The Fugitivities, стр. 53

They ate sandwiches and drank beer that Lazaro had brought for the occasion. There was no talk of the police raid, other than a passing reference by Barthes to the fact that she still hadn’t heard from some people that she wanted to check in on. The others had tired themselves in the ocean, and after eating there was a certain cozying up between the two couples, and Jonah felt increasingly awkward in the arrangement. He let them know he was heading out for a swim.

The water was colder than he had expected, but the waves were not rough, and he easily made his way through the breakers to a place deep enough to tread fully immersed. He enjoyed swimming alone, the solitude and sense of space. He relaxed his body upward in the water so he could stare into the brightness of the sky.

Teresa’s body was magnificent, her color, everything. Her voice, the words she had said expressly for him: eu sou muito apaixonada pra você. He wished Isaac were with them, that he could talk to him about Teresa. He would have to write to him, describe all the crazy things that he had lived through since arriving. It was as if the place had intoxicated him with equal measures of nightmare and fantasy. Visions of being randomly shot and dying in the street, but also of a life far away from America, with a woman exactly like Teresa, living in one of the little houses in Santa behind a wreath of tropical flowers. Teresa reclining with her back against a shutter, reaching for a joint resting on the little yellow serving dish, taking a hit and waving off a spiral of smoke before stretching out her dark legs in the sunshine as she listened to the sound of the tram going by on its way to the Largo das Neves. Its lilting grumble showered in the cries of schoolchildren jumping on and off the sides, chasing it down the street. Eu sou muito apaixonada pra você…você sabe isso…The weight of her breasts, the heat of them chest to chest. The blue Fusca parked outside under a palm tree. A world of cold beer and trips down to the ocean on any given day, the breath of solar splendor and the beauty everywhere of colored bodies like his own; the sweat of lovemaking in the afternoon.

Barthes was shouting his name down the beach. The crew was ready to head back. He stumbled out of the water and Barthes came to him with a smile and a towel.

“How was it?”

“It was great. The water is fantastic.”

“You looked like you were having a good time out there. I was watching you.”

She gave him a look, and then they were interrupted by Octavio shouting about wanting to avoid traffic. Barthes was already heading back. Jonah dried and toweled in a dopey run up to the car that Lazaro already had revving and ready to go.

Teresa was in the driver’s seat, beaming as usual, adjusting her headwrap and setting her playlist. She eyed Jonah in the back through the mirror.

“Someone has been smoking too much today, even when he’s gone swimming, that one still looks like he’s stoned! Octavio, your friend, our marijuana is too strong for him I think.”

“Nah, he’s all right, we do more than this in New York on a long night—caballero, mi socio, how you doing, man? I swear he’s getting skinnier though! Man, you need to eat more—I need to get you back to the city for some churrasco or something.”

“Truthfully, I feel good, man. I feel good, don’t mind me. I’m just taking it all in. The sand, the water, the sun. It’s just beautiful to be here.”

The colors in the sky over Rio were beautiful, and everyone was somewhat fatigued. Lazaro and Teresa sang along with each other to the sambas. The Americans each basked alone in their thoughts.

—

The next morning they learned that Taìs was in the hospital. From what they could gather, she had been hit in the head with the butt of a heavy rifle. It was unclear whether the gun belonged to a police officer or a drug-gang commando. By the time her mother had gotten her to help it was too late. There was heavy hemorrhaging and she had slipped into a coma.

Barthes was furiously making phone calls all through the morning to people who worked for her NGO. She set up a meeting with Angelica so they could go to the hospital together. Octavio and Jonah asked Barthes if she wanted them to go with her. But she simply packed an overnight bag and left without an answer.

There was nothing to do but wait and pray. To the universe, if that was what might rescue her, although Jonah felt keenly how much better it would be to walk, as Teresa did, with a deity one believed would deliver. He could remember only sparsely what he had read of the Bible. Now, involuntarily, he thought of an image that had bothered him when he first read it in the Book of Job. It was the line about the human body being crushed like a moth. He had been a boy when he first heard that passage and had seen himself trapped under a boot, his slim chest crumpling like a chocolate wafer. He was so seized by the image that he looked it up online when they went to check their emails. He had basically remembered it correctly, but it was the lines that followed that now struck him viscerally, with an almost unbearable realism. They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it. Jonah thought of the students he had left behind in Brooklyn. He tried to think of something else.

—

The weather was gorgeous, the city humming with life. Octavio and Jonah wandered, saying little, trapped in a daze. Eventually they ended up in a café in Copacabana