by Lydia Laube
‘Not very long.’
‘Is this your husband?’
‘No,’ I replied.
He then gave us a list of prices by the hour. I looked around and suddenly it dawned on me. Charming. I was in a brothel. But it was reasonably cheap, right in the main street, it looked clean and the staff appeared respectable. I managed to get through to the desk clerk that I wanted a room all to myself, thank you very much, and another gorgeous smiling young man, a Ricky Martin clone, shooed me into the antiquated lift, clanged the metal grille shut and up we creaked.
I dumped my bags and zoomed on up to the roof-top dining room to partake of breakfast. The Hotel Central, built around 1920, is classical art deco in design and must once have been quite grand. It would have been great up here on the roof in the hotel’s heyday and even now, in its declining years, with all its glass doors open and a cooling breeze blowing through, it was a pleasant spot.
I was sorry to hear that it only catered for breakfast. A beer garden would once have graced the roof either side of the dining room, but now it was vacant except for some litter and a few pigeons. I sat in a cane chair that looked an original 1920s’ model while a courtly older man served me. The coffee had no sugar. Ah, civilisation at last – the sugar bowl was on the table, not in my cup. James joined me and I think my breakfast went on his tab. It seemed to be unusual for a woman to be running about loose. The taxi driver and I had conducted a long conversation, all of which I managed to work out, concerning the whereabouts of my husband, if this wasn’t he in the cab with me. This place was beginning to sound like Saudi Arabia, where the first and last words spoken to me had been: ‘Where is your husband?’
Hotel Central was four floors high and it presented to the street a facade of pale-green and white tiles. Its foyer opened right onto the footpath and the tiles continued on the walls in there. Black and white tiles marched across the floor to the back wall, where a well-worn grey marble staircase with an old brass hand-rail ascended to the rooms alongside the venerable lift. All the stairways and corridors were covered to a fair height with off-white-with-age tiles topped by a black-and-white-tile frieze.
Each floor had a sitting area on the landing at the top of the stairs in front of tall French doors that opened on to a small balcony over the main street. This space was tiled in a bilious shade of mustard, patterned in an attempt to convince you that it was marble. None of the exterior windows or doors possessed glass, just green wooden shutters to close against the rain. A three-piece lounge suite, classically square-shaped but re-covered in an excruciatingly ugly maroon vinyl, sat on a threadbare carpet in the sitting area near my room. The carpets all looked as though they had been in situ since the year one – and in the darker recesses of the passages, a faint whiff of old socks came off them. They were so worn that in places no carpet at all was left, just the threads that it had been woven on.
This establishment didn’t run to a vacuum cleaner. The housemaids swept the carpets with a broom. During my sojourn in the Central I used to read in the sitting area, as there the light was good, and here I met the odd short-term tenant, each of whom was very agreeable.
On an exploration foray, ambling along the main street under the huge old mango trees that line it, I came to the town square, the Praca de Republica. In a large, leafy park, a pre-election rally, as well as the usual Sunday market, was in full swing. Stalls that sold crafts, clothes, and food covered the walkways alongside the lawns.
Searching for lunch, I discovered that Belem shuts down more tightly than my home town of Adelaide used to on a Sunday. Nothing was open. I walked all the way down to the riverside, where a swish new building housed many exclusive shops and galleries. Beside this enormous edifice, the ramshackle stalls of the market wandered a great distance along the waterfront. Fish were sold in a lovely old building but the rest, mostly fruit, vegetables and foodstuffs, was outdoors in lean-tos and shaded benches. Near the end, the market degenerated and became sleazy.
It was siesta time and, except for a few stallholders snoozing alongside their goods, there were few people about. A man and woman approached and the man spoke to me. ‘Senora,’ he said. And went on earnestly in rapid Portuguese. I think he was telling me that it wasn’t safe to walk in the street now. It certainly looked seedy and the area was deserted except for some strange-looking people lying about in doorways. I beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of the town, passing many closed cafes on the way. By the time I finally found one open, I was desperate for food and, taking a wild stab at the menu, ordered a meal. Then I waited an hour to discover that the cook had barbecued a whole chicken for me. The chook was delicious, but so would have been fried running-shoes in my famished state. Even so I could still only eat half of the fowl. Yes, truly. Only half. I asked for a doggie bag.
