Psychologists as well as mere world roustabouts will probably admit that the more nearly penniless a man is the more ready is he to “take a chance.” His condition cannot be worse, and it may suddenly become much better. A vagabond evidently is subject to the same laws as more respectable members of society. At any rate, with only a few milreis left, I grew bold and instead of squeezing the last loaf of bread out of them, I squandered them for lottery tickets. On the following Saturday there was to be a “drawing extraordinary,” with the first prize nothing less than a hundred million reis! With that amount I might even buy a steamer for the trip home; besides, I had long wished to know how it feels to be a multimillionaire. Even in real money and at normal exchange a hundred million reis reached the respectable sum of $325,000, and though Brazilian shin-plasters had dropped to half their pre-war value, though every “piece” of ticket must pay a commission to the vendor and must bear the ubiquitous “consumption” tax in the form of a stamp, though the government takes five per cent. of all winnings and loads down the lucky ticket-holder with so many other stamps, taxes, and grafts that it requires a lawyer to dig him from under them, there would still remain the price of the bridal suite on any steamer plying the east coast of South America.
A crowd of mainly collarless and rather vacant-faced men and women, who for many years had been chasing that will o’ the wisp called the winning number by buying a “piece” of ticket whenever possible, were already gathered in and about the frontless shop down behind the main post-office of Rio when I reached it. No small number of them were plainly so carried away by visions of what they were going to do with their winnings that they had played hooky and jeopardized their real source of income. Even I felt the subtle breath of hope, fed mainly on ardent desire, that swept through the sour-scented throng as the formalities began. Five little girls in spotless white, but of several shades of color—as if the officials in charge had sought to have every complexion of their clients represented—stood behind as many whirligigs fitted with the figures from 0 to 9. Every twenty seconds the girls gave these a simultaneous whirl, and when they stopped the number indicated by the five figures visible to the audience was called out by an official in the front row. Then another girl thrust a hand into a globe-shaped urn and, with averted face, drew out a wooden marble on which was engraved the conventional signs for a sum of money. That represented the amount of the prize for the number just whirled, and, like it, was called out and then written down three times on as many printed slips by dozens of men and boys seated around the walls of the room, some of them government officials, some representatives of the various lottery agencies.
There are at least fifty prizes at each drawing, ranging all the way from about the price of a ticket, the occasional winning of which keeps the disgruntled clients from abandoning the game, up to the capital prize. The deadly sameness of the process made the formality a soporific which, combined with the tropical heat and the fetid breath of the multitude, soon left me drowsily leaning against my compact neighbors. Time and again some insignificant prize was announced and set down by the scribes around the walls, until I began sleepily to wonder if the hundred million ball had inadvertently been left out of the urn. When the “cem contos de reis” was at last droned out by the wooden-voiced announcer in the same bored, monotonous tone with which he had so often mentioned the equivalent of a dollar, my thoughts were wool-gathering and it was not until a flutter went through the crowd that I recognized the significance of the announcement. I glanced at the ticket in my hand, then at the number on the whirligigs. Protector of the Penniless! They were the same—at least the first three numbers on them were! An African-pated blockhead of unusual height blotted the last two of those on the platform out of my field of vision. I shouldered him aside, treading under foot a few immediate by-standers. The surge of pleasure that was mounting my spine turned to angry disgust. The last two figures were not even near enough my own to give me the “approximation” prize. With my usual carelessness and stupidity I had bought the wrong ticket, and the glamor of being a multimillionaire faded to the real but familiar experience of being “dead broke” in a foreign land. My disappointment was evidently widespread, for the tightly packed throng began instantly to melt away like molasses from a broken jug, so that by the time I reached the street there were hundreds of other glum-faced individuals shuffling off in both directions. Only then did I realize that the cambio in which I had spent my last milreis was quite fittingly named “Sonho do Ouro”—the “Golden Dream.”
