Chasing Bohemia (7 page)

‘What, like I turned up with the hammock in Barretos?'

‘That was the outback. This is Rio,' she said.

‘But …'

‘But, but, but. Enough of your buts, Carmen! You are driving me crazy with buts,' she cried in exasperation, her Italian accent winning out over the Irish one, as though I was the one suggesting that she turn up at someone's house with her bags and move in.

I didn't think seriously about it, though, until one morning, after having been woken up for the seventh night running by a drunken Chiara at 5.00 a.m. and then by the rustling plastic of the German girls at 7.00 a.m., that I passed the house and spied someone sleeping in a hammock. It was the first time I had seen someone outside the house, and I stopped at the gate for a rest.

The steep and uneven staircases, not to mention the increasingly oppressive heat, often forced walkers to stop outside random houses for little rests before continuing on their way. New tourists marked themselves out immediately by rushing up and down the staircases, trying to get it over with quickly and ending up unattractively red faced and drenched in sweat. Only the locals knew that you had to ‘take it slow'.

The hammock-sleeper opened one lazy eye. I made a sighing gesture to indicate my exhaustion and pointed to the blazing sun above. Perhaps he would offer me a glass of water. I tried my wonderful Portuguese: ‘Is house mine. I come in?'

The hammock-sleeper jumped up with unexpected enthusiasm and rushed to the gate.

‘Yes, come in. Come in.'

I briefly considered that he might be an axe murderer, but decided it was too hot for anyone to be killing anyone, much less with an energetic axe, and followed him into the house.

I didn't regret my forthrightness (or Chiara's, anyway). The grand tour of the Casa Amarela, as I would come to know it from the carefully opened coffee-table books, revealed a magnificent, turn-of-the-century art-nouveau property restored in a style of camp tropical Brazil meets French Maison, with Ming Dynasty Chinese influences. If that sounds all too much for the sleek inner-city modernist, I can assure you, it was. It was wonderfully, magnificently, fabulously excessive. The hammock-sleeper, a Brazilian soap star called Paulo — who I would later discover had taken up acting to avoid being committed to a mental institution — hustled me down the long French-tiled hallway and into the first of the three enormous living rooms that made up the first floor.

Rousseau-like canvases of brightly coloured toucans and Brazilian parrots in the midst of a lime-green jungle screamed down at a zebra-skin chaise lounge, while overloaded sideboards of engraved Brazilian wood creaked under the weight of bronze religious sculptures, Ming vases, and blown-glass ashtrays. In the centre of the room, a round coffee table inlaid with a shimmering pond of water was scattered with rose petals and candles. Stained-glass shutters opened out onto a steep slope of overgrown garden at the back of the house where a horse-sized Rottweiler, which Paulo called Torré, played joyfully. A love-swing hung from a giant mango tree.

In the second room, an enormous round table was laden with gold plates and copper goblets. Canvases of ripe, luscious fruits, seemingly split open with someone's bare hands, decorated the walls, and plants in stone pots stood in the four corners. The final room on the ground floor was decorated in the style of Imperial Portugal, with two thrones in royal blue, an unused mahogany writing bureau, an assortment of baroque, silver, religious sculptures from the eighteenth century, a large Debret etching of King Dom João VI, and a white kneeling couch for the slave who would massage my feet. I could hardly catch my breath before being whisked up a wide-turning staircase and into a chandelier-lit bathroom of exquisite blue tiles.

‘It is magnifi—,' I started, looking up in wonder at the hundreds of glass crystals, but Paulo silenced me with a finger to my lips. He was nearly bursting with pride. He ushered me out of the bathroom and along a hall into the second-floor rooms I had originally spied from the street.

I found myself face-to-face with my destiny — the Saint Tropez heiress, that is. In front of me stood a red-lacquered bed built for a Chinese princess, complete with arm rests for the slaves to carry it. By the window was an enormous writing desk made of a carved black wood. Antique Chinese lanterns hung from the ceiling, and a gentle breeze sounded delicate wind-chimes on the balcony. The yellow tramcar from Santa Teresa rattled by, and across the road I could see the white-washed walls of the priest's house.

