The Fugitivities, стр. 49
Octavio was rejuvenating himself in the sea. The salt on his shoulders flashed in the sun as he thrust himself through the waves. A Brazilian man had joined the European women near their spot. He laughed with them while he took off his shirt. He was wearing a black Brazilian-style Speedo that ended at mid-thigh, and, around his neck, a thin gold chain. He stood watching over the women with his arms crossed and his feet planted beneath his shoulders, like a lifeguard. Jonah had never seen such a perfect man, not in the sense necessarily of absolute beauty, but of masculine ideal. He was chiseled, his hair cropped and trim, his skin dark—darker than Jonah’s and with a glowing vermelho in it. Handsome in the inimitable, charismatic way of black men. Barthes was looking at him too, over the spine of her textbook. Jonah glanced at her breasts. They were small, not flat really, but diminutive. She still had an adolescent figure. Just then Octavio came crashing into view, dripping all over Barthes’s books and tearing towels away to dry himself. Barthes looked up from her reading.
“How was the water?”
“Spectacular,” said Octavio. “You need to stop all this reading, it’s unhealthy, we’re in Rio, try and act the—”
“The water is filthy,” Barthes cut in. “They drop raw sewage in there for miles up the coast, so do me a favor and don’t touch me.” Instead of following her orders, Octavio came after her. Barthes refused to scream as Octavio wrestled and tussled with her in the sand and Jonah remained neutral until they kicked up sand in his face. He noticed the Brazilian man looking over. He didn’t seem bothered at all, just indifferent, as if he expected the foreigners to be exactly what they were.
On the bus on the way back Jonah felt sick. The couple sat in front of him bickering. Or at least Jonah thought they were bickering. But then after a while, to his astonishment, Barthes’s head was resting on Octavio’s shoulder, and he had placed an arm around her and was whispering something, or really kissing her softly, his face buried in her hair. To feel alone in the company of quarreling lovers is not the worst kind of solitude, Jonah thought. But few things are more grating to the demands of ego than to be alone in the presence of their reconciliation.
12
About a week after their arrival, Barthes invited them to a beach picnic her NGO had organized for her students. When Jonah and Octavio arrived, they found the young woman everyone called Gracia surrounded by a circle of kids and assistants handing out pieces of fruit, small sandwiches, and potato chips. Barthes was radiant. The sun was shimmering in her hair; she seemed less pale and twiggy, full of a raw vitality she hadn’t yet fully displayed in their presence. She was wearing bangles and colored bracelets and she laughed easily with the kids as she played with them, chasing them around in the sand. Jonah and Octavio joined them and ate hungrily like little boys, and then Octavio got a game of soccer going.
The three friends played against five younger and more skilled kids who threw themselves across the sand diving and dribbling while the Americans tried to keep up. Octavio scored just enough to keep them in the game. After one goal Jonah saw him looking at Barthes and thought he saw a glimmer of relief, a look that said—Why haven’t you always been this way?—and—I knew you were like this all along—and—This is how I like you—and for the first time it was clear to him that their abrasion against each other had also polished them like lenses. This in no way assured they would always be together, or even that they would always be there for each other in times of need; but it had fostered in them an inconvenient conviction that no other person would ever understand them so well, that all other relationships, even happier ones, must suffer a little for their comparative misalignment.
It was getting dark, and Barthes announced that she would be accompanying two of her students, Taìs and Angelica, back to their homes in the favelas. Octavio quickly insisted on joining them, which meant that Jonah would have to go as well. They all caught a van on Avenida Atlântica and headed north in rapid bursts, swerving over as the fare handler threw open the door, crying out a string of destinations, and hustling more rides. Along the way, Taìs and Angelica quizzed the young men on their sightseeing accomplishments and were tickled that they had been in Rio for weeks without visiting the Christ Redeemer, or the famous Lapa steps where Snoop Dogg and Pharrell filmed the music video for “Beautiful.”
By the time they reached their stop night had fallen. In the increasingly narrow lanes where they were walking, the streetlights either hadn’t come on yet or someone had disabled them so that they never would. Barthes was walking ahead with Octavio and Taìs, who had taken him by the hand, while Angelica walked quietly at Jonah’s side. A moped driven by a young man, carrying an older woman with some grocery bags behind him, squirreled past noisily. Octavio was becoming quieter as Barthes, ever sure-footed, marched them up to what they could see was the beginning of the favela. They climbed a long flight of stairs in near darkness. At the top Jonah looked back and saw the twinkling lights of the city strung out below in undulating waves. They had passed the first low brick constructions when he heard the click. Two boys came out of the shadows with long guns dangling casually