John Velasco-De Armas
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The End of the World in Rio
Some months ago, an eclipse occurred on the side of the planet opposite from Brazil. Soothsayers reminded us that the prophecies of Nostradamus had identified that specific day as the beginning of eternal darkness. It was a day to be remembered.
The bitter prospect of annihilation monopolized the front page of the Rio de Janeiro newspapers, and ruined the taste of my morning coffee. I skipped to the financial section. There was the customary speculation on the dollar, a few cents one way or the other. The banks were arm wrestling with the government, nothing new. The local stock exchanges had taken another dip in their customary rollercoaster fashion; this time the drop was blamed on profit-taking on the New York Stock Exchange. Inflation was now below 1 percent per month, a far cry from a monthly 40 percent only five years ago. Unemployment was up, the president's popularity was down. A politician cried out for the resignation of the nation's leader in melodramatic, unintentionally amusing terms. None of those interviewed by reporters remembered that the economy was enjoying comparative stability. Brazil has no natural catastrophes, no hurricanes or earthquakes, but it does have more than its share of politicians.
The morning the world was scheduled to end, there was an unusually thick fog, and that, too, could have been blamed on the president. Brazilians take pleasure in reviling their politicians. When the sun does not shine in Rio de Janeiro, Cariocas--the popular term for the inhabitants of Rio--let loose with their sharp tongues, inside cabs, at corner coffee counters, up and down the long lines at the bus stops: The representatives they were responsible for electing democratically were not doing their job. Cariocas would run things better if the nation's capital had not been moved away from this coastal city forty years ago.
In that morning's newspaper, there was an article on direct foreign investment, which had skyrocketed from less than US $1 billion per year at the beginning of the decade to US $26 billion last year. The government was criticized for allowing the privatization of federal and state companies to decelerate. At the same time, the government was criticized for privatizing.
The gargantuan American, Spanish, and Brazilian telecommunications companies which acquired the state-owned phone companies are learning to walk on hot sand, attempting to tropicalize their technological and administrative skills. Until they do so, using the telephone here promises to continue to be a frustrating experience. Trying to make a long distance call, even between Rio and São Paulo, has become even more difficult after the addition of numbers for the new telephone servers. A sequence like 031(or 015 or 021)1131289657 is not easy to remember, and an irritating recording often interrupts in the middle of the exercise to insist that "that number does not exist." The companies proudly report that the success rate of completed interstate calls is currently at 52 percent.
The relatively new cellular telephone market saved the day at the peak of a recent telecommunications crisis. Foreign distributors sold cell phones like hotcakes to taxi drivers, cleaning women, shopkeepers, Hare Krishnas, priests, politicians, poll takers. A newspaper cartoonist recently portrayed a sexy lady selling phones in a booth; the sign above her read "take one now, pay after the Apocalypse." Cariocas, like most Brazilians, delight in consumer credit, and, in the nineties, this sort of financing has not only been a prime economic mover; it has also created an illusion of redistribution of wealth.
A minority maintains that the government's privatization policy is giving away sovereignty to the gringos. "Gringo" refers not only to North Americans, but to all foreigners. Decades have passed since "Gringo go home" was last painted on the walls surrounding empty lots in South American cities. Now there is no animosity towards foreigners. Rock, rap, Rambo, and RAM memory have chipped away at cultural barriers. Perhaps there is a bit of envy in terms of material wealth, but it is also possible that the Carioca on the street may view Americans as slightly gullible. Cariocas might feel that, given half a chance, they could take over the United States, liven things up, show them the advantages of an occasional dose of healthy rule-bending, show them how to run things more creatively. Until that unlikely opportunity arises, they are willing to let the gringos pour their money into Brazil and--it is hoped--create new jobs. A lot of Cariocas need those jobs.
The population of Brazil is either 160 million or 170 million, depending on the source. The nation's high birth rate and declining infant mortality make official head counts instantly obsolete. The population of Rio is eight and a half million, allowing for a 10 percent margin (either way) for rainy census days, and Greater Rio reportedly has more than ten million inhabitants.
