)
Night is falling, and we will eventually need the candles that Lourdes has inside her bag, as well as the candles on the altar. Rosa has probably been in second-stage labour since the afternoon; her water had already broken when we arrived. Even in the daylight, the lighting is always bad, though there's an open window facing the west to catch the sun at dusk.
Lourdes is an expert, like a good obstetrician. She knows what to do and I only have to obey her, but I don't know what we would do if there were any serious complications, like a breach birth. In a breach birth, Lourdes would have to put her arm in Rosa's uterus to turn the baby around, like farmers do with calves, so that it came out head first like it's supposed to, because there's no other way, as I see it. But it would be complicated, because the uterus is pushing hard to expel the baby at the same time, and the contractions could actually break the baby's neck.
In a hospital, the doctor would just do a caesarean, but we're far away from a hospital. If Rosa needed a caesarean, would Lourdes know how to perform one? Could she do it, given the circumstances, without killing the mother, the baby, or both? A caesarian would kill Rosa without a doubt, because we don't have anesthesia.
Lourdes tells me afterwards that she has performed caesareans several times, but always after the mother was dead, in order to save the baby. The infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate is very high here. Lourdes says afterwards that she has lost the mother or the child, sometimes both, several times: "Too many times to count," she says.
After dusk, the air is so hot, so sultry, that I have trouble breathing at first. It's like I'm suffering an attack of asthma. I'm about to panic, but Lourdes needs me: I can't be a burden to her now that she's trying to deliver a baby. So I calm down and start to breath more slowly. Instead of fighting the sultriness, I surrender to it: I let the heat and the humidity push the air out of my lungs of their own accord. In the end, I can breath fine — I forget about it. I don't think Lourdes ever notices my distress, but at some point, I hold Rosa's hand and tell her in English: "Don't worry, senhora, it's going to be okay."
Having never before participated in a live birth in a shack in the Third World, I'm a little nervous myself. I'm trying to reassure myself as well as Rosa, I think, but she doesn't seem very worried. In fact, she seems bored, except when she has a contraction; then she's in a lot of pain. There's always three or four children hanging around her dwelling, so it's evident that Rosa isn't a new mother. Still, I ask her from time to time, looking for signs of distress: "Tudo bem, senhora? Is everything all right?"
Rosa always nods her head. But she lets out a loud wail from time to time, during a contraction, gradually moving her body to a prone position as she tries to expel the baby. It's a long process, several hours. Eventually, Rosa stops wailing and cursing during the contractions, resigned to the pain, though it isn't any less painful. You just realize that there's no way out of this, except the birth of the child — or death.
Lourdes and I have no idea how long it will take to deliver the baby because no one has a watch or a clock; time is eventually rendered meaningless. The baby's head only begins to appear after dark. Then the baby shoots its way through the birth canal like a rocket as Lourdes catches it. The moment Rosa hears the baby crying on its own, her face lights up with joy. Then Lourdes cuts the umbilical cord, cleans off the baby, and hands it to Rosa, who starts feeding it. The baby is a son. It's true what the Bible says: women forget the pain of childbirth right after the baby is born, though they might remember later in bits and pieces. It's the endorphins.
Given the horrible conditions and the family's poverty, the sense of danger in the air outside because of people firing their guns, the birth of this baby is relatively easy for the midwife and me. There's few complications, a routine birth for Lourdes, it seems. However, there are no routine births if you're the mother, except in comparison to previous ones. But this birth will always haunt me, one that I'll remember always, for several reasons.
After the baby is born, I'm not sure if either the mother or the child will survive. The baby's cry is weak, but when Lourdes cuts the umbilical cord, they're still alive; they seem to be doing well. But I check for vital signs with the stethoscope that I have in my bag: heart beat, pulse rate, and respirations. I palpate the baby's abdomen as well. The baby's colour looks normal, the pupils reacting normally to light — all vital signs normal. The mother and the child seem fine, though you can't easily check for signs of infection to the ears, the nose and the throat very well, since the lighting is poor. The only light that we have is by candle, the ones on the altar and the ones in Lourdes' bag.
The baby is small, possibly a little premature. You can only hope, and of course, you want them to survive very much. I have never wanted a mother and a child to live more than them, except me and my own children, but it seems that everything is against them, whether or not they survive. A shantytown is no place to raise a child. I even want to adopt him, if it's possible — if his mother will give him up.
At my insistence, we drive Rosa and her baby to a clinic in José's car just to be safe. I would prefer a hospital, but Rosa only wants to go to a clinic. Lots of people are afraid of hospitals, you know.
When we arrive at the clinic, however, there's already a long queue of people waiting to see the doctor, though the clinic isn't even open yet — the sun has just started to rise.
I call Robert again to tell him what has happened: "We're going to be here a long time," I tell him. "There's a long queue..."
We wait several hours before it's our turn to see the doctor. I even sleep for a while when we sit down in some chairs. When I wake up, I lift my head from José's shoulder and see that he's having a bad dream. He wakes up with a start, unaware of where he is, and I say to him in a low voice: "Shhh, it's okay, I'm here..."
I put my arm around his chest and my ear to his heart. His heart is racing at all speed, but he calms down, puts his arm around my shoulder, and falls back asleep. I remember now the look in his eyes when I first met him, how faraway it was. This time, there's a look of terror in his face, but he falls back asleep.
Lourdes wakes us up when the receptionist calls me. She gives me a dirty look, then I understand why: I had my arms around José while he was sleeping.
I tell the receptionist beforehand that I'm willing to pay on my credit card if necessary, but she says: "That's okay, senhora. The government will pay..."
Brazil has national health insurance like Canada, but there's a severe shortage of doctors, nurses, and health professionals, particularly in the rural areas. In isolated regions, like the rain forest, people even have to be evacuated by helicopter in cases of severe illness. There's lots of patients at this clinic, and only one doctor and two nurses, so there's a shortage of staff here as well, it seems.
The facilities at this clinic are very primitive compared to what you have in Canada. Probably built in the 1960s or 1970, when this area was still part of the country, the clinic doesn't have ultrasound or amniocentesis, for example, though they can do x-rays. However, the clinic is clean and the staff seems competent, given what they have.
The doctor examines Rosa and the baby and concludes that they're well enough to go home; he only stitches her up and prescribes an antibiotic, which you can get at the pharmacy at the clinic. Lourdes had used compresses to slow the bleeding.
Through José, Lourdes tells me that I have done well, and they both thank me. José takes Rosa and her baby home and drops Lourdes off at Rosa's. I don't smoke, but Lourdes and I share a cigarette in José's taxi to help relax and drink a bottle of warm Brazilian beer at Rosa's. Though she had caught me with her man, Lourdes is friendly in the end. Before departing with José, Lourdes and I hug and kiss on both cheeks. "A Deus, senhora," she says. That means: "Go with God."
Then José takes me back to my hotel. We arrive at my hotel late in the morning, more than twenty-four hours after José and I have met at the beach. José helps me carry my packages upstairs to my suite. I remove my pendant, the one with the fleur-de-lis, and give it to him; he puts it around his neck and kisses me. Before he leaves, I kiss him one last time outside my suite and say to him in a low voice: "Adieu, mon amour, adieu..."
I had thought that a lover couldn't be important to me if I had met him only one time and never saw him again, but I was wrong — I was naïve. That afternoon with José had so much meaning for me; he was all the world to me the time that we were together, though I don't love him like my husband. It's just that we clicked. We were comfortable with each other, like we could say anything about ourselves.
José would make a good priest, I think, except that the vow of chastity would definitely be a problem for him. As well, I understand why there's problems between him and Lourdes: he has a bad case of wandering hands, I think.
However, the times with José were fantastic — épouvantable. It was some of the best sex of my life, and I will always remember him. As well, I remember the samba music — it's everywhere in Rio, from the First of September until Carnival. I loved being surrounded by the music.
What I really remember now, however, is the wretched poverty that I have seen in the favela; you don't forget something like that. Delivering a baby there and seeing the conditions that the people there live under has changed me.
I'm not the same — I'm not what I was.

*****

Oh, I knew right away, the way she was beaming! She had love bites on her throat and on her neck! As well, it was her voice when she talked with me on her cell phone, how ill at ease she seemed. Okay, maybe she was really helping a midwife deliver a baby: as an obstetric nurse, she helped doctors at the hospital every day. But in the slums of Rio? How does a tourist end up in a place like that? She wasn't just shopping!
She came back late in the morning of the next day with a rank odour that you couldn't identify. I had never smelled anything like it before. Her white print dress and her knees were dirty, like she had been kneeling in her garden, and the soles of her feet were black — she was wearing a strange pair of sandals. I wondered if she hadn't been doing it en lèvrette6 in the mud!
The taxi driver helped her carry a few packages up to our suite: some clothes, some souvenirs, and some fruits that I had never seen before. She explained to me what the fruits were, but I don't remember what they were now. I remembered the taxi driver, from when he picked us up at the airport, but it was impossible to tell from his blank expression if anything had happened between them.
Okay then, she was shopping, but something wasn't right. I wanted to question her then, but I didn't want to argue in front of the taxi driver and the kids. She said that she was exhausted, but you could hear her singing to herself in the shower, evidently in a good mood. She went to bed and fell asleep right away, but she asked me to let her sleep only a couple hours, because she didn't want to sleep all day.
After she woke up, we had a late lunch together with the children at the hotel restaurant. I wanted to confront her then, but we were in public. Instead, I only asked, with a certain coldness in my voice: "Did you sleep well, ma chérie?"
She didn't seem to notice the nuance in my voice, but only answered affirmatively. She was unfamiliar to me now — opaque. I no longer knew this woman.
After lunch, we all went down to the beach, where the children played in the ocean while she and I both sat down to read. Maybe she couldn't read either, but I couldn't concentrate on my book. I really wanted to talk, but I was afraid that I would start shouting in front of all those people at the beach. So again I said nothing.
After we returned to our hotel, I turned the TV on high and told the kids to watch it. (They were watching Televisão Globo, the Brazilian channel, though the hotel had cable stations in English.) Then I asked her to follow me into the bedroom, shut the door behind me, and asked her to sit down. I stood hovering in front of her as she sat on the bed. "What happened yesterday?" I asked. "You were gone all day."
She shrugged. "I went shopping," she replied. "What do you think?"
I thought she was being evasive. She was clearly nervous: it was her voice, her eyes. I think she knew that we would have this talk.
"What were you doing besides shopping, eh?" I asked.
"I was helping a midwife, Robert," she replied as she looked up, "but I already told you that on my cell phone yesterday. We even took the mother and the baby to a clinic. Don't you remember? I called twice..."
"Okay," I said. "You were shopping and you were helping a midwife. What else were you doing, Chantal?"
She shrugged her shoulders in an attempt to appear nonchalant and said: "I didn't do anything else, Robert. Delivering a baby can take a long time, you know..."
I lost patience with her and shouted: "You're lying! What were you doing?"
"Why are you shouting at me, eh?" she shouted back, standing now. "Why are you questioning me like that? What am I supposed to have done, Robert?"
"I think you were unfaithful, okay?" I replied coldly. "If not, then what were you doing yesterday?"
She didn't deny it but became silent. You'd think that she'd have denied it vehemently if she wasn't unfaithful. You'd think that she'd be very indignant, if I was accusing her unjustly, but she only acted guilty instead of indignant. When she didn't answer right away, I said to her, more calmly: "Look, Chantal, something isn't right. When we first talked on the phone yesterday, you were nervous. I thought then that you were hiding something. What is it? What were you doing yesterday?"
When she repeated what she said before about shopping and helping a midwife, I implored her, my voice rising in exasperation: "Please tell me, I have the right to know — just look at your neck!"
She stood up and looked at her neck in the mirror, then touched her neck absently and fidgeted with a lock of her hair for a little bit. She sat back down on the bed, a look of dread on her face, then she looked at me and confessed in a low voice, barely audible: "I was helping a midwife, Robert, and I was shopping yesterday, but I've been unfaithful to you, okay? I had sex with another man..."
Then she pleaded in a louder voice: "Oh, please forgive me — please! I don't know why I did it — I don't know why! Please forgive me?"
I felt like a deer that had just been shot by a hunter — I couldn't believe it, what she had just said! Though I had suspected, though I was trying to extract a confession, I was still shocked to hear her confess. She tried to explain herself, but it didn't register in my mind. When it became evident that she was telling the truth, my heartbeat became faster and my throat tightened. I was breathing heavily, my knees were trembling. If I had been eating, I'd have choked on my food. I wanted to shout, I wanted to cry — I wanted to either hit or strangle her. I thought of killing her at that moment, I even made a fist. You could see that she was frightened.
I didn't know what to do, but I had to do something. Finally, I asked, with difficulty speaking: "Why, Chantal, why? What have I done to deserve this?"
She shouted: "You hurt me too!"
Then she started to sob and repeated her accusation: "You hurt me!"
"How did I hurt you?" I shouted. "What did I do?"
"You were unfaithful too!" she shouted, "I saw you flirting with that girl on the beach, and you called me by someone else's name! I know you've had sex with her, I know it!"
She hit me a couple of times on the arms. She didn't really hurt me because she was much smaller than me, but I tried to grab her wrists to keep her from hitting me again, only she broke away from me. When she tried to punch me in the face, I covered my face, but she kicked me hard in the shin — that hurt!
As I rubbed my shin, she shouted: "You bastard! And I've had your children! What's wrong with me, eh? I'm too old — you'd rather have one of your students?"
"No, no, a thousand times no," I shouted.
Then I lowered my voice, because of the children in the living room. "She was nothing to me," I pleaded. "Besides, a little flirtation and adultery are not the same thing — not at all!"
"Flirtation?" she shouted. "Flirtation? 'If a man looks upon a woman with lust, he has committed adultery with her in his heart.' It's in the Bible!"
"I don't care what the Bible says," I shouted back. "No matter what the Bible says, flirtation and adultery are not the same — not at all! Besides, the devil can quote scripture..."
"I'm not the devil," she replied coldly. "I'm not the devil, though I could become one."
Then she said, with a ruthless logic: "If you haven't had sex with her, it's because you haven't had the chance. I was there, the children were there, and everybody else at the beach was there — and you had pieces of pizza in your hands. But if you two have been alone together..."
She didn't finish what she was saying; she didn't think she had to. She sat back down on the bed and folded her arms across her chest, then turned away. I sat down next to her and started to touch her shoulder, but withdrew my hand as if I was about to knowingly touch something hot, then reconsidered. After a few moments to collect my thoughts, I said: "But we weren't alone, Chantal. If we had been alone, I wouldn't have done anything with her. I wouldn't do that to you because I love you and I thought you loved me."
I was still breathing heavily, afraid that I might have a heart attack. I was trying hard to control myself, but O God, I wanted to kill her — killing her would have been sweet! Then I said to her, more calmly: "Okay, I was wrong to have flirted with her — I'm really sorry. But you were wrong too. You were wrong, Chantal — you've never done anything like this since we've been married. At least as far as I know..."
Then she turned around. Still sitting on the bed, face to face with me, she said: "Well, haven't you been unfaithful before? The opportunities for you are there on campus, you know. How do I know what you're doing when I'm not there — how do I know?"
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed convulsively. Of course, I was shocked that she would say something like that — completely shocked. I moved away from her like she had a contagious disease. After a moment, I could only say: "What did you say?"
"Yes," she shouted, standing up again. "Your ex-wife has told me that you were quite the Don Juan when you guys were married! Though you were separated, you were unfaithful to her with me: you were still married to her when we met, you know! Maybe you've been unfaithful since we've been married. Maybe you even have one of your students or some secretary as your mistress. And who's Maria anyway?"
I couldn't believe it — me, accused of being unfaithful with one of my students! I shouted, my voice trembling: "When have I ever done that? When have I ever been unfaithful to you, Chantal — when? With what women have I been unfaithful to you? Who is this mistress that you seem to think I have? Both times that you were pregnant, I took sabbaticals to be with you — remember?"
"You did it with Maria," she said coldly, "or you did it with someone here in Rio..."
Then she sniffled.
Oh, I was in such a rage then! And her manner was defiant. Then she shrank back as I quickly moved towards her, cowering against the wall at the head of the bed. I grabbed her by the arms and pulled her to her feet. "When have I been unfaithful to you?" I shouted again. "When?"
In horror, I realized what I had done and let go of her arms. She shrank back down on the bed and started to cry again. "You forgot about me," she sobbed, "and you forgot about the kids. You were only thinking about that girl on the beach! I know you had sex with her — I tasted her!"
She wept bitterly, then suddenly the moment of truth: she realized what she had done, it seemed, and cried: "O my God!"
She buried her face in her hands again and wept, this time from shame.
"You forgot about the children too, Chantal," I said coldly.
She said nothing but continued to sob. I saw that she was ashamed, but why — because I had found out what she had done? Did the bitch even have a conscience, or was her shame merely from getting caught? I no longer thought I knew this woman; she was a stranger to me now. These words from Othello were running through my mind: "Her honour is an essence that's not seen..."
Yes, I thought of putting my hands around her throat! Then I asked a question of a more practical nature: "Did you use any protection, Chantal — any condoms?"
My voice was full of dread — even I could detect it.
She shook her head and sniffled. "I didn't think anything would happen," she replied softly. "Really, I only wanted to go shopping, that's it. Oh, please forgive me, I'm sorry — really sorry! I love you and I'm sorry!"
She was crying again. Then she stopped crying, hesitated a moment, and said quietly: "I could be pregnant, you know, though I can't know for sure right now. It's too soon to tell..."
"Then you'll have the abortion," I insisted. "It's that simple. Or I'll throw you out on the street like the whore you are!"
I knew very well how she felt about abortion — that it was wrong — but as I saw it right now, I'd have done the abortion myself if necessary. I didn't give a damn about her Catholic upbringing, the Church be damned! These words from Othello were also running through my mind: "First to be hanged and then to confess — I tremble at it!"
Yes, I was trembling, my knees felt weak. I wanted to kill her so much! Although I already suspected who her lover was, I wanted to know for sure who to murder in case I ever saw him again. So I asked: "Your lover, who is he?"
"The taxi driver..."
Just then, Avril opened the door timorously and stuck her head into the room: "You guys, me and Patrick are hungry," she said. "We haven't eaten supper..."

