The same ancient, dirty, German-made cars that had bounced me into Caxambú bounced me out again in the afternoon, and all the rest of the day I bumped along at the tail end of a way-freight that seemed constantly on the point of falling to pieces as it thundered in and out of the hills on a warped and unrepaired old track. To the north the earth lay piled high into the heavens, for Minas has some real mountains. Swift tropical darkness fell, and we went banging on into the night, our old wood-burner leaving a trail of fireworks behind us that gave it the suggestion of some fire-spitting dragon of medieval legend, and yanking us at last into Cruceiro. Next morning I took the direct line from São Paulo to Rio, and it was pleasant indeed to ride once more on a broad-gauge, roomy, coal-burning train. Rain had given the country an aspect quite different from that of two months before, but nothing could disguise the lesser industry and progress toward civilization in the State of Rio de Janeiro than in that of São Paulo. Rezende, the first town over the boundary, proved to be a village posing as a city, a ragged, barefoot place, overrun with dust and squalor, with ambitionless loafers and negro good-for-nothings. Professionally, too, it was a shock; far from finding it worthy of a Kinetophone performance, we could not have given a dog-fight there to advantage.
The slightly fertile country began at length to tip downward and we descended through long tunnels between vast opening vistas cut off at some distance by a great blanket of fog coming up from the sea. At Belem there was already an atmosphere of Rio, still some thirty miles away, with frequent towns and suburban service from there on, though we halted only at Cascadura and drew up at length in the familiar scent and hubbub of the capital. Carregadores snatched my belongings without so much as “by your leave” and bundled me into a taxi—which reminds me that inside my unlocked valise, that had been tossed about and left lying in all manner of places since leaving Campinas, there were a million and a half reis of our earnings in Brazilian bills. One’s possessions are so much safer under such circumstances in South America than in the United States that what would seem criminal carelessness in the north becomes a common habit.
It was like getting home again to hear the newsboys bawling “A Rua!” “A Noite!” “Ultimas Noticias!” in the guttural throat-growl peculiar to Rio, to be accosted by the same old lottery-ticket vendors, the same street-car conductors, to see the same “women of the life” strolling the Avenida and riding invitingly back and forth on the first section of the “Botanical Garden Line.” There was almost a monotony of familiar faces, so accustomed had I been for years to always seeing new and strange ones. The “Sugar Loaf,” hump-shouldered Corcovado, topsail Gavea, lofty Tijuca, and all the rest still looked serenely down upon the human ants’ nests at their feet with the immutability of nature’s masterpieces.
Yet Rio was different than I had first known it. Had I left it for good and all when I had expected, I should have had a better impression, but a false one; I should have known only the winter Rio, which is magnificent and has little in common with Rio of the summer-time. Statisticians assure us that, thanks to the trade winds and its greater proximity to the ocean, Brazil’s metropolis falls several degrees short of Buenos Aires in the most infernal months of the year, but it is doubtful whether anyone except the thermometer recognizes the advantage. In late November it lay sweltering under a lead-heavy blanket of heat that drenched one at the slightest exertion, mental, moral, or physical. No sooner did one put on a collar than it melted about the neck—and not only is a fresh white collar indispensable in Rio, but they cost sixty cents each and twelve cents a washing, and rarely outlive more than four journeys to the beat-’em-on-a-rock style of Brazilian laundries.
There was less evidence, however, than I expected of the rioting that had marked the change of administration a few days before,—a few broken windows between the office of O Paiz, chief journalistic supporter of “Dudú,” and our first Brazilian playhouse, a bullet-mark in a stone or brick wall here and there to recall the battling hordes that had surged up and down the Avenida. The trouble had started on the eve of the inauguration of the man from Itajubá. Among “Dudú’s” Machiavellian bag of tricks was a company of government bouncers and strong-arm men under command of a ruffian known as Lieutenant Pulcherio. On Saturday night, in the last hours of the detested régime, the lieutenant and his fellow-officers were discussing their glorious past over a quiet whiskey-and-soda in the Hotel Avenida bar when a group of the populares they had so long oppressed stopped to mention what they thought of them. The political protegees replied to this vile affront to their noble caste by firing on and attacking with swords the mainly weaponless populares, and among other gallant deeds worthy of their past killed a negro newsboy of twelve. The povo, however, for once vulgarly resisted their noble superiors by laying hands on bricks and cobblestones and weltering back and forth across the Largo da Carioca and the Avenida, managing in the process to prepare the beloved Lieutenant Pulcherio for funeral.
