RainStorm

driven
    also by personal factors. I didn't want to have to catch up over the
    phone, to answer questions about where I was and what I was doing,
    to explain my long delay in tracking her down. Better to get it
    all out of the way in person.
    Salvador was a two-hour flight from Rio, and in making my
    way through this new city I was struck, as always when traversing
    colossal Brazil, by the contrasts among the land's regions. Salvador,
    nearer the equator, was hotter than Rio, the air somehow richer,
    moister. In Rio, the ubiquitous granite cliffs seem to offer glimpses
    of the land's strong skeleton; in Salvador, everywhere there was red
    earth, more akin to a soft covering of skin. And the people were
    darker-hued: a reflection of the area's African heritage, which revealed
    itself also in the baroque carving of the town's colonial
    churches; in the blood-pounding beat of its candomble music; in the
    flowing, dancing moves of its capoeiristas, with their hypnotizing
    mixture of dance, fighting, and gymnastics, all set to the tune of
    the stringed berimbau and the mesmerizing beat of the conga.
    Nascimento was well buffered by secretaries, and there was a fair
    amount of back and forth before I was able to actually get ahold of
    him. When I did, he told me that Naomi had left word with him
    about a friend from Japan, someone named John, but that this had
    been some time ago. I acknowledged the delay and waited, and after a moment he told me that his daughter was living in Rio, working
    at a bar called Scenarium, on the Rua do Lavradio. He gave me
    a phone number. I thanked him and went straight to the airport,
    smiling at the irony. All these months of avoiding Salvador, only to
    learn that Naomi and I were living practically as neighbors.
    That evening, after taking steps to ensure that I wasn't being followed,
    I caught a cab to Lapa, the neighborhood around Scenarium,
    among the oldest in the city. I got out a few blocks away, per
    my usual practice, and waited until the cab had departed before
    moving in the direction of the bar.
    I made my way along antique streets composed of rows of cobblestones
    convulsed over the centuries into valleys and hillocks by
    the ceaseless stirrings of the earth below. A few widely spaced
    streetlights offered weak respite against the surrounding gloom, and
    passing figures appeared indistinct, insubstantial, like phantoms
    from the area's colonial past, shifting in confusion among the faded
    facades and broken balconies, lost souls trying to locate once-thriving
    addresses that existed now only as monuments to dilapidation and
    disuse. Here and there were signs of new life--a repaired balustrade,
    a reglazed set of windows--and somehow these small portents
    made the shattered relics on which they blossomed a strangely vibrant
    foreground to the modern high-rises towering beyond: tenacious,
    more resolute, the ravaged sockets of their empty doors and
    windows seeming almost to smile at the prospect of the eventual
    passing of their newer, taller peers, who would age without inspiring
    any of the devotion that promised to restore these ancients to
    the vigor of their youth.
    I turned onto the Rua do Lavradio and saw Scenarium. The bar
    occupied all three floors of two adjacent buildings, the facades of
    each suffering, like so many of their brethren in the area, from considerable
    age and neglect. The light and music emanating from the
    interior were startlingly vibrant and alive by contrast. A long queue
    of cars waited in the street in front, as though in awe or homage. I
    stood before the large, open entranceway for a moment, surprised
    to note that my heart was beating rapidly, remembering the concentrated
    time I had spent with Naomi in Tokyo, and how long it
    had been since I had promised I would be in touch.
    I walked in and glanced around. Hot spots first, by instinct and
    long habit: seats facing the entrance, partially concealed corners,
    ambush positions. I detected no problems.
    I moved inside. The interior was vast, and decorated like a Hollywood
    prop warehouse. Everywhere there were antiques and curios:
    iron cash registers, a red British telephone booth, a cluster of
    parasols, busts and statues, shelves of colored bottles and jugs. Even
    the tables and chairs looked vintage. Had it been less capacious, it
    would have felt cluttered.
    The ceilings were high and of bare wood, the walls stone and
    alabaster. In the center of the room, about ten meters in, the