Heliopolis (13 page)

I nod.

‘We lived there, before your company kicked us out. The toilets at the back of the sixth floor were a kitchen I shared with sixteen other people. You can see a scorch mark on the wall in the third cubicle along where my chip pan caught fire. And one of my son’s drawings—of a hang glider, I think—is still on the wall. By a soap dispenser. It’s a crazy place, where you work.’

‘How many children do you have?’

‘Just one. Milton.’ She smiles. ‘You remind me of him, you know? If it wasn’t for your stuck-up suit! But I don’t want to talk about him.’

I weigh my words. ‘He’s . . . in trouble?’

‘Of course he’s in trouble! We’re all in trouble. He’s got nothing to eat, no money, nothing to do. It’s fucked, the whole situation. And he sees these drug boys, the
traficantes
, strutting about. Is it any surprise he’s attracted to them? Walking around, devil-may-care, waving their guns in the air! They’ve got all the clothes, all the dough, they do what they want! How do I keep him away from all that by saying “Go to school,” “Stay here,” “Eat this shitty bowl of beans”?’

Suddenly she is crying.

‘I’m sorry. I—’

‘You want to understand what it’s like?’ She closes her eyes, shedding twin tears that steal down her cheeks. ‘I said I didn’t want to talk about it. But you asked me. So you brought us here.’

‘Brought us where?’

‘My son got shot yesterday. Only a few blocks from the office. He was out in the street and he got shot by a motherfucking security guard, just for asking for money. How can people be so ready to take us out over nothing?’

The
lanchonete
is suddenly small and vivid, and filled entirely by Flávia’s wet, careworn face.

‘My God.’ The news seems to supercharge my hangover. I feel sick and giddy, and my head feels like it’s filling up with heavy blood.

‘Don’t look so shocked, child. It’s not your fault.’ She sniffs loudly, and reaches for a napkin.

‘Is he OK?’

She blows her nose. ‘He’ll be fine. This time. But of course, the people who helped with the medical attention were the
traficantes
. Every way you turn you need their help.

‘I try to keep him on the right track. I threaten him. “If you fall in with those boys,” I say, “then I’ll kill you myself. Better that than the alternative—that you get shot by a policeman, or by some other kid who wants to take your place.” But he doesn’t listen to me. He has a horrible temper. He gets it from his father. I worry so much about what he might do if he fell in with the wrong people. And this is just the kind of thing that will push him over the edge. What am I supposed to do to stop it?’

‘I cannot imagine.’

‘No! You can’t. A boy younger than mine was shot in the head, only four months ago. They found his body in the street, his brains drying on the wall. I knew his mother.’ She is crying again.

‘I’m sorry.’

She sniffs. ‘Milton was lucky this time. But the point is that the scumbag who did it really didn’t care if he was alive or dead. If it hadn’t been for the two secretaries who saw it and called for medical help then I don’t know what would have happened. I just don’t know where it will end. The gangs. The guns. The drugs. Some things are getting better. But street names don’t stop people getting killed. Sanitation doesn’t stop people getting killed.’ Her voice is now quavering with anger. ‘And because we’re mostly black—even though for some reason I can’t understand everyone is proud of saying that the white can be just as poor—we mean nothing to the authorities. We might as well not have names.’

Still, I can think of nothing to say.

‘We want to help ourselves. That’s what the rich never understand. They assume we want them to do something, when all we want is to stop being invisible to them so we have the chance to get on.’

Still nothing.

‘Forget it. Second thoughts, I don’t want the burger. I feel sick talking about this stuff. I’m going back to work.’

‘Wait—’ my voice cracks.

‘This isn’t your problem. It’s not right for me to talk like this to you. You live in a different world. Sleeping on floors coated with piss is a choice for you.’ She makes herself laugh, bitterly. ‘Sorry. I’m not in a good mood today. Thanks for the
vitamina
.’

‘My best wishes to your son,’ I call.

She turns slowly, like a supertanker adjusting her course, and meets my eye. ‘He’s not your problem. Don’t worry about him. You can’t make the world better all on your own.’ At the door, she calls over her shoulder, broadcasting it to the street, ‘And stop drinking so much.’

All I can think as I watch her walk away is:
How could you come into work today?

I sit at the bar for a while after she has gone, contemplating the network of cracks that break up the surface of its cream-coloured enamel, and sliding my empty juice glass around in a small puddle of condensed water. Seeing that Flávia didn’t completely finish her
vitamina
, I suck briefly on the straw, tasting the sweet avocado mixed with something more bitter that must be her saliva. Then the cheeseburgers arrive, steaming and savoury, and though I have lost some of my appetite, I can’t ignore them altogether.

