Heliopolis (18 page)

‘I told him to leave the city for a few days. He’s gone to stay out of town, with my father.’

‘Sounds like a good idea.’ I’m short of breath.

Flávia ducks off through a low, flimsy door in the wall, with a gate in front fashioned from an old piece of wrought-iron garden furniture. The stairs take us down sharply, through three other dwellings: two boys watching TV, a teenage girl washing her hair in a plastic bowl, a man in a vest smoking as he stirs a pan of rice on a gas ring. These last two both greet Flávia and regard me with polite interest. I share Oscar’s surprise at the fact that they all have TV and fridges, but then I’d probably have been equally amazed if they didn’t.

Only when Flávia puts down her bag do I conclude that we have arrived, that this is her space: a red-painted waxed floor with a small kitchen area and two beds separated by a blanket strung from a clothesline.

‘Your son sleeps in there?’

She nods.

‘Do you mind if I look?’

‘There isn’t much to see.’

I hook a finger round the partitioning blanket and pull it to one side. It could be the room of any boy, if it qualified as a room. The space is scarcely larger than the bed it contains. Two old football posters adorn the walls, and there’s a bench at the end of the bed with a padlocked box on it that I assume contains the boy’s valuables.

Flávia is bustling around, unpacking her shopping and stowing it in a small fridge and an old cupboard that serves as her kitchen unit. I notice a framed photograph of her and a younger Milton at a party, him wearing a clean white shirt, her holding up a bottle of beer to the camera, laughing.

‘Where the hell is my kitchen knife?’ she mutters.

‘Nothing stays put around here. There’s no respect for personal property.’

I know where the knife is—it’s in police custody, having been prised out of a dusty palm tree and taken away as evidence. I don’t suppose Flávia would be pleased to hear that.

The girl who was washing her hair next door comes in with a Polaroid camera.

‘Stand together!’ she says, without asking who I am.

Flávia has been sweating as she climbed the steps. She smells spicy, almost horsey, giving me a brief sensory memory of the hot, enclosed air of the farm stables. I’m sure I don’t smell too good either.

The
pow
of the flash. It’s like a weapon. Momentarily, it shocks every blemish on the wall into revealing itself. One of Flávia’s purchases, a box of rice, the smallest you can buy, moves on the counter. I glimpse the retreating back of a cockroach, and realise how minimal the lighting is down here, how much it keeps hidden.

Holding the camera at arm’s length with one hand, the girl flicks her hair distractedly with the other to dry it, and looks at me, indicating for the first time that she might be interested to know who I am.

‘My name is Ludo,’ I say.

She smiles. ‘Funny name.’ She pulls the Polaroid from the camera and waves it around in the air before handing it to me.

I look ill. Flávia looks tired. But there’s spontaneity in it. We’re both cracking a smile, and the smiles are real. A trick of the light, something reflective caught by the flash, means that there’s a white ghost between me and Flávia in the picture, like the spirit of her son, materialised to keep us apart.

‘I like it,’ says Flávia, taking it from me. ‘I’ll pin it to my wall to remind me of the strange man who sleeps on toilet floors. Now go. I’ve had enough for today. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Don’t turn left into the alley if you want to make it back to work.’

‘Goodbye, strange man,’ says the girl. Her smile. It’s a shaft of light. She follows me back through Flávia’s door to her own place.

‘Aren’t you going to tell me your name?’ I ask her, on my way out.

‘No.’ She laughs.

‘How about a photo of the two of us?’

‘Those things cost money, you know! Anyway, I’ve run out of film.’

‘Bye, then.’

I wonder why I worried about setting foot in this place. I feel relaxed, relieved. By the time I have found my way back out to the football pitch, I’m almost grinning openly.

A proper game has started since I walked past before. I stand there for a minute or two, watching these lean, barefoot dancers in the dust, admiring their skill, until I am noticed.

‘What are you looking at, my friend? Unless you’re scouting for Corinthians, you can keep moving,’ shouts one of the older players.

He makes a grabbing gesture at his groin that could just be an insult or could be my first and only warning that there’s a gun in his waistband. Not taking the chance, I turn immediately, and walk in the opposite direction, and don’t react to the volley of catcalls that follows. My composure has left me, and my guts are turning like clothes in a spinner.

‘That’s right, playboy! Turn, and walk, baby.’

‘Be glad we’re playing an important game so we don’t need to come and empty the pockets of that nice jacket.’

‘Keep walking.’

‘Bang.’

I jump. They see the involuntary flinch in my shoulders and their shouts dissolve into laughter. I don’t turn around.

