Carioca Fletch

by Gregory Mcdonald

  “That is for export.” Norival licked the lid of his beer can.

  “Perhaps Brazilian music is too complicated for others to understand,” Tito said.

  “The melody, too, comes from the drums,” Fletch said. “People are not used to listening to the drums for melody.”

  For the most part, the Tap Dancers discussed which samba school would win the Carnival Parade. This matter is discussed in Brazil as fervently, as passionately, as who will win the World Football Cup or the presidential election is discussed in other parts of the world.

  Each of the big favelas, slums in Rio de Janeiro, presents a finished samba school for the Carnival Parade, complete with a newly written song and huge, ornate, intricate floats; hundreds of trained, practiced drummers; brilliant, matching costumes for thousands of people. The Carnival Parade is the total competition of sound, melody, lyrics, rhythm; sights, the stately floats, dazzling costumes, the physical beauty of the people dancing from that favela, the magical quickness of the kick-dancers; originality and vitality; minds and hearts of the people of each of the slums.

  All the people in each favela work all the year on their favela’s presentation, being careful that their song for that year is well written, then spending many nights and every weekend practicing it, playing it, singing it, dancing it, promoting it in the streets; designing and making each of the costumes, for men and women, each more complicated than a wedding garment, by hand; designing and building their samba school float, usually as big as a mansion. Every spare moment and every spare cruzeiro goes into making each favela’s presentation as beautiful, as stunning to the ear and the eye, the mind and the heart, as exciting as possible.

  And the competition is most strictly judged, and therefore, of course, always the subject of much controversy.

  As Fletch heard the Tap Dancers discuss these matters, which school had the best song for this year, possibly the best costumes and floats, as they knew of them, the best drummers and dancers, which did win and might have won last year, the year before, he heard the names and snatches of the songs that were now being heard everywhere, on the streets, from the radio and television. Months before Carnival, the new song of each samba school is offered the people like a campaign pledge and promoted like a political platform or an advertising slogan. The Tap Dancers discussed the various samba schools one by one, from the oldest, Mangueira, to one of the newest, Imperio da Tijuca; from one of the more traditional, Salgueiro, to the overpowering drum section of Mocidade Independent de Padre Miguel. Toninho seemed to think this year’s winner would be Portela, judging the song that school was offering and what he knew of the costumes. Orlando thought Imperatriz Leopodinense had the better song. Tito agreed with Toninho about Portela. Norival drank his beer, belched, and just said, “Beija-Florr

  Fletch wiped the sweat off his skin with his rolled-up shirt.

  Breaking into English, Toninho said, looking through the rearview mirror, “Fletch, you should hope for Santos Lima to win.”

  “Then I do.” Leaning forward, Norival gave Fletch a lopsided look. “But why should I?”

  “You used to live there. That was your place. That is where Janio Barreto lived. And was murdered.”

  For a moment, there was silence in the car.

  Then Orlando began humming the song offered this year by Imperio da Tijuca.

  “Orlando! Toninho!”

  In the mountains, they had driven down a deeply shaded drive and pulled into the sunlight-filled parking area in front of an old run-down plantation house.

  Immediately there appeared on the front porch of the house an enormous woman, a good three hundred pounds, her arms out in either greeting or sufferance, in the identical posture of Christ the Redeemer.

  “Good Lord,” Fletch said when he saw her through the car window.

  Orlando and Toninho had gotten out of the front seat and opened the back doors.

  The other side of the car, clearly Norival did not care whether he moved.

  Fletch got out his side of the car. The mountain air was cooler on his skin; but, still, the sun was biting.

  Around the corner of the house appeared a skinny young teenage girl dressed only in shorts. Her eyes seemed as sunken as in a skeleton’s skull.

  “Tito?” the woman shouted.

  Tito got out of the car, grinning.

  The other side of the car, Norival lumbered out, went quickly to the bushes not far away, and relieved himself.