I eat, feeling the fats and sugars detonate within me with each greasy, meaty swallow, combating the hangover head on. I finish the first burger, pluck a napkin from the chrome box on the counter, and dab my mouth a little before embarking on the second.

‘Where have you been, you little shit?’ Oscar is standing in the doorway of my office. ‘I warned you about this meeting, and you haven’t done a stroke of work, have you? The MaxiBudget people are here, and your computer isn’t even warm.’

‘You told me to prepare for the meeting, so that’s what I’ve been doing,’ I say. ‘I’ve been meeting with someone from the favela.’

‘Prove it.’ We’re pacing down the corridor, past a beautifully painted graffiti mural of a mermaid, undermined by a later occupant with the spray-on title,
Suck My Fish
.

‘Her name is Flávia. She cleans in this building, and I’ve just taken her for a drink. She’s perfect for this project: has a son, is struggling to make ends meet, goes hungry some of the time. MaxiBudget will be a godsend for her. When we have some concepts she’ll be an instant test audience.’

He stares at me as he walks on. ‘You’re a slippery son of a bitch, Ludo. Always have been.’

‘Thank you, boss.’ Now we’re outside the meeting room.

‘Right, here we go. Remember: impress this guy.’

Oscar throws open the door wearing his finest client-welcoming smile, and I see that impressing this guy—huge, lovable, anticipating my surprise and holding his giant arms out to embrace me—is the least of my worries.

Thank God I’m not still wearing his shirt.

It’s at this point, in a clinch with the real Ernesto, and not the psychotic, whispering version in my head, that something shifts inside me and I know exactly who has been leaving those messages on my phone. The realisation creates a vacuum in the pit of my stomach, and the world goes black in my eyes as he finally releases me.

How could I ever have thought otherwise? No wonder the background noises of the groaning fridge, the rushing pool filter and the twittering bird are so familiar. No wonder the messages only arrive when I have a terrible hangover. I’ve been leaving them myself in the small hours of the morning, on the verge of passing out.

W
here did it start? Was there some point of no return, before which I might have graduated to adulthood without becoming messily, morbidly bound to Melissa; one step forward into pain that I needn’t have taken, without which I might have stayed safe? In fact, one moment does present itself; a scene which, as I replay it now, makes me want to scream and run into the past, waving my arms to avert disaster.

Before I followed Melissa to the city, our roles were well defined and discrete. I lived on the farm and she was its weekend visitor. That meant that I could laugh at her when she got squeamish about caterpillars or sentimental over calves, and she could allow that to happen, safe in the knowledge that her ‘real’ world was somewhere that might easily wrong-foot me. Now that she was my only ally in that world, and my link with the old one, the balance of power shifted, and I began to cling to her.

Zé and my mother had both made it clear that if for any reason I decided the move had been a bad idea, the process was reversible. And so after only three weeks in Angel Park I announced to Melissa that I wasn’t staying.

I am fourteen. Melissa and I are sitting on the submerged concrete stools that encircle the swimming-pool bar, drinking freshly squeezed lime juice. Melissa has taken me there to slow me down, to talk me through all the good things about the city. An electrical storm is brewing, and the palm trees sway uneasily. The sunlight, filtered through boiling smog, is the colour of mustard. This is the morning when Melissa will persuade me to relinquish my home for ever, using only a few words and one fixed blast of the eyes.

‘I’m not staying,’ I said. ‘I’m going back to the farm. My mother needs me and I should never have left her.’

‘At least wait until you’ve had a chance to get used to it here.’

‘I don’t
want
to get used to it. Nobody seems to realise how fucked-up it is.’

‘They know. They’ve just worked out ways of living with it.’

‘I already know how to live on the farm. I’m going back.’

‘What about my parents? Have you thought what they might think if you go back so soon?’

I paused, swishing my legs in the water. I was wearing my old, frayed shorts from the farm, but they seemed out of place here, and I wished I’d put on the new swimming trunks that sat neatly folded in my closet at the house. I looked beyond the pool area toward the distant tower blocks of the city, which broke up the horizon like the defences of an impossible castle.

‘I hadn’t thought about that,’ I said.

‘You should. I doubt they would look at you the same way again if you went back so soon.’

My legs fell straight. I looked at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’m just worried they might think you’re . . . ungrateful.’

‘Is this blackmail?’

‘No. It’s just . . . please don’t go. Stay.’

‘What difference does it make to you? You have the “weekday me” here whenever you need him, and you can go on seeing me on weekends.’

‘But now I have the
real
you,’ she said, smiling. ‘And I don’t want to send him back. Stay with me. We’ll move away from Angel Park in the end. We’ll go and live in the city together, at the top of one of those towers.’

I laughed. ‘Whatever you say.’

‘So you’ll stay?’

‘I’ll give it more time. So long as my mother still recognises me when I go home.’

