Daria Read online

  This was what Vasco da Gama, the executive director of the Lusitanian Social Service Centre, kept telling Daria, the young and beautiful Daria, almost from the very beginning. She had just started to work as his executive assistant. It was as if he was pleading, pleading with her, pleading for something mystical, something grand, something beautiful, which she did not quite understand. She had been tired of waiting for her open work permit and fed up with working here and there after she’d left her nanny’s work in Richmond Hill and had come to live in Toronto. One day when she was going up and down College Street looking for a decent job, she decided to go into the Lusitanian Social Service Centre to ask if they were looking for someone who spoke Portuguese very well, someone who could translate. The receptionist, a nice older Portuguese woman from the Azores, said that she ought to speak with Mr. Vasco da Gama about the matter. She called him and told him about Daria’s query, and he asked her to send Daria up to his office. Daria was only twenty-three years old then. She was shy but full of life, full of dreams, full of energy and willingness to work, to work hard and please. She went up and entered his office. He got up from his chair, shook her hand with a tight grip, and introduced himself in a nice Portuguese that sounded continental to her. She was wearing a long flowery dress with an opening on the side that revealed part of her leg, and which made her body appear longer. The dress displayed her curvy figure splendidly, a figure accentuated by her narrow waistline and the generous hills of her breasts and hips. She had that ripe and full voluptuousness of a young woman from Southern Europe, though often people would assume she was French for some reason or other. People would frequently insist that she had that je ne sais quoi that only the French have. Some would swear that her accent and her manners could only be French. And when she spoke French, they had absolutely no doubt that she was française indeed. Some would claim that she had that look of a Mireille Mathieu or an Audrey Tautou or even a Juliette Binoche. She would feel honoured by such comparisons, and would say in a jovial, slightly mocking manner, “Oh, no, I am only Portuguese, from the continent.” On her way to the centre, as she was walking on College Street, she felt the eyes of men on her, and the words too, which some did not care to hide. She often felt confused when this happened to her: she wanted to be beautiful and noticed, and yet when men gave her those messages that part of her wanted, she felt uncomfortable and ashamed. She felt as though she were naked, nothing but prey before the eyes and teeth of a ferocious and undeserving beast.

  It was May, a month that she found to be of astounding beauty in Toronto, a month of exuberant greens and long rows of tall trees that went on and on from the beginning of the streets to their very end, revealing a magic, sacred world of sorts, a charming intimate abode. Perhaps they reminded her of Almores, with its oak, pine, and eucalyptus trees standing tall and strong. Vasco da Gama had that middle complexion of a man that could easily pass for Portuguese, but, as Daria later found out, he was half-Indian and half-Portuguese. He appeared to be in his early-to-mid-sixties, and his upper lip had a full sensuality that gave him a certain appeal and also perhaps told of his mixed heritage. Daria explained her reason for dropping by, listed her qualifications, and gave him her résumé. He glanced at it briefly and then glanced back at her. He looked her directly in the eye and said that, in fact, he was just trying to find someone who could speak and write Portuguese, someone who could translate from English to Portuguese. He said that he had had great difficulty finding people in the community for the job. He added that the Portuguese community in Canada had very little education, and that certainly she was a blessing that had come to him when he least expected. He agreed to let her know the next day about whether he could hire her as his executive assistant. He also asked briefly if her papers were in order and if she could work legally in Canada. She said yes with an expediency that was perhaps too obvious, too quick to assert itself, and which he later used against her. But at the time he did not seem to care; he had other needs, other intentions that would become obvious to her only as time went by. Daria left the office happy, very excited, with a sure feeling that her luck was starting to change, that she was moving toward another line of work. She was overjoyed to be leaving the blue-collar jobs, which she had been doing pretty much since the age of twelve, and entering the upper class. She would no longer be a maid for all services, she would leave her past behind, and her parents and family would be proud of her. The next day, Vasco da Gama called her to tell her that he had checked his budget, that he could indeed offer her a part-time job at the centre, and that she would be his executive assistant and the official translator for the centre. Daria felt elated, happy, happy, like never before. The new beginning had arrived. Her American dream was finally starting to manifest itself. She felt thankful, thankful for the world, thankful for that nice receptionist lady from the Azores who had sent her up to meet Vasco. Thankful for the sun and the moon and the beautiful goats she had left behind in Almores.

