Tramp Royale (21 page)

And Coca-Cola, of course-we rich barbarians have been accused of having added nothing to world culture. This is a most unfair canard; we have contributed Coca-Cola, jukeboxes, and comic books, all worldwide in scope.

I am only half joking. When the water is not safe to drink, as so often is the case abroad, and your stomach rebels at the idea of more strong coffee, strong tea, or alcohol, Coca-Cola really does offer a pause that refreshes-and you can buy it almost everywhere. As for jukeboxes, the quality of the music is up to the man who inserts the coin; the machine itself is a worthwhile accomplishment. Comic books I won't defend.

I myself am very weary of being told by scornful Europeans that we have no culture. In the first place it simply is not true, even in the snooty sense in which the sneer is usually put, as in painting, music, and literature we are lustily productive. But in the widest sense we have made the greatest cultural contribution of any society to date, by demonstrating that 160,000,000 people can live together in peace
and
freedom. Nothing else in all history even approaches this cultural accomplishment, and sneers at
our
"culture" are both laughable and outrageously presumptuous when emanating from a continent that habitually wallows in its own blood. I'll take Coca-Cola, thank you; it may be vulgar, no doubt it is simply impossibly American, it may lack the bouquet of a Continental wine-but it is not flavored with ancient fratricidal insanities.

During the trip to São Paulo I sat next to a local citizen. We chatted throughout the ride, he in Portuguese and I in English. I found Portuguese even harder to chew than Spanish, but we got along all right as his acting was more than competent. When we pulled into the outskirts of São Paulo he pointed out places associated with the emperors of Brazil and, at last, helped us off the bus and directed us to the hotel where we had been advised to have lunch. My Spanish had been no trouble to him at all; he simply thought I was speaking English the whole time.

(Only three words are necessary to travel all over South America:
"gracias"
and
"por favor."
They cover all situations.)

The parks and plazas and monuments to Emperor Dom Pedro II in São Paulo are old; practically everything else is brand new. This is the Dallas of the boom country. It has almost as many people as has Rio de Janeiro-as of 1953, that is; by today it may have more than Rio. It is bursting its britches and new construction is going on all the time and everywhere, even during Christmas holidays. It is not safe to lean against a building there; workmen may come along and yank it down, letting you fall into the excavation. But there will be a new building in its place almost at once.

We enjoyed a gourmet's lunch on the top floor of a skyscraper hotel. View windows looked out in all directions and I looked out through them. It did not look like Latin America; it looked like Chicago. São Paulo being on a plateau of almost 3000 feet elevation its climate is not as oppressively hot as is Santos; the people are exceedingly energetic. So far as we noticed there was no slow down during the traditional siesta time; they seem to have given up the afternoon nap, which seems deplorable. Progress can be overdone.

The traffic was fast and hazardous. All Latin Americans drive with courage but Brazilian drivers seem to have even more careless abandon than the others. But their conventions are much like those elsewhere in the continent and we were now somewhat used to them; there were no casualties-which was just as well; in Brazil, if a driver runs you down, he usually sues
you;
the pedestrian is not assumed to have the right of way.

We shopped along a street of smart women's shops having the unlikely name of Rua Barão de Itapetininga. I complained that I had seen the inside of every retail shop for ten thousand miles and that we might as well have settled for Denver, but it did me no good. Ticky answered that she had been dragged into every bookstore over the same route and, besides, everybody knew that the quickest way to size up how a country was getting along was to take a look at what was offered for sale there-quantity, quality, variety, and prices.

I muttered that looking was all right but if she kept up her pace she was going to ruin the economic structure of each country we visited, but she did not hear me; she was already plunging into a blouse shop, her nose quivering like a bird dog catching a scent. The shops certainly did have pretty things and the handmade blouses were among the prettiest. Ticky insisted they were "bargains" and I suppose they were. I never will understand about such things; to my mind a bargain is something I need at a price I can afford.

Somehow the
senhoras
were less intimidating than the grim, firm-bosomed females that jostle one in our own department stores. Where do those women go when the stores close? You rarely see them (thank heaven!) anywhere else. My own intense dislike of shopping is based on a fear of being trapped on an upper floor by a mob of them; I think I suffer from a subconscious conviction that they are carnivorous.

