The Fugitivities, стр. 54
The night was warm and the doormen of the edificios they passed were sitting on the edge of their swivel chairs, their shirts opened a button or two even more than usual, their heavy gaze not sunk into the surveillance monitors but riveted on the Japanese handheld radios broadcasting the Flamengo vs. Vasco da Gama match. You could follow its progress as you moved from building to building, bar to bar, corner to corner; it blurted out from passing taxis, from the corner grocers, seeping out of the living fabric of the city itself. Team flags and pennants appeared in windows; every other person in the street was wearing the anarchist colors of Flamengo.
At the bar they found Lazaro drinking with a group of friends and cheering on the squad. Flamengo had already opened with a scorching, if opportunistic, golazo by Renato setting the Maracanã Stadium on fire.
Octavio was in his element, and immediately fell in with the group, yelling about the qualities of the various players, annotating the progression of the play with his sweeping gestures, entering into passionate dispute with anyone and everyone, singing the heroics of Ronaldinho and the young Argentine Lionel Messi, poised to bring glory to Barcelona. Teresa wasn’t there.
Jonah pretended to be involved, but he couldn’t match Octavio’s fluency, and in its presence he had a creeping sense of isolation. In the dance halls, when the sambas came on, the dividedness only deepened. On the one hand, the rhythms connected; a wall of sound, the battery of drums crashing with a relentless, implacable sweep. The whole thing was suffused with African synchronicity. But the vocals were another matter. It was as if each and every song were a national anthem, and every person in the crowd lifted their voice on cue. Everyone knew the words, everyone loved the same songs and sang them with the same passion, the same understandings. To be surrounded by this ecstatic chorus, and be left unsinging, was an insurmountable indicator that you were a gringo. Without the words to the sambas, without a soccer team, without becoming one with the spirit of the people, there was no way to truly be a part of the city, to be whatever it meant to be Brazilian. Eu vou torcer. He had asked Octavio to translate the words from Jorge Ben’s song for him. They meant, he explained, to cheer for, the way you cheer for a team, but more than that—because in Brazil a team is more than just a team, and soccer is more than just a game. One cheers not just for the team, but for the hope of goodwill, for peace and comprehension among men, for the beauty of women, for the garden that is the city, for the seasons and celestial science, for the green beauty of the sea, for the haven of the human heart. Jonah felt the soulfulness of this. He was in awe of its expression. But he was not of it. He could not make it his own.
14
The burning sensation of cachaça coated the back of Jonah’s throat and his head was pounding when he woke to the sound of Octavio and Barthes arguing. He was too groggy to care about the details, but her tone conveyed displeasure. He heard Octavio leaving the apartment. There was quiet for a time, and then a long strip of light along the floor coming from the bathroom. Barthes was in the shower. The room was dark. Someone had closed the shutters and the apartment was still cool, but he could see through the small slats that it was bright outside. He half dozed that way for a time, listening to the ceiling fan overhead and the shower spraying with a lulling flush.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw Barthes, or rather Barthes’s wet feet and ankles. She was wrapped in a beige towel and her hair was dripping. The air was pungent with the aroma of her soaps, and he could smell her body. The towel fell. Before he could make sense of it, she was down beside him. Running her fingers over his legs. The tips of her wet hair stringing along his chest. She whispered and he nodded. She took him in her mouth, and when he was ready, she sprang up and went to the bathroom and returned with a condom. She kissed his shoulder as he rolled it on. Her body was frailer and bonier than he had imagined. The sex was uneven, and because it was going that way it was not easy. He felt as though he had to prove something to her, perhaps something he would have wanted to prove, but not just then. And he was too conscious of wanting to be away, anywhere else, and with anyone else. He was also disconcerted by not knowing the sincerity of her desire for him, or her motivations, which in that moment seemed the same thing. To satisfy a curiosity, to attack her lover, or simply because she felt like it—these were not the reasons he wanted her to have, but not reason enough for him not to go along with it. Since it was happening, if it was to go that far, what he now wanted was to make Barthes come. To see something, anything, through. But her moans remained deeply ambiguous, the tow of her pleasure rising and falling away again, her breath vacillating so that he wondered if the either of them would make it. And