Away from Home (41 page)

Sergio gave his cousin a not unfriendly push. “I know what I’m going to do for you if you’re so lonely,” he said. “I’ll talk to your father next week. He has a very nice, dull, fat girl for you to marry. A rich girl. Someone like Glorinha.”

“No!” Guillerme howled in mock horror. “Not Glorinha!”

“She would
love
to marry you. Your father likes to play cards with her father, so I’m sure he would approve. She’d make a good wife for you; she’s just out of the convent. I’ll tell your father—”

“I wouldn’t support that fat cow,” Guillerme said. “One dress would cost me a year’s pay for the material alone.”

“Listen to the millionaire! She could support you.”

They were smiling at each other now and roughing each other up, Sergio giving his cousin a light punch and Guillerme fending it off and feinting a jab in return. Helen felt odd: everything was so open and unserious now that in one more minute Sergio would probably announce that he was going to go to bed with her and take her through the door. She didn’t feel like herself, she felt like some stranger, some casual girl who says, “Excuse me, I’m going to go make love now,” as if she were going off to the powder room.

“Let’s go and have a drink,” she said, interrupting them. Her voice sounded strained. “All three of us.”

They walked back to the house, Sergio in the middle. Guillerme swung his golf club and chattered happily, almost triumphantly, one arm linked through Sergio’s. Sergio was holding Helen’s hand. He glanced at her from time to time and his eyes were troubled. Guillerme ran ahead to see if he could cajole the key to the whisky cabinet from his uncle.

“He’s jealous,” Sergio said.

“That’s not much consolation for me.”

“I know, darling. What shall I do—kill him? Gun, sword? You tell me how.”

“Poison.”

“All right. In the drink. No, then he couldn’t marry Glorinha. I wouldn’t want to spare him that.”

“Would you really make an arranged marriage for him?”

“It would be good for him,” Sergio said. “But he won’t do it. He’ll marry someone he’s known all his life, but at least he’ll pick the one.”

“Did … you?”

“I chose her myself,” Sergio said, almost defensively.

“I mean, did you know … her … all your life?”

“Yes.”

“Now I know,” Helen said lightly. “I don’t know why I asked, because knowing that doesn’t really make me know anything anyway, does it?”

“You mean, do I love her? I told you before. Don’t talk about it here.”

“Can I ask you one more thing?”

“Her name is Mariza,” Sergio said.

Sergio’s father was enchanted enough at the presence of a young female in his house that he opened his liquor cabinet and allowed each one of them a small glass of
cachaça
. It tasted sickly sweet and much too strong to Helen, who choked over the first sip, but she felt honor-bound to drink it if it killed her, if only so that the old man could not pour it back into the bottle. Dinner was to be served early in order to give them all time to go to the movie at their own theater. The doctor had told Sergio’s father not to go to bed late, so he was having the movie shown at seven. There was one movie theater on the
fazenda
, and whenever any member of the family planned to attend, word was sent out with one of the servants and the picture was held up until the family arrived.

His afternoon rest seemed to have revived Sergio’s father. During the dinner, which was slightly less long and complicated than their huge midday meal, he leaned forward often to speak to Helen alone, made private jokes which she could not understand but which amused him, gave her alternately coy and covetous glances, and in short behaved as if the sight of her had convinced him that he could still use a girl instead of a hot-water bottle in his bed. He was always chivalrous about it all, never crass or outright, but there was something about his eyes—twinkling at the corners with patriarchal amity and probing from their depths with proprietary lust—that made Helen acutely uncomfortable.

The light chilled wine was delicious, and the evening air had become less muggy. There was the same cheese before dessert, followed by fruit and then a sweet creamy custard with caramel sauce. Sergio continued to discuss conditions in the outside world of Rio and São Paulo with his father, never including Helen since she was only a woman and knew only about dressmakers and hairdressers. It was as if she were already a member of the family. The butler walked silently about the table, bringing and removing plates with his deft, white-gloved hands. Guillerme mixed up all the food on his plate, as he had at lunch, and devoured it indiscriminately. Helen thought he would be a wonderful person to have to get rid of left-overs, since he didn’t seem to know what he was eating anyway once he had destroyed it.

