Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [8]
I glanced at the empty sand beside me. He had sat on his shoes. “I will dance barefoot,” I said.
“Are you staying for the festa again tomorrow?” he asked.
“No,” I lied. “Are you coming out tomorrow?”
“It’s a festa. I dance every night.”
I twined his hair between my fingers. “I’m going to join my friends. Will you come or stay?”
“I’ll stay.”
I kissed him again, on the mouth. Twice. I wasn’t sure why. “Good bye,” I said.
“Until later.” His smile strained the skin below his cheekbones, but never got near his eyes.
We slept all day, Ana, Andrea, and I. At night, we danced again. In empathy, they wouldn’t wear their shoes, the plastic ones they’d brought specially to show off. All night, with one eye, I watched for the man. I was edgy. Other people leapt in ecstasy to the music, but for me the dance never came inside. Arembepe was not large and he was tall. Had he come, I would have seen him.
The next week, Ana, Andrea, and Tatiana accompanied me to the Salvador airport. “It’s the first time I’ve been here,” Andrea said, gazing around her at the wide counters and high ceiling. We stopped for a fruit drink before I boarded my plane to São Paulo.
“We’ll miss you,” Ana said.
“I’m coming back.” And as I said it, I knew it was true. Suddenly I realized that I couldn’t imagine leaving this place forever. I didn’t know how yet, but I was coming back. And this time, I’d stay.
two
the first return
I had a strange year in Australia. I spent my days busily researching a topic for which I had already received a grant. But I kept thinking of Salvador.
In the evenings, I read about the city and reflected on my impressions. Salvador was an old city, by New World standards, settled by Portuguese in the 1500s. Thinking of their Catholic roots, they named Salvador’s remarkable turquoise bay Baía de Todos os Santos, or the Bay of All Saints. The graceful buildings they constructed were tinted the colors of southern Europe: deep rose, robin’s egg blue, Seneca yellow. During my visit to Salvador, I had seen many of these buildings, now decayed, their colors softened by the centuries.
I reflected on the tourist brochures I had requested from local travel agencies. They were of a Salvador I had visited on outings with Alexandra and her sisters: brilliant white beaches shaded by tall palm trees bending to warm afternoon breezes. For a small fee, the brochures told me, beachside vendors would provide visitors with a comfortable chair on the sand and cold drinks—including beer or coconut juice iced in its shell and served with a straw. As an added service, vendors would even watch people’s belongings while they frolicked in the waves or snorkeled in the tepid shallows. In these celebrated tourist areas, the night air carried the scent of the sea. Lovers and casual strollers leaned against the ancient railing of the promenade, struck silent by a glistening tail of moonlight snaking its way across dark water. Bars, open to the evening air, served local drinks made from limes, drinks strong enough to make anyone lightheaded and open to love.
I did not find in these brochures the Salvador I had mostly encountered: intrusive freeways, apartment blocks that already seemed in disrepair the year they were completed, vast shantytowns surrounding the city’s tourist center and small middle-class neighborhoods. Most of the shantytown residents, I learned from more academic books on Brazil, had fled their homes in the countryside, forced off the land by drought, poverty, and unequal land laws. They flooded Salvador, looking for a better life, but they arrived with few city skills or city connections. In the shantytowns that I had seen, people had moved themselves and their belongings onto every unsupervised space. They had stacked shack upon shack to house arriving relatives and children, creating a honeycomb of disorder and distress.
Rubbish and sewage were constant roadside companions in these shantytowns. In some neighborhoods, I had seen residents collect their