“Hey, Sampaio, you got the blues?”
“I have indeed, Ribeiro, but there are only three packets in stock. I suggest you take them because I don’t know when the next lot will be delivered.”
What would I be without my personal pharmacist?
“I’ll take the lot.”
Viagra is as revolutionary as the pill, but no one has the courage to say so. And with this business of having to use condoms, well, a man needs a little help. Then someone goes and invents this miracle, on sale in any decent drugstore, and without a prescription if you know Sampaio! It’s freedom! I can’t imagine life without it anymore.
I didn’t see age creep up on me, that sly bastard. At thirty, you don’t look fifteen anymore; at forty, the last signs of your twenties disappear; at fifty, your thirties. It takes a decade or so to lose things. I didn’t notice, I felt the same, full of energy, mature, on top of my game. It was only when Suzana and I broke up that it hit me. I’d lived with her for over a year, convinced she was having an affair with Sílvio, and I let myself go to seed. I stopped weighing myself, measuring my waistline, biceps, I went off-diet, didn’t sleep much, drank more than usual, and tried some other shit. Suzana’s fault, it was all her fault.
The morning I came home a wreck after the scene I’d made, playing the betrayed husband, I opened the door with a bleeding knee and Sílvio’s laughter still echoing in my head. I undressed, hurried to the bathroom, and accidentally caught sight of my reflection out of the corner of my eye. There I was, buck naked, in the mirror. I was an old man. Shocked, I went closer to investigate. Gray hair, bags under my eyes, sagging cheeks, flaccid neck, double chin. My nipples were bigger, my stomach was swelling, a gut beginning to form. My cock was average and my arms and legs still had muscles but were showing obvious signs of decline. My well-being was based on simple, routine things. Taking them away from me, as Suzana had done, had upset a delicate balance. My mother’s smile, being knocked over by the wave, her hands, Suzana’s mouth, her easy laughter, me being an orphan. I sat on the toilet and cried, then I phoned Celeste.
Carlos helped a lot. He was taking volleyball seriously and my sister had me coach him. He cured me of my depression. Him and Frank Sinatra. I’ve never been to America. It was my dream to visit America. My Sinatra collection won me a lot of women back in the day. These days I hide it so it won’t scare them off.
“Send it down the back, down the back!… Attaboy! What a comeback! Seventeen to fifteen! It’s the triumph of experience.”
I arranged a game on the beach with Carlos, a best of three with his son and a pal from college. These kids haven’t even got hair on their bodies and they think they’re going to beat the lion here.
“The bump, the precise set, the indefensible spike. Go on, kneel down, you don’t have the moves! Must be the crap you eat.”
I’m tired.
I woke up early to teach a lesson to seniors. Some old girls who roasted in the sun all their lives and now they’re like vampires, can’t even see light. Melanoma’s a bitch. I’ve had a few moles removed myself. I don’t like sunscreen.
It’s hard to accept that those old women were fifteen once. Now they all have to get up before dawn, but it’s not like they’re missing any sleep. Better to have something to do. They complain of insomnia a lot. They complain a lot, period. And who’s the hero who gets up before dawn to meet a bunch of seventy-year-old zombies? Ribeiro here. But it’s good because by nine o’clock half my workday is over. I play a game of beach volleyball, nap until about four, then go meet the beach crowd again to see what life has in store.
It hasn’t had much lately, but today looks promising.
I was going to say no to the old ladies. I went to the building where they all live, on Rua República do Peru, to tell them I couldn’t do it. But the niece of the one in 401 came down to say her aunt wasn’t feeling well. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight-ish, nice figure, long hair, tight jeans. When I saw her I changed my mind. I said I’d come to find out what their objectives were, ad-libbed it for about a quarter of an hour, and suggested I pay them each a visit to get to know them better. I suffered through those eleven floors. Time is cruel to women. I left the one with the niece for last.
The aunt was asleep in her bedroom.
I suggested she install grab bars in the bathroom and asked a few harmless questions: if she lived there, if she was just visiting. Alda had just split with her husband and didn’t want to live with her mother. She thanked me for my interest and praised me, saying I was a very considerate teacher. I asked her out on a date. She said she left the shop at six. Bingo!
It feels good to swim in the cold water off Copacabana. That warm piss soup in the Northeast of the country is disgusting. But the water here is dirty, the current’s changed direction, no one’s brave enough to go for a dip. Oily brown foam. One of the advantages of age is that you stop caring about the distant future. Now I just sit on the sand with the pigeons and risk skin cancer—I ain’t about to slop on sunscreen. Check out the goddesses walking past—my God, they still exist. Not for me, not anymore, never again. I’ve had to come to terms with whores and good girls over fifty. Neurotic, all of them, like Alda in 401. I can tell she’s desperate.
“Bye, Carlos, tell your mom I’ll stop by tomorrow. I’m meeting someone. Yep, the lion here ain’t dead! Don’t worry, I won’t ruin the family name, I’ve been to see Sampaio!”
I never wanted to have children. My nephew was the closest I ever got, with the advantage of being able to give him back to my sister whenever we hit a glitch. All men become slaves to their kid’s moms, even after they’re divorced. I never found a mother, not for me or my kids. I thought about getting a vasectomy, but I was afraid it might affect my ability to get it up.
The water in these beach showers is straight from the sewers. So what? It feels good to wash off the salt! Álvaro drinks water from the tap and he’s still alive.
“Hey, where’s my coconut water? Could you pass me my fanny pack? It’s behind the counter there.”
I’ve known this guy since he was a kid. Now he’s inherited his dad’s kiosk. Where’s my pill? Here! The Niagara-blue diamond.
* * *
After the beating I got from Lucíola’s father, and the phrase “dirty old man” her brother left as a memento, I decided to become a monk—I gave up smoking, became chaste. I was ashamed to approach girls, afraid of hearing a “no.” I felt like an idiot and stopped taking the risk. I’d wake up before dawn, run the beach end to end, coach Carlos, and swim in the afternoon when I was done teaching. I became a machine, an Adonis with no libido. I didn’t feel like it and had no idea what was going to become of me. All Álvaro could talk about was his inability to get it up, so I avoided him. Sílvio had ditched the gang to go live on the wild side, Neto was married, and Ciro had just died. I practically married my sister.
Celeste was very practical. She had decided to try life on her own. She still liked her husband but wanted to leave him. She was pretty brave; at a time when most women are scared witless of losing their partners, Celeste came out with this one. It was good, because I didn’t have to tiptoe around my sister’s apartment and I was a male presence there while she was between relationships. I slept at my place but spent the day at hers, and we were happy like that. It didn’t last. Celeste started seeing a production engineer who’d started at her firm. I asked what a production engineer did, but Celeste wasn’t sure. “Something to do with planning, I don’t know, one day you can ask him,” she said. I didn’t. I was insanely jealous of the guy. I hadn’t had sex for a year, I was tense, and I got it in my head that Carlos shouldn’t be left alone, so I started waiting for Celeste in the living room with a scowl on my face. The minute she turned the key in the lock I’d start in with the interrogation, wanting to know where she’d been, who she’d been with, if she’d eaten. At first she thought it was cute. She said I was bonkers and would shoo me out, but when I started getting aggressive, she was frank with me. With a straight face, she told me to go get laid. “The first one you see, Ribeiro, just do it; don’t think about it, then tell me how it was,” she said. And she banned me from her apartment after seven at night.
