Either/Or.

It’s a risky business, being a foreigner and presuming to comment on your host country. Not only is there the danger that any Brazilians I know will read this and exact grim reprisals (I’m a coward) – but also, and perhaps more importantly, who am I to pass judgement on the gigantic, complex world outside the window? Can I really pretend that I understand how it all fits together, if it fits at all – the Skol trucks passing in the sunlight, the crowds at the intersection, the helicopters buzzing towards Avenida Paulista and, beyond that, the interstates curving towards the horizon, the miles of beaches, the samba rising out of tin shacks to the stars, the great brown god of the Amazon, the high sierra? Then, of course, there's the fact that anything I say will seem like my definitive pronouncement, condemning or condoning everything, undermining the alternative perspectives which constantly suggest themselves, overlooking the myriad currents of influence and idea which comprise the mad and glorious whole. Indeed any single pronouncement is inherently unsuited to Brazil, since Brazil, I’ve come to realise, is ineffably plural and, not only plural, but specifically dual: it is a country defined by the contrast between extreme opposites, from sublime to ridiculous, rich to poor, beauty and horror. Accepting and embracing these contrasts is the secret to getting on with the place – otherwise it will drive you up the fucking wall.

The best analogy I can come up with to describe how it feels is that it’s like having an exciting new girlfriend who keeps punching you in the face and then hugging you.

Now, to illustrate my point, I could provide you with loads of examples – but one will suffice. It was such a ridiculous experience, yet it had such a happy outcome that it encapsulates perfectly this whole duality business and epitomises the essence of Brazil as I know it.

So, it was my birthday recently, and we decided to go out to a posh restaurant. I was a bit depressed and edgy when we got there, as I don’t like birthdays in general and I especially dislike my own birthday – all those people staring at you, touching you, humping your legs: horrible. Anyway, the restaurant soon assuaged my self-pity and delirium tremens because it was utterly beautiful, the food was excellent and the atmosphere, despite being a bit swanky, was really good. There was even a giant fig tree in the room. Here’s a picture of it: 

Everything continued swimmingly right through the starter, main course and saturnine aftermath, right up until it came time to pay. That was when I demurely wafted our debit card towards the waiter, who took it, studied it and then, with evident regret at the anguish-bomb he was about to detonate in my chest, informed me that they didn’t accept this type of card. The supreme irony of this moment was that I had very nearly brought our credit card out with me that night, thinking to be on the safe side in this strange and posh new land, but decided against it because our debit card had never given us any problems before then.

But this was no time for irony, people. It was a time for action, specifically the action of finding a cash machine. So, I stood up, kissed my wife farewell (mentioning something about being ‘some time’) and disappeared into the night.

It all seemed pretty simple as I set out: I would follow the waiter’s directions to the nearest cash point for our particular bank, withdraw the needful and return to a hero’s welcome. However, concealed within the phrase ‘our particular bank’ is the maggot in the apple and the pooh-pooh in the sandpit. The problem is that, on account of this being Brazil, the banks have not elected to provide cash points which communicate with the cards of any other banks. Living somewhere sane, you find this strange. Why don’t the banks just get together, agree on a standard operating system (the ones in the UK run off Windows XP, for example) and rake in the profits that will follow from more people being able to withdraw more money, spend more money and get into more debt? No, no, no! SILLY RABBIT. That would be logical, efficient and profitable which, as we all know, are the three deadly sins of modern banking.  

With it being the case that I had to find not just any cash point, but a cash point for our particular bank, my expedition (and make no mistake, it was an expedition) first of all took me past one, two, three, four other banks which in any other country I could have used to access my money. I didn’t mind, though. I had confidence in the waiter. I knew that soon enough I would come to the right bank, the promised land, the sleepless beacon of hope where our money slept and dreamt little piles of interest during the night. Except I never found it. The directions I had didn’t seem to be right, or I had misunderstood them, because after ten minutes’ walk there still wasn’t an Itau (this being the name of our bank) in sight. However, there was a petrol station. Perhaps I was saved! Petrol stations here often have a 24Horas cash machine inside, these being the only exception to the non-cooperation policy of the banks which provide cross-platform coverage for most cards. Except, when I went in, there wasn’t one there. Bugger.

