She had spent a lot of her life saying ‘no’ to things to which she would have liked to say ‘yes’, determined to try only those experiences she could control – certain affairs she had had with men, for example. Now she was facing the unknown, as unknown as this sea had once been to the navigators who crossed it, or so she had been told in history classes. She could always say ‘no’, but would she then spend the rest of her life brooding over it, as she still did over the memory of the little boy who had once asked to borrow a pencil and had then disappeared – her first love? She could always say ‘no’, but why not try saying ‘yes’ this time?
For one very simple reason: she was a girl from the backlands of Brazil, with no experience of life apart from a good school, a vast knowledge of TV soaps and the certainty that she was beautiful. That wasn’t enough with which to face the world.
She saw a group of people laughing and looking at the sea, afraid to go in. Two days ago, she had felt the same thing, but now she was no longer afraid; she went into the water whenever she wanted, as if she had been born there. Wouldn’t it be the same in Europe?
She made a silent prayer and again asked the Virgin Mary’s advice, and seconds later, she seemed perfectly at ease with her decision to go ahead, because she felt protected. She could always come back, but she would not necessarily get another chance of a trip like this. It was worth taking the risk, as long as the dream survived the forty-eight-hour journey back home in a bus with no air conditioning, and as long as the Swiss man didn’t change his mind.
She was in such good spirits that when he invited her out to supper again, she wanted to appear alluring and took his hand in hers, but he immediately pulled away, and Maria realised – with a mixture of fear and relief – that he was serious about what he said.
‘Samba star!’ said the man. ‘Lovely Brazilian samba star! Travel next week!’
This was all well and good, but ‘travel next week’ was out of the question. Maria explained that she couldn’t take a decision without first consulting her family. The Swiss man was furious and showed her a copy of the signed contract, and for the first time she felt afraid.
‘Contract!’ he said.
Even though she was determined to go home, she decided to consult her agent Maílson first; after all, he was being paid to advise her.
Maílson, however, seemed more concerned with seducing a German tourist who had just arrived at the hotel and who was sunbathing topless on the beach, convinced that Brazil was the most liberal country in the world (having failed to notice that she was the only woman on the beach with her breasts exposed and that everyone was eyeing her rather uneasily). It was very hard to get him to pay attention to what she was saying.
‘But what if I change my mind?’ insisted Maria.
‘I don’t know what’s in the contract, but I suppose he might have you arrested.’
‘He’d never be able to find me!’
‘Exactly. So why worry?’
The Swiss man, on the other hand, having spent five hundred dollars, as well as paying out for a pair of shoes, a dress, two suppers and various fees for the paperwork at the consulate, was beginning to get worried, and so, since Maria kept insisting on the need to talk to her family, he decided to buy two plane tickets and go with her to the place where she had been born – as long as it could all be resolved in forty-eight hours and they could still travel to Europe the following week, as agreed. With a smile here and a smile there, she was beginning to understand that this was all in the documents she had signed and that, when it came to seductions, feelings and contracts, one should never play around.
It was a surprise and a source of pride to the small town to see its lovely daughter Maria arrive accompanied by a foreigner who wanted to make her a big star in Europe. The whole neighbourhood knew, and her old schoolfriends asked: ‘How did it happen?’
‘I was just lucky.’
They wanted to know if such things were always happening in Rio de Janeiro, because they had seen similar scenarios in TV soaps. Maria would not be pinned down, wanting to place a high value on her personal experience and thus convince her friends that she was someone special.
She and the man went to her house where he handed round leaflets, with Brasil spelled with a ‘z’, and the contract, while Maria explained that she had an agent now and intended following a career as an actress. Her mother, seeing the diminutive bikinis worn by the girls in the photos that the foreigner was showing her, immediately gave them back and preferred to ask no questions; all that mattered was that her daughter should be happy and rich, or unhappy, but at least rich.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Roger.’
‘Rogério! I had a cousin called Rogério!’
The man smiled and clapped, and they all realised that he hadn’t understood a word. Maria’s father said:
‘He’s about the same age as me.’
Her mother told him not to interfere with their daughter’s happiness. Since all seamstresses talk a great deal to their customers and acquire a great deal of knowledge about marriage and love, her advice to Maria was this:
‘My dear, it’s better to be unhappy with a rich man than happy with a poor man, and over there you’ll have far more chance of becoming an unhappy rich woman. Besides, if it doesn’t work out, you can just get on the bus and come home.’
Maria might be a girl from the backlands, but she was more intelligent than her mother or her future husband imagined, and she said, simply to be provocative:
‘Mama, there isn’t a bus from Europe to Brazil. Besides, I want a career as a performer, I’m not looking for marriage.’
Her mother gave her a look of near despair.
‘If you can go there, you can always come back. Being a performer, an actress, is fine for a young woman, but it only lasts as long as your looks, and they start to fade when you’re about thirty. So make the most of things now. Find someone who’s honest and loving, and marry him. Love isn’t that important. I didn’t love your father at first, but money buys everything, even true love. And look at your father, he’s not even rich!’
It was bad advice from a friend, but good advice from a mother. Forty-eight hours later, Maria was back in Rio, though not without first having made a visit, alone, to her old place of work in order to hand in her resignation and to hear the owner of the shop say:
‘Yes, I’d heard that a big French impresario wanted to take you off to Paris. I can’t stop you going in pursuit of your happiness, but I want you to know something before you leave.’
He took a medal on a chain out of his pocket.
‘It’s the Miraculous Medal of Our Lady of the Graces. She has a church in Paris, so go there and pray for her protection. Look, there are some words engraved around the Virgin.’
Maria read: ‘Hail Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who turn to you. Amen.’
‘Remember to say those words at least once a day. And…’
He hesitated, but it was getting late.
‘…if one day you come back, I’ll be waiting for you. I missed my chance to tell you something very simple: I love you. It may be too late now, but I wanted you to know.’
Missed chances. She had learned very early on what that meant. ‘I love you’, though, were three words she had often heard during her twenty-two years, and it seemed to her that they were now completely devoid of meaning, because they had never turned into anything serious or deep, never translated into a lasting relationship.