We were interrupted by the sound of a man's voice downstairs, and Paulo scurried to meet him. There was a brief delay before they both appeared, carrying between them a plant potted in white engraved wood. The gentleman who had joined Paulo was around sixty, handsome, distinguished, and dressed in small white shorts and a pink t-shirt. He had shapely, tanned legs, a manicured, white goatee, and elegant unlined hands. The manner in which Paulo deferred to him indicated that he was the real owner. He smiled at me, put the plant down, and said something in French. I looked at him blankly and he apologised.

‘Oh, I am sorry. I thought you were French. What do you think, dear? On the right side of the table or the left?' Gustavo looked at me intensely while I looked at the plant and correctly sensed somehow that this was not a throwaway question, nor was my answer to be irrelevant to my future relationship with the man who owned the most magnificent house in Santa Teresa. I studied the plant's position, walked around the room a little, considered the light, and then told him to move it to the left. Paulo moved it, and I told him to move it back ten inches. ‘Renaissance?' I asked with a French accent, and he corrected me and said it was baroque — at the time, I suspected that neither of us knew if it were either. He asked me if I was certain it should not be to the right and I gestured with a royal wave to indicate that I was. In short, I bluffed.

I returned to the house that night for dinner, having been invited this time, and we discussed antiques, Europe, and the Australian squattocracy. I brought with me an Australian wine — a $40 bottle of Jacob's Creek — and he savoured it with excessive appreciation. ‘Such a fine wine!' he exclaimed, and then launched into an attack on the horrendous Brazilian wines. I smiled. I couldn't have cared less about wine. I could only think of that big empty Chinese princess room. I delicately steered the conversation around to the observation that he lived in such a big house alone, and Gustavo responded suavely that he sometimes rented rooms to relatives and the occasional ‘interesting friend'. After one more discreetly inquiring dinner, I jammed myself into the latter category and begged for residency at the Casa Amarela on Rua Joaquim Murtinho in Santa Teresa. He agreed to a short stay of one month, and we clinked glasses in celebration.

‘Will the Chinese room do for you, my dear?'

‘It will do,' I said, nearly tearful with gratefulness. ‘It
will
do.'

I ARRIVED LIKE
a thief in the night, quietly smuggled my UB into the Chinese princess room under the protection of darkness, and hung my three items of clothing in the walk-in wardrobe. I had explained apologetically to Carina that, while I loved the Rio Hostel, I was then twenty-eight years old and could no longer tolerate sharing rooms with anybody.

‘I thought you were only staying a few days,' Carina said with a teasing smile.

‘I don't have to be anywhere,' I responded happily. ‘I would like to get to know Santa Teresa a bit better, and if you could see my new room …'

She smiled kindly.

‘Did you find something simple somewhere?' she asked.

‘Yes,' I said nodding. ‘On this road, in fact.'

When she dropped me off later that evening, her face took on the look of someone who has just found out that her new friend is the Countess of Monte Carlo.

‘Darling, let's do cocktails as soon as you can,' I cried as I pulled the UB out of the boot, already feeling like the Saint Tropez heiress. Carina, still looking up at the yellow house through the windscreen, just nodded and blinked in amazement.

Once upstairs, I hid the cowboy hat and boots in a plastic bag at the bottom of the cupboard, and prepared myself for dinner. Luckily, I had managed to stow a little black dress into the bottom of the UB away from the watchful eyes of Skye and Stephanie back in Battersea. I had been carrying around that little black dress for over ten years, just in case I was invited — like some Bond girl coming in from the jungle — to dine at a maharaja's palace in India, or to cocktails at the country retreat of a European count. I never did use it on all those travels, spending my time instead in a red cotton shirt and a pair of extremely worn Levi jeans that were christened ‘the urinal' by Stephanie and me for literal reasons on our adventure through the Mekong Valley of Vietnam. That was until, of course, I arrived at the Casa Amarela.