*****

We ate lunch in silence in the hotel diner, the whole family, then we went down to the beach. This time, anger came over me in a torrent — I was barely in control of myself. While the children swam in the ocean, I asked her, with great malice in my voice: "Was it good, Chantal?"
She didn't seem to hear, so I asked again, a little louder: "Was it good with him?"
I was seething inside, about to explode. I saw the shame in her face, and I smiled at her discomfort. She was not at ease — oh no, not at all! — and I enjoyed it. She blushed, her eyes cast down. Then she replied evenly, but avoiding my eyes: "I prefer not to answer that question, okay?"
"Well, you will answer it," I insisted. "You will answer it! Was the sex good, Chantal — was it?"
Oh, I was really angry! I wanted to shout — maybe I was shouting — but I stopped myself. I asked once more, quietly: "Was it good, Chantal? Was it worth possibly destroying our marriage — our family?"
She glared at me a few seconds with an air of defiance, then replied with quiet rage, her voice trembling: "Yes, Robert, it was good — fantastic! I came several times — several times! We even woke up some of the neighbours. Otherwise, I have not enjoyed this vacation, except with the kids. Now please leave me alone!"
She started to read again. I thought then that she was like a tigress that had just acquired the taste for human flesh, certain that she would do it again if given the opportunity, entirely certain. Yes, I wanted to kill her. I thought that I ought to kill her, that it was my right. But I calmed down after a few moments and merely said to her quietly: "I hope you're satisfied, Chantal. You've really hurt me. I hope you're satisfied, because I never wanted to hurt you..."
She looked at me in anger, her nostrils flaring like those of a wild mare, but she stopped herself from saying whatever it was that she was going to say. It seemed then that she didn't want to fight anymore, that she wanted to reconcile. In the end, Chantal has always tried to be a peacemaker. She only calmed down and said in a low voice: "I'm sorry, Robert. I didn't want to tell you because I don't want to hurt you either, but you wouldn't leave me alone. I'm flighty, impulsive. I got in too deep, I was over my head. A thousand times, I'm really sorry — I didn't want to hurt you either..."
"That's no excuse," I replied. "Not all flighty people are unfaithful to their spouses, Chantal."
"Well, haven't you been unfaithful too?" she asked, all indignant. "I saw you flirting with her, and I tasted her on you."
"It was salt from the sea," I lied. "I went swimming."
She smiled ironically and said: "You don't like to swim, Robert. You're afraid of the water — you would rather hike in the woods."
"I've jumped into the water a few times," I replied evasively.
Of course, I was lying about the salt from the sea, but I did it out of weakness while she did it out of spite, as I saw it.
She looked down, blushing again. I thought that she wanted to cry, but instead she looked up at me and said in a low voice: "Please forgive me, I was wrong, okay? I won't do it again — ever!"
She excused herself, stood up, and returned to our hotel, almost running. I let her go, because I was ready to let her run out of my life forever, if that was what she wanted. I would have deserved it, because it wasn't the salt from the sea — she knew that.

*****

The kids don't know what has happened, only that their father is angry at you. But you think that you have to protect your son when his father chases him from the living room into the master bedroom. You don't remember now why your husband was angry at your son, but you throw your arms around the little boy, who's all frightened, and hold him close. Your daughter, who has seen everything, is terrified as well: "No, papa, no!" she cries.
"He hasn't done anything," you shout. "If you're mad at me, yell at me, but leave him alone!"
He just glares at you, a look of hatred on his face while you hold your son close to you, frantically kissing the boy on the face several times. You're sure that he wants to kill you, but you're even more afraid that he wants to hurt your son. You can't understand why he hates his own son so much right now. Who knows, maybe he suspects right now that Patrick isn't his son, since Patrick looks like you, not him — who knows?
Then your husband looks like he wants to cry. You realize now how much you have really hurt him. With your right arm still around your son, you hold out your left hand to your husband and tell him again that you're sorry, but he just walks away.
A few minutes later, you follow him into the little living room of your hotel suite, where he's sitting on the sofa. You kneel in front of him, wrap your arms around his legs, and rest your cheek on his knees. "I'm sorry," you murmur, "but please don't hurt him: he's your son and he loves you..."
He calms down, but he doesn't respond to your touch. Tired from his outburst, he asks you to leave him alone, so you stand up and walk away. But you tell him that you love him before you leave the room.
"I love you too," he says slowly, "but I need to be alone now..."
"Do you really mean it?" you ask. "Do you really love me, or do you only say it out of habit?"
He doesn't answer, but as you knelt before him with your arms around his knees, weeping, he thought of Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asks himself if Mary wasn't Jesus' wife, if Mary was ever unfaithful to him. He asks himself if she wasn't weeping as she washed his feet out of guilt for what she did to him. And was Jesus ever unfaithful to her, for example, with the Samaritan woman by the well? Your husband can ask these questions, because he's an agnostic, but even he has his Jesus: maybe his Jesus is a cuckold who brought upon himself his wife's infidelities by being unfaithful himself.
Yes, Jesus was wise, your husband concedes, but perhaps it was wisdom from the pain. But your husband has a greater sense of pathos for Jesus now: he can empathize better with the man on the cross now. Perhaps he even loves him more than he did before.
Your Jesus is O Redentor on Corcovado, the one with his arms spread out to embrace the world. Your Mary Magdalene has her arms wrapped around his legs, weeping, bathing his legs with her tears. "I love you," you murmur, "I love you..."
But he doesn't understand.

