Rio de Janeiro, July 3rd
Arrived the day Brazil was eliminated from the World Cup. Stepped into Baby’s flat, such priceless art, to struggle out of my clothing.
[Well, that needs some explaining. Before I left London a friend of mine, Roy Round the ballet photographer, gave me an introduction to a wealthy man in Rio known as “Baby” Bocayuva. He subsidized a ballet company run by his ballerina wife, Dalal Ashcar. I arrived after dark and unannounced at his apartment in Ipanema after a long ride. I gave Roy’s name and was instantly received with delight as I struggled out of my filthy clothes standing on a valuable carpet surrounded by world class art. That, in contrast to my reception in Fortaleza, was what defined my perception of Brazil.]
July 4th
Lunch with M.Luiza at Carreta. Introduced to Ballet Dalal Ashcar.
[To compensate me for being locked up in Fortaleza they adopted me. Baby gave me the use of a small apartment. Dalal deputed one of the teachers, Maria-Luiza, who everyone called Lulu, to take care of me. “Caretta” was a restaurant with sublime steaks.]
Maria-Luiza or Lulu – my guardian angel in Rio
July 5th
Morning to Baby. Visited quarry at Ibrati. Biggest in Brazil. [The source of his wealth.]
There follows a list of all the people I was involved with during the following month: Baby, Dalal, three sons, (daughter in Paris, daughter-in-law’s father is Faust at L’Express – an important left-wing newspaper in France). And a baby son by Dalal. Lulu, Holly, Gill, Antony, Christine, Miriam, Jandira, Manuel, Markus, Ben, Le Professeur, Alci, Marcia, Kubitschek (ex-President of Brazil), Barbara, Maria-Estelle, Maria de Gloria Chagos, Adolfo Bloch (big newspaper proprietor – Globo) Lucy Bloch, Geraldo, Ylen Kerr, Antonio Carlos, Esmeraldo & Tito Ryff (Apt 301) Elena and Renato, Lulu’s mother, grandmother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and nieces, godmother, Déa (Buzios), Bob Alexander, Roger Austin, Axel Galles, Mike Sarne, David Zing.
Places
Ipanema, Leblon, Gavea, Botafogo, Copacabana, Flamengo, Corcovado, Boa Vista, Avda Brasil, R.Alfandega, Yacht club, museum, Barra de Tijuca, Lagoa, Batabui, Cabo Frio, Buzios, Petropolis, Vassouras, Araros.
Events
Quarry, Bauhaus, “Pippin” (a show), Dinner and talk with Kubutschek, visit to Manchete, Lunch at Botafogo, Bank of London, Alfondega at Galleão, Ballet of Oscar Arrais, Churrasco at Bambui, Visit to Vassourras, Arraras and electric carver, morning on Ipanema beach, night with Christ., Buzios, mussels, Mrs Ferguson, Macumba at Petropolis
[Was invited to take a trip across the Bay. Achille Markov, the Swiss ballet master, resembles Danny Kay, with pointed white leather pumps.]
Achill Markov, the ballet master, with Holly, Lulu (and me of course) crossing the bay, followed by the best shrimp dinner of my life.
Rio de Janeiro, July 11th
Meant to finish piece for S.T. Woke at 8.30 (later each day). Went across to market and thought to buy a steak. The “filé mignon” was “acabo” – finished. I asked for something else. He was a surly man and might have been handing me shoe leather. It looked as if it was off the loin. An Englishwoman warned me that anything but filet was really for stewing. She’s nuts. It was delicious (relative to my expectations) and tender. Filet is 22 cruzeiros a kilo, and now I work it out, I find this meat cost the same. That’s 62 pence a pound. Eggs are 4.50 a dozen = 2p each (big, hard shells. Butter costs over £1 a kilo.
Cheese also costly. But 6 limes for 5p; big avocado for 9p; oranges for 1p – 3 cruzeiros a kilo; rice a bit more. Salario minimum is 320 cruzeiros a month = £5 a week.
[I tried hard on my journey to keep tabs on the cost of living for ordinary working people. For the moment I was in the lap of luxury, but it was all fantasy. It could and would vanish the instant I moved on.]
The view from “my” apartment window in Leblon.
Sat in front of window to eat. Beautiful day, fog has cleared, men working on high rooftops and sunning themselves. Looked at my work for half an hour and gave up. Laundry has lost my “Colorado beetle” vest. I hope they find it. He speaks some English.