Statistics are very important in Brasília, perhaps due to that city's arid climate, but not so important to those who live outside the nation's capital. Statistics are not usually quoted by many Brazilians--except for economists, and these professionals often appear to have difficulty speaking understandable Portuguese.
The newspaper I was reading had a picture of Welsh druids rehearsing a special end-of-the-world ritual in the forest. Europeans, I learned, were testing smoked pieces of glass, old cranial x-rays, anything to protect their eyes from the eclipse that was to shadow the planet between one and two o'clock Brazil time. People passing by a subway station in downtown Rio de Janeiro were asked what they thought of the doomsday predictions. A young man replied by asking the reporter if he thought The Day After would be a holiday. A woman, less young, laughed, and said that at least she wouldn't have to worry about the overdue payments on her television set. A typically deterministic older man said that what had to be, would be, and if God so wished, it would certainly be the end of the world in Europe. But not in Brazil, he said gravely. God was Brazilian.
A few years back, the Pope had announced to a huge crowd in Rio: "If God is Brazilian, I am a Carioca."
Thinking of the Pope reminded me that it was now too late to make any spiritual preparations for the Last Day. Like thousands of other business people living in Rio, I soon would have to drive to the airport downtown and take the forty-five-minute shuttle flight to São Paulo. This was a lame excuse for neglecting to pray, since there are any number of Catholic churches on the way to Santos Dumont Airport. But my habitual prayers before take-off would also have to count in case the world was ending.
During the seventies, bankers of all nationalities reluctantly traded Rio and their swimming trunks for tight suits and choking ties, and followed the scent of money to the new industrial parks of São Paulo. The nation's capital had already been moved to Brasília, and Rio was left with a large population of die-hard bureaucrats who could not bear to think of living far away from the sea. For many Cariocas, scores of whom had simultaneously held multiple jobs (hence the practice of leaving spare coats over office chairs to feign one's presence), it seemed that some essential metaphysical assumptions were abandoning them. The once sacred right of having time to shoot the breeze or go to the beach, have a beer and watch the people walk by at the water's edge--these prerogatives were being challenged by priorities imported from the University of Chicago's economics department. It would take decades to alter the mentality of a city which had long been dependent on government desk jobs. The next generation of Cariocas would somehow have to meet the philosophical challenge. In the meantime, many people like myself would regularly have to face the shuttle between Rio and São Paulo.
Still, the myth that the Carioca is extraordinarily adverse to work is a well-protected one that modern Cariocas do not seem anxious to relinquish. Cariocas are proud of seeming able to have time to enjoy a sexy, comfortable life, while expending a bare minimum of effort to produce wealth. Statistics (are they to be trusted, after all?) show that Cariocas work at least as much as other individuals in large cities, and have quite normal sex lives (less than half as exciting as the locals delight in boasting about). Heavy traffic at nine o'clock at night reinforces nasty rumors that more and more Cariocas of all socioeconomic strata are putting in ten- or twelve-hour workdays. Nonetheless, they won't admit it: it would tarnish their image.
Looking up from my newspaper, I could see that fog still hid most of the muffin-shaped, granite hill that was five or eight hundred yards from my window. It also blocked the view of the dozens and dozens of new high-rise luxury apartments in the distance to the left, which gave me the momentary illusion of going back in time. In the last decade, the Barra da Tijuca on Rio's South Side has mushroomed into a real estate agent's psychedelic dream. The progressive development of the more affluent areas of Rio has been southward, between the hills and the sea--a stretch extending twenty miles from the downtown business district. Coming along the coastal road, the string of beaches (and neighborhoods) one would encounter are Flamengo, Botafogo, Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, São Conrado, then the newer areas of Barra and Recreio.
Barra is blessed by a long, unpolluted beach and presents an eclectic conglomeration of architectural styles. Glass-walled offices and retail stores and balconied residential buildings line the twelve-lane main drag, and behind these are houses which vary in style from palatial neo-Georgian, circled by disproportionately narrow gardens, to Florida modern, to contemporary kitsch. Some are a tribute to the combination of new money, unleashed imagination, and dubious taste. Others have baked, red tile roofs, handsome high ceilings, wide-planked flooring, and well-fed termites. Near the unmarked border between Barra and Recreio, there is a mammoth replica of the Statue of Liberty in front of a futuristic building called New York City Center, an entertainment center which includes a giant Steven Spielberg-Gameworks arcade. Next door is the largest shopping mall in South America. Like most Brazilians, Cariocas are very fond of superlatives, as in the world's largest soccer stadium (Maracaná), the world's most beautiful women, etc., etc.
