Carioca Fletch

Twenty-two

“Have you ever been in a favela before?” Marilia asked.

“I have been in slums before. In Los Angeles, New York, Chicago.”

They had driven slowly past The Hotel Yellow Parrot. None of the Barreto family was at that time waiting in front of the hotel.

Fletch had parked the MP where Marilia told him to, on a city street a few blocks from the base of the favela.

“Last week, our industrial city of Sao Paulo produced ten thousand Volkswagen cars,” Marilia said. “And twelve thousand, eight hundred and fifty babies. That is the reality of Brazil.”

The favela of Santos Lima rose straight up a mountainside not all that far from the center of Rio de Janeiro. For the most part it was made of hovels stuck together by various materials, bits of lumber from here and there, packing crates, tar paper. A single roof might be made of over a hundred pieces of wood, tin, aluminum. A favorite patch was a flattened tin can nailed over a hole. A few were old, solid houses, all very small, and most of these had been painted at one time or another, purple, green, chartreuse. Some of the little stores, which mostly sold rice and beans and chope, looked somewhat permanent. As with most residential districts, the houses looked more solid, slightly more prosperous, the higher they were in the favela. The sewage from the higher houses flowed down muddy streets to settle under the lower houses.

As they entered the favela and began to climb, radios blared music from every direction. In a nearby shack, a packing crate really, a samba drum was being tuned. At a distance a large bateria of drums could be heard practicing.

Marilia Diniz and Fletch attracted much attention. Almost instantly they were surrounded by thirty, forty, fifty small children barefoot in the mud and sewage. The teeth of a few of the older children had rotted to stumps. Only a few of the very young had the distended bellies and skinny legs of malnutrition. Generally the bodies of the children old enough to fend and rummage for themselves, those over the age of six, although skinny, were well formed, as quick as darting fish. Their fingers tugged lightly at Marilia and Fletch; their imploring voices were low. For the most part, their eyes were bright.

“Well over half the population of Brazil is under nineteen years old,” Marilia said. “And half of them are pregnant.”

Marilia then asked the children for directions to the home of Idalina Barreto. In response, they fought for her hand to guide her there.

Fletch followed along with his own gaggle of children. Perhaps a dozen times he felt their hands slip into and out of the empty pockets of his shorts.

The women looked at him through their doorless doors and glassless windows with blank expressions on their worn faces, neither friendly nor unfriendly, not particularly curious. Their expressions indicated more that they were thinking about him, the life he led that they had glimpsed here and there; the big, clean buildings he had lived in, the airplanes he had flown in, the restaurants he had dined in, the accoutrements of his life, cars, telephones, air conditioners. There was little resentment in their look, as there was little resentment in their not being familiar with snow. His was a different life, vastly different, as different as if he had lived on Venus or Mars: too different to generate emotion.

A man called to Fletch in Portuguese from a bar counter under a tin roof. “Come! I’ll buy you a little beer!”

“Thanks,” Fletch answered in Portuguese. “Maybe later!”

And of course Fletch wondered about their lives as he walked through their world. To do without everything he knew, even a little money, privacy, machinery, in most cases, work. To do without everything but each other. He wondered if he could adapt to such a life, but only as he wondered if he could adapt to life on Jupiter or Saturn.

As they passed a small home, a toothless, bald old woman in a rocking chair in the shade looked at Fletch through rheumy eyes. “Janio!” she shrieked. “Janio Barreto!”

She tried to get out of her chair, but fell back.

Fletch just kept moving.

As they turned the corner around a sizable pink building, Fletch spotted young Janio Barreto down the dirt track. The boy hurried away on his wooden leg—doubtless, to broadcast the news that Fletch was coming.

The Barreto home was not very high in the favela.

Idalina Barreto stood tall in the door to her home, hands on her hips. Janio and other small children were in front of the house. Her eyes narrowed as Marilia and Fletch approached.

“Bom dia,” Marilia said. She introduced herself. She explained that they had come to hear all about Janio Barreto and what had happened to him forty-seven years before.

The hag pointed to Fletch and, in her crackly voice, asked some question about Fletch.

Marilia said, “She wants to know if you will tell her what happened. Why you were murdered, and who murdered you.”

There was no humor, no irony, in Marilia’s face.

Sleepless, slightly dizzy in the bright sunlight, surrounded by a swarm of whispering children, Fletch shook his head. “I don’t know.”

As Idalina Barreto led Marilia and Fletch into her home, she dispatched children to find various relatives and bring them here.

The inside of the house was a space protected from some of the elements by walls of many boards of different shapes and sizes, nailed together at different angles under a patched tin roof.

The interior was impeccable. The dirt floor was reasonably dry and freshly swept. Plates, pans, cups, and glasses near the basin sparkled. A round table in the center of the room was polished. On it was a pretty embroidered cloth, and on the cloth was a bowl of fresh flowers. The calunga doll was also on the table. Chairs of various styles and sizes were around the walls of the room.

On the wall, either side of a battery radio, were magazine pictures of Jesus and the Pope.

A vast crowd was collecting outside the house.

Marilia said, “Idalina would like to know if you’d like coffee.”

“Yes. Thank her.”

Idalina flicked her wrist, and more children darted out.

Then she sat in a tall-backed wooden chair with wide arms. She gathered the hems of her long white dress around her ankles.

She indicated with a sweep of her hand that Marilia and Fletch should be seated in chairs of their choosing.

Fletch took a humble seat in a kitchen-styled chair.

As they waited silently, children brought them cups of very strong, very sweet coffee.

A few adults came into the room, four women, two men. They were introduced to Fletch as Idalina’s children and grandchildren. Fletch stood to greet each of them and didn’t really get their names.

Each stared at him, round-eyed. They didn’t seem willing or able to breathe normally. They backed into chairs along the walls.

Finally, the one for whom everyone apparently had been waiting arrived: a man in his fifties, shirtless, in proper black shorts and sandals. His hair was neatly combed.

“I speak English,” he said, shaking Fletch’s hand. “I am Janio Barreto Filho. I have worked many years as a waiter, in Copacabana.” He stared into Fletch’s eyes a long, breathless moment. Then, old enough to be Fletch’s father, he said, “I am your son.” In one movement, he hugged Fletch to him and embraced him hard. There was a choked sob in Fletch’s ear. “We are so glad you have come back.”