Nilo Peçanha, son of a former president of Brazil, had been elected president of the State of Rio de Janeiro for the term to begin with the new year; but, as so often happens in South America, the opposition party still in power was determined to give the office to their own defeated candidate. This was one Lieutenant Sodré, an army man of similar caliber to the celebrated “Dudu” and having the same backing. With the aid of the outgoing state president he had “acquired” arms and ammunition from the federal stores in Nictheroy and was preparing to take office by force, having picked up large numbers of Carioca crooks and gunmen and scattered them among the various cities of the state to stifle opposition. Peçanha, on the other hand, had applied to the Supreme Court for a habeas corpus, giving him the office that was being stolen from him, and after considerable dodging and hesitation the national president had decided to lend federal armed force to uphold the Supreme Court decision in favor of Peçanha.
Mere orders from the federal government mean little in the life of a Brazilian state, however, and Nictheroy was seething on the brink of anarchy when we landed. Sodré, it seemed, had had himself sworn in as president by the state assembly early that morning and had sent word to that effect to the president of Brazil. He could not gain admission to the state presidential palace, but with the support of the state police and the outgoing authorities he did take over the presidential offices. Then suddenly, some three hours later, a cry of “Viva Peçanha!” had resounded through the police barracks, the policemen had taken it up and, headed by two sergeants, threatened to kill the officers unless they joined in also, and the entire state police force on which the rebel had depended swung over to the other side, looted the stolen ammunition, and took to rushing about town shouting and firing in the air.
This was the condition in which we found the state capital. The firemen had joined the police, and auto-trucks crammed full of excited shouting negroes and half-negroes in uniform were rushing about town at top speed, all but overturning at every corner. The lower classes, having likewise filled themselves with cheap cachaza, had joined the general uproar of noise, irresponsibility, and probable violence, and the streets were swarming with populares shouting “Viva Peçanha!” “Viva o Salvador do Povo!” and similar nonsense in maudlin drunken voices, while Sodré sent hurriedly to the national president demanding “guarantees” for his personal safety.
Residence in South America, however, teaches one that revolutions are by no means so dangerous on the spot as they are in the armchairs of those who are reading about them afar off, and we serenely continued our preparations for the evening performance. Desultory shooting, street brawls, and the surging of masses of drunken populares continued throughout the day and for several days thereafter, while the shouting, shooting truckloads of police and firemen continued dizzily to round corners, each time more nearly resembling the drunken brute into which the tropical languor of negro militarism is apt to degenerate in times of crisis or popular excitement. But it was, on the whole, a good-natured rather than a blood-thirsting brute, and though what Brazil calls “persons of most responsibility” kept out of sight, we common mortals, including not a few women, walked about town attending to our business as usual. Once a ragged, drunken mulatto popular came into the leitería in which I was quenching my thirst with a glass of ice-cold milk, walked bellowing and reeling past me and two men at another table up to a little messenger-boy of fourteen, and ordered him to shout “Viva Peçanha!” The proprietor dared not protest, for the police were all drunk and the povo more than likely to take the ragamuffin’s part; but when the latter finally staggered out again the shopkeeper raised his hands to heaven and demanded to know why the fellow had picked on the boy and not, for instance, pointing at me, on “o senhor over there.”
The “Cinema Eden” was right on the waterfront, though the only paradise in sight was the view of Rio piled up into massive banks of white clouds across the emerald bay and the marvelous sunset and steel-blue dusk which spread over its unique, nature-made sky-line as we opened our doors. The near-revolution was still surging through the streets, though a few sober soldiers of the regiment of federal troops that had been landed were riding about town in street-cars, with ball-loaded muskets ready for action. Peçanha had been sworn in that afternoon, surrounded by a swarm of other perspiring politicians in wintry frock-coats and silk hats, but the national president had concluded to avoid any responsibility in the matter by calling a special session of congress to decide between the rival candidates, instead of carrying out the decision of the Supreme Court—“which,” perorated Ruy Barboso, “is what our constitution orders and what is practiced in the United States,” two equally convincing final arguments. Though we were the only theater open the house was not crowded. “Persons of most responsibility” preferred to remain at home, and the populares were plainly in most cases without the price of admission, even had the revolution not promised a more exciting show outside. I took charge of the door in person, not at all certain but that the povo might try to force itself in en masse. Once, during our part of the program, a mighty explosion shook the town like an earthquake and shooting sounded under our very windows; but as the stampede for the door started I barricaded the immense exit and “Tut” went on calmly running an amusing film known as “College Days,” and before it was ended the volatile audience had quieted down again. The explosion, it turned out, was of a great deposit of powder on one of the many islands in the bay, nearly twenty miles away.
