Laura giggled and put her hand on his thigh. “Brazil has no past. That’s what makes us so mysterious.”
Marilia shot a glance at Laura. “You have not heard of queima de arquivo?”
A begging child came by and placed one peanut in front of each of them.
Laura laughed. “A while ago a Brazilian airliner crashed on a runway. As anyone’s airliner might. Within minutes a crew showed up to paint over the Brazilian how-do-you-call-them? insignias on the airplane. It is our way of preventing what has already happened.”
“It means ‘burn the record,’” Marilia said.
“It means ‘cover up,’” Laura said. “It is the Brazilian way of life. That is why we are so free.”
“It has happened more than once,” Marilia said. “A government takes power. In disapproval of all that has gone before, it burns the records of previous governments. Like confession, the idea has been to give us a fresh beginning.”
“So we are a nation of anarchists,” laughed Laura. “We are all anarchists.”
“All histories are shame-filled,” Marilia said.
“Brazil’s shames we have expunged by setting fire to them, sending them on the wind.”
At a little distance from them, the pixie, a boy about six years old, watched them with disappointment. They were not eating their peanuts.
Marilia put her sunglasses on her nose and sat back in her chair. “And you, Fletcher?”
Slowly, Fletch ate his peanut.
Instantly the small boy stepped forward and offered to sell Fletch a bag of peanuts.
Fletch took cruzeiros out of his sneaker and gave too many to the boy.
He opened the peanut bag and held it out to Marilia.
She shook her head. “Do you practice queima de arquivo? Are you in Brazil to burn your record?”
“Many are.”
“It would make him Brazilian,” Laura said. “Honorary Brazilian.”
“Is that why Laura’s father does not like you?”
“My father likes him,” said Laura. “Loves him. It’s only that—”
“Her father,” Fletch said, “is a scholar. A professor at the university. A poet.”
Now a dozen begging children were around his chair, whispering at him.
“Of course. Otavio Cavalcanti. I know him well. Laura is almost my niece. She should be staying with me, here in Rio.”
“He is intolerant of North Americans. I am a North American.”
Standing on the sidewalk near the curb, standing uncommonly still, was an old woman, a hag. A long, shapeless white dress hung from her neck. Dark pouches high in her cheekbones made it seem as if she had four dark eyes. All four eyes were staring at Fletch.
“That’s not it, precisely,” Laura said. “Fletcher can come here to Brazil, to sit in this café, drink guaraná and watch the women walk. My father is not permitted into the United States of the North anymore, to read his poetry at Columbia University. My father is intolerant of that.”
“I have read your father,” said Fletch. “He speaks on behalf of the people.”
Across the sidewalk the woman in white was staring at Fletch as if he had dropped from the moon.
“And there is something else.” Laura shifted in her chair. “You must admit it, Fletch.”
“What is it?” Marilia asked.
“My father feels Fletch does not see the difference in the Brazilian people.”
“There is no equality like Brazilian equality,” Fletch said. “I love that.”
“It is not the equality….” Uncomfortably, Laura was looking at Marilia.
“Oh, yes,” Marilia said.
“My father says Fletch keeps trying to understand the Brazilian people through other people he has known. He cannot see the other side of us.”
“There is much I don’t understand,” Fletch said.
“There is much you do not accept.”
Fletch grinned at his own joke: “There is much I cannot see.”
“My father—”
“Your father is a member of a Candomble,” Fletch said. “An intelligent man like that.”
Marilia twisted the cloth braided around her left wrist.
“But he loves Fletch. He says Fletch is surprisingly open, as a person,” Laura said.
“As a North American.”
“You cannot understand Brazil,” Marilia said from behind her sunglasses. “Brazil accepts thieves. The United States of North America will not accept scholars and poets who speak on behalf of the people.”
“Am I a thief?” Fletch asked. Clearly the hag staring at him from across the sidewalk thought he was something extraordinary.
“You said you came here rather quickly.”
“True.”
“You said you did not expect to come here. You were not prepared.”
“True.”
“You do business with Teo da Costa.”
“True.”
“Teodomiro da Costa is my good friend. In fact, I understand I will see you both at dinner at his house tonight.”
“Good.”
“Teodomiro da Costa makes a good business changing hard currencies, like dollars, into cruzeiros, into hard commodities, like emeralds, gold. He has become very rich doing so.”
At the word cruzeiros, the pixies around Fletch stepped even closer and raised the pitch of their imploring whispers.
Fletch said, “I thought he drove a taxi.”
“Teodomiro da Costa does not drive a taxi.”
Fletch took more money from his sneaker and gave it to Laura to pay the waiter. When Laura paid, speaking Brazilian Portuguese, the bill was sometimes as much as ninety percent less. He gave some cruzeiros to the smallest begging child.
“Marilia,” Laura said. “In Brazil, a man’s past is burned.”
“You may burn Fletcher’s past,” Marilia said. “That is all right. Laura, I do not want to see you burn your future.”
“There is no future, either,” said Laura. “There is the piano.”
“The Brazilians wish for a future,” Marilia said.
“Past … future,” Fletch muttered.
“I said something wrong,” Laura said.
“You are staying at The Yellow Parrot?” Marilia asked.
The Hotel Yellow Parrot was an Avenida Atlantica and known to be among the most expensive.
“Yellow Parrot,” said Fletch. “You must admit some things in Brazil do not make sense.”
“Fletch is okay,” Laura said. Then she said something rapidly in Portuguese. “My father loves him.”
Down the sidewalk to the right, stepping warily around the samba band sweating in canary yellow shorts, through the dancers, came a North American woman, clearly from the United States, clearly newly arrived, in a light green silk dress moving on her body as she moved, green high-heeled shoes, wearing sunglasses and stupidly carrying her purse like a symbol of rank dangling from her forearm: the California empress.
Laura put her hand on Fletch’s forearm. “You okay, Fletch?”
“My God! I mean, why not?”
“Suddenly you turned white.”
“Let go of me.” Fletch flung off her hand.
He ducked beneath the table and began retying his sneakers.
Instantly there were the seven or eight heads of the pixies under the table with him, to see what he was doing.
Laura’s head joined him under the table, too. “Fletch! What’s the matter?”
“Estou com dor de estomago!”
The pixies groaned in sympathy for him: “Ooooooohh!”
“You are not sick from the stomach!” Laura said.
“Estou com dor de cabeca!”
“Ooooooohh!”
“You are not sick from the head!”
“Febre… nausea… uma insolacao….”