Our sweet-voiced guide, Antonio, spoke of the many beaches that went on and on south to the Atlantic, and how this was but one in a city of eleven million people. Mountains rose up straight from the earth. Grass-roofed huts along the sand sold cool drinks. Everywhere buses and cars pushed for room, springing free to race. And the sea, the sea was a vast ocean of green and blue seemingly without limit, though in fact it was a bay and did have beyond its horizon other hills we couldn't see. The sea was God's finest harbor.
Rosalind was overcome. Glenn snapped pictures. Katrinka stared with faint anxiety at the endless train of white-dressed men and women wandering on the broad band of beige sand. Never had I seen a beach as wide as this, as beautiful.
There was the patterned sidewalk I had glimpsed in my dreams--the strange design which I now saw was a careful mosaic.
Our guide, Antonio, spoke of a man who had built the whole long Avenue of the Atlantic along the beach, with these mosaic patterns, to be seen from the air. He spoke of the many places we might go, he spoke of the warmth of the water, of the New Year's and the Carnivale, those special days for which we must return.
The car made a left. I saw the hotel rise up before us. The Copacabana Palace, a grand old-style white building of seven floors, its broad second-floor terrace lined with pure Roman arches. No doubt the convention rooms and the ballrooms lay behind those huge arches. And the comely white plaster facade had an air of British dignity to it.
The Baroque, the faint last echo of the Baroque, here amid all the modern apartment towers that had crowded up against it but could not touch it.
Almond trees clustered in the middle of its circular drive, trees with big broad shiny green leaves, none too great, as though nature itself kept them to a human scale. I looked back. The trees spread down the boulevard, they spread in both directions. They were the same lovely trees of the busy streets.
One could not see all of this. I shivered, holding the violin.
And look, the sky over the sea, how quickly it changes, how rapidly its vast banks of clouds move. Oh, God, how the sky rises.
Like it here, dear?
I went rigid. Then at once made a little defensive laugh, but I felt him touch me. Like knuckles against my cheek. I felt something tug at my hair. I hated it. Don't touch my long hair. My veil. Don't touch me!
"Don't start having bad thoughts!" said Roz. "This is bee-utiful!"
We moved into the classic circular drive, made the turn before the main doors, and the concierge came out to meet us--an Englishwoman, her name Felice, very pretty and immediately polite and charming, as the English always seem to me, like a species preserved from the modern obsession with efficiency that debased all the rest of us.
I climbed out of the van and walked back away from the drive so that I could look up the full facade of the hotel.
I saw the window above the main arch of the convention floor.
"That's my room, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, Miss Becker," said Felice. "It is right in the center of the building, the very middle of the hotel. It's the Presidential Suite, as you requested. We have suites on the same floor for all your guests. Come, I know you must be tired. It's late at night for you, and here we are at midday."
Rosalind was dancing for joy. Katrinka had spied the nearby jewelers, the dealers in the precious emeralds of Brazil. I saw the hotel had arms, with other shops: a little bookstore full of Portuguese titles. American Express.
A host of bellhops descended upon our bags.
"It's damned hot," said Glenn. "Come on, Triana, come inside."
I stood as if frozen.
Why not, darling?
I looked up at the window, the window I had seen in my dream when Stefan first came, the window I knew that I would look out from, onto this beach and the waves, waves now quiet, but which would rise perhaps to create that very foam. Nothing else here had been exaggerated.
Indeed this seemed the greatest harbor or bay I'd ever beheld, more beautiful and vast even than San Francisco.
We were led inside. In the elevator, I shut my eyes. I felt him beside me and his hand touch me.
"So? Why here of all places?" I whispered. "Why is this better?"
Allies, my darling.
"Triana, stop talking to yourself," said Martin, "everybody will think you're really crazy."
"How can that matter now?" said Roz.
We scattered, attended, guided, offered cool drinks and kind words.
I walked into the living room of the Presidential Suite. I walked straight towards that small square window. I knew it. I knew its clasp. I opened it.
