by Ian McDonald
‘It can be manipulated,’ Quinn said. ‘I am less than a novice in this compared to some walkers of the worlds; I possess enough skill to share my vision.’
‘This chaos, this uncertainty and clamor of the eyes, how can you ever know what is real and what is false? How can you ever find your way back to the true world?’
‘They are all true worlds, that is the thing. We live in the last whispered syllable of time, dreams within dreams. Our lives, our worlds, have been lived a thousand, ten thousand times before. The Order believes that we must dream on, that all else is cold and death. But some believe that we must wake, for only then will we see a morning. For though our lives have been lived ten thousand times, our world reborn time after time after time, in every rebirth there is a flaw, an error, something copied imperfectly. A trick of the enemy, if you would have it. In our world, our times, that flaw is the curupairá, a window on the plethora of worlds and the reality that lies behind it, and thus our hope.’
The greater party of the Cidade Maravilhosa had passed down the white-water gut; now the children, grinning and wet in their little skimming pirogues, took to the run. They waved to Caixa; she stood fast, the cross of Our Lady of All Worlds gripped in her wounded fist. Falcon shook his head.
‘I cannot believe in such a world.’
‘The world persists whether you believe it or not.’ Quinn rose. ‘I must be getting on now. They are waiting for me.’ He dipped his head toward the forest edge, dark and dripping. Falcon imagined he saw two women standing there in the dim, one a white woman with a head of curling golden hair, the other of an Asiatic cast and complexion, her hair a dark red. A black man waited under the eaves of the forest. All wavered like mist on the edges of Falcon’s perception; then he picked his way over the stones to the shore. When he looked back only the smoldering fire remained.
The Iguapá nation had passed, the children’s boats melted into the mist. Caixa had returned the cross to its figurehead place in the canoe; the paddlers pushed out. Waitacá gave a cry; an object running the gut. For an instant Falcon thought it was a capsized canoe, a great war boat. It cleared the run into slack water. The paddlers hauled it in. An angel face, blank yet smiling, gazed up at the fast-running gray mist. Its hands held a three-bladed sword; an angel fallen from the pinnacles of Nossa Senhora da Varzea. Falcon pushed it out into the stream, and the rippling water running fast and chattering over the stones took it and carried it away.
GLOSSARY
Abiá: Uninitiated novice.
Agogô: Twin-horned metal percussion instrument used in candomblé and capoeira.
Aîuri: Tribal council.
Alabé: First drummer and song leader; male office in candomblé.
Aldeia: Missionary Indian village, usually Jesuit.
Alva: Skin-color descriptor: pure white, considered rare in Brazil.
Amaci: Herbal infusion used for purification.
Assentamento: Assemblage of objects, herbs, and water fed and venerated as the conjunction of a person and orixá.
Axé: Transformative power: magic, the force that makes things happen.
Baiana: From the state of Bahia, latterly come to mean the quasi-traditional costume of women from Salvador.
Baile: ‘Dance,’ used in Rio in the sense of an impromptu street sound-system party, giving rise to the popular carioca genre of ‘baile-funk.’ Constantly evolving.
Bairro: Official city district.
Barracão: Main ceremonial room of the terreiro.
Bateria: The percussion section of a samba school.
Bauru: Paulistano hot ham-and-cheese sandwich, often in sweet bread.
Berimbau: Stringed instrument of African origins, a bow attached to a resonator gourd, used in capoeira.
Bicha: Literally ‘bitch,’ but used as ‘queen.’
Bolar: To‘roll’ in the saint - a spontaneous possession trance and common precursor to initiation as an iâo.
Branca-melada: Skin-color subtype. Honey-colored.
Caboclo: Mixed Indian/white, very much an Amazonian underclass. The term is mildly derogatory in contemporary Brazil. See also ‘mameluco.’
Cafezinho: ‘Small coffee,’ served strong, small, sweet and on the go.
Caiçara: Riverside slave stockade.
Camarinha: Inmost, holiest chamber in a terreiro, reserved for the mae do santo and her consort. Also, in colonial Brazil, a town council.
Candomblé: Afro-Brazilian religion based around the veneration of orixás.
Captaincy: Division of colonial Brazil; a segment of land bordered by two lines that ran parallel to the equator inland until they struck the Line of Tordesilhas, the demarcation between Portuguese and Spanish territories. Ruled by a donatory.
Catadores: Informal garbage collectors.
CBF: The Brazilian Football Confederation, the sport’s governing body.
Chopperia: Bar selling draft beer.
Cidade Maravilhosa: ‘Marvelous City’; also, Rio’s city ‘anthem.’