*****

I haven't slept much, I'm having white nights again. So I get up and brush my teeth. When I look at myself in the mirror, I see that I have my eyes in the grease of the bins. "I need sleep," I moan.
I fall asleep almost at dawn and wake up early in the morning feeling exhausted. So I take a chair and a book and go down to the beach with the children. I see him standing up against his car at the edge of the beach. Maybe he's waiting for someone? We wave to each other, then I strip down to my swimsuit and rub suntan lotion on the children and myself before the children run down to the ocean.
I watch him approach me. Face to face with him, he takes my hands, smiles and says: "Tudo bem, senhora?"
I force myself to smile and say quietly in return: "Good morning, José..."
I put my arms around his neck and kiss him on both cheeks. We hold each other for a while, then he asks, still smiling: "Would senhora like to go shopping today?"
"He knows about us," I reply, looking down. "I had to tell him..."
I also warn him that my husband knows who he is. His smile disappears. "That's a pity, senhora," he says with feeling. "What did he do — has he hurt you?"
I don't want to show my feelings, because I prefer to suffer in private. But there's no pain without an audience, as my husband has said: I only shrug my shoulders in an effort to be nonchalant, so that he won't think I'm worried. "He shouted," I reply, "and I shouted, but he didn't do anything..."
"Take off your sunglasses," he orders brusquely.
There's a certain resolve in his voice. I'm a little bit afraid, but I take off my sunglasses and let him inspect my face, looking for signs that I have been hit. I don't know why, but I even shut my eyes tightly, like he's about to hit me. When he indicates that he's satisfied, I put my sunglasses back on. "I would have killed him if he had hurt you," he says quietly.
I believe him — that's why I'm terrified now. The way he says it, he could be going to the store for a pack of cigarettes; killing my husband would easy for him. Then I remember the gun in his car — I can see him killing someone now. Then I remember the mother and the baby. Because I would rather talk about something else, no matter what, I ask: "The mother and the baby, are they doing well?"
He doesn't answer right away. Then he replies quietly: "I think the mother's doing okay, senhora, but the baby has died. It's unfortunate, but it happens sometimes..."
I don't believe it! After a few moments, I ask, still stunned: "Good God, what happened? They were fine when we left them — what happened?"
I ask him some questions to try to understand better how the baby died, but he can't tell me anything. He merely shrugs, more agitated now, and replies: "I don't know anything, senhora, I wasn't there. Lourdes saw the woman again, not me."
I put my hands to my face and start to cry. "I lied to that woman," I sob. "I told her that everything was going to be okay!"
This has never happened to me before, perhaps because I have only been a full-time nurse a short time. Except for one baby, all of the babies that I have helped to deliver in hospital have survived. The one exception, a woman from Haiti gave birth to an anencephalic baby. I didn't cry then, because the baby had no chance; he was already dead because he had no brain. The doctor just did a caesarean, that's it. But the one that I helped the midwife to deliver would survived with decent medical care — I believe that. That baby's death could have been prevented, and I'm still outraged about it.
When I were pregnant with my son, there was the problem of Rh incompatibility, because my blood type is O negative while my husband's is O positive. I was given injections of RhoGam, since my son was my second child. Without the RhoGam, the Rh antibodies in my blood would have attacked the Rh antigens in my son's blood, killing my son or causing him severe mental retardation. Although I don't know for certain, the baby that the midwife and I delivered could have died from erythroblastosis fetalis, fœtal anemia due to Rh incompatibility. Symptoms of erythroblastosis fetalis include: an unusually high-pitched wail, jaundice, bruise-like rashes called petechiae, swelling of the organs of the body.
I'm not a doctor, that's true, but I see none of these symptoms when I examine the baby. With a stethoscope and a thermometer, I check vital signs: pulse, heartbeat, respirations, temperature, level of consciousness. I tap his liver for signs of an enlarged liver, another symptom of erythroblastosis fetalis. I can't tell for sure if the baby has jaundice because the only light in the shack is provided by the midwife's candles and the votive candles on the altar, but I see no other symptoms. His cry sounds normal enough, though he's a little smaller than normal — low birth-weight another sign of erythroblastosis fetalis.
The baby might have developed complications later, but I rule out fœtal anemia due to Rh incompatibility as the cause of death, though I could be wrong — I'm not a doctor. But I ask myself why the doctor at the clinic didn't find anything wrong with the baby.
I feel terrible thinking this about anyone without proof, but I ask myself if the baby hasn't been murdered. But who did it? It could have only been Rosa Moraes, Lourdes, José — or me. I can understand why Rosa, the mother, might not want a baby: the baby is just another child for a woman in poverty to take care of. As for Lourdes, José has told me that she performed illegal abortions as well as delivering babies. But does she practise infanticide as well? I doubt it. José, I don't doubt that he's capable of murder, but would he murder a baby? He would have to be a monster to do something like that! But I don't see anything unusual: José and Lourdes would have had to go back to finish the job after dropping me off at my hotel, so it couldn't be them.
I used to read to my daughter a book about angels when she was little. According to Jewish folklore, a female demon called Lilith often killed babies soon after they were born. If José, Lourdes or Rosa didn't kill the baby, they might think that I was an evil presence that killed the baby because I committed adultery with José; they might think that I am Lilith. However, I doubt that José and Lourdes are that superstitious, though Rosa is perhaps another pair of sleeves.
Then, when I remember the look of joy on Rosa's face after her baby was born, I realize then that she wanted that baby very much, despite her poverty. I'm ashamed of myself for even thinking that she could possibly want to kill her baby. Whatever happened, therefore, I will never know — it just happened.
As I sob, José puts his arms around me and says soothingly: "It's a pity, senhora, but it happens here all the time. Brazil is not a rich country like Canada. There's a lot of poor people here."
"This wouldn't have happened in Canada," I cry angrily.
He grabs me suddenly by the arms and shouts: "There's nothing you could have done, Chantal — nothing! You did everything you could. Nobody could blame you — you have no reason to cry!"
Then he runs his hand through his hair and mumbles an apology. He tries to put his arms around me again, but I excuse myself with haste because I'm afraid of him now. I have to get away from him, no matter what, because I see him now as someone capable of violence — he might hurt me. He calls my name as I run away, because I have forgotten my things, but I don't stop to turn around. I hurry back to my hotel, forgetting my chair, my book, even my clothes — everything. I'm wearing only my swimsuit. I stop running only when I realize that the children are still in the water.
He catches up to me and puts his arms around me from behind. In a panic, I try to break away from him, striking blindly, but he holds me tightly until I stop struggling. "I'm sorry I shouted at you," he says quietly into my ear. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing you could have done. This is Brazil, not Canada — those people can't afford decent medical care..."
I fall to the sand, José falling down next to me. I nod my head in agreement, then cry in his arms. He must think I'm just a silly tourist, but I'm not crying just because of the baby. It's everything else as well: the girl with my husband, being unfaithful and getting caught, the possibility that I might be pregnant, and seeing the worst poverty that I have ever seen in my life. As well, if my family back home knew what I had done with José, they wouldn't have approved. The baby was just the last nail in the coffin.
I'm devastated, I feel as if everything that I had done was all for nothing. I realize now that I was trying to make amends for what I had done by helping the midwife deliver the baby — trying to be the Good Samaritan. I had hoped that maybe some good might come of it if I helped Lourdes successfully deliver that baby. I thought that maybe I was even meant to be there at that moment.
Then I see a police constable standing over us. "Is everything okay, senhora?" he asks.
I look at José, then I look up at the constable and reply: "Yes, he's a friend..."
But the constable only glares at José, then mutters something in Portuguese before he leaves us. Then I see my daughter and my son staring at José and me, and we stand up.
When I arrive back to the hotel with the kids, I take the elevator up to our suite. Then I open the door, slam it hard and weep bitterly. Despite the pain, giving birth to my children had been beautiful for me, but it couldn't have been beautiful for Rosa because she lost her baby.
I feel so devastated!

*****

I drove down to the beach where I had met her a couple of days earlier and waited, because I wanted to see her one more time before she returned to Canada. Then I see her walking across the beach from her hotel with her children, dressed the same as before: the same straw sun hat, the same sunglasses, a white cotton blouse and beige shorts. But her steps seem heavier. When we see each other, she waves, but something isn't right, I think. However, I approach her as she strips to her swimsuit and sits down; she's wearing the same black bikini underneath her clothes. When we are face to face, I smile and greet her with: "Tudo bem, senhora?"
"Not bad, José," she replies. "How's it going?"
She kisses me on both cheeks and gives me a hug. She tries to smile, but her smile seems forced. I kiss her hands and ask: "Would senhora like to go shopping? We can take the kids..."
She looks down, slowly pulls her hands back, and says quietly: "He already knows, José. I had to tell him."
Then she looks up at me and says: "He knows who you are..."
It's really a blow to me, him knowing. I kneel down in the sand in front of her as she sits back down in her chair. "That's a pity, senhora," I say sincerely. "What did he do — did he hurt you?"
She shrugs her shoulders listlessly. "No," she replies. "I shouted, he shouted, but he didn't hit me..."
I asks her to remove her sunglasses, to prove that her husband didn't hit her. We stand up again so that I can look at her face more closely. When I'm satisfied that her husband didn't hit her, I signal to her to put the sunglasses back on. "I would have killed him if he had hurt you," I mutter.
She turns pale, but I'm serious: I would kill anybody who hurt her. The act of possessing her had made her mine, if only briefly. I feel responsible for her safety, so I'm ready to kill him. I have my gun in the car, but I don't need a gun to kill him.
You realize how evil jealousy is when you're ready to kill somebody's husband in a jealous rage, because she wasn't really mine. But jealousy wasn't new to me: I had known men who beat their women, my father, for instance, when my parents were fighting. As well, I was about to kill one time myself, but I have already told you about Cristina and Gilberto.
Regardless of what her husband might think, I'm sure that she will never be unfaithful again. She is chastened, full of regret. I don't think that she's naturally deceitful, or she would have never admitted it to her husband except in the face of undeniable proof — something that her husband couldn't have had, I thought.
Of course, our little affair is over, but I had known that she would go back to Canada anyway. I couldn't imagine her abandoning her family to stay with me here in Rio, though I still have fantasies of sailing away with her on a boat to Africa or the Azores, or living in a grass hut and having lots of children.
Then she ask: "The mother and the baby, how are they doing?"
I'm surprised by that question. I shrug my shoulders, ill at ease, and reply: "The baby died, senhora..."
Lourdes had told me about the baby dying the morning after it was born. Lots of babies died in the favelas — lots of babies. Some of my brothers and sisters had died as either babies or small children. I had lost some of my childhood friends to sickness, injury or violence, mostly to gunshot wounds — I had shot Rodrigo, for example. Death was nothing new to me, but Mrs. Rousseau was really dumbstruck. She asks a lot of questions at first, like a health professional, in order to understand better how the baby had died. Then she puts her hands to her face and starts to cry. "I can't believe it," she sobs, "I can't believe it..."
We stand up again and I put my arms around her, but her reaction really surprised me. In the favelas, it was only a baby that would have lived and died in poverty anyway, or grown up to be a malandro like me, but she didn't understand. She had seen more of Brazil than any other foreign tourist that I had ever met, but she's still naïve. The lives of the favelados of Rio are beyond her understanding — unreal to a middle-class woman from Montréal, though she obviously cares deeply.
But after a few minutes, I lose patience with her: "There's nothing you could have done, Chantal," I say sharply. "Nothing. You did everything possible for that baby. No other tourist would have done what you did. You have no reason to cry..."
She looks at me with an expression that accuses me of betrayal. I immediately apologize, but she breaks away and stalks off before I can say anything. I call to her because she has forgotten her chair, her book and her clothes — because I want to say that I'm sorry, that I'm not really angry at her. So I run after her, seizing her by the waist from behind when I catch up to her.
"Let me go," she screams in a panic, kicking and trying to punch me, "let me go!"
She hits me in the mouth, but I hold onto her. "You did nothing wrong, Chantal," I say softly in her ear, holding her tightly in my arms. "You didn't kill the baby, okay?"
"Let me go," she sobs, pleading now, but I hold her tightly until she stops struggling.
"You did nothing wrong, okay?" I repeat, almost whispering. "You did nothing wrong — it wasn't your fault. That baby had no chance — you saw how those people live. There's nothing that you could have done to save him, please believe me. Babies die there all the time!"
She falls to the sand, and I sit down next to her. "I know that," she sobs. "I know that..."
I put my arms around her and let her cry on my shoulder. People are staring at us now as we sit on the sand with our arms around each other, but I don't care anymore; we're on our own little island. I don't usually cry over women, because a man can always find a woman, but I'm crying too.
She's right: babies aren't supposed to die in their first day of life, not when they could be saved. She has reason to cry, because all her efforts have come to nothing. Her husband would have never found out about us, if she hadn't stopped to deliver a baby. All I had to do was take her back to her hotel right after our rendezvous, and nobody would have known anything.
I have a profound sense of despair: that God doesn't exist, that God lives in neither the favelas nor anywhere else in Rio, that God lives nowhere else in the world. The monastery at São Bento is just a worthless storehouse for somebody's gold — gold that could be used to feed the hungry and house the poor. I feel helpless in the face of injustice, that life itself isn't just. I feel helpless again, like when Cristina ran off with Gilberto — like when Broadway Joe ordered me to shoot Rodrigo while Gilberto, his brother, watched. It seems like the world is eating its children, and I can do nothing but watch. What's worse, I have always thought that life was worthless anyway. That hurts worse than anything else, because I have never been religious, never believed in God or candomblé or anything else anyway, though malandros like me often invoke the candomblé like Oxóssi or Ogum for blessings and power.
As we cry, a young man in a Toronto Blue Jays cap with his hair dyed black and a ring in his nose asks: "Are you two all right?"
Mrs. Rousseau nods, sniffles and replies: "Yes, everything's fine, thank you..."
Then we see a police constable staring down at us. I explain to the constable as briefly as possible what happened at Rosa's, but he won't leave until Mrs. Rousseau tells him that I'm a friend.
We kiss and hug each other, then pick ourselves up off the sand. We say that we love each other, because it seems like the thing to say. I think that she needs to hear it from me, because I feel that I loved her, that maybe she loves me too, at least for the moment.
Then we see her two children staring at us, all frightened. I wonder how long they been watching us. I help her gather her things and carry them back to the hotel.
She gives me a hug one more time at the entrance to the hotel. But before we part, she says: "Please give Rosa my condolences..."
I regret the harsh words now because I wasn't really angry at her, but at everything else: the world and its poverty, the rich, my country, her husband, God — anyone but her. I'm astonished that a tourist would help Lourdes deliver a baby in one of the favelas. I hadn't thought that some people might be different, but that those who had a lot of money — the rich and the tourists — didn't give a damn about the poor. The leftists, the people who set off car bombs in downtown Rio, I thought they just wanted power. I didn't think that they really cared either, or they wouldn't set off bombs in the street at the risk of hurting or killing others.
Her act of compassion that night at Rosa's has changed me. She realized now that she was naïve, but I realized that I was naïve as well. Having lived among the favelados my entire life, I hadn't realized that there were people in the world who cared, who thought that babies weren't supposed to die when they could be saved — that poverty and crime didn't have to be the way of the world.
After I tell Lourdes what happened at the beach, she says: "That woman's crazy, Jecu. If her husband was like your father — like any man in Brazil — he would have killed her. You should forget about her..."
I only nod my head in agreement, because I had almost killed my girlfriend, Cristina, and my best friend, Gilberto, when I caught them together. Oswaldo, Linda's man, would have killed both me and Linda if Linda hadn't stabbed him in the heart first. But I was afraid that Mrs. Rousseau's husband would kill her, because a man in Brazil will kill a woman who has been unfaithful; it's the dark side of our national psyche.
I am responsible for what is happening to her, but I can only watch her walk out of my life that day. There's nothing that I can do to save her now — nothing.
I lost my world at the beach that day, because I can't live in Rio anymore now.

