Mutiny on the Bounty, thinks Hugo, is a strange film to show on a ship. The girls have seen it three times already in the onboard theatre, and now they’re off to listen to the jukebox in the ‘teen lounge.’ They seem to bounce happily enough around the ship all day, and find their parents at mealtimes. As Hugo and Dora continue on their daily walk about the ship—Dora’s idea—he wonders if weeks of travel might be a gift. Goodbye by a thousand tiny degrees, unlike travelling to Canada by plane: a rupture too sudden and shocking to consider.
It’s been almost a week since the top of Sugarloaf Mountain disappeared in the humid fog that hung over the city, obscuring the tops of buildings and Christ the Redeemer. Next vanished the city’s smaller, jumbled peaks, and the tall lamps in the harbour, their hazy lights receding, dimming, then extinguished. Soon, the wheeling, flattened V-shape of gulls circling the boats was gone, then the contours of the shore, until finally there was nothing left of Brazil to see. Eventually, the muddy waters of the Amazon merged with the blue-green of the Atlantic, and from the promenade deck, they inhaled salt air and the white paint freshly applied to the corroded railings and blistered iron shell of the ship. Their voyage barely begun, Hugo already found himself suppressing swells of nausea from the sway of the boat. From leaving Luiza. A few times he’s caught himself imagining her tangled in the ship’s rudders, hair and skin and sinew churning in their wake, following them all the way to Canada. The ugliest part of his mind is still the quickest, and has the habit of horror. But his medicated brain doesn’t hold on to these thoughts the way it used to: they streak through, then just as quickly evaporate. He can’t hold anything for long. So he thinks of other things. He feels the breeze on his skin. Looks into the sun. Hears the crackle of a woman behind him fondling her packet of chips. These are the moments when he almost feels free.
Hugo and Dora spend their time on the ship stretched out among the other idle bodies on chaises lining the promenade deck, or joining card games, drinking cocktails, staring out to sea. Since his treatment, he doesn’t have much desire for alcohol, but he drinks to join in, to keep Dora company. She is frequently distracted, often staring out into the distance, drinking more than usual. Yet she stays close by his side, as though pulled there. But even as they were embarking at the dock, surrounded by families weeping, embracing, she kept looking around, then over her shoulder as they boarded, a mass herded up the gangplank. Had she hoped he would come?
Now, as they walk around the ship together, she keeps her hands curled around his upper arm. Little is said. Nothing of consequence. He moves carefully, his arm pressed gently at her back. He doesn’t want to startle her.
‘It’s cocktail hour in the ballroom,’ Dora says to him now. ‘They’re going to have music of some kind.’
And so they go, and for a while it is the usual big band with some samba, some jazz thrown in to make the passengers feel more adventurous. One giant entertainment, this ship: buffets, a show every night, a swimming pool, shuffleboard and crokinole and bridge tournaments on deck. The saxophone player comes toward the microphone, his face glistening with sweat.
‘And now, what’s new?’ he says slowly, enunciating carefully and lingering on sibilance. What’sss new? He gestures to the piano player to begin as he turns and wipes his face and the back of his neck with a cloth, sweating under the bright stage lights.
The music is warm and smooth and hazy, and when Hugo asks Dora to dance she looks almost as pliant and transported as he feels. By the time they reach the dance floor, a shadow has crossed her face and she is scowling, preoccupied again. They dance in silence, until he feels her body shudder slightly against his.
‘Look now,’ he says, suddenly awkward. His own wife and he doesn’t know what to do with her pain, what to say. Remote, he had sometimes thought her; but it isn’t that she’s cold. She’s determined, sometimes afraid. Careful not to feel as much as the rest of them, never to fall apart like they have, because then who would hold them up? But now that she’s crying he is like a child seeing a parent cry. Unsure what to do. He tries to lift her chin so that her eyes meet his, but she won’t let him, so he speaks into her hair.
‘That man was nothing to us,’ he says. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t true. ‘I won’t mention him again.’
‘I won’t either.’
‘And when we get to Canada, it will be so cold your tear ducts will freeze, so you won’t be able to cry anymore.’
Here she laughs a little, then lays her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s not cold there all the time, you know.’
‘I know.’
A thin, high-pitched whining escapes through her clenched teeth. She might split open; she’s fighting so hard to get something out. Or keep something in.
‘There’s time,’ he says, holding her tighter now, holding it in. ‘When we get there, once the girls are in school. We’ll have so much time.’
‘Yes.’ A release of breath now. She leans into his lapel and the saxophone player goes on: ‘Georgia on My Mind.’ ‘Misty.’
‘Do you remember, when we were young,’ he says, ‘how much we loved to dance?’ He lifts her chin again and this time she meets his gaze, nods, then shuts her eyes once more.
‘We went to that masked ball for Carnival once at the Copa. I remember thousands of people.’ As he says it, he knows that can’t be true, but that’s what he sees in his mind. Translucent waves of fabric hung from the ceiling and crested onto the walls above people jammed around small tables. Silhouettes of boats were mounted above crowded balconies, streamers spilling over their edges. Giant stars hung from the walls, and large pillars topped with lanterns protruded from the floor at an angle. The men were in white jackets with plain masks while the women wore lace, cat ears, peacock feathers.
‘You wore that velvet rabbit number. All the other women wore the prettiest masks they could find, and you looked so bizarre, with those ears that kept nearly poking me in the eye. I loved it, how you were willing to make yourself ugly, when you were the most beautiful one there.’
For years, they’ve been drifting farther from one another, their lives bifurcating, but he promised her he would come back. And perhaps they could still recover something elemental, those cardinal lines on the map where they still cross. Elsewhere.
Outside the ballroom windows, he is surprised to see only the slate-coloured sea, the deepening blue sky. The ship is an amusement park, but the world outside is nothing but air and water.
They had danced all night at the masked ball, and then as now, she lets him hold her up.