I stopped and pondered what to do. The night was hot, I was dressed mostly in Spandex and chafing was becoming a problem, so I decided to go back the way I came and ask for some directions. I stopped and asked a parking lot attendant where the nearest Itau was. He pointed me over the road. This, evidently, was the one I had missed. It was a weird, fancy Itau with gold doors. It was also locked. There was an employee on the steps. I asked him what was going on. He said the bank was shut. I considered kicking him in the face, but decided instead to ask where there was another Itau. He pointed down the road, in the opposite direction to the one I had originally gone, a direction which would take me over the crossroads near the restaurant and into a strange new world. I went in that direction. After another five minutes of walking, I saw the bank. Feeling excitement mount within me like soda bubbles, I moved to go inside.

As I was walking up the steps, another guy coming from the opposite direction joined me. We struggled with the card-reader by the door, eventually getting it to admit us and developing an unlikely, buddy-movie kind of bond in the process. I felt a surge of joy as the air-conditioned, electrically toasted air of the little ante-room with all the cash machines in it wafted over me. It smelt like victory. It wasn’t. As we moved inside, we both realised at more or less the same moment that there was something wrong with the cash machines. They all looked a little too dark. They were, in fact, completely dark. They were switched off, one of them even had a recharging light on it (have you ever, ever seen a cash machine recharging before?), while another had a curt notice informing us that the cash machines were switched off between the hours of 10pm and 8am. It was precisely 10pm. I went outside with this guy, asking him if he perhaps knew there was another Itau. He told me what I had hoped he wouldn’t, which is that they would all be the same, all closed for the night. He suggested I find a 24Horas, but he didn’t know where there was one. I felt the bond between us wither and realised we would never make that buddy movie. At the same time, I was conscious of my wife waiting for me, so I hurried on into the dark. In my desperation, I tried one, then another, and another cash point from all the foreign banks which, in my heart of hearts, I knew would reject me like all the women I’ve ever loved. None of them worked. Some of them laughed at me and spat deposit envelopes over my feet.

By this point I was feeling a little desperate and upset. I’m a repressed, bourgeois Englishman, after all: the prospect of not being able to pay the bill in an expensive restaurant fills me with a primal terror. I calmed my nerves, gathered my wits and levelled my head (and dabbed my wrists with a little restorative essence of lavender). Then I asked a cab driver near the restaurant if he knew where there was a 24Horas. He pointed back down the original road and I resisted the urge to weep and say, ‘PROMISE YOU’RE NOT BULLSHITTING.’ He carried on to explain that there was one at the petrol station. Of course, I already knew there wasn’t one at the petrol station, as I had been there already. But by this time I just wanted to go. Once again due to being English, I went in the direction he’d suggested, even though I knew he was wrong. I passed the many closed and inhospitable banks and went into the petrol station. As I had thought, no cash machine. I asked the counter guy where there was a 24Horas, and he said at the next petrol station, and pointed further up the road – so the taxi driver had been right. I mentally apologised to him and left in that direction. When I got to the second petrol station and went inside, I was delighted and terrified to see that there was indeed a 24Horas there. I was terrified because I could not quite bring myself to believe this would be the end of my nightmare. What if it was Out of Order? What if it didn’t have any money in it? With considerable trepidation, I approached and inserted my card (into her…No, no, this is not that kind of story).

The machine thought about it, emitted a whirring from deep within its innards and popped up the screen asking for my pin. I did as requested (by this point I would have bought it a fish supper and taken it dancing if it had asked me) and everything seemed to be going well. But then disaster struck: an alert popped up saying that, in the interests of security, my bank’s customers would only be permitted to withdraw R$100 (roughly £35) between the hours of 10 and 8. The bill for the meal was three times that. Desperate, thinking that some money was better than none, I agreed, pushed the relevant buttons, got my hundred. Ever hopeful, I put the card in again. Perhaps, I thought, the machine only mentioned this condition as a suggestion for how to behave, rather than a rule per se; perhaps customers would be allowed to withdraw R$100 three or four or as many times as they liked if they chose. But no. I was presented with an insulting red alert screen and my card was vomited back out at me. I went outside feeling very dishevelled. It was warm. My Spandex felt like fire. I could not go on. I called my wife, explained the situation and we agreed that I’d come back to the restaurant and offer myself as a sacrifice to the management.

