Loves of Yulian (17 page)

The next day started out warmer than usual, and Irenka suggested that we go to the pool in the morning, and then an air-conditioned movie in the heat of the afternoon. The heat in Rio didn’t bother me as much as it did Irenka or Mother, but I loved movies. I particularly loved the anticipation as you stepped into a darkened theater, about to be transported into another existence. In Portugal, Mother had taken me to see a movie about a cowboy who played the guitar, drew his gun faster than anyone else, and captured bad men with his lasso. But Irenka didn’t want to see a cowboy movie, but the one with the handsome actor named
Gooper
, whom she had seen before. I wasn’t excited by the prospect, at first, but we saw on the placards outside the theater that it was about soldiers fighting Arabs in the desert, so that made it all right.

The movie was in English, of course, which neither of us understood, and had Portuguese subtitles, but neither Irenka nor I could read them fast enough. But the story had horses and camels, and I recognized from the round, box-like, white hats that the soldiers wore, that they were in the Foreign Legion. Irenka didn’t know what the Foreign Legion was, and I had to explain it to her in whispers. But she cried when the handsome soldier was killed and his friend covered him with a French flag, then poured gasoline on him and set him on fire. I found it sad too, but I knew it was all make-believe, and, besides, I didn’t want Irenka to see me cry.

Coming out of the cool theater into the hot afternoon was terrible, even for me, and we had to stop and catch our breath after taking only a few steps on the sidewalk. But we decided that the excursion had still been worth it, and decided to do it again, even when the day wasn’t too hot. Then I explained to Irenka how people didn’t have to give their right name to join the Foreign Legion, so that a lot of the soldiers were crooks hiding from the Law or husbands trying to get away from mean wives, and things like that. And, finally, I told her about Sra. O’Brien’s son wanting to take Mother out to dinner, which she didn’t want to do, but also didn’t want to upset her employer.

That Saturday, Sr. Segiera took us to the beach, but not the big beach near our hotel. It was a little beach somewhere else and practically empty, except for large boulders and logs that had washed up from the ocean. It took a while to get there, and he brought us there in his own car, not the Lincoln Continental, with the chauffeur, but the much smaller and older Chevrolet, that he said was his own.

And he had surprised us by arriving exactly on time. Mother had told me, that morning, that he would probably be late, since it was customary in Brazil to be late, but the senhor had been right on time.

And he had also brought me a present. As I got into the back seat, I saw an airplane sitting there. It wasn’t the same kind of airplane as the one in the photograph that he had given me, but a sleek fighter plane, about thirty inches long, with green and brown camouflage markings and the target-like insignia of the British Royal Air Force, which was, at that time fighting German bombers over London. . “That’s for you, Julien,” he said, over his shoulder, as he started the car.

“Oh my God, it’s an airplane,” Mother exclaimed, turning around. “You shouldn’t have, Ernesto. Julien, say
thank you.
”

Ordinarily, Mother’s prompting would have been totally superfluous, but this time the gift had, literally, taken my breath away. “Th. . . th. . . thank y. . . y. . . you, M. . . m. . . monsieur,” I stammered.

“Every boy needs an airplane,” the senhor said to Mother.

“Oh, but Ernesto. . . ”

“It isn’t expensive, Barbara. It’s cardboard, and if it crashes, he needn’t worry about it.”

“You mean it actually flies?”

“Oh, yes. You’ll see when we get to the beach.”

“Oh my God. Did you hear that, Julien, when we get to the beach, Sr. Segiera will show you how it flies.” Then, in Polish, she added, “You should kiss him.”

That was a command that I had no intention of following, but, since we were under way, at that point, and some time would elapse before it would even be possible to do what Mother had said, I was sure the directive would be forgotten. In the meanwhile, I held the beautiful plane carefully in my hands visualizing myself throwing it into the air and watching it glide to the ground, like the paper airplanes I had seen the older boys fold and fly in Poland. Except that this one was much bigger and actually looked like an airplane.

