Chasing Bohemia (35 page)

It was hard to shake off the anarchy of Brazil, and I got caught out in the margins of an organised society more than once — first for driving an unregistered car though the country back-roads, and then for riding a pushbike without a crash helmet.

‘It's
my
head,' I protested, but the two policemen, who were clearly not in the mood for individualistic arguments, sneered, and then said sarcastically, ‘Not when you're banged up in intensive care at St Vincents' on Medicare, it's not.'

‘I don't want St Vincents' medical care,' I protested. ‘I refuse to accept the impositions of an interventionist nanny state ... ' But they interrupted me with a snigger and said, ‘Aw, tell that to the judge, luv.'

But if I thought the loss of anarchy was hard, nothing broke me like the
saudade
— that evocative sensation described by seafaring Portuguese which, lacking a direct translation, I now understand means a heart broken into bits by its memories. I played Cartola over and over again, hoping to kill the nostalgia somehow, but it only made it worse, each note bringing those fat, yellow moons behind my eyes and the torturous sound of a cavaquinho through my window. I survived by playing capoeira on Bondi beach with a fierce Brazilian woman called Meire Lou, and drinking with my brother and sister at the Brazilian bar in Bondi on Thursdays. I eventually managed to put $6000 in the bank by eating pasta for three months and selling my possessions. The mortgage drones were furious.

‘How can you go back to Brazil? You don't have any money,' one couple asked.

‘I've sold everything,' I responded.

Their jaws dropped in outrage, and they eventually spluttered, ‘Well, that's just … that's just bloody irresponsible.'

My parents saw me off from the airport this time, a little sadder than usual, and to make them happy I told them I was going to start a business. I had even believed it myself for a while, until I went drinking with my old boss and she'd said, ‘I'd probably stick with cabaret if I were you.'

IT WAS DECEMBER
by the time I got back to Brazil. Fabio arranged for a band of five sambistas to serenade me at the airport gates. My barely adequate financial situation must have been a disappointment to Fabio, but he got over it. ‘Join the club,' he said with a shrug. At first, owing to the fact that it was a weekend, it appeared that nothing in Rio de Janeiro had changed. It was bloody hot, the smell of rotten mangoes hung in the air, and the sound of ‘Memories' burst out of Gustavo's radio. The samba was still pumping on until midday, Gustavo was still bitching about Fabio, Chiara still hated everything except Catra and funk, and Fabio still had the look of someone with not much to lose.

It wasn't until eight o'clock on the Monday morning that I realised something was different. We had been out late the night before and I was in a deep, dreamy sleep. Gustavo, Fabio, and I were dancing samba with a bunch of grey nomads around our tour bus in Rome when a slow, piercing shriek blasted away the cobwebs of unconsciousness and catapulted me into the bright, painful light of the day. ‘What, where, how?' I muttered, still dancing. I got up and flung open the balcony doors, unsure whether I was in Captains Flat, Rome, or Rio. The sound continued. I was confused. I was in Rio. Maybe. But what was that sound? My gaze focused on the other side of the street, where the people in the priest's house had opened their shutters and were staring back at me.

Eventually the dream dissolved, and I saw that a nasty little clock alarm was making all the trouble. Fabio was asleep beside it, his face planted in a pillow, with no sign of waking up. I slammed my fist down on the top of the alarm and slumped to my knees. I couldn't figure out whose alarm it was and why the devil it would be on in our house, but was given no opportunity to digest this mystery before Fabio jumped up like a soldier caught sleeping on patrol, gibbering wildly: ‘What, what, yes, time, please, late, maybe I'm late, early never…' He ran to the closet, got inside, then out again, lapped the room twice, ran to the doorway, caught his forehead on the overhead panel of the door, and landed smack on his back. I was fully awake by then. ‘What the hell is going on, Fabio?' I mumbled. Not disheartened, he got up again, pulled on his shorts, and ran downstairs, saying, ‘Have my lunch ready for twelve,' and I watched him disappear down the street to his first steady job.

Yes, Fabio had a job. As incredible as it seemed, he had turned his back on fifteen years of bohemia, put aside his hundred compositions about malandragem, and joined the worker bees. The party had come to a screeching halt. That morning I rang the Italian revolutionary to tell her about the new developments and to see if she wanted to go to the beach.

‘Can't. I'm working,' she said, lamentably.

‘Since when does a revolutionary work?' I cried.

‘Since I had to pay my rent, you cheap corporate whore. My parents are threatening to cut off my trust fund. Now fuck off!' She slammed the phone down.

My lazy Monday plan of a trip to the beach, followed by a manicure and dinner at Bar do Mineiro, was shaping up badly. I went downstairs to have coffee with Gustavo. He had been doing breathing exercises and complaining of a rash since I'd come back. He claimed haughtily that Fabio had brought bugs from Lapa into the house.

‘Shall we go to the museum at Niteroi today?' I asked brightly. He breathed deeply, sighed heavily and muttered, ‘Unfortunately,
minha filha
, I have to clean this house.'

‘Where's Denize?' I asked, incredulous.

‘She's studying to be a doctor now. Can't come anymore on weekdays,' Gustavo responded with a shrug, and slipped on a pair of yellow gloves.

‘And Fabio?' he asked, picking up a broom. ‘How are things between you two now?'

‘Gone to work,' I said, hardly believing it myself.

‘Oh, God save us,' Gustavo said, and crossed himself, for there was one thing that bohemians and the elite of Brazil had in common, and that was an extreme revulsion for work. ‘The poor man. It's so disgusting to have to work.'

Fabio's job, the voluntary slavery — paid in at a luxurious one-and-a-half times the minimum wage of 320 reals per month — was to maintain the garden and run dinners one night a week at Julie's Poussada Manga Manga. He'd got it the week before I arrived. At first it was difficult, seeing my jewel of a bohemian getting up with bags under his eyes to go off to work each day. His weekday nocturnal nature frittered away, and he started binge drinking on Saturdays. We stopped going to samba on Mondays, started watching television on Wednesdays, developed a semblance of routine when it came to food, and he stopped seeing shapes in the clouds.

For my part, I failed to rise to the challenge, and proved myself to be a terrible cook and a completely inadequate housewife. ‘Sometimes I wonder what your purpose in life is, Carmen,' Gustavo would say in one of his new and transitory alliances with Fabio. ‘A woman needs to be either Maria — a housewife — or be rich, and you are neither.' Still, we survived the transition somehow. Sometimes it broke me down to see Fabio covered in dust and paint, but mostly I found it quite sexy. His guitar hands turned rough, his pasty nocturnal skin tanned to a rosy brown, and his bohemian beer belly all but disappeared. I needn't have worried in the first place. He got sacked three months later, and became a ruthlessly commercial organiser of street samba instead.

As for the others, never say never. Chiara started working on reception at the Rio Hostel and running samba tours, Carina fell in love with Australia, Gustavo started frequenting a cabaret on the backstreets of Lapa, Paulo became famous, Winston moved to Sweden, Denize got into university, Dominique became a DJ for a strip club, and Regina left dealing and disappeared.

And, in the Chinese princess room of Casa Amarela, I started writing my first book — a far-too-romantic novel about an Australian girl who went to Rio and fell in love with a malandro. The only thing that really remained constant was my devastating talent for the samba. Oh, and that fat yellow moon. She's still there.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to …

Chiara, Gustavo, Carina, and Fabio, for making this story possible, and particularly Chiara for her research on funk and the characters of Lapa; Benython Oldfield, Ann, and John, for opening the way; the people of Scribe Publications, for taking a chance; my parents, for their support …

… and Rio de Janeiro, for putting on the lights just when I needed them.