  Then behind the enormous woman imitating a statue there appeared a real statue, a mulata, a girl six foot four easily, perfectly proportioned, an amazing example of humanity. Her shoulders were broad, her waist narrow, her legs long. Each of her breasts was as large and as full as an interior Brazilian mountain seen from the air. Each of her eyes was bigger than a fist and darker than a moonless night. Her black hair was long and flowing. Her skin was the color and texture of flowing copper. Dressed only in slit shorts and high-heeled shoes, she moved like a goddess in no great hurry to go out and sow the seeds of humanity upon a field. This amazing creature, this animate statue, smiled at them.

  Fletch gulped.

  “You brought me someone new!” the fat older woman yelled in English. “Is he North American? He is so beautiful!”

  “He has special problems, Dona Jurema,” Toninho laughed. “He has special needs!”

  “My God,” Fletch said. “Where am I?”

  Tito punched Fletch’s bicep. “At a different height in heaven.”

  Twelve

  “Tricked,” Fletch said. “A little place we know in the mountains. You guys have brought me to a brothel.”

  Towels wrapped around their waists, he and Toninho were sitting in long chairs in the shade near the swimming pool. The back of the plantation house was even more dilapidated than the front. Paint was thin and chipped. The back door was lopsided on its hinges. The flower borders had gone years untended. Lilies grew in the swimming pool.

  “Very relaxing,” Toninho said. “I did say it was very relaxing.”

  “So why do the well-loved Tap Dancers need a brothel?”

  “Everyone needs a few uncomplicated relationships, no? To relax.”

  They had entered the plantation house, each being fondled by the massive Dona Jurema as he passed her, her laugh volcanic, her fat layered like lava. The younger woman, Eva, smiling happily, stood aside, looking even more Amazonian inside the house. They had crossed the scarred foyer, gone through a large, vomit-smelling dark ballroom turned into a tavern, and out the back door.

  Coming again into the sunlight, each of the Tap Dancers dropped his shorts and plunged into the swimming pool. With the encouragement of Dona Jurema and the smiles of Eva, Fletch had followed suit.

  There were five white towels waiting for them when they came out of the pool. Their shorts had been piled neatly on a table near the back door.

  The skinny young teenage girl brought them a tray with five glasses of cachaça and a sugar bowl.

  Norival downed his cachaça in a gulp, asked for another, and collapsed on a long chair on the long side of the pool.

  Tito was doing disciplined laps in the pool, stroking through the lily pads.

  Orlando went into the house.

  “What is that new North American verb?” Toninho asked. “Interact. It is tiresome having always to interact, especially with women. The women here do not expect anything so profound as interaction.”

  Dona Jurema came through the back door and let herself down the steps like a big bag of glass.

  “So good of you to come, Toninho,” she said. “Not many of the girls are up. Ah, it’s a hot day. We had a busy night. We will have lunch for you in a while.”

  “This man.” Toninho put his hands on Fletch’s forearm. “This man has special needs.”

  Jurema beamed at Fletch. “It would be a sin if he is having difficulties.”

  “He is not having difficulties, I think,” Toninho said. “Are you, Fletch?”

  “Only
with the cachaça.” He put his glass down on the burned-out grass.

  “A special need I’m sure you can satisfy, Jurema.”

  Arms akimbo, the woman shrugged her shoulders. It was a seismic upheaval. “We can satisfy any need. Why, an Air Force General we had here—”

  “Toninho,” Fletch said. “I have no special needs.”

  “But you do,” Toninho said. “A very special need. I am your friend. It is important to me that your special need be fulfilled.”

  “I need sleep,” Fletch said, leaning back in his chair, closing his eyes.

  “I know what you need.” Solemnly, Toninho said, “My friend needs a corpse.”

  Fletch’s eyes popped open. His head snapped up. “What?”

  “I said you need a corpse. For the purpose of copulation.” To Jurema, he said, “My friend has the great need to make love to a corpse.”

  Jurema was not laughing. She was answering Toninho in rapid Portuguese. Her eyes, her face, her voice bespoke someone doing business.

  “Because,” Toninho said, “my friend is a corpse. Partly a corpse. Part of him has not had a woman in forty-seven years. Clearly, if we are to get the truth from him, his peri-spirit must be awakened.”

