his left thumb hooked into an old-fashioned wooden palette , his pockets filled with tubes of acrylic paint , he used only one brush until it fell to pieces , covering the broken walls with brilliant pictures of the trees , the vines , the flowers he 'd seen in rio de janeiro and the faces , yes , always the faces of the beautiful brazilians he encountered everywhere , walking through the nighttime rain forest of corcovado , or on the endless beaches of the city , or in the noisy garishly lighted nightclubs he frequented , collecting expressions , images , flashes of hair or shapely limbs as he might have collected pebbles from the frothy margin of the ocean .