Chasing Bohemia

by Carmen Michael

  I always had the impression that Copacabana was an extraordinarily glamorous place sometime around the fifties. Perhaps it was all the Carmen Miranda films that my mother used to play, or the Peter Allen song, but I had an image of cool tropical mansions by the water, swaying palm trees, and decadent women with lush red lips being pursued by wealthy wayward counts. Like most of the world’s famous beaches, Copacabana was once just a stretch of sleepy seaside houses joined together by empty sandy roads. It only really became famous in 1923 when the Copacabana Palace Hotel was built, and every Hollywood starlet and her director flew down to grace her creamy terraces. Copacabana opened for business, and Brazil’s wealthiest have been crushing into the four-mile strip of land between the sea and the lake behind it ever since. Now it is said that if all the people of Copacabana came down out of their condominiums there wouldn’t be enough room for them on the streets.

  There seemed to be only one building left from the old era on Avenida Atlantica. A flag flapping in the front yard indicated that it was now the Austrian embassy. Next door was the Syndicate of Chopp, a beer house whose sign competed loudly with two evangelist churches on the second floor: the International Church of God’s Grace and the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

  I crossed over the six-lane highway behind two middle-aged tourists in badly cut swimsuits, their pale, glutinous cellulite shaking at each step, and stopped to look out at the sea. Waves were crashing wildly on the shore, sending up plumes of sea spray onto rows of empty deckchairs. The sand had a dull, oily sheen, and a suspicious brown scum clung hardily to the surface of the water. There were no Amazonian queens in feathers, no muscle men on the jungle gym blowing me kisses, and certainly no Carmen Miranda. A city of tourist clichés without the actual tourist clichés was hardly going to be any fun. It was August, after all. It was the middle of winter for Rio de Janeiro. The sky was a blanked-out winter white, and the tops of the palm trees shook in the winter breeze. There was even a chill in the air.

  I watched as the pair of cellulite-ridden tourists finally reached the line of tents and candy-striped deckchairs arranged along the seashore, then went to sit down at one of the kiosks dotting the black-and-white mosaic pavement. The battered plastic chairs were chained to small hooks on the ground, and as I tried to imagine a person who would be desperate enough to steal one, the bar owner came up behind me. ‘You look your bag, lady,’ he said, and pointed in the direction of some homeless kids sleeping under a palm tree. I shrugged, ordered a Coke and, as if on cue, two of them got up and came begging for money. They were black as midnight and dressed in thin, stained shorts that hugged their wiry frames. One had matted hair and yellow eyes, and both had running noses. I bought them an oldish-looking pastry instead, and their faces registered neither disappointment nor pleasure — just sheer indifference. They disappeared, only to be replaced instantaneously by another equally miserable pair of barefoot children who scampered away when the bar owner threatened something grave. ‘Leettel fiefs!’ the bar owner said angrily to me, and for a moment, I entertained the image of them whipping the bar owner as he pulled a human plough across the dirty sand, an image that dissolved as a passing policeman launched out to belt one with his open hand.

  I paid for my Coke and continued up the avenue, passing the sleeping bodies of black homeless people, undisturbed by the roar of the morning traffic and the tap of stilettos. Those who had awoken were sitting on rough haunches staring out blankly into the traffic. The only other people on the street were white, dressed in Nike trainers and brightly coloured bike pants, with Walkmans covering their ears and dark sunglasses protecting their eyes. A poodle trotted by, wearing blue and green booties and a fur jacket. A black nurse dressed in a white uniform tended an old white man hunched over in his wheelchair. On the other side of the road, outdoor bars with unlit neon signs saying HELP and HAVANA were opening up for the midday trade, and the first customers, with red-veined noses and a solitary sex-tourist look about them, were sitting alone at their tables. Waiters in white coats hovered on the pavements while a whore with a baby in a pram wandered back and forth, jiggling her assets in a peach-coloured mini-dress and throwing occasional glances at the tourists who ignored her. As I made my way to the city side to catch a bus back to Santa Teresa, I saw two beggars arguing drunkenly over the rights to the contents of a freshly filled bin. Whores, hotels, and homeless kids. Copacabana had hit the tourist-trap jackpot.

