Brazil Diaries: Vira Lata
The second dispatch on moving across the world
Somewhere in the crowd, the pineapple seller is dancing. Right arm raised, he holds the core of a pineapple like a beacon, a knife sticking into its pale yellow flesh. With his left hand, he grips a stranger’s shoulder. “Here,” he shouts. “Like this,” and with his feet, he demonstrates the step, tap, step, tap, rock dictated by the samba music thumping and soaring from down the street. It’s Saturday. All the shops are closed. And the population of the island is filling the city center to celebrate the 401st anniversary of its founding when President Floriano “the Iron Marshal” Peixoto suppressed a Federalist rebellion and inspired the citizens to change the name of their city from Nossa Senhora do Desterro (Our Lady of Banishment) to Florianópolis.
Sitting in the shade of a building, squinting into the dancing figures, I sip the dregs of a caipirinha, wondering how I traveled halfway around the world only to end up in a street full of John Lennon sunglasses and stalls of vinyl records. Near the pineapple salesman’s cart is a white VW van in which a tattoo artist is burning patterns into people’s skin. “Flash tattoos,” they’re called, and I wonder, for the millionth time, if now is the moment to get my first and final tattoo. But no. Not today. There are too many firsts this month. “We should get tattoos,” I shout to Michael, who is sitting next to me, and he shakes his head.
A woman approaches us now, holding a zippered cooler. She stops at our table, her smile deepening the creases around her dark eyes. “May I show you my work?” She asks, and waits until Michael says, “Of course!” Unzipping the cooler, she pulls out plastic containers of brigadeiros, a ubiquitous Brazilian sweet made of condensed milk and not much else. I can’t stomach them, but according to the Brazilians I know, a little practice leads to tolerance and then dependence. Michael selects a white chocolate version and hands the woman cash, joking with her about something I can only guess at. In order to understand Portuguese conversations, I must maintain laser focus from start to finish, and my mind has been wandering to the globalization of the hipster movement and whether or not I made a mistake purchasing the denim dress I am currently wearing. The woman leans down and kisses Michael on the shoulder, “Bless you!” she says, giggling, and with a spring in her step, she moves to the next table where a man and woman are cuddling and looking morose.
It had been a full day. In the early afternoon, Michael and I had wandered through a market full of bulky earrings, vegan food, and wildly patterned robes and strolled through the second floor of the city’s historical archive where a makeshift gallery featured splotchy paintings and sketches of people standing on ladders accompanied by cryptic phrases like “Myself in the world” and “Learning to live with uncertainty.” On the hunt for samba music that was promised at four o’clock, we made our way down a side street lined with tattoo parlors and dive bars. A secondhand bookstore appeared, doors flung wide, and as Michael perused the Brazilian literature, I ferreted out the dusty shelf of English-language paperbacks. “100 Color Illustrations of Henry VIII.” “Bassett Hounds: A Complete Owner’s Manual.” “Astrological Birth Control And How to Choose the Sex of Your Child.” The 1980-1981 Texas Almanac. “A Short History of Finland.”
We left empty-handed.
Back in the street, the promising sounds of drums and a pandeiro drew us towards a bar. The tables were packed with overheated revelers. Wearing tank tops, flip flops, and colorful skirts and shorts, they sweated and drank beer, laughter ringing around the small, high-ceilinged room. The music was starting, and a skinny boy of about 12 covered his ears and bowed his head to the table as his younger brother sat up straighter in his chair. We stood in the doorway, watching the band glide through their set as if floating on a surge of joy. I don’t know how finite the samba catalog is, but every time I hear it in Brazil, it always seems that the audience knows the words to every song. Dancing alone, dancing together, young and old, stepping flawlessly, with a heel twist here and a hip sway there, they sing song after song, eyes closed, joy writ large. I stood in the doorway, feeling a sense of calm, of being invisible and content, of hearing the music, for once, like it was a friend rather than a prosecutor in a courtroom pointing at me. “That one.” He would say, “That one doesn’t have the music in her.”
As the woman selling brigadeiros presents her work to the couple next to us, we decide it’s time to move on. Pushing our way through the dancing crowd, we pass the pineapple seller who has taken it upon himself to make even the most uninitiated member of the crowd a samba aficionado. On the next street, a band is playing xote, a style of music that is related to the Scottish polka and is therefore unlistenable. The crowd has parted, and in the space, a man and woman are inexplicably dancing the tango with an attitude that I can only describe as professional determination. As we turn to leave, I notice an elderly man standing beside me. His head barely reaches my shoulder and he’s wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap that are several sizes too big. As our eyes meet, he gives me a big, shameless wink.
Making our way toward the market square to call an Uber, the music recedes and we see the giant fig tree, Figueira, which gave the city’s football team its name and, it is said, grants prosperity and happy marriage if you circle it several times. Michael and I had stood beneath it earlier in the day but relocated after a drunk man tried to snatch our brownies.
As we approach Figueira, a bald man in a bright orange robe pops out from behind a door, brandishing a digital camera. He positions himself in the street, snaps a few photos of the afternoon light leaching through the canopy of branches, and ducks his head back inside as if he’d never existed. The rain that hung heavily in the air earlier in the day has lifted and the shadows are growing long, conspiring with the cracks and potholes in the pavement to create an optical illusion of real and imagined hazards. Turning left onto the main road, we see a convoy of parked police cars. Officers in bulletproof uniforms and jauntily skewed berets stand next to them, assault rifles raised skyward. Red plastic tables line the street, and men in white tank tops drink from cans of beer.
Our last impression of the city is a dog. In Brazil, dogs have many names. Cachorro is the catch-all. Cão denotes something fiercer. Pets as a general category are called “animais de estimação” (“animals of esteem”). And then there are vira latas (“trashcan flippers”), the mutts who wander the alleys and sleep in the crooks of the street curbs. The one approaching us now is most certainly a vira lata, a blond, fox-like creature with hopeful, wary eyes, a drooping left ear, and a patch of fur missing from its front right leg. Opening his box of brigadeiros, Michael places one on the pavement. We stand back, watching, as the dog tentatively approaches, wondering, like us, how cautious to be. She sniffs the candy, decides against it, and lopes away, head low, scanning for threats and treasure.