"Allies, Stefan?" I asked. I made my voice soft, as if I were murmuring Hail Marys of thanks. "And who would they be, and why here? Why did I see this when you first came?"
No answer but the full pure breeze, the breeze that nothing can soil, flooding past me into the room, over the conventional furnishings, the dark carpet, flooding in from beyond the immense beach and those dark figures moving leisurely in the sands or in the shallow quiet surf. Above, the clouds hung down in glory.
"Do you know everything that I dreamed, Stefan?"
It's my violin, my love. I don't want to hurt you. But I must have it back.
The others were busy with bags, windows and vistas of their own; room service carts were brought into the suite.
I thought, This is the purest, finest air I've ever breathed in all my life, and I looked way out over the water, at a steep granite mountain rising sharp from the blue. I saw the perfect shimmering horizon.
Felice, the concierge, came to my side. She pointed to the distant cliffs. She gave names. Below the buses roared between us and the beach. It did not matter. So many people wore the loose short-sleeve white, it seemed the clothing of the country. I saw skin of all colors. Behind me the soft Portuguese voices sang their song.
"Do you want me to take the violin, to perhaps--"
"No, I keep it with me," I said.
He laughed.
"Did you hear that?" I asked the Englishwoman.
"Hear something? Oh, when we close the windows, the room is very quiet. You will be happily surprised."
"No, a voice, a laugh."
Glenn touched my elbow. "Don't think about those things."
"Ah, I am so sorry," said a voice. I turned and saw a dark-skinned beautiful woman with rippling hair and green eyes staring at me, a racial blend beyond the boundaries of imagined beauty. She was tall, her arms naked, her long hair Christlike, and her smile made of blood-red lipstick and white teeth.
"Sorry?"
"Oh, we mustn't talk of it now," said Felice with haste.
"It got into the papers," said the goddess with the rippling hair, holding her hands as if to entreat me to forgive. "Miss Becker, this is Rio. People believe in spirits, and your music is much loved here. Your tapes have been coming by the thousands into the country. People here are very deeply spiritual and mean no harm."
"What got into the papers?" Martin demanded. "That she's staying at this hotel? What are you talking about?"
"No, everyone has expected that you will be at this hotel," said the tall brown woman with the green eyes. "I mean the sad story that you have come here to look for the soul of your child. Miss Becker--" She extended her hand. She clasped mine.
Even as I felt her warm touch, the chills went over me, circuit after circuit. I felt weak looking into her eyes.
And yet in all this, there was something horribly thrilling. Horribly so.
"Miss Becker, forgive us, but we could not stop the rumors. I'm sorry for this pain. There are reporters downstairs already--"
"Well, they'll have to go away," said Martin. "Triana has to sleep. We've been flying for over nine hours. She has to sleep. Her concert is tomorrow night, that's barely enough time ..."
I turned and looked at the sea. I smiled, then turned back and took the young dark woman's hands.
"You are a spiritual people," I said. "Catholic and African, and Ind
ian as well, deeply spiritual, or so I've heard. What is the name of the rituals, the ones the people practice? I can't remember."
"Mogambo, Candomble." She shrugged, grateful for my forgiveness. Felice, the British one, stood aloof, disturbed.
I had to admit--no matter what joy we knew wherever we went--someone on the periphery was always disturbed. And now it was this Englishwoman who feared offenses to me which weren't possible.
Aren't they? You think she's here, your daughter?
"You tell me," I whispered. "She's not your ally, don't try to make me think that." I looked down and said it under my breath.
The others retreated. Martin saw them out.
"What do you want me to tell those damned reporters?"
"The truth," I said. "An old friend said that Lily had been reborn in this place." I turned again to the window and to the sweet thrust of the wind. "Oh, God, look at this sea, look. If Lily should come again, which I don't believe, why not in a place like this? And do you hear their voices? Did I ever tell you about the Brazilian children she loved, who lived near us in those last years?"
"I met them," Martin said. "I was there. That family came from Sao Paulo. I won't have you upset by these things."