“Are you American?” he asked. “No English.” He confirmed it. “You are English? Good. Americans are shit!” What does he know about either?
Marcia [Kubitschek’s daughter] has talked to her father about seeing me. He wants it to be next week. The ST has not called yet. It’s the one problem, and it costs a fortune to compensate for. What’s more, it encourages waste, I’m sure.
She (Marcia) has made me a temporary member of the Country Club, and a card is to be left for me at the [dance] studio. She thinks the prices there are quite cheap, and no doubt comparable food elsewhere would be twice the price, but I still shan’t be able to afford it, except as an extravagance. It crossed my mind that the facilities might turn out to be a gift, and I couldn’t decide what to do in that case. I shall have to dip a toe in the water and see how hot it is.
Went for a ride instead to Barra, Tijuca, looking for way up to Boa Vista. Saw the boys on their boards sitting out to sea waiting for a ride. It’s quite true they do seem to be worshipping some invisible deity on the horizon. One small boy has developed a way of spinning his board back over the crest to stop. Another came out towards me wearing black flippers. He placed them carefully on a rock to dry. Then, out of the sand he hooked his goggles and tube, then sandals and finally a vest, all buried from sight. A bit of wood with a skewer in it was also part of his outfit.
At last found the road up. In the folds of the hillside the vegetation is interspersed with bananas. There are also little four-petalled flowers in red & blue all over the side of the road. Passed a house of concrete actually shaped like the prow of a big launch.
First there’s a sign saying Alto Joã. Then an unsigned road and another marked Joã. When you’ve been to Joã (and halfway round Brazil) and come back to the same junction it seems reasonable to take the other road and suppose that Alto is a place and not a description of Joã. Took long winding road to Vista Chinesa. Looks down on the Lagõa and Copacabana, like an architect’s model, because the lagoon is like glass. The city is really squeezed between the mountains with many tall blocks. It is made to be seen from the air.
In the shrubbery in front of the mock Chinese pagoda saw a little hovering bird, busy among a bunch of blooms. Magic is just seeing something as though for the first time. Afterwards comes the business of explaining and exploiting.
From there down to the lagoon, petrol and a free cafesinho. Lulu, at studio, goes off to see psych. [She was in therapy] Holly talks to me. Then Lulu invites us both to Carreta – the churrascaria – in the same street. H is very stubborn and English behind her balletic flutter. Lulu all too compliant. I get a distinct feeling that between them I have been maneouvered. I don’t in the least mind it.
Strictly speaking these are not travel notes. I have done my best to make them comprehensible, but not very successfully I’m afraid. More next week. Enjoy the heat. Cheers.
I’d like to think you missed me last Sunday, but I apologise for not popping up as I usually do. I was preparing for a visit to England where I spent two days at the monster ABR meeting, talking and selling books. At the last minute there was too much to do. Now I’m in trouble because I find I’ve left behind the notes I was going to use for this Sunday, so it looks like you won’t hear anything new from me again for another two weeks.
The Adventure Bike Rally at Ragley Hall is truly astonishing. As someone who has been taking his biking pleasure mostly as a solitary figure crossing an empty landscape, the idea of spending two days with 20,000 other bikers should have been rather overwhelming, but the event is so extraordinarily well organised that I never felt oppressed. On the contrary, how could I not have felt pleasure at seeing such a huge audience for my talks. I gave them a lecture on philosophy (a favourite subject for bikers, as you know) because I have actually read, to the last page, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” And that was on the last day of the heatwave that had everyone frazzled. The applause was deafening. Make what you will of that!
I don’t want to leave you with nothing to read, so here’s a diary entry from Sri Lanka that I published a long time ago.
Cheers,
Ted.
From My Notebooks In 1976: Ceylon
I’m in Ceylon, having visited one of the best-known sites, Sigirya, a fortress created out of a phenomenal rock formation.
The view from the top of the fortress was extraordinary. There were carvings, but little that my uneducated mind could explain. The next day I left the Rest House (and the German sisters.)
October 11th, To Puttalam
On shore of a lagoon. Junction town. Single row of huts, some tiled, some thatched. Small veg market had chiles, kohl-rabi, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, limes, eggplant, potatoes, yams, etc. In short an excellent variety. Fish market, a small raised cement platform, thatched, had good fish too. Some puppies stood around it. One was so thin and failing that it was scarcely more than a head. Watched some crows on a roof – one had a fruit in its beak but could hardly eat it , since as soon as it put the thing down to grip it with a claw, another bird unencumbered, would threaten possession. It had a younger companion also which simply screeched with open beak and got a couple of morsels for its pains.