  IT WAS A RELIEF to return to Santa Teresa that afternoon. The quiet streets and cool mountain air soothed my travel-fried brain after the furious pace of the city below. I took the tram up to the top of the mountain and back again to see the bairro, or district, in the light of day. Santa Teresa was clearly a more traditional bairro than Copacabana, but there was something intriguingly avant-garde about its random mixture of modern and old, of experimental and traditional, of the chaste and the ostentatious. Mansions, terraces, and slums shared the undulating hills. Traces of Europe lingered, without the uniformity and with greater intimacy. Open windows invited one to glance inside to where bored women leaned on folded-back shutters. The fringes of banana palms behind old stone walls hinted at forgotten private gardens. Children raced along sidewalks overlooking the crumbling white city below, while groups of men stood chatting around portable barbeques, their voices ebbing and flowing in the arriving night.

  Carina and I met inside a noisy little bar tucked away on a backstreet, heaving with hip, artistic types with untamed curly hair and bright shirts, many of them carrying black instrument cases. They were making a din at the back of the bar, and someone was talking theatrically to the chef through an open window to the kitchen while others fell about laughing and clutching their sides. The chef played her part and gave a big, round smile. A swarthy-looking man in a white coat mashed limes with a pestle and mortar behind the bar, and the smell of frying meat filled the air. Short men in white shirts and black trousers were threading their way through the tiny gaps between the tables, and one threw a large vinyl-covered menu onto our table.

  The Portuguese words on the menu swam in front of me. I had made the very astute travel decision not to learn any of the local language before coming to Brazil. I was only going to be there a month at the most, after all, and Spanish was going to be more useful. Besides, was it really going to make any difference to anyone if I learned ten Portuguese words and rambled on incoherently to unsuspecting waiters and newspaper-shop owners with a ridiculous smile and a pathetic accent, like some sort of Japanese package-tourist saying, ‘G’day, mate’ at the Rocks? No, it was better to say nothing and at least keep them guessing.

  ‘I’ll have that one,’ I said, pointing at number three.

  ‘Oh, the sautéed goats brain?’ Carina asked amusedly.

  ‘No, I meant number four,’ I corrected her quickly.

  Whatever the black and purple slosh was that came out later that night, we were drunk before it arrived. The caipirinhas were to blame — the local Brazilian cocktail and its lethal blend of lime, cane whiskey or cachaça, and lots of white sugar. ‘The praaaaaablem,’ Carina slurred, ‘is zat zeeee sugar disguises the al, the al, the alcoohool.’

  Despite our nearly immediate state of inebriation, we managed to have a conversation about something — her obsession with pale, emaciated Englishmen, I recall, which was finally revealed to be the real reason why she had bought the hostel. It turned out that she didn’t give a toss about working for other people. She just loved blondes. There was a downside, like having to deal with customers and stuff like that, but broadly things seemed to be working out. There certainly was no end to the steady stream of Anglo-Saxon admirers hanging around the reception desk while I was there. After several more confessions of the regrettable variety, Carina straightened up and said, remarkably clearly — as though we had been in a business meeting rather than sculling cane whiskey like a couple of swamp frogs — ‘I have an appointment. I am going home.’ And then she jumped i
n her car and skidded off over the metal tracks, leaving me standing on the square in Santa Teresa.

  I walked home alone that night and stopped at a little park in the curve of the road. It was empty but for two young lovers wrapped around each other on a stone bench, kissing noisily, and a guy selling beers from a foam cool-box. On a balcony to the left of the park, someone swung lazily in a hammock, his leg out one side and the pin creaking rhythmically. The distant strains of samba from a radio somewhere in the valley floated up to the park, crickets chirped in the big flat-footed trees around us, and I marvelled at an enormous yellow moon that seemed to have fallen right into the Bay of Guanabara. I breathed in, looked out for a long time, and savoured the overwhelming joy of having finally left London.

  –3–

  A Rodeo, a Revolutionary, and a Runaway

  I left to find what I had lost in enemy cities: They closed streets and doors on me. They attacked me with fire and water. They threw shit at me. I just wanted to find toys broken in dreams: a crystal horse, my dug-up watch.