  Daria became Vasco’s protégée at the office. There were three other older women working there whom Vasco did not like very much. He kept saying they were uneducated Portuguese women who had no more than Grade 4 and had put on a little makeup just to appear educated. They did not fool him. He was a savvy man who had travelled the world and had a law degree from a prestigious university in London, England. He was married to a woman from Lisbon, the beautiful capital. He knew class when he saw it. When Daria told him that she was the daughter of peasants from Beira Alta, he said, “Yes, but you are different. You are very different, Daria. You emanate class all over.” Today, when Daria thinks about this, she always remembers another conversation she overheard around the same time at the university between a Black student and a Filipina student. The Filipino student was telling the Black student that she was not really Black, and the latter kept telling the former that she must be blind and needed to open her eyes, for unless a miracle had happened on her way to school, the last time she saw herself in the mirror she was very black. Daria remembers trying to understand what Vasco and the Filipino girl meant. Even though Daria appreciated Vasco’s comments and treatment because they made her feel distinguished, she was at the same time assaulted by an uncomfortable feeling: she felt that he was somehow insulting her parents, who were uneducated people from the countryside. She felt that he was automatically putting them in a low category, a category from which she had somehow escaped and should therefore be thankful. She should be thankful for him because he was able to see something in her that was special, very special. He was a savvy expert, a shrewd connoisseur who could easily separate the wheat from the chaff—or as he said in Portuguese, o trigo do joio. And she, Daria, she was trigo.

  In addition to the three older women working at the centre—and Daria, Milena, and Luísa, all young girls in their early twenties—there was also another woman working there: Helena Santos. Helena Santos was in her forties, she was from Pico—one of the Islands in the Azores—and she was visibly in love with Vasco da Gama. Or perhaps it was not love she felt, it was awe. Helena suffered immensely, like many Portuguese do, continental and otherwise, from a class complex. But her complex was also compounded by the complex of region and language, for she was from the Azores, and—as Daria discovered when she first came to Toronto—there was between continental Portuguese and Azoreans a wide rift. The rift was, in fact, laughable because, as Vasco da Gama consistently argued, most of the continental Portuguese who immigrated to Canada were just as classless and uneducated as the ones who had emigrated from the Azores. He couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. He would say, however, that the Azoreans were more religious than the continental Portuguese and that Azorean women were trashier or perhaps just more desperate. They used their “bottom power”—in other words, their physical attributes—to exploit men, often acting like shameless Madonnas or outright prostitutes. He added that he had done his military service at Air Base No. 4, in the Azorean Base of Lajes in Terceira, where he had learned
how to fly a plane with American military personnel and had witnessed all kinds of sordid events—or stories, as he would put it—happening between Azorean women and the posted servicemen. He did not say whether he had been a participant in any of the events of these stories. Helena, who had a common-law partner, a very hardworking and nice man, was indeed deeply afflicted by the issue of class, region, and language. She constantly craved the attention and the compliments of Vasco, and she tried to speak in that neutral Portuguese so that people would not see her as the Azorean that she thought she was. It was painful to watch her constantly trying to impress Vasco. She was jealous when Daria came along. She felt that this pretty young thing—who had some education, could speak proper Portuguese, and was from the continent—was stealing her chance to escape her class and climb up the ladder. She was the secretary at the centre and had always been so, even though she had been working there for over four years. And now Vasco was hiring Daria as his executive assistant. It was not fair. Simply not fair.