Instead of heading back towards the office, I walk away from the favela in the other direction, and end up crossing a patch of waste ground encircling two dead apartment blocks—each one not unlike what our office must have been before Oscar stepped in to fix everything. These blocks have had their backs broken; their floors sag like slumped shoulders. I enter one of them through a lobby dripping with water. It smells of urine, and is ominously quiet. I climb the stairs slowly, noticing the same gangland tags on the walls that we have enshrined in plastic resin at the office. The Shadow Command must have been in control of this area for some time.

Melissa had a toy, on the farm—I think it was called
Laberinto
. You had to steer a steel marble through a maze by twisting knobs on a box that tipped the floor in different directions, avoiding holes. That’s what it’s like in this building; I feel like a ball bearing in somebody’s game of
Laberinto
. The floors move as I walk on them. I have to jump gaps in the concrete. As I climb the staircase I hear the metal straining to bear my weight. This place has decayed beyond squalor. Even the squatters have moved on to better-appointed wrecks. It ought to be scary, but it isn’t. It’s almost exciting that the floors might concertina sharply downwards at any time. I picture what Oscar would do with this building. He’d fix the floors into one position with metal struts, setting things forever in one random state, cancelling the building’s capacity for variation and killing its personality.

The door to an apartment on the second floor is open. The windows are shattered, and the apartment is empty but for one three-legged orange plastic chair, peppered with burn marks. I balance on the chair, testing to see if it will hold my weight, then I sit, awkwardly enthroned, watching the sunset through shattered windows and a gap in the wall, imagining some democratising fire sweeping the city, consuming every community, gated and improvised alike.

I
am twenty-one. Ernesto and I sit in a damp side chapel behind the altar, where a flickering CCTV monitor has been set up so we can watch footage of the guests as they arrive. Under the water of the wobbling, blue-washed screen, they resemble anthropomorphised sea creatures attending a plush undersea ball. Here are crabs and lobsters. Here are taut-skinned puffer fish with surprised eyes, and sly, menacing sharks.

‘Who are these people? I don’t recognise any of them,’ Ernesto says, blinking into the monitor, tugging at the stiff collar of his new shirt. He’s nervous, and his hair has been slicked back with wax, giving him the louche appearance of a
telenovela
villain.

He’s right. It’s a gallery of strangers, but for the odd regular from the Angel Park pool bar, and one or two faces I half-remember from photographs, or glimpses through letter-box apertures in tinted car windows.

‘It’s everyone,’ I say. ‘Everyone who matters. Isn’t it?’

‘Is your mother here? I would love to meet her.’

Of course she was there. She was at the centre of the event. She was its throbbing heart. Her whole existence since Rebecca brought her out of the favela had led up to this moment, and she was on high alert. To make matters more fraught, a busload of deputies had been sent from the city to assist her, and this would not make for a relaxed working atmosphere. She could not produce dinner for four hundred people on her own, but the extra staff made her nervous, even though they had been recruited to Zé’s specifications and well understood his requirements, and even though she insisted on spending a full week drilling them on their duties in the run-up to the event.

Once he’d got over the shock of Melissa’s pregnancy, Zé had warmed to the idea of her marriage to Ernesto. He was a known quantity, and his parents were on many of the same residents’ committees. Zé (I suspect) foresaw that Ernesto was someone he would win over in the end, just as he had every other obstacle in his life. But any acquiescence on his part to the
idea
of Ernesto would never transmute into a desire to make him feel at ease and comfortable. Once Zé had got over the shock of the fact that he was not to be the architect of this pivotal change in his daughter’s life, he reasserted his authority in every other way he could.

There was no discussion over where the wedding would take place; if there was ever a location geared up for this kind of celebration, it was Zé’s pleasure farm. And so much the better if, away from his home turf, Ernesto felt awkward and out of his depth. It would weaken him nicely; leave the stage free for Zé and the wonderful speech everyone expected of him.

Besides, there was no time for lengthy debate. Even though Zé and Rebecca insisted that the pregnancy was not an embarrassment, the wedding was hastily put together. Melissa’s state was never alluded to, and steps were taken to disguise any hint of a bump. It would have been a brave man who brought up that topic on the day.

We both knew that my role had been devised and approved by Zé, but Ernesto still made a pretence of asking me to be his best man, just to make me feel better.

‘Melissa is the best thing that has ever happened to me,’ he said. ‘And you’re closer to her than anyone else, apart from me. That means you’re closer to me than any of the other idiots I grew up with.’