Gustavo, the owner of the property, was a magnificent host of aristocratic proportions. He was a chic combination of Portuguese, German, and Argentine descent, and he had run restaurants for some period in São Paulo before coming to Rio. Scattered around the house were elegantly framed photos of him and other tanned, beautiful people on yachts in Greece, their swimsuits indicating the sixties or seventies, and others of him wearing a fur muff, carrying skis up the slopes of St Moritz and other havens for the rich.

At the start, we would share breakfast together from a table laden with fruit juices and cheese and hams, while he would attempt to elicit scandalous confessions about my past. The inevitable question about the quality of Australian men in bed came up again, although his views were somewhat more encouraging, given a recent showing of Australian Rules football on Brazilian TV. He probed at my social class with questions about family and antiques, but I kept the truth simple and unadorned.

Despite her initial encouragement, Chiara hated Casa Amarela on first sight. She came to visit one night after I'd arrived, looked around the salon, and said, ‘It is completely gross,' before spinning on her heel and walking out. Gustavo took muted offence, pulling me aside afterwards to ask me, ‘Who is that terrible hippy woman?', and the relationship was strained for a long time thereafter
.
I organised one or two ill-thought-out dinners where the Italian and Brazilian did sit down at the same table, but their conversation was small and suspicious. Chiara could not tolerate his ‘crass display of wealth' and Gustavo could not tolerate her wild, unkempt hair. Their lack of affection drove them both into their respective corners for a time; Gustavo's audaciousness soared to provocatively elitist statements when Chiara was around the house, and Chiara responded by openly calling Gustavo ‘an elite falsetto' for the lack of books in the house. I managed to smooth things over by saying that at least nobody was from the dreaded middle class. Well, apart from me, anyway.

For a social artist like Gustavo, I was a blank canvas. He was an optimistic man with an enormous imagination and no children to disappoint him.

‘So, my dear, what are you doing in Rio?'

‘Just passing through. I thought I would stay on for a month.'

‘Marvellous. Lemon with your tea?'

‘No, thanks.'

‘Of course you will. You must. English people do.'

‘Oh. I guess I will, then.'

‘And your family?'

‘I have two brothers and one sister and ...'

‘No, not that. Your lineage.'

‘Ummm … Well sort of half-German, half-English, dash of Scot. My dad works in sort of, well, consulting, but they were farmers originally, really.'

‘Oh! A ranch owner. A
fazendeiro
, we call them here.'

‘It's not really a ranch; more like a farm. It's not really of the proportions of your coffee colonels or anything …'

‘A fazendeiro's daughter …' he interrupted dreamily.

‘Not really a fazenda, as I said, but a small plot of …'

‘Where exactly?'

‘I come from Australia, but I was living in England for five years.'

‘So you have blood of the English aristocracy.'

‘Not quite … I mean, Australians are not really what you call aristocratic, but …'

‘But you personally formed part of the landed gentry?'

‘No, not …'

‘Please, my child. There is no need for explanations.'

Silence from my end. His eyes grew very wide.

‘Your grandmother was an English baroness, wasn't she?' His eyes boggled.

‘Yes.'

It was not until the following week, when I discovered that there was a soap opera or
novella
playing in Brazil at the time about a young
fazendeiro's
daughter who ran away to Rio to escape an arranged marriage, that I realised the full extent of Gustavo's extraordinary imagination in making me his heroine. He became determined to broker an alternative arrangement to my phantom fiancée, preferably with one of his illustrious connections, before, as he put it, ‘the sun set on my youth'. To prepare me for this end, as we split open fresh mangoes from the garden and fed Torré delicate spoonfuls of duck-liver pate, he educated me on the finer points of Brazilian culture. Never lose your temper; never reveal publicly that you have seen anyone with anyone at any time (direct family members excepted); never ever admit to infidelity (do you want to upset the whole apple cart?); and smile, for goodness sake, darling. Nobody likes miserable medieval types in Brazil.