Chasing Bohemia by Carmen Michael

Author:Carmen Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, TRV000000, TRV024020
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2007-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

–10–

Gypsy Eyes

She had eyes like a gypsy, oblique and sly.

– MACHADO DE ASSIS, Dom Casmurro

December arrived in Rio like a train coming to the end of the line. It ground to an exhausted halt and the passengers piled off, gasping with relief. The sun turned into a blazing white-hot ball, the palm trees drooped lazily, the streets were dotted yellow with the carcases of overripe mangoes fallen from the grand mangueira trees. Everybody stopped doing everything. Museums, post offices, receptions, and empty banks hummed to the sound of air conditioning, and shutters and blinds stayed jammed shut from morning to dusk. In the blinding heat of the midday sun, when even the streets seemed to desert themselves, the brown bodies of Rio de Janeiro crushed onto white sandy beaches or sought refuge in shady bars with frozen beer served in long, amber-coloured bottles. The rich disappeared to their beach houses in Buzios, tourists arrived in droves, and the heat closed in around us, exploding off every pavement, bouncing from windscreens, and seething from the car bonnets. Forty-degree averages appeared on the public digital temperature-clocks that lined the city, sales of fans and air conditioners went mad, and the petrol stations started running out of ice-cream. Everybody dropped five kilos overnight.

My Anglo-Saxon tolerances were ill-adapted for the climatic extremes of the Brazilian summer; I found it impossible, without sluicing the pavements with great quantities of my sweat, to do anything except lie very still in the hammock between eleven and four. I went to the beach early morning and took long siestas in the afternoon. Only at sunset, as the city breathed a collective sigh of relief, did I slink onto the streets to sip coconut water by the black-and-white mosaic boardwalks of Copacabana and Ipanema Beach, snack on chic European cuisine at the lake kiosks, or drink caipirinha at outdoor bars in Lapa.

It was like a teenage summer. My skin turned a rich, rosy brown from mornings on Ipanema Beach, my hair streaked an expensive Brazilian blonde, and I finally abandoned my lesbian jeans for the more appropriate Lapa uniform of bikini top, cotton hot-pants, and Haviana thongs. I was twenty-eight years old and I had never looked so good. I felt lazy, wonderful, and indolent. And not the slightest bit guilty. One fleeting thought of the overcrowded Jubilee Line between Neasden and central London was enough to induce a warm, fuzzy feeling of smug satisfaction deep inside my heart.

My family’s loaded calls to ask me when my visa was running out fell on deaf ears. ‘What are you doing there anyway?’ they would ask, appealing to the family’s puritan work ethic. I fended them off by telling them I was learning samba. ‘What the hell is samba?’ asked my father gruffly, finally weighing into the debate when my mother told him I would not be home for the fourth Christmas in a row. ‘Well, shouldn’t you be in a school or something at least?’ he asked, after I tried

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.