*****

I woke up to the sound of the door slamming and Chantal weeping uncontrollably. I was afraid that she was having a nervous breakdown. I remembered her attempts at suicide — you don't forget something like that. She had tried to jump off the balcony a couple times early in our marriage when we were fighting, after Avril was born. After the last suicide attempt, I said, between gasps for air: "This isn't normal, wanting to kill yourself like that!"
She merely nodded her head. She had trouble making decisions sometimes, but she started to see a psychiatrist, who prescribed some medication. Now she was pleading with me to hold her again, crying about a baby. I didn't understand at first, but when she calmed down sufficiently, she told me that the baby that she had helped to deliver had died. She had found out from her lover, the taxi driver, she said, when she ran into him on the beach by chance.
I had doubted that the baby existed, had thought that it was all an elaborate hoax, but I held her close against my heart, and reassured her that I loved her, even though I was no longer sure that I loved her after what she had done. The children hugged her too, Patrick, wrapping his arms around his mother's waist, because at least they loved her.
What had happened was this: any good that she might have done in that shantytown had been canceled by the death of the child, in her mind: what remained now was just her shame.
I can't believe what she did — I'm shocked! She could have been raped and murdered, her body, dumped in a garbage dump somewhere. Suppose he had taken her to a motel somewhere and then abandoned her: what would she have done then? If she's pregnant with another man's child, how could I suffer the indignity of that? How could I love a child that isn't even mine, particularly one conceived under such circumstances? Everybody would know, because her lover wasn't even white, as far as I could tell. She could have HIV, the unborn child as well, if she's pregnant. Why should a child suffer a horrible death from AIDS? But what about the children? We have done things as a family, going to cabanes à sucre7 early in the spring, for example, where people drink coffee and eat donuts and little candies made from maple sugar. A complicated divorce would really hurt them. I know, because my parents were divorced when I was young. I have only the memory of helping my father paint a house when I was about five years old, that's it, because my mother did everything to prevent me, my brother and my sister from seeing him; he just gave up in the end, I think.
As well, I know the pain of divorce from the dissolution of my first marriage — from Katrina, my love like a hurricane. Even with Chantal with me, it was difficult, going through a divorce. I have a son with Katrina, Alex, that I don't often see, because they moved out to Manitoba when he was small; he's twenty-one now. When I last saw him, he was about to get married. I could be a grandfather now.
I gave her the best years of my life too, you know, but what good was it? Both times that she was pregnant, I took sabbaticals to be with her — I did it gladly. But I have started to think now of what I had missed. Oh, there have been women — I have always been able to find women! I could have found a woman among the lecturers, if not among the students, no problem: Chantal was a student when we met, you know.
So what do you do: pursue liaisons with the young and pretty university students less than half your age — me, almost fifty years old? Hey, I have already been accused of having a mistress! I won't be spiteful, but if I find somebody else, what's to stop me now? I only did it with Flora because she was available. There's always someone available. If I couldn't maintain an erection in the future, for example, wouldn't she look for a lover again anyway? The whore, she has had her revenge!
We met late in the autumn, in Montréal. Chantal was sitting with her friend, Alice, outside a tavern at the corner of Maisonneuve and Crescent, begging for some beer money. With her hair in dread locks, a white panama hat much too big for her head, I thought she was cute. She was original, with a sense of the absurd: she was wearing white pyjamas out in the cold with a red flannel shirt over them. They shared a joint with me, out on the street, then we went inside the tavern and I treated them both to a meal. Alice soon fell asleep in the corner of the booth while Chantal and I talked until the tavern closed. When she said that she was studying to be a nurse, I smiled and said to her in English: "You're a sister of mercy."
She understood the words individually, but not together in a phrase. I explained to her what a sister of mercy was, and she smiled. Sisters of mercy are what the English call nurses.
Then we walked back to the apartments that she shared with Alice, who was her roommate. She looked like an orphan. When I saw that she had no coat, but only a flannel shirt, I gave her my coat, though it was much too big for her. She gave me her telephone number and told me to call her sometime — so that I could get my coat back, she said. Then she caressed the stubble on my cheek and said: "You'd look good in a beard, I think..."
Then she placed her hat on my head and stepped back. "It looks better on you than it does on me," she said. "Please take it — I would like you to have it..."
Reluctantly, I accepted it. She gave me a hug, then I kissed her fingers and kissed her twice on the lips before she went inside her apartment with Alice. I was thirty-four while she was twenty-one — her, a nursing student at the University of Montréal while I taught at McGill — but I was already in love with her.
Our first date was at the Redpath Museum a week later, where we walked around all day, talking and looking at exhibits. We ate at a donut shop on Maisonneuve afterwards, where she told me about her aunt, Marie-Claire, who died at the age of sixteen, long before she was born. "She had rheumatic fever when she was four years old," she said, "and never recovered. She died on St. Stephen's Day, 1949 or 1950, the day after Christmas. The whole house filled up with white smoke, and everyone ran outside, thinking it was a fire, but there was no fire. We think maybe Marie-Claire was trying to communicate with us..."
Then she looked at me with her dark brown eyes and said sincerely: "She talks to me sometimes, when I look at myself in the mirror in my bedroom, since I was five years old. I can see her — she was very pretty."
Then she told me about her heart: "I had a heart murmur when I was a child," she whispered. "My parents were afraid I was going to die, I think., because the doctor told them that it was just a little syncope. That's medical parlance for 'feinting spells'..."
The night we first made love, she played "Two Hearts Beat As One" by U2 on a CD player. I remember the sound of the guitars swirling all around us in the bedroom, and the wailing of the singer. I saw the tattoo of the butterfly in blue, red and yellow for the first time; she said that she got it just for me. Then, with her on top of me, à la femme supérieure, she closed her eyes, put her tongue to her upper lip, then cried out. We cuddled in a spoon position afterwards, her back to me. "You won't forget me, eh?" she asked as she sniffled.
Then she put my hand on her heart, and I buried my face in her long and luxurious hair. I wanted to weep, I was so overcome with emotion. "I won't forget you," I replied, "I'll never forget you..."
We later spent a weekend at the Château Frontenac in Québec City, where a condom slipped off after we finished making love. She didn't conceive, but that was our first honeymoon. For our second honeymoon, after we were married, we spent a week on the Gaspé Peninsula, camping and hiking. I got into a debate about global warming with an evangelical Christian from New Brunswick who was also on honeymoon with his wife; he thought global warming was God punishing man for his sins — because of gays and lesbians in Montréal. But Chantal said: "We have looked at the earth as a mother who takes care of us, no matter what we do, when maybe we need to look at her as a parent in a nursing home. Or maybe a child who needs our care..."
I realized then that she was pregnant, but with the births of our children, she had severe postpartum depression both times. She tried to throw herself off the balcony of our apartments during an argument shortly after Avril was born, only I wrestled her to the floor. That was when we both realized that she had psychiatric problems. She admitted then that she had long been suicidal, having tried to drown herself at the age of ten by jumping off a dock at the lake after a childhood friend had drowned.
However, we loved each other. I even thought that we had a good marriage, when the times were good. But what's left of our marriage now? How can I forgive her after what she has done — how can I trust her now? First, she was unfaithful, then she tried to deny it. The denial hurt more than the actual infidelity, because she lied to me — Chantal had never lied to me, or so I thought.
So what do you do, now that she's sobbing so pitifully? Right now, you comfort her because she's still your wife and she needs you. I loved her once, and she used to love me, so I kissed her with great tenderness, like she was something fragile, because she was vulnerable at the moment, something fragile. She was breaking apart, and she wanted me to put her back together. So I told her that I loved her, because even if I didn't mean it now, I might mean it later — because of what we had.
I loved her once, really loved her.
Yes, we have to think of the children, because they have already seen too much. They have lost their innocence — I can see it in their eyes. We have to heal ourselves, both for ourselves and for the children. If we can't love each other, we must reassure the children that we still love them, because they understand — at least subconsciously — that, if their parents can stop loving each other, then maybe their parents could stop loving them.
Yes, we must think of the children...

*****

It's a New Year's Eve tradition in Rio to go party at the beach of Copacabana until the sun rises. Your husband and you take the kids down to the beach because you and the kids want to bring in the New Year Brazilian style. The revelers always meet at Copacabana on New Year's Eve, because you can see the sunrise perfectly from Copacabana. Ipanema to the west is better for watching the sunset.
There are the revelers at the fires outside the hotels on the beach early, singing and dancing the samba, drinking Brazilian beer; they're having a good time. There are boys doing capoeira, a Brazilian form of martial arts, from the looks of it, to a battery of drums. They look like Tutsi dancers in Rwanda that you see in magazines or on public television, or South African gold miners doing their tribal dances. These boys are mostly black, though a white boy might show what he can do from time to time. Some of them are rapping.
New Year's Eve is a sign that Carnival will soon be upon Rio. New Year's Day is the Feast of the Blessed Virgin in the Catholic Church, but also one of the feast days of the Yoruban ocean goddess, Yemanjá, who came to Brazil from Africa with the slaves. Like the Virgin Mary, Yemanjá is dressed in a white robe with the blue border — that's why you often see black women in Brazil dressed in long white robes and white turbans.
The gods and the goddesses that make up the candomblé pantheon are similar to the Catholic saints. There's Oxóssi, the god of the hunt, who is the Catholic St. Sebastian, the patron saint of Rio, and the god of war, Ogum, or St. George, the dragon slayer in Christian hagiography. Xango is St. Anthony, or "Black Anthony," pensive and solitary, tempted in the desert of Mount Sinai by the devil.
Catholicism has survived, in part, because of its syncretism; most Catholic feast days fall on or near pagan feast days, you know: Québec's St. John the Baptist Day, for example, which falls near Midsummer's Eve. Christmas and New Year's occur during the Saturnalia, the celebration of the Roman harvest. The Cult of the Virgin in the Roman Catholic Church probably comes from the old cult of Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, with her vestal virgins. Of course, the Romans loved their wine, like the cariocas at Carnival.
The whole city is preparing for Carnival, making their costumes and rehearsing dance routines, because Carnival is only about two months away. Carnival in Rio has become known for its orgiastic fervor, in contrast to the solemn Catholic observances at Lent. Picture, if you will, women parading in the Sambadrome with tall headdresses and almost nothing underneath but the imagination: women in Rio promenade like that during Carnival, though not the baianas. While Carnival can start up to a fortnight before Lent, ending on Shrove Tuesday, its celebration in Rio has become increasingly africanized, a candomblé celebration as well, with dancers and batteries of drums. You can hear the samba everywhere just before Carnival. Whites from Rio took the samba beat and combined it with jazz riffs to create the bossa nova. Blacks in Brazil mostly like samba, though more and more young Brazilians are listening to rap.
After dark, you and your family come upon a group of Yemanjá's devotees by the shore, all dressed in white. They have placed a lit candle in the middle of a large watermelon, with everyone holding little white and blue flowers. Some of the children are launching little balsa wood boats made as offerings to the goddess. Though Yemanjá is an African goddess, most of the people in this group are middle-class whites from Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, or even further west or east of Rio. Even white people in Rio pay homage to these gods and goddesses. It's a New Age thing, probably.
When they see you, a middle-aged man smiles at you, who are also wearing a white dress, and offers you a little white flower. "You say a prayer and throw it to the ocean," he tells you. "If the tide takes it, that means that Yemanjá is pleased and has accepted your offering. She will bring you good fortune..."
"If the tide doesn't take it," your daughter asks haltingly in English, "it means that you will have bad luck?"
The man smiles and replies: "Yemanjá is good and kind; she doesn't wish bad luck for anyone. But if you deliberately drown somebody, then you will make her very angry, because the oceans and the rivers are sacred to her. You should never murder, of course, but you must never murder somebody by drowning, or Yemanjá will make bad things happen. She can cause tidal waves..."
You smile, close your eyes for a moment, then throw the flower out to sea. You throw it at the right moment, because the tide takes it away. Then the children each ask for a flower and the man gives them one. Before they throw their flowers to the waves, he helps them time their throws right, so that the flowers go out with the flow tide rather than come back with the ebb tide.
"Whites have always misunderstood black people and African culture," says the man, who is white himself. "When the slaves en route from Africa tried to throw themselves overboard, the white slavers thought that it was merely suicide from despair, when it was also the slaves hearing Yemanjá calling her children to join her in paradise. Yemanjá would then send a big fish to swallow the one fortunate enough to free himself from his captors and take him home to a paradise under the sea. At least that's what they believed..."
The man is a lecturer in anthropology who has been to Africa several times, studying their cultures, learning their musical rhythms, because he's also into percussion instruments. His pride and joy, he says, is a big Yoruban drum that he had bought while in Nigeria. Then your husband suggests: "Maybe you should study the people in the favelas here in Rio. I'm sure that there are many similarities between the Yorubas in Nigeria and the baianas in Rio..."
Both you and the anthropology student look down, somewhat embarrassed. Apparently, your husband has reminded the lecturer that he's ignorant about people in his own city, in his own country. But the little grass huts across the ocean in Africa that look like a quaint little village to the middle-class suburbanites of Rio or Montréal may only look like a miserable shantytown to the same people up close in their own city. Or worse, people who are poor in faraway places might be considered more worthy of our compassion over there, but not when they live here closer to home. When poor people live in our own neighbourhoods, then we might think that they're only lazy, especially when they ask us for spare change. But your husband has some understanding of poverty, because his family was poor when he was a child: he still carries with him the shame of wearing old clothes to school while the other kids wore new ones.
You and the children are soon dancing the samba with abandon, you, with the man who had given you and the children the flowers. Your husband asks himself where you learned to dance like that. Though you are hardly as skilled as these people, your dance is seductive to them, the way your hips swivel while your torso seems stationary. You receive compliments — they all want to dance with you. Because of the humidity, the sweat should be dripping from your face, but instead it sticks to your face like a light mask.
Before you leave, you receive hugs and kisses from these people; they have accepted you as a friend. "It's a pity that you won't be here for Carnival," says a woman who had been dancing with you.
As you walk along the beach, a young woman from another group comes up to you, lifts up her top, and exposes her breasts. You dont' believe it! Then she laughs at everybody's reaction before moving on. But you clap your hands together and laugh too: "Oh, I love this place!" you exclaim.
Yes, you love this place — maybe too well, your husband thinks, but maybe your reaction shouldn't surprise him. Despite what you have done with your lover, there's a certain innocence about you, though innocent doesn't make moral. Whereas other people might have been offended, a strange woman exposing her breasts like that in front of children, you have reacted with childlike amusement yourself. But sometimes you refuse to see the bad in people: you probably thought that your lover was an honourable man, whereas your husband thinks he's racaille.8
Out of boredom, your husband finds himself looking at other women, looking for Maria da Conceição, for example, but he doesn't expect to see her. Maybe she's avoiding the beach, he thinks, but there's a lot of people here; she could be anywhere.
He thinks of the taxi driver as well, but he doesn't see him either; maybe the taxi driver is working, or alone with another tourist. Then he sees Maria da Conceição together with the taxi driver, their arms around each other, laughing and singing the apple — he can't believe it! "The little whore!" he says to himself. Maria had told him that she was engaged to be married. He's sure that the taxi driver isn't her fiancé, definitely not someone of good family like her fiancé — if she has a fiancé.
When he sees them kiss, he's envious of the taxi driver's youth and good fortune. Is there any woman in Rio that he hasn't tried to pick up? Your husband both admires and envies his success with the other sex. Given a hundred women, your husband thinks, the taxi driver would sleep with half of them — at least here in Rio. This beach is his playground.
You and the children have found another party of sambistas, so your husband leaves you for a moment and approaches Maria da Conceição and her young lover. He's going to be gracious about it, he says to himself. He's only going to wish them Happy New Year, since it's New Year's Eve and everybody is celebrating. New Year's is the time to let bygones be bygones, you know.
But the taxi driver sees him first, smiles and says: "Ah, good evening, senhor, Happy New Year!"
The taxi driver is respectful, so your husband bows his head slightly and says in return: "Happy New Year to you too."
Then the taxi driver glances at your wife and the kids. "You have a beautiful wife, senhor..."
Your husband is a couple centimetres taller than the taxi driver. Your husband stares hard back into the taxi driver's eyes and replies: "Yes, monsieur, she's a very beautiful woman..."
The taxi driver's smile disappears and he says: "Treat her right, senhor..."
Your husband recalls that his first impression of him had been favourable, when he picked up your family from the airport; he didn't seem like a bad devil then. But now your husband is ready to kill him, and the taxi driver looks ready to do the same. Then they both remember Maria da Conceição, who's looking at them nervously. When your husband sees that Maria is also wearing a white gown, like you, he smiles at her, tips his hat and says: "Ah, you look very beautiful tonight, ma p'tite..."
"Obrigada, senhor," the girl replies, also smiling. "The senhor looks muito distinto..."
They stare into each other's eyes a moment; her dark brown eyes look black now, radiant. When your husband realizes that he's holding her hand, he kisses her fingers lightly and says: "Merci beaucoup, ma p'tite..."
Then he recites something from Charles Baudelaire:

"Aujourd'hui l'espace est splendide!
Sans mors, sans éperons, sans bride,
Partons à cheval sur le vin
Pour un ciel féerique et divin...

