Heliopolis (10 page)

The grounds around the communal driveways that linked homes with the ancillary services were prettified with landscaped ponds and waterfalls. Unreal rocks and imported earth had been used to make them look natural, but they ended up looking every bit as fraudulent as the environments devised to fool animals in zoos. There were two shopping malls, an ice rink and a grand cinema complex that showed all the latest releases, approved for screening by committee and advertised in the compound newssheet.

Life in Angel Park is life with the sting removed. The more you accept what passes for reality behind its walls, the less likely it is that you’ll know the real thing until it breaks down your door. Impulses and feelings are all very well—but every one of them has been anticipated and rendered safe, and its potential consequences catered for. When your overindulged son wraps your Porsche round a lamppost, all he has to contend with is a security force whose paymaster is you, his parents, so he can never really get into trouble. And you can live your life without coming into contact with the favelas, or any other unsavoury aspect of the megacity outside. Behind the gates, it even smells better. The chemical fumes of the city recede, replaced by the aromas of cut grass and cinnamon candy, and the warm smell of freshly bathed Caucasian babies. That, in any case, is the theory.

A car met us at the heliport. I looked around anxiously for my bags, but they had been silently spirited away. The car that met us smelt of polished leather, and shot off down a pristine, empty road. I turned to Melissa, who was sitting beside me, watching my reactions.

‘Are we sharing a room?’ I asked, afraid of treading too hard on her turf.

She smiled. ‘Wait and see.’

We passed through a set of smooth, automatic gates, and the absurdity of my question was revealed, because there was the house: steep and huge, and familiar to me, though at first I couldn’t understand why. Then I realised that it had the same façade as that of the giant doll’s house that Melissa and I had played with on the farm. With its three storeys and its four reception rooms, I had always thought it unreal, a fantasy place. Nothing like it could exist in real life, unless it was a hotel or a palace. As we drew up beside the sumptuous spray of fountains outside the front door, I realised that all along the doll’s house had been an exact replica of this place; a lavish true-to-life gift and not, as I had imagined, the whim of a fanciful toymaker. The question of whether I would have a bedroom of my own was embarrassingly redundant. I couldn’t believe that I had thought this was the real world, and that what they had wanted from the farm was something manufactured, when in fact, they lived in a doll’s house set in the grounds of a guarded amusement park. No wonder Zé said ‘down to earth’ every time they landed at the farm—they lived on another planet!

By the time I was shown to my room, my bag had been magicked up there already, and was being unpacked. The settling-in period I had prepared myself for was not, it seemed, necessary. Here were my clothes, pitifully arranged in a massive dark-wood closet that smelled of eucalyptus, beside piles of far more expensive ones that had been purchased for me; here was my toothbrush, leaning jauntily from a mug by the basin alongside Melissa’s, for all the world as if we’d brushed together that morning. When I introduced myself to the maid in my room, she, like the chauffeur who’d brought us from the helipad, called me ‘Senhor.’ It made me squirm. Already I felt homesick for the wood-smoke smell of the farm kitchen, for Silvio bursting in with a lewd remark, and most of all for the prickly yet willing object of those remarks, my mother. The room was silent and plush. Everything smelt new. Those few things I’d brought with me were swamped. I paced around the room for a moment after the maid had gone, wondering whether I should stay put or go downstairs. As soon as we arrived, the other three had marched off purposefully in different directions, and my desire to blend in was so strong that I wanted to fall in with their behaviour in spite of having no business to attend to—even less than I thought, now that my bag had been unpacked for me. Because the maid was there, I didn’t even have the opportunity to be ravished by the size of the room, to test the sponginess of the mattress with a nervous giggle. Everything was so casually supervised that I couldn’t even give vent to my wide-eyed, farm-boy amazement.

Zé poked his head round the door. ‘You should be comfortable in here. Did they get you some clothes?’

‘Yes, thank you. For all of this . . . ’ I began.

But he’d already left the room and was pounding down the first-floor corridor (red carpets, chandeliers, black and white 1960s photos), assuming I was following him. I ran to catch up.