  AT CAFÉ UN-DIPLOMATICO. At first Daria was quite naïve and couldn’t see all the networks at work at the centre, and especially in Vasco’s head. She was naïve, and she also felt very happy with her own luck, happy to land a job like that after enduring so much and in so many places. She felt distinguished because Vasco thought she was special, smart, and classy. They became friends—close friends, she thought, but friends only—and they disclosed many things to one another. He would often start talking about his own daughter, Santeria, telling Daria how shy she was, how she had never been with a man and had never even had a boyfriend, and how she and Daria were really alike. Being naïve and eager to please her boss, but also mainly because she believed Vasco was her friend and had the best of intentions towards her, Daria eventually disclosed to Vasco that she too had never been fully intimate with a man. She had never gone all the way. She was a virgin. She told him about the intense love affair with the drug dealer whom she had met at the restaurant on College Street, just a block or two down from the centre. She told him how she still felt very attracted to him but that her morals did not allow her to be with him, to go all the way with him. She told him this and that, gradually, in the many conversations that they had when they stayed late at the office working on a grant proposal or some other important project. It got to a point where she felt very comfortable with Vasco. She felt he was indeed like a father to her, a trusting and concerned person to whom she could speak about love and sex, and from whom she could even seek advice. She could never do this with her own father, who was not only on another continent, but who was also too shy and much too religious to discuss things of this nature with his own daughter. But then the conversations started to become somewhat awkward because Daria felt that Vasco would always find a way steer the conversation toward the same topics: sex, love, and relationships. But even though she felt uncomfortable, a voice in her head kept telling her: This man is like my father; he is old enough to be my father. I am like his daughter Santeria, as he constantly tells me. He is a man of stature, of standing in the community, intelligent and educated. He can be no harm to me, can mean no harm to me.

  One day after work, Daria and Vasco went to Café Diplomatico to have dinner. They had been working hard on a project, and he had told her that he wanted to thank her for her devotion and all her hard work. It was a spring day in May, the time of year when Toronto starts to come alive and people sit on patios eating and watching the world pass by in its new clothes. It’s the time of year when people are cheerful and excited because finally the long darkness has passed and they can have a break, a break in pure daylight, their limbs emerging from their recoiling sadness to fully stretch and taste the sun. Vasco and Daria had ordered Pizza Napolitana and a bottle of red wine, Dão, a wine from Daria’s region in Portugal—the Dão-Lafões winery belt. She can’t remember exactly how it had started, how the conversation had shifted to that topic, but suddenly she became aware that Vasco was doing it again. He had managed to switch the topic of discussion and was asking her if she knew how a woman becomes aroused. She felt very uncomfortable this time, her face now clearly red. She thought that the people sitting at the nearby tables would hear what he was saying and would know that something inappropriate was happening between them, something sordid between an older man and a younger, naïve woman. She wanted to leave, but she was afraid to stop him or upset him. She did not want him to think she was being disrespectful or ungrateful, so she remained there, praying that he would stop saying what he was saying, asking what he was asking. She did not really say much, just a “yes” or a “no,” an “I am not sure” or an “I guess.” He went on and on about it saying the first thing that happens when a woman is aroused is that her nipples get erect and her thighs get wet. Daria became more and more uncomfortable and eventually worked up the courage to say she had to go home because she needed to study for her psychology class as she had a midterm test the following day. At the time she was taking continuing education courses at the university to earn a degree in social work. He said he would drive her home even though she said she could walk as she did not live far. He also insisted on paying even though she pulled out her wallet to share the cost of the meal. He drove her home in his silver BMW, and he said goodnight by touching her hand. She did not sleep well that night. It was not the first time that she had felt that things between her and Vasco were moving in an inappropriate direction, and she had spent several sleepless nights thinking about it, worrying about what it all meant. Every time, she would eventually force herself to go sleep, reminding herself that this man was like a father to her, that he was in fact the same age as her father, that he was a man of stature, an educated, intelligent man. How could she think he meant her any harm?