It was so easy to imagine she belonged here. Even the father’s changing attitude, his growing intimacy, showed that he had accepted her. Everyone obviously knew—or believed—that she was Sergio’s mistress. No one seemed shocked. The old man was, after all, Sergio’s father, not his wife’s father. The children were not here. The tight, family air of the
fazenda
was dissipated this holiday and had been replaced by the spirit of fun. She wondered what the meals were like when Sergio was here with … Mariza. She remembered his wife only vaguely from the swimming pool: a chic, cool woman with a frighteningly knowledgeable look in her eyes. A woman who knew by instinct when her husband was becoming interested in someone else. Or perhaps knew from experience.…

“What is the movie tonight?” Helen asked.

“Who knows?” Guillerme said. “An antique, of course.”

“It will be amusing for you,” Sergio told her.

When they finally rose from the table a light rain had started. Helen could hear it outside on the leaves. Everyone seemed happy about the rain, because they were farmers. Sergio went to get the jeep and drove it under the overhang of the front porch so she would not get wet.

She drove with Sergio in the jeep, with the top up, safe and dry, while he whizzed down the unlighted dirt roads he had known since childhood. His father and Guillerme had gone in the father’s chauffeur-driven limousine, an ancient black Mercedes-Benz. The movie theater was a small yellow stucco building set on the edge of a village square of its own. Beside it was a general store with an open front, inside which Helen could see bolts of rough cotton materials stacked on shelves, huge sacks of rice and beans and flour open at the top and containing large tin scoops for measuring, and a wooden counter with glass jars of hard candies. On the other side of the movie house was a bar with swinging doors. A short distance apart from them was a small gasoline and repair station.

Workers were already gathered on the narrow, crude sidewalk in front of the movie theater, taking shelter under the overhang of the roof. The rain dripped off the edge of the roof into the dirt road, making puddles. Sergio drove the jeep up on to the sidewalk and let her out.

The workers looked at her and greeted her with respect. Some of them had women with them, their wives or perhaps fiancées, and many of them had brought their young children because the movie was early tonight. The children ran around playing tag and teasing one another, dodging the bicycles which many of the workers had used for transportation and which were now parked in a great clutter of wheels and chipped painted handlebars under the small shelter from the rain.

It was twenty minutes past the time the movie had been scheduled to begin, but it had been held up until the family should arrive. Helen and Sergio waited outside until the black Mercedes-Benz drove up, and then the four of them walked into the theater, together, a little like a royal procession, with the workers in their faded clothes parting and bowing slightly on either side.

The inside of the theater was painted a dull yellow, with stucco walls decorated with ancient movie posters, some of them American, which were beginning to come away at the edges from the wall. Helen remembered some of the movies from years ago—she had seen them when she was in college. Some of them she had seen later on television. The family had a box upstairs. Actually, they had the entire balcony, but it was a small one, with straight-backed wooden chairs set in three rows. They all sat in the first row. Below, Helen could see rows and rows of removable chairs, more like a schoolroom than a movie theater. When the family entered their box everyone in the theater looked up at them, as if they had seen visiting celebrities. She almost expected an unseen band to strike up the national anthem.

The lights went out and the film began. It was as much of an antique as Guillerme had said; flickering, scratched, and accompanied by a tinny soundtrack. She could hear the projector whirring in the small projection booth above them. It was almost impossible to follow the action of the film. Everyone spoke very rapidly in Portuguese and jumped up and down and broke into song and dance at odd moments. It was evidently a musical, set in a slum, with men playing music on instruments made of washboards and tops of garbage pails, and a hyperthyroid bleached blonde with a pompadour and blue jeans apparently saving all of these slum dwellers from losing their homes to a wicked landlord. The audience roared appreciatively at all the jokes, but Helen could neither hear very well nor understand the Portuguese slang. There were, of course, no subtitles. She felt completely out of it.

She glanced at Sergio beside her. He looked bored and he was glancing at her too. “Do you understand it?” he whispered, taking her hand.

“Some,” she lied.

“We’ll go out soon,” he whispered guardedly.

