Carioca Fletch (17 page)

“I relieved them of some of their inheritances.”

“I dare not even ask you about this country inn they took you to.”

“It had a swimming pool.”

“Riding around all day. So late to the Canecão Ball. Cristina said you were dressed as a movie cowboy.”

“An outfit I borrowed from Toninho.”

“I saw it in the closet.”

“I looked real sleek.”

“That you danced hours with that French film star, Jetta.”

“There was no one else to dance with her.”

“I’m sure.” Laura mixed her
pirao
with her
farofa com dendê
. “Brazilians are not like this all the time. Only during Carnival. Brazilians are a very serious people.”

“I’m sure.”

“Look at our big buildings. Our factories. Our biggest-in-the-world hydroelectric plant. Everything here runs by computer now. At the airport, all the public announcements, in each language, are done by computer voices. And you can understand what they are saying perfectly.”

Through the window Fletch started to count the
macumba
fires on the beach.

“Marilia Diniz and I went this morning to the
favela
Santos Lima to see the Barreto family, to hear the story of Janio Barreto’s life and death.”

Laura did not seem interested in that. “You should read the novels of Nelida Piñon. Then you would know something of Brazilian life. Not just Carnival foolishness. Things are very different here in Brazil.”

“I know,” he said. “The water goes down the drain counterclockwise.”

“Anyway …” She removed a bone from her fish. “Last night, in Bahia, I agreed finally to do this concert tour.”

“Concert tour? You’re going on a concert tour?”

“Pianists who stop playing the piano stop being pianists,” she said.

“Where are you going? When?”

“In about a month. Bahia first, then Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Recife. Friends of my father have been urging me to do this, setting it up for some time.”

“I guess they want you to get serious.”

“I am an educated pianist. I’ve had good reviews. I like the idea of bringing so much Brazilian music to the piano.”

“You will have to work very hard to go on such a tour.”

“Very hard.”

“Practice a lot.”

“A very lot.”

“Do you want dessert?”

“Of course.”

They ordered cherry tarts.

“Fletcher,” she asked, “what are you serious about?”

“Sleeping.”

“Serious.”

“I’m serious about sleeping.”

“Sleeping is necessary, I guess.”

“I am seriously worried. You remember that woman I was to have breakfast with yesterday morning at The Hotel Jangada?”

“Who is she?”

“The woman in the green dress we saw on the
avenida
.”

“You didn’t want to see her.”

“I do now. Her name is Joan Collins Stanwyk. She’s from California.”

“That was clear, from looking at her. Her eyes looked as if she were watching a movie.”

“She’s disappeared.”

“People disappear in Brazil, Fletch.” Laura didn’t seem to want to hear about that, either. “What time are we to arrive at Carnival Parade?”

“Teo suggested about ten o’clock. I doubt he’ll be there much earlier than that.”

“I’ve never watched Carnival Parade from a box before.”

“I think he suspects this is the only year I’ll be here for it.”

Laura said nothing.

For a moment, Fletch watched her finish her cherry tart.

Then Fletch gazed through the window at the
macumba
fires on the moonless beach. A cheer was sent up from a samba crowd on the
avenida
.

He said, “Carnival…”

“The point of it is to remember that things are not always as they appear.”

“Welcome to the Samba School Parade!” Teodomiro da Costa said in the tone of a ring-master. He stood just inside the door of his box overlooking the parade route. He wore jeans and a T-shirt. On front of the T-shirt were printed a black bow tie and ruffles. In a more personal tone, he asked, “Have you eaten?”

“At the hotel.”

He looked into Fletch’s eyes and spoke just loudly enough for Fletch to hear him over the fantastic noise. “You have not slept.”

“Not yet.”

“Have a drink.”

“
Guaraná
, please.”

Teo repeated the order to the barman.

“Laura!” Teo hugged her to his chest. “Did Otavio get home all right?”

“Of course. He just pretended to need help.”

“I think that’s what you do with daughters. You pretend to need their help when, actually, you do.”