I arrived back at the table ten minutes later, enraged, exhausted and limp as a dish cloth. I slumped into the chair which the waiter had rather unctuously pulled out for me. I was hot and wanted to take my jacket (Spandex) off. I closed my eyes and tried to think how we would negotiate the tricky subject of our inability to pay using my woeful Portuguese. My wife stroked my hand, possibly to judge how much meat they’d get out of me. A moment later there was a flash of light from behind me. I tried to ignore it, but the light got brighter, and still brighter. I turned to see what it could be and was presented with the vision of a small thermite explosion in a slice of cake approaching me, held aloft as high as possible to attract the attention of all the other diners by our beaming and, curse him, utterly lovely waiter. It was a birthday cake, you see, and there was also champagne and artesanal cachaça, the ubiquitous sugarcane liquor of Brazil, and two glasses, and everyone was smiling at me.

I was furious! How dare these people inundate me with kindness while I was trying to hate and blame them for the awful humiliation I was still anticipating. To my left, I could see my wife desperately trying not to laugh as I sat there fuming by the happy glow of the roman candle in the birthday cake. It was like being a toddler again, wanting to cry but knowing you had nothing to cry about and that crying would only make everyone laugh at you more. I knew that the proper response would have been to laugh and show gratitude, but knowing this was the proper thing to do made it impossible for me to do it. I glowered at my shoes, refusing to meet the eyes of the other diners sitting nearby, smiling encouragingly while I defied them through sheer force of will to say anything or start singing (there’s an extremely embarrassing birthday song used here in Brazil, which gets louder and louder as everyone, in the spirit of fun, joins in – if this had happened, I would have stabbed myself in the face). The waiters, who had all gathered nearby, possibly to add a barbershop quartet to the proceedings, shuffled around a bit, obviously wanting to help this strangely melancholic gringo, and concerned that they had offended me in some way. Very slowly, thanks to the tender (or tenderising?) ministrations of my wife and some of the cachaça, I calmed down.

When the other diners had returned to their meals and my pulse had returned to normal, I caught the eye of the maître-d’ for our section of the restaurant and brokenly, feebly, explained our situation. I portrayed my wife and I as victims of fate, beaten down by the cruel machinations of an indifferent cosmos. We were like him, I claimed: children of the flood cast out of the garden to wander the wilderness. We needed to band together now to survive these terrible times. It was our only hope. I continued in this vein for some five to ten minutes, long after the maître-d’ had, with the utmost courtesy and, more importantly, gentleness, explained that it was quite alright, sir, these things happen all the time, and he would be only too happy to send the bill to our home for payment in due course. This was the final nail in the coffin of my animosity. When the information finally sank in, I flopped back into my chair and realised that Brazil had done it once again: given me every reason to dislike the place and then one spectacular, transcendent reason to love it.

CODA

What I’m trying to say is that, however much this country frustrates you (and it does, a lot), the incredible generosity of spirit which you encounter not only in posh restaurants but also on street corners, in shops and entirely at random, always brings you round. We don’t have it in Europe anymore – instead we have call centres and customer collection points and personal injury lawsuits, which is a pity. 

Cats and Flowers.

