A Brazilian woman shopping in New York was puzzled by the tag on a madras shirt she had bought for her husband: “Guaranteed to fade.” In a country as rich as the United States, why would anyone want to wear faded clothes? Why do the Americans like to wear faded blue jeans? Surely that is false romanticism and just one more example of the childishness of the Anglo-Saxon as compared to the more adult Latin? Values are realistic in Brazil. Outside of fashionable circles, the poor are thin and the rich are fat, and fat is a sign of beauty, as it has been since the ancients.
Brazilians are in many ways quick, but they can also be woefully slow. The same mistress who scolds her cook for flirting will complain about the meals always being late. Yet if anyone asks naively, “But why not have lunch at one o’clock every day?” she will reply, “Oh, well — this isn’t a factory.”
* * *
Among the first settlers in Brazil were the big “captains,” impoverished Portuguese noblemen and younger sons seeking quick fortunes, who were used to having feudal henchmen and slaves around them. They and the Portuguese of low rank who were also early on the scene soon established a tradition of having Indian and Negro slaves. One result is that to this day physical labor is looked down upon. Of all his inherited attitudes this one is the hardest for the Brazilian, free of so many other prejudices, to overcome. The upper-class Brazilian who visits the bustling North American continent cannot understand why there is so much eagerness for work. A rich boy mowing the lawn? More romanticism! A lifetime government job, white-collar work, or preferably no work at all, is the poor man’s dream. A shabby, sickly bill collector, who can barely support his wife and six children, but who proudly carries a brief case and wears two fountain pens in his pocket, will tremble with rage if his position in society is misunderstood: “I? — Everyone knows I have never worked with my hands in my life!”
* * *
But along with admiration for a life of ease and luxury goes a strange indifference to physical comfort. Even in cold weather — and it can get quite cold south of São Paulo or in the higher regions of the interior — there is no heating of any kind. People simply put on more clothes. In the small towns in June or July, the coldest months, one often sees a pleasant, old-fashioned Brazilian scene: the large family, grandparents, parents, babies, visiting godparents, and a few odd cousins and fiancés, wearing sweaters or perhaps bathrobes over their clothes, all sitting around the dining-room table under a hanging lamp. Everyone is doing exactly what he wants: reading the paper, playing cards or chess, or relentlessly arguing over the other people’s heads. Elsewhere, even the granfinos, the elegant, cosmopolitan-rich set of the upper-class, who have adopted the “English weekend” and spend it in Petrópolis or other resorts, present somewhat the same air of camping out in the winter. In freezing rooms, the ladies with mink coats over their slacks and rugs over their knees, the gentlemen wearing mufflers, they watch after-dinner movies, the latest chic diversion. Perhaps they will sip Scotch, again to be chic, but more likely cafezinhos, the boiling hot and very sweet little cups of coffee. The poor, meanwhile, drink the same cafezinhos, pile all their clothes on top of them and go to bed early.
Brazilians are a remarkably sober people. Two or three cafezinhos provide enough fuel for them to talk and argue on all night long. The late 19th-century sailor-author Captain Joshua Slocum (Sailing Alone Around the World) was, in his earlier days, in command of a ship on the South American coast. He speaks more than once of “my sober Brazilian sailors” who, unlike the sailors of other nationalities, always turned up again after a night in port — with no hang-overs.
Perhaps because Brazilians are usually as indifferent to cooking as they are to physical comfort, the staple diet is rice, dried meat, and black beans, cooked with a great deal of lard and garlic and served with a dish of manioc flour, to be sprinkled over the beans. However, there are many dishes of great refinement that use twenty or thirty ingredients, and wonderful desserts with even more wonderful names like Maiden’s Drool, Bride’s Pillow, and Blessed Mothers (small cakes).
* * *
The conversation in the caffeine-enlivened evenings will alternate between politics, real estate deals (a favorite pastime of all classes), and family reminiscences. Proud of their Latin logic, Brazilians are also a little proud of their reputation for “craziness.” Family traits are cherished; such and such a family will be famous for its bad temper or for its obstinacy or for its green eyes — because looks, too, are very important. A good family nose will be traced down right to the last-born infant. This preoccupation with good looks may come from the knowledge that many of the oldest families have some Negro blood. Since everyone also wants to be as claro, or white, as possible, this is another of those contradictions that seem to bother no one.
Criticizing the country, running down the government and talking about the “national stupidity” with fearful and apocryphal examples are also favorite pastimes. It is sometimes hard to tell whether the speakers are really angry or merely excited, tolerant or unaware of any need for tolerance, naive or extremely sophisticated. Brazilians are mercuriaclass="underline" recently during Carnival a Negro dancing along the sidewalk with his wife suddenly ran into his two mistresses. There was a small riot and some hair-pulling, but an hour later all four were observed gaily dancing the samba together and holding hands. When the wife was asked why she put up with it, she answered helplessly but rather proudly, “He talked me into it. He’s such a pretty talker!”
More taciturn peoples are likely to be suspicious of talkative ones and to think they are wasting their energy. One frequently meets among intellectuals a sort of Brazilian Hamlet-type, incapable of serious work or action, who seems to be covering up a deep anxiety with words, words, words, a pretended madness, a deliberately fanciful humor that is not frivolity although it resembles it. The earthy humor of the poor, the brutal cartoons in newspapers and magazines, the street boys who laugh at cripples or ugly women — this is directly in line with the humor of the Romans; but the humor of the intellectual is very different, wry, gentle, and a little wild.
They poke fun at their usually bloodless revolutions: “No one fought in that revolution — it was the rainy season.” Like the Portuguese form of bullfighting in which there is no killing, Brazilian revolutions or golpes (coups) sometimes seem to be little more than political and rhetorical maneuvering. A man’s speeches, his moral and physical courage, are admired, but actual violence is going too far. Duels are still fought in Argentina, but they are out of style in Brazil. Brazil has not fought a major war for almost a century. It has rarely wanted more land, already having more than it knows what to do with.
* * *
Jokes tell even more. There is an old favorite, perhaps not even Brazilian originally, about a man walking down the street with a friend. He is grossly insulted by a stranger, and says nothing. The friend tries to rouse his fighting instincts, “Didn’t you hear what he called you? Are you going to take that? Are you a man, or aren’t you?” The man replies, “Yes, I’m a man. But not fanatically.” This is the true Brazilian temper.
Chapter 2
At least as early as the 9th century a land called “Brasil” was already a legend in Europe. It was wherever bresilium came from, a wood obtained in trade with the Far East, much in demand for dyeing cloth red. (Perhaps all the red woolens the peasants wear in the paintings of Brueghel were dyed with “brasil” wood?) The Medici Atlas of 1351 shows an island labelled “Brazil,” and this imaginary island keeps re-appearing for several centuries, sometimes in one part of the world, sometimes in another, even after the present Brazil had been discovered. Columbus found the dye-wood tree in the West Indies, but in his eagerness for gold he simply ignored it. But the first ships sent back from the continent of South America were loaded with brasil-wood, and “Brazil,” or “Brasil,” became the common name for the new country. (The spelling varies and sometimes the number; it was also called “The Brazils.”)