Restored, I went to stock up on guarana drinks. I entered a doorway that I thought led into a shop, but actually went into the next building. Inside, in a foyer, I encountered two smart-looking young men dressed in white shirts and ties, who were handing out metre-long, gold-coloured plastic trumpets. I thought that this must be some kind of sales promotion. I didn’t want a trumpet but the smiling young man forced it on me, as well as a sheet of paper covered in Portuguese. I followed some other people down a hallway and entered, to my very great surprise, not a shop, but a large auditorium full of seats that sloped down, row after row, like a picture theatre. At the bottom was a stage with a central dais above which hung a massive banner proclaiming, ‘Jesus es me Senor’ – Jesus is my Lord. Good heavens, I had bumbled into a revival meeting. I would be expected to blow my trumpet, stamp my feet and shout ‘Halleluiah’. Apart from the fact that the show would all be in Portuguese, it wouldn’t be much use to me – I am way past saving. The young men guarding the exit were most reluctant to let me go and tried hard to persuade me to stay. ‘No, no, no!’ they said, ‘You’ll really enjoy this show.’ Or words to that effect. I pushed the trumpet back at them and bolted. I knew I’d enjoy getting a guarana fix from the shop much more.
It had been hot, thirsty work walking about Belem and when I reached my room in the late afternoon, I had a shower and zonked. James came to see if I wanted to go out to eat but I said I would rather continue with the siesta. When I woke it was dark, so I gave up on this day and, doing a Scarlett O’Hara, told myself I’d take up life again tomorrow.
I got up at the crack of dawn for a very satisfactory breakfast. Elegantly presented, it included cheese and ham slices, crispy French rolls, a huge slice of watermelon, fruit juice and really good strong coffee. The constantly beaming waiter was the only elderly person I had seen so far in Brazil. A dear old man, he looked a hundred, but probably was not a day over ninety-five. I sat by the open doors and fed the pigeons on the roof my watermelon seeds and bread crumbs. They were big, fat, glossy-plumed birds, one of whom wore white, 1920s’ spats that make him look heavy-footed but were in keeping with the era of the hotel. Two pigeons were behaving themselves nicely with a couple of bread crumbs when a smaller pigeon flew in. One immediately stopped what he was doing and started posturing in front of her. From past observations I have come to the conclusion that pigeons seem to be utterly and totally obsessed with sex. This female was just trying to get a feed and was probably saying, ‘Oh, just get out of my way will you,’ like any sensible woman would when food was on offer, but the idiot male continued to bob up and down around her like a thing demented.
At the tourist office, which was set in lovely gardens, an agreeable young man listened intently and tried hard to understand me. He spoke English but his accent was so excruciating I scarcely comprehended a word. But he did his best to find me a boat down the coast to Rio De Janeiro, roughly four thousand kilometres away. I had achieved my goal – crossing the continent overland. Now it was time to go home and the logical place to get a flight back to Australia seemed to be Rio.
It was all to no avail. I could see that the young fellow thought I was quite mad – tourists are suppo
sed to fly, and that was such a simple operation. Why did I persist in making trouble for poor travel agents with my eccentric ideas? At one stage he interrupted the phone call he was making to a shipping company to ask me: ‘Will you be on this ship on your own?’
‘Yes,’ I said, not wanting to confuse the issue, but privately I really had hoped there might be a couple of sailors to drive the thing.
Parting friends, he shook my hand and gave me a fine map and a special price of only $5500 to fly back to Sydney from Belem, which I declined gracefully. I didn’t want to buy the bloody aeroplane, just rent a small space on it for a short while.
