The Fugitivities, стр. 59
“Pinche pendejo!”
Octavio had opened the door before Jonah had time to put the journal away.
“What’s this shit about, Octavio?” he said, brazenly.
“What’s it about? You steal my girl, now you spy on my work! You’re so jealous of my success that you can’t help yourself? You can’t even mind your own business?”
“I’m traveling with you. You are my business. Look, man, I’m getting a bit worried about you.”
“You should be worried about yourself. I should beat you then leave you by the side of the road!”
Octavio snatched his journal back and glared at Jonah like he would hit him. If it was going to come to blows, Octavio would have the upper hand.
“Calm down. Look, man, you’re unwell, I don’t just mean with a flu or whatever it is—you’re a mess, I mean look at you. Your skin is practically the color of that shit you’re drinking. C’mon, man, let’s get out of here and go see some sights along the river. That’s what we’re here to do, isn’t it? Maybe there’s a bookstore where you can re-up on some poets. I’ll buy you a poetry book. Whatever you want as long as it’s not more Rimbaud or any other tragic poet who died young. Just, let’s go, yeah?”
Octavio looked at Jonah and then back at his journal. He flipped through a few pages, then tossed it on the desk.
“All right then, a truce, but don’t think I’m not gonna remember this, Jonah. Don’t think you can just slip out of this shit, cabrón…”
In Porto Alegre the jacaranda trees were in bloom and puddles of purple blossoms rounded the dark trunks all along the quiet streets of Bom Fim. Jonah and Octavio strolled around a park and examined the area around the university before turning and making their way back to the city center. There, close to the banks of the Guaíba River, they came across the semi-enclosed terrace of a grand former waterfront hotel—the Majestic. The building was an art-deco palazzo painted pink, spruced up and converted into a cultural center named for the poet Mário Quintana, with a café, a cinema, a bookshop, and a multivalent space for contemporary artists. Jonah examined the movie-house marquee. They were showing a film by one of the old French New Wave directors who was still alive and working, a nostalgic black-and-white remembrance of Parisian youth and revolutionary aspiration in the heady days of May 1968. Jonah was pleased to see that it was being projected on thirty-five-millimeter film. They paid forty-five reais each and went in.
The theater was empty. They decided to sit three rows from the screen, dead center. As the dark and grainy images swept over them, Jonah felt the languor of Paris. A jump cut between worlds. The lead actress, who played a young sculptress more in love with her art than with politics, had a mischievous intensity that reminded him of Arna. Octavio was entirely entranced by the actor who played her love interest, a morose poète maudit whose death was the inevitable and symbolic price to be paid for the tattered dreams of a failed revolution. When the lights came back on, they made their way up the aisle past the only other person in the theater, a young woman who must have entered late and taken up a seat in the very last row. They exchanged glances, but she remained seated, her eyes returning to the rolling credits.
They were sharing a cigarette outside the theater when she emerged. From the way she dressed, Jonah figured she was an art student. She spoke to them in Portuguese and Octavio answered “Pois não,” and handed her a smoke. She said something back to Octavio in Portuguese, which erupted into a discussion that Jonah struggled to follow. Then Octavio gestured at Jonah and himself. “New York,” he said.
The woman started sputtering scattershot words in English that had the lovely and strange coloring of her Latin cognates. It was obvious that her English was as poor as Jonah’s Portuguese. She smiled gallantly. She said something to Jonah in Portuguese, but Octavio beat him to a reply. “I told her you don’t speak Portuguese very well,” he said. Jonah attempted to rebut this claim with some imitations of the native tongue. Her smile turned into a concentrated frown. Octavio again came to his rescue and translated for Jonah as they attempted to discuss the film they had just seen. It wasn’t until Octavio told the woman that Jonah had also lived in Paris that they found a common tongue. “Tu parles français, alors,” he said.
“Oui…mmm, un peu,” she said. At that, they both burst out laughing.
The three of them entered into a conversation where everything had to be translated to someone, and eventually the person least translated to was Jonah.
The woman was slightly older, he guessed; it was hard to say because her features were youthful, but something around the eyes and about the way she carried herself suggested her age. She was dark-haired and rocked gently on her feet when she talked. He could see Octavio picking up on the same things. In fact, he seemed enthralled, if somewhat subdued. Octavio was trying to summarize what they were doing in Porto Alegre, and he was struggling because she seemed only increasingly puzzled, if also amused, by these wayward Americans.
“Tourism, tourism.” She kept nodding and pointing at them.
And Octavio, in