  “Toninho!” Fletch said.

  “It is true,” Toninho said to Jurema.

  Behind Fletch’s long chair. Jurema bent over. She put her hands on his breasts and put at least part of her weight on them. Pressing hard, she ran her hands all the way down his stomach, under his towel to his pelvis, then raised her hands.

  She erupted in laughter. “He seems alive. If the other part of him is as healthy …”

  A cool breeze blew over Fletch. He resettled his towel.

  “You see the problem,” Toninho said with dignity. “Now. How can you help my friend?”

  “Toninho. Stop it. You’re gross.”

  “A corpse for my friend? Someone young, dead, and pretty.”

  “Toninho, this isn’t funny.”

  “Probably by Tuesday,” Jurema said. “There are always such corpses available during Carnival.”

  “Find a good one,” Toninho said.

  Jurema waddled a short distance. Speaking to Toninho in Portuguese, incredibly enough she stooped over and picked a weed out of the burned grass. Her face flushed. She then lifted herself up the back stairs and into the house.

  “Tuesday,” Toninho said. “She’ll have one for you Tuesday.”

  “Toninho, I hope this is another of your jokes.”

  Abruptly, in the same tone of voice, Toninho said, “Your friend, Teodomiro da Costa, is to be respected.”

  “I met with him this morning.” Fletch watched the sunlight flashing on Tito’s shoulders as he swam. “He had advice for me, which I respect. Especially at the moment.”

  “In this country, seventy percent of the business is run by the government, you see. To do well on your own, as Teo has, is to do very well indeed. Now tell me. In North America, there is a car which has what is called a slant-six engine. Can you describe it to me, please?”

  Fletch told Toninho what he understood of the slant-six engine, and that it had an especially long life. Sitting on Saturday morning in the mountains above Rio de Janeiro looking out into the sunlight, he felt his eyes crossing. He had not had that much of the cachaça. One moment Toninho was talking seriously of necrophilia and the next just as seriously about a slant-six car engine.

  The young girl brought Norival his third cachaça.

  “Ah,” Toninho said. “Norival is an arigó. A simpleton, a boor, but a good fellow. If he were not from a rich, important family, he would be an arigó. His brother, Adroaldo Passarinho, is the same, exactly like him in every way. Look the same, act the same. His father has sent Adroaldo to school in Switzerland, in hopes there will be someone in the family this generation less than simple. Arigó.”

  Tito climbed out of the pool and, not drying himself, dropped naked belly down on the grass.

  In high seriousness and in great detail, Toninho then wanted to know about this new robot he had read about in Time magazine supposedly capable of understanding and obeying one hundred thousand different orders. Designed in Milan, manufactured in Phoenix with Japanese parts. What was the nature of the computer which ran it? How were the joints designed, and how many were there? What would the robot say when given conflicting orders? Would the robot know, better than a person, when it is breaking down?

  In his towel, holding a fresh glass of cachaça, Orlando stood on the back steps of the plantation house. He sang. Of the four Tap Dancers, Orlando’s muscles were the heaviest. His voice was deep, and he sang well.

  O canto de minha gente

  Assediando meu coração

  Semente que a arte germinou

  E o tempo temperou

  Amor, o amor

  Como é gostoso amar.

  Norival raised his head from his long chair and hissed. Even from a distance, it could be seen Norival was not focusing. His head dropped back.

  “Ah, the arigó never sobered from last night,” Toninho said.

  “What’s the song?” Fletch asked.

  “An old Carnival song. Let’s see.” Toninho closed his eyes to translate. Fletch had been slow to see how long Toninho’s lashes were. They rested on his cheeks. “‘My people’s song makes my heart leap. The seed is sown by art and tempered by time. Love, love, how good it is to love.’”

  “That’s a good song.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  With his glass of cachaça, Orlando wandered down to where they were sitting.

  “Orlando,” Toninho said. “Give Fletch a demonstration of capoeira, of kick-dancing. You and Tito. Make it good. Kill each other.”

  Raising his head beside the pool, Tito said, “You, Toninho.”

  “Perform for the gods,” Toninho said.

