Tony Bellotto: Rio Noir

I spend more time with the client than I had planned. I know that now, in the late afternoon, especially with the rain, the subway will be hell. I decide to kill time around here, maybe get something to eat, have a beer. The idea of getting home later isn’t all bad. I can’t recall just when I became a slave to routine, but I swear it was involuntary. I think about how odd that is. How we become fossilized in the apathy of that production line. And still have to suck up to the boss.

I call my wife to say that I’ll be home a little late, that I decided to wait for rush hour to end because I’m in Largo do Machado and it’s raining, she knows how it is. They shouldn’t wait for me to have dinner.

I think about checking to see if anything worthwhile is playing at the São Luiz Cinema (when I lived here there was also a movie theater in the Condor gallery, which later became an evangelical church and today I have no idea what it is). I walk under the marquees of the buildings and pass a young boy handing out leaflets. I buy gold, or something similar, I imagine, but when I take one of the papers the coincidence surprises me: Tarot readings. Guidance in love, spiritual issues, answers to your most pressing concerns .

I smile. It looks as if the gypsies who used to wander around the square have also moved up in life and now some have their own private offices. I read the address, which is in the old Condor Gallery building, 29 Largo do Machado.

I stop at the entrance, in front of the gallery. What the hell, I’m not doing anything, isn’t one lie as good as another, whether it’s going to the movies or getting a tarot reading? And who knows, maybe it’s a way of paying homage, however belatedly, to Simone. Who was kind of crazy but wasn’t a bad person and didn’t deserve to have her life cut short so tragically. I decide to look for the place. I take the elevator to the fourth floor.

The door is opened by a beautiful, well-dressed young woman who in no way resembles the gypsies of two decades ago, and I automatically smooth my hair and adjust my collar. I explain that I’d like a reading, is she available?

“When?” she asks.

“Right now, if possible,” I reply. “I live pretty far away, in Recreio, but on the street here I saw a leaflet with your address and was interested.”

“I’m with a client at the moment,” she says.

“I can wait.”

It’s true, I can wait, but more than that, suddenly it has become strangely important for this beautiful girl to read whatever there is to be read about me in the tarot cards.

“It’s going to be awhile. Half an hour, forty minutes,” she says.

I look around. The waiting room is tiny and windowless, but there’s a pile of magazines in one corner, next to a candle and a vase with plastic flowers. An iron thing on the wall representing a sun and moon. A vague smell of incense.

“I’ll stay here and read a little, if you can see me next?”

Everything seems totally professional. The phrases: I’d like a reading. I’m with a client. If you can see me right away . I sit in the black faux-leather armchair, pick up a magazine, begin leafing through it. I see orderly stacks of business cards: other people offering alternative therapies there in the same small space. Every Wednesday night, transcendental meditation. Right, I didn’t imagine that tarot readings would pay the rent.

My reading lasts an hour. I sign a check and leave there transformed. I don’t remember much of anything that was said, except for the comments about a particularly interesting card, the Hanged Man (actually, a guy dangling upside down, tied by one of his feet). According to the card reader — Renata — the Hanged Man indicates a situation of personal sacrifice of something valuable: when I leave the building, words like destiny, initiation, indecision , and self-denial are still floating in my head, like moths around a lamppost. A well-conceived plan that remains only a theory, Renata also says. Loss and helplessness would be the negative aspects of the card. On the other hand, there’s also a very positive aspect, the possibility of changing one’s life, of interior peace.

I leave there dreaming of changing my life and interior peace. More than that, I leave there dreaming of Renata.

My wife and I have had our crises, some of them quite serious, but awhile ago we fashioned a modus vivendi without major disturbance, for the sake of the children. We’ve been married for twelve years, which is the number of the Hanged Man tarot card, I think, I who always found that sort of thing utter nonsense. But suddenly, while being jostled on the subway en route to the Cantagalo Station, I’m making plans to set up another reading with Renata, to return to Largo do Machado.

I’d left the car in my sister’s garage in Copacabana. I collect the car without going up to say goodbye to her. I put on music and think about Renata on the long journey from Cantagalo to the Avenue of the Americas. I’m still thinking about her when I turn onto my street, park the car in my spot in the garage, and take the elevator to my floor — still thinking about her when I open the door to the apartment.

At my second reading, two weeks later, I want to talk more about myself. I want Renata to know me. The first time, I was reticent, asked generic questions to which she gave generic answers. Now I want to pluck my soul out from under the skin and spread it out for Renata, take it, explain this, please — and you don’t need to return it afterward. As far as I’m concerned, she can spread my soul on the floor and walk on it if she wishes.

This reading takes almost two hours. The World card (challenge of seeing something that must be concluded) and the Tower (imminent moment when it will be necessary to knock down old structures) appear in meaningful positions. Renata’s hair is loose this time, long dark hair like that of the gypsy she is not. She is wearing large silver earrings and a T-shirt that outlines her pert, pretty breasts. She is more sexy this time, and I want to believe it’s not by chance.

At the end of the reading she asks me if I’d like another cup of tea, and obviously I accept, while still debating with myself whether I should invite her to get something to eat nearby. She brings the teapot with hot water and a small box with tea bags of various kinds. Then she brings a plate with raisins. I conclude it’s better to leave the invitation for the next reading, today would be hasty. In any case, we have time to chat a little.

“Well,” she says, sitting down and pushing her hair behind her ears, “how did you become interested in tarot?”

“Oh, it’s a long story,” I answer. “I had a girlfriend, many years ago, more than twenty years — almost thirty, actually — who liked tarot. She wasn’t a professional but liked to do it for herself, for her friends. I confess that I thought it sheer foolishness, I thought that in the readings the person heard what he wanted to hear. For example, if the card said, It’s necessary to knock down old structures , the person would always manage to frame it in the context of his own life — that’s what I thought.”

“But you don’t think that anymore?”

“You’ve changed my opinion about tarot,” I say excitedly. “When I was here the first time I was quite skeptical, but now I’m seeing things differently.”

“And why did you come the first time if you thought tarot was silly?”

“That old girlfriend of mine. We had a difficult relationship, at the end. Ugly fights, things I don’t miss at all. Later I found out she died in a car accident. She was still quite young.”

“Oh, that’s so sad, I’m sorry.”

The tarot reader’s almond eyes fall on mine. She seems so sweet.