"Tell them we are looking for Lily but we don't seek to find her in any one human being, tell them something nice, tell them something that will fill up their municipal auditorium where we're to play. Go ahead."
"It's sold out," said Martin. "I don't want to leave you alone."
"I can't sleep till it gets dark. This is too much, too gorgeous, too perfectly shining. Martin, are you tired?"
"No, not much. Why, what do you want to do?"
I thought. Rio.
"I want to go up in the rain forest," I said, "go up to the top of Corcovado. Look at the sky, how clear it is. Do we have time to do that before dark? I want to see Christ up there with his arms outstretched. I wish we could see Him from here."
Martin made the arrangements by phone.
"What a lovely thought," I said, "that Lily should come back alive and claim a long life in such a place as this." I closed my eyes and thought of her, my luminous one, bald and smiling, nestled in my arms, the little white collar of her checked dress turned up, so that in her steroid plumpness, her adorable roundness, we called her "Humpty."
I heard her laugh as clearly as if she were sitting astride Lev, who lay on his back on the cold grass of the rose garden in Oakland. Katrinka and Martin had taken us that day. We had that picture somewhere, perhaps it was with Lev--Lev lying on his back, and Lily sitting on his chest, her small round face beaming at the heavens. Katrinka had taken so many wonderful pictures.
Oh, God, stop it.
Laughter.
You can't make it sweet, no, you can't do that, it hurts too much and that you think, perhaps she hates you, that you let her die, perhaps your Mother too, and here you are in the land of the spirits.
"You take your strength from this place? You're a fool. The violin's mine. I'd burn it before I let you have it."
Martin spoke my name. No doubt behind me, he stood watching me talk to nothing, or maybe the wind hushed the words.
The car was ready. Antonio waited for us. We would drive to the tram. We had two bodyguards with us, both off-duty policemen hired for our safety, and the tram would take us up through the rain forest and we would have to walk the last steps to the foot of Christ at the very summit of the mountain.
"Are you sure," asked Martin, "that you're not too tired for this?"
"I'm excited. I love this air, this sea, everything around me ..."
Yes, said Antonio, there was plenty of time to make it to the tram. It would not be dark for five hours. But look, the clouds, the sky was darkening, it was not such a perfect day for Corcovado.
"It's my day," I said. "Let's go. Let me ride shotgun with you," I said to Antonio. "I want to see everything that I can."
Martin and the two bodyguards climbed into the back.
We had only pulled off when I noticed the obvious reporters, laden with cameras, clustered at the door, one small group in an intense argument with the English concierge Felice, who gave no sign that we were in fact within earshot.
I knew nothing much about the tram, except that it was old, like the wooden streetcars of New Orleans, and it would be pulled up the mountain, like the cable cars of San Francisco. I think I had heard it was dangerous at times to ride it. But none of this mattered.
We rushed from the van to the tram car just as it was about to depart the station. Only a scattering of people were on board, and seemed for the most part to be Europeans. I heard people speaking in French, Spanish and what had to be the melodious angelic Portuguese again.
"My God," I said, "we're going right into the forest."
"Yes," said our Antonio, our guide. "This forest is all the way up the mountain, this is a beautiful forest, this forest is not the original forest ..."
"Tell me," I said. In astonishment I reached out to touch the bare earth, we rode so close, to touch the ferns lodged in the cracks, to see above us the trees leaning over the tramway.
Others chattered and smiled on the tram.
"It was a coffee plantation, you see, and then, when this man came to Brazil, this rich man, he saw that the rain forest should be brought back, and he had it replanted. This is a new forest, this is a forest only fifty years old, but it is our rain forest of Rio, and it is for us, and he did this for us. All of this, you see, he carefully replanted."
It looked as wild and unspoiled as any tropical paradise I'd ever beheld. My heart was thumping.
"Are you here, you son of a bitch?" I whispered to Stefan.
"What did you say?" asked Martin.
"Talking to myself, saying my Rosary, my Hail Marys for good luck. Glorious Mysteries; Jesus Rises from the Dead."
"Oh, you and your Hail Marys."