Our receipts for the first section were so poor that we cut out the second and went home for a moonlight dip in the sea just outside our waterfront rooms in the charming residential district of Nictheroy. But it was the last day of the year, with a crushing heat after the splendid air of the plateau, and the soft wind that was now sweeping across the bay drew me back for a last glimpse of Rio in the throes of New Year’s Eve. The city lay a vast irregular heap of lights, here in dense clusters, there strung out along the invisible lower hills, all cut sharp off at the bottom by the endless row of them along the Beira Mar. The Avenida was densely crowded, and getting more so. Newspapers had erected booths covered with artificial flowers and colored lights, several police, fire department, and military bands were scattered along the great white avenue, and a constant, unbroken procession of automobiles crept up one side and down the other, pretty girls perched on the backs of the seats and on the furled covers, all filled with the “respectable families” whose plump and physically attractive ladies are rarely seen in the streets after dark on any other day in the year. I was caught where the confetti fell thickest, but there was little rowdyism and no unpleasant din, though paper ribbons spun across the lighted sea of faces and perfumed water was squirted into them in that good-natured and outwardly courteous way with which the Latin-American softens the perpetration of his most hilarious, carnival-time tricks.
CHAPTER XV
NORTHWARD TO BAHIA
More than five months had passed since my first arrival in Rio when, in the first days of the new year, I actually started on my homeward way again. The train from Nictheroy northward left at dawn, after the unfailing Brazilian habit, and I caught a last glimpse of sunrise over Rio and its bay before they passed finally from my sight. The mountains of the cool plateau lay blue-gray along the horizon all that day’s ride through the singing jungle. The flat littoral was considerably inhabited, but chiefly with thatched mud-and-reed huts, contrasted only now and then by a massive, dignified old fazenda-house standing, like some poor but still proud aristocrat, on a commanding knoll above broad reaches of flat corn, cane, or pasture lands, broken by frequent marshes grown full of the omnipresent vegetation. At the stations negro boys highly contented with life sold melons, bananas, mangos, red figs, the acidulous, parrot-beaked cajú, and little native birds in tiny home-made cages. The scream and groan of crude cane-carts in the fields or along the dust-thick roads could sometimes be heard above the roar of the train. Rain had been frequent here during the past weeks, but it had ceased abruptly at Christmas and the implacable sun had already wiped out all evidence of moisture. At Macahé we came down to the edge of the sea again, stretching away emerald-blue and mirror-smooth to the end of space, then turning inland once more across a sand-blown region, we descended at Campos, 176 miles north of Nictheroy.
This second city of the State of Rio de Janeiro is an old and somewhat dilapidated town well spread out on the campo, or sea-flat open country, for which it is named, with a few aged church-towers peering on tiptoe over the broad cane-fields that surround it. Scattered imperial palms slightly shade it, and the widest river I had so far seen in Brazil gives it a light-craft connection with the sea. Neither its mule cars nor its medieval “Hotel Amazonas,” with a single banho de chuva, or “rain bath,” are fit subjects for unbounded praise, but at least its chief cinema manager cut short my professional labors by signing on the dotted line as soon as it was pointed out to him. I left the contract and instructions to “Tut” with the hotel runner, to be handed to the tallest man who arrived by train the next Wednesday, and fled on into the north by the same conveyance by which I had arrived the day before.
The difference between this British-owned line and the government-operated “Central” was as wide as that between discipline and license, yet even on this the ticket-offices were miserable little holes in the wall, barely thigh-high; the sellers always opened as late, and worked as slowly and stupidly as possible, and it was only by crouching like an ape and fighting those struggling about the ticket-hole with trickery, stealth, and bad manners that the traveler could get a chance to buy the exorbitant-priced tickets and escape paying fifty per cent. excess on the train. Kilometer-books are sold in Brazil, but they must be taken to the ticket-window to be stamped and audited and registered and signed each time the holder wishes to board a train, hence nothing is to be gained by using them. The shadowy, saw-shaped range on our left followed us all the blazing, sand-blown day, tantalizing us with suggestions of cool upland valleys and meadows watered by clear, cold streams. As the sun crawled round and peered in at my side of the car the heat grew unendurable, in spite of the electric fans which recalled the government lines by contrast, and the dust-filled air all but refused to enter the nostrils. The insignificant stations were crowded with the curious enjoying their chief daily diversion, but they were silent and listless beneath the appalling heat.