There is a florist the next road over. A Chinese family owns the shop and they all work there from time to time, but it’s most often the daughter you see. She’s about forty-five, extremely quiet and has that economy of gesture which shy people have. I go in there every Friday to buy a red rose for my wife. Yes, yes, very romantic. Of course, it sounds a lot less romantic when you realise that the giving of this rose commemorates the day on which I slaughtered her entire family. (It doesn’t really. Sorry about that.) Going to the florist is always a pleasure. The lady is so shy you half-suspect she’s having some complicated conversation with the flowers which you can’t quite hear, yet which you absorb through the moist green air. I also love the place because of the cats. There are always at least three of them there, although it’s not always easy to see them at first. You have to look. They might be on a shelf above the counter, snuggling up against the TV or stalking through the geraniums. Sometimes they’re curled up asleep on a spare chair or peeking out through the pale fingers of orchids. Sometimes they’re just picking delicately away at a bowl of biscuit. They’re all different types, long and short hair, snow white and tabby, and sometimes there are kittens. My favourite time to visit is when it’s not raining (which is not that often during the São Paulo summer), because that’s when the lady puts a spare cardboard box out on the pavement which the tabby loves to sleep in. If it’s sunny, he’ll doze there all day. If it’s cloudy, the box might be empty or he might be there in one of the little jumpers which the lady knits. Whenever he is there, passersby step quietly around him, because we all sense there’s something inviolable about a sleeping cat. I do occasionally try and give him a stroke when I’m walking out of there with my rose. He suffers the attention with regal hauteur until I wander off, feeling a little bit sad that I ever have to leave that quiet place given over entirely to cats and flowers and the unmarked passage of untroubled time.

This is why I feel like shit, can't breathe, smell, taste, shake off my head-ache, or be bothered to do anything beyond the bare minimum.

(Direct google translation from Folha de São Paulo, 12.09.10: http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/797654-sao-paulo-entra-em-estado-de-alerta-devido-a-baixa-umidade-do-ar.shtml)

São Paulo goes on alert due to low air humidity 

The city of São Paulo is on alert due to the low relative humidity. At 16:25 on Sunday, the CGE (Center Emergency Management) of the prefecture reported moisture contents between 15 and 20%. Earlier this afternoon, the Municipal Civil Defense had already decreed a state of attention in the state capital. 

Guarulhos airport has one of the worst hit, with 30º C and relative humidity of 15.5%. 

Also according to the CGE, Monday (13th Sep) will be as dry and sunny as this Sunday. The maximum should reach 33º C and relative humidity will drop, once again, to within 15%. 

The situation should only improve from the end of Tuesday (14th Sep) and fourth place (15th Sep), when a cold front will pass by the coast of São Paulo, increasing the relative humidity. The forecast is for isolated showers. 

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), indices of relative humidity below 30% classify as a state of attention, 20% to 12%, a state of alertness, and below 12% a state of alert. The main effects of low moisture are dry throat and eyes and breathing problems. 

The agency also warns that the low humidity increases the chances of fire in grasslands and forests and asks people not to put fire in vacant lots and dry vegetation. 

The recommendation of the Civil Defense is that people avoid outdoor activities and exposure to the sun between 10h and 17h and do not practice exercises between 11h and 15h. We recommend eating plenty of fluids to not have problems of dehydration.

I have never wanted it to rain so much.

Termite Season.

It’s termite season again. Termites only seem to come out at night here in São Paulo, like disappointing vampires. But what they lose in fright potential, they make up for in volume. Each night a few thousand of them congregate around every outdoor electric light in a city which is a huge constellated field of electric lights, millions upon millions of them. Once they’ve found their particular spot – the light of their life, so to speak – they don’t do very much apart from dive bomb each other and whirl around the nucleus of light in great flickering, slow-mo flurries. In the morning their wings form glistening drifts of translucent lace which, if wings were diamonds, would create ten million millionaires overnight. But, this not being the case, we simply fetch the dust-pan and brush each morning and start sweeping them up from where they’ve heaped against the skirting board and under the table, chasing after the skittering whorls and eddies, taking the pan-full of fallen gems out to the kitchen and shaking them into the bin. 

InSecurity, Part I.

São Paulo is the first city in the world to fulfil Bill Hicks’ dystopian vision of what will happen to us if we live with ‘the eyes of fear’ rather than ‘the eyes of love’. That’s right, folks: the security presence is so strong here that pizzas are indeed delivered through our mailboxes. Most apartments round here have one: a delivery slot built into the entrance gate. Here’s ours:

The thinking here is that the pizza delivery guy can hand you his wares and you can hand over your money without ever having to feel at risk of viewing him as another human being. No, he’s socially inferior and therefore a potential criminal and we must treat him as such. Who knows, his poverty may even be contagious. Unfortunately no one's found a way of entirely eliminating human contact from the process – at least, not yet.

