Chapter Six
After pillaging the flower market of its most spectacular blossoms and ordering them sent to Carrie, Deacon hails a cab and spends the remainder of the afternoon making calls. Traveling to the docks, he speaks to two business acquaintances. Then he pays a short visit to the banker who handles his commercial transactions and asks for a favor. His banker is delighted and promises to do as Deacon has requested.
“You may rely on me, Senhor Presgrove,” he says, shaking Deacon’s hand with so much enthusiasm that a bystander might have thought Deacon had just been elected to political office.
After leaving the bank, Deacon dismisses the cab and strolls through the city. His pace is leisurely. From time to time, he pauses to admire something: a cage of green and red toucans being offered up for sale, piles of orange cashew fruits, clay pipes imported from Holland. Around four, he stops in a café for a small cup of coffee so strong and thickly sugared he can almost stand his spoon up in it. Legless beggars clack along the street in small wooden carts painted with the faces of saints, vendors hawk an unidentifiable purple fruit that looks like grapeshot, barefoot female slaves in ruffled skirts and turbans pass by balancing trays of sweets and baskets of laundry on their heads.
Tossing a few coins to the waiter, Deacon gets up and begins to walk again. When he reaches a section of smart shops, women dressed in the latest Paris fashions sweep by him like flocks of exotic parrots.
As he crosses the Largo do Praço, he sees a toothless old man in a battered straw hat clutching a lamppost with one hand and a bottle of rum with the other. Rum is sugar and sugar is selling for next to nothing, Deacon thinks. This is a thought that should worry a man in the sugar exporting business, but Deacon’s mood remains sunny.
Pausing in front of the Igreja de Nossa Senhora de Candelária, he looks around for a cab. The church, which as usual is adorned with scaffolding, is still not complete. Deacon has long thought it should be renamed “Our Lady of Perpetual Construction,” but he has not found anyone he can share this witticism with. Brazilians are touchy about foreigners making jokes about religion.
A cab appears. Deacon hails it and gets in. Half an hour later he is sitting in the parlor of the home of the military attaché to the American Diplomatic Mission, drinking sherry and having a lively conversation with the attaché’s wife, a small, redheaded woman from Tennessee named Nettie.
“My stars!” Nettie cries. “You are the most amazin’ man, Deacon Presgrove. How do you do it?”
“Necessity, my dear,” Deacon says. “Pure, unadulterated necessity.”
Nettie laughs and refills his glass, which, Deacon is sorry to note, is hardly larger than a thimble.
“You simply must take part in one of our amateur theatricals before you leave Rio. You are too talented to let yourself go to waste. Christ Church is putting on a passion play at Easter, and you would be perfect for the role of Judas.”
Deacon smiles and toasts her with the miniature sherry glass. “I will take that as a compliment, Mrs. Wiggins. Alas, I will be long gone before Easter, out on the high seas, tossed by the elements.”
“Why, you selfish old thing, you. You simply cannot leave without sharin’ your talents. You were such a favorite back in Washington City. I still remember the night I saw you do Shakespeare at the National Theater. I never saw a more handsome Romeo. I can’t for the life of me recall the name you acted under?”
“Donald Lane. But my acting days are long behind me, Nettie. I had a brief career on the boards, again out of necessity. A single season only. Hardly a soul except you remembers and, darlin’, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t remind them.”
“My lips are sealed,” Nettie says. She takes a sip of sherry and laughs. “At least until you sail. Now don’t go givin’ me that dark look, Deacon. I’m only teasin’. Honey, you are lookin’ at me like Othello looked at poor Desdemona just before he wrung her neck.”