Authors: Rona Jaffe
Away from Home (52 page)
The couple twenty-five feet away from them, their privacy interrupted, got up and moved farther away down the beach. “Poor guy,” Bert said. “We shouldn’t have bothered them.”
“Serves them right.”
“Put your head back. The buildings are upside down.”
“It makes me dizzy.” She lay flat on the beach with her head on Bert’s shoulder. He put his arm around her. It was very comfortable and peaceful on the sand, cool, the sand very soft against her bare legs. Once in a while she heard a car drive by, but otherwise it was very still. “I used to watch them,” she said. “Those people. I wondered who they were. People with no homes? Kids running away from chaperones? Clods with no need for privacy or romance? Utter romanticists?”
“Two of each.”
A beggar, dressed in torn shapeless pants and a fluttering rag of a tan shirt, came shuffling along the beach looking about for someone who seemed rich. He was middle-aged, unshaven for a week, as thin as an old chicken, and slightly drunk. When he headed for them Helen stiffened with alarm. He stopped in front of Bert and looked down at them both.
“I only want some money,” the beggar said in Portuguese. He swayed above them. Helen had the sudden thought that he might do something violent—even kill them. She glanced at Bert.
Bert took some cruzeiros out of his pocket and handed them to the man. The man took them but he did not leave; he stood there swaying gently, looking at them.
“I only want some money,” the beggar said again, thickly. “It is very bad, the inflation.”
“Oh, Bert!”
Bert looked calm, even slightly friendly. “Go away,” he said in Portuguese. “I have no money, and we’re in love.”
A great black-toothed smile came over the beggar’s face. “In love?” he said. He hunched his thin shoulders, put his hands into his pockets, and reeled away quickly over the sand. He turned around once to look at them over his shoulder, and he still had that resigned and beneficent smile. “Okay,” he called back to them in English. “In love?
Okay!
” He disappeared into the darkness.
They laughed and lay back in each other’s arms. It was midnight in Rio, and ten
P.M
. in New York where Helen’s mother and father were, and nine
P.M
. in Chicago where Mil Burns was, and only seven in Hollywood, California, where Guillerme’s movie stars were living their celluloid lives. In the States, summer had ended; cities were coming to life again from the torpor of heat and hibernation; it was the first weeks of fall. In Brazil, winter had ended; spring was here and soon summer, soon again Carnival, the season of folly and liveliness. One continent cool, one hot; both newly stirring and aware of the new season; neither aware of the other—the curve of the earth got in the way.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1960 by Rona Jaffe
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0842-6
Distributed by Open Road Distribution
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New York, NY 10014