Of course, Maria da Conceição doesn't understand a word of it. "I'm sorry," your husband says, "but I only know it in French. But take my word for it, it's a beautiful poem..."
Then everybody is silent. Your husband tips his hat to them again, smiles and says: "Well, I'll go rejoin my family. They're off somewhere, probably doing the samba..."
But before he leaves, Maria gives him a little peck on both cheeks and wishes him Happy New Year. He gives her a peck on each cheek as well, then suddenly gives her a big kiss on the mouth, looks over at the taxi driver, and smiles. Maria smiles shyly — she's probably blushing. "The difference between age and youth, my friend," your husband says to the taxi driver with a smile, "is experience..."
Then he leaves them. When he looks over at them again, they're laughing, doing what they had been doing before he interrupted them. "Youth is wasted on the young," he mutters to himself.
The partiers stay up until long after midnight, until the sun slowly begins its ascent over the beach, the campfires gradually dying one by one until they are merely glowing embers. It's a New Year's tradition in Copacabana to party on the beach until the sun comes up, and New Year's Day 2002 is no different than any other New Year's Day. It would take a horde of wrathful angels at the End of the World to break up this crowd, your husband thinks, but he's merely bored, not wrathful — not very much fun, even he must admit. After seeing a few couples risking the conception of a child, you and him give up shielding your children's eyes, but you think that maybe you shouldn't have brought them here. Whose idea was it anyway?
As you return to your hotel, you and the kids are still dancing the samba to whatever music is in your heads. Then, while the stars are still out, your daughter, Avril, points to the stars in the southern sky: "Look, maman," she cries, "there's an upside-down cross!"
"Yes, you're right," you agree. "How beautiful! Oh, look, Robert!"
You hardly recognize any of the other constellations, since you see only the boreal sky in Canada, but you can see the Southern Cross quite clearly, to the southeast corner of the sky, the last star of the constellation pointed southeast. This constellation looks like an upside down cross, or an anchor in the sand, the bottom star pointed about ten or fifteen degrees to the left of an imaginary vertical axis.
Then you and your husband are dumbstruck! You have spent more than a week in Rio, and nobody has thought to go outside to look at the stars even once. The southern sky looks so beautiful now, and you had almost missed it.
Then you point to two other constellations and say: "Look, there's Capricorn, and Aquarius over there..."
He agrees and murmurs: "Yes, you're right..."
For the first time that evening, he's in form — he feels like dancing. He takes you by the hands, then you do a little pirouette — you are dancing, your children as well. Back at the hotel, with the kids in bed, you scatter kisses like the stars on a cloudless night over a field far from the city. Then the sun comes sneaking through the window of your bedroom at dawn like a drunk after the bars have closed, spilling its crimson rays over you after you're done.
Some of the morning's rays hit your face just right as you sleep with a white orchid in your hair. Your getting older, he thinks, like him — maybe a few lines around the eyes, a few grey hairs. But he says out loud while you sleep: "You move me, mon amour..."
He can't sleep, worried about the future once you return to Canada. He feels some resentment while you sleep so peacefully, but he puts his arms around you from behind anyway and gently places his hand on you heart. He kisses you lightly on the cheek as you sleep, but you stir in your sleep without waking up. You look happy now, but he has a sense of foreboding. What about your marriage? Could you ever go back to the way you were again?
It's a white night, and he's torturing himself with dread for the future.

*****

I dream that I'm in the jungle, with drums in the background. Laughing, some angry and cruel men have seized me and stripped me naked to dunk me in a vat of blue dye. I cry out for mercy because I know that they're going to rape me and kill me, but there's no hope. These men will show no mercy, and nobody will save me.
Then I feel my husband's arms around me from behind: "Shhh," he whispers, "it's all right..."
But for a minute, I'm still in that twilight world between dream and consciousness, waking up but not yet awake. I'm still disoriented, still frightened. I don't know where I am, and I can't stop crying.
"It's all right," he whispers again, "it's all right..."
Then he puts his hand to my heart and I start to calm down. But it's some minutes before I can stop crying.
Then I sniffle and say: "I'm having a nervous breakdown..."

*****

Rio de Janeiro, dawn of the last day. As the sunlight shone through the window of our room, I gazed at her as she slept, lying on her back with her legs slightly apart. Her body looked like a marble statue in the moonlight, or the cast of a body found at Pompeii after the volcano had erupted and buried the whole city in a sea of lava. Only when she moaned in her sleep and stirred slightly, like she was having a dream, did she seem alive. She seemed somehow innocent, pure.
I gazed at the tattoo of the butterfly just above her pubic hairs, underneath her sheer negligée. Then I kissed her lightly on the lips, something I had never done before while she was asleep. I don't know why I did it, but those lips looked so tempting.
She sat up immediately with a gasp, then cried: "Shit, Robert, you scared me! Why did you do that?"
"I'm sorry, mon amour," I replied, trying to suppress a laugh. "I didn't mean to scare you, but maybe you were having a bad dream..."
She lay down on her side, her back to me. I put my arms around her, kissed her on the cheek, and murmured: "I'm sorry, Chantal. I shouldn't have done that, okay? Can you forgive me?..."
She nodded, but I could see that she was all frightened. Then I placed my hand over her heart, that black heart, the heart that I once loved so much — that heart that I sometimes wanted to tear out with my bare hands now.
In the past, it has calmed me; it was calming me now. With the crimson sunlight bursting through the window at dawn, and the beating of her heart under my hand, I felt a surge of feeling in my own heart and in my face. I wanted to weep for some reason, but I buried my face in her hair and kissed her on the right shoulder and the nape of her neck as I gently squeezed her breasts. When I leaned over her, she cradled my head with her arm and kissed me back.
We were initially timid, even afraid, then we did it with a certain desperation that we had never felt before. It was like we were afraid that we were doing it for the last time. While we were doing it, I had to suppress the urge to bite hard into her right breast. If I had done it, I would have drawn blood — I would have hurt her — so I didn't do it. Instead, I sucked on the skin just underneath the nipple with my lips, leaving a large welt. She did the same to my neck and chest, thinking it was all in play. Then I gave her the ultimate kiss until she cried out, jerking her hips hard into my face.
She pushed my head away, then asked me do it again as she took her foot again and again. Then I drove hard into her sated body, like I wanted to rape her — like I wouldn't have stopped even if she had cried out for me to stop. But she never cried out for me to stop: I did it until I exploded into her, than collapsed on top of her. She cried out too, at the moment of ecstasy. Then she sniffled as we held each other close.
She could have conceived that night, because we used no contraceptives, but we were ready to take that risk — I didn't care anymore. If she was carrying a child now, maybe it could have been mine.
She thanked me, then started to cry. I asked her why she was crying, but she only shook her head. "I can't tell you," she sobbed.
"Why?" I asked, gently squeezing her. "Why, why can't you tell me?"
"I don't know," she replied, shaking her head.
Why did she do that — why did she thank me? She had never done it before after having sex — never. What did she mean by it? Did it mean that she still loved me? Or was it him? I was again afraid that she was having a nervous breakdown, but maybe she was just crying about something that I didn't understand, something that she perhaps didn't understand either.
Then we looked up, surprised to see the children staring at us, all frightened. They had seen everything, I was sure. Maybe they were afraid that I was hurting her because of the way that we had been fighting, I don't know. I only know that they saw what we were doing. But Chantal only smiled at them and said: "Don't worry, everything's fine. Go back to sleep, eh?"
They came up to us and kissed us goodnight, on the cheek, then went back to bed. We laughed crazily after the kids went back to bed. I have never been able to calm the children like her. Then she cuddled up to me, put her head in the curve of my shoulder, and placed her hand on my heart. I was moved by her placing her hand on my heart like that, because it felt like she loved me. "'Woe implores go,'" I said, "'but all joy wants eternity.'"
"That's beautiful," she said, "who wrote it?"
"Nietzsche," I replied. "Thus Spake Zarathustra. Zarathustra was facing the sun, like we are now."
"I don't understood you," she said, with her ear to my chest. "I only know that, if I squeeze too hard with my hands, you'll slip through my fingers like mercury..."
I felt at peace as she fell asleep in my arms, a feeling that I still loved her. I did it to make her mine, but was she ever mine? I will love you, mon amour, with all that I am capable — I have never loved anyone else more — but will you love me, or will I lose you in the end, long before the end, when one of us dies, through a separation other than death? I love only you, even if you will fly away from me like a butterfly, never to return. I will neither cripple you nor tear off your wings, but I will love you, even if you fly away. But who are you? Your mother had warned me once that I wouldn't always know. But I have found that love is something willed; we make ourselves love each other — we whip ourselves into a frenzy. I know that much.
You can only master her body briefly, but never her heart, her mind or her soul. Where she's transported at the moment of ecstasy in her mind, you can never know; maybe she doesn't know either. So let her think of him! You can't rip him away like a pendant around her neck anyway.
I kissed her on the head, because I still loved her, though maybe I was losing her. We lost everything that we had before Brazil, but maybe we got a little bit of it back that night...

*****

You have morning sickness after you get back from Rio. You have to take a day off from work that day, because of the cramps and the nausea. Then the menses are so heavy that you think that you must have miscarried. It could have been because of the flight back, it could have been because of the anxiety — a lot of things.
It seems like you spend the whole day on your side in bed, not wanting to move. Time has no meaning for you: the seconds, minutes and hours all merge in one great torrent of consciousness. Fortunately, your husband is there to get the kids off to school that day, because you lie in bed all day, mumbling to yourself.
"You need to see a psychiatrist again," he says to you, when he comes home from campus and finds you still laying on your side and mumbling to yourself.
You go to the piano and play something from Debussy: "Golliwog's Cake Walk." He can tell by the way you play it that there's a disturbance deep within your soul, because the music is harsh rather than playful. Because he knows that you can play it, he suggests: "Why don't you play 'Clair de Lune'?"
You break down and cry at the piano, but he pretends that nothing is happening. He's afraid that if he rushes to comfort you, you will only retreat deeper into psychosis, in order to run away from him and from everything else. I understand that only you can bring yourself back, so he suggests again: "Why don't you play 'Clair de Lune'? I have always liked that song..."
You straighten up, but you play a Gnossienne by Erik Satie. It sounds to him like bouzouki music; he can almost hear the joyful sound of the smashing of dishes at a Greek wedding. He can taste the feta cheese, he can see the ring of fire on the surface in a glass of ouzo. He's amazed at how talented you are, how you use the pedals of the piano to create the desired effects. How the notes blend into each other as they swirl in a cascade of sound! You can see the colours of the notes as you play; each note has a different colour. Yet it isn't just the pedals: your fingers are adept as well; the black and white keys seem to obey you. However, what really amazes him is how your mood has changed so quickly, but you have always been changeable.
By the end of the song, you have already regained your equilibrium; you have negotiated the passage between the Scylla and the Charibdis.

