From My Notebooks In 1974: Sâo Paulo to Curitiba

6th September, Sâo Paulo to Curitiba

Probably the nastiest ride of all time. At first the dreaded traffic didn’t bother me. Then came fog (or cloud), rain, wind. And it went on non-stop for 8 hours. Cold. Throttle and clutch cable seized. Couldn’t see – and froze.

[I didn’t record the diesel that dirty trucks spewed over me, though I still remember it very well. The road climbed unexpectedly high before coming down again.]

Arrived in Curitiba – for want of anything on the way – ready to spend a fortune to find warmth and shelter. But two men in a VW stopped and talked and led eventually to beautiful hospitality. Warm shower, bed, food, conversation. Fat man is drug salesman, dapper man is sweet maker. Town is, they say, one with the highest all-round standard of living in Brazil, and also most costly. Very civilised town centre (as mentioned in Brasilia).

Went out on 7th September (National Day, Saturday) to see city and then to meet “moto queros” as they call themselves, and to oil my cables. Also repaired damage to right pannier. Discussed politics. These men are solidly behind the regime, convinced it is doing the only possible thing.

Now I’m in a land of plenty where almost every family, it seems, can have its share of modest comforts in the bourgeois style, and a little left over for luxuries. Marcio earns 65000 cruzeiros a month from Glaxo. He has been doing this work for twelve years, previously for Italian firms, but he puts Glaxo above them all. He met his wife 18 months ago at the Rio carnival. She was from Curitiba and her four sisters and two brothers nearly all live there, so he came to live here too. They have a four-room flat, polished parquet floors, electric shower (which always just misses the temperature you’d like) and rather than spend on furniture they have a foam rubber slab on the bedroom floor, and bean bags in the living room, but that’s because the flat is not theirs, and they want one of their own.

Marcio in 1974

Unlike the Rio rich he makes do with one of the whiskies that pretend to be imported but are firmly called by everyone “Nacional Scotch.” E.g. “Old Lord” blended whisky – malt whisky distilled and bottled in Scotland 12 years ago. Well I’m no hand at scotch at all but I’m not going to swallow a 12-year-old malt at £2 a litre when a bottle of Johnny Walker goes for twice the price.

Also on the drink shelf is an elaborate carton in blue & gold armorial motifs advertising its content as Pinwhinnie Royale Scotch Whisky, and inside is blue cloth bag tied with a golden card at the top containing a smallish bottle _ but by the feel of it the bottle is empty. There are cigars from Bahia in individual jacaranda sleeves, a gift from his father, each costing 25 crz he says. Very good I admit. And electric Japanese clocks. And o ktail sticks from Minas of twisted silver and coloured stones, and a trophy from Glaxo and a wooden carnival whistle and three special looking bottles of wine, one with label attached, and some glass and silver. On the table there are pine cones and a red brown polished nut that looks like a small, closed cone but isn’t – a kernel rattles inside and it comes from a beach near Rio.

There are few blacks down here and there are jokes about them though nobody admits to prejudice. There’s that smell though!

The men dress warmly and fondle their paunches through jersey knitwear. I can scarcely remember a paunch in Ceara. Women are cosy, the weather is cold, but there’s no indoor heating. People go around complaining of cold but looking healthy. There are sparrows on the rooftops and pigeons in the squares and the whole thing is just what you’d expect from a fusion of German and Northern Italian, but strong civic sense.

The Moto Queros received me in a circle specially carved out of the mosaic stone paving at the city centre where the Rua dos Flores is a pedestrian street. And some very nice light metal and acrylic structures have been put up for coffee, phones and information. They sat on their Suzukis – 550 ’75 and a 550 ’74 and a 380 GT, all three-cylinder machines, gleaming, all sitting still as museum pieces, men trapped in an unfulfillable dream. It seems a pity to say so, but few motorcycles get the use for which they were designed.

Marcio said: “It’s easier for me to like what I do than do what I like.”

He is from Campo Grande in Matto Grosso. Family owns huge area of farmland. His full name is Marcio Mascarenhas Grise – Albaneira de Lourdes is his wife.

Marcio and me in 2001

[Before I left them to go on to Argentina, Marcio insisted that I exchange helmets with him. I wasn’t too keen on his rather heavy black fibre helmet but I couldn’t refuse.]

[I returned to Curitiba in 2001 and found him again, now in a palatial penthouse apartment. In the meantime, he had become fairly rich, enormously fat and then, after a near-death experience, quite slim. To my astonishment he and Albaneira had preserved my helmet like a museum piece, and he showed us around town with great pride. Unfortunately, all the stress he had put his body through was too much, and he died not many years later.]

I was in Brazil for 9/11. I watched it on a hotel TV in Receife. Because my Portuguese was poor I thought, for a while, that it was another disaster movie. It felt rather remote. People I talked to later were sad but had mixed feelings.

See you next week.