Melissa laughed and put a hand on my bare thigh under the water. ‘I knew it. You’re going nowhere, city boy. Time to put one of the Pool Bar’s finest toasted sandwiches on Papai’s account. If that doesn’t convince you to stay I don’t know what will.’

We returned to the farm for the first time three weeks later, but it might as well have been a lifetime. I knew this before we’d even set off on the Friday afternoon, when Zé got home from work and took me aside. It would have been at about the time when, on the farm, Silvio was sweeping down the tennis court and clearing leaves from the water chute, whistling old Carnival tunes. I fairly shook with the excitement of returning home. I pictured myself sprinting down the helicopter steps, leaping into my mother’s arms, and following her back to the kitchen to enthuse about the craziness of the city, a chipped mug of sweet coffee in my hand.

‘Ludo,’ said Zé, beaming as he showed me into his study. My bag stood in the hallway, ready to go, packed with gifts (a blouse for my mother, a bottle of whisky for Silvio). ‘You must be excited about returning home this evening. Sit down.’

I was almost breathless with it, but I didn’t want him to see that. ‘Yes. Not that I’m not grateful for being here—but yes, I’m looking forward to it.’

He smiled, and cut the tip off a cigar. ‘It’s OK to be excited about going to see your mother, Ludo. I won’t take it as a personal affront.’

‘Sorry.’

‘And don’t apologise! You can start relaxing around here now. This is your home. Which brings me to my question. You can say whatever you like to this, do you understand? It’s your decision and nobody will judge you either way.’

I nodded.

‘I wanted to ask you, before we arrive back at the farm: where would you like to sleep? In the main part of the house, with the rest of us, or where you used to sleep, with your mother?’

‘With my mother,’ I immediately replied. ‘She would be hurt if I didn’t.’

‘Fine. That’s settled. I just wanted to know whether I should phone ahead to have a room made up for you. Now, get ready. Liftoff in half an hour.’

I left the study, still excited about going home, but no longer uncomplicatedly so, and less sure of what home was than I had been five minutes before.

As the helicopter came in to land at the
fazenda
I looked down at the heads of those in the lineup, dutifully waiting in line as I had done every week for as long as I could remember. My mother in her pinafore, Silvio in his best and only suit. They looked comical from up there. Why had nobody ever told us that? From above, that collection of coiffed heads, all being churned up by the downdraught, the way everybody shuffled and jostled in the line—it might have been designed to make us look as stupid as possible.

‘Silvio’s thinning out on top,’ Zé remarked as we came in. ‘Doesn’t your mother look beautiful today,’ said Rebecca, whose empathy was on a state of high alert on my behalf.

I imagined what they were thinking about down there. Silvio would be making dirty jokes, trying to deliver his punch line as late as possible so that everyone in the line would be fighting the laughter just as the helicopter doors were thrown open. My mother would be smirking a little, but keeping it together.

And there it was, the realisation, electric: she was trying to keep a straight face for me now. Everything had already changed. No matter how sensitive anybody was to the fact that it might happen, nothing could prevent it. I felt nauseous as we hit the ground.

‘Down to earth,’ Zé proclaimed, as the door of our capsule popped open and the warm, leafy air of home flooded in. ‘Down to earth at last.’

That first weekend was the one with the most uneasy silences, when the chasm between me and my mother seemed the widest, but everyone was desperate for this strange new arrangement to work. My mother and I took refuge in role play. I sat expansively in the kitchen, a prodigal son telling tales of the metropolis, while she proudly fussed round me, dispensing cakes. Neither posture came naturally—both involved the pretence of pride, which neither of us possessed in any quantity, and both were dropped in subsequent weeks—but something about playing the parts was a comfort to us, as the bereaved sometimes shelter under broad brushstrokes of personality to prevent close scrutiny of their pain.

‘Look at my boy flown in from the big bad city,’ she cried, in a flustered tone of voice completely alien to her, when we had finally disengaged from a lengthy embrace. ‘Let me pour you some coffee.’

The words were a smoke screen. As so often before, my mother’s true eloquence revealed itself through what she put on the table: trays of cakes, sweet pastries and savoury buns; and coffee. It felt like I had never tasted coffee as delicious as what was in the cup before me now.

Although most of the objects in my mother’s kitchen were functional in the extreme, there were a few special items, brought back for her by Zé and Rebecca on trips to Europe and America, and given with the injunction that they were ‘for you, not for us’ and never to be used for any entertaining other than her own. As a result, they remained largely unused, except when some distant relative came to stay, or on the birthday of Silvio or one of the other farm workers. One such gift was the set of delicate Italian coffee cups that I drink from to this day. (I knew they were Italian because I found the word ‘Lucca’ on the bottom of each cup and saucer, and asked my mother to show me where it was in the house atlas. We got through all the Americas and most of Africa before she believed me that it might be in Europe.) As a boy I hadn’t even been allowed to wash these in case I should break them. Now, they were laid out on the table for me, while Silvio, I noticed, drank from the thick, chipped mug of my childhood. I wanted to snatch it from his hand and dash my dainty cup to the floor, but I had to play along.