Flying through fog has never attracted me, so I went back to my paper. Besides, if the world was going to end between one and two o'clock, it seemed senseless to rush.
Local newspapers sometimes tend to be almost as irreverent as their readers. Cariocas find so much humor in self-criticism that they don't find laughing at others at all offensive. There was a story in the paper about a reverse beauty contest organized by the attention-seeking mayor of a small town in the backlands. The object of the contest was to select the ugliest woman in town and a photograph of a proud young lady adorned with a satin sash fully justified her victory. The second runner-up, angrily punctuating accusations with a pointed index finger, was her mother.
Brazilians on the whole are not concerned with political correctness. Racial intermarriage began many generations ago, and this has softened the edges of any discrimination. In a country where the offspring of such marriages occupy seats in government, high positions in large corporations, universities, and hospitals, race is not a prominent issue. It is likely that there are as many blacks as whites in the numerous favelas, or shantytowns, on the hillsides of Rio, and that both groups are far outnumbered by mulattoes. However, to say that there is no racial discrimination whatsoever in Rio would be inaccurate--and utopian.
The melodious performer Martinho da Vila may include songs which refer to race in his romantic samba repertoire, but lyrics relating to race are not what account for his popularity. On the other hand, funk-rap with a social message has sold a million CDs for Racionais MC's, a young group from the low-income suburbs of North Rio. Race, a magazine addressed to the black population of the city, recently lamented the lack of consciousness of issues associated with skin color, and the resistance Brazilians show to rallying behind the little-known organization known as Black Movement. A famous black TV reporter recognized that blacks would always have to confront situations of racism, but concluded that racism was simply tiresome.
Brazilians of any shade of skin color are--first and foremost--Brazilians. In cities like Rio and São Paulo, where McDonald's restaurants abound in American-style shopping centers, and where Internetted adolescents save up for the Nike swoosh, music critics forecast that Pagode de Mesa will be a commercial success. Pagode is veteran black singer Beth Carvalho's new samba album, produced without electrical instruments, going back to the roots of samba, to the neighborhood street corners and crowded tables of open-doored local watering holes. Some of the songs contain a social message, most of them speak of tenderness, and all of them exemplify the Brazilian spirit. In the farthest corners of this country--a country larger than the continental United States--chests swell with pride whenever the name Pelé is spoken, not because of the world-famous athlete's skin color, but because he is Brazilian.
A short note in my newspaper reported that a man had been arrested at a downtown bank for cashing a bogus check. In accordance with common practice, he had written a telephone number and address on the reverse side of the check. Unfortunately for the criminal, he had written down his own address, and so the police had no difficulty in locating and arresting him the following morning. The man was from Portugal, the story ended laconically. The Portuguese are the butt of thousands of Brazilian jokes, even though a large portion of the population is of hard-working Portuguese ancestry. The Carioca is not inclined to recognize "the old country," whether his roots can be traced back to Portugal or Africa. He regards himself as an entirely new product, with his own distinct identity.
Within that national identity, Cariocas are proudest of their own particular idiosyncrasies. A detailed map of the new speed traps in the city caught my attention in the second section of the newspaper. Paulistas, or those who choose (or are forced) to live in São Paulo, do not deny their envy of the beauty of Rio de Janeiro. What they hide, though, is their envy of the coastal city's hitherto unenforced speed laws. Rio is a vain city, and Cariocas are by no means against having their pictures taken, but the newly installed cameras equipped with flash devices to capture the license plates of speeding cars are extremely unpopular. Effectively camouflaged by the trees planted in the median strip of the highways, these busy cameras are securely encased within a small birdhouse structure called a "pardal" (sparrow). The devices resemble the hat worn by Disney's Gyro Gearloose--locally known as Professor Pardal, from whom the speed traps very likely take their name. I carefully tore out the map and folded it: it would be useful.