*****

I'm being treated for anxiety and depression; the whole family is in counseling now. No more illegal drugs for me either. My husband is mercurial, by turns relaxed then angry; he suddenly gets angry for no apparent reason, then changes back just as fast. Our daughter has changed as well, treated for depression like me, while our son withdraws into himself before lashing out at the world. He fights at school, he says, because a bully has been picking on him, but he won't say who or why.
I talk to his teacher about it, but she doesn't know either. Then one day, my son shouts at me: "I hate you!"
That really hurts, so I ask him why, but he doesn't tell me. Instead, he calls me a whore and starts hitting me with his fists. My husband has to intervene: united we stand, divided we fall, he seems to think: "That's your mother, you," he shouts, grabbing him by the arm.
I want to slap Patrick myself, but I say to my husband quietly: "It's okay, Robert."
Then I ask my son: "Why did you call me that? That was really mean!"
He says nothing at first, then he stares at me and says with certain defiance: "Gérard says that a woman who kisses a man who isn't her husband is a whore."
I feel myself blushing, but I try to explain to him: "Gérard must not like you very much, or he wouldn't have said that. Is he the one who's been picking on you at school?"
But he doesn't answer me. Instead, he asks: "Why did you kiss that man at the beach, maman?"
I look at my husband, who avoids my glance, then I say quietly to my son: "He was just a friend, Patrick. It's your father that I love, your father. That man was only a friend..."
Then I ask him if he has told anybody else about what he saw at the beach. When he admits that he has, I say to him sternly: "Don't be a gossip, Patrick. Those guys don't have to know our business. If you tell other people that your mother has been kissing another man, they might make fun of you. Yes, somebody might even call your mother a whore..."
Then I apologize to him: "I'm sorry that I've hurt you and Avril — please forgive me. Please remember that your father and I love you very much, no matter what happens between us..."
I kneel and give him a hug, but his body is limp and unresponsive. I ask him to hug me back, I hold him in my arms until he responds. When he hugs me, he tells me that he still hates me, with his arms around my neck and his head on my shoulder. I tell him that I understand. It's only words: he's just a little boy who has been hurt. He says that he hates me now, but that's only because he loves me — he feels betrayed. But we all feel hurt, and we all feel betrayed.
After our son has left the room, my husband says: "Children are cruel sometimes. They might be cannibals, if they could only conceive of eating each other."
"Patrick and Avril are not cannibals," I reply angrily.
That comment really bothers me, because I love children — my children anyway.
"I'm not saying that they're cannibals," my husband replies evenly. "I love our children too, but the problem isn't them, Chantal, but you and me. That's why everybody's fighting right now..."
I don't have an answer. I only think that the short physical space between me and him might as well be as wide as the ocean; he's unapproachable now. But I try to approach him anyway. When he sits down in his favourite armchair in the living room, I kneel down in front of him, wrap my arms around his legs, and rest my cheek on his knees — like in Rio. "I love you so much," I murmur, "but you're so far away..."
He soon responds by stroking my hair and kissing me on the back of the head, but he's still far away — I feel so estranged from him.
I must try to forgive as well, because I get angry too. Everybody knows what I have done. Him, I don't know for sure, though I have reason to suspect. He hurt me, flirting with her like that at the beach, leering at her — really hurt me. But what really hurts is that I tasted her on him, or I think that I tasted her. Yet he still denies what he has done: he denies everything and will continue to deny it until I either have proof or accept that he's telling the truth.
I feel guilty about Rio, because I hurt him — I didn't want to hurt him. But it isn't just the guilt: I have a certain awareness of the world now. I love my city, my province and my country, but we all live in the same world now. Unfortunately, most people don't understand much about the world that we live in today. I didn't know either, until Rio. I still don't know very much about the world. Most people only know from what they read in the newspapers or watch on TV, but my father used to say: "You don't stop to warm your hands while your neighbour's house is on fire..."
The whole world is on fire, and we have only stopped to warm our hands. I have only just started to pay the penance that Father Paul, the young priest, demanded of me as a teenager: to help those less fortunate, to feed the hungry and provide shelter for the homeless. I'm still trying to love God with all my heart, might and soul, and my neighbour as yourself. I'm still trying, but it's so hard to obey these commandments!
When I think about it today, I feel bad about sitting on a street corner with my friend, Alice, begging for beer money as a student when other people have to beg for food. We thought it was a joke at the time, begging for beer money, but we did it a lot then.
I agree with Anne Frank: I think that people are good at heart. People won't give you a poisonous snake if you ask for a piece of bread. I have never meet anybody who was totally evil — I have never met a devil. Everybody wants to do good, but many people don't think they can make a difference. So the world continues to burn.
I'm taking classes in order to be a nursing teacher. Maybe I would like to work for Health Canada9, going from door to door. I'm also learning Spanish and Portuguese, because I would like to go back to South America some day, maybe even teach there. I want to help others because of what I have seen in Rio — because of what I have seen in my own community. But when I relate to Robert my desire to go teach in South America, he says to me, incredulous: "You want to quit your job here to go work there in South America?"
"Not now," I reply, "maybe later, when we're older, when we're retired. For a little while, or maybe permanently — it all depends. But I would like to go back..."
As I see it, he's suspicious, like I only want to go back to Rio to see him again. "Can't you just help people here in Canada?" he asks.
"I already do," I reply, "you know that. I would like to help anywhere, it doesn't matter where. It could be Canada or Brazil."
"Are you really saying that you want to leave me then?" he asks.
I shrug your shoulders. "Do you want me to leave you?" I ask. "If you clap your hands three times and tell me to go away, I'll do it. Banish me to the four corners of the earth, O master: your wish is my command..."
I smile and make reverence like a genie — if only I was dressed like a dancer before a sultan! I haven't lost my sense of humour, but he only looks at me like I'm crazy, him, always inscrutable like an oriental khan.
He may be ready to crawl for me, like I would for him. He may want to give me the moon and the stars — everything under the heavens. He may be willing to do anything for me, but he'll never say it because he can only communicate ideas but never feelings. He only concedes: "Well, there's a lot to be done in this community..."
I suggest that he go volunteer at a restaurant du cœur on weekends and help feed the hungry. "You're a good man, Robert," I tell him. "I know that you would like to help others..."
So he gives a few hours of his time every week now; it seems satisfying to him. He plays his guitar for some senior citizens at a convalescent home too — his idea — just like I play the piano at the hospital for the patients at the hospital during my lunch break. He wants to help those who are less fortunate — we all do, I think. He'll always push the car of a motorist who's stranded — I have seen him do it with my son. I have seen him treat a homeless person to a meal as well.
Robert is a good man, and I love him so much! Yes, I would let him shove me back into a bottle like a genie, if it would make him happy — if it would solve anything.
There's so much to be done. I do volunteer work in our community, Avril as well. We give clothes to shelters, and cans of food. There's a lot of poor people even in Canada, people who are homeless and disabled, drug addicts and alcoholics, former prostitutes trying to rehabilitate themselves. There's women who have been beaten by their husbands or boyfriends, children who have been sexually abused. But everybody knows that: all you have to do is read the newspapers or watch TV. Sometimes, you only have to look around you.
My sister, Joëlle, who's also a nurse, works with AIDS patients. Her friend, Brooke, is HIV positive, but not Joëlle — not yet. Yet AIDS patients thrive once they get the treatment that they need, particularly children. The children, for example: some of them have had HIV all their young lives, yet some of them are almost adults now. Brooke, Joëlle's friend, is doing well, though she has had it for some time.
You have to wear surgical masks because of those infected with AIDS, those dying from it: you could make them sicker by breathing on them, even kill them. I have to be tested for HIV regularly, since I come into contact with blood, having delivered babies born with HIV. I have even stabbed myself by accident with used hypodermic needles — it happens to nurses all the time. Then there's José: who knows how many people he has slept with? But we're in the midst of a terrifying plague, with no end in sight: I have accepted the fact that I could die from it, even if I don't have it now. I remember the words of the Brazilian prostitute: "We all have AIDS, even you..."
But what I really remember is the woman and her child that José and I encountered in the centre-ville of Rio de Janeiro. José and I gave them money without solving their problem: they still have HIV, if they're still alive.
"What must we do?" the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy asked. What can we do? We do what we can. The poor, we have with us always.
I no longer work in the States but closer to home, at Royal Victoria Hospital, affiliated with McGill University. I'm taking classes there to be a nursing teacher. The building is beautiful, more than a century old with a limestone façade. It's the most beautiful hospital in the world, I think. This hospital is special for me because I was born there, the children as well, while my husband was born at Notre-Dame in Old Montréal. But my husband and I talk so little now that he's unaware for some time that I no longer work in the States.
We have been living separate lives.

*****

In a dream, I'm lost, wandering around the favela crying, naked and hungry. I have become a child again. José's mother, the large black woman who was selling beans and rice in the market place, scoops me up in her arms and sets me down on her knees.
"What's wrong?" she asks gently.
I am unable to tell her, always crying, but she reassures me: "Don't worry, my child: we'll find your mother and your father..."
I wake up with the realization that my mother will die soon, and I'm terrified. I am only now beginning to admit that my father is dead, but my mother will be dead too one day.
I worry about her now, because she hasn't been herself since my father died. Finally, I say to her tearfully: "Please don't give up! I need you — we all need you!"
Then I tell her about the dream. I tell her that I have actually met the woman in the dream. My mother asks: "Has something happened in Rio, Chantal?"
I nod my head slowly. My mother waits for me to tell her what it was, and I tell her everything, including my suspicions of Robert's infidelities. I even tell her about my own infidelities. Of course, my mother is disappointed. "Are you sure that he actually did anything?" she asks.
"Yes," I say firmly, "only he won't admit it."
"But what if he's telling the truth?" she asks.
I explain to her how I know — why I suspect. My mother sighs and then says: "Two wrongs don't make amends, Chantal, but one wrong will lead to another unless somebody stops the cycle. 'Return not evil for evil,' it says in the Bible..."
I want to argue with my mother, but she's right.
Then my mother adds: "There's only two kinds of marriages in the world: those between two people who love each other, and those between two people who don't. Your father and I weren't always happy, you know, but we raised six kids together..."
Then my mother, who's in bed, asks me to cut her toenails. My mother is dying; she has diabetes and she's obese — she may even lose part of her lower left leg. I wish now that I hadn't told her about my dream, about what happened in Rio, because I have upset her. Robert was right when he said: "Sometimes, we have to protect our parents from the truth..."
I had thought that he was only being selfish, afraid of embarrassment, when he said that, but he was right: we have to protect our parents sometimes; we have to be adults. Then he adds: "Sometimes, the hardest thing in life is when we become the parent and our parent becomes the child, and we have to take care of them as if they were children."
He knows from experience: he and his sister, Arlette, tried to take care of their mother when she was dying of cancer, but in the end, the responsibility fell mainly to me and Arlette. That's why I was hurt when he didn't comfort me very well after my father died.
His mother was English. In the manner of the English, she was never very warm or very affectionate, but she says to Robert and Arlette: "Let's be like a French family: let's show our love for each other..."
Wow, what a change! I didn't think that she even liked the French.
Then one night, I have a dream of my mother and my father dancing by the light of the moon in a cemetery during the autumn. I'm dreaming in colour. I see everything clearly: the trees, the dead leaves on the ground, and the graves, all illuminated by the light of the moon. They're young and in love with each other — happy.
I know while dreaming that it's only a dream, but I feel a great sense of peace right now — I'm happy too. I no longer feel threatened. I can release my parents to the next world now, because the dead don't belong with us — they belong there, on the other side. But the trick is to not let go too soon, before they have died.
I will therefore gladly cut my mother's toenails while she's still alive.

*****

You're depressed, so you tell your friend, Alice, about you and your lover when she's over at your house. She puts her hand on top of yours as you sit at the kitchen table and says with sympathy: "I'm sorry, Chantal, but if either Luc or I was unfaithful to each other, it would be over between us. As I see it, it's over between you and Robert now; it's the end of your marriage as it was. You can only start over again or divorce, that's it. Me, I always thought you guys were happy together, but I guess happiness is as rare as a bird that shits on our heads..."
You both laugh at her little joke. Then Alice looks down, biting her lip hard. "What's wrong, Alice?" you ask gently, touching her on the hand.
"Cancer," she replies in a breaking voice. "It has spread to the uterus..."
You're blown away! You hold each other close while you cry, because maybe you're about to lose your closest friend. How can you not cry — how can she not cry? It doesn't seem fair. You want to die — you, not her. Life has lost its sweetness for you, but Alice wants to live more than anything, for her children and for her husband as well as herself, yet she might be dying.
You wish that you could take her disease upon yourself as you embrace her, so that she might live. You even close you eyes and try to take her cancer away from her. Maybe you could do it, if you only had the faith, but you don't think you have the faith. Yet she feels your warmth, your love — she feels a jolt. You, you feel faint, because of your heart. Alice is aware that you had a heart murmur as a child, and she sits back down at the table.
You had made a vow when you were young: "When we are over thirty, if we are single or widows, I will lie down with you under the stars. I swear by the Aurora Borealis..."
A vow half made in jest, like Don Giovanni inviting the statue of the man that he had just killed to a party in that opera by Mozart. You both thought it stupid to be old and alone when you could have each other after your husbands had died, when no man would want you; that's why you made that vow. You didn't want to sleep alone, but you're afraid now that one of you is going to die. Therefore, you feel cheated — you both feel cheated. In the end, you might one day sleep alone after all, unless Alice doesn't die, or you die before your husband.
The night that you were alone as teenagers while her parents were out, you didn't really do anything — you were fully clothed. You had slept together many times as children without having sex while spending the night either at your parents or hers — it was no big thing. You have even shared the same bed as roommates while at university, sometimes with several others sleeping on the same bed, because winters are cold in Montréal and it was a small room.
You could have had a Boston Marriage, but you both wanted children. You wanted ecstasy when you conceived, not a test tube for a lover. You wanted your cries to shake the heavens at the moment of conception, because of the very painful ecstasy of childbirth afterwards. You have risked your life by having children, you know, so you wanted to enjoy getting pregnant by a man rather than through artificial insemination — it was your right. And children have need of a father as well as a mother: it's through your husband that your son will learn to be a man, through you that your daughter will learn to be a woman. Children have need of both parents — of many parents.
Yet Alice was your lover as well as your friend: you had your hand on her heart; she had her hand on yours. Maybe your husband has sensed a sexual tension between you and her and was jealous, but you were always afraid to do it because you were afraid of ruining your friendship with her. As well, you weren't sure if you had a desire for her, or if you were only curious. You weren't sure about her either. She understands that you are beautiful, but you have never known if she merely admired your beauty or wanted you; maybe she didn't know either. Yet when you look into each others eyes, something transpires between you — an understanding. There's something between you, but to Alice, the love between two women is a parody of the real thing: the love between a man and a woman. On some level, you believe it too, because it's the way you were raised: Catholic. So nobody in your family has ever completely accepted your sister's friend, Brooke, not even you: somebody always found a reason to dislike Brooke.
Yet if one of you was a man, you might have been married. You and Alice feel yourselves part of the same soul, because we're all part of the same soul — everybody. There's only one soul, and that's God. So you cuddle on the bed in your bedroom under some blankets, fully clothed, before Alice has to go to work, because she has need of you. You place your hand on her heart from behind and hold it there; it's calming for her, for both of you. In her hour of despair, she's content for a moment; she feels your love from the warmth of your hand on her heart.
Then you kiss her on the cheek and murmur: "Maman loves you..."
She cries. Those words have a special meaning for her, because her real mother died when she was a teenager. That's why she was suicidal that night when you were alone: her mother had died, and her father had run away to Florida, though he came back.
Before she goes to work, you each other kiss twice and say that you love each other — because you love each other.
Alice is a nurse at a hospital, just like you. You have always had parallel lives, you and Alice.

