Recife, in Northeast Brazil, the poorest area of the country – neglected by the government in Brasília, but with a rich history – the first explorers landed there… and a rich folklore… A people that has struggled and struggles still: see Dry Lives (Vidas Secas) by Graciliano Ramos, or The Queen of the Prisons of Greece (A Rainha dos Cárceres da Grécia) by Osman Lins. The background – but this is really the story of Mara, a girl from the countryside, and Bete, a girl from the slums. A character study, like Amores Decadentes, and beginning in Brazil just a while after Amores Decadentes finished in Eugene, Oregon. And like in the first story, tarot is used. Sometimes girls get crazy, and they themselves will tell you.
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Excerpts from the Story
[Recifolia, (carnival out of season) is going on two blocks away]
Saturday I had invited a work colleague and Zinga, the African from the Pirapama building, and Genásia. Only Genásia showed. She didn’t want to go out and play, stayed two hours (the usual, making love, doing everything except actually completely penetrating her, since she’s still a virgin), and tried to rob me of 5 reais. The end of her. I went out alone and stayed on the beach side, in the sand. I enjoyed it but I only met this little girl about seven years old, that is, she’s the only one who talked with me. It’s that Mara had to work. She’s coming tonight bringing I don’t know who, perhaps her brother and Vinha. It’s seven o’clock and the electric trios still haven’t started: I heard some noise and then it stopped – it was supposed to start at four. Friday I went to bed at four, and yesterday at two, but I think it went on till six or seven in the morning. A lot of people. Now the music has started.
Mara came with her brother Raimundo, Vinha, 13, and Bruna, 10. We went to the avenue with a two liter bottle full of maracujá caipirinha [passion fruit juice – very tropical flavor, something like lemon and pineapple, mixed with cachaça – their white lightning], very strong, but Raimundo saying that it was just like water. I think it was one of the best parties of my life. Raimundo was a riot, very funny, Mara as well, and to top it off the two very pretty girls, and all the others going by in the avenue. Bruna liked me, danced with me, gave me kisses on the cheek, held my hand; it was all tender love and prettiness; and Raimundo got more and more drunk, and Mara left me more or less alone with Bruna, sitting at the table with her, and the lights went out; it was very sweet. The day after we went to the beach.
Wednesday I canceled a class because Lucy came, Mara’s friend that I know well, pretty but too simple for me. But she arrived sad and upset because the guy that is living with her gave her an infection in her vagina, and topped it off by lying, saying that no way, he was going out with this virgin, and he took her hymen, saying it was Lucy that got the infection that cut his dick, twisting everything, and moreover, they say he’s ugly, and much more a dog [woman chaser] than I. So I flirted with Lucy. We went to the beach. I went for a swim and this black girl was with them when I came back, all of them applying this cream to turn the hair on their bodies white; ugly black girl looking at me like a gringo, a take. They went for a dip and another arrived, a friend of the first, whiter and better looking, but not enough, and low class. She asked me if Lucy was my girlfriend and I said no. She asked to sit and sat. She kept looking at me wanting to flirt but I wasn’t in the least interested. The others return and the comedy begins. The two piranhas [Piranha is that vicious brazilian fish, but it also means a low class whore.] want to get something out of the gringo, get rid of the other two (Mara and Lucy, who they think are whores as well in spite of appearances to the contrary.), the one always looking at me, Lucy sitting facing me and me caressing her knee – at one moment when the piranha was looking I motioned at Lucy with my finger to show that it was she I wanted, but even with that she didn’t completely give up. Later I learned that Mara told them I was her husband. You see? They thought they could take us and we were ten times more confusing without even trying. And Mara hadn’t caught on to any of it and let them in further and further. I wanted a soda and instead of her going to get it she let one of the piranhas go, who came back with three – supposedly one for Lucy and one for me, but it ended up one for Lucy and Mara and one for each of the piranhas. To escape all of the confusion I went for a swim again. In the water there was this young girl, not real pretty, so young that she still hadn’t breasts, low class, looking at me like a piranha. Swimming I went a little closer to her, decided it better not to get involved and swam back a distance – the mother was near, the girl wasn’t pretty – I don’t know – it smelled funny. Just after that three ugly men about 35 years old entered the water with them, one of them that must have been the father of the girl. You see, the hunting season for tourists has begun. I returned to the comedy, drank a coke and we left. They lowered themselves to asking Lucy for bus fare, and Lucy is as poor as they come, and then they tried Mara who told them to try me but that she doubted I would give it to them – I learned this later because they never did ask me. I bought the two cokes that they had drank and told Mara and Lucy that it was a very cheap lesson. The piranhas said that they weren’t with the gang that was grouped up over to one side of the beach, but we hadn’t even gotten to the sidewalk and I looked back and already four of the young men had gone over to them. They thought, I believe, it’s a silly gringo, get him drinking, send off Lucy and Mara with threats, the boys come around all friendly, and then it gets ugly. Did you like it?
Since I’m organizing my life this week I’m going to have Betânia take an Aids test, if she loves me, and have her take me to her house, before anything else. She called me Tuesday (yesterday) night and wanted to see me and said she was raped during the Recifolia. (But she wasn’t, she was with friends and they were robbed, the two robbers were going to rape her but she said she had Aids, and one of the guys remembered that he had seen her whoring on the sidewalk.) Mara says that if Bete loved me she wouldn’t have stood me up on Thursday night, if she was alone, which makes sense. I think Betânia is honest, until now she hasn’t robbed me, but I’m discovering little lies; she says she doesn’t want me to know everything about her life – certainly she is afraid of revealing herself, of giving over everything. Mara says she is setting me up for a big coup – so because of this I’m going to ask for some little proofs of her love. It’s very complicated. I like Betânia a little, she excites me, but it almost doesn’t matter, especially since lately she’s been touchy and closed up. I’m going to go a couple of weeks without sex with anyone and see where the story goes, tell Betânia that if she wants me she’ll have to do these things first. She was telling me that she wasn’t going out anymore, and I hadn’t seen her on the sidewalk anymore, but I suspect she has a macho in Brasília Teimosa and because of him she doesn’t want to take me there, but then on her birthday she had ended up crying because she was so upset, because she wanted to take me there but she was afraid. At least the tears were real, but I don’t know about the motives. I also know that when she arrives here on Friday she’s horny, I can see and sense it. I don’t know. I think she’s a more or less good person but in a hard place. I have more respect for her than for Mara. She dances. She dreams. Dreams with violence. She has already dreamed that she was with me in my land, but I had gone back to Brazil – she was sincere, she told me all the details. Also she says that she doesn’t want to give herself over to me completely because I have Mara, which is easy to understand.
Friday she’s going to find me totally different, not smoking grass anymore, not wanting to screw, and so not wanting to give her any money, with Mara already programmed for Saturday and Sunday, which I had arranged before Bete had called me on Tuesday. Since, as she is learning, when she stands me up I disconnect completely, tell myself that she’ll never come back around, that she found another, and I start looking for another…