It was still early morning and reasonably cool if you kept out of the sun, so I walked up the shady side of the main street and entered several airline offices where various young ladies tried to find me a better fare without success. Finally one took me by the hand and led me a couple of doors down to meet someone she said might be able to help. They offered me a fare for four thousand. I nearly had a fit and asked if I could whittle it down a bit by taking the bus to Rio and flying from there. This reduced it to $2200. Then I discovered that all flights to Australia were fully booked. The first available seat was three-and-a-half weeks away. I put myself down for wait listing, or ‘weight lifting’ as it was put to me. It sounded as though I might as well be doing that.
After an enormous by-the-kilo lunch I racked out for a two-hour siesta. It was terribly hot in the middle of the day and by that time I always felt so hot and sweaty that I longed for a cold shower. That was lucky – there was no hot water in this hotel.
In the evenings I promenaded around the square on the lawns and under the trees with the rest of the populace. Wandering about at night among the food stalls and flood-lit statues seemed reasonably safe and was very pleasant. But, as there was no breeze, it was still not really cool. I imagined that it would be cooler down on the waterfront but from what I heard this would be madness. Big strong men don’t walk by the river alone at night, let alone medium-sized women.
My spacious and spotlessly clean room had a beautiful parquet wooden floor. I was intrigued by the extreme height of the ceilings and doors throughout the building. I estimated the distance to the deco-style ceiling cornice in my room to be at least four metres. The door into the corridor was three-and-a-half metres high, the top metre being patterned glass in a wooden frame. A second door in one wall connected me to the next room. The door handle had been removed on my side – I hoped it had been on the other side too.
I possessed two windows, both of which were innocent of glass and opened into the corridor. But they did have louvred wooden shutters, the top half of which could be opened for air – and to allow people passing by in the corridor a sight of the top of your head. All the woodwork, doors, frames and shutters were painted the nauseous shade of green that had been popular in the twenties and they didn’t look as though they’d had a touch-up since then. The furniture was also original 1920s, a classic oak dressing table with a black-marble top and a big oak wardrobe commodious enough to secrete a lover when your husband came home unexpectedly. And there was a little sink that was surrounded by hectares of white tiles edged with a black border and had an intriguing brass lever instead of a tap. A light swung from a cord in the ceiling a hundred kilometres away and a pedestal fan was plugged into a powerpoint that had been added as an afterthought. Well, a ceiling fan would have been useless way up there. The room was completed by a reminder of the good old days when there were rafts of servants at your beck and call – an ornate service bell of porcelain surrounded by brass was positioned in the wall by the door.
Each floor of the hotel had a huge ablution block that was entirely covered in tiles – floor, walls and even the corridor leading to it. First you entered a great room that was no longer used, but still contained a row of cement laundry troughs under the windows on the far wall. Some guest-room windows opened into this area and I wondered how this set-up worked back in the days when the maids would have been out there washing by hand in the early morning. Progressing through the laundry you came to the bathrooms. Segregated into male and female sides, they contained not only showers and bidets, but colossal cast-iron baths, big enough to wash a baby hippopotamus in.
The main streets were extremely crowded. I have never seen as many buses as I did in Brazilian cities, and there were thousands and thousands of taxis. I had seen no street people in Manaus but sadly there were a few, as well as a couple of beggars, near my hotel. One was a woman who didn’t look to be quite all there mentally but none of them was old. Street living is not an occupation conducive to longevity, I guess. The beggar to whom I invariably gave money was plonked right in the middle of the busy footpath of the main street, where people had to walk around him. He had no arms or legs, just a trunk with stumps on it, but he sat in the hot sun and smiled at the passers-by.
One day I solved two mysteries that had puzzled me – bingo halls and polished coconut shells. The former were actually places to play the pokies, but had large ‘Bingo’ signs outside. I investigated one and didn’t have a clue what I was doing but the machine spat ten dollars at me, so I didn’t complain. And the polished coconut shell halves that I had seen stacked on counters at small cafes or street food stalls, I discovered, were for soup. One evening I saw a woman deposit a few plastic chairs on the footpath, set up a tiny stall and start serving soup into these coconut shells. Nobody seemed to mind the sudden appearance of this obstacle, they just walked around the chairs. Multitudes of other tiny stalls sold similar items – belts, hair ornaments, wallets and so on. Some people merely stood on the footpath and held out items for sale.
