Carioca Fletch

Eleven

“Bum, Bum,” Toninho said.

The black four-door Galaxie was on the sidewalk close to the hedge in front of The Hotel Yellow Parrot. Around it, dressed only in shorts and sunglasses, were the Tap Dancers. Norival, the only one with his belly hanging over his belt, held a can of beer in his hand.

“Bom dia, Fletch,” Tito said.

“Tem dinheiro?”

Tito grinned. “É para uso pessoal.”

In front of the hotel, half in the road, half on the sidewalk, a samba band was beating its drums at full strength in the strong Saturday morning sunlight. At their center was an old pickup truck casually decorated with palm fronds, some of which had been dyed purple and red. Seated in the back of the pickup truck, facing backward, was a huge black papier-mâché monster. Its arms were out, to embrace; its eyes were big and shiny; its smile was friendly. A girl dressed only in a G-string and pasties sat on the monster’s head, her legs dropping over its face. Of course she had gorgeous legs and a flat belly and full breasts. Her long black hair fell over her face. On the ground near the truck, a tall man in a long black evening gown and cherry-red face rouge danced wildly to the drums. A nine-year-old girl also danced in a black evening gown, while puffing a cigarette. A bare-legged middle-aged man danced while holding his briefcase. Perhaps there were fifty or sixty people dancing around the band.

“Bum, bum, paticum bum,” Toninho said.

Fletch tossed his plastic liter bottle of water onto the backseat of the Galaxie.

“Senhor Barreto,” the doorman said quietly.

In one swift motion, Tito pulled Fletch’s tennis shirt over his head and off him.

Orlando put his forefinger against Fletch’s chest. “Look! Skin!”

“He has skin?” Norival asked, looking.

Tito ground a couple of knuckles into Fletch’s back. “Muscle!”

“He is there?” Norival asked. “Really there?”

“Senhor Barreto.” the doorman said, “Mister Fletcher.”

“Bum, bum,” Toninho said.

Behind the doorman, tall, stately in her white gown, big-eyed Idalina Barreto came through the crowd. On each side of her she had a child by the hand. Three older children were in her wake. The children were clean enough, but the jerseys on the girls were too big or too small. Below his shorts, from above his knee, the ten-year-old boy had a wooden leg.

“Janio Barreto!” the hag shrieked over the sound of the samba band.

“Ah,” Toninho said solemnly. “Your wife.”

The doorman stood back.

Tito handed Fletch his shirt rolled up into a ball. Fletch threw it into the car.

The old woman cackled rapidly. She was presenting the children to him.

“She says they are your great-grandchildren, Janio,” Tito said. “Are you catching their names? The boy is called Janio.”

Fletch put his hand on the head of one of the small girls.

At first, Idalina Barreto smiled.

As Fletch ducked into the backseat of the black Galaxie, her voice became shrill. She pressed forward.

Toninho got into the driver’s seat. “Aren’t you going to ask your wife if you may go gambling?”

Orlando got into the front passenger seat. Entering from the other side, Tito sat in the middle, beside Fletch. Norival sat near the left window of the backseat.

Fletch handed two of the children money through his back window.

Toninho started the car. “Bum bum” he said.

As the car rolled forward, the hag’s face continued to fill Fletch’s window. Her shrieking voice filled the car.

“Ah, wives,” Tito said.

Soon the car bumped off the sidewalk and got into traffic on the avenida.

Through the rearview mirror, Toninho was staring at Fletch.

There were many cans of beer on the floor of the backseat of the car.

“Bum, bum, paticula bum” Toninho said, driving through traffic.

“Carnival.” In the front seat, Orlando stretched. “How nice.”

Toninho shook his head sadly. “Think of driving off and leaving your wife and great-grandchildren that way! To go gambling! What is the younger generation coming to!”

“Um chopinho?” Norival held out a can of beer to Fletch.

“Not yet.”

Stuck in traffic, Norival handed the beer through the window to a child no more than twelve. Then he opened one for himself.

In the traffic near them was a big, modern bus. All that could be seen through the windows of the bus were bare, brown upper torsos, moving like fish in a net, the arms flailing the insides of the bus, the feet apparently stomping the floor with the rhythm, the faces raised in some song. The bus was being used as a drum, being played from the inside by more than one hundred fists, more than one hundred feet. The bus being used as a drum from the inside did not seem to impair its modern beauty or impede its rollicking progress through the traffic.

Finally the Galaxie turned into a side street and picked up speed for a short way until they came to another samba band almost clogging the street. A small seventy-year-old lady, all by herself, dressed in a red dress and red shoes, a red plastic handbag hanging from one forearm, danced to that band, taking perfect small steps with perfect dignity.

Creeping the car past the samba band, Toninho shouted through the window at them, “Bum, bum, paticum bum, prugurundum!”

Some of the people who heard him waved.

“Bum, bum, paticum, prugurundum,” Fletch tried to say. “What’s that?”

“An old carnival song,” Tito said, picking a beer off the floor.

Norival was swallowing his third beer since getting into the car.

“What does it mean?”

“Nothing.”

After a while they were free of the city, and the car began climbing the narrow, twisting mountain roads. Behind walls and hedges were suburban homes. The higher they climbed, the more expensive were the houses.

Shortly Norival had to be let out to water some of the bushes. Then he started another beer.

Occasionally through the heavy green growth, the hedges, Fletch caught glimpses of Christ the Redeemer, thirty meters tall, over a thousand tons heavy, a half mile in the sky above Rio on Corcovado, arms stretched wide to welcome and embrace the whole world. Enough times, Fletch had heard the story of the Argentine fisherman who spent days outside Baia de Guanabara waiting for the statue to wave him in. Finally, he sailed his catch of fish home to Argentina.

At one point, Toninho said in English, “You are not here long before you discover Brazilian music is not only the bossa nova of Vinicius de Moraes and Tom Jobim.”

“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.”