But the
senhoras
and
senhoritas
are soft-voiced and gentle even at a stocking counter.

We had to buy some shoes. That was understandable; South American shoes do even more for the female foot than does a hot water bottle. The designs are indecently sexy. Ticky found, and bought, a pair of black high-heeled slippers the tops of which were nothing but nylon diamond-mesh. They turned bare feet into naked feet, an effect similar to that achieved by dressing a woman in opera-length black hose and a G-string.

I pointed out that if she wore them she might be arrested; she could not be nakeder if she wore nothing but the shoes because no one would look at anything but her feet-and gasp. "That is exactly the effect I want," she said smugly, "a simple, modest dress and my feet looking out in those and leering. I'll take them." She did not even ask how much they cost.

Satiated at last with shopping, we loafed for a while in a dreamy, old garden filled with fountains and birds, which is surrounded by the swarming São Paulo retail district and is near the bus station. There was time still to hire a car and a guide, but the garden was so pleasant that we decided to take for granted that São Paulo had public buildings, a race track, and points of historical interest. We knew that it had; the pamphlet we had with us told us so, but we gave them the rest of the day off and stuck with the birds and the fountains.

At last we walked slowly and reluctantly back to the bus station. The interurban station there is an extremely busy place with a bus pulling out every few seconds and a dozen loading at once; it had a population density as thick as you can get without stacking people in two layers. All seats are reserved and tickets must be bought ahead of time.

The bus for Santos has some other name, I never did find out what. I was trying unsuccessfully to buy tickets and succeeding only in holding up a queue of others equally anxious when a man came to my rescue. He had the face of a jovial hawk and about twenty words of English, which was eighteen more than I had of Portuguese. With his help I got the tickets, then he firmly kept us from getting on the wrong bus.

He stayed with us then, to keep us straight, and flipped his lapel to show some sort of shield; I understood from the gesture that he was a plainclothesman. But he was not satisfied that we understood his status. He pulled down his lower eyelid to show that he was an "eye," then pantomimed in detail the operations of a pickpocket, plus other gestures adding up to a charade that he was assigned there to protect the crowd from pickpockets.

It was clear to us and I suppose it was equally clear to any pickpocket present. But he was a most successful goodwill ambassador for his country. He kept us from getting on several more buses, put us on one at last and spoke to the driver about us, then waved us out of sight.

The run by sea from Santos to Rio de Janeiro is only overnight. The
Ruys
stood into Rio Harbor before breakfast; Ticky and I got up early and watched it from the bridge by invitation of the Captain. The regulations of every ship state that passengers are not permitted on the bridge; I have yet to be in a ship in which the master felt it necessary to enforce the rule. This was the first time Captain Verwijs had invited us and it was a treasured privilege, for Rio has the most glorious harbor in the world.

Oh, I'll admit that it is not a scientific statement; I have not seen all the harbors in the world. But in the course of some years at sea as a youngster, plus other trips since, I have seen a lot of them and I have compared notes with others who have seen the important ones I have missed. I am not counting uninhabited fjords in Norway nor anything like that; I speak of seaports. I stick by the statement and strongly doubt if anyone can be found who has seen Rio who will vote for any other harbor.

Sydney Harbor has its backers for the honor, but, while Sydney's harbor is beautiful, it is not in the same league. The approach to Seattle through Puget Sound is lovely but the Seattle roadstead is not much to see. Golden Gate has one fine view; Rio has a hundred. As for New York Harbor, the approach up Bedloe Channel is essentially ugly, despite the famous skyline and the beloved Statue of Liberty.

Rio, lovely Rio, is the one harbor without fault or blemish, a sight for travelers which cannot disappoint, a case where the glorious reality exceeds the build-up.

Provided the weather is good, of course, since the inside of one rain storm looks much like the inside of any other. We were lucky indeed to draw a golden day. I hope you are equally lucky but don't expect it; Rio has heavy rainfall right through the year.