Someone once told me that the magazine with the widest circulation in Rio was Disney's Uncle Scrooge. Whether the top place still goes to the rags-to-riches duck or to the national edition of Playboy, it is most noteworthy that Cariocas read many more magazines than books. There are newsstands on almost every block of the main streets, newsstands which would dwarf the one in New York's Grand Central Station. A wide array of covers present images of nude women, others of practically nude men, computer magazines in English, home decorating periodicals in French and Italian, newspapers from São Paulo, The Financial Times, The New York Times, papers from Argentina--a seemingly endless selection filling the racks and hanging from clothespins. There may also be copies of spiritual self-help books by the Brazilian literary phenomenon Paulo Coelho, as well as a special-edition series by renowned contemporary Brazilian writers on the seven capital sins. (The best-selling champion of these, hands down, is Lust, by João Ubaldo Ribeiro.)
The great majority of books are quite expensive here. Paperbacks average around $15, and in a country where the monthly minimum wage is now considerably less than $100, books are a prohibitive luxury for the vast majority of the population. At those prices, booksellers have trouble emptying their shelves, and so printing houses usually limit editions to an average of 3,000 (as compared to 30,000 in the U.S.). The Rio government has pledged to build 156 public libraries by the end of next year--an ambitious project, considering that only 3,900 public libraries exist in the entire country.
A warm winter sun glared insistently above the lazy fog, as the FM classical music station on my car radio announced Mozart's Allegro Con Brio Symphony No. 25. The South Side rush hour of fathers on their way to work dropping their children off at school had been followed by the hour of mothers rushing off on errands, or coming back from their aerobics classes. I braked abruptly as a fleet of zooming mothers converged in front of me, suddenly slowing down the flow of traffic, as if there were an interesting car crash just ahead. When the music shifted con brio, these mothers in new sub-compact cars pressed ahead once again, like criss-crossing birds fleeing from a cage left open. Two miles further on, the traffic again screeched almost to a halt, then slowed to a funereal pace.
The green Gyro Gearloose hat visible in my rearview mirror explained the sudden stops and starts. Carioca women are extremely pragmatic, and these drivers had not been wasting their time reading fickle economic forecasts or Portuguese anecdotes in the newspaper. They had memorized the locations of the speed traps identified on the map I had forgotten on my dresser. Several took advantage of the momentary lull in the race to brush their hair, or to make calls on their cellular phones. When they were safely out of the range of the cameras, off they sped again, allegro con brio.
A string of low mountains and high hills divides Rio into the North Side (low- and middle-income residential, and, further inland, beyond the downtown business center, industrial and peripheral areas, where low- and very-low-income housing projects are located) and the South Side (middle- and high-income, sprinkled with favelas). The road winds over the junction of the sea and the Marapendi lake toward one of the several tunnels on the way downtown. A large billboard depicting a tanned, completely nude blonde came into focus. The advertisement offered the services of a plastic surgeon, which the sensuous model obviously did not require. Surgeons and lawyers have an unspoken code of ethics which generally frowns upon publicity, so I suspected that the Mayor might have had something to do with the billboard. It was a highly effective means of slowing traffic.
Internationally renowned Brazilian plastic surgeons do actually perform miracles on patients suffering from tragic burns, and most of this work is done on a charitable basis. Helping the Cariocas fight the vain, inglorious battle against wrinkles, however, is what pays for the surgeons' imported cars and expensive claret.
Emerging from the Barra tunnel into the bright, rising mist of São Conrado Beach is always an ethereal experience. The white sand and the sapphire water lie off to the right (just past a lawyer's billboard enticing debtors with magical legal solutions), the lush golf greens to the left, and the Rocinha favela straight ahead. Flanking the road were more billboards of young women posing in tight jeans, or suggestively eating ice cream bars.
The rising shantytown of unfinished houses and low, unplastered red brick buildings contrasts vividly with the clusters of white marble apartment towers on the beach side of the highway. The commonly accepted estimate for the population of the Rocinha favela is between two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand. Some of these hillside inhabitants have automobiles, some have satellite television, but most of those who manage to accumulate more than pocket change refuse to leave the hill. Video stores, fitness academies, and beauty salons have sprung up in the area, as well as an expansive evangelical church. The evangelical sects of Protestantism have effectively challenged the dominant Catholic church in Brazil's big cities over the past decade and a half. The Universal Church is by far the largest of these organizations, and has come under fire in the press for its fantastic financial success.
