“Because,” Toninho said, “my friend is a corpse. Partly a corpse. Part of him has not had a woman in forty-seven years. Clearly, if we are to get the truth from him, his peri-spirit must be awakened.”
“Toninho!” Fletch said.
“It is true,” Toninho said to Jurema.
Behind Fletch’s long chair. Jurema bent over. She put her hands on his breasts and put at least part of her weight on them. Pressing hard, she ran her hands all the way down his stomach, under his towel to his pelvis, then raised her hands.
She erupted in laughter. “He seems alive. If the other part of him is as healthy …”
A cool breeze blew over Fletch. He resettled his towel.
“You see the problem,” Toninho said with dignity. “Now. How can you help my friend?”
“Toninho. Stop it. You’re gross.”
“A corpse for my friend? Someone young, dead, and pretty.”
“Toninho, this isn’t funny.”
“Probably by Tuesday,” Jurema said. “There are always such corpses available during Carnival.”
“Find a good one,” Toninho said.
Jurema waddled a short distance. Speaking to Toninho in Portuguese, incredibly enough she stooped over and picked a weed out of the burned grass. Her face flushed. She then lifted herself up the back stairs and into the house.
“Tuesday,” Toninho said. “She’ll have one for you Tuesday.”
“Toninho, I hope this is another of your jokes.”
Abruptly, in the same tone of voice, Toninho said, “Your friend, Teodomiro da Costa, is to be respected.”
“I met with him this morning.” Fletch watched the sunlight flashing on Tito’s shoulders as he swam. “He had advice for me, which I respect. Especially at the moment.”
“In this country, seventy percent of the business is run by the government, you see. To do well on your own, as Teo has, is to do very well indeed. Now tell me. In North America, there is a car which has what is called a slant-six engine. Can you describe it to me, please?”
Fletch told Toninho what he understood of the slant-six engine, and that it had an especially long life. Sitting on Saturday morning in the mountains above Rio de Janeiro looking out into the sunlight, he felt his eyes crossing. He had not had that much of the cachaça. One moment Toninho was talking seriously of necrophilia and the next just as seriously about a slant-six car engine.
The young girl brought Norival his third cachaça.
“Ah,” Toninho said. “Norival is an arigó. A simpleton, a boor, but a good fellow. If he were not from a rich, important family, he would be an arigó. His brother, Adroaldo Passarinho, is the same, exactly like him in every way. Look the same, act the same. His father has sent Adroaldo to school in Switzerland, in hopes there will be someone in the family this generation less than simple. Arigó.”
Tito climbed out of the pool and, not drying himself, dropped naked belly down on the grass.
In high seriousness and in great detail, Toninho then wanted to know about this new robot he had read about in Time magazine supposedly capable of understanding and obeying one hundred thousand different orders. Designed in Milan, manufactured in Phoenix with Japanese parts. What was the nature of the computer which ran it? How were the joints designed, and how many were there? What would the robot say when given conflicting orders? Would the robot know, better than a person, when it is breaking down?
In his towel, holding a fresh glass of cachaça, Orlando stood on the back steps of the plantation house. He sang. Of the four Tap Dancers, Orlando’s muscles were the heaviest. His voice was deep, and he sang well.
O canto de minha gente
Assediando meu coração
Semente que a arte germinou
E o tempo temperou
Amor, o amor
Como é gostoso amar.
Norival raised his head from his long chair and hissed. Even from a distance, it could be seen Norival was not focusing. His head dropped back.
“Ah, the arigó never sobered from last night,” Toninho said.
“What’s the song?” Fletch asked.
“An old Carnival song. Let’s see.” Toninho closed his eyes to translate. Fletch had been slow to see how long Toninho’s lashes were. They rested on his cheeks. “‘My people’s song makes my heart leap. The seed is sown by art and tempered by time. Love, love, how good it is to love.’”
“That’s a good song.”
“Oh, yes.”
With his glass of cachaça, Orlando wandered down to where they were sitting.
“Orlando,” Toninho said. “Give Fletch a demonstration of capoeira, of kick-dancing. You and Tito. Make it good. Kill each other.”
Raising his head beside the pool, Tito said, “You, Toninho.”
“Perform for the gods,” Toninho said.
Orlando looked into his glass. “I’ve had a drink.”
“You won’t hurt each other,” Toninho said.
“You and Orlando,” Tito said from the grass.
“It is important Janio sees capoeira from close up,” Toninho said. “So he will remember.”
Glass still in hand, Orlando went to Tito and with his bare feet stood on Tito’s ass. Standing thus, he drained his glass, leaned over, and put it on the grass. Then he began to walk slowly up Tito’s back.
“I can’t breathe!” Tito said.
“And you can’t talk?” Toninho asked.
“I can’t talk, either.”
Then he wriggled free, spilling Orlando to the side, and jumped to his feet.
In a wide arc, he swung his right foot, aiming for Orlando’s head.
Orlando ducked successfully, turned sideways and slammed his instep into Tito’s side, against his rib cage. Orlando’s towel dropped.
“Wake up,” Orlando said.
In a short moment, Tito and Orlando had the rhythm of it, had each other’s rhythm. Gracefully, viciously, rhythmically, as if to the beating of drums, with fantastic speed they were aiming kicks at each other’s heads, shoulders, stomachs, crotches, knees, each kick coming within a hair’s breadth of connecting, narrowly ducking, sidestepping each other, turning and swirling, their legs straight and their legs bent, their muscles tight and their muscles loose, their fronts and their backs flashing in the sunlight, the hair on their heads seeming to have to hurry to keep up with this frantic movement. With this fast, graceful dance, easily they could have killed each other.
Eva had come onto the porch to watch. Her eyes flashed. A few faces of other women appeared in the upper windows of the plantation house. Everyone loves the Tap Dancers…. They’re sleek.
“Remember …” Toninho was saying. “A skill developed by the young male slaves, in defense against their masters. They would practice at night, to drums, so if their masters came down from the big house, to look for a woman, they could pretend to be dancing. Thanks to—what is the word in English?—miscegenation, such skills ultimately were not needed….”
There was a loud Thwack! and Tito began to fall sideways. He had taken a hard blow to the head from the instep of Orlando’s foot. The blow could have been much, much harder. Tito did not fall completely.
“I told you to wake up,” Orlando said regretfully.
Recovering, Tito charged Orlando like a bull, right into his midriff. Orlando fell backwards, Tito on top of him. Laughing, sweating, panting, they wrestled on the grass. At one point their bodies, their arms and legs, were in such a tight ball perhaps even they could not tell which was whose.