Carioca Fletch

“Forget it, for now. She is not Yemanja.”

“I am not Janio Barreto. Whoever.”

“She says you are. She recognized you. She says she studied you carefully while we were at the cafe. Did you notice her?”

“Yes.”

“She said you have the identical legs of her husband, the same stomach muscles from pulling the fish nets, the same proportion between your shoulders and your hips. She said the slight slash of your navel is identical.”

“Laura…”

“Well, she should know.”

“I have never pulled fish nets.”

“You have the muscles from Janio Barreto.”

“Laura, not many Brazilians have my basic light coloring.”

“Some do. Janio Barreto did. Your heads are identical, she says, your eyes.”

“I had a similarity to the husband of the woman in the green dress, too.”

“Similarity has nothing to do with it. She says you are Janio Barreto, her husband.”

“Who was murdered forty-seven years ago.”

“Yes.”

“I’m a ghost? Is that what she’s saying?”

“Partly that. No, you are yourself. You are Janio Barreto. You see, you came to Brazil. You see why, don’t you?”

Fletch exhaled deeply. “What is the old woman’s name?”

“Idalina. Idalina Barreto.”

“What bothers me is that you listened to her. The doorman—”

“Why not?” Laura turned the page of the magazine. “She was talking.”

“Laura, you seem to have no regard for the real past. Yet you listen to these impossibilities.”

She was studying some health chart in the magazine. “What’s real?”

“Which is more real to you?”

“Bananas are good for potassium,” she said. “I think I knew that.”

“You won’t let me explain. You won’t explain to me.”

“Forget Idalina Barreto, as much as you can, for now.”

She flung the magazine aside and looked at him standing between the window and the bureau.

“How are we to know each other?” he asked.

She rolled more onto her back and held one leg, one arm in the air. “By sharing your banana with me.”

He laughed.

“I need more potassium.”

“Potassium gluconate, I hope.”

“Come, come, Janio. I want some more of your potassium.”

“I’m not Janio.”

“Janio’s potassium. Your potassium. Harvest your banana and feed me your potassium.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Come, come, my Janio. It is ripe. I see that it is ripe. I will peel it with my teeth. Let me taste your banana.”

“Where’s my shoe?” He regretted kneeling on the floor in his long white trousers to look under the bed for his shoe.

She came into the room and stopped. In the bathroom she had bathed and done her hair and also dressed in white slacks and an open white shirt.

“Why is this stone under our bed?”

Sitting back on his haunches, he showed her the small carved stone he found under the bed. “It’s a toad. It looks like a toad.”

“That,” she said.

“Why is there a stone toad under our bed?”

“The maid must have left it there.”

“The maid left a stone toad under our bed?”

“Put it back,” Laura said. “It may be important to her.”

Four

“My father’s here!” Laura dumped three teaspoonsful of sugar into her cachaca. “I hear his voice.”

Courteously, Fletch took his glass of cachaca from the silver tray held out to him by a houseman. Cachaca is a brandy made of sugar-cane juice. In Brazil it is courteous to offer guests cachaca. It is courteous of guests to accept cachaca. Fletch had tried it with some added sugar, much added sugar, no added sugar. Cachaca was a taste he had not acquired.

With his glass of cachaca in hand, he followed Laura out onto the terrace.

Teodomiro da Costa’s house was built somewhat upside down. Entering at street level, one went downstairs to the bedrooms and a small family sitting room, upstairs to the grand living room filled with splendid paintings and other objets d’art, upstairs again to a huge reception room complete with full bar. Off the reception room, high above Avenida Epitacio Passoa, overlooking the truly beautiful lagoon Rodrigo de Freitas, was a handsome terrace decorated with green, red, yellow flowering jungle plants.

Now in the reception room a long table had been set with crystal and silver for twelve.

Teodomiro da Costa did well exchanging currencies and commodities. Fletch had invested his money with him.

On the terrace Laura and Otavio were greeting each other with hugs and kisses and rapid talk in Brazilian Portuguese.

Wordlessly, Otavia then shook Fletch’s hand.

“Boa noite,” Fletch said.

“Otavio has come here to meet with his publisher,” Laura said. “He is staying nearby, with Alfredo and Gloria. Have you met them? Alfredo is a marvelous man, true Brazilian, so full of life, generous to a fault. Gloria is a marvelous woman, truly bright, so charming, with a large feminine soul.”

“Are they here?”

Laura looked around at the other people on the terrace. “I don’t see them.”

“They are preparing for the Canecao Ball tomorrow night.” Otavio said. “I do not need to prepare. Poets are born in disguise.”

“And your mother?” Fletch asked Laura. “She did not come from Bahia?”

“My mother,” said Laura. “Orchids you can never leave.”

“They are worse than children,” agreed Otavio.

“Worse than I was, anyway,” Laura said.

Teodomiro da Costa came across the terrace to them. He was a tall man of sixty with the head of a bald eagle. “Fletcher, it is good to have you back. Did you enjoy Bahia?”

“Of course.”

“Good. For dinner we are having vatapa, a typical dish from Bahia.”

Fletch smiled and took Laura’s free hand. “I made friends there.”

“But Cavalcanti is my friend.” Teo kissed Laura on the cheek. “And Laura too.”

Otavio said, “We are all friends.”

Teo took Fletch’s cachaca and placed it on the tray of a passing houseman. He said something to the housewoman. “I have ordered you a screwdriver,” he said to Fletch.

“Is it called a screwdriver in Portuguese?”

Teo laughed. “I called it orange juice, vodka, and ice.”