The old man kept falling asleep. Every now and then his head would nod, then fall forward on his chest as if his neck had been broken. But whenever Helen squirmed on the hard chair and turned to look longingly at the exit the old man would wake up again and give her a large, eager smile. He was so pleased that he had his own movie theater, he wanted her to like it. Guillerme was smoking a cigar and watching the movie avidly.

The pompadoured blonde in blue jeans was shaking everything, as if she were trying to shed a skin. The jerky hopped-up action of the film on the projector only emphasized this, so that her gyrations were something superhuman. Helen found a perverse fascination in this.

Sergio, in the darkness, put his hand lightly on her breast. She wondered why they were here at all. The shock of his touch traveled pleasurably through her whole body, and when she turned her head to look at him they were so close their lips almost touched. She looked at his mouth and she wanted so badly to kiss it she had to bite her lip and draw away. “We’ll go,” he murmured.

He leaned across her, with his hand on her thigh, lightly, as if it were only accidental, but she knew he was as acutely conscious of that touch as she was. He spoke across her to his father, in a loud whisper.

“We’re going to leave now. Helen is tired from the trip.”

“Good night,” the father said, smiling at her, crinkling up his eyes at her, giving her a pat. “Good night. See you tomorrow.”

“Good night,” she whispered.

Guillerme pouted at them around his cigar, his elbows leaning on the railing in front of him, looking like a large, angry baby with a pacifier in its mouth. “Sleep well,” he said nastily.

Helen and Sergio scrambled around the empty chairs and made their way out of the box and down the stairs to the now empty lobby. She could hear the audience laughing happily at some unintelligible joke. Outside, the rain had stopped. It was a cloudy night, heavy with mist, the stars invisible. The moon was full and white, split across the middle by a shred of cloud. Neither of them spoke.

Sergio stopped the jeep in front of her house. “I go put the jeep in front of my house,” he said, helping her to climb out. “Then I come back to you and stay all night.”

“All right.”

He hooked his finger in the front of the waistband of her skirt and pulled her close to him. “Don’t go anywhere,” he whispered with a little smile.

“No.”

He kissed her then, with passion, and suddenly Helen felt a curious resistance in herself, a reluctance and a kind of pride. Who do you think you’re fooling by moving the jeep? she wanted to ask him, and she felt hurt.

“I tear you to pieces,” he was murmuring, holding her tightly. “You are the most beautiful—wait for me.”

He was gone, driving the jeep off in a wild shower of rainwater in the muddy driveway. Helen walked slowly into the guesthouse and she felt almost disconnected, lightheaded but with her arms and legs very heavy. The maid had turned down the covers of one twin bed in her bedroom and left a lamp lighted on the table beside it. The shutters at the window had been closed to keep out the rain.

Helen pushed open the shutters, all of them, and leaned out, breathing the cool, heavy air. She was trembling again, as she had that afternoon when she and Sergio had been on their way here to make love, but this time it was more of a shuddering. She felt very cold, and frighteningly lonely, as if a stranger she had never met before was coming here tonight to rape her.

I could let him, she thought, and I would like it as soon as I got used to him. She realized with terror what she was thinking. This was not the passionate, uncontrollable coupling of two people who were hopelessly in love with each other; it was a lay. That was all—a lay. I feel like a whore, she thought, and bit into her knuckles, hardly feeling the pain, wanting to feel it, wanting to feel something besides this overwhelming disgust with herself.

She had had an intimation of this feeling; she had sensed it coming this afternoon. She had known at dinner but she had forbidden herself even to recognize it. At the movies when she and Sergio had excused themselves with the blessings of his father and the jealous farewell of his cousin, she had known. She was his mistress, his woman, and everybody knew it. So what, they thought. He’s lucky. I’d like to get a piece of that myself.

He wanted it to be good for us, he wanted it all to be beautiful
, she thought, and she began to cry. The tears spilled out of her eyes before she even knew that she was crying. Her throat closed with the held-in, unspoken sounds of weeping. He doesn’t know me at all, he doesn’t understand me, nor I him. I can’t do it, this way, I can’t. Oh, Sergio, I can’t do it. It’s all gone.