Heliopolis (25 page)

‘Are we going to be OK?’ I say to him.

‘We’re going to be fine. What the hell happened to you?’

‘Nothing. It’s nothing. So long as I’m forgiven.’

‘You’re forgiven,’ he says.

I wonder what Melissa has been telling him about how screwed up I am that I should earn such swift absolution. Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

‘Happy birthday,’ they both say.

They have brought me a gift, which I open. It’s a gold watch, with my initials engraved on the back.

‘I have never owned a watch.’ I realise this for the first time as the words come out.

‘We noticed,’ says Melissa.

‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Don’t say anything. Just put it on.’

The lobby starts to fill up with guests, all of whom have in common the fact that they are wondering how to behave. The smartly dressed are eating the food and chatting, but looking uneasy at the increasing swell of people they wouldn’t normally see except when they’re having their windscreen washed at the traffic lights. And these people, tentative at first, begin to dominate the event, drinking and eating, dancing to the music, until eventually they are enjoying it without reservation. The building seems to be evolving yet again, right before my eyes.

Then the lights dim, the screen lights up, and the audiovisual presentation begins. Deep, sad string music plays against a scene of street poverty. Children cry and wail. The camera focuses in on a pathetic mound of rotting fruit peel topping off a rubbish heap buzzing with insects. We pan back on a dried-up river bed, clotted with plastic bags. Then, appearing like a sun over the horizon, the beaming contours of the MaxiBudget logo come into view, and the mournful strings are replaced by uptempo electronic music, and the children’s faces break into smiles as they find themselves in a Garden of Eden. Fresh fruit and vegetables are piled in abundant heaps. Calves and piglets run around green fields. And, in bold, coloured lettering, we are asked:
MaxiBudget—What Have You Got To Lose?

Oscar takes to the stage, his squat form lit by the final, joyous images of the presentation, a smug grin smeared on his face like the evidence of something eaten in secret.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome! This is a special night—but it is only the beginning. So I won’t speak for long. I just want to welcome our esteemed guests this evening, in particular our patrons, Senhor Zé Fischer Carnicelli and his beautiful wife Rebecca, who are the architects of the MaxiBudget project, and to whom we are so grateful for the opportunity to communicate its benefits. It’s wonderful to have you here.’

Looking around I notice that the majority of the guests are mystified by Oscar’s speech—they have no idea what this evening is for. All they know is that it’s a free party, with free food. After some initial interest, they start to talk over Oscar, but I can hear him.

‘I also want to thank Ludo dos Santos, whose unique insight into the issues facing the inhabitants of these communities, helped in part through his in-depth research with another of our employees,’ (he checks his piece of paper) ‘Flávia Pereira de Souza, have helped us to crack this project. Thanks to them, we have really got under the skin of our future consumers.’

Hardly anyone is listening. The crowd is talking away, and the tide of people in the room seems to be getting larger and larger. A crush is developing at the door.

‘This venture,’ he goes on, lowering his voice to a hushed, reverential tone, ‘will break down walls. Will bring us closer together. Please—keep your voices down for a moment. Just for a moment, ladies and gentlemen!’ I see a flash in the darkness behind him as one of the snipers on the balcony adjusts the grip on his weapon.

‘And finally,’ says Oscar, ‘I wouldn’t normally advertise this, but I thought I would tell you, since nobody else will, that I am sixty years old today. So here’s to me.’ Laughter rolls around the room and into a smooth wave of applause. ‘Enjoy the evening,’ he says. ‘Eat! Drink!’

The room, the crowd, the noise—all recede from my consciousness, as if I have taken a step backwards, into myself. I stand, staring at the empty stage, my hand frozen in front of me holding my drink, and I hear Ernesto’s and Melissa’s comments as if they are being phoned in from another world.

(‘I never liked that guy,’ says Melissa. ‘Didn’t he use to try and feel up your mother back on the farm?’

‘He didn’t even mention me, the little worm,’ says Ernesto.

‘Did you know his birthday was the same as yours?’)