‘Things OK in the city?’ said Silvio, regarding me over the cup, the steam playing around the dark laugh lines at his eyes. Fumes from his customary slug of brandy reached my nose. It was a smell I had known all my life.

‘They’re fine,’ I said. ‘Different.’

‘You’ve got a nice, comfortable bed there? You’re sleeping well?’

‘It’s pretty good.’

He took a sip of coffee, and kept his eyes on me. ‘Hasn’t that crazy place taught you anything yet?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been there long.’

‘So you can’t help me answer my question?’

‘I’ll try. What is the question?’

He regarded me seriously. ‘What did the priest say when he came home to find two whores and a monkey in his bed?’

Thank God for Silvio, especially since what had happened must have been playing havoc with his sense of feudal propriety. I was never more grateful for his jokes than now.

‘While we’re talking about beds,’ my mother said, interrupting. ‘There was an instruction to make up an extra one at the house. You’ll be sleeping up there from now on?’

Silvio’s laughter sent a hot spray of coffee over the plate of
empadas
in front of him. ‘Looks like city boy has got himself a taste for comfy beds after all!’ he shouted, before wheezing uncontrollably for several minutes.

‘And he asks me why he can’t be trusted with the good china,’ muttered my mother, whisking the plate out of danger and fetching a cloth to clean the mess. It was too late for me to point out that I had in fact requested to stay with her.

But I did. I spent the afternoon cursing Zé for offering me the choice but not acting on my decision, and later that day, as I watched her ladling fish stock into a
moqueca
pot, I told my mother that when Zé had put the question to me, I had asked not to be moved. She stroked my cheek with her strong, tough palm.

‘I’m sure you did,’ she said. ‘But you should sleep up there. I’ve been making those wonderful beds for years—one of us might as well enjoy sleeping in them.’

Somehow, time made it OK—time, and the fact that everyone wanted it to work. And in fact, the physical distance between us brought with it great benefits. Far earlier than for most, my mother became a proper friend, an equal. Now she had relinquished her pastoral responsibilities, I could complain or enthuse without moderation about my new life, in the way you might to a grandparent or an uncle, or anyone else who loves you but isn’t saddled with the worry of being principally responsible.

The character of the weekends changed. Now that I was the one bounding out of the helicopter, I saw less of Melissa and the family, and spent all my time in the kitchen with my mother. I ate with her instead of with the others. And in so doing I got to know her better than I would otherwise have done.

The downside was the occasional feeling that conditions had been placed on her mother’s love. From that point on, she made no attempt to hide it when she was itching to get on with whatever she had been doing when my phone call interrupted her, or when she was falling asleep after a hard day. Our worlds were moving apart.

What seemed outrageous at first became natural in no time: multiple homes, two wardrobes of clothes, staff. And now that home had stopped being home, the process of assimilation into Angel Park could gather pace.

To start with, I didn’t help myself. In my third week, a guard pulled over to investigate something suspicious in one of the ornamental ponds. He feared, or hoped for, a dead body. What he found was me, floating face down and contemplating the depths, as had been my habit in the forgotten pools of the farm. The usual fray of drawn pistols and aggressive shouts ensued, before I managed to convince the man that I was a resident.

‘That pond is ornamental,’ said the guard, holstering his weapon as I trudged dripping up the bank. ‘You can’t swim in it. There are other pools for swimming in.’

‘Why can’t I swim in this one?’ I asked.

‘I told you, it’s
ornamental
,’ he said, as if saying the word louder would make me understand him better. ‘It’s not a swimming pool.’ He helped me on to the bank. ‘Also, some of the sewage pipes round here don’t carry so well: it’s probably chock-full of Angel Shit.’

‘That is a reason I can relate to,’ I breathed, wishing I’d kept my mouth closed underwater, but smiling in spite of this as my head instantly filled with Silvio’s jokes about rich turds clogging up the water chute.

School was a grand academy in extensive grounds, shielded from the favela on its doorstep by high walls and gatehouses. At dropping-off and picking-up time the street was impassable, blocked by ranks of chauffeur-driven vehicles, their engines ticking over as they queued up to relinquish or collect their charges as near to the door as possible. Had Melissa not been fearless enough to leave the compound, her kidnappers would never have succeeded. They were crazy to think they had a chance of grabbing a pupil from that place—but the high walls and the blacked-out cars must have told them their prize would be worth the risk.