By the shore was a thin strand of sand littered with all kinds of rubbish. Again the crows attracted my attention and one – an obviously inferior one – was hanging about behind the others. At one point it raised a claw and put it pleadingly on another bird’s back – twice. The other bird flew away. The mangy one was left alone. Then I noticed a dog, a bitch with distended udders, licking something between its front paws. It was a puppy stretched out on the rubbish, head back and oozing blood. The mother looked up so mournfully.
These small examples of life and death on the rubbish heap moved me and depressed me profoundly. Since Colombo I’d been viewing the world through discomfort and fever with a deliberately jaundiced view. I saw the profusion and luxuriance of the tropics as a terrible mess, buildings as mildewed wrecks, human effort as futile. The people seemed tedious to me, an endless procession of M&S shirt tails hanging over sheets – with facile smiles signifying nothing if not envy and ingratiation. Only the older women impressed me in spite of myself, with the fineness of their features and slim, handsome carriage. The road was murderously bumpy, the traffic foolish. Several times in Ceylon I’ve saved my life by noticing another driver when it was his obligation to notice me. People stop quite suddenly in the road for no apparent purpose., and without indication. I think there is a powerful amount to be said against tropical paradise and I should be grateful for these fevers perhaps. The yearning for temperate home must have been overpowering in early adventurers when they fell sick.
At Puttalam I got hot tea and an extra sheet and tried to sweat it out. There was plenty of sweat, and in the morning I thought I’d won. I rode the 46 miles to Anaradhapura (after photographing a cobra) and sat among the ruins for a while.
A young man came and, by the brilliant tactic of not asking me for a single thing led me to offer him my address. I walked barefoot to the big Dagoba (or whatever). The dome is solid and covered with cement – has little to say to me. There’s a crack where it was once struck by lightning, and a new lighting conductor runs down the side. There’s also a maze of granite pillars sticking out of the ground. The lad says this is the ground floor of a seven-storey building in which a hundred monks prayed on each floor, all in their solitary cells. If true it’s an amazing notion – what a hum must have gone out from that box. Enjoyed also the moonstone outside the temple. Elephant, horse, lion, buffalo.
From A on the road to Mannar. And at the main junction was already feeling the fever again. Had a drink and some Disprin at the rest house. Disprin is becoming part of my diet. Rest of journey went well, no more rain. In the morning. I rode through a maximum downpour for maybe 15 minutes – and the jacket is a success.
[Somewhere – in the USA I think – I’d acquired a leather Belstaff outfit. I was still wearing it when I got back to London.]
At Mannar got the same room at the guest house. Went straight out to fish off the bridge, thinking how nice to be alone, but a great company of betel chewers lined up alongside me. I managed to live with it, however, and got the great excitement of a catch. The fish felt very strong and for a while I couldn’t move it at all – after its first run – then slowly I inched it in. It was a stingray. Very exciting to see it come out of the water. Not really so big – maybe four pounds – with a beautiful mottled brown back – a rather human mouth and two eyes on top. One of the men cut off the tail and showed me the spike which lies alongside the tail close to the root (not as I imagined at all) Took it back proudly to the rest house. The cook said he would fry it for me – but as a fish, he said, it was not famous.
Two men on the bridge started talking to me. It annoyed me at the time, and I must have shown it.
“Your native land, please?” “Are you a university graduate?” “How much does this, or that, cost?” They came afterwards to the Rest House and I had to sit and take tea with them. One was the medical officer for the area. And the other (Mr. Ratnavale) is a clerk of some sort. They have so little to say and understand so little of what I say that it’s largely a ritual. Whatever I said, Mr. R’s face would express perfect wonder and enlightenment, and say “I see,” as though everything was now clear. But the MO did describe symptoms of typhoid which gave me a bit of a scare next day.
That strange Scots family also turned up.
Rest House man told me a series of superstitions – full bucket, empty bucket. If a monk crosses your path when you set out, forget it. If the gecko chatters as you step out of the house – also forget it. If you run over a cat, you’ll have an accident. Woodpecker’s noise is a bad omen.
Also says Tamils smell different. If they use a towel, you won’t be able to. He says Sinhalese and Europeans are much closer.