*****

After Alice goes to work, I'm resolved to save my marriage. But I work nights while my husband works days, so we don't see each other for a couple days. When I see him again, I tell him: "I love you, but I want the truth, Robert: were you unfaithful in Rio — have you ever been unfaithful?"
He nods his head slowly and admits it: "Yes, Chantal, in Rio, but her name was Flora. I only wanted to do it with Maria..."
I slap him hard in the face and shout: "You hypocrite! You make me crawl when you're the one who should be crawling!"
Then I cry.
"I was weak," he shouts, touching his face where I slapped him. "You, you did it out of spite. It was the spite that actually hurt me, not so much the infidelity. As I see it, you wanted me to find out, or you would have come back to the hotel much sooner after your little rendezvous — without the bites on your neck. I don't think you would have gone out to deliver a baby afterwards, if you didn't want me to know..."
I apologize for having slapped him, then I say quietly: "I was weak too, Robert. When I saw him in the sun at the beach, he looked like a god. We really had hooked atoms..."
Then I tell him again: "It's you that I love, Robert. So I want to know: Do we stay together or divorce? Please give me another chance! Maybe we can start over..."
"What about me?" he asks. "Do I get another chance?"
You look at him hard and say: "I'll forgive you once, Robert, or seventy times seventy. As you forgive me, I forgive you..."
Those words are like a blow to the face for him, but all I want is to be forgiven one time as well. Me, I want to forgive like the saints forgive, but it's hard — that's why saints are saints.
I still want to go back to South America, but it's because of the baby, the one that I lost there. It isn't José — it never was. Then I plead: "Will you please say you're sorry? You really hurt me, you know..."
I sob uncontrollably. It isn't just the guilt but everything else: the girl at the beach; José and his woman, the midwife; the little ones with their guns; the smiling pig sticking his head through the hole in the wall of the little shack. It's everything. I am transported back in time to the favela, to Cidade de Deus, where the children laugh cruelly, smoke marijuana cigarettes, and brandish big pistols that their little hands can barely hold. You hear gunshots and people hurling their threats at each other. You can always hear the loud music from the radios, the dogs barking, a chicken about to be plucked. There's José's mother with her red turban selling black beans and rice, and Lourdes, with mud on her sheets and feet. As well, there's the baby and its mother, both of them alive, only the baby's no longer alive. I see José, then myself, as children, sitting in a large shiny metal washtub as his mother gives us a bath, pouring water over us. Then I see my childhood friend, Gilles, then Alice — even Robert — like we're all her children. There's St. Benedict's monastery with all its gold, and Robert arguing about global warming with a Christian couple during our honeymoon at the Gaspé Peninsula. There's St. Boniface, who Robert tells about chopping down a giant sacred tree to convert the pagans, and men setting fire to the rain forest. Then I hear the voice of my aunt Marie-Claire, who died young of rheumatic fever before I was born, without understanding what she's saying. Or is it my own voice? I don't know anymore. There's a woman with six arms, but I wonder if it isn't Marie-Claire — very threatening, like a giant spider, but injured, missing two arms. Then I see Alice, with naked torso, missing her arms like the Venus de Milo, her body ravaged by cancer, and myself without a head, the winged Goddess of Victory at Samothrace, dressed in scarlet. I am the Scarlet Woman, the Whore of Babylon — the one who wanted to desecrate the altar for the love of a priest as an adolescent. We had agreed to a rendezvous under the stars, only he never showed up; he was later transferred to another parish. Now I'm afraid, ready to panic — falling into the abyss where, when I hit the bottom, my body will be smashed like pottery into a million pieces.
When I die, what remains? Nothing. There's only nothingness — the nothingness from which we sprang, the nothingness to which we return. There's nothing, and I suffer from vertigo in realizing that. I can't get these terrible images out of my mind, but Robert holds me in his arms and says with, difficulty speaking: "I'm sorry, Chantal — can you forgive me?"
Or maybe I can't hear him very well. His apology is difficult for him, but sincere — I know it. I nod my head, unable to speak. I'm not myself — I'm not who I was. I feel so small, insignificant. Can what I have done really compare to what I have seen, to what has happened to me — to everybody? I feel so broken, responsible for everything. It's me who's responsible — for everything. We are all responsible for everything and everybody. My father was right: I am my brother's keeper. The world is my child and I'm its mother. Only life is too big for me right now — I'm overwhelmed.
"Are you all right, Chantal?" he asks.
"I'm not myself," I repeat in a faraway voice. "I'm not myself..."
I continue to sob and he says: "Shhh, everything's all right. I'm the one who loves you..."
I nod my head, but I'm not myself anymore. Then I feel his heart beat against my ear, and I believe him. And I forgive him: it doesn't matter now — there's nothing to forgive now.
Then I look up to him and say: "I'm sorry — really sorry..."
He nods his head and replies: "I know that — it doesn't matter any more. I'm sorry too..."
Then I tell him about Alice, that she has cervical cancer. "Is she going to die?" he asks, concerned.
"I don't know — it's too soon to know..."
He holds me in his arms again, and I listen to his heart beat. Then I listen to my own...

*****

I have decided to accept Donna's offer to sponsor me as a permanent resident of Canada. She has sent me a postcard with a kiss in dark red lipstick on the back, but we talk often on the telephone, if only for a moment. We become closer that way. I look forward to her telephone calls with great anticipation, I even start to love her.
I have to go down to the Canadian consulate in Rio and apply for a temporary visa. I can apply for a permanent visa once I'm already in Canada, I am told. I have to apply for visas for my children as well, even though they will be staying with their mother in Brazil. The whole process will take about six months, because you have to wait for the background check by the Canadian Ministry of Immigration and Citizenship. You can be denied a visa because of a bad criminal record. You can be denied a visa if one of your children has a bad criminal record as well. I had received a new identity after I got out of prison, however, so I have a good record, but if I had known it was going to take so long, I would have probably just said forget it. But it was worth the trouble in the end, because it wasn't just the sex with Donna — I loved her as well.
I talk it over with Lourdes. We both agree that it would be better if I went to Toronto, because of the money; we both know that I would make money like water over there compared to here. She trusts me to send money for the children, she says. It's no big deal to her if I leave, so Lourdes and I end our relationship amicably.
It isn't because we don't love each other anymore, but because we want a better life for our children that I'm going to Canada: it's the money, as well as Donna. Lourdes is a good mother, a good woman, but she doesn't want to emigrate to Canada. What's more, she had caught me with Mrs. Rousseau. Then there's Maria da Conceição.
Before I leave Rio, I meet Maria da Conceição on the beach one more time while driving my taxi. "I'm leaving for Canada," I tell her, while rubbing suntan lotion on her bare back as she lies face down on her beach towel. "If we don't do it now, we'll never get another chance..."
She only moans: "Ah, I love your massages, Jecu..."
So we go to my place while Lourdes is out, probably delivering a baby. The kids are gone as well, but I don't know where — maybe with Lourdes or their grandma.
First, Maria insists that we clean up the place — that takes at least an hour. Then we sit on the sofa in the living room, drinking some wine and smoking some bazeado. While we're high, we do it on the carpeted floor in the living room, then in my bedroom. I've had sex with her only one time before: New Year's Eve, on the beach.
If Maria had said "stay," maybe I would have stayed, because I liked her a lot: she was nice and relaxed. But she has said to me: "Go to Canada, Jecu! Rio isn't a good place to drive a taxi: a robber could kill you here..."
Of all the women that I've ever loved, she's the most like myself physically: the same wavy hair, the same medium complexion, almost the same body-type — tall and thin. For me, she is Rio de Janeiro in all her glory: I still sigh when I think of her. It's almost like incest, her, looking almost like a sister, but what sister — a sister of the mind? But Mrs. Rousseau had said to me: "We're all looking for the other half of ourselves, José, someone like ourselves..."
The word that Mrs. Rousseau had used was dæmon, which is different than "demon." The ancient Greeks, she said, believed that each individual had a masculine or feminine part of themselves that they could only find in another person. Perhaps Maria da Conceição was my dæmon, but we can never be together permanently because of social class; she's a university student — a pretty little patricinha about to be married — while I'm only a taxi driver. She has read books on such subjects as biology and economics, while I only read newspapers while waiting for clients. She likes me, I think, but I have never gone to school, though my father had taught me to read and write.
So in the end, it's only for laughs; we only have that one afternoon. She's probably lives in São Paulo now, married to her paulista, but it's Maria da Conceição who sends me off before I leave for Toronto. I have left a lot behind me in Rio: Maria, for example, as well as my family.
I don't know, maybe it's the way she arches her back...