As if it wasn’t enough, Neto passed away.
Ciro used to try and help Álvaro by reassuring him that all men have their bad days, except me. Not anymore. When Celeste told me to get back in the game after a long sabbatical, I, frightened by how short life is, picked up where I’d left off. I didn’t want the ones who were interested in me even if they were the last women alive, and the ones I was interested in didn’t want me under any circumstance. Young women were now standoffish, and turned their noses up at me. Solange was the best of a bad lot.
We met in my dentist’s elevator. She worked in an accountant’s office in the same building on Rua Figueiredo de Magalhães. I’d just had my teeth cleaned and my mouth was sparkling, which must have helped. She was short and bug-eyed, with dyed red hair, but overall she was okay. We went to La Mole. She had the escalope with Piedmontese rice and I had the breaded shrimp. We had wine, ice cream, coffee, and devoured the petits fours. During dinner, Solange confessed that she was saving up for a boob job. Is there something wrong with her breasts? I wondered. I don’t mind if they’re small; I actually like them like that, as long as they’re not saggy. We took a taxi to Catete and got out in front of her building. Solange was wide open. I was already on the third step, with my foot in the foyer, when a thought struck me. What if I can’t get it up? Cold sweat began streaming down my neck that very second. Solange hadn’t noticed yet, so I pretended everything was fine, wished her good night with cinematic flair, asked her out on a second date, kissed her hand, and took off. I didn’t want her to think I was insecure. Nothing scares off the opposite sex more than that.
Sampaio sold energy drinks, imported vitamins, I liked him. Once when I came down with a bad flu, he gave me an antibiotics injection that put me on my feet again in just one day. He became my GP. Sampaio was very discreet. If he mentioned Viagra, it was by its biblical name: sildenafil. Tadalafil, for Cialis, and vardenafil, for Levitra, had yet to be invented. I didn’t sleep a wink the night before my first time with Solange, imagining myself trying to have sex but not being able to. I dreamed her pussy was a bronze statue. At daybreak I went out to buy sedatives. I’d survived the end of my relationship with Suzana on Lexotan prescribed by Sampaio. I was grateful to him. I arrived early, he was late. When he saw me at the counter with bags under my eyes, he asked if someone else had died. I begged him for tranquilizers. He eyed me suspiciously.
“Tranquilizers for what? Do you want to relax?”
“More or less,” I said, head down.
“Sorry to pry, Ribeiro, but what’s the problem?”
“My sister’s seeing someone…”
“Uh-huh…”
“She told me to get back in the game…”
“I see…”
“I’m going out for dinner, tonight, and I think there might be dessert.”
“Say no more,” he said, and dragged me off to the back of the pharmacy to the cubicle where they gave injections. Sampaio closed the curtain and took the blood pressure monitor down from the wall.
“Do you have a history of high blood pressure?”
“No,” I said.
I forgot to mention my mother’s heart attack, nor did he ask. He just pumped the air, staring at the monitor with a serious face.
“One hundred twenty over seventy, no danger,” he said, and disappeared into the stock room.
He returned quickly holding a packet.
“Ribeiro, the only reason I don’t compare this wonder to the Lord Jesus Christ is because it’s a capital sin. But it is, Ribeiro, this here is the Lord Jesus Christ.”
I took the packet. Viagra, said the label.
“I suggest you take it about three hours ahead of time so you don’t have any surprises and are already fired up by the time you get there.”
“Have you tried it?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “When it first came, and I haven’t stopped since.”
The same thing happened to me.
I gave it to Solange like a jackhammer. It wasn’t enough. Viagra separated sex and love. As a lover, I was jealous, stupid and needy. Sildenafil suppressed my romantic expectations and I fell into temptation. Sílvio would have been proud of me. I fucked like a gymnast, spent money I didn’t have on the twenty-year-olds in the dives on Avenida Prado Júnior, and grew fond of the disposable robes at the Centauro, where I almost went bankrupt after two hookers locked themselves in one of the little rooms with me. They started half-heartedly, not making much of an effort, but when it was almost time to turn the red light back on, which signaled the end of the session, the harlots started rubbing each other like octopuses. It gave me a huge boner and I asked for another session. And another and another. When it was time to pay they explained that with the two of them, everything was double. I left without a dime and had to borrow money from Celeste. I said it was for a root canal.
I put a pill in my mouth and swallow. Alda, here I come. It’s been ages since I’ve had a decent woman. It’ll be good for a change.
“How much is this? And how much is on my tab? Then let’s settle up; I don’t like to be in debt.”
I ran into Álvaro yesterday on Rua Francisco Sá. I was leaving Sampaio’s pharmacy and came face-to-face with him. We hadn’t seen each other for several years, since Neto’s funeral, I guess. Boy is he in bad shape, and his head’s a mess. He called me Ciro about three times and stumbled another ten. I tried to give him a hand but he got offended. I was too embarrassed to ask if it was ischemia.
Copacabana has changed a lot—it’s these buses churning out black smoke. I’ll have a beer, thanks. I love a dive. I like to watch the drunks.
Álvaro insists that Sílvio died in Lapa, but he’s wrong. It was in Cinelândia, in front of the Bola Preta Carnival bloc headquarters. I went to the funeral, Álvaro! The disagreement was threatening to turn into a fight so I cut him off.
“Forget it,” I said. “What difference does it make? Sílvio lied; he said he was going to Porto Alegre but he wound up in Niterói and never called again. Remember how he used to snort? Bad breath, smoking, talking nonstop? He’s gone, and good riddance.”
Álvaro thought that was funny. We said we’d get together one of these days. Who knows? I miss the gang. Álvaro, Neto, Sílvio, and Ciro.
I was crazy about Ciro. Ciro was the best of us. We had his leftovers. Women could sense Ciro’s presence even with their backs turned. By his smell. When he walked into a room, they’d all turn around like robots. The married ones, the single ones, fiancées, debutants. And Ciro was a fun winner, full of stories. He knew his politics, he was intelligent, a compulsive reader, romantic, and he was even good on the guitar. No one could hold a candle to him. We joked that he was the shark and we were the pilot fish. Truth be told, we fought as hard for his attention as the ladies did.
