A narrow, glossy black snake’s head emerges from a hole in the ground. The snake twists its neck around to make sure that no one is watching, then hoists the rest of its body out of the hole. It is shockingly fat and clumsy, like an obese woman dressed in a black leotard, with a couple of extra limbs and bulges. The snake clumps around in a meaningless, ugly shuffle-dance, then rolls disgustingly on the ground.
A baseball goes soaring through the air in slow motion. The stitching comes apart while the ball is still in flight, and hundreds of tiny white parachutes drop gracefully from its insides.
A man shouts in anger. Suddenly his voice undergoes all its metamorphoses in reverse, and within seconds he is a howling baby.
Bodies plummet, human bodies hurtle downward through the air with groans of fear that sound like droning airplanes. A white flower opens with searing grace and purity.
The flame of a candle — now steady, now flickering, but always burning — reflects the sundry images with which it comes into contact. There is a vague procession of people, animals, buildings. .
A green shoot comes up from the dark earth. It sprouts two tiny bright leaves, then stops growing.
A milk bottle cap shoots off; the milk spews upward and falls in a thick white curve of milk.
That thick white curve of milk showers gently and felicitously down upon you both, Awinita and Milo, covering your bodies in a fountain of warmth, the mellow marrow-ecstasy of heroin. Eyes close gently, breathing slows, lips relax, hands open — oh, abandonment, oh, utter abandonment — woman and womb, skin and membrane, the mother a child to her child, the child a mother to its mother, adult and infant curled up around and inside of each other, outside of Time.
• • • • •
IX. NEGAÇA
Deception, provocation. Pretending to do one thing (a movement, an attack) and in fact doing another to surprise one’s adversary.
Milo, 1975–90
A NIGHT SCENE, lit by torches, on Terreiro de Jesus in Salvador de Bahia’s upper city — a large and beautiful square surrounded by old churches and cafés. Young black men in white pants have formed a street roda and passersby are being drawn into it. Radiating from the central berimbau, energy circulates from one body, voice and soul to the other; by turn, the capoeiristas sing and kick and spin and wheel and cartwheel, beat drums and shake tambourines—ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA—smiling always, even when they miss a beat and fall or accidentally strike an adversary. The rhythm is hypnotic and insistent, monotonous and precise. It’s not by virtue of making an effort that they play together; rather they are part of a single body, the pulsating joyful body of the fight-dance. Raising your foot in a kick-spin, you all but graze your adversary’s face, the beauty is to miss him but just barely, if he dances well he’ll feel the blow coming and be ready to second-guess you and avoid it, knock you off balance and gracefully threaten you in turn, as the two of you watch and duck, swing and smile and wheel and dive and lollop, the beat carries you forward, then your turn is over and, moving to watch the next pair bow to salute each other in front of the central berimbau, you encourage them with our singing, drumming, clapping and your smiles. Ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA. . There’s no winning or losing in this game, only playing, endless playing, you want your adversary to be strong not weak, smart not dumb, you’re delighted to trick him and delighted to be tricked by him, boy learns from girl, white learns from black, old learns from young, the teaching is the doing is the beauty is the grace is the humor, endlessly you go on learning, smiling, moving, feinting, never missing a beat. Gingare, the dance of life: the controlled, prolonged, sustained, ineffable excitement of capoeira is like an endless climax.
Receding from the vortex of the event, our camera turns and finds itself nose to nose with. . another camera. Shooting the roda in black and white is a film crew from New York, Milo among them. . Moment of mutual embarrassment. Like dogs, the two cameras sniff each other out, moving around to see what’s going on in the back.
Because Milo’s body has begun to move of its own volition, he is being gradually but imperiously included in the performance. The Bahians watch him, approving with nods and gestures the precise élan of his limbs. .
OH, MILO, WHAT wouldn’t I give to have witnessed that scene! Your other forms of physical training were all reactivated at once: hockey for clever swerves, swivels, pivots, and feints; boxing for swiftness, lightness of footwork and accuracy of arm thrusts; sex with Paul Schwarz for sensual, graceful interaction with other male bodies. This was what you’d been looking for all your life. The Bahians saw it, too. No room for doubt — buoyed up by the solid, attentive warmth and approval of the crowd, your head went down, your legs went up, the speed increased, and your body, like that of the other young men, became a pure, moving cipher. Eyes wide open, you gave yourself up to the capoeira rhythm as it irrigated your flesh. Ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA, ta, ta-da DA. . You knew this beat from before, long before, from your mother’s heart that gently, rhythmically played her ancestors’ tales into your ears when you lived inside of her, Milo, yes, you had this beat in your blood and could feel it now, coming up from the ground of Terreiro de Jesus, zinging through the sacred berimbau and galvanizing your whole being. Unexpectedly, at age twenty-three, you felt at home for the first time in your life.
Sorry. Yes, of course we’ll go back to the third person. And yes, of course we’ll change the name, don’t worry. What’s in a name? (To call your mother Nita is to destroy the meaning of her name, which is fawn. .)
CUT TO THE following day: a gathering in a tiny open-air café at São Joaquim, Salvador’s outdoor market. Seated with several of the capoeira initiates, you’re smoking cigarettes, drinking weak beer and chewing the rag. Your friend Homer, the African American director of the candomblé film you’ve come to work on, translates for you from the Portuguese.
“. . They wanna know where you learned capoeira.” Milo shrugs and grins.
“Dey taught me.”
“. . They say you’re one of them.”
“I feel it, too. An honor. Ask dem if I may pay for de next round.”
That evening, the New York crew is invited to the home of a local capoeira mestre. Smiles follow plates of fejoada and glasses of caipirinha around the table. Several shots from different angles, to show hours passing, elation rising. Late in the evening, a corpulent woman of sixty or so, sexily swathed in a green cotton print dress, comes to sit next to Milo. Her skin is copper-colored, her teeth bright white, her English halting but clear.
“I saw you dance last night. The fire was in you.”
“Oh, so dat’s what it was!” Milo laughs. “I wondered.”
“You’re Milo Noirlac, a French person from Quebec. I asked around. My name’s Manoela.”
“Trilled to meet you, Manoela.”