He had a point, of course. He never connected with the Angel Park kids, and that is not surprising. They had too much money, and were so afraid of leaving the compound that they terrorised everyone until they finally plucked up courage at the age of seventeen to take their first baby steps beyond the razor wire. So what he said was a perfectly reasonable argument for his picking me over them.

If only he hadn’t included those words,
apart from me
.

The
fazenda
had never known anything like it. Silvio and his men deforested an area the size of a football pitch to create an accommodation plateau for wedding guests, which Zé referred to as ‘the parade ground.’ Temporary shelter was assembled here in the form of huts and teepees. The way they sprang up overnight was almost military—and sure enough, I found out that Zé had bought the magnificent bivouac dormitories in bulk from a humanitarian-aid supplier. They were refugee huts, assembled, upgraded with bathrooms and decorated in the theme colours of the wedding.

The invitations were hand-sewn with multicoloured ribbons and flawlessly addressed by calligraphers. Every employee of the farm was set to work pruning, trimming and beautifying—erecting tents, stringing lights from trees, replanting flowerbeds. Every lamppost between the church and the entrance to the farm was draped with a huge banner bearing the entwined initials of the bride and groom, which mystified the local residents, who thought they were either part of a campaign on the part of a political party they hadn’t been told about, or an advertisement for some life-altering new product. Neither assumption would have displeased Zé.

The nearest church to the farm—a damp, chalky adjunct to the nearby plantation, whose best days had ended around the same time as slavery—was given a face-lift. Zé and his family had occasionally graced it with their presence at the weekends, but no amount of casual patronage could have prepared the building for this. Its flaking plaster was replaced, its gilt polished, its whitewash renewed. Where any decorative features had deteriorated or vanished they were plundered from similar churches or bought at auction. The place was virtually rebuilt.

When the day came, a troupe of orchestral musicians from Amazonas, along with a stripped-down ensemble selected from the cream of the Manaus Opera House choir, were flown down by jet along with the wedding flowers, the centrepiece of which was a splash of jungle orchids that had been quietly growing in the rain forest only a day before. The church hummed with them, with their indignation.

When the congregation was seated there followed a parade of principal players—the traditional pairs of
padrinhos de casamento
, selected old family friends from the city, all smoothing the way for the main attraction. When my turn came I was told to walk slowly to my seat, following the rhythm of the processional march struck up by the musicians, and Ernesto’s parents did likewise. They entered slowly, like royalty, smiling in every direction, determined to make the most of this moment in the spotlight.

Then Zé and Rebecca pounded down the aisle. Zé wore his usual ‘nothing to see here’ grin in spite of the carefully rehearsed orchestral crescendo that accompanied their entrance, while Rebecca managed to look as serene as usual even at the speed at which she was being propelled by her husband. Both beamed and kept their heads down in a mockery of bashfulness, and did a fantastic job in the process of making themselves look like the main attraction. They were past masters at drawing the gaze of others in their direction by pretending they thought nobody was looking at them.

Melissa came in alone. As she walked down the aisle, I stared ahead at a candle dripping hot wax on to the flowers, ready to step in if needed. That way, I didn’t have to watch her approach, and risk picturing the alternative scenario, the dream scenario. Better not to look at all—although the shape my eager imagination assembled from my peripheral vision and the quiet gasps of the congregation was unbearable enough.

I’d smelt the rain coming as we went into the church. Inhaling damp air, I had looked down the valley and seen it approaching, in a bright, rolling cloud whose hard edges stood out against the lush green of the trees. As if on cue, it arrived during the vows, the darkness rendering the candlelight suddenly more atmospheric. You could hear the water beating up the hill; time it to the second as it broke over the church roof.

The wind rang the bells too early in the tower. A panicked bat flitted from one end of the church to the other. Rain pounded on the metal roof during the prayers. Gold glinted. Incense burned. Candles guttered. Ernesto smiled nervously. Stomach turning, I watched the spray of rain from outside spurt under the church door and on to the stone as the promises were exchanged.

By the time it was over, so was the storm, leaving behind fresh air, dripping leaves, and roads that gushed in the evening sunlight with milky-orange water. As usual, the rain brought hordes of frogs out onto the driveway, croaking and belching and slipping about in the mud. The guests’ roaring cavalcade of off-road vehicles smashed them all in a euphoric blare of car horns and klaxons as it sped back to the farm. Their burst bodies lay there crisping for days afterwards.