He spent his holidays in Búzios, in a fisherman’s cottage. The most coveted beauty of Ipanema drove her VW for four hours through the night just to meet him in paradise. When she got there, Ciro said he was going to fetch supper and dove into the sea holding a knife. He came back with a live lobster. After the meal, they jumped into bed and the lucky woman spread the crustacean hunter myth around Rio. To ensure that his number was always a success, Ciro started leaving a crate of the creatures tied up on the ocean floor. Whenever a candidate showed up—and one always would, because there was a queue—he’d emerge from the waves holding the lobster.
We loved Ciro.
I was there, beside him, the day he met Ruth. We arrived at Juliano’s party together, ready for yet another unforgettable night. Sílvio brought the arsenal and Álvaro and Neto met us at the door as planned. The women all turned to look as Ciro walked in and we tried to figure out what would be left for the picking, but one of them didn’t turn around. Ruth. She didn’t even notice we were there. She laughed out loud, in a circle of guests gathered around someone playing the guitar, and went on singing that song… Today, I want the most beautiful of roses… “A Noite do Meu Bem” by Dolores Duran. She had the voice of a nightclub singer—low, sensual—and she sure was something to look at. The whole room stopped to listen. I was crazy about Ruth; it was love at first sight. When I glanced sideways, I realized the same thing had happened to Ciro. I’d never seen him like that. Ciro took the lead, walked over to the group, asked for the guitar, and began to play a beautiful song by Vinicius de Moraes that Odete Lara used to sing… Without you, my love… I am no one… Ruth took the female voice, Ciro, the male voice, and they finished together, to a standing ovation, forever in love.
My world fell apart.
How could I compete? They disappeared together and someone started playing “Lígia.” “Lígia,” the soundtrack of my heartache. I listened to “Lígia” many times, thinking about her, thinking about Ciro. It was hard to go out with them, see them so happy together. Ruth wasn’t a girl anymore, but so what? If she’d chosen me, I’d have had children with her, a family. I’d have given up cradle-snatching once and for all. I’d have been hers alone. But she chose Ciro, of course she chose Ciro. Heck, I’d have chosen Ciro. But I would have looked after her. I’d never have done what he did, the abominable thing he did to her.
That’s why I threw myself into Suzana. That’s why I can’t forgive Sílvio, because I loved Ruth my whole life but never overstepped the mark. I watched Ciro make her happy, really happy, and then kill her, lock her away, spit on her. Serves you right, Ciro. That cancer served you right.
This is a strong one. I’m sweating. Think about Alda. Damn traffic. Lycra clothes, my God, the world’s gone crazy. Women dress like whores even to go to the corner store. Check out the ass on that one! Vacuum-sealed in those leggings. I learned what leggings were at the gym.
I’m a bit dizzy when I get to my building. I stop in the foyer to catch my breath. The doorman notices and asks if he can help. “I’m fine,” I say, feeling Álvaro’s irritation. Then I think I was rude for no reason. I ask if there’s any post, but before he checks he says I’m red. “It’s the muggy weather,” I say. But it isn’t muggy, it’s cool, in fact. “What, they’re going to turn off the water in the building? Now? No, wait for me to have a shower. Tell them I’m going up, stall them for me!” I drag myself to the elevator. The building hasn’t incinerated its trash for thirty years, but the smell’s still here. First floor… second… this elevator’s going to fall. Fifth… sixth, my floor. The neighbor in 610 is cooking beans. She cooks beans every day. The corridor reeks. I can’t stand beans. I feel so queasy. Where’s the key? This stench is going to kill me.
My sanctuary. Quick, to the shower. Whoa… black ceiling, what’s up, lion? Put your head down, breathe deeply. It’s getting better. Migraine coming on. I’ll take my swimming trunks off in the shower so I don’t get sand everywhere. Boy, does it take a long time for this piece of junk to heat up. I’m going to get an electric one. Electric showers have come a long way. It’s getting warmer… C’mon, for chrissake, they’re going to turn off the water soon. It’s warm. Thank God. I’m actually sweating in the water. I think I’m going to throw up. Now it’s boiling, goddamn, pain-in-the-ass shower.
When I reach for the cold faucet, I feel the tingling creep up from my right hand, through my arm and into my chest. My chest. It tightens, as if a giant is crushing me with his fingers. A stabbing pain in my plexus. My lungs are paralyzed, my jaw locks, and I’m short of breath. I try to stay calm and think about calling the doorman, the police. What’s Celeste’s phone number? 97… 9756… 753… 75… I try to remember. I get out of the shower holding onto the curtain, the plastic can’t take my weight, and I kiss the canvas. I feel better than I did standing up. Lie down, put your legs up. The floor’s cold as hell. Another stabbing pain, I don’t believe it. Relax, lion. God, I can’t see a thing. Cough, I heard on TV that you have to cough if you think you’re having a heart attack. I’m having a heart attack. I can’t cough if I’m asphyxiating like this.
I need to find Carlos. He’ll come with his son… what’s his name? It doesn’t matter. Carlos will drag me to a taxi, take me to an ER… Where’s my cell? I left it in the living room. I’m screwed. I’m not getting up from here. My heart’s going to leap out of my mouth. Here it comes, here it comes… here it comes… there… it goes.
It’s okay, Ribeiro. You’re not going to have a stroke, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s. You won’t be pushed around in a wheelchair by an ugly nurse, you won’t drool like Álvaro or come out of a hospital full of holes like Ciro. You’re a lucky guy. That’s the last of the water. This is it. Is this it? Yep, this is it. I shouldn’t have taken that pill on an empty stomach. Forget the empty stomach, it was going to happen anyway. I was taking four or five a week. Viagra gave me ten extra years of service life. It’s fair. More than fair. I’d trade the next ten for the last seven. Long live the troupe at the Centauro, the trannies at The Pussery, Erotika, and internet sex. I lived it up. Now it’s over.
I didn’t live at all. None of it was worth Ruth.
I went to see her at her sister’s place, some ten years after she got divorced. She’d become distant and bitter. When she saw me, she cursed us all: Sílvio, Neto, Álvaro, and me. She didn’t mention Ciro. She couldn’t, she didn’t have it in her. I’d gone there hoping to tell her how I felt, to propose something or other, whatever she wanted, but I didn’t have the courage. She asked how the mob was. Like that, the “mob”… . I said I hadn’t seen them for a while. That was shortly after the beating I got because of Lucíola, when I tried to change my ways and find myself a real woman. Ruth asked me to leave. She said we were all dead to her and went into the bedroom without saying goodbye. Her sister saw me to the door and made me promise not to come back. Ciro had left nothing of the old Ruth. Selfish bastard. He always was.
I stopped making plans. The future ended there.
From then on, I accepted that I’d have to screw older gals who were further and further removed from what I wanted. Like Alda, who I made out to be a Miss Universe but who is really the bottom of the pit. Sorry, Alda, I won’t be seeing you later.
