In the Midst of Winter

“No hospital. It’ll pass, but I need a toilet . . .”

Before Richard could contradict her, Lucia told Evelyn to drive the Subaru and she got in behind the wheel of the Lexus. “Drive slowly, Lucia. You saw what can happen if the car skids,” said Richard, before collapsing onto the backseat in a fetal position. It occurred to him that in exactly the same posture, separated from him only by the back of the seat and a plastic partition, lay the body of Kathryn Brown. Half dazed by pain and weakness, he found himself sharing with her some of his worst memories and wondering if her spirit had already sensed much of what had happened to him in the past.



IN THE DAYS WHEN RICHARD LIVED in Rio de Janeiro people drank as a matter of course. It was a social obligation, part of the culture, a necessity at every meeting, even business ones, a comfort on a rainy evening or at a hot noon, a stimulus for political discussion, and a cure for a cold, sadness, frustrated love, or a disappointment in soccer. Richard had not been back to Rio for years, and yet he guessed it must still be the same: certain customs take generations to die out. At the time he drank as much alcohol as his friends and acquaintances, not considering it anything out of the ordinary. Very occasionally he drank himself into a stupor, but that was always unpleasant. He preferred to float, to see the world with no jagged edges, a friendly, warm place. He had not given his drinking much importance until Anita declared it was a problem and began obsessively counting how many glasses he downed, discreetly at first but later humiliating him in public with her comments. He had a good head for liquor: he could drink four beers and three caipirinhas without any drastic consequences—on the contrary, he lost his shyness and thought he was wonderful. Yet from then on he restrained his drinking to assuage his wife and his ulcer, which had the habit of springing unpleasant surprises. Although he wrote frequently to his father, he never mentioned his drinking, because Joseph was abstemious and would not have understood.

After giving birth to their daughter, Bibi, Anita became pregnant three more times, but on each occasion suffered a miscarriage. She dreamed of having a large family like her own; she was one of the younger daughters among eleven children and also had countless cousins, nephews, and nieces. Every new loss deepened her despair, and got it into her head that it was a sign from the gods or a punishment for some unknown fault. Gradually she began to lose her strength and joyousness.

Without these essential virtues dancing lost all meaning for her, so that in the end she sold her academy. The women in the Farinha family—grandmother, sisters, aunts, and cousins—all closed ranks, taking turns to be with her. Anita clung closely to Bibi, watching over her anxiously all the time for fear of losing her. Her family tried to distract her by getting her to write a book with the recipes of several generations of Farinhas, in the belief that nothing bad can resist the remedy of work and the comfort of food. Then they made her arrange eighty albums of family photographs in chronological order, and when she had done that invented other pretexts to keep her busy. Richard reluctantly allowed them to take his wife and child to her grandparents’ ranch for a couple of months. The sun and wind revived Anita’s spirits; she returned from the countryside weighing four kilos more and regretting that she had sold the academy because she wanted to dance again.

They made love as they had in the days when that was all they ever did. They went out to listen to music and dance. Richard tried a few steps with his wife until he could see that all eyes were fixed on her, whether it was because they recognized the queen of the Anita Farinha Academy or simply out of admiration or desire, then he gallantly gave way for other men who were lighter on their feet. He retreated to drink at their table and watch her tenderly, vaguely wondering about his existence.

He was of an age to plan the future, but with a glass in his hand it was easy to postpone that concern. He had completed his doctorate more than two years earlier but had not made anything of it apart from a couple of articles published in academic journals in the United States. One was on the land rights of indigenous people in the 1988 Brazilian constitution, the other on gender violence. He made his living giving English classes. Out of curiosity rather than ambition he occasionally applied for one of the job vacancies he saw in the American Political Science Review. He considered his time in Rio de Janeiro as a nice pause in his destiny, a prolonged vacation. He would soon have to carve out a professional career for himself, but that could wait a while longer. The city was conducive to pleasure and leisure. Anita had a small house near the beach and they got by on the money from the sale of her academy and his English classes.



BIBI WAS ALMOST THREE when the goddesses finally answered the prayers of Anita and the rest of the women in her family. “I owe it to Yemaya,” said Anita when she told her husband she was pregnant. “Is that so? I thought you owed it to me,” he laughed, lifting her in a bear hug. There were no problems during the pregnancy and she reached full term, but the birth itself was difficult and in the end a caesarean was needed. The doctor warned Anita she should not have any more children, at least for a few years, but that did not upset her too much because now she had Pablo in her arms. He was a healthy boy with a voracious appetite, the little brother for Bibi that the whole family had been waiting for.