Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
É escritora, tradutora, brasilianista e diretora de pesquisa na Rádio Novelo
histórias publicadas
Um conto de duas cidades
Last Tuesday morning found me standing at a bus stop on Rua Jardim Botânico, bleary-eyed and rumpled, but bound for São Paulo. All because I’ve been trying to be more impulsive lately. The Friday before, I was checking my email at PUC and saw that a dear professor of mine was giving two talks at USP the next week. And Antonio Candido was giving the opening talk at the Sérgio Buarque de Holanda conference! I did a bit of agonizing and deliberating and asking to be let out of classes and trying to find plane tickets for less than R$500 (complete failure on that front), but by the next day I had bus tickets to the Drizzly City. I yanked myself out of bed at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, the day of the conference, and made my way to Rodoviária Novo Rio. By midafternoon I was in another world.
Back to school
Maybe not in terms of workload, or reading difficulty, or even the fact that all my classes are in Portuguese. PUC is hard because it feels like high school. I know that it’s only been two years, but I’d completely forgotten what it was like to be in a classroom and feel that nobody wanted to be there. “You have the right to miss up to 25% of the classes,” one history professor explained wearily as students texted in the back of the room. “If you copy from Wikipedia on your midterm, we will find out,” said another. At one point during a Brazilian literature course, the professor was resolutely talking over at least 3 different whispered conversations; in a 4-person history seminar, the benevolent old professor actually had to shush 50% of the class.
I-Juca-Pirama
It was supposed to be a nature walk. That’s all I’ll say.
We met in front of the bondinho station at 8 a.m., the city still a bit shrouded in fog. We were the first group to go on a nature walk organized by the study abroad program – the guinea pigs, as it turned out. Everyone was rather sanguine about it, expecting some sort of a stroll and maybe a bit of scrambling over rocks. I very nearly wore jeans and Converse, but at the last minute sacrificed my sartorial dignity and laced up the massive blue sneakers I only wear when there is Exercise to Be Done.
Viking on the lagoa
I have now rejected or been rejected by most forms of organized exercise. We’ve already ruled out capoeira, for one thing. There’s running, of course, but I am of the opinion that everyone with the possible exception of Usain Bolt looks silly when they jog. Gyms, meanwhile, are full of scary people who wait impatiently for you to finish on the elliptical machine. Football, either futebol or American football, is a recipe for me getting a head injury. (I attempted to head a soccer ball exactly once in my life, when I was 12. It didn’t go well.) My hand-eye coordination is so abysmal that it rules out basketball and Ping-Pong at one go. I don’t have the patience for yoga, and I can’t even ice skate.
Swearing allegiance to the Rei
My fate as a Brazilianist is currently hanging in the balance. More accurately, it rests in the white-clad, superstitious hands of Roberto Carlos. The first time I heard the name Roberto Carlos, I had to look it up for a translation – a short, surreal piece by Marina Colasanti, which made an impression on my creative writing class. That’s a lie, actually; I’d heard of Roberto Carlos first a semester earlier, when I saw the film Pixote. But the reference was glancing, in any case. I gleaned that he was a prolific pop singer, looked up a few videos, winced, and got back to translating.
Tudo bem? Tudo bom. Você? Tudo ótimo.
Here’s something for the Brazilians in the peanut gallery to ponder. This has been bothering me for quite some time. Do you realize exactly what you are affirming when you say that tudo está bem? Tudo is a big word to be throwing around every time you greet someone. Tudo. Everything. Every last thing, from the weather to the state of international relations to your grandmother’s dog. Tudo, in the history of the world, has literally never been bem, bom, or ótimo. Not even close. At the very least being able to say “tudo bom” smacks of provincialism, or a serious lack of introspection. Really? Tudo?
chicken-hearted
Midnight on a frigid Tuesday, sitting at Garota da Gávea, nursing a chopp and slowly expanding my colloquial Portuguese/Northeastern slang repertoire. (Newest acquisition – when you’re not up for doing something, you’re sem saco. And, yes, that pretty much means what you think it means. Also, apparently just yelling “égua!” at people is a thing?) It’s a bone-chilling night by carioca standards, and someone discovers that our breath is even starting to fog up. General delight and novelty.
Como torcer
On Saturday, I got my stripes. “Perder faz parte,” my football godfather said with a worried look as we bid each other goodbye before the Botafogo-Fluminense game. “Losing’s part of it.” Pump-up talk: you’re doing it wrong. But I was prepared for wailing and gnashing of teeth – perhaps readier to grovel than to exult. As Nelson Rodrigues famously put it: "The Botafogo fan buys his ticket like someone obtaining the sacred, inalienable right to suffer". Consider my ticket purchased.
Real Gabinete Portugês de Leitura (mas não de livros pessoais)
Just look at it. Why in the hell did it take me so goddamn long to visit this place? I swear I’d written down “Real Gabinete Português de Leitura” on some notepad with a list of things to do in Rio, but it must’ve gotten lost in the predeparture shuffle. Anyway, today, finally, I cruised up to Centro to see the RGPL for myself. It was either that or the Museu de Arte Moderna, but the RGPL won out after I dawdled long enough in Jardim Botânico that there was no time to give the museum a proper visit.
São João Batista
Jesus, you must be the only person who arrives in Rio and goes straight to the cemetery. [email from a carioca] Paying my respects to Carmen, that’s all. In 1955, her funeral procession stopped Rio cold as 500,000 people wended their way through the streets to the Cemitério São João Batista in Botafogo. Things were slightly less crowded today.