‘I think we should do a quick tour of the property. You need to familiarise yourself with the security measures, in case you should ever be here when the house is empty.’

It seemed unlikely—I’d already met two members of staff and I had only entered three rooms of the house—but I followed him downstairs.

‘You’ll need to know the locations of all the trip lasers—I set them off by accident myself sometimes, and I swear that
Intruder Beware
voice scares me to death every time—and we’ll need to drill you through all the relevant alarm codes and passwords in case the park security guards ever turn up. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you if they didn’t know who you were. Then there are the searchlights—they have the power of a million candles each, and you should know how to operate them. And you must learn the attack calls for the dogs.’

I’d seen two mottled, stocky hounds pacing around the garden as we pulled up. They hadn’t looked all that threatening.

‘Don’t be fooled by the sight of them,’ Zé went on. ‘They’re Fila Brasileiro fighting mastiffs, and they’re lethal. They’re bred to control livestock—so a man is nothing more than a snack as far as they’re concerned.’

‘Control?’ I said.

He sniffed. ‘Aggressively control. Then of course there’s the panic room—I’ll show you how that works later on.’ He handed me a shiny, thin aerosol can. ‘And this is your Silver Bullet. Keep it on you at all times. I get them custom made, and we all carry one. They spray a substance forty times more powerful than Mace into the eyes of your assailant, and coat him with a sticky ultraviolet paint for the purposes of identification after the event.
Don’t leave home without it!
’ he added in English, with a cheery American accent.

I must have looked uneasy, because he paused in the middle of a large sitting room decked out with white carpets and gold mirrors, and said, ‘Ludo, you look terrified. Don’t worry. This is just how things are in the city.’

I nodded. ‘Carry on. I’m listening.’

‘That’s almost it. All we need to do now is teach you how to handle a gun.’

‘I can shoot,’ I said quickly.

‘Not a rifle, like on the farm. Here, you’ll need to know your way around a handgun. Just in case. What I always tell Melissa to do if anyone gets inside is to take up a defensive position in one of the bedrooms and bring the intruders down one by one as they come in. But don’t worry: I’ve asked Ernesto to take you out tomorrow morning for a shooting lesson.’

Ernesto?
I thought. W
ho the hell is Ernesto?

‘But for now,’ Zé went on, ‘it’s time for dinner.’

And then something reached my nose that made my body quiver. A warm smell of meat and onions slowly simmered in wine, herbs and cream, and distinctively spiked with nutmeg. It was a Sunday evening favourite for me. It was the smell, comforting as one of her hugs, of my mother’s chicken stew.

I saw Zé stride forth into the kitchen, arms outstretched, and disappear from view. Then I heard him say, ‘Dinner! What delicious food do you have for us this evening, oh cook of my dreams?’

They’d brought her too! Without even telling me! God knew how they’d got her here so fast—maybe the helicopter had gone back to fetch her—but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was here. I flew across the polished marble of the hallway and into the kitchen, ready to give her the embrace of her life. My mother stood at a large, spotlit stove with her back to me, wearing the same blue smock she had worked in ever since I could remember.

Zé wheeled round as I entered. ‘And this, Claudia, is Ludo—our new member of the family.’

The woman who was not my mother turned around and held out her hand for me to shake. She wiped it first on her smock, which I now realised was standard issue uniform for all Zé’s kitchen employees and not something unique to my mother. And, much more horrifying, neither was her recipe for chicken stew.

A
candle burns on my table. As I wait, and hope that the Australian has forgotten our meeting, I dip the fingertips of my right hand one by one into the molten pool around the wick, relishing the hot, sharp pain followed by the feeling of delicious intimacy as each fingertip is coated in solidifying wax. I peel the caps off in turn, and let them fall to the table, where they land like petrified flower petals. I scoop them up and drop them into the breast pocket of Ernesto’s big, baggy shirt, not wanting to appear too bored by my guest’s late arrival.

