Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [92]
The symposium organizers paid for a room in a very pleasant middle-class hotel in Salvador. It was a comfort I decided I could get used to. I gave my paper two days after I’d arrived. The presenter of my panel, who clearly had been at that first presentation I had made years before, introduced me by saying, “And we would like to welcome Dr. Willson. Several of you will remember her first scintillating presentation here in Bahia.” Scattered members of the audience burst into laughter. Embarrassing memories die hard when one’s colleagues keep bringing them up over the years....
Don also came to Salvador for the conference, and we went to visit Keila at the tenement where Don had lived. It had now been slated to join the renovated streets of the rest of the Historic District. In preparation, it had been condemned. The transvestites had much difficulty in Salvador finding accommodation where they could live the lifestyle they desired and ply their trade. So, with the renovation trucks fast approaching, the tenement owner (who was also a transvestite) was still able to command high rents in the condemned building.
Keila had gone to Italy for a few years, her passage funded from her work with Don. She had worked there as a prostitute. This was the dream of most of the transvestites, to go to Italy and earn the huge sums they heard could be made among the Italians. Keila, who, like all the other Brazilian transvestites in Italy, had been an illegal immigrant, got caught and kicked out of the country. She had temporarily returned to the old tenement where she had lived before and where her friends still did.
Keila spoke a very colorful and clever Portuguese, and, while in Italy, she’d learned Italian. Not surprisingly, she also learned a great deal about Italian cooking. She invited Don and me to dinner one night. Don paid for the food, and Keila invited the entire building.
Don and I sat on folding chairs while she regaled us with stories of Italy, demonstrating particular points with her large spoon and screaming insults in Italian to friends in the hallway and the street. The fact that no one could understand her seemed to delight her only more. Physically, she was transformed. Now she looked like a very attractive, middle-aged, slightly plump, slightly dark, Italian woman.
While she was cooking, Don and I explored the tenement. Don’s room was gone. We walked to the concrete wall at the back. In the gathering darkness we stared at the open area that lay behind the wall.
“Look,” Don said. “The garbage has been taken away.”
“Mmmm,” I said.
“It looks as though they’re just throwing garbage out there again.” We stood in silence a minute.
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Just gazing. Waiting to see if the rats will come out. Look, here they come. Still fat.”
I glanced down the dark hole of the descending stairway. “I wonder if people are still living below,” I said
“Keila says there are. Two. Crack addicts.”
“If the rats ate them would anyone notice, do you think?”
“The owner would notice when the rent came due,” Don said. We shared a nasty little laugh.
“I hate this place,” he said.
“Salvador?”
“Yeah. Salvador.”
“We should have taken more holidays,” I said. “Gone to the beach more.”
Don smiled and turned away from the rat vista. “We always say that,” he said. “We should really do it someday.” I nodded and we walked around the corner to where Keila was cooking.
“You look really beautiful since coming back from Italy, Keila,” I said. She twirled in a small circle.
“Don’t I though? I mean, I’ve always been beautiful, but now—” and here she injected some Italian phrase I didn’t understand. “That means ‘but now I’m absolutely stunning!’”
We laughed and she began to lay