The Fugitivities, стр. 60

She didn’t seem to buy it, but she didn’t mind either. She turned to Jonah directly and surprised him with an entirely different question: Did he like Beyoncé? She was a huge fan of American music. Jonah wearied of being the ambassador for black America, but he was happy to indulge her.

“She’s our queen,” he said with a smile. “Tell her,” he relayed to Octavio, “that to paraphrase the great Keith Murray, when we see her shine we feel like we’re all the most beautifullest person in this world.”

Octavio gave him a look and was coming up with a deflection that would bring things back to him, but she looked straight at Jonah with a smile and simply said, “I understood you are saying…I think so too.” This placed the momentum back with Jonah, who now took a different line but one he hoped would make clear something about where they were coming from.

“Tell her,” he said to Octavio, “that when you are coming from the United States, being in South America can feel like visiting the scene of a crime.”

Octavio was game, and she absorbed this even more intently, her attention now fixed on Jonah.

“Tell her there is no place in Latin America where it can feel good to be a gringo,” he said. This led to an awkward pause between the three of them.

Then she spoke, but too quickly for Jonah to make it out. “What did she say?” he asked Octavio.

“She said Americans are imperialists who have a lot of blood on their hands. But a lot of that blood is at home and not just abroad. She respects the black people of America because they have been so strong in the face of everything. She says they are an example for the world, and that is why she, like everyone, turns to them and loves their culture.”

“Tell her I appreciate that,” Jonah said. He did appreciate it; he also noticed that she was still looking at Octavio in a way that was different, that meant something more, and he decided to make the diplomatic move and excuse himself. “I’ll catch you back at the Rialto,” he told Octavio. To the woman he gave a simple salut, but she insisted on pulling him toward her and kissing him on the cheeks and, as he leaned in, his nose got caught up in the fragrant mass of her dark curls.

It was late when Octavio returned, and Jonah was now the one reading poems in bed. Octavio unpacked his washing kit and prepared to shave. Since leaving Rio, Octavio had let his beard grow, and now he seemed to take pleasure blading it off in front of their small mirror.

“You have a good time?” Jonah asked casually.

“With Francesca? Yeah.”

“Francesca, got it. What did you all get into?”

“We had coffee in the café at the cultural center. She was over the moon when I told her I had been reading Clarice Lispector, her favorite writer. She even bought me a copy of one of her books right there at the store.”

From a bag, Octavio pulled out a green book with the illustration of an undersea coral on the front and handed it to Jonah. He opened it up to the title page, where he noticed that Francesca had written her full name, Francesca Meireles, followed by her digits. He flipped to the first page and read aloud the Portuguese: “É com uma alegria tão profunda. É uma tal aleluia.”

Octavio’s face had regained its color, and now he even seemed to be glowing. “It’s with such profound happiness. Such a hallelujah,” he translated proudly.

“Sounds amazing,” said Jonah, a little more flatly than he intended.

“Francesca?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s more than that! She’s…well, you know what, man, you can find out for yourself. Because she’s invited us, both of us, to a gallery reception at the Pinacoteca tomorrow.”

The next evening, they met Francesca on the second floor of a beautiful open-plan art gallery. Octavio and Jonah both wore ties, but the effect didn’t come off as classy as they had hoped. Their accessories had been hopelessly creased in their luggage, Octavio’s shirts were lightly stained, and neither of them had jackets. Francesca didn’t seem to mind. She spoke in Portuguese, with a sprinkling of French art terms, as she walked them around the room, pointing out prints, acrylic paintings, installations that merited attention. Her own work was on display in one corner. She had cut out speech bubbles from local comic strips and used a magnifier to blow them up to canvas size before filling them with a collage of images of politicians, pop and movie stars (there was Beyoncé), newspaper clippings, old maps, sea charts, fashion icons, parts of wild animals, and zigzagging lines of pastel coloring that connected or bisected the fragments so that the whole thing had a kind of televised talismanic quality. She was proud of her work, and when she explained it to Octavio, their glances would invariably latch onto each other and she would turn away hurriedly and show them another piece. The place was crowded, and eventually they all ended up separating so that Francesca could greet people while Jonah and Octavio wandered on their own.

The show presented artists from all across the Southern Cone. An Argentinian had cut up a map of Buenos Aires so that only the cemeteries were left visible; a Chilean had created a wall of faces out of thousands of passport photos of the desaparecidos. There were international stars present as well. A famous white South African artist had a video installation that took you on a parallel voyage to the moon, an affectionate pastiche of Méliès, full of silvered light, scratchy Victrola piano, and a rocket fueled by unrequited love. Francesca found Octavio and Jonah there, loitering on the lunar surface. She suggested that the two of them join her on a cigarette break. Octavio agreed, and Jonah, sensing that his friend