• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“No.” An image flashed before me of Agnaldo’s zoned-out face, then an earlier one of his smile as he played capoeira with me. “How did he die?”

“Beans.”

“What?”

“Because of the heat. Beans are a heavy food. People eat them when it’s too muggy, too humid, and they die of stomach heat. Their stomach gets too hot and they die.”

“What do the doctors call this?”

Jorge shrugged. “I don’t know. It happens all the time.”

Agnaldo. Through the dust and afternoon heat, I began to hear his music. I saw his face, full of so much intelligence, so much promise, and so much joy. Destroyed by crushing, mind-numbing poverty. I hate this country, I thought. I hate it.

The day before my flight to Seattle, I met an Englishman at capoeira who was a student of one of my friends in England. I took him around the city for a half a day. He had English pink cheeks and looked about twenty. He and his girlfriend had come to Brazil with very little money, and he had already found a job teaching English for about ten dollars an hour—an excellent hourly wage. The job was four hours a week, and he and his girlfriend planned to live on his earnings.

“That’s not much to live on,” I said.

“People here live on sixty dollars a month,” he said. “I want to live simply, like people here.”

We went to their apartment, a small two-bedroom in a middle-class area. The air was thick with marijuana smoke despite an open window. On the small stereo they had clearly brought with them, Indian sitar music played.

I smiled and suddenly felt old.

“We plan to go camping,” his girlfriend said. “Take our tent and live off the land somewhere north of here on the beach.”

“That might be difficult,” I said. I constructed in my head the scene: in a small beach-side town a group of locals watch in utter amazement as two foreigners, clearly loaded with valuables, put all their belongings into a flimsy cloth shelter and then blithely walk away, leaving everything behind.

“I’d give your tent five minutes before it disappears,” I said.

A twilight moon shone through the window, and I wanted to be outside. The man got up to change the CD.

“The people here are so honest. Not like people in England,” he said. The new music sounded like Eastern meditation chimes.

“Do either of you speak Portuguese?”

The woman crossed her legs under her on the couch. “We find goodness is the same the world over,” she said. “We don’t really need Portuguese to communicate. We see people, we smile, and we all understand each other. It’s in the energy.”

I realized that I must sound like a lecturing know-it-all. It was time to leave.

part two

treading water

twelve

encountering seattle

I was offered a temporary teaching position north of Seattle, for which I was grateful, but I knew I couldn’t handle small-town America just yet. I wanted to be near the bigger city, but the city disoriented me. It was so encumbered with…stuff. I found it hard to shop in the large grocery stores; I became lost in the overwhelming selection of too many items. I decided to move to Vashon, an island near Seattle that was easily accessible to the city via a fifteen minute ferry ride. I thought I wanted tranquility, solitude, and quiet.

Soon after my arrival, I was standing with some newfound friends near Pioneer Square, a touristy downtown “historic area” (shades of Salvador). People packed the chilly autumn street, laughing, talking, and shouting to each other from sidewalk to sidewalk. A squadron of motorcycles zoomed by, then parked along the curb. My friends and I were waiting to be let into a crowded dance bar. We were not the first in line.

A man, drunk and dark-skinned with black hair, walked near the first couple in line. Under his arm he carried what appeared to be a bedroll and a jacket.

“It’s a good night,” he said, slurring his words.

The couple pretended they hadn’t heard.

“It’s a good night,” he said more aggressively to the