Read Online Brazil on the Move by John Dos Passos - Free Book Online
Authors: John Dos Passos
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and bundles and crates of fowls and the bus starts off grinding and lurching on its slow way through the shabby dryseason jungle. After a while we begin to pass clearings where huge stumps and the skeletons of felled trees still smolder from the burning over; then thatched shelters, a few half finished houses of brick. In front of the first tileroofed houses we see a wattled cage that someone explains is a wolf trap.
We drive downhill through a broad street of low houses which are mostly stores. A crazy bamboo shack has a sign, CAFÉ CERES . We pass a billiard parlor. We cross a green river on a floating bridge supported on clusters of oil drums lashed together. The Rio das Almas. Everybody points out a small white house on top of a grassy hill. That is where Sayão lives.
We are deposited in front of a set of new brick walls which are marked GRANDE HOTEL CERES . We pick our way past the bricklayers, stepping over planking heaped with fresh mortar, and find that the diningroom and a few small alcoves have been completed. The hotel is open for business. The landlady greets us and briskly straightens up a table for our lunch. She speaks English. She comes from the northern part of Bohemia, she says. Oh yes she’d been in the colônia a long time, almost a year.
The place to wash is outside in the yard, two enameled basins on a soapy board and a gasoline can full of water. The tall unshaven man who is washing his face with a great deal of snorting and sputtering turns out to be a Syrian merchant who sells textiles. Yes business is good, good, good. When we settle down to eat I ask the landlady where Sayão is to be found. She shakes her head. He is a hard man to put your finger on. Never stays in one place. She will send a boy over with a message.
“He is not here. Dr. Sayão has gone to Rio,” says a young lighthaired woman, nicely dressed as if for shopping in the city, who walks into the diningroom speaking dogmatic English. She sits down beside us. She comes from Vienna. She has an apartment in Rio. Her husband is a Hungarian. They are settling. If she likes it she will give up her apartment in Rio. If we want to learn about the colónia we must stay many days because it is very interesting. We must come to see her new house. Eventually Dr. Sayão will return.
The rosy young couple who walked in while we were talking turned out to be Swiss. He was an agronomist under contract to the Brazilian Government. Did they know anything about the whereabouts of Dr. Sayão? Oh no they didn’t know anything yet. They had just arrived. Dr. Sayão had fixed them up with a house. They had gotten married and had come to Brazil. They both had blue eyes and light curly hair, and fresh pink and white complexions. Their clothes looked crisp and clean. They walked out hand in hand looking into the jungle with shining eyes.
After we’d eaten the usual meal of rice and beans and meat we strolled around the village of Ceres. The highway cut through the bottom of a wide valley cleared halfway up the hillsides. In every direction among the treestumps straggled clumps of unfinished brick houses. Everywhere bricklayers were working, framing was going up. You caught glimpsesagainst the sky of the bare brown backs of men setting the tiles on the roofs. That heap of bricks was going to be a moving picture theater; that one was going to be a bank. Here and there a little house already finished in white stucco with painted shutters stood out bright and neat. On all the hills around the great scraggly trees of the ruined jungle crowded rank on rank against the edges of the clearings.
We kept asking for Sayão. “He can’t be far,” people would smile and say.
Everybody was out that afternoon. The American Franciscans who had a little house beside the unfinished church were away on a mission. The young American who ran a brick kiln beside the highway in the middle of town had gone into Anápolis. The Americans who had set up the sawmill down by
We drive downhill through a broad street of low houses which are mostly stores. A crazy bamboo shack has a sign, CAFÉ CERES . We pass a billiard parlor. We cross a green river on a floating bridge supported on clusters of oil drums lashed together. The Rio das Almas. Everybody points out a small white house on top of a grassy hill. That is where Sayão lives.
We are deposited in front of a set of new brick walls which are marked GRANDE HOTEL CERES . We pick our way past the bricklayers, stepping over planking heaped with fresh mortar, and find that the diningroom and a few small alcoves have been completed. The hotel is open for business. The landlady greets us and briskly straightens up a table for our lunch. She speaks English. She comes from the northern part of Bohemia, she says. Oh yes she’d been in the colônia a long time, almost a year.
The place to wash is outside in the yard, two enameled basins on a soapy board and a gasoline can full of water. The tall unshaven man who is washing his face with a great deal of snorting and sputtering turns out to be a Syrian merchant who sells textiles. Yes business is good, good, good. When we settle down to eat I ask the landlady where Sayão is to be found. She shakes her head. He is a hard man to put your finger on. Never stays in one place. She will send a boy over with a message.
“He is not here. Dr. Sayão has gone to Rio,” says a young lighthaired woman, nicely dressed as if for shopping in the city, who walks into the diningroom speaking dogmatic English. She sits down beside us. She comes from Vienna. She has an apartment in Rio. Her husband is a Hungarian. They are settling. If she likes it she will give up her apartment in Rio. If we want to learn about the colónia we must stay many days because it is very interesting. We must come to see her new house. Eventually Dr. Sayão will return.
The rosy young couple who walked in while we were talking turned out to be Swiss. He was an agronomist under contract to the Brazilian Government. Did they know anything about the whereabouts of Dr. Sayão? Oh no they didn’t know anything yet. They had just arrived. Dr. Sayão had fixed them up with a house. They had gotten married and had come to Brazil. They both had blue eyes and light curly hair, and fresh pink and white complexions. Their clothes looked crisp and clean. They walked out hand in hand looking into the jungle with shining eyes.
After we’d eaten the usual meal of rice and beans and meat we strolled around the village of Ceres. The highway cut through the bottom of a wide valley cleared halfway up the hillsides. In every direction among the treestumps straggled clumps of unfinished brick houses. Everywhere bricklayers were working, framing was going up. You caught glimpsesagainst the sky of the bare brown backs of men setting the tiles on the roofs. That heap of bricks was going to be a moving picture theater; that one was going to be a bank. Here and there a little house already finished in white stucco with painted shutters stood out bright and neat. On all the hills around the great scraggly trees of the ruined jungle crowded rank on rank against the edges of the clearings.
We kept asking for Sayão. “He can’t be far,” people would smile and say.
Everybody was out that afternoon. The American Franciscans who had a little house beside the unfinished church were away on a mission. The young American who ran a brick kiln beside the highway in the middle of town had gone into Anápolis. The Americans who had set up the sawmill down by
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