Early the next morning the opposition newspapers were already pouring out their pent-up spleen on the head of the outgoing president, resurrecting censored articles and deluging the disappearing administration with vituperation. The names they called the “odious gaucho” were scarcely fit to print; those applied to “Dudú” sometimes had the genius of intense exasperation. There were columns of such gentle remarks as:
The four years now terminating mark the blackest, the most nefast page in our history, the most painful calamity with which Providence has flagellated us since Brazil was Brazil. During the administration of the analphabetic sergeant who got possession of the chief power by knavery and the imposition of the barracks, justice was disrespected and reviled, immorality created rights of citizenship, robbery and corruption ruled unrestrained. There has not been a day since the inauguration of this unpleasant mediocrity, degenerate nephew of our great Deodoro, that the President of the Republic and his auxiliaries did not go back on their plighted word, in which there was not registered a new political infamy, in which we did not hear of a new crime or a new immorality. Praise God, this terrible four years of darkness is ended!
The inauguration took place in the early afternoon of Sunday, the fifteenth of November, anniversary of the day on which the republic was declared. In Brazil this ceremony is as simple as the swearing in of a juror. The incoming president takes the oath privately, signs his name, bids farewell to his predecessor, and the thing is done. On this occasion things moved even more swiftly. The instant the other had taken his place, “Dudú” sprang into an automobile, even forgetting in his haste to embrace the new president, according to time-honored Brazilian custom—of thirty years’ standing—and fled to the protection of Petropolis and his youthful consort. He had good precedent for his eagerness; other retiring presidents of Brazil have done likewise. When Campos Salles left the presidency in 1902 he was stoned by the populace, yet all Brazilians agree that he was by no means as corrupt or poor a president as the “unpleasant mediocrity” who was just then fleeing.
It quickly began to be apparent, however, that perhaps “these terrible four years of darkness” were not entirely ended. The new president was considered an honest and, within Brazilian limits, a democratic man, but he was evidently not quite strong enough to throw off the domination of the national boss, the “odious gaucho” senator from Rio Grande do Sul. It was partly due to this feeling of disappointment, partly to the increased wrath caused by publication of censored articles left over from “Dudú’s” reign, reciting unbelievable official thievery and corruption, and to the release of great bands of political prisoners from dungeons in the islands of the bay, where they had been sent without trial or even accusation, that serious riots again broke out soon after my return to the capital. This time the fuss was started by students from the schools of medicine, law, and the like, who decided to “bury” the ex-president. Something like burning in effigy, this was considered a great insult not only to the former executive in person but to the army which he, as a field marshal, represented. The army general in command of the police brigade of the federal district went out to stop the outrage. The students were already parading the streets with a gaudily gilded “coffin” and using the offensive nicknames of “Dudú” and “Rainha Mãe,” when the brigade was set in motion. Before it could accomplish its purpose, orders came from the newly appointed minister of justice to let the students go on with their brincadeira (child’s play), whereupon the general in command rode back to the ministry and resigned—knowing he was to be dismissed next day anyway. Meanwhile the students had been joined by an immense mob of populares, mainly barefooted out-of-works and men of the porter, street-sweeper and hawker type, who marched back and forth through the business section and at length broke out in attacks on “Dudú” sympathizers or beneficiaries, which resulted in several deaths. When night fell a regiment of cavalry, another of infantry, and all the police of the federal district were protecting the palace of Cattete and that of Gaunabara, in which the new president had chosen to make his home. Nictheroy, across the bay, also was seething; even São Paulo threatened to join the revolt, to avenge the insult of having been offered the most unimportant post in the cabinet, with oily words about being the “agricultural state par excellence.” But the new government, like the old, had too firm an ally in the army for a revolution, with no other support than the weaponless populares, to be successful. Gradually the rioting died away, though by no means the criticism of the new administration, and Brazil settled down to another four years not unlike those that had just been so fittingly brought to a close, but which were to be marked a few months later by the assassination of the “odious gaucho.”
Though they were empty, I did not feel like again taking our old rooms out on the Praia do Flamengo. They seemed hot and stuffy; the very waters of the bay felt tepid; even the president’s palace of Cattete next door had been abandoned in favor of the newer and more sumptuous one of Guanabara. I hunted Leme and Copacabana over in vain for quarters overlooking one of those peerless beaches where the air from the open ocean might make life endurable, but the houses along the shore belong to the well-to-do, who do not have to take roomers even in “brutal hard times.” During my search I accidentally dropped into the Cinema Copacabana, a pleasant little place in one of the most prosperous sections of town. The slow-witted Portuguese who announced himself the owner and manager soon proved to be merely the hen-pecked consort of the real director. But the place promised well, if properly managed, and I finally signed it for five days—and fled to Petropolis for Thanksgiving.