Alda waited for Ribeiro at the door of her work for over an hour. She went home humiliated, rejected by an old man. The next day, the news traveled through the building: the instructor hadn’t shown up for the six o’clock lesson or volleyball at ten. Carlos called his apartment and rang the doorbell, and the doorman managed to break down the door. They found Ribeiro lying in the flooded bathroom. The building’s water had come back on, and the shower had overflowed. Ribeiro’s stiff body, beginning to decompose, wasn’t a pleasant sight. Carlos called a hearse, tried to dry the floor with a bath towel, and phoned Celeste to tell her what had happened. Alda smiled unintentionally. She didn’t wish for anyone’s demise, but her relief at not having been rejected by a man in his seventies was greater than any sense of loss. And she thought it romantic that she had been the old-timer from Copacabana’s last chance at love. It had a certain charm. She went to the cemetery to pay her respects.
Burials were a thing of the past. With the inauguration of the crematorium at São Francisco Xavier Cemetery, families had begun to prefer ashes to bones. Celeste took charge of the preparations. Her men helped her a lot, but she insisted on seeing to the details herself, ordering the wreaths, choosing her brother’s coffin and suit. Carlos covered his uncle with the Botafogo Football Club flag and placed the volleyball from his last game in his hands. He gave the speech. He was sincere and affectionate. His mother didn’t want to speak, but she held on to her son, nodding with approval at the end of his sentences. She was the one who gave the order for the oven to be switched on. A mournful melody played as the coffin passed over the conveyor belt of metal rollers and disappeared into a low, dark tunnel, like suitcases in an airport x-ray machine. The final product wasn’t released until the following day. At the front desk, Celeste showed them her piece of paper with a number on it, was given the box, and drove with it to Leme Rock. My brother loved the beach, she said, revealing the contents of the urn among the fishermen, rods, and hooks. Carlos and his son each took a handful of their uncle, Celeste did the same, and the three of them threw Ribeiro into the wind, repeating the gesture until there was nothing left. He hovered around the family, before being sucked up with the vultures in a rising current. A few particles brushed the faces of those witnessing the ceremony. No one complained. The fishermen were respectful of the family’s rite, although they were still nauseated by the cloud of organic dust.
Celeste had her feet planted firmly on the ground; she saw as much greatness in death as she did in life. Girls develop quickly and, without her mother, Celeste had had to grow up fast. Woman of the house, wife to her father, mother to her brother. It saddened her deeply to say goodbye to Ribeiro, but not so much that she didn’t feel proud of her grown son, her healthy grandson, the good men she had in her life. She had lived alone for a long time, but her grandson had taken the place of her son, and her new love the place of the old one, such that she had never experienced the emptiness of her losses. She didn’t have the temperament for that. She had always lived surrounded by people; she didn’t believe in loneliness. Ribeiro hadn’t been well—he’d lost the innocence he’d maintained for so long. She’d preferred to see him dispersed in the atmosphere rather than roaming Copacabana, spending money on whores, taking stimulants, at risk of being beaten up, mugged, or arrested. It’s good that he’s stopped now, she thought, as she buttoned up her black dress.
It was the first time Álvaro had been to a cremation. He thought it was deplorable and undignified to shove a dead man into an ash factory, mixed with the remains of other dead people. No one cleans that thing. Ribeiro’s sister’s calm shocked Álvaro, his last friend left alive. Celeste should have hidden her acceptance better. She was crying, it was true, but smiling, smiling enough that you could see her teeth; it wasn’t right. Her son and grandson were more discreet, her ex and current partner, too. “Women are all attention seekers,” he told himself, in his incorrigible misogyny. Álvaro had hoped to see someone agonizing over his friend’s death, but everyone seemed resigned, including him. It bothered him that he was the last man standing, with a one-hundred-percent chance of being next. In addition, he was bored. Was it the fault of the ceremony or the heat? Why did the weather always get muggy when someone died? Feeling short of breath, he sat at the back of the small audience. He listened to Carlos, and thought it was a beautiful speech, but was shocked at how naturally those in attendance were acting. There was nothing natural about death. The anger, the helplessness, and the mourning of times past were missing. The heartbreak was missing.
Ruth was the goddess Oshun; she was Mary and Magdalene, the consummate woman—she always had been. Pride of her father, mirror of her mother, she was marriage material. She’d have been happy at any time, era, or place; she’d have suited a merchant or a warrior. She was Aphrodite incarnate, the embodiment of femininity. Future exemplary wife, she came of age in the heyday of the late 1950s, to the elegant soundtrack of Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. Love was the order of the day and adults drank away their sorrows. Ruth yearned for her own day to come. She was a prize and knew it—she was saving herself for Mr. Right. She nurtured a childish romanticism while fulfilling the requirements of the new era.
She was one of the first to know what it was to be free to drink and smoke, to sing at parties, to wear a bikini, to be courted, and to laugh without being vulgar. She was cultured and intelligent—she wouldn’t have been complete if she wasn’t. She read Nietzsche and crocheted. Her education at Colégio Sion had suppressed any excesses; she was just the right degree of easygoing, and restrained in equal measure. A nice girl. Her friends turned out to be much more brazen. Unlike Ruth, they had no choice. At the beginning of the sexual revolution, with the contraceptive pill, they were pioneers in the art of having sex without questioning whether or not it was worth it. But not Ruth. She waited patiently. And while she did, she listened to Dolores Duran.
She was still a virgin when she enrolled in university to study language and literature. The young men quickly noticed her graceful walk, broad smile, beautiful voice, and the way she put her hands on her hips when she danced samba. Ruth paraded across campus, high on the daily contact with testosterone. In response to the stimuli her hair grew thick, her skin rosy, and her nipples were permanently erect. Everything about her ripened as she waited for a moment that never arrived. She read Plato’s Symposium with her study group and discovered that she was androgynous. Some terrible god had cut her original body in two, separating her from her male half. She wanted to find him, get him back. At night, she fantasized about being sewn back together, stitch by stitch, skin on skin. A shiver would run through her and she would fall asleep aroused. But Ruth forgot to heed the wise man’s warning: “We only love what we don’t have.”
Sérgio was a sensitive, serious, attentive young man. He was studying philosophy and wanted to be a teacher. Her friends were rooting for Beto, the Alain Delon of economics, but Ruth preferred Sérgio, with whom she had discovered Symposium. Virginity was still the norm, but it was no longer compulsory. Her more progressive friends urged her to go for it and, exasperated by her reserve, called her a prude.