It’s disgusting, of course. But it’s hard not to let yourself get sucked into the fear bubble which pervades everything you do here. To get an idea of how deep these paranoiac delusions go, all you need to do is take a walk around a wealthy enclave like Pinheiros or Jardins. As you do, you can carry out a sort of imaginative archaeological dig in which you use your surroundings to peel back the layers of recently accreted history and see for yourself how the city used to be and how it has changed.

Along those winding tree-lined streets, where the palpable hush is the sound of money whispering to itself, you’ll see elegant townhouses built during the fifties and sixties. At the time of their construction, all these houses made some concession to security whether by high walls or spiked wrought-iron fences or spy holes in the front door. But the designers seem to have been too idealistic, too optimistic in their estimation of their city’s future because, over time, these precautions have evidently been deemed inadequate. Now additional layers of security have been improvised over the top of them: the wrought iron fence today has three filaments of electrified fence running across its top, the wall has coils of razor wire all across it, and the front door has an electrically-controlled gate to vet all entrants. I would provide you with a photo of this, but if I tried to take one, I’d probably get tasered.

Then there are the hastily constructed plastic and breeze-block shelters which have been plonked down on the streets themselves. Every street in wealthy areas like Jardins or Interlagos has one, and each is inhabited by a 24-hour security detail whose vigilance is subsidised by each household on the street. It’s the same story in Pinheiros, where we live, only with apartment buildings: each one has a man sat in a little cabin all day and all night, watching over a row of security cameras, buzzing in residents and maids and workmen and pizzas. Here, again, is ours.

It’s only a single gate, because our place isn’t that fancy. Lots of blocks have got two sets of gates, each one of which you are buzzed through because no one is allowed their own key to this gate, presumably to prevent an enterprising mugger taking it off you and then entering the property under false pretences.

Then there are the car ports; you can just about see ours to the left of the picture. These generally consist of a double set of automatic gates with a twenty foot cordon between them, like the bailey of a medieval castle. I guess the thinking here is that, if you’re an enterprising car jacker, you’re likely to get penned in between the first and second gates, whereupon the security guards will pour hot oil on you. Of course, when I first got here, all it did was remind me of Indiana Jones, and every time a gate closed I had the urge to wait until the last possible moment and then roll under, rescuing my fedora with a desperate grab. I don’t know what would have happened to me then. Severe beating? Taser? Sexual assault? Nothing good, anyway.

The high levels of car paranoia are justified, however. Cars are extraordinarily expensive here and they hardly depreciate in value over long periods of time. There is consequently a huge car-theft industry, with cars being taken from rich areas into parts of town where the police can’t even travel, and then smuggled out of the country via loose border control areas such as Foz do Iguaçu. As a result, one of the things you learn never to do here is sit in a stationary vehicle. We have a friend who broke this rule along with her boyfriend, and was car-jacked (and hit in the face with a pistol) as they were sitting directly outside her apartment. Scary.

Another friend was car-jacked and taken at gunpoint on a trip round the banks to empty her accounts. The guy in the front seat sounds like a character from a Coen brothers' movie. He seemed cheerfully amoral and insisted on giving this woman helpful tips during the course of the journey. ‘Why were you parked by the side of the road, talking on your phone? That was silly. You should be more careful, you know. You could get hurt.’

Of course, drivers still have to stop when the traffic stops. But people have developed a defensive strategy here as well. What they’ll do, many of them, is leave a wide gap between themselves and the car in front of them whenever they stop. That way, if they feel threatened, they can make a quick get-away. Or, more realistically, drive back and forth until the car-jacker gets really tired and wanders off, complaining that it's just not fair. 

All this fear made our recent road trip pretty hair-raising. It was fine once we made it out of the city. Unfortunately, we had the loan of a sat nav (shat-nav) which refused to let this happen. It kept directing us down ever narrowing roads, into suspiciously empty, scary looking areas where small children and old women looked at us with hungry, knowing expressions. We couldn’t stop to check what the fuck was wrong with the bloody GPS at this juncture, despite being hopelessly lost, because stopping would have made us vulnerable. Eventually, when we found ourselves in a car park which the sat nav was insisting to be the Ayrton Senna Highway, we switched the damn thing off and just drove and screamed (and screamed and drove) until we found ourselves back on a main road. Ah, Brazil.