Silvio’s ingenuity was tested to the full—and not just because of the strain this party was to put on his emergency back-up generator, or the number of vehicles he had to extricate from the avalanching mud. His water chute had been cleaned and re-sprayed and lined with coloured lights, so that guests could shoot themselves through the darkened woodland at speed, as if through a magical night kingdom, the bats and owls of the farm crossing over their heads. Silk lanterns that hung from the trees like ghosts became objects of fascination for all the humming, buzzing animal life. It felt like a betrayal. I felt disappointed in the creatures for not carrying on as normal, for adding to the atmosphere in that way, buying into and acknowledging the event.

And then there was the food.

A theme had been devised, of classics fused with contemporary national influences—meaty river fish, powerful jungle herbs and unexpected rain-forest fruits—but that was just the beginning. A wok station and a sushi bar operated all night. Seafood bars carved from solid ice were deposited round the swimming pool, piled high with crab claws and lobster tails, with oysters and clams. Racks of dripping quail spun slowly in gleaming rotisserie machines. Silvio erected a device that he called the Carousel—a spinning wrought iron cage that ensured that the meat encased within it had constant distribution over the coals beneath and created a downdraught that coaxed from them an even, generous heat. The spinning cuts flew around like colours on a child’s top. It wasn’t the only contribution Silvio made to cooking apparatus. Also flown down from the forest were twenty peacock bass and a
pirarucú
fish the size of a man, which he entombed in a ditch of glowing coals for the day, roasting it whole. And for the main event, a miracle, engineered by my mother: four hundred perfectly cooked fillets of beef, with a delicate truffle sauce.

By the time the guests had got stuck into all the other food available at the buffet, drunk their fill from the caipirinha bar, and snuffed up whatever else they had brought along to enhance their evening, their appetites had died. In many cases plates were left untouched, as guests were lured to the dance floor by a favourite song. As the music struck up, I swept away the debris of the meal, collecting the intact steaks and pocketing them, munching on them like apples, getting the meat down even when it hurt my throat to swallow, devouring it so it wouldn’t go to waste, trying to get round the tables and clear as many of them as possible so that my mother wouldn’t see them coming back. I carried on for as long as I could, with tears in my eyes at the injustice of it, with mounting pain from all the meat I was dry-swallowing and from the swelling in my stomach.

‘Tidying up, Ludo?’ said Zé, clapping a hand on my back. ‘You have better things to do—like enjoy yourself.’

‘Are you enjoying yourself?’

He sighed. ‘How could I not? Look around you. It is what this place was built for. I suppose I had better give my speech before everyone is completely insensible. Perhaps after something sweet. Come and sit with me.’

As I was talking to him, one of the desserts appeared—piles of slices of watermelon heaped with homemade ice cream. We found an empty table, Zé scanning the area before he sat down to see if there was anyone more important in the vicinity. Realising that I needed to eat quickly so he could be on his way, I began removing the pips from my slice of watermelon with a fork before taking a bite; my mother had taught me that this was more polite than spitting them out.

‘I wouldn’t do that!’ said Zé, staying the back of my hand with a cool palm and a mischievous smile. ‘Try one.’

‘One what?’

‘A pip. You might be surprised.’

I did. Solid, dark chocolate.

‘They’re French. We had them made especially.’

‘Someone had a boring job putting those in,’ I said.

‘I can’t imagine it,’ Zé agreed. ‘Whoever did it must have the patience of a saint. Now, I think I ought to give my speech before conditions deteriorate further.’

He was right. Looking up I could see two guests tearing down a string of red and yellow paper lanterns and chucking it in the pool. If he didn’t speak now he would lose his audience.

During the speech—a sparkling number, with plenty of proprietorial references to ‘my Melissa,’ a couple to her new husband, and one mention of me—things continued to fall apart. Several girls were thrown into the pool fully clothed, one of them glancing her head on the side. Two men tried to play football with a ball they had doused in petrol and set on fire. Others lit handheld fireworks that spurted hot wax as they detonated low over the heads of fellow revellers. The water chute, overrun with those eager to discard their outfits, and others who didn’t bother, was suddenly running beyond its capacity. The plunge pool at its base seethed with bodies. The playground had been overrun by contenders with high expectations, and never had so much been asked of it. The only thing more shocking than the abundance of it all was the manifest indifference of those it was meant to impress.

After I had congratulated Zé on his speech, I tried to warn him about what was going on. ‘There are people trying to walk across the lily pads. They’re smashing them to pieces.’

‘Are they?’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that. You shouldn’t worry so much. This place can take it.’

I found Ernesto devouring a slice of watermelon and fretting about his father-in-law.