Idra Novey - Ways to Disappear

Under the shade of the same banyan tree, a Bahian woman with a deep purple feather in her head wrap was selling fried, steaming mounds of acarajé. Emma could smell the dendê oil, the onions and yucca stewing in the sauce. Some lunch, senhora? the woman asked without looking up.

Please, Emma said, eyeing the woman’s feather again. It was the black-purple of wet beets, of rubies gleaming in the back of a drawer.

Is that feather from a shop nearby, by any chance? Emma asked.

Eh, the woman said. See the hat man behind the Aram Yamí Hotel, over on Santo Antônio Street.

Emma repeated the name of the hotel and the woman nodded, handing her a plastic-based napkin to accompany her acarajé. Emma took a bite and her eyes bulged at the sudden blaze in her mouth. Everything had an infernal aspect in Salvador. The hot pepper, the heat. Her mouth in flames, she unfolded her map to see where she was. She hadn’t come here to go wandering after feathers.

Unless she had.

In any case, there was Santo Antônio, a mere two blocks away.

The hat man gestured for her to step closer. They were alone in the dim store and Emma wasn’t sure she wanted to get any closer. In his stained undershirt, the hat man was holding out to her what he said were the rare purple feathers of a macaw, but they weren’t really purple at all. They were blood-colored.

Maybe you prefer the feathers of the jabiru, he said. Do you have a particular hat in mind?

No, not yet, Emma admitted, and he motioned to the forest of hat stands crowding the back of the store. There was a whole stand of the white fedoras that samba musicians wore, another of the jaunty banana-shaped hats for forró. But also a rack of floppy cotton sun visors and stiff, colorful straw hats with wide, flamboyant rims. Emma didn’t know if she had enough charisma to pull off any of them, but this trip she hadn’t been able to avoid the sun as she had in the past. On other trips, she’d carefully orchestrated her days so she could be inside or in the shade by midday for fear that she’d burn. And she’d been right. Out in the hottest hours now, she could feel on her face and arms how irreparably she was burning.

From the nearest stand, she picked up a cream-colored hat with a wide brim and put it on. Miles would have found it a ridiculous choice, destined to end up crumpled at the back of their closet with her other impulse buys from Brazil. Behind her, she heard the hat man shuffling closer. She turned to him.

May I? He slipped a thin dark feather into the band. I don’t get martins that often, he said. They only winter here.

Emma stepped in front of the grimy mirror on the far wall. The feather was not the one the woman at the acarajé stand had been wearing. This one was longer and had a steely bluish sheen. Between the dark feather and the giant white brim of the hat, she looked like a woman who was slightly off her rocker, or maybe just a woman with a sense of humor, who wasn’t willing to wait for some impossible alignment of the stars to enjoy her life.

I can pull out some other feathers for you to try. The hat man eyed her, making it clear that he would be happy to pull out a few other things for her as well. But she said the martin was purple enough.

After settling the bill, she gave a little tilt to the brim and, restored, found her way across the hot street into the lobby of the Aram Yamí Hotel.

The Aram Yamí suited Roberto Rocha impeccably. Upscale and colonial, it was the sort of hotel in which Alessandro would have gone on about his grandmothers scrubbing the floors of such a place for Rocha’s grandmothers.

But Alessandro was not here. And in his absence, Rocha had no problem indulging his love of rosewood tables with cabriole legs and the heavy giltwood mirrors in the halls. The voluptuousness of it all enchanted him. Every old object could be a correlative to an injustice if one wanted to see the world that way. But what for? A meticulously carved mahogany settee was still a marvelous settee. Its elegance didn’t have to be tainted by the thought of his grandmother’s staff on their knees, rubbing in the oil to preserve the gleam of the wood.

Rocha had despised his grandmother, always tinkling her silver service bells and telling him what an odd boy he was, how he had something in his voice that made people nervous.

His loafers removed, Rocha lowered himself onto the bed. It creaked under his weight. Down the hall, a group of American tourists had begun to natter outside the elevator, making it impossible to take a proper rest. Soon, thankfully, the elevator ferried them away and he was almost asleep when the room phone rang.

I’m sorry to disturb you, Senhor Roberto, the receptionist said, but we have a woman in the lobby here to see you.

Is that so? Well, tell her I’ll be right down.

He slid his loafers on again, lifted his bifocals from the bedside table. It was so like Beatriz to be the one to find him. And on the very day he arrived. Surely he’d be able to shake something out of her — a novella or a handful of new stories. She knew he would respect her privacy, wouldn’t give away her whereabouts to anyone.

Bing.

The elevator doors parted and Roberto Rocha summoned his most confident, admiring smile. Where was she? The only woman he spotted in the quiet lobby was a gangly tourist wearing a giant cream-colored hat that gave her something of the air of a flapper. When the woman with the hat got up and started to move in his direction, he thought it must be a coincidence.

Boa tarde, the woman said. I’m Beatriz’s American translator.

He made the face he reserved for vinegar. Was it you who just called? Did you just ask reception to ring my room and rouse me from my nap?

I’m terribly sorry, she said. I can come back later. I was just hoping I could speak to you for a few minutes about Beatriz.

Is her son here with you as well?

Marcus? Oh, no, I came alone. The translator blushed under her broad hat. Her Portuguese wasn’t terrible for an American, but she was a nervous girl and too tall. She made him feel absurd, lifting his face to her like a schoolboy, exposing all the rolls of flesh under his chin.

He took a step back to regain control of the conversation. I presume you’ve spoken with Beatriz.

Well, no… I — well, are you here to meet with her?

Of course, Rocha said.

So she’s definitely here, in Bahia.

I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose her location, he said.

Well, perhaps you could relay a message. The translator stepped closer, towering over him again. It’s about her safety. If she wants to leave Brazil, I want her to know I can help her. She could get a residency in Iowa at the International Writing Program there, or I could get her a longer-term teaching job with—

Because teaching at an American university, he interrupted, is the pot of gold at the end of every writer’s rainbow?

I just want to help her get out of danger.

And into the sanctuary of one of your just American institutions.

Senhor Roberto, all I want to do is help.

Oh, I have no doubt, he said. All Americans ever want to do is help. If you’ll excuse me, I’m really quite tired. He gave the translator a nod as he turned away and felt her blanch behind him. For months, Alessandro had been warning him that he was turning into a dried-up lemon of a man. It wouldn’t have killed him to admit that he had no idea where to find Beatriz either, that the day before he’d arrived she’d vanished from the hotel where she’d registered as S. Martins, having persuaded the hotel to give her cash for the remaining nights he’d paid for her to stay there. He’d been furious at such a blatant manipulation of his generosity, and furious at her for making him travel all this way for nothing.