I make a bet with myself that I can identify him when he walks in. It’s a little unfair. I would know when he’s here with my eyes closed, so much does he jar with the faded elegance of the place. There’s something almost obscene about how healthy he looks: his tanned, blemish-free skin; the dog-dick, coral pink of his tongue against the bright white of his teeth. His T-shirt clings like sandwich wrap to a pair of repellent, inflated pectorals. His trousers have huge saddlebag pockets in their sides, as if he were on safari and needed kit to hand for every possible scenario. Was he expecting an untamed wilderness, or does he just dress for the outback all the time?

‘How you going?’ he says, in English. He’s been drinking already. He walks with a swagger, and when he sits down, his feet swing out loosely from his ankles like cars on a fairground spinner.

‘Well,’ I reply. ‘
Cachaça
makes excellent fuel. We even power the cars with it here, as you may remember.’

He laughs, and sits down.

‘When were you last here?’ I say. ‘Should I be speaking to you in English?’

He laughs, and switches languages. ‘No—my Portuguese is intact. Although it’s been a few years.’

‘Your English—you’ve picked up quite an accent,’ I say, playfully.

‘I have. But speaking this language again—it’s wonderful. I can hear the Carnival drums already! Let me tell you straight away, I’m excited about working back here—and I would love to make the move permanent if I can.’ The waiter arrives. ‘Could I get a beer thanks.’

‘Bring him a caipirinha as well,’ I say. ‘He’s home now!’ The only way to make this experience bearable is to get him drunker. He’s physically fit, so it shouldn’t be hard.

My task for the evening is not simply to entertain him. He is on the verge of accepting a secondment to the agency, so in theory I’m vetting him as much as schmoozing him. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. The truth is that to deny him the position if he wants it would be out of the question. His father is another old buddy of Oscar’s, so that is pretty much that; showing him a good time is my only option. It won’t be easy—my real feelings are snapping about in my throat like snakes, ready to strike—but the fact that he has to feel charmed doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun at his expense.

Within the hour, he is well oiled, and talking. After my second caipirinha I order a bottle of Californian Pinot Noir, but the Australian decides to stay on beer and spirits. While I’m ordering the drinks he also leans over to request ‘the largest cigar in the hotel’ from our waiter, and slobbers on the end of it like a dog with a twig when it arrives.

‘I love it here,’ he says. ‘I’ve been reading up on how the market works. Tiny ideas for tiny minds: it’s like being a god. Back home, consumers expect to be entertained before they’ll even consider hearing your brand name. Over here, it’s like the good old days—you tell them to do something and they do it.’

I smile. ‘We like to think it’s more complicated than that. Now, what would you like to eat this evening?’

‘What’s on the menu?’

‘Everything!’ I say. ‘Nowadays. In that area, I expect the city has changed beyond recognition since you were last here.’

The regulations prohibiting imported goods have long since gone. And now that chefs can obtain saffron for their pilafs,
bouquets garnis
for their
bourguignons
and
porcini
for their risotti, the plates of the city’s diners are home to the real thing and not poor local approximations. It’s just a question of which restaurant is most likely to blow his mind.

‘It’s your first night in the gastronomic capital of the continent,’ I say. ‘And I have a generous expense account. So the question is, what would you like? We could hit one of the
churrasco
places, but this city also has some of the best Italian and Japanese restaurants on the planet—not to mention Lebanese, Portuguese, Indian, Korean, Spanish, French. Or if you’re looking for something a little simpler, they say that more pizza is eaten here some evenings than in the whole of Italy. Just say the word. I can get us a reservation anywhere.’

He takes a pull on his cigar, and blows a thick, bottom-heavy smoke ring, the larger half of which dips down towards the table and lands like a toxic bomb in my glass of wine.

‘To be honest, I’ll have plenty of time to explore the city. For tonight I’d be happy just holing up here and ordering a club sandwich. What do you say?’

My eyes glaze over and I take a big gulp of wine. ‘Of course.’

I can’t bear to order one for myself, but I request the sandwich for him, hoping for his sake that he enjoys it.