"What do you mean by that? Look, the earth's red, absolutely red!" We rose, turning slowly curve by curve through deep gashes in the mountain and then emerging on an equal footing with the soft, dense and drowsy trees.
"Ah, I see the fog coming," said Antonio, smiling sadly, his voice so apologetic.
"It doesn't matter," I said. "It's too lovely the way it is, it's to be seen in all ways, don't you think? And when I do this, ride like this, up and up a mountain towards the sky and Christ, well, I can take my mind off other things."
"Good to do that," said Martin. He had lighted a cigarette. Katrinka wasn't there to tell him to put it out. Antonio did not smoke and did not mind, and seemed in his courtesy surprised to have been asked now by Martin if the smoking was permitted.
The tram made a stop; it picked up a lone woman with several bundles. She was dark-skinned, wore soft shapeless shoes.
"You mean it's like a streetcar?"
"Oh, well, yes," sang Antonio's voice, "and there are people who work up above, and those who come here and there, and you see there is one of a very poor place ..."
"The shantytowns," Martin said. "I've heard of them, we're not going into them."
"No, we don't have to."
Laughter again. Obviously no one else heard it. "So you're that spent, are you?" I whispered. I pushed down the window! I leant out the open window, ignoring Martin's warnings. I could see the leafy branches coming, I could smell the earth. I talked into the wind. "You can't make yourself visible and you can't make anyone else hear you?"
I save my finest for you, my love, you who took your own bold steps into the cloisters of my mind, even as I played there, singing your vespers to a chime inside me that I myself didn't hear. For you I will be a worker of more miracles.
"A liar and a cheat," I said beneath the rattle of the tram. "Keeping company with ragged ghosts?"
The tram stopped again.
"That building," I asked. "Look, there's a beautiful house there to the right, what is it?"
"Ah, well, yes," said Antonio, with a smile. "We can see it on the way down. In fact, let me ca
ll now." He pulled out his small cellular phone. "I will have the van come up to meet us there if you like. It was a hotel once. It is abandoned now."
"Oh, yes," I said, "I have to see it." I looked back, but we had turned the bend. We went higher and higher.
Finally we had come to the end, and to the crowd of tourists waiting to return. We stepped onto the cement platform.
"Ah, yes, well," said Antonio. "Now we climb the steps to Christ."
"Climb the steps!" declared Martin.
Behind us, the bodyguards sauntered side by side, moving their khaki vests back so we and everybody else could see their shoulder holsters and their black guns. One of them gave me a tender respectful smile.
"It is not so bad," said Antonio. "It is many many steps, but it is broken up, you see, and there are places to stop at every ... how would you say it? ... stage, and you can get something cool to drink. You do wish to carry the violin yourself? You don't want me to--?"
"She always carries it," said Martin.
"I have to go to the top," I said. "Once as a child, I saw this in a film, Christ with his arms outstretched. As if on a crucifix."
I walked ahead.
How lovely it was, the crowds slack and lazy, and the little shops selling cheap trinkets and canned drinks, and people sitting idly at the scattered metal tables. All so mellow in this beautiful heat, and the fog blew up the mountain in white gusts.
"These are clouds," said Antonio. "We are in the clouds."
"Magnificent!" I cried. "The balustrade, it's so beautifully done, Italian isn't it? Martin, look, here everything is mixed, old and new, European and foreign."
"Yes, it is very old, this balustrade, and the steps, see, they are not steep."
We crossed landing after landing.
Now we walked in perfect dense whiteness. We could see each other and our feet and the ground, but scarcely anything else.
"Oh, this is not Rio," said Antonio. "No, no, you must come back when the sun is out, you cannot see."
"Point out Christ, which direction?" I asked.
"Miss Becker, we are standing at the very base of the statue. Step back here and look up."
"To think we are standing in the heavens," I said.
Like Hell.
"It's all mist to me," said Martin, but he gave me an amiable smile. "You're right, this is some country, some city." He pointed to the right where a great hole had opened up and we could see the metropolis below, greater than Manhattan or Rome, sprawled out before us. The gap closed.