But at least, if one must be stranded, there were few finer spots than Rio to be stranded in. I returned to my sight-seeing duties on the street-cars, and, by dint of outwitting the German proprietor of my hotel that evening, managed to save enough of that day’s six thousand to run an appeal next morning in the two principal newspapers of the capital. In all frankness it should have been lachrymose, but I had long since learned that a bold and boastful manner, with a facetious tinge, is more likely to bring real results:
American Writer and Explorer, university graduate, widely traveled but still young, knowing fluently Spanish, French, and German, and understanding Portuguese and Italian, being marooned here by the present situation, will accept temporarily any reasonable employment, in Rio or the interior, of sufficient interest to pass the time.
With no available means of moving on, I had time for anything—except to be bored.
That very evening I came within an ace of getting employment without even waiting for replies to my printed appeal—or at least I came as near it as did the suitor who would have been accepted but for the slight matter of the answer being “no” instead of “yes.” The first Brazilian singer ever heard in grand opera in Brazil was announced to appear at the Municipal Theater, and with that splendid sense of propriety for which the Latin-American is noted he had chosen, or been chosen, to make his début before his admiring fellow-countrymen as the hero of Puccini’s “Girl of the Golden West.” The ticket speculators were out in full force when I scuffed my way down the mosaic-paved Avenida, but their machinations were naturally of little interest to a man who could not rub two coppers together. What had won my attention was rather a rumor that a group of stage cowboys was needed, and as my worst enemy could not have failed to admit that I came more nearly looking that part than anyone else wandering the streets of Rio, here was my opportunity to behold at close range the Brazilian misconception of the American wild west and its bloodthirsty denizens; besides, the two milreis paid to “supers” looked good to me. A veritable mob of loafers, rowdies, and gatunos surged back and forth in the narrow street behind the theater, sweeping down upon the fist-less old “master of supers” as often as he ventured outside the stage door. Several times he fled in dismay, but at length, when the opera was about to begin and the marshaling of cowboys was imperative, he ventured forth with the air of a man who is taking his life in his hands and began letting his selections be thrust upon him. I footballed my way through the crowd that was swinging to and fro with his every footstep and offered my services. My wide-brimmed felt hat alone should have won me a place. The harried functionary glanced at me, mumbled something to the effect that I did not in the least fit the part, and finally retreated within the stage door, followed by a motley collection of spindle-shanked Carioca street loafers who would have made an ideal background to a melodrama set in a tar-brushed Whitechapel.
Hardly was my last milreis gone when exchange improved and Brazilian money came halfway back to normal. The inevitable profiteer had already grasped his opportunity, scattered groups of populares took to mobbing the shops that had most flagrantly boosted food prices, and though even the courts did not function, because of the twelve-day holiday, the government was finally compelled to take advantage of the state of siege to punish a few of the most heartless offenders and publish a list of prices which could not be exceeded without loss of license and possible imprisonment. But the ways of the Brazilian are devious, and no great improvement was accomplished. The semi-military police, their rifles loaded with ball cartridges, patrolled not only those parts of town in which the various European nationalities might meet, but wherever disgruntled bands of the povo were likely to gather. It would probably not have been difficult to start a revolution in Brazil during those eventful days.
Meanwhile, not an answer did I get to my stirring call for employment, except an offer to become a combination door-keeper and office-boy, which I did not consider interesting enough even to pass the time. It was after three of a blazing afternoon that I rode out in my official capacity to Ipanema, where I had found behind a mass of rocks a little cove in which no bathing-suit was needed. There was a marvelous private beach, and a rock-walled dressing-room where only a stray negro wench might see me if she chose to look, but from which I could see the tips of the Corcovado and the “Sugar Loaf,” and, across the turquoise bay, silhouetted at this hour against the sun side of the sky, box-shaped Gavea, hazy blue with distance.
I had ridden halfway back to town when I looked up from reading one of Brazil’s epics and caught sight of the back of a head that looked familiar. The hat above it and the coat below I had certainly never seen before, and I could make out little of the face, but that little merely increased my conviction. By the time we had passed the tunnel I decided to make sure and, moving up close behind the man, I pronounced a name in a mild voice that would probably not have attracted attention if it were not the right one. The man turned around quickly, then thrust out a hand. As I had suspected, he was Raymond Linton, not only a fellow-countryman but a fellow-statesman, whom I had last seen in Buenos Aires.