Her libido was threatening to burst the dike. Ruth thought about love day and night. Politics, war, Cuba, the future, and the nuclear bomb were of little interest to her. She decided it would be with Sérgio. She agreed to finish a project with him at his place and, one sunny afternoon in the spring of 1962, she lay on his bed and, with a kiss, made the invitation. Caught by surprise, Sérgio applied himself to the mission. He was shy, and tried to hide his lack of experience. He was respectful, technical, and amateur. Ruth left his room with the uneasy impression that she hadn’t changed. She was still chaste. The frustration made her balk, preserve herself even more. If she kept trying, she thought, she might not feel the impact of the big event. Sérgio had taken her hymen, that was certain, but he hadn’t even touched her restlessness. It is passion that deflowers a woman, awakens her senses: smell, touch, taste, sight, a tingling in her ears. Ruth was still virginal. Who was going to rescue her?
It was Ciro; Aristophanes had been talking about Ciro.
It was chance that brought them together, at Irene’s cousin’s birthday; Irene and Ruth were the best of friends. Juliano had noticed that his cousin’s friends were ripe for the picking and had organized for them to come to the sing-along. That’s why Ruth was there when Ciro, Neto, Álvaro, Ribeiro, and Sílvio walked into the room. She could just as easily not have been, but she was. But even if she wasn’t, Ciro and Ruth would have met one day, somehow. It was destined to be.
Today I want the most beautiful of roses
Everyone stopped talking to listen when Ruth sang. She did more than just sing, she made the song hers. The long hours spent beside the record player, the vinyl worn from being played over and over, her crystal-clear understanding of the lyrics, her identification with the sorrow of the song, her husky voice, all of it really did make one want to stop and pay attention. Near the end, when the protagonist confesses that because her love has been so long in the making, perhaps her gaze is no longer as pure as she would like it to be, Ruth looked at the people listening and saw Ciro standing at the back of the room. The floor gave way, the wall receded, and the image of the handsome man loomed, giant and glowing, before her. Her head span. She felt the blood race in her veins while her arteries constricted. The rush of hormones gave her goose bumps and a knot in the stomach, and her heart beat faster. Her poisoning began there. She finished the song to much applause and pretended to be calm, smiling and doing her best to control the whirlwind inside her, until she saw out of the corner of her eye that Ciro was approaching. She shook from head to foot. He took a guitar from the hands of one of the serenaders, sat in front of Ruth, and, without taking his eyes off her, played the first few chords of a song and sang.
Without you, I have no reason
“Samba em Prelúdio.” Ruth blushed, everyone noticed. Ciro smiled, he was irresistible. With a nod, he invited the muse to accompany him in a duet. She accepted the challenge. They sailed through the notes, savoring the poet’s words.
Without you, my love, I am no one
There was no pause. When the song was over, Ciro returned the guitar to its owner and stood while the audience applauded. Then he shouted that Ruth was his and dragged her away from the rabble. Despite their resentment, none of the other guests dared contradict the hero. Absolute lord of the scene, Ciro swept up the queen with the skill of Eros. Many couples were formed that night after witnessing their meeting.
Ciro’s hand squeezing hers—the calm it brought her. She couldn’t remember a thing, just fumbling with buttons and pressing her face against the skin of a man she didn’t know. She stayed there like that, eyes closed, breathing the same air as him, listening to the rhythmic beating of his heart. She wanted to be sewn to him forever. His large hands clasped her face and she dared look up. Ciro brought his mouth to hers and opened it with his lips, teeth, tongue. Ruth wrapped her arms around his neck and felt the roughness of his beard, took in his manly smell, the cigarettes. There’s nothing ethereal about love. It’s flesh, it’s physical, it’s brutal. Ciro ran his hands up Ruth’s legs and, without questioning whether he should or not, slid his fingers inside her. The gesture put her on guard. For the first time since she’d set eyes on him, she began to ask questions. Who is he? she thought, firmly holding the intrusive hand. Ciro understood. He was also reflecting, for the first time, about what had happened since the moment he saw her.
“My name’s Ciro, I have a law degree, and this has never happened to me before.”
It was what he could say. It wasn’t a trick; how to make her understand? Ciro was on unfamiliar terrain, but his sincere reply had the desired effect. Ruth accepted his innocence and consented.
Someone appeared on the veranda and hurried along things that were asking to be hurried along. They left without saying goodbye to anyone. In the hall outside the apartment, Ciro pressed the elevator button insistently while Ruth stared at the floorboards. She wasn’t going to his place and he couldn’t go to hers; there was nowhere, so it would have to be there. They counted the seconds with serious expressions on their faces. Anyone looking at them would have sworn they’d just quarreled. When they stepped into the mirrored cubicle, Ciro waited to ascend two floors and pressed the emergency button. The door opened, showing an ugly slab of concrete. Ruth kept still. He held her against the wall with a deep kiss and everything spun again. Exploring her breasts and belly, Ciro knelt, lifting Ruth’s skirt up to her navel, then pressed his face into her and inhaled.
“My name’s Ruth,” she said.
Ciro stood to admire her. His hands slid up to the back of her neck, and she wrapped her legs around him. He unfastened his belt hastily and looked at her again. Now serious, he held her by the hips and forced himself inside her. It was done. Someone bellowed down the shaft for them to stop holding up the elevator. There was no time. He positioned her in the corner of the tiny square and violated her until he was finished. Ruth was no longer a virgin. She had found her reason for being.
“I saw Jesus,” she told her friends.
She liked President Goulart because Ciro liked President Goulart, Che Guevara, Bob Dylan, and Noel Rosa. Ruth was Ciro’s first lady, his Jackie, she played the perfect hostess for her beloved. She took an interest in politics again, debated the bomb, became friends with Célia, married Irene to Álvaro, laughed at Sílvio’s excesses, and never understood why Ribeiro was eternally single. She felt sorry for him, but didn’t know why. She fell in love with everything that orbited around her sun. They marched against the coup of 1964, watched the musical Opinião, starring Nara Leão and later Maria Bethânia, paraded with the Banda de Ipanema Carnival block, went to the beach, and loved each other like crazy. Their honeymoon was in Búzios. Ciro took her to hunt for that night’s lobster. They dived among the rocks and fucked on the sand, on the quay, in the bedroom, in the other rooms. Ruth had only known orgasms in her dreams, and Ciro made them real. He was a pioneer.
But it is precisely here, at the apex of romantic realization, that a woman’s fate is sealed. Drunk on love, Ruth was no longer herself. She was Ciro, she was their son, the house, the couple. She said she was complete. She had forgotten the philosopher’s warning. She never suspected that those ten years of happiness were just the opening act to Tosca, the accumulation of everything that she wouldn’t have from then on.
She woke early. Ciro was watching her in silence. It wasn’t normal for him to wake up before her. Ruth smiled and he headed for the bathroom without returning the smile.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” he replied.
For years on end, Ruth would go over that morning in her mind. She was sure Ciro still loved her when he went to bed, but he woke up changed, sullen, dry. He had come home late, he’d been drinking, and Ruth had wanted to talk, but he’d become irritated and locked himself in the bathroom. The next day, he was aloof. She demanded an explanation and heard something she’d never expected: the problem was their marriage. Ruth froze. He didn’t want to get into it now, apologized, buttoned up his suit, and left for the office. Shaken, she asked the maid to look after João, called in sick to work, and retreated to the bedroom. The maid noticed her pale face, bulging eyes, and shortness of breath, but didn’t say anything. She took care of the boy.
