Chasing Bohemia (22 page)

AS FOR MYSELF
, I wasn't only struggling with the threat of absolute poverty, but also with the reality of comparative poverty. Chiara had returned to Rio with a topped-up trust fund and a sunny new outlook on her revolutionary activities, Carina's father had instructed her to buy an apartment on his account, and Gustavo had Casa Amarela and an entire island he used to call ‘the farm' to the south of Rio. New travellers with enormous bank accounts arrived to live on Joaquim Murtinho, and inconveniently became friends — Nico with his generous French government unemployment fund and Anna, another Italian trustafarian. They were, as the local malandros astutely identified them, on
dinheiro de primeiro viagem
or ‘first trip money,' implying generosity and naïvety in equal abundance. I was the only one without a ‘fund' of some description, and the only one living a lifestyle ridiculously beyond my means.

I tried the Brazilian approach, and called my father to see whether I might be able to access some of the vast Michael family assets — to assess the possibility of selling off a few of the one million kangaroos for which I was famous within the leafy garden walls of Santa Teresa — but there was no sympathy forthcoming from the home camp. There was a general consensus among everyone I knew that it was well and truly time that I came home and started commuting two hours a day and working in the real world like the rest of them. Not that my father was ever a wage slave. He had a wonderful unstructured life behind him. Maybe that's why he got worried. The one child who looked like she might make it straight in the corporate world had run off to Brazil.

‘Trust fund?' my father echoed incredulously down the phone when I proposed an array of solutions to my problems. ‘You are about the last person I would trust with a fund of any description.'

My brother was no better.

‘Boo-hoo …' said my brother unsympathetically when I unburdened my woes upon him. ‘Come home and work like the rest of us, you lazy cow.' My sister was more helpful, although her means were limited.

‘I can lend you a couple of hundred.'

‘A couple of hundred what?'

‘A couple of hundred dollars.'

‘That's hardly going to pay my bills.'

‘You can stay with me when you get back,' she offered kindly.

‘I'm not coming back,' I screamed, surprising even myself with the violence of my outburst.

‘No, I know. But if you do ... you know ...' she reassured me.

The only person to offer me anything substantial and without strings attached was a penniless Irish actor friend of mine, Lochlann O'Mearain, who wrote me an email out of the blue and offered to give me five hundred pounds to continue my luxurious unemployment until the end of Carnaval in February. I was so surprised that I nearly swallowed my mango skin. Lochlann never had more than twenty pounds on his person, or any possessions, in the entire time I knew him. His penchant for giving away other people's possessions as presents was the cause of much irritation in our household of otherwise corporate high-fliers. Maybe he was just amazed that I was unemployed when it had always seemed to be him with the job problems, maybe the exoticism of Rio de Janeiro had inspired some madness, or maybe he was just messing with my head.

I was on the verge of accepting Lochlann's generous offer, if only out of curiosity, when Carina came up with an ingenious plan. It had followed a meeting with Carina and Fabio at the Rio Hostel in which I had expressed serious concerns that I might have to return at some stage to my country to work. Carina listened intently as I explained my dilemma. Everyone went to Carina with their problems. She had inherited her father's careful and considerate manner of listening to other people's dilemmas and finding reasonable solutions. She thought quietly for a moment before suddenly turning to me with a suggestion.

‘I've got it. Why don't you run tours in the lead-up to Carnaval?'

‘I'm a tourist. Not a tour guide.'

‘You know more about Lapa than me! Why not?'

‘Because I'm not Brazilian.'

‘But Fabio is,' she said, and thumbed in his direction.

‘Fabio?' I echoed uncertainly.

We both looked over to Fabio, who had long since lost interest in the discussion, and was at that moment tracing the clouds in the sky with his forefinger and humming a tune that sounded like a dozen broken gates opening and closing.

‘Hmm …' she said, raising one eyebrow with concern. ‘I see what you mean.' She sighed and then shrugged.

‘But what choice do you have? You are broke. I will have ten gringos ready to go tonight.'

‘But what will I say?'

‘Whatever. They will be drunk by the time they go, anyway.'

Fabio jumped to life with the new proposal and proposed a rare afternoon on the beach to celebrate our imminent wealth.

‘Isn't it a bit too early to celebrate?' I asked.

‘Never! Never too early to celebrate. Never!' he cried. ‘To the contrary, it is good luck.' He bounded ahead of me on the street and I quickened my pace to keep up with him. ‘All right, then. But shouldn't we prepare?'

‘Prepare what? We will just improvise. Between my charm and your English, we are guaranteed of success.'

‘But they might want to know stuff, like historical things. They are paying, after all. And my Portuguese is terrible.'

‘You worry too much. Foreigners! Always worry, worry, worry. If I was as rich as a foreigner, I would not worry about a single thing. Not one little thing.'

Generally he hated going to the beach, but when he wanted to please me he would accompany me and hover all day under the umbrella, swimming only at the water's edge. He might have been a shark on the back streets of Lapa, but on the beach he was completely out of his element. He was afraid of the water, had sensitive eyes, and did not like direct sunlight. He would shrink back from every wave that crashed on the shore whispering, ‘Here comes the tsunami.' He preferred instead to go to one of the hundreds of waterfalls that sprang like black gold from the mountains around Rio, where he could root around in the rugged riverbeds and gnarly trees, calling to the monkeys and toucans under a light that fell in strange, fan-like patterns on our faces and on the mossy forest floor. That day on the beach, however, he lay about like an Italian count on the Mediterranean coast, soaking up the rays, or standing around with the other boys smoking cigarettes and even, in the afternoon, braving the strong, foamy undercurrents.

