Away from Home (18 page)

“I felt as if I were going to join them in two minutes,” Helen said. It didn’t seem ridiculous to say that, even now; she was still too close to it. “I wonder why.”

“Some people are more psychic than others,” Sergio said. “It’s a kind of extrasensory perception. How is it that one person can tell what another is thinking, when no one else senses a thing? We felt it, and our friends didn’t.”

“I was wondering if there was something in those cigars those people were smoking,” Helen said.

“We weren’t.”

“No.”

He opened the door of his car for her and helped her in. It was a small Brazilian-make car, something like a Volkswagen. “Can we leave?” he asked.

“We should tell them.…”

“They’ll know we left. They have the other car.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Let’s get a drink.”

She nodded, and he started the car. As they drove slowly down the dark, bumpy road she felt herself beginning to relax. She thought of a gin and tonic and the warmth it would bring her. It occurred to her briefly to invite him to come home with her for a drink, but then she realized immediately that whoever saw them would think he was going to be her lover, and worse
he
would probably think so too. The thought of home was only an instinctive reflex; she did not really want to go home at all. The apartment seemed so foreign, so different and far away, it was as if by appearing in her own living room with her newly awakened emotions she would be making an entrance into someone’s parlor covered with blood from an automobile accident.

They drove into Copacabana and he parked the car in front of a very small, air-conditioned
boâte
. There was only one other couple in the room, sitting in a dark corner, and on a tiny bandstand a man sat on a stool playing the guitar, with his eyes closed. There was a minuscule dance floor, and the walls behind the booths were made of illuminated glass with live fish swimming behind them.

Sergio ordered drinks, and Helen drank hers so quickly she scarcely had time to feel it sting as it went down. She felt the warmth then, and she also felt lightheaded. “I may live,” she said.

“I hope so.”

“Are you a Brazilian?” she asked abruptly.

“Of course. My father and grandfather and great-grandfather too. Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said, slightly embarrassed. She did know why she had asked, but she was ashamed to explain it. She had wondered because he seemed so familiar and like herself, so perceptive of whatever was in her, that she had the provincial inclination to reject anything that was foreign in him because that meant a mystery. “Because … you’ve never been to a Macumba before,” she lied. “You said so.”

“It’s true.”

“What made you come to this one, finally?”

“I don’t think I’d better tell you,” he said. “You won’t believe me.”

“Of course I’ll believe you.”

“I went there because I knew you were going to be there, and I wanted to see you again.”

“You’re right; I really don’t believe you,” Helen said. She laughed. “
Me?
After five seconds in a swimming pool?”

Sergio looked at her intently. It was not the way most people look at other people, because the other people are within their range of vision, but as if he were really looking at
her
; she almost saw herself reflected in his eyes. “Listen,” he said slowly. For the first time she heard the very faint trace of a Portuguese accent. “After five seconds in the swimming pool, as you put it, would you have wanted to see me again? If some good friend had told you I was going to be some place tonight and you knew you would see me, would you have wanted to be there? Think,” he said slowly. “I want you to tell me the truth.”

“I never thought about it,” Helen said.

“Think about it now,” he said gently. His voice was soft but matter-of-fact, as if there was nothing preposterous in this question at all. “Sergio Leite Braga is going to be at the Macumba tonight. We are all going together. Would you like … do you want … to see him?”

She looked at her locked hands, remembering back to that moment when she had recognized him again; and then she looked at him and she felt that same small shock of recognition, but oddly intensified now. If someone were to ask her his question now she knew she would answer yes, or more likely she would not answer anything but she would be there. She shook her head. “It’s too late to have an abstract discussion,” she said. “I have to go home. I have some things to do, and my children—I want to be sure they’re all right.”

He smiled at her, but there was neither amusement nor taunt in it. He seemed vulnerable for a moment, and that surprised her, and then it did not surprise her. “And yourself?” he said softly. “Are
you
all right?”

“I? Of course.”