I try not to look at it when it arrives. I want to avoid the comparison. I don’t want to know whether this sandwich is better or worse than the one I remember, or the same. I just don’t want them connected. But simply by ordering it the Australian has barged in on the memory, and lashed himself to it.

He gets drunker and more boisterous, and doesn’t touch the sandwich. To avoid thinking about it, I retreat further from him into the comfortably padded room of good red wine. As he talks on, my mind wanders, to the boy in the square this morning, to the man working the bathrooms downstairs, to Ernesto. To Melissa.

‘The problem with first-world markets is that clients are constantly trying to find new ways of discovering whether or not advertising actually works. Here, you know it works—I’ve seen what happens when a good campaign rolls out. The sales skyrocket. They treat us with the reverence of Romans before the Oracle. I love that.’

As he talks, he picks up one quarter of the sandwich, gives it a critical glance, and takes a large bite, spilling much of what is left behind. Then, right in front of me, he dismantles the other three quarters, browsing their insides for wads of chicken breast, which he absentmindedly tosses into his mouth between puffs of his cigar, and leaving the rest.

‘What are you saying? That consumers over here are unevolved? Half-wits?’ I ask.

He pauses mid-swallow, fearing he’s upset me.

‘Because I might have to agree with you.’

He roars with laughter.

‘But you’ve hardly touched your sandwich.’

He grimaces. ‘Tell you the truth, I eat a lot of club sandwiches, and this one isn’t that great.’

It does look tired: limp lettuce, grey bacon, old bread. I feel exhausted just looking at it.

‘I feel we have let you down,’ I say. ‘There’s still time for us to get a table somewhere.’

‘I have a better idea.’ Stage whisper. Foul cigar breath. ‘How about a pick-me-up to help me get over the jetlag? That will soon take our minds off food, eh?’

If he’s leaping right in like this it means that Oscar probably tipped him off. I feel like an errand boy, and am tempted to toss the bag on the table and leave him to get on with it, but I manage to keep my cool and lean back in my chair. It’s the first time in forty minutes that his conversational requirements can’t be met by a serious nod of the head or a conspiratorial chuckle of acknowledgement, so I make use of the opportunity to keep him quiet. I’d have expected this from a New Yorker, a Londoner. But an Australian? I thought they were meant to be clean-living—all yoghurt and fruit shakes and jogging.

‘You want cocaine?’

Fearing he has misjudged the situation, he backtracks. ‘I don’t know. I mean, Oscar said—’

‘Of course.’ His smile returns. ‘You can find most things in a hotel like this.’

He raises his glass. ‘Excellent.’

‘Just one thing,’ I say. ‘If you have a taste for drugs, you must be careful. It doesn’t do to get mixed up with the police in this city. They shoot first, and do not get as far as the questions.’ I drain my glass of wine, and stand up. ‘I will ask around.’

What he wants is right here in my pocket, but I need some time away from him, and I can’t stop thinking about the sandwich. Things are bad enough for the hotel as it is without that kind of ingratitude. I feel I should offer the chef an explanation, which is convenient as the kitchen is probably just where he thinks I would go to get drugs. He’s probably read a magazine article trumpeting the virtues of the new fusion restaurants in the city, and is picturing fashionable young chefs boosting their culinary creativity with powders less wholesome than cassava flour. Never mind that the idea of barging into a crowded hotel kitchen and demanding drugs from a bunch of semi-geriatric second-generation Italians is laughable—I want to give him the impression that’s what I am doing. I leave the bar, cross the hotel lobby and enter the restaurant.

It’s a barren, dessert-trolley sort of a place, fringed with foreign couples, and with one rowdy business dinner at the centre. I’m trying to work out where the kitchen is when our waiter comes in from the bar bearing the remains of the club sandwich, and I follow him through a set of swing doors.

We enter a cramped, steamy kitchen, where a crackling radio plays bossa nova. Several large aluminium pans bubble away on the stove. One young chef is twisting and cutting small red sausages and dropping them into a pan. Another grates cheese. A third, older man is seasoning a huge sea bass, which must be for the businessmen outside. They’re in the middle of a joke and are laughing as the waiter enters, with me, unseen, on his tail.