We were late for our first tour that evening, thanks to Fabio, but nobody was too bothered. As Carina predicted, our ‘clients' had already been drinking caipirinhas since five in the afternoon, so by eight their big, red, northern European faces were shining with sun and alcohol. It was a magnificent Rio evening, nearly twenty-five degrees at nine, the crickets screaming in the tropical jungle around us, and all the residents out on the street with their worldly possessions. The next-door neighbour had even brought out a lamp and hearth-rug. The gringos jostled excitedly at the hostel exit, waiting for their big night of bohemia to begin, while Fabio skulled caipirinhas upstairs like a rock star about to go on stage. As he jumped about, getting his ‘show time' energy rushing through his veins, Carina pulled me aside to warn me about splitting the proceeds.

‘Just remember, darling. Don't pay all at once. He is not used to having money. Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, as you guys say!'

I waved her away with one hand.

‘Don't be so bloody elitist,' I retorted.

But she just shook her head and gave a rueful smile.

It was a roaring success. Even if my translations were less than 40 per cent accurate, we improvised like true professionals. Fabio tap-danced his way down to Lapa, charming the yellow-haired crowd with his songs and cavaquinho, while I played Charlie, bringing them up from behind. He introduced the Scandinavian girls to Winston Churchill (in exchange for a nominal commission), had Waldie tell his samba boat story in exchange for free beer, sold three paintings on behalf of the artist Selarón, and secured free entry and drinks to the Club Democraticus. The commentary was sketchy at best, filled with disconnected stories and irrelevant facts, riddled with prejudices and potential law suits, and frequently displaying a profound lack of historical knowledge:

This here is the Convent of Santa Teresa, built in 1780 by the runaway saint Teresa who petitioned the governor of Rio to ... umm ... to do something. Anyway, moving swiftly on ... The bars, a recent addition to the colonial architecture, were placed on the windows at the start of the 1900s, to protect the local community from the naughty, slutty little nuns getting out and tempting the good malandros of Lapa with their kinky outfits. Fabio! Here is a wall picture of Madam Sata who, in spite of being gay, was also a good fighter. Joao do Rio lived here. He was a good bloke, he drank a lot, and he wrote some stories about Rio. He loved whores, too. There is Priscilla. She is a whore. So are the three next to her. Does anyone want me to buy them drugs?

Still, nobody complained, and at three in the morning we split the money fair and square, two hundred each, hit up a Scandinavian couple for an early-morning dinner of goat curry and rice alongside the intellectuals of Nova Capella, and then went home. Carina had arranged a tour for every night that week, so I told Fabio to meet me the following night at the hostel at the same time.

He didn't turn up the next night. Nor the following night. Nor even the third night. He disappeared into Carioca no-man's land. Not even Winston had seen him. Carina tutted and said, ‘I don't want to say that I told you so.' I didn't see him again until he turned up three hours late on the fourth night, claiming not to have eaten for two days and not to have one centavo in his pocket. The hems of his white trousers were filthy with Rio street dirt, and the band of his hat was as twisted as a scarecrow's. Dark rings had appeared under his eyes. I sat stiffly on the edge of a porch deckchair with a deliberately cold expression. He smiled and took my hand, which I withdrew immediately. The floor creaked from the other side of the door, where Gustavo was listening into our conversation. Fabio tried another tack.

‘When will the next tour commence?'

‘Tour? What tour? Where the hell have you been? What happened to our tour business?' I said angrily.

‘You wouldn't believe it if I told you.'

‘Try me.'

‘I was possessed by Exu?' he offered hopefully.

‘Well, if you can't even dignify me with a serious response …' I said, getting up. He grabbed my hand.

‘I told you you wouldn't believe me.'

‘Go to hell then. Anyway, there is no tour. The gringos have gone out.' By that stage, even I was calling them ‘gringos'. Fabio's face fell.

‘There has to be. I am desperate. I haven't eaten all day, and I owe thirty reals to someone in Lapa,' he said, genuinely distressed.

‘Why didn't you turn up the next day then?'

‘I didn't need the money then.'

‘Surely you realised you would need it at some stage.'

‘I didn't think about it. I just didn't need it then.'

‘So you only work when you really need the money?'

He paused, as though thinking about this for the first time, and then shrugged and nodded.

‘Yeah. Doesn't everyone do that?'

‘No!' I was irritated. ‘Some people work because they want to put away something for tomorrow. Some people work because they have children and responsibilities to take care of. Work is important, Fabio.'

‘No, it is not,' Fabio responded swiftly. ‘Fun is important. Happiness is important. Work is not.'

‘Is that everyone's fun and happiness, or just yours?'

We ended up going to the hostel that night, and despite our disappointing no-shows of the past few days, there were five foreigners ready to go. We ran the tour, Fabio was as charming as ever, the tourists loved it, and I kept the money on the pretext of covering our operating costs. Within three days, Carina's words had rung true, and Fabio, hungry and mean from not being paid, had turned into a ruthless marketing machine. The transformation was astoundingly swift. Humiliation really worked! He arrived at the hostel promptly every day at 6.00 p.m., his nails clipped, hair slicked back, and posture fawning, spent an hour winding up the gringos to take tours, and talked professionally about expanding to other hostels.

Chiara arrived at the hostel as Fabio was describing his plans to expand into the favelas of north Rio. Since her return from Italy, back and badder than ever, she had been engaged in some solo charity work on the streets of Lapa. Her latest ‘project' was a tough single mother called ZeZe, who walked with a polio limp and had just come out of prison with her new baby. She was pregnant with three kids in the house when they arrested her in the middle of the night, and when she came out of jail she had to go and pick up her children off the street. She found one under a bridge with her torch. Chiara had become friendly with her kids, and she wanted to set her up with her own business selling drinks to get her out of dealing.