Conselho Ultramarino: The crown council that ran colonial Brazil.
Corda vermelha: ‘Red cord’; the highest level of capoeira, analogous to a black belt in other martial arts disciplines.
Cor-de-canela: Cinnamon-colored: one of 134 skin types recognized and delineated in Brazil.
Crente: ‘Believer’ - member of any one of Brazil’s many evangelical Christian sects.
Dende: Palm tree whose fruit and oil are important in food offering to the orixás.
Descanso: ‘Chilling’ on arrival at the terreiro - cooling the head.
Doces: Cakes, sweets. Cake is commonly served for breakfast in Brazil.
Donatory: Quasi-feudal fief holder of a colonial Brazilian captaincy.
Ebó: Offering of sacrifices to orixás.
Ebomi: Terreiro elder, initiated for more than seven years.
Egbé: Community based in a terreiro.
Ekedi: A usually female terreiro officer who does not trance but aids those ridden by the orixás.
Engenho: A sugar mill, including the land, buildings, slaves, and animals that worked it.
Entrada: Slave-taking expedition.
Enxofrada: Skin-color subtype of pallid yellow, jaundiced.
Escaupil: Kapok-padded leather or cloth armor worn by bandeirantes, considered impervious to shot.
Exu: Lord of the crossroads and entrances, messenger between gods and humans, dynamic principle. Often found at the entrance to the terreiro, and characterized as a typical Rio malandro.
Farofa: Manioc flour, often fried in butter for a nutty flavor.
Favela: Unofficial Brazilian shantytown.
Fazenda: Country estate for coffee or sugar, or a cattle ranch.
Feijoada: Great dish of Rio, a long-simmered cassoulet of pork bits with Brazilian sausage and other thrifty cuts. In Rio, always made with feijãos (black beans), though pinto beans are commonly used in the rest of Brazil.
Feitor: Trader or small industry owner; ‘factor.’
Fidalgo: Portuguese knightly class.
Furaçao: Hurricane.
Furo: A cross-channel between two main river channels.
Futebol: the beautiful game, real football. Known in the US as soccer.
Futsal: Five-a-side soccer played in a walled arena with a smaller, heavier, ground-hugging ball. Very fast, very popular, very good.
Gafieira: Dance hall/public dance. Paulistano equivalent of a carioca baile.
Gatinha: Young vivacious woman.
Gelosias: Wooden shutters on the upper windows of colonial houses.
Guaraná: Native Brazilian berry with high levels of caffeine, made into a series of stimulant products, including very popular, very sweet soft drinks.
Ianques: Literal transliteration of ‘Yankees.’
Iâo: Initiate of a typical syncretist Afro-Brazilian religion.
Igapó: Terrain occasionally flooded by a river.
Jacaré: The cayman.
Jogo: ‘Game’ or match of capoeira
. Unlike other martial arts, one ‘plays’ capoeira, emphasizing its street-smart, malandro aesthetic.
Kibe: Delicious deep-fried meatballs of Lebanese extraction, often found at breakfast.
Ladeira: Steep ‘ladder’-like alley in a favela. Usually traversable only on foot or by moto-taxi.
Lanchonete: Lunch-stand/small café.
Lavrador de cana: Small-scale colonial cane-grower, owning at the most half a dozen slaves.
Lingua geral: ‘General language’; a simplified version of the languages of the Tupi peoples used as a universal tongue. In eighteenth-century Brazil it was more widely spoken than Portuguese.
Loira: White with blond hair.
Maconha: Marijuana.
Mae do santo: Candomblé priestess.
Malandragem: The entire capoeira philosophy of malicia and jeito (qv) as a theory of life.
Malicia: Capoeira term meaning ‘street cunning/warrior smarts’ - the ability to see and take an unfair advantage if one is presented.
Maloca: Multigeneration Indian house.
Mameluco: Alternative expression for caboclo, usually in military service.
Moqueça: Bahian (usually seafood) dish based around coconut milk and dende.
Morbicha: Headman of a village.
Morena-fechada: Very dark, almost mulatta.
Morro: Steep hill characteristic of Rio.
Mulatinho: Lighter-skinned white-negro.
Orixá: A god, force of nature, divine ancestor, archetype - all of these and subtly much more; the expression of the divine in Bahian candomblé.
Pae do santo: Candomblé priest.
Pão de queijo: Cheese-bread. A Brazilian obsession.
Paulista: Inhabitant of São Paulo (state).
Paulistano/a: Inhabitant of São Paulo (city).
Patúa: Amulet worn to ward against evil spirits in capoeira.
PCC: Main Paulistano criminal gang. In Rio the favelas are divided between ADA (Amigos dos Amigos) and the CV - Commando Vermelho, or Red Command.