Facing the favela, on the other side of the highway, is a large, empty lot which serves as the rehearsal ground for Rocinha's samba school. As I drive past, I can see balloons marking off the perimeter of the lot, and banners reminding the dancers in the school that Carnival is only seven months away. Not even the end of the world could diminish the enthusiasm for Carnival.
The tunnel which bears the weight of all the shattered hopes of Rocinha opens up to the affluent area of Leblon a few miles later. Shortly after sunrise, serious Leblon health addicts hit the beachfront sidewalks running. When the carbon monoxide fumes from the cars of people on their way to work begin to collect in the adjacent avenue, young mothers and their infants replace the sweaty athletes. They, in turn, are followed on the wide sidewalks by enthusiastic retirees wearing straw hats, white socks, and juvenile tennis shoes. The contingent of late risers permanently on holiday joins these earlier groups in pairs or threesomes, chatting as they walk, and trying to look their best. They do look good, the grandmothers in brilliant lycras and sunglasses, the young mothers pushing colorful baby carriages, the men between jobs working hard to breathe while holding in their beer paunches, the older men proudly passing them up. Sidewalk attendants at the cold-drink stands use oversized machetes to chop small holes in coconuts for the thirsty passersby.
On the sand, early-morning calisthenics groups are replaced by makeshift teams of volleyball players. Closer to the calmly breaking water, sunworshippers patiently wait for the sun to break through the clouds, as vendors pass among them, selling ice cream, cold tea, lemonade. One familiar figure is followed from a great height by the colorful kites and balsa wood airplanes he is hawking.
As I drive by on my way to the airport, it is a typical winter weekday at the beach. Perhaps Nostradamus would not have been such a sour fellow had he been able to spend his winters in Rio.
Leblon and Ipanema are separated by a canal that flows between the sea and a lake. Ipanema has undergone many changes over the last generation. The abandoned pier has been removed, and gone are the topless, post-hippie ladies making wonderful statements against archaic social mores. Also gone are the military regimes, as well as much of the famed café intelligentsia of Ipanema who spoke out against them.
Poet, playwright, and bohemian Vinicius de Moraes and legendary musician António Carlos Jobim not only wrote and composed "The Girl From Ipanema" but helped create the spirit which once defined the neighborhood. They, too, have passed away, though their legacy is remembered not only in the cafés, but in the larger cultural history of Brazil. Theirs also was the story and music which formed the basis for Black Orpheus, made by the French director Marcel Camus--designated the Best Foreign Film in 1959.
Numerous Orpheus remakes have appeared since then, the most recent directed by Brazilian director Cacá Diegues. Some feel that this 1999 film is not comparable in quality to the original of forty years ago, but it is a candidate-to-be-a-candidate for a nomination for an Oscar. Right now the film industry in Brazil is riding a wave that the surfers at the far end of Ipanema beach could only dream of. Quatrilho won a Foreign Film Oscar indication in 1995, O Que É Isso, Companheiro? (Seven Days in August), a film by Brazilian Bruno Barreto on the kidnapping of American Ambassador Charles Elbrick, won its nomination in 1997, and Walter Salles's Central do Brasil (Central Station) got its nomination in 1998.
Cariocas are film enthusiasts. They are not too keen on most of the Brazilian low-budget, income-tax-rebate-financed movies, but they flock in great numbers to the American action films. The more serious film addicts are more eclectic: there are eight or ten "art" theaters in the city--not porno houses, but business-financed cinemas which show a wide range of classics and new cinema, with selections varying from the French Jacques Tati and other Europeans to modern Iranian and Chinese. Most major films are released with Portuguese subtitles on the local circuits in Rio within two weeks of their opening in the United States or Europe. A current favorite in Rio's modern multiplex cinemas is Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother.