“You’re beautiful and charming and sweet. These are things that make other people happy. They aren’t the things that make you happy.”

“Is anybody really
that
happy?” Helen said. The vehemence of her own voice surprised her. Why, she sounded like Mil Burns, or even like Margie.

“What a sad and terrible question,” Sergio Leite Braga said. He gestured for the waiter.

She did not speak to him until they were in the car. She felt again, as she had during the nightmarelike Macumba rites, like crying out,
Help me!
But this time she was really frightened, for she knew that if she ever said anything to hint at this she would be lost, and her family, and Bert, and everything she believed in. And yet, what exactly did she believe in? She remembered how many times in the past few years she had needed to ask Bert, Do you love me? Do you
really
love me still? And she had always felt abashed and even a little afraid when she asked him, for fear he would think she was childish, for fear he might laugh, for fear he might answer, I … don’t know, Helen.

She had the obscure feeling that she had to test Sergio in some way, ask him some question that really did not mean what it said, some question he could answer in guarded words because he would know what she really meant. It would mean
Help me
, but it would be a harmless question, foolish perhaps but not dangerous, and she would never have to utter the dreadful words that would reveal herself to him and irrevocably, to herself. She glanced out the window at the streetcar tracks, and then turned her head swiftly to look at him, almost is if she expected to catch him looking at her with perfidy or lust or guile.

“You think I’m beautiful,” she said.

“You
are
beautiful.” He looked at her with that little smile. “I know it.”

“Thank you,” she said lightly. She turned away to look out the window again. She must have been drunk, she thought, because for no reason her eyes were full of tears.

“It’s not midnight yet,” Sergio said. “I want to show you something. Then I’ll take you home.”

She did not answer, and he turned the car and drove out toward the district of Laranjeiras, the place of orange groves. The streets were narrow and cobblestoned here and the houses were very large and old and ornate, the iron fences that surrounded them giving glimpses of palm trees and marble statues overgrown to their knees in tall grass. It was dark and still; everyone seemed to be sleeping within these dark mansions, or dead and gone into the past. He drove through a passageway at the end of an alley, and they were in a small courtyard, enclosed on three sides by silent houses—mansions, really—that seemed to be showing their backs. The courtyard was paved in old uneven cobblestones that gave a dull gleam in the light of the white moon. In the center was a dry fountain, fallen into decay, the dark mark of the water indelibly upon it like a frayed black ribbon. There were small orange trees set in front of the mansions, and a little curb, where horses had once stood, and carriages.

“This is a very, very old place,” Sergio said quietly. He turned off the engine of his car, and they looked at the silent square and did not speak for a while.

“Who lived here?” she said finally.

“Wealthy families in the old days of Brazil. When the women married they never saw their husbands until the day of the wedding. Then they would come to live in a house like this, and they would stay inside it for the rest of their lives.”

“And never come out?”

“Only to go to church,” Sergio said. “And sometimes to visit relatives, but always in the carriage, and always with the chaperone. Their lives were inside their homes, with their children and servants.”

“But if they didn’t love their husbands?” Helen said. “How terrible!”

“It didn’t matter whether they loved their husbands or not,” he said.

“How terrible,” Helen said again, more softly. She tried to imagine what it would be like, to be married to a man who didn’t love her, who only cared about her as a mother for his children and a mistress of his great house. It was so easy to project herself into this cold image that she felt a wave of loneliness and longing that numbed her.

“But these women had their children,” Sergio said. His voice was a whisper. “That was enough.”

“It isn’t enough!” Helen said.

He looked at her and smiled, and covered her hand lightly, touching the tips of each of her fingers separately with the tips of his own and lifting them one by one. “I want to make you happy,” he said.

She was stricken with embarrassment by the way she had revealed herself to him. “You’re so clever,” she said bitterly. Then she realized she had only made everything worse.

“I am clever about you,” Sergio said softly. “Are you offended?”

She shook her head.

“I want to see you alone. Tomorrow. Will you see me?”