With my attention on the airplane, it took me some time to notice that the back of Sr. Segiera’s head looked very different now. Instead of his hair being cut off in a straight line at his neck, it had been tapered gradually, just the way Mother had told him. I wondered what his nails looked like.

When Sr. Segiera finally stopped the car on a road with a nearly-empty beach on one side and some houses on the other, I carefully extracted the airplane from the back seat and waited patiently by the side of the road, while the senhor opened the trunk and began to remove some beach things, including a wicker picnic basket.

“Julien, don’t just stand there. Help Sr. Segiera,” Mother said, but the senhor said, “He has to hold the airplane. That’s his job. I can handle the rest.”

“Well, here, let me,” Mother said, taking the basket from him. “Oh, what do you have in here?” she exclaimed, apparently surprised by the weight. Then we made our way over some grass and, finally, onto the sand.

“Help Sr. Segiera,” Mother said to me, as he laid out the blanket, and began to open the beach chairs.

“It’s
all right
, Barbara. It’s
all right
. Let him hold on to his airplane,” he said, and, suddenly, I was aware of a feeling that I had not experienced before. Sr. Segiera was telling my mother not to tell me to do things. I had had people telling me to be nice to my mother, to be obedient, to not bother her when she said she had a headache, to help her because she didn’t have a husband taking care of her, and one man in Spain had even grabbed me by the elbow and marched me to the bathroom, when Mother told me to go wash my hands, but no one had ever told Mother not to tell me to do something. And I suddenly had a great feeling of affection for this man.

Mother laughed and sat down again, though I doubted the sincerity of her laugh.

“Let’s go, Julien,” Sr. Segiera said, starting back up to the street. “Bring your airplane.”

“Oh, you’re going to make it fly,” Mother said, standing up.

“Just Julien,” the senhor said.

“I can’t come?” she said, very surprised.

“Just us men. You’ll see it when it’s up in the air.”

Mother sat down again with another laugh that didn’t sound totally sincere.

I had been standing there watching the exchange, and now ran to catch up to the senhor. As I ran, I could actually feel the airplane in my hand already wanting to fly. Then Sr. Segiera stopped, turned to me, and said, “Go ahead, wind up the motor.”

“M. . . m. . . motor?” I said.

Sr. Segiera now laid his hand on my shoulder and, with the other, turned his finger in a circle, indicating, I thought, that I should turn the propeller. “The rubber band,” he said. “The rubber band inside.” He said it, as though expecting me to know what he was talking about. Then, I guess seeing the expression on my face, he explained, “The propeller is attached to a rubber band. You can wind it up.”

Suddenly I grasped the situation. I had seen other rubber band-powered toys before and understood the principle. If you wound the propeller one way and let go, it would turn the other way by itself. I had just never imagined that rubber bands big enough to handle this job existed. I began winding.

“No Julien, the other way.”

“I’m s. . . .s. . . orry, M. . . .m. . . monsieur,” I said, embarrassed at my mistake. I wound the other way. “H. . . ow m. . . uch do I w. . . ind it, M. . . onsieur?” I asked, gaining control of my stuttering. I was afraid of winding the rubber band too tight and breaking it.

“More,” he said.

I continued winding until he said to stop. “Now set it down on the road,” he said.

Holding the propeller so that it didn’t unwind, I set the airplane down on the paved street and looked at my mentor.

Sr. Segiera now raised both thumbs. I didn’t understand his signal.

“That’s a signal to pull the wood blocks from under the wheels,” he said. “Let it go.”

With trepidation, I let go of the propeller. It began to spin. I felt it pulling forward against my hand. Then I released the airplane.

The plane began to roll forward along the pavement, gathering speed. Then I saw it lift about a foot off the ground and, when the propeller stopped spinning, settle back to the pavement.

I ran after the airplane, as it rolled to a stop. I picked it up and brought it back to where Sr. Segiera was standing. “It f. . . lew!” I said.

“Yes. Now if you wind it a little tighter and then launch it from your hand, it will fly even further. A lot of the energy is spent just getting off the ground, you know.”