Ruth didn’t eat, sleep, or leave her cloister. Midnight came and went and there was no sign of Ciro. She began to panic. She fell asleep exhausted, with swollen eyes, woke up in a sweat, and began to pace back and forth. She looked out the window every minute. She talked to herself and sobbed, while insomnia came and went. The sun was about to rise when she heard the door. Like a trained dog missing its owner, she stood waiting beside the bed. She heard footsteps in the corridor, it was him, she was sure. The door opened and Ciro appeared, unsettled.
Ruth ignored the lipstick marks and glitter on his shirt. They went at it like dogs. Ruth sobbed, clinging to her husband, and he swore he’d been faithful.
The months passed uneventfully, Ciro seemed cured, and Ruth recovered her delicate pride. The television was flooded with Christmas commercials, announcing the bottleneck of festivities. Ciro said he was going to stay back late for the firm’s end-of-year shindig. Ruth didn’t mind, overwhelmed as she was with presents, tree, and turkey, with the French toast and desserts for Christmas Eve. Midnight arrived and Ciro was nowhere to be seen. She went to bed with the sinking feeling that the nightmare was back. At 4:47 in the morning, she heard the key in the lock and raced into the corridor, tail wagging. Ciro had gone on a bender, as he did occasionally. His fly down, shirt hanging out of his pants, and traces of cheap cherry lipstick gave him away. Ciro showed no sign of guilt or regret; on the contrary, he laughed and called her darling. Disgusting. She shoved him away and shouted so that the neighbors would all know what a vile creature shared her bed with her. She gave full rein to hysteria. Ciro lost his patience. He’d been up all night and needed to sleep. He grabbed a change of clothes and disappeared through the back door. Her voice quieted when she saw him take the elevator down, and she spent the night standing in the laundry room, watching the back door. The maid arrived at seven and Ruth ran to lock herself in the bedroom. She took charge of the boy, the kitchen, and the ironing, and didn’t call Ruth until late in the afternoon, to say she had to go. It was December 23. Ruth didn’t answer. The poor woman called Raquel, the boy’s aunt, to ask her to take over. Raquel sent João to stay with his cousins and tried to coax Ruth out of her refuge. It was a lengthy negotiation. Ruth said she would only leave the room if Ciro came to her. Raquel repeated that she would leave a message in the living room, in case he came back, but that she needed to keep her chin up and lean on her family.
“You need to think of João, Ruth. It’s not his fault you two aren’t seeing eye to eye. Think about it—João’s more important than Ciro.”
Ruth loved João, but she had Ciro on a pedestal. That was why she hadn’t wanted any more children—she didn’t need them. It was a character flaw, highly irrational, a curse. She came out of hiding after much insistence, pallid and almost dead. Raquel was shocked by her sister’s withdrawal. She helped her into the car as if she were made of crystal and took her to her home in Humaitá. Ruth didn’t come down for supper on Christmas Eve, nor did she want to open presents or see relatives. She stopped eating on the 29th and continued to fast until the 31st. She was admitted to Clínica São Vicente on January 1, 1981.
Ciro didn’t show up until the afternoon, in a fluster, and begged to be alone with his wife. Raquel reluctantly agreed. She needed to rest, and she really did believe her brother-in-law had an obligation to clean up his mess. Ruth woke up hours later. When she saw Ciro, she thought the sedative was making her hallucinate. He lay down beside her and swore once more that he’d never do it again. Ruth took his word for it. She had no choice, and would have done anything so as not to lose him again. Ruth belonged to Ciro. And the more she proved it, the harder it was for Ciro to love what he had.
Six more months of calm and then another silly slip, a missed dentist appointment for João, made Ruth prick up her ears. And for good reason. Ciro was carrying on with the wife of a client for whom he had won a case. Fear made her forget her dignity. She followed him in a taxi to Glória, took the elevator up to Sílvio’s lair, caught them in the act, and made a scene. Ciro acted as if there was no one else there, stood, dressed calmly, and disappeared down the corridor. Ruth screamed until she lost her voice, stumbled down the nine flights of stairs, went to the corner, wandered around in circles looking for him, came to her senses, felt ridiculous, and went home. Ciro was already there, showered and in pajamas. When he saw her, he smiled as if everything was normal. Bewildered, Ruth told him what had happened and Ciro acted indignant. He lamented the fiasco, was concerned about Sílvio, whose apartment it was, and assured her that she had disturbed the wrong couple. He had been there at home the whole time, waiting for her.
“Don’t you think you should see a doctor, my love?”
Ruth lowered herself onto a chair using the back as a support. She asked for a glass of water. If it wasn’t him, she thought, who had she seen in Glória? And if it was him in Glória, then who was the pajama-clad man standing before her in the dining room now? It consumed her to such an extent that once again she forgot to eat and sleep. She was admitted to the clinic again three days later.
Ruth came back changed. She barely spoke and was secretive. She understood that people thought she was crazy, but she didn’t care. Her disappointment with Ciro extended to the rest of humanity. She didn’t give a damn about anyone. We only love what we don’t have. It had taken her years to heed the warning. She had done everything wrong, she had never resisted Ciro. She had given in immediately, for all time. She had lost all bargaining power. She needed to deprive him of her. Ruth stopped talking to her husband.
Ruth was wrong in thinking that she could make passion succumb to her will. The one who suffered was her. She was the one missing him. She was a masochist when Ciro wanted her to be a sadist. It destroyed their sex life. Ciro reacted with equal violence. He fucked half of Rio, while Ruth looked on in silence.
The most extreme act of romanticism is suicide. Ruth was born with the flaw of being exceedingly feminine and overly romantic. She had always seen it as an advantage, but now that she had discovered how fragile she was, she’d have given anything to be free of herself. If she had the audacity of Madame Bovary, she’d have taken hemlock; if she had the nobility of Sonya, she’d have taken on Siberia; if she were poor, like Fantine, she’d have pulled out her teeth. But no, she was a mortal, middle-class woman from Rio, like so many others. Célia, Irene, and Raquel all treated her suffering as something vulgar—it was just a separation. Wrist-slitting, hanging, gas, these were ends too grandiose for someone like her. She decided to be humble and kill her love with vestal discretion; her home became a convent. She no longer planned to win back her husband. What she wanted was to insulate herself from the noise outside; she didn’t want to care, to want, to need, to suffer. Death. She practiced indifference until she became insensitive to the smell, face, and voice of her other half. Objects began to disappear from the apartment, records, books. Ciro was preparing to move out. He hung his head and left, his suitcases full. Ruth understood that he wouldn’t be back. She was relieved, free to be unhappy on her own terms.