Ipanema still retains its pleasant cafés, but they are no longer filled with bohemians debating politics, forging new styles, or creating new music. Others with less verve have taken their place, and they share the open bars like the one called The Girl From Ipanema with tourists taking photographs. On the north side of Rio, the natural musicality of the Carioca takes a more traditional form: the amateur and professional musicians still gather in circles around the tables of their favorite botequins, or local bars, where they while away nights playing, singing, creating sambas. Gathered around them, tapping rhythms on matchboxes and tabletops, are their neighbors or samba fans from the other side of town. After a few glasses of draft beer, their songs boasting of amorous adventures (lost, found, imaginary), may be embellished with hyperbole and gestures which would humble Italian Oscar winner (1998) Roberto Benigni.
Middle-aged bohemians in Leblon (including many ex-Ipanema stalwarts) on the South Side, or in Vila Isabel on the North Side, crowd around their own tables on the weekends. They may be discussing a report that smoking cigarettes affects sexual performance. Most would swear that one day soon, they are going to stop smoking. Undoubtedly, there will be one in the crowd who will swear less solemnly, through a column of smoke, that one day soon, he's going to give up sex.
Fortunately, the tanned, and young, and lovely girls from Ipanema are still to be found there, and, as in the lyrics by Vinicius and Jobim, when they pass on their way to the sea, men still go "ahhh."
Ipanema and Leblon boast a number of theaters where TV stars between engagements pack the fans into low-capacity facilities. Plays usually have good runs, although the piece entitled Nostradamus may not have been so fortunate. Generally, the Carioca will go to see anything; he is a spectator par excellence. The magnificent Municipal Theater downtown is a monument to this passion, and tickets to operas, concerts, and classical or modern ballets--all of high quality--are difficult to come by. At a recent benefit Chopin recital by Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen, students were sitting on the steps of the balcony. Occasionally, the Municipality sponsors popular concerts or ballet performances on the beach, and aficionados from all socio-economic levels sit side by side on the sand to watch and listen. Some go just for something to do, but most are there because they love the music.
After bending around the point where Ipanema and Copacabana are separated by a few hotels and apartment buildings, I see my first tourist of the day. His face is covered with a white, clownish paste, which makes him look very uncomfortable, if not positively ill. Perched on one of the many granite benches arranged on the wavy black stone designs of the sidewalk, he sits with his head turned toward two shapely, coffee-and-cream-skinned women who are walking by. They pretend to ignore the tourist's stare, and not to notice that they have paralyzed the players in a volleyball game on the sand.
The many hotels facing Copacabana beach have been booked up for next New Year's Eve since last year. Two million people, forming immense rivers of brown or tanned celebrants dressed in white, will obscure the black asphalt of the Avenida Atlantica. If the world doesn't come to an end, after all, they will pack the wide beach, strolling, observing each other, drinking anything from grape soda to Dom Pérignon in order to ward off the summer heat and nostalgia. Many will eat hot dogs smothered in onions and green peppers, and will wake up with hangovers on the first day of the new millennium as an unforgettable penance. Listless and drifting, they will stop to listen to the several open-air rock or popular music concerts taking place on the beach, or turn their backs to the spectacle on the sand and watch the party-goers leaning out of the windows of the apartment buildings--looking at them.
At year's end, the four-mile beach of Copacabana is traditionally studded with preparations for religious rites in praise of Iemanjá, the goddess of the sea. Small areas of the sand are roped off, and act as gathering points for spiritual groups that perform their rituals within the confines of their designated section. Some members have a bit of pinga, the local white lightning, to get into a proper spiritual mood, while others may have that and a ritual cigar as well. All dance in slow circles to the beat of drums. In the process of invoking spirits from another world, several may go into trances, roll their eyes, and fall to the sand, shaking uncontrollably.
In many of these conclaves, there are wise, dark women in white cotton turbans and intricate lace who hold consultations for troubled souls--of any creed. On December 31, lines waiting for advice from these sages can be forty or fifty souls long. Other forms of ritual celebration on New Year's Eve include flowers (roses, gladioli) and candles. These offerings are protected from trampling feet and the soft sea breeze within shallow volcanoes dug into the sand. Depending on the intensity of faith and the resources of the pocketbook, the volcanoes built closer to the breaking waves may also contain combs, perfume, pocket mirrors, cider, or inexpensive champagne--all the items indispensable for a vain, lively goddess of the sea. Thousands of miniature volcanoes, each one lit up with a dozen candles, will speckle the beach, while drums and chants sound out the rhythms of religious experience. The wondrous sounds and shifting lights will ascend the wall of mirrored hotels, and a crescendo of emotion will build up to the stroke of twelve, when the sky catches fire.