Peças: Literally ‘pieces’; old colonial term for slaves.
Pelourinho: Slave whipping post, also that area of Salvador in which it was set up.
Pernambucano: From the state of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil.
Pichação: Tag graffiti; in Brazil usually done with a paint roller.
Pistoleiro: Hired gunman.
Preto: Black - as in color or person. Racial terms are used more freely and with less political freight in Brazil than in the north.
Puta: Whore, most commonly used in the popular sense of ‘bitch.’
Reconçavo: The early-settled area around the Bahia de Todos os Santos, the heart of colonial Brazil.
Reducione /reduction: A group of native villages or aldeias grouped into a working collective under Jesuit authority.
Réveillon: Mass beach ceremony in Rio at New Year when flowers are offered to Yemanja. Possibly even more popular than carnaval, certainly less commercialized.
Roda: The circle within which capoeira takes place.
Rodovia: Expressway.
Rodoviaria: Bus station.
Sampa: Paulistano name for their city.
Seleção: The Brazil international soccer team.
Sertão: The semiarid region in northeastern Brazil.
Soldado: Soldier - in the gangster sense.
Taipa: Brazilian mud adobe.
Tanga: Originally a triangle of fabric to cover the genitals of either sex, now a bikini style.
Telenovela: Insanely popular, insanely badly made and insanely trashy über-soap; the mainstay of Brazilian television.
Terra firme: High forest almost never flooded.
Terreiro: ‘Church’ or temple of candomblé and umbanda - usually a converted urban or suburban house within a sacred enclosure.
Travesti: Transvestite.
Uakti: Legendary Amazonian forest monster.
Umbanda: Rio/São Paulo remix of Bahian candomblé, usually practiced by whites.
Vaqueiro: Cattle rancher.
Varzea: Flood-plain zone of a river, regularly flooded.
Yemanja: Yoruban deity; ‘Mother whose children are like fishes,’ absorbed into candomblé as a sea-goddess, who is venerated in a (recent) mass celebration on the beaches of Rio at New Year.
Thanks
Daniela Prodohl, Paulo Prodohl, and Cleusa Nascimento for help with the Portuguese and rowdy arguments over doces on fine points of idiom. Any egregious errors are entirely my own.
Zack Appleton for assistance with biofuels.
Heidi Hopeametsa and Syksy Rasanen for lunch, capoeira, and physics.
Selected Reading
The intellectual godfather of this book is David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality . A few years old, but one of the most intellectually thrilling books I have read.
Books in English about Brazil are surprisingly hard to find: there are ten times as many about Cuba, a country you could lose in the Itaipu Dam, as there are about Brazil. Nevertheless, here are a few volumes I found special.
John Hemming: Red Gold. Peerless, beautiful, and grim, this is the definitive history of the Brazilian Indians.
David G. Campbell: A Land of Ghosts is a beautifully written, humane account of the ecology and peoples of western Amazonia.
Robert M. Levine and John J. Crocitti: The Brazil Reader. Invaluable for the 134 types of skin color alone.
Euclides da Cunha: Rebellion in the Backlands (Os Sertões). Classic, stunning story of the nineteenth-century Canudos uprising and its brutal suppression.
Alex Bellos: Futebol. The Guardian’s Brazil correspondent has produced the best book about the beautiful game in Brazil and the essential guide about how to be Brazilian. I freely admit sampling his definitive account of the Fateful Final. Not a dull page in it.
Peter Robb: A Death in Brazil. Fascinating journalistic study of political corruption in the northeast, but also a history, a travel book, and a cookbook as well.
The Playlist for Brasyl contains:
Siri: No Tranco
Suba: Tantos Desejos (Nicola Conte remix)
Samba de Coco Raizes de Arcoverde: Godê Pavão
Acid X: Uma Geral
Bebel Gilberto: Tanto Tempo
Suba: Na Neblina
Fala: Propozuda R’n’Roll
Salomé de Bahia: Taj Mahal (Club Mix)
Céu (feat. Pyroman): Malemôlencia
Milton Nascimento: Travessia
Carlinhos Brown/Mestre Pintodo do Bongo: Ai
Bebel Gilberto: Sem Contenção (Truby Trio remix)
Mylene: Nela Lagoa
Tijuana: Pula
Carlinhos Brown: Água Mineral
Pagode Jazz: Sardinha’s Club
Suba: Você Gosta
Bonde Das Bad Girls: Montagem Skollboll
Suba: Abraço
Milton Nascimento: Cio da terra
‘Brazil is not a serious country’
CHARLES DE GAULLE