  The three older women working at the centre would often smile when they saw Daria and Vasco leave the office in his car to go to some community meeting or another. At first, Daria did not quite know why they were smiling. She thought they were just being jovial and courteous to them, courteous to their boss. But then one day they approached Daria and told her, “Daria, my daughter, you must be careful with Mr. da Gama. You must be careful with him. There are rumours about him liking young girls too much. We mean no harm to you, Daria. We are like your mothers, and so we just want the best for you. We want the best for you, so you be careful, my daughter. Be careful.” Daria thought it was odd they would say this to her, and she felt that perhaps they were just jealous of the attention Vasco was giving her, like Helena often was. And she would be reassured when Vasco would say, as he often did, that they were all just uneducated women who were jealous of younger women like herself, Milena, and Luísa, who had other lives, other opportunities that the older women had not been given. But it came to a point when Daria felt that Vasco wanted to be seen with her. It was as if he wanted to show the world in general that he was still a virile man, a man capable of keeping up with the ladies. In her mind, she compared him to that RCMP boss who apparently did the same thing with his novice female officer, frequently going on rides with her in his car. He claimed they were investigating the case of the BC pig farmer who was murdering dozens of women, but in fact they were just going around in circles so that he could have the chance to convince her to sleep with him. No wonder she developed PTSD and has been off work for many years. Another time, when Vasco drove Daria home again after working late, he stopped the car in front of her house and took her hands in his, holding them tight for some time. By this time, her apprehensions had grown bigger and bigger, and she could no longer fall asleep that easily by simply telling herself the usual story about Vasco’s good intentions. So she told him she did not feel comfortable with him holding her hands like that, and she abruptly removed her hands from his. He became quite irritated and said he was merely showing his affection towards her and that she was being irrational and childish. He said she was, in fact, acting like a frigid, scared virgin. The next day at the office he was as nice as always, and she tried to forget the inciden
t using the usual mechanisms.

  THE MOZAMBICANS. Francisco Magno Motumba is a friend of Vasco da Gama. He is a magnetic Mozambican who also has an eye on Daria, the beautiful Daria, who is currently working at the Lusitanian Social Service Centre as an executive assistant. He comes to the centre frequently to visit Vasco, or so he says, but anyone who knows him or has taken care to observe some of his behaviour can easily see that the man always has a double agenda. He cannot stay away from women, beautiful young women. He has sex to give and sell, as he proclaims. The first time he saw Daria, his eyes kept scanning her from top to bottom. It was difficult for him to concentrate on her face, even though her face was as beautiful as her body, as Vasco would often say. Magno Motumba has a very interesting story, and truth be told, when Daria saw him for the first time she was entangled by his fierce penetrating eyes and she felt water running between her legs. She did not mind that he was eyeing her from bottom to top, and it didn’t matter to her whether he started at the top, at the bottom, or in the middle. He made her body boil and her mind get dizzy, and she knew it was time to give away her virginity. And then, as she discovered more and more about his past, she became slavishly enamoured, entangled in his grand life story, the story of a poet, a soldier, a man of the world. She felt sure her virginity had been kept until then only to give to Francisco Magno Motumba. Motumba held the post of general consul of Mozambique in Canada. He had been appointed to this post by the government of Joaquim Chissano, who had taken the place of Samora Machel after the first post-independence Mozambican president died in a terrible plane crash. The accident had taken place in 1986 in the Lebombo Mountains in South Africa, and the circumstances had still not been fully clarified; many claimed that the crash was the result of evil machinations by the South African Apartheid regime. Because Daria was wholeheartedly infatuated with Magno Motumba, it did not take him much time or effort to convince her of what he had in mind. As Daria found out later, Vasco and Francisco were more than just friends—they were very close friends, intimate friends, who shared many secrets and mostly a fetish for young virgin women. This meant that when Vasco found out that Daria was a virgin, he immediately told his close friend Francisco Magno Motumba. This was why he had started to visit the centre more and more, roaming around like a greyhound in search of prey. He was thinking about that precious hymen lying between Daria’s round thighs, and he would not rest until he got a direct taste of it. Daria being naïve, or dreamy, or just guided by the constant pounding between her legs, a pounding that was asking her to finally and completely surrender, was easy prey for the Mozambican. He asked her out the first time he met her at the centre, and immediately started declaiming beautiful love poems to her, making her feel that she was indeed his princess and he her prince.