Twenty-six

“Perhaps we should check with Eva,” Tito said. “Norival might have gone back to her.”

“Norival was happy with Eva,” Orlando said.

Of the four young men walking along the beach, only Fletch wore sandals. He knew himself not sufficiently carioca to walk along a beach in the midday sun in bare feet.

Toninho, Tito, and Orlando had picked Fletch up in the black four-door Galaxie.

On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the youngest Janio Barreto on a wooden leg silently watched Fletch get into the car and be driven away.

The drive to the beach where Orlando was scheduled to appear had been as fast as possible through the Carnival crowds.

At one place on Avenida Atlantica perhaps as many as a thousand people in tattery costumes jumped up and down around a big samba band moving forward only a few meters an hour on the back of a flatbed truck. Never had he seen so much human energy spent in so little forward motion.

On the way to the beach they listened silently to the loud car radio.

The discovery of Norival Passarinho’s body was not yet news.

The beach was filled with bright umbrellas, mats. Families and other groups picnicked and played.

Orlando said to Fletch: “It is said if a person dies copulating, he is guaranteed to return to life soon.”

“For Norival, the process might have been very quick,” said Tito.

Spread apart only somewhat, they walked along the water’s edge, looking for Norival perhaps washed up dead but thought asleep, some crowd of gossips with news of something unusual having happened, the corpse of the Passarinho boy being found, police barriers, markers, something, anything.

“Do people say the same thing in the United States of North America?” Orlando asked.

“I don’t think so,” Fletch said. “I never heard it.”

“People in the United States of North America don’t die while copulating,” Toninho said. “They die while talking about it.”

“They die while talking to their psychiatrists about it,” Orlando laughed.

“Yes, yes,” said Toninho. “They die worrying about copulating.”

“People of the United States of North America,” Tito scoffed. “This is how they walk.”

Tito began to move hurriedly over the sand, his head and shoulders forward of his body, legs straight, not pivoting his hips at all, his hands dangling loosely beside him like a couple of cow udders, his eyes staring straight ahead, an expectant grin on his face, each foot landing flat on the sand. The impression was of a body being pushed at the shoulders, falling forward, each foot coming out and landing at the last second to keep the body from falling flat on its face.

Fletch stopped walking and laughed.

For a while, then, he walked slightly behind his friends.

“Yes,” Tito said. “Norival may have revived.”

Fletch asked, “Is it true everyone goes slightly crazy during Carnival?”

Toninho said, “Slightly.”

“If the way to life eternal,” Fletch asked, “is to die copulating, then why don’t people just copulate constantly?”

Orlando sniffed. “I do my best.”

A man carrying two metal cylinders containing iced maté passed them. Each container easily weighed one hundred pounds. He would sell the maté in little cups to people on the beach. The man was in his sixties and he was walking rapidly enough to pass the four young men. His legs looked like the roots of trees hardened by time.

“This is crazy,” Fletch said. Perhaps lying in the sun on the beach would make him drowsy enough to sleep.

Dead wallets, stolen and emptied, were on the beach like birds shot from the sky.

Toninho scanned the surface of the ocean. “There is not even a sign of his boat. That, too, should have come ashore.”

“The boat sank,” Tito said.

“Maybe Norival sank,” Orlando said.

“Maybe Norival is alive and we are dead,” Fletch said.

Orlando looked at him as if he had just offered a possibility worth consideration.

They were coming to the end of the beach.

Nearby was a group of very young teenage girls in bikinis. Five of the eight were pregnant.

Toninho said, “Absolutely, Norival was to come ashore somewhere along here.”

“Let’s ask,” Fletch said. “Let’s ask the people on the beach if they’ve noticed a Passarinho floating by without a boat.”

“It leaves only one thing to do,” Toninho said.

“Go home to bed,” Fletch said.

“Swim along the beach,” Toninho said.

“Oh, no,” Fletch said.

Toninho was looking into the water. “It is possible Norival is lurking somewhere just below the surface.”

“That would be just like Norival,” Orlando said. “Playing some trick.”

“Arigó,” Toninho said.

“I need sleep,” Fletch said. “Not a swim.”

“Yes,” Tito said, “Norival was apt to be a bit slow, sometimes, to show up.”

“Last night, when I swam into Norival,” Toninho said, “he was more under the surface than I would have expected.”

“Right,” said Tito. “We shall swim along the shore and see if we bump into Norival.”

“Oh, no,” said Fletch.

“Leave your sandals here,” said Orlando. “Not even a North American can swim well wearing sandals.”

On the way back in the car they listened to a long news broadcast. Mostly, it was about Carnival Parade that night, and certain controversies which had arisen concerning it. One samba school was insisting the theme they had chosen to present had been usurped a little bit by another samba school. At least, the themes of the two schools were believed by one school to be dangerously similar.

In all that long broadcast, the discovery of the corpse of Norival Passarinho was not reported.