The box was bigger than Fletch had expected, big enough for twenty people to move around in comfortably, to see, even dance, plus room for the sandwiches and drinks table, the barman.

Adrian Fawcett, the writer for
The Times
, was there, the Vianas, the da Silvas, the London broker and his wife, the Italian racing car driver and his girl friend. Jetta looked at Fletch with the resentment of someone who had been danced with but not loved. She did not look at Laura at all.

Everyone marveled at everyone else’s costumes, of course. Laura was dressed as an eighteenth-century musician, in breeches and knee socks, ruffled shirt front, gray wig. The Viana woman asked Laura if she had brought her piano to accompany her costume.

As Fletch moved forward in the box, glass of
guaraná
in hand, he had the sensation that Rio’s volume knob was being turned up. Thousands of drums were being played in the area. Hundreds of thousands of people were singing and chattering and cheering.

Across the parade route, the stands were a sea of faces inclined toward the sky. Above the bright lights aimed on the route, thick, hot, smoky air visibly rolled up the stands and formed a thin gray cloud overhead.

“Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival Parade Class One-A is the biggest, most amazing human spectacle in the world,” Teodomiro da Costa had said, inviting Fletch. “Except war.”

The parade starts at six o’clock Sunday afternoon and continues until past noon Monday. About twelve samba schools, of more than three thousand costumed people each, compete in the parade.

I’m not sure I can stand three more days of Carnival.” Even speaking over the noise, Adrian Fawcett’s voice was a deep rumbling chuckle. “Days of elation or depression have the same effect on people, you know. I’m drained already.”

“It’s a mark of character to be able to survive Carnival intact,” Laura answered. “It’s a matter of having the right attitudes.”

She beamed at Fletch.

Fletch said: “It’s all beyond belief.”

“Next is
Escola Guarnieri.”
Teo peered over the rail at the
bateria
in the bull pen. “Yes, that’s Guarnieri.” Then he said to Fletch, “After that comes
Escola Santos Lima
.”

The parade route, on Avenida Marques de Sapucai, is only a mile long.

To the left along the parade route are the stands, built as high as most buildings, crammed with tens of thousands of people. They arrive in the stands, take and protect their seats, bake in the sun, eat their sandwiches, hold their bladders, chatter and sing beginning at noon, a full six hours before the parade starts. Almost all stay in their seats for the full twenty-four hours.

To the right along the parade route are the boxes, vastly expensive vantage points, some done up in bunting. In the boxes are government dignitaries, Brazilian and foreign celebrities, and people who are simply rich.

The parade route between its two sides is as wide as a three-lane road.

It is as wide as the line between shade and sun, sickness and health, tin and gold.

Also along the right-hand side of the route, ten meters high in the air, are the watchtowers where sit the various parade judges, one for costumes, one for floats, one for music, one for dancing, etc. They sit immobile, expressionless, alone, many behind dark sunglasses so that not even a flicker of an eye may be a subject of comment and controversy. Their names are not released to the public until the day of the parade. And so complicated and controversial is their task that the results of their judging are not announced until four days later, on Thursday.

Diagonally across the parade route from da Costa’s box, to the left, is the bull pen filled with hundreds of costumed
ritmistas
, the
bateria
of drummers of
Escola Guarnieri
. Their drums are of all sizes and tones. It takes the drummers up to an hour to put themselves into their proper places in regard to each other, to get their rhythms up, their sound up. Now their rhythm and their sound are full, and fill everyone at the parade, fill their ears, their brains, their entire nervous systems, control the beatings of their hearts, make their eyes flush with blood, their hands and feet move involuntarily, their bones to vibrate. This is total sound, amplified only by human will, as primitive a sound as Man ever made, the sound of drums, calling from every human, direct, immediate response, equalizing them in their numbness before the sound.

Everyone in da Costa’s box is standing at the rail. Laura has taken off her wig and opened the collar of her eighteenth-century-styled shirt. The faces of everyone at the rail shine with sweat. Their eyes, their lips protrude slightly, as if the sound of the drums reverberating within them were seeking a
way to burst out of them. The veins at their temples throb visibly to the beat of the drums. Being host, Teo stands back behind the people at the rail. Being tall, he can still see everything.