“Ruth, Ciro died, yesterday, at Silvestre. They found a really aggressive tumor three months ago. He didn’t make it. It’s over, Ruth,” said Raquel. “Do you want to go to the funeral? I have to take João and I thought I should ask you.”
Ruth was furious at her sister. Her repressed love threatened to well up and spill over. She would never see Ciro again. All that was left was her mistakes, she thought. Ciro would never know that their ten years of marriage continued to mean everything to her. Why hadn’t Raquel told her before? She wanted to slap her, blame her for his murder. Her long training in isolation, the self-control attained at great cost, brought back her rationality. It was for the best, she thought. She wouldn’t have had the courage to see him, to risk losing her sanity once again. She said she’d rather stay home.
Raquel left the room without protest. She had learned to respect her sister’s sovereign will. She had adopted João as her own and had kept on the maid. Ruth required very little; in exchange she asked that no one judge her, and that she be left in peace. Raquel had grown up jealous of her sister’s charms, but now she thanked God that such divine gifts had not been bestowed upon her. She had learned from a young age that the world is unfair and that great joys precede even greater tragedies. She despised her brother-in-law for his weakness and considered not attending the funeral herself, but her sense of duty toward her nephew made her forget the idea.
Ruth opened a cupboard in the living room that hadn’t seen any light since Ciro had left. She took out a dusty cardboard box, placed it on the table, and rummaged through the pile of records looking for the old Dolores Duran LP. The record player, along with the sound system that Ciro had bought in 1978, was still intact in the cabinet. The maid tended to the empty rooms with the same zeal as before. Ruth was always in the bedroom, but that day, after Raquel knocked on her door, she decided to come out of hiding. She opened the curtains of the living room to let in the sun and allow her memory to roam. She saw herself, so different to the person she was now, sitting on that same sofa, Ciro inviting her to dance, João jumping on the cushions, the paintings, the table. The moment required music. She took the record out of its cover, cleaned it carefully, and put it on the turntable. The needle was still there, the crackling before the melody began, the orchestra’s introduction, Dolores.
Don’t let the bad world take you away again
Ruth turned up the volume, sang, danced, and allowed herself to be swept away. The she flopped onto the armchair, out of breath, pensive, and fell silent. She was grateful. She had lived with Ciro’s absence for years. His death had put an end to the unbearable possibility of one day discovering that he was happy with another woman. Dead, he would remain hers, immaterial, eternal.
* * *
Ruth outlived everyone in her generation. She lasted for many years, locked away in her apartment with her imaginary partner. She checked out from reality early, existing somewhere between here and there, more there than here. Alzheimer’s, abulia, dementia, sclerosis—so many names for such similar symptoms. Ruth extinguished herself, watched over by her sister, and passed away one rainy morning at the age of eighty-three, happy with her master.
Célia was there for Ruth throughout her drama, kept her up to date on Ciro’s latest, was present every time she was admitted to the clinic, until she came to the conclusion that her friend’s neurosis was a lost cause.
After the divorce, Célia’s visits to the ground-floor apartment on Rua Maria Angélica came to an end. The ample living room opening onto a well-kept garden, where in the past they’d met for Saturday feijoadas, watched the World Cup, where the children could run free and the adults could play cards and drink all they wanted, became a dark mausoleum. Ruth didn’t open the windows or turn on the light. She inhabited the last bedroom, and no one was allowed in except the maid. But she didn’t consider the maid a person, Célia suspected, judging by the way Ruth addressed her.
“I’m telling you, Irene, Ruth acts like a plantation owner. She treats the maid like a slave and has breakfast in bed. If she’d only fold some clothes or wash some dishes, she wouldn’t be like this, desperate because of that good-for-nothing husband of hers. I know I’m a bother, so I won’t be going back. What for? To listen to her majesty’s tantrums?”
Irene didn’t disagree, although she thought Célia was exaggerating somewhat. She identified more with Ruth than with Célia, the Margaret Thatcher of São Cristóvão. Irene avoided talking about her own marital dissatisfaction with Célia for fear she’d get a lecture.
Célia had studied at a public school, was a swimming champion in junior high, and knew how to stand up for herself. Her Portuguese father had been abandoned by his mother, who had become widowed early and, preferring the company of her oldest son, had sent the younger one to boarding school. Her rejection gave the boy a trade. He learned carpentry at school and, once he was fully grown and the master of his own destiny, did well for himself in furniture-making. He married his shop’s cleaner, a beautiful black woman with very white teeth, who turned out to be a splendid business manager. Célia grew up near the São Cristóvão Club soccer field. She liked to go to Quinta da Boa Vista Park after Sunday mass, to games at Maracanã Stadium, and for ice cream and a movie at Saenz Peña Square. Rio’s North Zone was her territory. But prosperity and the purchase of a large shop in Catete made the family move to Flamengo when she was eighteen. This social ascension was terrible for Célia. She didn’t recognize herself in that amoral paradise—she was from the working class. When she finished technical school, she didn’t even consider going to university, as she despised academic pride. They like to rub those scrolls in our faces, she used to say. Célia wanted a job, a wage, and independence. She took a typing course and was hired as a trainee with the state traffic department. She prospered in that bureaucratic cesspool, surrounded by underhanded schemes, the buying of driver’s licenses, kickbacks, expediters, dust, and no air conditioning. She treated the rich and the poor with equal steeliness. She did justice. She didn’t turn in her colleagues, and hated snitches, but she refused to take part in their thievery. Deep down, they’re all no good, she thought.
She had never trusted men; she’d been brought up not to. Tall and athletic, the only reason she didn’t have more suitors was because young men were intimidated by that Charles de Gaulle in a skirt. The opposite sex was a potential enemy and she looked down on them from the heights of her fortress. Only a saint could get to her. The saint, in this case, was Neto.
Célia swam from one end of Copacabana to the other on a regular basis. From the sand near Fort Copacabana, Neto saw Calypso emerge from the waves. Of mixed ancestry, like himself, a giant, extraordinary. He fell for her there and then.
Lover boy had a degree in business management. His father, a public servant, had brought his son up to be someone. He drank in moderation and was a good kid, good-humored, and brilliant at soccer. Álvaro attributed Neto’s excessive normality to his skin color. His theory wasn’t unfounded. Whenever a more raucous celebration ended with the police at the door, Neto was always the one hauled down to the station. This unspoken racism made him pursue an exemplary life. He married young, had children young, and died young.
He had met Ciro and Álvaro at university. Business Management had a few subjects in common with Law and Accounting. Together, they’d started a samba-jazz band, with Neto on drums and Ciro on the guitar. Álvaro had tried the tambourine, but had ended up on the shaker.