*****

I arrive at Preston Pierson International Airport in Toronto early on a Friday morning in September. It is still summer in Canada, while in Rio, it's still winter. Donna is waiting for me at the air terminal, like she had said she would. We are suddenly very shy when we meet. The whole thing suddenly seems crazy: me, having left my family and my friends for a foreign country; she, about to pick up a stranger from the airport so that he might move in with her — it's all crazy. But then I take her by the hands and kiss her lightly on the lips. She puts her arms around my neck and kisses me on the mouth. Then we hold each other close without saying anything for a few moments. "I wasn't sure you were going to come," she murmurs, her head under my neck.
"I wasn't sure either," I admit, "but I have always wanted to leave Rio. You have given me a reason to leave..."
I get a permanent work visa, then a taxi license. I'm soon driving up and down Yongh Street, the longest street in the world, they say, picking up clients. I call home once or twice a week and wire money back home; Lourdes can enroll the kids in a Catholic school now. Lourdes has a baby about nine months later; she insists that it's mine.
In Toronto, Donna and I live together for about a year and a half before we get married. I have always been faithful to her — never cheated on her once. I am faithful even when she goes on business trips abroad. The wedding is a dignified affair. The bride looks absolutely radiant in a white gown as her father leads her to the altar of a little Anglican church in Woodstock, Ontario. When I kiss her, I feel like the luckiest man in the world. Maybe it's Donna who's my dæmon, the other half of myself...
Then the honeymoon in Brazil, where Donna meets my family for the first time. Since we're married in the month of June, it's almost winter in Rio, but there's never any snow in Brazil, and it never gets cold. It's wonderful, registering with new my bride at the Copacabana Palace Hotel, where I had driven so many other couples before. My younger brother, Tom, picks us up at the airport, in the same dark green 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that I used to drive. He tries to refuse any money, but I leave him a large tip anyway. "You should get a new car," I tell him.
"No way," he replies, shaking his head. "They don't make cars like that anymore, Jecu. The cars that they make now, most of them won't be running in a few years, unlike this one. This one even has a cast iron motor. So I want to keep it running as long as I can."
Tom is still struggling to speak English, but he smiles at Donna and says in English: "The senhora is very beautiful."
Donna doesn't speak much Portuguese, but she smiles shyly and says: "Obrigada, senhor..."
The car doesn't have any rust because of the climate in Rio, but it has been through a lot. In northern climates, the Beetle will eventually rust out around the manifold, and they only have a motor of fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred cubic centimetres — that's it. But I understand why Tom wants to keep it running: I had felt the same attachment to this car when I was driving it. As long as we could find parts for it, we could keep it running indefinitely. This car has a sentimental value, you know , because it had belonged to our father.
But the motor has a very bad knock, so Tom and I start rebuilding it with another brother, Tico, helping us. Tico is only fourteen years old, but he's the mechanic of the family. Together, we pull the engine out of the trunk in the back with a rented hoist. Tico takes apart the transmission all by himself as well, but he only has to replace a little brush inside it. The block is cracked, however, so we have to find another motor. Since Tom needs something to drive, Donna loans him the money to buy a used Volkswagen camping bus from the 1960s, but the first time he opens the sliding door on the side, it slides right off the track. However, we have two vehicles in our little fleet now. When Tico is older, maybe he will drive it.
Donna finds a motor for the Beetle from Mexico over the Internet with her little computer on her knees, then pays the cost of the motor and the shipping with her credit card. We have to wait seven or eight weeks, so our honeymoon in Rio is therefore extended from a week to two months, but Donna writes it off as a business trip: she makes business deals on her cell phone, and through teleconferencing. When we return to Toronto, they give me my job back with the taxi company, because they like me and because I'm a good driver. However, my eight weeks in Brazil will delay by at least two months the date when I can apply for Canadian citizenship, because I was away from Canada during that time.
It's always a little awkward to see a former lover again, that's to say, Lourdes, the first time back from Toronto, because she isn't the mother of one new baby but two. With some embarrassment, she admits that she has had a baby with another man. I don't believe it! Yes, I'm jealous, but the reason why is this: man is territorial, like a dog or a wolf, who will have a harem of several females like a grand sultan. You're always afraid of never finding another lover when you lose the one before, despite past success with the other sex. As well, you don't want to take care of somebody else's kids, unless you think that the woman might be willing to have yours. But me, I had been taking care of Manoel, who wasn't really mine, the one who had become like a son to me. So I ask her in the end: "Is he good to you?"
She nods her head and replies: "Yes, José. He's very good to me..."
"That's good," I reply. "So let's be friends then..."
Carlos isn't a bad devil, I guess — he treats Lourdes and the kids well enough. He's a much older man, at least fifteen years older than Lourdes. However, he doesn't want Lourdes to deliver babies anymore, but wants her to learn to read and write so that she can help the kids with school. Like Lourdes, he is illiterate, or practically illiterate. As well, Manoel still wants to be a football player, and Carlos also knows more about football than I do: "You have to run in a crouched position the entire game," he says to Manoel, "in order to increase your resistance to fatigue — particularly here in Brazil."
But once a parteira, always a parteira: when a neighbour is about to have a baby, Lourdes rushes off to deliver the baby, despite Carlos' strong objections. Lourdes and Carlos really fight about it afterwards, but she quietly holds her ground: "They need me," she replies firmly. "There aren't any doctors here — I'm the doctor to these women..."
After much arguing, Carlos slowly gives in: maybe he understands that Lourdes would rather sneak off to deliver a baby from time to time than have sex with another man. As well, Lourdes will perform abortions sometimes: there will be the same whispers in the kitchen with strange women, with women who are ashamed, afraid. She also knows how to do it to herself if she's pregnant, I'm sure. In the end, he trusts her: she's a good woman.
But Donna and I have our first argument as a married couple when she sees how Lourdes and the children have been living: "How can you let them live in poverty like this?" she shouts.
"I send them almost all my money," I reply, also angry. "I only keep a few dollars for myself every week. I barely have enough for cigarettes."
"Then why didn't you tell me that they needed more money?" she asks.
I reply: "They're already living better than they ever have, and my children are my responsibility, not yours..."
Which is true, but that isn't good enough for Donna. We find them a bigger place to live, but it isn't easy, because Lourdes has five children now. In the end, Donna buys them a modest four-bedroom bungalow in Santa Tereza, a working-class quarter away from the beach, from which Carlos still takes the bus to work every day. Carlos will pay rent, until he has paid enough to buy it outright. With two adults and five children, it's very crowded, however, but they can afford to pay the utilities and have a telephone.
I'm sure that Lourdes thinks that Donna must be crazy, just like she thought that Chantal was crazy, but she has received a house from Donna, so she shouldn't complain. But Carlos and me, we are no longer working for ourselves but for others, so that others may have a future: we are working and living for our children now. Carlos has children from other relationships, but they are all grown.
Donna wants to retire to Brazil when we're older, so we fly out to the coast of northern Brazil to look at some property. The property is subdivided into parcels of five or six hundred square metres on a promontory rising above the Atlantic Ocean. Though some of the parcels have already been bought, some are still for sale. There are no dwellings here, just the grass, gently caressed by the wind, some wild flowers and some sea birds. The place feels lonely and deserted. It's quiet, except for the shrieks of the birds and the sound of the wind.
This lot doesn't have much allure for me at first, but Donna's face is glowing with delight when she sees it — I know that she wants it. However, she asks my opinion. Though she makes money like water, enough money to buy it on her own if I don't agree, she wants my approval. So I tell her to buy it, because I love her and I want her to be happy. So she buys two adjoining six-hundred-metre parcels for about five thousand dollars apiece Canadian, with plans to build in the future. Me, I had never thought that I would ever own land in northern Brazil — or anywhere else in Brazil — but we are now fazendeiros. I can't believe it!
While sitting together with me at the beach outside our hotel back in Rio, Donna says to me: "I have some good news, José..."
"Oh?" I reply.
"We're going to have a baby. It's been confirmed..."
"Really?" I ask, happily surprised.
"Yes..."
Wow, I'm going to be a father! Even though I have other children, I'm still on the moon. Then I hear Donna say: "This is really sad!"
"Why, what happened?" I asked, concerned.
She has been reading an edition of the Toronto Globe: "It says here that a woman from Canada drowned off the coast of Florida," she says. "She was forty-two years old, the mother of a daughter..."
I don't know why, but I was worried that the victim might be Chantal, because she admitted to having thought of swimming far out into the ocean and drowning herself. So I ask with some dread: "Can you tell me the woman's name?"
She scans the newspaper again, before she says: "It says here that the victim was Deidre McLain, forty-two, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She was the mother of a daughter. Why do you ask?"
"Just curious," I reply vaguely. "I don't know, maybe she got caught in the undertow..."
Of course, I feel bad for Deidre McLain and her family, but I'm relieved that it isn't Chantal who has drowned. I'm also glad for myself, because I'm going to be a father again — what could be better? I'm even a landowner in northern Brazil, far away from the crime and the poverty of the Cidade de Deus in Rio de Janeiro, driving a taxi in Toronto. To me, Toronto is the greatest city in the world. I'm content now — who wouldn't want my happiness?
And yet, I'm still haunted by the past: I still have dreams from my childhood in the favelas from time to time, and I see Chantal swimming — always swimming. Her swimming always seems without purpose, yet she's always swimming about somewhere — but where? Maybe not even she knows.
You try to put the past behind you, but you're always walking into the future with one foot in the past, the other in the future, while straddling the present, which continually flows underneath you like a great river, like the Amazon. Only the present is real, since the future is always unrealized and the past is irretrievable. But what are dreams if not incidents involving people, places and things from our past that still haunt us? Once remembrance holds you in its teeth like an angry dog, it doesn't let go — you never forget completely. It may even tear you to shreds as it shakes you with its jaws.
Yes, an angel can drive you mad if you aren't careful, but we're all looking for that moment of madness, that moment of bliss; we all want to meet an angel and have it embrace us. When you meet that angel, however, you can never be the same again, because angels might not want to let go either.
Then I say to Donna: "Hey, let's buy a boat!"
"A boat?"
I stand up and point towards the ocean: "There's the coast of Africa, across the ocean from here. You and I are closer to Africa now than anybody else in South or North America. We could sail across the ocean, if we wanted, or we could sail up and down the coast here, or on Lake Ontario. We could live in a grass hut and have lots of children..."
I probably sound like a crazy man. She laughs and replies: "But what if I don't want to have lots of children, eh?"
"Then we'll invite the neighbour's kids over our place, as well as mine and Lourdes'."
She laughs again and says: "I don't know about the kids, but the boat might be a lot of fun..."
We stand up with the sun to the west at our backs, holding hands and looking out to the ocean. It's here where the Europeans first arrived in Brazil, here where they brought the slaves from Africa. But maybe it was here that the Indians first came to Brazil as well: maybe the Indians of the Amazon came from Africa as well, while the Indians in North America crossed over into Alaska from Siberia — who knows? Those that we call "natives" in the Americas might have been like the cariocas in Rio: the descendants from people who came from all over: Africa, Japan, Siberia, Polynesia, even Europe — anywhere — then blended together. Only no one knows when they came, because that was before history.
This is history now: Donna and I, standing on a deserted beach in northern Brazil, the wind blowing in our hair like the dreams twisting and turning in our minds. This is history too: Donna has bought two adjoining parcels of land in northern Brazil. From these parcels of land, we could sail across the ocean to Africa, if we only had a boat.
We will buy a boat then.

*****

It's spring, I'm planting a single fleur-de-lis in the backyard. When I see my husband standing over me, I feel threatened and stand up quickly, knocking the dirt off my hands and knees.
"I bought a few to replace the ones that I already have," I tell him, avoiding his eyes, "since they're probably all going to die soon. But none of the others from the nursery have made it. It could be, the nursery got a batch of flowers with some mold..."
I kneel down again and gently rub one of the white bell-shaped flowers between my fingers, the one that I have just planted. Then I look up at him and say: "This one here is already wilted. Too much water. If we get a lot of rain this year, it may not survive either."
He only looks at me suspiciously, so I tell him: "It isn't for him, Robert; it's for the baby. Somebody has to remember him..."
"Well, can't you plant some white chrysanthemums?10" he asks, still skeptical. "People buy white chrysanthemums when someone has died..."
"Chrysanthemums are annuals, Robert," I reply curtly. "You have to replant them in the spring because they die in the fall."
Then he asks: "What's happened to your pendant?"
I look down at my chest when I realize that it's missing. I blush when I remember why. "I must have lost it," I mumble, all flustered, avoiding his eyes again. "I don't know what's happened to it..."
I feel guilty, because I have lied to him again. But I can't tell him the truth — can I? — that I gave it to him...
I buy a whole batch of fleurs-de-lis and plant them all over the backyard — one for everybody that I love, both family and friends. But there's so many people that I love that the backyard is soon covered with them. There's no pattern, I plant them here and there — everywhere in the backyard where there's enough sunlight. Then I plant several other species of flowers mentioned in the Bible: white hyacinths, narcissuses, crocuses — several varieties of flowers. Some I plant early in the spring, others in the autumn. Some bloom early, others late. Some I plant in the shade, near-shade or sun. I plant them all over until our backyard is run wild with flowers.
This is a religious experience for me: I see the fleurs-de-lis all over the hills of Judea, where Jesus walked. Then I fall to my knees and weep, but for joy this time: I feel that I can let go of the baby, because he no longer belongs to me. Then I realize that my children don't belong to me either — they belong to God. Nothing is mine, not even my soul.
God, as opposed to gods and goddesses, is a void, a nothingness from which we all sprang. Jesus is just an image, a reflection of the divine in a cosmic pool of water, like the Virgin Mary and Yemanjá, the African goddess. All of the gods and all of the saints are reflections of the divine. We are all reflections of the divine — we are all divine. We are all saints, sanctified to the degree that we want to be sanctified.
Then I see Jesus' mirror image in a pool of water in the backyard with his arms wide open, like the statue on Corcovado in Rio. Maybe I'm hallucinating, but I can see a faint image.
My husband dug that pool when we first bought this house; he has several large goldfish that he keeps in the garage during the winter. If you clap two small Chinese cymbals together when you feed them, the fish come to the edge of the pool, because they know they will be fed.
Then I take several photographs of the flowers with a digital camera. I take a picture of the pool as well, but I'm the only one who can see Jesus in the photograph — only I can see him.
What a beautiful garden! I like to sit down on the bench by the pool and meditate, or I will spin around on the patio like a whirling dervish. I do some yoga as well. I feel at peace here, sitting on the bench in the lotus position.
I am at peace.

*****


You are swimming in an indoor swimming pool, since it's winter. In your reverie, you have stripped naked and entered the ocean. As you slowly enter the water, little fishes nibble at your ankles. Up to your neck in the water, you stop to let the fishes nibble at your entire body below the water line; the sensation is very pleasant.
Then you start swimming from the shore. You swim and swim, thinking of nothing, feeling only the waves trying to push you back to shore, until a great wave will take you far out to sea and drown you. From time to time, you stop swimming to turn around and look back at the shore. You always smile with satisfaction before you swim out to sea again.
Beyond the shore, there's porpoises and whales. They seem happy as they swim around you, the sun reflecting off the water. You even ride a dolphin's back for a while.
You are Venus, returning to the sea foam from where she came — you are the goddess of love. Then you see St. Theresa in the sun. St. Theresa is you, you are St. Theresa, opening up like a flower when God envelopes her with his light. You too are waiting for an angel to pierce you with his light. You want to be God's mistress, like St. Theresa of Avila, if he wants you.
Then, in the middle of your swim, you are suddenly pierced by a million shafts of multi-coloured light, all the colours of the Aurora Borealis: red, blue, green, yellow and violet. What a jolt! The sensation is extremely painful at first, then very pleasant. Your heartbeat seems to stop for a moment, then starts again, followed by a great wave of emotion, a great love for God and the world.
You lose all sense of time and space, then you weep from happiness. You no longer know if you're swimming in the sea, or in the swimming pool, but this experience is very real for you, very moving. In your ecstasy, you don't want these lights to ever stop piercing your body, but they stop in the end, leaving you exhausted. You feel that you can barely swim to the other side of the pool; a life guard might have to rescue you.
Then you hear the voice of the Virgin Mary, who's the African goddess Yemanjá, wearing a flowing white robe with a blue hem, whose skin is black, brown or white — any colour — Our Lady of Yemanjá. She might be the Hindu goddess Kali, with the six arms, very threatening when wrathful, or maybe your deceased aunt, Marie-Claire, who died when she was sixteen from complications of rheumatic fever as a child. You are looking for your Mother: maybe she'll send a great fish to swallow you so that you can rejoin her again in paradise.
Then you see Life standing on the shore, her right breast bare in the manner of the Marseillaise, weeping. You weep as well. You ask forgiveness, because you have always been unfaithful to her, but she smears her lipstick across her face with the back of her hand.
Then you stop swimming. In your reverie, a great wave suddenly pushes you back to shore. Your life isn't over yet, you think, there's still work to be done. It isn't time to rejoin your Mother — it isn't time. The sea doesn't seem ready to take you back, so you swim slowly back to shore, stopping to float on your back from time to time, like a sea otter. The waves will take you back to shore if you're too tired to swim, you're sure, your body kept afloat by its natural buoyancy.
Then there's a tsunami, and a gigantic wave suddenly pushes you far out to sea. You don't know what has happened at first, you're momentarily submerged. You don't know which way is up or down. You panic, afraid of drowning unless you can swim back to shore, and you swim furiously against the current — you're afraid of death. But that's life, isn't it: to swim against the tide until a wave submerges us and we drown?
Nevertheless, you choose life, because there's still so much to do. You are love, you are life, you are even divine — all of us are divine. You don't know much Latin, unlike your husband, but this is your heart's prayer, its blessing:
Gloria in excelsis Deo. In terra, pax in hominibus bonæ voluntatis...


The End