Down the parade route from the left, passing the
bateria
in the bull pen like the top of a T comes the
Abre-Alas
, the opening wing of Guarnieri’s presentation. This group of
sambistas
, moving of course to the sound of the drums, wear bright, ornate, slightly exaggerated costumes presenting a hint of the time and place of the samba school’s theme, in this case nineteenth-century Amazon plantation ball gowns, their hoop skirts a little too wide, the bodices a little too grand, the bouffants a little too high; for the men, spats a little too long, frock coats a little too wide in the shoulders, top hats a little too high. This is the slave’s view of plantation life. The exaggeration is a making fun. The exaggeration also expresses victory over such a life.

Immediately behind the
Abre-Alas
comes a huge float stating the literary theme of Guarnieri’s presentation. On the slowly moving truck invisible beneath the float is a mammoth book open for all to see the letters G.R.E.S. GUARNIERI
(Gremio Recreativo Escola de Samba Guarnieri)
. It is desired that the spectator know that it is of history that the school portrays, a kind of written, authoritative history, which may be a kind of joke, too, or an exaggeration, as there is very little authoritative, written history.

Then comes the
Comissão de Frente
, a line of formally dressed men doing a strolling samba. It is desired that the spectators accept these aging
sambistas
, honored for their contributions to past Carnival Parades, chosen for their grace and dignity, as the samba school’s board of directors. Few, if any, actually are directors. The real directors are working hard in the school’s parade, all sides of it at once. The presentation-dancers, drummers, floats on trucks and flatbeds, floats that are pushed by hand—must move at exactly one mile an hour, without gaps or holes, keeping the balances of colors and movements perfect.

Behind this line of dignitaries comes the first and most distinguished dancing couple, the
Porta Bandeira
and the
Mestre Sala
, the Flag Bearer and the Room, or Dancing Master. These are mature people, in their prime, dressed in lavish eighteenth-century costumes regardless of the theme, those decided by everyone in the
favela
to be absolutely the best dancers, those dancers everyone else most enjoys watching. Their dance step is incredibly complicated, to most people an incomprehensible wonder, with patterns within patterns, movements within movements. They too must move forward in their dancing at exactly one mile per hour. And while she dances, the lady of the couple must carry a flag, the samba school’s emblem on one side, the symbol of that year’s theme on the other side, waving it so that both sides are visible to everyone.

It is obligatory that every person in the parade, every dancer, dignitary, drummer, director working or parading must constantly be singing the
samba enredo
, the song presented by that school that year, as loudly and as well, as continuously, as he or she can.

As the
Alas
come by, the theme of the school’s presentation becomes more and more clear, however broad the theme may be. An
ala
is a group of hundreds of vigorously dancing people identically dressed depicting some aspect of the theme. Here one
Ala
is costumed as Indians from the Amazon Basin, dancing steps suggestive of that cultural area. Another
ala
is again of plantation life, the costumes modified, of course, so that the beauty of the people of that
favela
, their flesh and movement, the joy of the dancers’ bodies may be revealed and enjoyed by all.

In among the
alas
come the
Figuras de Destaque
, the prominent figures which relate to the theme, in this case mythically huge figures of Amazonian plumed birds and monkeys.

All these groups cross in front of the
bateria
of drummers filling the air with sound in the bull pen.

In da Costa’s box, Jetta in particular wilts. Her greatly abbreviated costume of a Foreign Legionnaire looks hot and heavy over her breasts and hips. Her back leans against a
stanchion. Her chin is on her chest. Her eyes are open, watching, but glazed.

The most important obligatory
Ala
of any presentation is that which honors the earliest history of the samba parade in Rio de Janeiro. After the drought of 1877, women who had emigrated from Bahia danced slowly down the main street of Rio in their long white gowns on the Sunday before Lent, inviting the men to join them, as they had done in Salvador. So here comes the
Ala das Baianas
, scores of older women, usually the blackest in the
favela
, dressed, dancing in the flowing white robes of Bahia.