‘Excuse me,’ I say to the waiter. ‘Can you tell me who made that sandwich?’

The waiter spins round, then looks down at the tray in his hands, and back at me. ‘I beg your pardon, Senhor?’

‘That sandwich. I want to speak to the person who made it.’

‘Was there something wrong with it?’

‘Nothing at all. It was good. I just want to tell whoever made it that it is not being sent back half-eaten because it is unsatisfactory. The person who ordered it was not in a position to appreciate it, that’s all.’

The waiter looks around him to see if anyone else is on hand to deal with this situation, before turning back to me. ‘Sir, you really shouldn’t be here. Guests are prohibited from entering the kitchen.’

I shout over his shoulder at the chefs. ‘Whoever made that sandwich—it was delicious, OK? It was very, very good.’ They look up from their work in bewilderment.

‘Thank you, Senhor,’ says the waiter. ‘We appreciate the compliment. Now I must ask you to leave us.’

‘It was great! Hear me? It was a
life-changing
sandwich!’

Red-faced, I burst back through the swing doors and into the restaurant. I should go down to the bathroom to cool off for a second before going back to the bar, but I can’t bear the thought of running into that attendant again.

I stride into the bar, trying to contain my indignation. The Australian’s excitement is palpable from the doorway. His saddle-bagged thighs are trilling up and down like the fingers of a cocktail pianist. He’s probably high already on the excitement, and thanks to my warning about the police, the perceived danger of what is about to happen.

I slap Oscar’s bag of powder into his hand, and say something cheap like, ‘Amazing what the well-equipped kitchen has in stock these days.’ And he’s off to the bathroom with a spring in his step. I picture him snorting and spluttering away down there, and pity the poor attendant in advance for his next client. Then I order a large whisky and try to get as much of it down as I can before he returns.

He springs back into the bar after a while, beaming. There’s a white crust around one nostril. I motion for him to wipe it, and hand him a napkin.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Not partaking yourself?’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘So, your boss, good old Oscar,’ he says. ‘Remarkable man. Very persuasive. Knows how to get a man motivated.’

‘He certainly does. He is skilled in the art of terrorism.’

‘Know what he told me about this city once?’

‘What?’

‘He said, “For seventy dollars, you can fuck someone who’s more beautiful than anyone you’ve ever fucked. But for two hundred dollars you can fuck someone who’s more beautiful than anyone you’ve ever
seen
.” That idea didn’t terrify me, I can tell you.’

‘Yes, that does sound like him.’

He gives me an arch look. ‘Is it true?’

I could feign incomprehension, but I can’t bear to open the door to more of his leering, unsuitable conversation. ‘So I am told,’ I say. ‘You’re interested?’

‘Is it an inappropriate request?’

‘Probably. Are you asking it anyway?’

‘Maybe.’ He almost looks bashful, then laughs.

‘You may have to give me a little time,’ I say, finishing my drink.

‘I’m going nowhere,’ he says.

The belt of heat that strikes me outside the hotel is welcome, though I know I will soon be ready to retreat back into air-con. I head for a square at the foot of one of the city’s tallest buildings. During the day this area is respectable—the tower is open to the public, and tourists pay to go up it and attempt to take in the vast yellow forest of scraper-chaos that surrounds them—but at night, the plaza near its base is anarchic and alive. Everyone here is hustling in one way or another: the gold dealer standing with his ‘Buy’ or ‘Sell’ sign, his mouth and ears full of dodgy product; the apothecaries plying their witchy potions and rain-forest remedies from mobile stalls; the street performer who claims to have a cobra in a bag; the transsexual prostitutes loitering on the corners looking disarmingly stunning. Not one is what he seems. Not one can be trusted.

I cross the plaza, fending off advances from two fortune tellers and a hooker, and head for the green light of an all-night pharmacy. The kid behind the counter is bored and sleepy, and after I have named a couple of brands they don’t have, he swivels his ancient black and white computer terminal in my direction so I can browse the stock myself. It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m looking for.