They were united by male allegiance, women, and the beach, in that order. Copacabana was home to various tribes. Álvaro had known Ribeiro since he was a child. They had both lived on Ministro Rocha Azevedo and had gone to the beach at the end of Rua Miguel Lemos. Ribeiro was friends with the crowd there, some rough types who ran amok in the nice neighborhood. He was always surrounded by women, unlike Álvaro, who frightened them away even when he still had hair. Sílvio was drawn to the group by Ciro’s charms, and took everyone’s virginity in psychoactives. Sílvio was a myth in Copacabana. He was said to be the youngest person ever accepted into the famous Jackass Club, and had participated in the cowardly act of hanging a transvestite by the foot from a tenth-floor window on Rua Barata Ribeiro.
The first Carnival of the 1960s was the big turning point in their friendship. Sílvio told them about some Italians he’d met in the diplomatic service, who pretended to be gay to get close to virgins and women who were hard to get. “They loosen up because they think they’re safe… after two drinks you’re in!” he assured them. He proposed they use their musical talents to found their own Carnival block of cross-dressing men. The idea was greeted with unconditional enthusiasm. They spent the entire month of February putting together their costumes. Ciro, the most beautiful of them all, played a sexy intellectual and launched the miniskirt way before Mary Quant, with boots and a wig with a fringe. Álvaro was a housewife with watermelon breasts, and Neto let out his inner samba queen in a dazzling gold-sequined bikini, with a boa around his shoulders and feathers on his head. Sílvio went as Carmen Miranda, and Ribeiro paid tribute to Norma Bengell’s Bardot. They laid half the city and consolidated their friendship.
Neto’s friends were his only sin.
The five were lolling in the sand when the goddess emerged from the waves and strode to the shade of the beach tent next to theirs. The skin on muscle, the sway of her hips, and her hard thighs were an arrow through Neto’s heart. His friends noticed and began to egg him on. Neto approached her. Célia was aloof and kept him on ice for months. She didn’t give him the time of day, but she didn’t discourage him either. His extreme patience was proof of his love. Then she tortured him with a year of courting and a three-year engagement. A virgin. The bride’s parents only gave their consent to the marriage after the groom was given a promotion at the hospital supply company he worked for. Neto bravely resisted the urge to swallow Célia alive, to be alone with her, without her mother, nieces, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Without clothes. He could barely wait. At the wedding ceremony he was so anxious, so thankful to finally have the right to be with his own wife, that he sobbed at the altar. The long wait annulled his performance that first night. His blood pressure dropped and he had to lie down. Exhausted from all the anticipation, he fell asleep. Célia didn’t mind leaving consummation until the next morning. She hugged her trophy husband and took a while to nod off. You only became a grown-up when you were married, and now she was. Married and a grown-up.
Her father had a meltdown at the church. He started muttering inaudibly in the sacristy. Then he began to roll his head around, gesticulating and flinging his arms wide.
“That bastard… that bastard’s going to steal my daughter…”
Family members tried to reassure him, but he lost his composure, repeating that they were taking his baby girl. The mother, worried that his deep-seated jealousy would ruin the occasion, gave him a tranquilizer, told him to splash some water on his face, and went back to enjoy her day of glory. She had been born in the neighborhood of Mangueira, had lost her parents at a young age, and had helped bring up her brothers and sisters. She had never imagined that she would be able to give her daughter a wedding like that. She had a photograph of the bride and groom framed and hung it in the living room over the couch. Poverty, the death of her parents and many other relatives, it was all behind her now. All she had to do was sit and wait for grandchildren.
They took a while to come. A boy and a girl, Murilo and Dalva. Célia put together a spreadsheet of their expenses and calculated that it would be wise to wait three years before having a child. Every month, she would set aside part of their earnings for the future endeavor and, in the meantime, enjoyed her prince consort.
They were happy together.
Célia put up with Neto’s friends’ mischief until their children were born. Then she removed them all from her circle of trust. She was suspicious of Sílvio’s fetishes and Ribeiro’s pedophilia. Her father died begging her not to let down her guard. “Sons-in-law aren’t relatives,” he insisted. Her mother argued with him, defending her daughter’s choice, but thought it didn’t hurt to stay alert.
Serial divorces, youths on drugs, hippies in dirty pants: Célia hated the new ways of the world. She never forgot the day she saw Ney Matogrosso on television for the first time. At first she admired the folk singer with the beautiful voice, with a splendid feather boa around her shoulders and a vulture mask on her face. Célia thought she was a little hairy, but the pitch of her voice was unmistakable: it was a woman. In a more daring dance move, the mysterious peacock thrust its hips this way, while the breast baubles went that way, revealing that there were no breasts there.
“It’s a man!” she cried. “Good Lord! It’s a man!”
Célia made the children leave the room.
“The world’s gone crazy,” she said to Neto that evening, and redoubled her watch over her children.
She admired President Médici and General Geisel, and shared their horror of communists. They wanted to take over Brazil, she was sure of it. What, share my home with others? Let them do it at their own place! And she would turn her back, refusing to give it any more thought. Her two biggest fears were that Dalva would lose her virginity and that Murilo would be gay. Her paranoia about external threats ended up molding her appearance. She became dour. The tension around her mouth creased her cheeks, and worry etched out lines in her forehead and grooves between her eyebrows. Célia grew ugly. Neto didn’t notice. To him, she would always be Calypso.
They fought, it is true, many times, and even came to blows once or twice, but breaking up was never a possibility. Célia was the guard dog of the family. She died without enjoying an old age, at sixty, of a stroke. It would have been an exemplary death if she hadn’t been so young. She said goodnight to her husband, went to bed, and didn’t wake up.
Neto’s desperation at his wife’s wake was a sign of what was to come. He doubled over in anguish. He knelt on the ground, tried to tear off his clothes, gnashed his teeth, kicked, and shouted. His children ran to restrain him. Neto’s howling diminished, his fury abated, and Murilo and Dalva sat him down once again in the chairs beside their mother, but the calm didn’t last. The queue of condolence-givers had barely begun to move again when Neto had another wild fit. He seized Célia and tried to carry her out of there, to take her home. Help was needed to get him to put her body down. At Murilo’s request, Álvaro and Ribeiro dragged him off to the infirmary. Sedated, he followed the coffin, leaning on two of the sidekicks his wife had so vehemently disliked.
Neto never recovered. Of his own accord, he continued taking the tranquilizers he’d been given at São João Batista Cemetery. “I can’t take this sober,” he said. When his speech became so slurred that no one could understand what he was saying, Murilo took him to a psychiatrist and Neto began the merry-go-round of trial and error with mood regulators. None worked very well. The cocktail turned him into a walking bundle of side effects. He would swing from euphoria to depression, more depressed than euphoric. Murilo tried homeopathy, massage, acupuncture, and insisted on psychoanalysis, but nothing could put a dent in Neto’s fixation with Célia.
He was in permanent mourning.