Carioca Fletch

Twenty-one

Before again pulling the drapes closed in his room at The Hotel Yellow Parrot, Fletch noticed that across the utility area the man was back painting the room. “If he doesn’t finish soon,” Fletch said to himself, “I’ll go across and help him.”

In bed again, hearing the samba drums from two or three combos in the street, Fletch tried his best to sleep. He breathed deeply, evenly, a long time, to convince his body he was asleep.

His body was not fooled. He was awake.

His mind was crowded with wriggling flesh, with people dressed as rabbits and rodents, harlequins and harlots, grandes dames and playschool children, villains and viscounts, convicts and crooks, pirates and priests. Clearly, you cannot sleep, Laura had said. Did you fall asleep? Teo had asked. I thought not With a fat Queen of Sheba eating cookies from a bag. With the sight of a man walking well with a long knife sticking out of his chest, reporting to police that he had lost his camera.

Idalina Barreto had been on the sidewalk in front of The Hotel Yellow Parrot when he returned. The wooden-legged great-grandson was with her. She had some sort of rag doll in her hand.

As he hurried into the hotel, she yelled and shook the rag doll at him.

Again he put the pillow over his head. Again he insisted he go to sleep. He thought how tired his legs were, from dancing with Jetta, from …

It was no good.

“Bum, bum, paticum bum.”

Heavily, he got out of bed. He opened the drapes again.

He looked up the number of Marilia Diniz in the telephone book.

“Prugurundum.”

He dialed her number. It rang five times.

“Marilia? Good morning. This is Fletcher.”

“Good morning, Fletcher. Are you enjoying Carnival?”

“Marilia, I know it is Sunday morning, during Carnival; it is wrong of me to call; but I need to talk to you. I have not slept since Thursday.”

“You must be enjoying Carnival.”

“It is not exactly that. Are you too busy? Can we meet somewhere?”

“Right now?”

“If I don’t get sleep soon… I don’t know what will happen.”

“Where’s Laura?”

“She went to Bahia with her father. She’ll be back later today.”

“You need to see me, before you can sleep?”

“I think so. I need to understand something, do something. I need advice.”

“You are disturbed?”

“I lack in understanding.”

“Come over. Do you know how to get to Leblon?”

“Yes. I have your address from the telephone book. Are you sure it’s all right if I come now?”

“I ignore Carnival. I am here.”

“Trouble between you and Laura?” Marilia asked.

In her little house in Leblon, behind a high wooden fence, Marilia Diniz led Fletch into a small study.

“I saw you in a car with the Tap Dancers yesterday.”

Fletch did not dare ask her what time of day, or night, she saw them; whether all the Tap Dancers were blinking. “I relieved them of some money, playing poker.”

At the side of the study, Marilia was adjusting a disk in a word processor. “The Brazilian male,” she said, “is known for his energy.”

“There’s magic, high energy in the food.”

“The Brazilian male is slow to give up his … what? … his immaturity.” She started the word processor and watched it operate a moment. “At seventy, eighty, the Brazilian male is still a boy.”

The word processor was whizzing away, typing manuscript. “Forgive me,” Marilia said. “This is my routine for Sunday mornings, making manuscript of my week’s work.” She sat in a comfortable chair near her desk and indicated Fletch should sit on a two-person sofa. “I used to have a typist, but now? Another job lost. Teodomiro arranged this word processor for me.”

Fletch sat.

“You look healthy enough,” pale Marilia said. “Glowing.”

“I have already been to the police station this morning. A woman I know, from California, showed up at my hotel yesterday morning, early. She had been robbed. I told her I would bring her money, immediately. Walking between my hotel and hers, she disappeared.”

“Ah, Carnival…”

“Really disappeared, Marilia. With Teo’s help, I checked her suite at The Jangada. Her clothes are still there. She has no money, no passport, no credit cards, identification.”

“You are right to be concerned,” Marilia said. “Anything can happen during Carnival. And does. Is there any way I can help you?”

“I don’t think so. We went through the hospital for that district. Teo says I just must wait.”

“Waiting is hard.”

“That’s not why I came to see you. As I said on the phone, I have not slept since Thursday.”

“No one sleeps during Carnival.” Then Marilia said, “So I guess you don’t want any coffee.”

“No, thanks. Do you know about this old woman who says I am her murdered husband come-back-to-life?”

“Someone mentioned something about it, the other night at Teo’s.” Marilia glanced at her word processor. “You tell me about it.”

“Okay.” On the divan, Fletch put his hands under his thighs. “When you, Laura, and I were having that drink at the café on Avenida Atlantica, Friday afternoon, an old woman in a long white dress came along the sidewalk and apparently saw me. She stopped near the curb. She stared at me until we left. Did you happen to notice her?”

“I’m ashamed to say I didn’t.”

“She was behind you.”

“Is the old woman the reason you disappeared under the table?”