  – PABLO NERUDA, The Seeker

  The rodeo was something of a whimsical travel decision; a late entry wedged in between Rio and Salvador on the map of Brazil, and inspired in part by a random reading of All The Pretty Horses shortly before my departure from London (and a long-suffering passion for country music, I will admit). With no other dream in sight, I had an idea to marry a cowboy and ride off with him into the sunset, where we would live like John Grady and that Mexican babe of his. But it was too late to buy a ticket to Mexico, and I was forced to seek out this tumbleweed itinerary within Brazil. I was not going to let the dream die over a mere detail such as geography. The Barretos Rodeo claimed to be the biggest in the world, with over one million spectators, and nobody I knew had ever heard of it. To an intrepid travelling cowboy-fancier, this meant two great things: real cowboys and no tourists. It had seemed like a fabulous plan back in cold London — I was sure to illuminate many long, dull dinners back in Sydney with my action-packed tales of Brazilian cowboys and fierce bucking bulls — but I lost a little of my nerve when Carina announced that she, too, had never heard of it. It was meant to be the biggest rodeo in the world! She rang a few hotels in the vicinity of Barretos but even they recommended that I put my visit off for another decade.

  ‘It is not on the tourist trail. I strongly recommend that you do not go,’ Carina said conclusively, slamming shut the Brazilian version of the government hotels guide before moving on to resolving the dilemma of a German backpacker who had lost his colour chart. I hung my head and listened to the conversation about colour charts turn in circles, starting with the frenzied German who was unable to buy any clothes because he’d forgotten to bring his colour chart and ending with Carina who, in spite of her excellent English, had no idea what the German was talking about. In the end she stopped a passing tourist and pleaded, ‘Please, darling, help me. What is a colour chart?’

  That was when I first met Chiara.

  ‘You’re not scared, are you?’ a voice whispered from behind me. I swung around to see a tall, lean woman with wild, unkempt hair step back. She had an impish, round face and smiled mockingly. ‘Are you? Are you really scared of going?’ she pressed me. The hardened traveller in me bristled at the mere suggestion.

  ‘What? No, of course not. I’m not scared,’ I said derisively. ‘It’s just that there is no accommodation. I don’t, well, I don’t know where to stay …’ I trailed off.

  She looked at me closely and then burst out laughing.

  ‘There are no accommodations off the beaten track, man. That’s why it is off the beaten track. Hah!’ She looked Italian or French, but her accent was slightly tinged with the singsong intonation of a Dubliner.

  ‘Right. Well, where am I going to sleep, then?’ I asked, a little sarcastically. She smiled and turned to the discarded-clothes bin beside reception, and pulled out a hammock and threw it to me with a contemptuous toss of her long, dark hair.

  ‘In the hammock, of course. That’s where all the Brazilians sleep.’ I looked into her eyes and she looked straight back. It was like Louise’s challenge to Thelma. She knew it, I knew it, and she knew that I knew it. I couldn’t have said no even if I’d wanted to.

  Carina, overhearing the conversation, stopped the German mid-stream at the merits of combining pale lemon and mint green, and shot Chiara a warning look. ‘Chiara, don’t be irresponsible,’ she said sternly, before returning to the agitated German and telling him to buy black. She put a ‘Closed’ sign up on the desk.

  Chiara rolled her eyes and ushered me by one elbow out of Carina’s earshot, saying in a low voice, ‘Don’t ever listen to the Brazilian middle class.’ She nodded in the direction of Carina. ‘I mean, I love her, but she has no idea.’ Then she walked off to chat up the barman, calling back over her shoulder as she did, ‘Hey, and by the way, cowgirl, I’m gonna wait here at this hostel until you get back to check that you went. So don’t go making up any stories.’

  At 4.00 a.m. the following morning I discovered that it was Chiara who turned on the lights to read her book every night. I was still awake when she came into the room.

