Carioca Fletch

Thirty-five

Fletch—

I could not wake you up.

I tried and tried. A few times I thought you were awake, because you were talking. What you said made no sense. Did you know you talk in your sleep?

You said you were on a big white riverboat, and the sky was full of buttocks.

You said you had your goat, or someone was trying to get your goat. You seemed afraid of a kicking goat. Then, remarkably, you babbled on about an ancient Brazilian mythical figure, the dancing nanny goat.

How do you know about such things? Sometimes, when you were talking in your sleep, your eyes were open, which is why I thought I was succeeding in waking you. You said something about a man with his feet turned backward, another mythical figure, and when I asked, “Fletch, do you mean the capoeira?” you just stared off like some sort of a almapenada, a soul in torment. You also mentioned other Brazilian hobgoblins, the man with his head on backward, the headless mule, and the goblin with-hair-for-hands. You talked about being pursued by a one-legged boy, and when I asked, “Fletch, do you mean the saci-perêrê?” you stared a long time before saying, “Janio Barreto … Janio Barreto….”

Amazing thing is, you didn’t know the names of any of these Brazilian scary figures. You seemed to be seeing them in some sort of a nightmare. You were sweating profusely. Do you think you had a fever? I am amazed you have such bad dreams of such hobgoblins, like a Brazilian child, when you have never heard of them or read of them, as far as I know.

Later, when I tried again to wake you, you said, “Leave the dead alone!”

Maybe you frightened me. A little.

I canceled our reservation for dinner at Le Saint Honoré. I gave our tickets to the ball at Regine’s to Marilia, who gave them to some people she knows from Porto Alegre.

Your body is a real mess.

I decided what you need is rest.

I have gone back to Bahia. Carnival is almost over, for this year. I must start organizing my music for the concert tour.

Perhaps you would come to Bahia and advise me of what music you think should be included in the programme.

Now maybe my father will be interested in talking to you—now that he knows you have studied up on such things as the boi-tatá and the tutu-marambá

Ciao,

Laura

Fletch had awakened into bright sunlight. He was very hungry. He was very stiff. His body was sticky with sweat.

For a long moment, he thought it was still Monday afternoon and the sun had not yet set.

“Laura?” The hotel room was totally quiet. There was no noise from the bathroom. “Laura?”

From the bed, he noticed that her cosmetics, all those bottles which issued smells if not beauty, were gone from the bureau. None of her clothes were around the room. Her suitcase was gone from the rack.

His watch was on the bedside table. It read five minutes past eleven. Even in a topsy-turvy world, the sun did not shine brightly at five minutes past eleven on Monday nights.

Slowly it dawned on him it must be five minutes past eleven Tuesday morning.

He had slept seventeen hours.

Having to ask individually each part of his body to move, he got up from his bed and walked across the room.

Instead of Laura’s cosmetics on the bureau was Laura’s letter.

He read it twice.

Had he really talked so much in his sleep, said all those things to Laura? What’s a boi-tatá and a tutu-marambá Indeed, he must have frightened her.

Vaguely, he remembered having bad dreams. The boy, Janio Barreto, was following them down that crowded, dark slum street to Carnival Parade. In bright floodlights, Fletch was hunkered down in a swirling mass of bodies, brown eyes popping in surprise at seeing him there, being kicked from every direction. Again he was under the stands at Carnival, where he did not belong, looking through his own blood at a man walking by slowly, his head on backward, turning to smile at him….

In the bathroom, he tore the bandages off himself. Scabs had formed nicely. Red marks had turned purple, and purple marks had turned black.

Hadn’t Laura seen the big white riverboat floating sedately down the stream of swirling costumes? Hadn’t that been real?

Gingerly, adding no more cuts to his face, Fletch shaved.

Janio Barreto following them through the subway to Carnival Parade had meant something to Laura it had not meant to him. What had her letter said? Saci-perêrê. What’s a saci-perêrê

The warm water of the shower felt good on his body. The soap did not feel so good on some of his wounds.

In fact, Laura had not really asked him what happened to him under the stands at Carnival Parade. She thought anyone can tell a story and say it is the past. Even after his pointing out Gabriel Campos at Santos Lima, she did not really ask. She only asked how, why he pointed out Gabriel Campos.

He did not dry himself after the shower. Instead, he just wrapped the towel around his waist. The air felt too good on his wet body.

His mind a jumble, he went out onto the balcony. A small samba combo was playing, probably outside a nearby café. Across the utility area, the man was still painting the room.

Laura thought it was funny the Tap Dancers had left him in a closed coffin with his bag of money. He had seen Norival Passarinho walk after he was dead. On broomsticks, his ankles tied to the ankles of Toninho and Orlando. Then Fletch had seen Norival Passarinho really walk after he was dead, really talk. Adroaldo Passarinho. Well it was funny.

Fletch was dead. He had died forty-seven years ago. At Dona Jurema’s mountain resort the Tap Dancers had tried, maybe as a joke, to arrange a corpse for him. People believed he could answer a question older than himself. Who had murdered Janio Barreto? And he had answered it. Apparently, Fletch had seen mythological figures which were not a part of his own culture. Of course, they must have been just costumed revelers under the stands. Were they? He had helped the dead Norival Passarinho walk, in a crazy, drunken scheme. Then he had believed he saw Norival Passarinho walk, heard him talk. Fletch had come back to life. He was in a closed coffin.

For Fletch, the line between life and death had become narrower. It was so narrow, it really could be funny.

Across the utility area, the man painting the room looked at Fletch.

Fletch had not realized he was staring at the man.

Fletch waved.

Grinning, the man waved back at him. He waved his paintbrush.

Fletch blinked. He has damned little paint on that paintbrush, if he does not hesitate to wave it at someone, in a room he has been painting for days!

Fletch laughed.

The man waved his paintbrush again.

Across the utility area the two men laughed together.

Fletch gave the man the thumbs-up sign, then went back into his room.

He telephoned The Hotel Jangada.

Room 912 did not answer.

Mrs Joan Collins Stanwyk had not checked out.

Yes, there was a message awaiting her in her mail slot.

Drinking mineral water from a plastic liter bottle, Fletch read Laura’s note a third time.

Then he called Teodomiro da Costa and arranged to meet with him that night. He would be late, Fletch said, as he intended to drive to the village of Botelho and back.

Teo recommended the seafood restaurant there.

Reluctantly, Fletch knelt. His cuts and bruises protesting, he leaned over until his head was only a few centimeters from the floor.

He peered under the bed.

The small, carved stone frog was gone.