I saw the marvellous church of Our Lady of Nazare. Built by rubber barons, it bristles with Victorian statues, Carrara marble and gold. The real church for masses of Brazilians is still the church of the spirits. The Africans who were imported as slaves by the Portuguese brought their gods with them and many times all they did was re-name their deity with a Christian name. The old voodoo religion, now called candombie, persists.
Having several weeks to fill in before my flight home, I decided that I’d love to see the mighty Amazon meet the Atlantic. I could do this by taking a boat out to spend a few days on the island of Marajo. As big as Switzerland, Marajo lies in the wide mouth of the Amazon and has forests, grassy plains, river beaches and big herds of water buffalo. The smart, new boat-terminal building seemed the logical place to start enquiring for a boat ticket to Marajo. It wasn’t. I was given directions to the place that was alleged to be the one. Hours later, cheesed off from hiking about in the heat, I came back to where I had started and was given direction elsewhere. Then they said that this office would now be closed for siesta. Typical. These boat offices shut at eleven for lunch and then go on to siesta. A good life already, but that’s not enough for them. They don’t open again in the evening, as respectable people who have had a siesta should do. They only open from three till five. I considered this pretty stupid – not for the office workers, perhaps, but certainly from a poor traveller’s point of view.
There was nothing else to do except imitate the supine staff, so I had lunch and a lie down before setting off again. This time I looked up my guide book. It swore that the boat office was ‘at the junction’ of the two streets it named but omitted to mention that from there you had to walk at least two kilometres. After asking for help many times I finally found the place, a big tin wharfside shed that housed several small ticket booths. From one of them, with my less-than-adequate Portuguese, I managed to extract a ticket for a boat to Surre, the only town on Marajo, in two days’ time.
The next day I used seven buses – and only once wound up on the wrong one. I found a bus going to the main bus station and asked the driver to tell me when we came to it. In the very modern bus depot, which was more like a train station thanks to its flight of stairs down to the departure bays, a helpful man struggled with my hybrid Spanish/Portuguese and I booked a seat on a bus to Rio de Janeiro in a week�
��s time. The journey would take fifty-two hours. ‘A good bus with a toilet,’ he promised. ‘Hopefully,’ I said. At first I had asked for a seat at the back of the bus but the ticket-seller indicated that this wasn’t such a good idea. ‘Pooh,’ he said holding his nose. ‘Toilet there.’ After fifty-two hours I guess they would get a bit whiffy.
Catching another bus, I set out for Icari, a village famed for its pottery, on the outskirts of Belem. The journey took a very long hour. Although I did see the odd horse-drawn cart and quite a few donkeys, we didn’t travel out into the countryside but through interminable suburbs of ugly, squat buildings. When we finally reached the bus terminus, I asked the driver for directions to Icari. He said that I should have got off earlier. The driver of another bus, which was about to return to Belem, kindly waited until I had finished the drink I’d bought at a dump of a nearby roadside stall and off I went again. About ten kilometres later he put me off. Standing in the dirt road, I thought, Crikey, this is a village? ‘Don’t miss it. It’s wonderful,’ the guide book’s authors had said. I thought that they needed to examine their values – not to mention their eyes. It might have been wonderful if you were mad keen on pottery, lots of it and mostly the same, but I’m not. I don’t care for it at all. I came to see the interesting village in the countryside that I had visualised. Instead I stood in a hot, dusty street lined with rows of dreary shacks, which were fronted by open drains full of sewerage.
I waited for the next bus alongside an evil-smelling butcher’s ‘shop’, an open-air roadside stand with slabs of meat arrayed on a grotty bench. It was a long wait in the heat, and my mood wasn’t helped by the devoted attention of hordes of flies. When a bus came I jumped on it – I didn’t care where it was going. As luck had it, it went to the bus depot from where I caught another bus right to the door of my hotel. Fantastic.