I do not understand the geology of Rio. The bay looks like a flooded river valley among mountains, but no major stream runs into it; the principal drainage of the back country parallels the coast line behind a row of mountains and discharges a couple of hundred miles away. The land must be slowly sinking into the sea here to produce this wonderfully complicated shore line, but what accounts for the curious conoidal mountains? Are they the cores of volcanoes laid bare by eons of erosion?

If I could tuck in a souvenir picture folder at this point I would not attempt the silly task of describing Rio. On second thought I won't attempt it anyhow but will risk only brief comments. Can half a ton of blueprints and a dozen thick books of specifications convey the breath-taking beauty of a jet bomber in flight?

There are hills, mountains, inlets, points, bays, and beaches in such profusion that it cannot all be seen from any one point, even from the top of Corcovado. There is a great city spilled like gems into this three-dimensional primitive beauty. There is lush tropical jungle, rain forest, covering all but the city itself, the bay, and the hunching summits of rock.

The much-pictured Sugarloaf is only one of a dozen sugarloaf mountains here. The compass-scribed sweep of world-famous Copacabana has a dozen rivals, each unfairly overshadowed in fame by the misfortune of being too close to the one with the famous name.

I had known as everyone knows that Copacabana was backed solidly by tall buildings in a dazzling modern style designed for enjoyment of tropical climate, but I had not known that this free and generous architecture framed all the beaches and spread throughout the city. Rio looks as if it were fifty years into the future. By comparison all of our own cities look as antiquated as a rolltop desk.

The
Ruys
spent only one day in Rio, which left no time for leisurely poking around; we were forced to hire a car and a guide if we were to see as much as possible. We were not too lucky in the guide; he spoke French, Spanish, and Portuguese but only a half dozen words of English. He could point things out to us and tell us what they were but we missed the sophisticated and idiomatic discussions with which Herman enlivened Buenos Aires.

Our first impression was of overpowering, suffocating heat. If the car stopped for only a moment to let traffic change, we found ourselves panting, almost ready to pass out. We were there in their summer (late December). The records show that July averages eight degrees cooler with less than half as much rain, so July is the time of year that we plan to go back and do Rio properly. That means that we will never see Carnival in Rio, since Mardi Gras must fall either in February or the first week in March, which are even hotter than late December.

I hate to give up forever the prospect of Carnival in Rio, but I can't be gay in a steam bath. They say that Mardi Gras in Montevideo is just as much fun and the weather is ten degrees cooler. Or perhaps the trick is to roister in the streets all night and sleep all day in an air-cooled hotel room. Hmm-

Presently our guide got us out of downtown and we began to perk up. Rio is even better equipped with parks and gardens than is Buenos Aires, and tropical rain forest growing conditions make it inadvisable to poke a walking cane into the dirt-it might sprout. After a long and confusing tour of parks and plazas and public buildings we started out along the beaches, where it was so cool that it was just pleasantly warm. The beaches of Rio are so long and so wide (most of them) and so numerous that they aren't very crowded, not so much so as Laguna Beach and nothing like the solid mass of pop bottles, chewing gum, and sweaty bodies that hides the sand at Coney Island. But Australians would find the surf a little on the nice-old-lady side since the enclosed bay keeps the rollers from having room to work up much muscle.

But the sand and sea are just a sidewalk away from the hotels. The wiggly-patterned sidewalks, so conspicuous in postcards, are not limited to the Copacabana; the other beaches have them, too, and so does downtown Rio. We saw them in Santos as well. This pleasant, useless custom gives dull stretches of concrete a holiday air; I would like to meet the light-hearted gent who started it.

I noticed just one Bikini suit and only a few bare-midriff models. South Americans are a bit conservative about displaying female hide.

After the beaches we started up the Corcovado. This mountain is twice as high as Sugarloaf and is the site of the Cristo Redentor statue. We had time for one viewpoint or the other, but not both. I wanted to ride the famous cableway to the top of Sugarloaf, but Ticky gets a bit dizzy on step ladders and grew downright mutinous at the prospect of being locked in a cage and then being swung spiderlike high in the air on a string.