  Orlando looked into his glass. “I’ve had a drink.”

  “You won’t hurt each other,” Toninho said.

  “You and Orlando,” Tito said from the grass.

  “It is important Janio sees capoeira from close up,” Toninho said. “So he will remember.”

  Glass still in hand, Orlando went to Tito and with his bare feet stood on Tito’s ass. Standing thus, he drained his glass, leaned over, and put it on the grass. Then he began to walk slowly up Tito’s back.

  “I can’t breathe!” Tito said.

  “And you can’t talk?” Toninho asked.

  “I can’t talk, either.”

  Then he wriggled free, spilling Orlando to the side, and jumped to his feet.

  In a wide arc, he swung his right foot, aiming for Orlando’s head.

  Orlando ducked successfully, turned sideways and slammed his instep into Tito’s side, against his rib cage. Orlando’s towel dropped.

  “Wake up,” Orlando said.

  In a short moment, Tito and Orlando had the rhythm of it, had each other’s rhythm. Gracefully, viciously, rhythmically, as if to the beating of drums, with fantastic speed they were aiming kicks at each other’s heads, shoulders, stomachs, crotches, knees, each kick coming within a hair’s breadth of connecting, narrowly ducking, sidestepping each other, turning and swirling, their legs straight and their legs bent, their muscles tight and their muscles loose, their fronts and their backs flashing in the sunlight, the hair on their heads seeming to have to hurry to keep up with this frantic movement. With this fast, graceful dance, easily they could have killed each other.

  Eva had come onto the porch to watch. Her eyes flashed. A few faces of other women appeared in the upper windows of the plantation house. Everyone loves the Tap Dancers…. They’re sleek.

  “Remember …” Toninho was saying. “A skill developed by the young male slaves, in defense against their masters. They would practice at night, to drums, so if their masters came down from the big house, to look for a woman, they could pretend to be dancing. Thanks to—what is the word in English?—miscegenation, such skills ultimately were not needed….”

 
There was a loud Thwack! and Tito began to fall sideways. He had taken a hard blow to the head from the instep of Orlando’s foot. The blow could have been much, much harder. Tito did not fall completely.

  “I told you to wake up,” Orlando said regretfully.

  Recovering, Tito charged Orlando like a bull, right into his midriff. Orlando fell backwards, Tito on top of him. Laughing, sweating, panting, they wrestled on the grass. At one point their bodies, their arms and legs, were in such a tight ball perhaps even they could not tell which was whose.

  Eva, moving like Time, went down to them.

  Finally, Orlando was sitting on Tito and giving him pink-belly, pounding Tito’s belly hard repeatedly with his fists. Tito was laughing so hard his stomach muscles were fully flexed and no harm was being done.

  Standing over them, behind Orlando, Eva laced her fingers across Orlando’s forehead and pulled him backward, and down.

  Kneeling over Tito as he was, sitting on him, bent backward now so that his own back was on the ground, or on Tito’s legs, Orlando looked up Eva’s thighs. He rolled his eyes.

  He jumped up and grabbed Eva by the hand.

  Together Orlando and Eva ran down the grassy slope from the swimming pool and disappeared.

  “You see?” Toninho said. “Uncomplicated.”

  After resting a moment on the ground, breathing hard, Tito rolled over and over and on into the pool of water.

  “Your Moby Dick” Toninho said abruptly. “By Herman Melville?”

  Fletch looked at Toninho, wondering what new surpise was coming. “Yes,” Fletch said. “I read it while waiting for a bus.”

  “‘Call me Ishmael,’” Toninho quoted.

  “Not a bad beginning,” Fletch said. “Simple.”

  “Is it?” Toninho finished his cachaça. At the long side of the pool, Norival was finishing his fourth. “Is that Ishmael meant to be some spirit of the United States? Some guardian?”

  “Almost anything can be said,” Fletch said. “And has been.”

  “In a way, Ismael is the guiding spirit of Brazil.”

  Fletch said nothing. Necrophilia, slant-six car engines, the nature of arigó, robotics, capoeira, now a discussion regarding American literature.