“No. That was because of this other woman, from California, who walked down the street just then. I was surprised to see her.”

“The woman who has since disappeared?”

“Yes.”

Marilia got up and checked her word processor, scanned the processed manuscript.

“When Laura and I entered the forecourt of The Yellow Parrot, this old hag jumped out of the bushes at us. She was screaming and pointing her finger at me. Laura talked to her calmly.” Marilia sat down again and listened to Fletch expressionlessly. “The old woman said that she recognized me. In an earlier life, I had been her husband, Janio Barreto. That forty-seven years ago, at about my present age, I had been murdered. And now I must tell her who it was who had murdered me.”

Marilia said nothing.

Fletch said, “Laura said, ‘Clearly you will not rest until you do.’”

“And you have not rested.”

“I have not slept.”

“You think the old woman has put a curse on you?”

“Marilia, she hangs around outside my hotel, accosts me every time I go in or go out. She brought her great-grandchildren to the hotel to meet me. This morning she was there on the sidewalk, yelling at me and shaking some kind of a voodoo doll at me.”

“A calunga doll.”

“Whatever.”

The word processor finished its work and turned itself off.

Marilia said, “An interesting story.”

“No one will help me to understand,” Fletch said. “Otavio Cavalcanti will answer none of my questions, about anything. He just nods and says Yes. Teo says he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know what to do. I can’t understand whether Toninho Braga is making a joke out of it or whether there is some part of him that is serious. Worst of all, I can’t understand Laura at all. She’s an intelligent woman, a concert pianist. She seems to have no curiosity about my background, but she seems to give this Janio Barreto matter some credence.”

Marilia sighed. “Ah, Brazil.”

“I can’t tell if everyone here is playing some kind of an elaborate joke, a trick on me.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Laura says I won’t rest until I reveal this murderer, and I haven’t. Teo seems to say he is not surprised I am not sleeping. The Tap Dancers just don’t expect me to sleep. How can I figure out what happened in Rio de Janeiro a generation before I was born? Am I to die of sleeplessness?”

“Did the old woman say you wouldn’t sleep until you answered her?”

“I don’t know. Laura talked to her. In Portuguese that was way above my head. I believe the old woman did say so. Why else would Laura have said so?”

“And you believe all this?”

“Of course not. But I’m nearly going crazy with sleeplessness.”

Marilia’s eyes traveled around the stacks of books in her study. “What’s the question?”

“First, could this all be an immense practical joke Laura and the Tap Dancers are playing on me? The Tap Dancers seemed to know all about it before they ever met me.”

“Could be,” Marilia said.

“They’re all friends. I’m the foreigner. Surely it is easy enough to hire an old woman, some children, a ten-year-old boy on a wooden leg?”

Marilia frowned. “A small boy on a wooden leg?”

“Yes. Supposedly the great-grandson. Named Janio Barreto, of course.”

Marilia said, softly: “Or it could be that you are Janio Barreto, and you were murdered decades ago, and you have come back to Rio to reveal who murdered you.”

Fletch stared at her. “Are you in on this, too?”

“Fletcher, my new friend from North America, you must understand that most of the people in this world believe in reincarnation, in one form or another.” Marilia stood up and went to her word processor.

She began to tear and stack the pages of her manuscript.

“Marilia, may I point out to you that while you and I have been sitting in this room talking about ghosts and curses and calunga dolls, a magnificent, modern piece of technology quietly has been typing your manuscript in the corner?”

“This will not be read in your country.” She placed the stack of new pages under a manuscript on her desk. “I am not translated and published in the United States of the North. The publishers, the people there have a different idea of reality, of what’s important, what affects people, what happens, of life and death.” She sat in her soft chair. “Have you at least had breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“Then what shall we do?”

“Tell me straight out if I should take this matter seriously.”

“It is serious, if you’re not sleeping. You can become quite ill from not sleeping. You can drive your car into a lamp post.”

“Marilia, nothing in my background prepares me for this. I was employed as an investigative reporter for a newspaper, dealing with real issues, police corruption—”

“This is not real?”

“Can it be real that I was murdered forty-seven years ago? That I have come back from the grave?”

Marilia chuckled. “It’s real that you’ve come back to Rio de Janeiro. It’s real that some old woman thinks so. It’s real that you’re not sleeping. Ah, Carnival!” Marilia said. “People go crazy during Carnival!”

“I don’t intend to be one of them.”

“Reconciling differing realities,” Marilia apparently quoted from somewhere. “What does your education and training, as an investigative journalist, tell you to do in a situation which perplexes you?”

Fletch thought a short moment. “Find out the story.”

“My training says that, too. So let’s go find out the story. Where do the Barreto family live?”

“Someone mentioned … Toninho mentioned … Santos Lima. Toninho said I had lived in the favela Santos Lima.”

“Let’s go there, then.” Marilia stood up and took a bunch of keys from her desk. “Let’s go find out the story.”