Over the last fifteen or twenty years, the hotels on Copacabana have burned tons of money in magnificent New Year's fireworks displays. They invariably strive to outdo one another, and every year the show gets longer. If the event is not canceled out by the fulfillment of the prophecies of Nostradamus, the spectacle on Copacabana beach at the turn of the millennium may go on forever.
The stream of cars and impatiently accelerating buses turned away from Copacabana Beach, and flowed through another tunnel to Botafogo Bay. Although the water washing up onto Botafogo Beach may be polluted, the scene is spectacular. The shiny curtain walls of the office buildings reflect Sugar Loaf Mountain, its cable cars filled with tourists, Brazilian and foreign alike, belatedly asking themselves if cable cars are safe. They are, and the view they afford of the crowd of small boats anchored in front of the yacht club, of Copacabana Beach, of the city of Niteroi across the Bay of Guanabara, gives a new dimension to sightseeing. For added excitement, tourists can watch the runway of the nearby downtown airport, and worry if the climbing 737s on their way to São Paulo will miss the cables in the course of their ascent.
Driving from Botafogo through the Aterro do Flamengo landfill is always a special experience. On this area reclaimed from the bay is a sprawling park of wonderfully varied vegetation. Grass-covered mounds give rise to groups of mature, towering palms, flowering trees, twisted trunks, and sculpted bushes. Partially hidden behind the mounds are basketball and tennis courts, scaled-down soccer pitches, bicycle and running paths. At night, sixty- or seventy-foot poles hold up powerful clusters of lights in six-leaf-clover configurations that cast a soft, magical veil of illumination over the park, relaxing the stressed minds of the motorists on their way out of the city center.
The expressway continues past the grandiose, pi-shaped monument for the lost soldier, then the foot of Avenida Rio Branco, the main business street, and the turn-of-the-century, dome-shaped Municipal Theater. The National Museum of Art, across from the Municipal, recently hosted a highly successful Dalí show. Just before the exit to the airport terminal loomed the rebuilt Museum of Modern Art, where a Picasso exhibition is currently on view.
The main hall of the airport terminal was in utter pandemonium when I arrived. Reporters elbowed their way through an unusually large crowd, directing harsh floodlights at miserable would-be travelers. The fog and the morning-long delay had taken a toll on the normally unassailable Carioca humor.
"The Aviation Authority announces that Santos Dumont Airport is now operational. Passengers are requested to consult air traffic information screens. . . ." Without any trace of emotion, the feminine voice gave instructions over the loudspeakers. Passengers bumped against each other, apologized, and went in different directions looking for the screens they had never bothered to notice before.
At the top of one screen was a blinking six o'clock flight. My eleven-thirty plane had not even arrived at the bottom of the list. At the rate of one flight every fifteen minutes, my plane would leave sometime after the Apocalypse was scheduled to take place.
The upstairs lounge was filled with sulky businesswomen and businessmen looking down despairingly at small cups of very black coffee. A whooshing sound from an espresso machine intermittently broke the reigning silence. It could have been an airport lounge anywhereanywhere but in boisterous, buoyant Rio de Janeiro.
"Varig announces the departure of its six-seventeen flight to . . ."
A Swiss-looking gentleman with thick glasses punched angrily at the buttons of his pocket agenda, ignoring his Brazilian companion's comments on some aspect of crystal manufacture. Two young women and a young man stirred orange juice with plastic straws, and halfheartedly mumbled about a Last Night party. A bald man sitting at the far side of the lounge whispered into a cellular phone, shaking his head from side to side.
At a table on my left was a tanned, blonde-haired woman in her forties or late thirties, dressed in a tasteful beige suit. Her dark glasses protected her eyes from the misty glare coming from the tall windows, and from the smoke of her gracefully held cigarette.
