Just as he had on Ilha das Flores, Addy wakes early in Rio, and begins his days with his morning exercises, which he performs on the rug beside his bed. Today, it isn’t yet seven and he’s already sweating. It’s the end of summer in Rio, and the heat is intense, but he’s grown to like it. As he lies on his back bicycling his legs, he can hear the grate of metal gates being lifted as the cafés and newsstands three stories below open up on Avenida Atlantica. A block east, a blazing sun on the rise over the Atlantic beats down on Copacabana’s white-sand beach. In a few hours, the crescent-shaped cove will be teeming with its usual Saturday crowd: bronzed women stretched out in figure-hugging suits beneath red umbrellas, and men in short swim trunks playing endless games of soccer.
“Eins, zwei, drei . . .” Addy counts, holding his hands behind his head as he twists his torso left to right, reaching elbows to knees. Eliska once asked him why he always counted in German. “With everything that’s happening in Europe and all . . .” she’d said, leaning over the bed to peer at him quizzically. It was the closest they’d gotten to talking about the war. Addy didn’t really have an explanation, except that when he imagined a drill sergeant prodding him to complete his exercises, he always pictured a block-jawed German.
With his sit-ups complete, Addy stands and wraps his fingers around the wooden bar he’s hung in the doorway, counts out ten chin-ups, and then lets himself dangle, his body limp, enjoying the sensation of his spine elongating toward the floor. Satisfied, he showers quickly, then dresses in a pair of linen shorts, a white cotton V-neck T-shirt, canvas tennis shoes, and a straw Panama hat. He slides a pair of newly purchased wire-rimmed sunglasses into the v of his tee, then reaches for an envelope resting on his bed, tucks it into his back pocket, and leaves the apartment, locking the door behind him.
“Bom dia!” Addy sings under the awning of his favorite open-air juice bar on Rua Santa Clara, his shirt already clinging to the sweat on his back. From behind the counter, Raoul beams. Addy met Raoul during a game of pickup soccer one day on the beach. “You’re not from around here, are you?” Raoul had chuckled when he caught a glimpse of Addy’s pale chest. Later, when he discovered that Addy had never tasted a guava, he insisted on a visit the next day to his juice bar. Since then, Addy has made an effort to swing by the bar as often as he can. He can’t get over all the different flavors on hand. Mango. Papaya. Pineapple. Passion fruit. Rio tastes nothing like Paris.
“Bom dia! Tudo bem?”
“Tudo bem,” Addy replies. He’s become fluent in Portuguese. “Você?”
“No complaints, friend. The sun is shining, and it’s hot as hell, which means it’ll be a busy day. Let’s see,” Raoul says to himself, looking around at the produce arranged across the counter in front of him, “—ah! Today I have a special treat for you, just in—a?ai. Very good for you, a Brazilian specialty. Don’t let the color scare you.”
Addy and Raoul make small talk as Raoul prepares Addy’s juice.
“So where are you off to today?” Raoul asks.
“Today, I celebrate,” Addy says triumphantly.
Raoul squeezes the juice from an orange through his press, mixes it with the dark purple a?ai puree in Addy’s cup.
“Si? What are you celebrating?”
“You know how my work permit finally arrived? Well, I’ve found a job. A real job.”
Raoul’s eyebrows jump. He raises the cup in his hand. “Felicita??es!”
“Thanks. In one week I start work in Minas Gerais. They want me to live there for a few months, so this weekend I say good-bye for now, to you, my friend, and to Rio.”
Addy had heard about the job in Brazil’s interior several months ago. The project, called the Rio Doce, involved building a hospital for a small village. He’d applied right away for the position of lead electrical engineer, but when he met with the project managers, they shook their heads, claiming that without the proper paperwork, their hands were tied. “Perfect your Portuguese, and come back when you’ve got a work permit,” they said. Last week, on the day his permit was cleared, Addy contacted the managers. They hired him on the spot.
“We’ll miss you in Copacabana,” Raoul offers, and then reaches behind him for a banana. He tosses it to Addy. “On me,” he winks.
Addy catches the banana and sets a coin on the counter. He tries a sip of his drink. “Ahh,” he says, licking the purple juice from his upper lip. “Lovely.” A line has begun to form behind him. “You are a popular man,” Addy adds, turning to go. “I’ll see you in a few months, amigo.”
“Ciao, amigo!” Raoul calls after him as he turns to leave.
Addy slips the banana into his back pocket beside the envelope and glances at his watch as he sets off down Rua Santa Clara. The day is his to explore until three, when he’s due to meet Eliska on Ipanema Beach for a swim. From there, they’ll head to dinner at the home of a fellow expat they met a few weeks ago at a samba bar in Lapa. But first, he must mail his letter.
His is a familiar face at the Copacabana post office. He stops by every Monday with an envelope addressed to his parents’ home on Warszawska Street, and to inquire about whether anything’s come for him. So far, the answer has been a consistent and sympathetic no. Two and a half years have gone by since he received news from Radom. As much as he tries not to dwell on this, his trips to the post office are a constant reminder. As the weeks and the months pass, the agony of wondering what has become of his family worsens. Some days it erases his appetite and fills his gut with a dull ache that lingers through the night. Other days, it wraps around his chest like a strand of steel wire and he’s sure that at any moment the flesh will sever, shredding his heart into pieces. The headlines in the Rio Times only heighten his anxiety: 34,000 Jews killed outside Kiev, 5,000 dead in Byelorussia, and thousands more in Lithuania. These killings are massive, far bigger than any one pogrom, the numbers too wretched to fully conceive; if Addy thinks too hard about them, he will imagine his parents, his brothers and sisters, as part of the statistics.
Brazil, too, is preparing for war. Vargas, who, like Stalin, flipped his loyalty to the Allies, has battled German U-boats off the south Atlantic coast, has sent supplies of iron and rubber to the United States, and in January began allowing the construction of U.S. air bases on its northern coasts. Brazil’s involvement in the war is real, but Addy often marvels how he wouldn’t know it in Rio. Just as in Paris in the days before the war, here there is life and music. The restaurants are full, the beaches packed, the samba clubs pulsing. Addy wishes sometimes that he could disconnect, as the locals seem to be able to do—to immerse himself in his surroundings and forget about the war completely, the intangible world of death and destruction that lies, crumbling, 9,000 kilometers away. But as quickly as the thought enters his consciousness, he chides himself, inundated with shame. How dare he stop paying attention? The day he disconnects—the day he lets go—is the day he resigns himself to a life without a family. To do so would mean writing them off as dead. And so, he stays busy. He distracts himself with his work and with Eliska, but he never forgets.