I began winding the propeller again. I could feel the resistance building to the point at which I had stopped the last time, and kept winding beyond it.

“That’s good,” Sr. Segiera said. “Now just. . . .” and he mimed throwing the airplane lightly.

I did as instructed, and the plane took off into the air. It climbed quite high above the ground, but then I watched in horror as its right wing dipped and it banked toward the beach and the water.

I ran after it, ready to dive into the water after it. The plane crossed the strip of beach, but out over the water a breeze seemed to blow it back, just as the propeller stopped and the plane began its descent. One landing gear and one wingtip hit the sand, and the plane nosed over, with its tail up in the air, practically at my feet.

Picking it up with a heavy heart, I was relieved to find that the only damage was a little nick out of the wingtip. Sr. Segiera was jogging towards me now, and I covered the injured wingtip with my hand. “N. . . n. . . no d. . . d. . . damage, M. . . m. . . monsieur,” I said, stammering furiously. It wasn’t the injury to the plane, which was only cosmetic, that I didn’t want him to see, but the blemish that it seemed to imply in our relationship.

I did not fly my airplane again that day, fearing for its safety. As Sr. Segiera and Mother sat in their beach chairs and talked, I ran along the empty beach, holding the plane overhead and feeling its wanting to fly.

Sitting again in the back seat of Sr. Segiera’s Chevrolet and holding the airplane in my lap, as we drove home, with the light growing dim outside, I, once more, played in my mind the scene of the senhor telling Mother that she couldn’t come with us to fly the airplane. “Just us men,” he had said, and Mother had gotten that surprised look on her face and then sat back down.
Just us men
—
Julien and me.
And then he had laid his large hand over my shoulder.

But neither was I totally unaware of the fact that this had not upset Mother very much, that she had spent the whole afternoon talking, and laughing with Sr. Segiera, and, that she was, quite clearly, getting to like him, as I had feared earlier. But the emotions that I, myself, was now feeling towards Sr. Segiera kept that fear in a back corner of my mind, where it could not interfere. My feelings were reaching out to this very nice man to the extent that those diamonds on Mother’s hand did not seem to matter anymore. What mattered was that we should see him again soon, that he should lay his hand over my shoulder again, and that he should have that
us men
expression on his face once more.

When the senhor stopped the car in front of our hotel, he and Mother whispered something to each other and then touched their puckered lips together. It was the first time that I had seen Mother do that with anyone, and it gave me a strange feeling.

CHAPTER VIII

The following day, Sr. Segiera had to work, even though it was Sunday. So I was surprised to see Mother putting on one of the dresses that she wore around company. “Sr. O’Brien is taking us out for lunch, in the mountains,” she said. Sr. O’Brien I took to be the man who had brought Mother home in his open car, with the kerchief on her head, some days earlier.

“W....ill w... e be g...oing in his o....pen c....ar?” I asked hopefully.

“I don’t know,” Mother said. “But I’m not taking any chances,” she added laughing, as I saw her take one of her large kerchiefs out of a drawer.

“I th... ought he d... idn’t w... ant me c... oming al....ong,” I said.

“I told him that the only way I would go with him would be if you came along as well. I don’t really want to go with him at all, but he is Sra. O’Brien’s son, and she is important to me.”

“Isn’t he nice? Is he a gentleman?”

“Oh, he’s quite nice and seems to be a gentleman, but he’s very young.”

“H..... ow y..... oung is h..... e?”

“He’s probably my own age, but I feel a lot older than him.”

This was a new concept for me, the idea that people could feel older or, I supposed, younger than their actual age. Mother, I knew, was just twenty years older than me, which made her twenty-eight. I wondered what twenty-eight felt like in comparison to, say, thirty. I wondered what seventy felt like, and a hundred, which was what people were supposed to live to if nothing happened to them along the way. What did it feel like to be a hundred and know that you’re not going to live another year? I felt a shiver go through me at the suggestion, and decided to think about something else.