A terrible realisation is taking root, and as much as I want to ignore it, the thought is growing fast, choking my brain like a weed. And though I am screaming in my head, telling my mind to STOP WORKING, it’s too late. The idea exists. It is expanding, feeding on the supporting evidence, gaining shape and substance.

I see Oscar, a young man, in desperation, coming to his friend, the young and promising Zé Generoso, already a player even now, in his thirties . . .

I have messed up, my friend.

What’s the matter? says Zé.

A girl. She says I knocked her up. What am I going to do?

You idiot. You fool. OK—we’ll think of something. We’ll work it out. Don’t panic. Can she cook, this girl?

Yes, she can cook. She cooks like a dream.

OK. That’s good. We need someone on the farm. She can have the baby and come and live with us out there. We’ll take her on.

You mean it?

Of course. That way you can see the child when you like—make sure it’s doing well.

Zé. I will owe you forever.

As easy as that, I see it happening. Zé Generoso lives up to his name once more—and Oscar is in debt to him for life. He will work for nothing on every one of Zé’s projects, whatever it may be—even if it’s a grand, misguided venture designed to show his wife that he has a heart.

And although Oscar will be so ashamed from then on that he hates me every time he looks at me, he will keep on looking.

There was a reason that my mother panicked after she told me that I shared the same birthday as my father.

That reason is that I might one day discover his identity.

Because I know him. Because he’s the man I found with his hands on her in the kitchen.

The news is blinding.

Zé wasn’t the one keeping me in my job after all. It was my reluctant father. The one to whom I was smoothly passed on as soon as my mother had died, without even realising it.

Oscar, who tells me to make him proud at the end of every meeting.

Oscar, whose look of frustration when I fail him goes far beyond the disappointment of a boss.

Oscar. Filthy, small-minded, foul-minded Oscar.

No wonder I recognised the background to that photograph—it was taken in the kitchen on the farm. Not in any favela.

With Oscar’s words, all the exotic fathers in my head, patient teachers whose love was transmitted to me through my mother over the years, wither and curl to nothing like photographs in a fire.

I can picture the conversation that led to my adoption too:

I am worried, Zé. The boy’s brain is turning to mush out here. He struggles to answer even basic questions. He gibbers like an idiot. What can I do about it?

Let me talk to Rebecca. We might be able to come up with something.

Zé Generoso. Once again, I am speechless.

What other secret conversations and agreements did I miss? What pacts did Oscar make with my mother? What threats over her? How did they meet? Whatever mundane, disappointing truth lies here, I don’t want to know it yet.

The sleight of hand of it: all of them in collusion, to lead me here, and for what? To shield me from the fact that I’m related to that poor little man? The fact that I was unintended, not born of love?

Milton. Dennis. I’ve been lashing out at alternative versions of myself wherever I found them—but this is the only person I was ever going to be. I’ve been home all along. It’s like being a piece on a chessboard with only one square.

‘I have to go,’ I say, hearing the protests of Melissa and Ernesto like muffled sounds from another room.

I cross the lobby in a daze, vaguely aware that the mood is becoming more frenetic, that a scuffle has broken out at the door. A couple of kids in basketball vests and shorts have taken the microphone from the stage and are expertly rapping over the music. Suddenly, against all the odds, it feels like a real party. I see Oscar trying to make conversation with some boys and being physically joshed around. He’s trying to make light of it but I can tell he’s nervous.

I have to get home.

When I finally make it through the crush at the door and out on to the street, I can hardly believe what I see. A riot is breaking out at the front of the building. So many people are trying to get in that it looks like a Carnival procession. A sound system has been set up on the pavement, and one enterprising man has set up a grill on which he is cooking enormous red sausages. The branches of the avocado tree are being shaken. Some people are dancing on cars. Two police vans are parked at the end of the street, warily surveying events. Already I can see that things will turn ugly.

I walk away down the street, far enough that the noise begins to die down, and look back. The crowd at the front of the building surges back and forth like a storming battalion. Smoke rises from the hotdog stand. A huge bang rings out as someone lets off a firework, which lights up the bright green foliage of the avocado tree from inside as it detonates.

