The Fugitivities, стр. 52
When they arrived at the far end of a mostly unoccupied beachfront, Lazaro went down to the water with Octavio and Barthes, leaving Teresa and Jonah to set up the picnic. As they were waiting on the blanket with the spread, she suddenly turned to him and asked in her broken English, “So, what you think of Brazil?”
He had sensed a question like that coming but didn’t have a good answer worked out.
“I love it,” he said after a moment.
“You love it.”
“I mean, I love the atmosphere, I guess. The people, the life.”
“The shooting, you love it too?”
“No. It’s true, that was pretty bad.”
“For us, it’s like this…from forever. We are more used to it than you. I saw you were very afraid. Yes, you were very afraid. It was a lot of shooting for you, I think.”
They had finished setting up the spread and Teresa was sitting in lotus position now at one edge of their checkered blanket, rolling trees.
“It was a lot; I’m not going to lie. I was scared—weren’t you?”
“Mmm, yes…but, how you say…I’m coming from here, so it’s my home. I know the favela…I know what can happen, but I am always walking in my beliefs. Like God, he is watching for me…Look, you see how it says?”
She was pointing now to a tattoo done in an italic script running along the inside arch of her foot.
“In faith.”
“Faith? Yes, I am walking always in faith…I have it here with me. And I am not afraid for this. But for you, I think, I am afraid.”
At this she laughed, and he felt the playful warmth of it rousing him.
“Are you believing?” she asked, grave again, but looking past him toward the shrieking and laughter coming over the waves. “Are you walking with God too?”
This brought him up sharply, and he considered whether to take the time to ask himself and then tell her what he genuinely believed, or to tell her what he thought she would want to hear, except that he realized he couldn’t entirely know what that was, or indeed if she would care to the degree that it would be worth maximizing or minimizing the accuracy of his response. Fortunately, Teresa was just then preoccupied with lighting up, tilting back, taking in the sun and the fragrant smoke with her eyes closed to the world. When she opened them, she was looking straight at him. With a soft smile, she reached out to pass him the joint. The hot smoke rushed in, its peppery fumes watering his eyes. Teresa watched him struggling with his composure and laughed.
“It’s strong,” he said. “I don’t know…I might have to go easy on this one.”
“Yes, it’s strong. Here, I will take some more, but…you still haven’t asked me my question.”
“Asked your question?”
“Are you believing in God?”
“Ah…well, I guess I believe in the universe, you know, everything all around us, I feel like I believe in that…but I don’t really go for, like, a church thing. But I would like to think that I walk with faith…I just think for me it’s more of a personal thing, you know?”
Teresa was smoking pensively and examining him. Her attitude suggested that his answer had not impressed her, and he wished that he had formulated a better reply, something perhaps closer to a useful lie.
“You don’t believe—you are like my old boyfriend. You want things to be easy, you have answer for everything, but…when it is the bad times, when it is not so good for you, when an evil comes. Then you are scared. You say everything to make everyone happy. You say this to me now because you are wanting to make me happy. You want to get what you want…but you don’t want to trust. That you cannot do, you could not go that far, not for God, not for me. So you believe in everything…but that way you can get nothing. Can you be happy with nothing?”
Jonah guessed that the tone of her last question was harder than she probably intended, but he wasn’t sure.
“I know I don’t have a good answer. But I don’t think it’s nothing—at least I hope it’s not nothing. I try to be in the moment, to believe in that. Like right now, here with you, in this beautiful place, I feel like I can believe in the importance of this, even if I can’t say for sure that it means what God means for other people.”
“But how you can love this place? You don’t know Brazil. You don’t know even Rio. You don’t know me. There are tourism where I live. With guides they come up into the favela to look at us. Like we are animals. But what do they know? They want to enjoy Brazil, like you. They want to have their photo and see Copacabana and see football and maybe sleep with Brazilian girls. What makes you different from this tourist?”
He didn’t know what to say to this. She had caught him in a crosshair he couldn’t dodge.
“Maybe you too…you want to sleep with Brazilian girls?”
He didn’t answer.
“Don’t be sad,” she said, cocking her head. “I am making you feel sad?”
“No, no…”
“Don’t worry, Jonah! I am liking you very much…Don’t be sad!”
She repeated this last point again in her own language. The tone in her voice had stung him, but to his astonishment and relief there was also more than a hint of a smile in her face. It was a mocking smile, but it wasn’t cruel. It left him no room for escape—but whether instinctively or in accord with her beliefs, it also afforded grace. What saved him, however, was the raucous return of the others traipsing up the beach, their shoulders