  ‘Hey! I didn’t know you were here. I thought it was that pain-in-the-arse German who goes crazy every time I turn on the light.’ I smiled, and she sat down on the floor beside me, her long legs stretched out in front of her like a cat. Someone in the bunk to the front of the room stirred. She lay down on the floor with knees up, heels under her buttocks, and hands above her shoulders, as though she was about to start some sort of exercise. She began to arch her stomach upwards towards the ceiling in one of those wagon-wheel moves that kids do in playgrounds.

  ‘So, are you travelling around Brazil?’ I asked, propping myself up on one elbow.

  ‘Nuh.’ She breathed in as she pushed her stomach upwards.

  ‘What are you doing here then?’

  ‘I’m not a traveller,’ she said through shorter breaths. ‘The truth is, I hate travellers. I’m a capoierista.’ It looked like a difficult move and she breathed in heavily before taking the final stretch upwards to the peak of the arc.

  ‘But what about you?’ she asked breathlessly, ‘Are you a real cowgirl or just adrenalin running?’

  Her arched stomach had nearly reached the level of the bed, her fingertips and toes contorting with the weight of her body above them, taut as a perfectly wrought horseshoe. I examined her face straining against the weight of gravity. Her eyeballs were bulging out of their sockets.

  ‘A cowgirl proper,’ I lied.

  She collapsed on the floor and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Well, what the fuck are you doing in Rio de Janeiro then?’

  WHAT WAS ANYONE doing in Brazil except running away? It was not exactly the world’s most convenient destination. It was on the other side of the world from, well, everywhere. Sure, I was fond of Carlos, my salsa teacher at You Can Dance If You Want To and, yes, it was true that I often had a warm, fuzzy feeling whilst listening to the Gypsy Kings’ track six, but Brazil had been a fairly random decision. My mother wanted to encourage the trip — since anything seemed more attractive than my recent interest in India — but other family members were quick to point out the annoying inconsistencies in the choice of my latest destiny. ‘The Gypsy Kings are Spanish!’ protested my sister’s boyfriend, Dave, when I explained the background for my trip. ‘And Carlos, your salsa teacher, is Lebanese,’ added my friend Stephanie gravely. Such facts, they should have well known, were profoundly irrelevant to me. Going to South America was not about going to South America; it was about giving hope to the notion deep down inside my steady heart that, somewhere in some place in the world at some time, there was something more interesting than commuting on a delayed inner-city train to a call centre every day.

  Escapism was the name of the game. I had worked for ten years in the travel industry in Sydney and London before I’d com
e to Rio de Janeiro and, before that, had lived twelve years in Canberra. That was enough to send anyone running to Rio. While it would be futile to detail the reasons why Canberra was an unsatisfactory place for a young woman who dreamed of being a cowgirl or cabaret star, most people were surprised when I left the travel industry. ‘But it’s so glamorous,’ they would whine as I gazed out at the rows of bored sixteen-year-olds selling holidays to Hawaii through grey, plastic headpieces. I was, unfortunately, a success in the travel industry, a result of the high percentage of unskilled single mothers in the industry and my reading of a management-jargon book one afternoon. My boss frequently complained, as I trailed late into management meetings wearing torn jeans, that she never once saw me wear the suit I’d worn on the day of my interview. Aside from the odd dress-code disputes, though, we got along fine. We both drank a lot, and she seemed to like me. I guess that’s why it took me so long to really run away. I kept getting paid.

  I had tried to split from the mainstream before — once to start a dot-com business in Sydney, another time to move to Barcelona to learn Spanish and, more recently, to find myself in India. But they were all false starts. The guru in Varanasi said it all when he told me that I would encounter what I needed by looking into the bottom of the clay jar he was holding. After a few earth-shattering moments, I looked up, swallowed, and said, ‘But it’s empty.’ The miserable little cripple just nodded. Anyway, I didn’t need enlightenment; I needed money. The heavens opened up the year after the war in Afghanistan, and my prayers were answered — a delicious combination of our biggest competitor folding and a rush of security-conscious travellers booking postponed annual holidays. We smashed our motivating targets by the first quarter, my bonus was ten grand, and I was gone by the next payday. Usually my company gave people a watch at their going-away party. At mine they gave me a harmonica and two hundred bucks.