I walk away, and keep walking for twenty minutes, past shabby condominiums and a dusty park until I reach a freeway, where after several attempts I manage to persuade a taxi to stop, and brave the furious horns of the slowing cars behind him, and take me home. The flyover seems to rise so high that I might get vertigo.

When I enter my apartment I realise straight away that something is wrong, but it takes me a minute to work out what it is: the silence. The place is quieter than it has ever been. The gas-powered fridge I inherited from my mother, whose whining and groaning has provided the backdrop to life in this place ever since I moved in, has finally died. The amount of relief I feel that the noise has finally stopped surprises me.

It means the freezer is also out. And that means that the time has come to eat the last of my mother’s leftovers. Of the tubs I brought back from the farm after she died, one remains. It is unlabelled, but whatever it contains is bound to be delicious. I have never been able to bring myself to open it. I suppose I have been waiting for a push like this.

I take out the tub and leave it in hot water to thaw. Leaving the lights off, I take a candle and a bottle of beer outside to sit under my canopy of plants. I inhale deeply. The air is full of feather-light particles that could be water or dust or pollution.

I run my hands over my skull, feeling its knobs and protuberances. My blood is heavy. My limbs feel as if they were lined with lead. Reaching up to the birdcage, I flick open the door and try once more to entice my fat little parakeet to fly away. The stupid thing won’t move. He flits away from my reach to cringe on the other side of his cage.

I will consume my mother’s last meal out here. I will dine with her one last time, before I ask Zé for the truth tomorrow. Then we’ll see where we are.

My phone rings. I do not answer.

When the message comes through I hit the speakerphone, and let Melissa’s voice ring out over the darkened balcony. She’s having to shout, almost to scream, to be heard over the jarring, thumping background music.

‘Ludo, I don’t know whether you’re still here, but we’re leaving. This thing is getting out of hand. We have the helicopter waiting on the roof and my father told me to find you . . . My God! Did you hear that? I think someone just fired a gun. If you are here, get to the roof if you want to come with us. Papai says it’s going to be like the Saigon airlift.’

I stop the message before it comes to an end.

There will be a last encounter with a treasured friend. A last swallow of your favourite food. A last kiss from the love of your life. Most of the time you won’t know when it’s the last time. But tonight I do—so I can make sure it’s done right. It will be a singular sensation, tasting my mother’s love for the final time just when I am questioning it the most. On one hand, I have found out that she lied to me for all of my life. On the other, I know that she was only part of a grander plan, of which she was never the principal architect.

I go to the kitchen area and open the carton. The smell of congealed fat rises from inside. Something offally and unpleasant. What was I expecting? This thing has been frozen for years. It’s inedible. I will have to find something else to eat.

I drink my beer, which has warmed up in the dead fridge. A newscaster’s voice drowns in the janitor’s radio downstairs—I can just make out something about violence at the opening of a new charity initiative.

Everything will be different tomorrow. From tomorrow I cease to be a passenger. I’m going to talk to Oscar, and hand in my resignation. And if he confirms that I’m his son then I’m going to resign from that position too.

I sit, watching yet more weekend helicopters vectoring smoothly overhead: their casual straight lines; the simplicity of their existence. I imagine a stinger missile shooting up out of the favela, bringing one down. I picture the machine, mortally wounded, spinning out of the sky with crippled rotors.

There’s plenty to think about. But for now, there are simple pleasures to enjoy. My beer. These plants. A grilled bird, sticky in my fingers. The hot, sweet air, full of fumes and hope. The beauty of this vast city at night, and all the possibility it contains.

The author gratefully acknowledges the invaluable advice and encouragement of Clare Alexander, Nick Armstrong, Jean-Paul Burge, Louise East, Sam Gilpin, James Gurbutt, Oliver Harris, Henry Hitchings, Carolyn Lindsay, Margaret Stead, Ellie Steel and Jonathan Wise.