"TAM announces its six-twenty-seven flight to . . ." The authoritative voice echoed throughout the lounge, reminding everyone that time was of the essence.
When the hands of a wall clock came together at noon, fingers rose impatiently in the air, catching the attention of sullen waiters. The Swiss rose in Geneva West Point fashion, and presented himself at the salad bar that was opening. Coffee cups and glasses half-filled with orange juice were noisily taken away, and speedily replaced with glasses of draft beer. Of course I did not believe the world was going to end between one and two o'clock, nor that the fog and the delay were evil omens, but after one cup too many of espresso, I was feeling thirsty. One watery beer would do no harm.
The lounge quickly took on Carioca airs. I remembered Saint Augustine's account in the Confessions of the experience of time three-times present: the present of things past, the present of things present, the present of future things. The quality of the present, and not the hour on the clock, was of the essence. I would have a second glass of beer. Someone began to tap out a samba on a box of wooden matches.
"VASP announces . . ."
Shortly after one o'clock, the blonde woman pushed a fresh cup of coffee with milk to one side of the table, and rescued a ringing cellular phone from a small leather briefcase. I found it difficult not to stare. Her ancestry could have been Polish, or Swedish. She looked like Ingrid Bergman who had stepped out of the mist of Casablanca, only with slightly rounder cheeks, and not-so-sleepy eyes. Perhaps she was Lithuanian; there was a large colony of Lithuanian immigrants in São Paulo. She spoke into the phone. "Hello J.J. . . . I'm still at Santos Dumont . . . there is a dreadful delay . . . a crazy fog . . . I arrived here at nine o'clock . . . What do you mean? Why would I lie?"
She turned away from the bald man sputtering beer and laughing into his own phone over near the windows. Slowly removing her sunglasses as she spoke, she revealed sapphire eyes. Definitely Lithuanian, with an Ipanema accent.
"What has gotten into you? I spent the night at my cousin's . . . We went to the theater. Why would I . . . A nightclub? How ridiculous! Since when . . . I got up at seven. How could I have . . ."
I toyed with my empty glass to show that I was not listening. The noise had risen to a festive level in the lounge, and I had to strain to hear what she was saying. Time passed. It occurred to me that I had not heard any announcements of departures for a while.
Ingrid slowly closed her briefcase, put on her dark glasses, and gestured for the waiter. A scent of expensive perfume announced her departure.
As she passed, I smiled, but, as in "The Girl From Ipanema," she did not see. I waved sadly for the busy waiter.
There were no longer many people in the main hall. Ingrid had turned from the ticket counter, and was heading toward the sun-filled opening leading to the taxi stand. Young and lovely--When she walks she's like a samba / That swings so cool and sways so gently / That when she passes / Each one she passes goes ahhh. . . . It was a fine day for the beach and an extended holiday.
"Final call for Varig eleven thirty-four shuttle service to São Paulo. . . ."
It was 2:05 when the pilot cleared the top of Sugar Loaf Mountain at the end of the runway. He calmly veered left, then right, at the mouth of the bay, and headed south. Christ stood on Corcovado Mountain with his arms outstretched, as if assuring me he would be there to welcome me back in the evening. The silvery blue guest pools on top of the Copacabana hotels reflected the fiery sunlight, and I could see bright bathing suits and white volleyballs dotting the pale yellow beach.
Nostradamus had fooled us. Perhaps he just had a bizarre sense of humor; or perhaps at heart, he, like the Pope, was a Carioca.
As the aircraft climbed, Two Brothers Mountain, looking not at all like two brothers, posed in the distance between the beaches of São Conrado and Barra. The mountain and adjacent hills seemed to come together in the shape of a languidly reclining woman soaking her long hair in the sea. The Casablanca fog had dissipated, and Ipanema beach stretched below us. Perhaps Ingrid would soon be there, to be comforted by the embrace of the unveiled sun, wondering whether to return to her irate husband in São Paulo--or to forget herself and become a girl from Ipanema. It would difficult for her to leave the beautiful city whose panorama was filling the airplane window. It is for me, every time I go on a trip. It is not an end-of-the-world despair, but a certain anxiety that something will change while I am away.