“We have nothing to say to each other,” Helen said. “And you know it.”

“I have a great deal to say to you. But it might bore you to hear me tell you what you do to me.”

“Please don’t,” Helen said. She took her hand away from his, finally. “Look …” she said. “I … it isn’t as if I were a single girl on a … a
vacation
, where I could meet an attractive man and say to myself, What harm would it do if I fall a little in love with him? Go and chase a tourist. Let her feel flattered. She probably has nothing to lose but her loneliness. She’d be going from nothing to something. I would have to go from something to something else to get involved with you, and I can’t. I’m not that kind of person.”

“You sound as if I’m taking something away from you,” Sergio said. He looked amused, but not nastily so; his eyes were earnest. “There isn’t one thing I want you to give up—except, yes, one thing—what you blame on that poor tourist.”

I’m not lonely, she wanted to say, but the words stayed in her throat as if she had been paralyzed. I’m not lonely. It seemed such an effort to say those words, such a tremendous lie, like inventing an entire life with one meager sentence; an impossible weight. She felt the words; they lay there in her throat, and they were too heavy to bring out. I’m not lonely, I’m not.

“Americans are always talking about love,” Sergio said. “They say, ‘I love you.’ Then they say, ‘I don’t love you.’ Or they ask, ‘Did
I
say I loved you?’ What nonsense that all is! Do you think love is something you give and later throw away, like a piece of cheap chewing gum? Wear it out and throw it away in the gutter and forget it? Use it, ashamed, with your hand over your face because it’s a bad habit? You say if you were a lonely tourist you
might
allow yourself to fall a
little
in love with me. What is this ‘little bit in love’? A not-so-good present for a distant relative who has to be invited to the Christmas party?”

“What do you want, then?” Helen asked.

“I want you to see me tomorrow.”

“I can’t.”

“Your husband is not going to be back tomorrow,” Sergio said. It was the first time either of them had actually said the word
husband
. The word seemed alien on his tongue, somehow, as if he had a completely distorted idea of what Bert was, and who Bert was, and how much Bert meant in her life. She felt a rush of loyalty to Bert and a feeling of shame and resentment.

“And your wife is away for the summer?” Helen asked coolly.

“My wife is on the farm,” Sergio said. His tone was matter-of-fact, with some affection and loyalty in it too, strangely enough; as it there was nothing immoral or cruel in speaking of his wife and her husband at the same time that he was speaking about wanting to make love.

“You love her,” Helen said.

“In many ways, yes. Of course I do. In time you grow to love a person who is kind and whom you respect.” He smiled at her. “You’re looking at me with those big eyes as if you’re shocked that I didn’t marry for love. Helen, darling, marriage was never invented to perpetuate love. It was invented by much wiser people than us, to perpetuate the good things, like the family and the home, and to raise good children. When two very young people love each other it is only a clever little wedge nature has for slipping them into the state of marriage. The first time a young boy falls in love with a young girl he’s really only in love with the fact that she
is
a young girl. That’s marvelous to him all by itself. But to make a whole marriage out of that would be a terrible thing.”

“I can’t believe that,” Helen said.

“How old were you when you married?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“And do you still love him the same way as you did when you were very young?” Sergio asked.

“That sounds like something Bert would say,” Helen said. “But for different reasons.” The name
Bert
just slipped out, and when she had said it she was shocked to find that she felt no disloyalty whatever this time.

“I do love my wife, in the same way she loves me,” Sergio said calmly. “And I love my children so much I would die for them, I think, if I had to make the choice. I wouldn’t think for an instant, Is this gesture wasted because this child might grow up to be a no-good and cruel to his mother? I love and respect my father. I love my mother, who died when I was very small. But none of this love is something you take and break off little pieces. You don’t hand them out and say, ‘Here, for you, and
here
, for you.’ I don’t love a little, the way you do, and be afraid all my life it is wasted. I love very much—very much—and it is never something lost.”