Between Two Worlds: Confessions of an (Almost) Expat

Rio de Janeiro - The dangers facing men between the ages of 40 and 50 are well-known. This is the age, after 15-20 years in the workforce, when a man looks around and says to himself, "Is this where I want to be? Is this what I want to be doing from here until I retire?" At 40 I had been working in New Jersey for seven years at a prestigious university, had managed to record and release my first CD as a flutist, had some success writing music reviews, had a house in the suburbs, married, two kids....nothing out of the ordinary. I smiled at the new red convertibles, the various ways in which my contemporaries were moving into their 40s.

But Brazil was waiting, stealthily, for me.

I had always enjoyed learning languages, for a variety of reasons. At the most basic level learning a new language was intellectually stimulating - the same sort of enjoyment that people get from doing crossword puzzles or jigsaw, fitting the pieces together, seeing the pattern form, until it all becomes clear. At the next level, after one starts being able to read a newspaper, a magazine, a novel, the pleasure of being able to enter a new world, a different take on things, the excitement of being able to get an insider's view of a city, and most of all, the possibility of access to literature which has not been and may never be translated into English. (When I first discovered Moacyr Scliar, the library shelves had one or two novels in translation, and the rest were impenetrable. What frustration!)

By age 38 I had spent a few semesters studying Czech, a language with an enviable literature (Kundera, Skvorecky, Capek, etc.) and one quite difficult for a non-native to speak fluently, with its odd pronunciation and complex grammar. I was ready to move on to Polish, a sister language, which would be easy to learn after the time I had spent on Czech. But, as it happened, it was not offered, due to a lack of student interest. My eye moved down the page, and I saw that there was a new professor of Portuguese. The die was cast. I had already studied other romance languages, and had wanted to study Portuguese since my exposure to Scliar. My knowledge of Brazilian music was extremely limited - I knew who Airto Moreira and Hermeto Pascoal were (due to their collaborations with Miles Davis), but nothing more. Bossa nova, only through jazz readings of the Tom Jobim songbook.

As it happened, my professor of Portuguese (Isabel de Sena, the translator of Caetano Veloso's book, with Barbara Einzig, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music and Revolution in Brazil) was enthusiastic about improving the collection of Brazilian music at our prestigious university, and I began to get to know the music of Caetano and Luiz Gonzaga, to listen to choro, forró and MPB. Sena used lyrics of bossa nova to teach grammar points in class (including Lobo Bobo and Samba de uma Nota Só).

By the third semester I was able to read Brazilian literature and discovered that the library of Prestigious University had an excellent collection (purchased from the literary critic of Wilson Martins, as it turned out, with dedications from the authors, in most cases). I particularly enjoyed the digestible and amusing crônicas of Luis Fernando Veríssimo, and somewhat later, the depictions of the peccadilloes of cariocas in A vida como ela é (Life as it really is) by Nelson Rodrigues. Without a Virgil to guide me, I browsed ignorantly through the shelves, and discovered Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, Oswaldo França Junior, and others.

I began to get to know Rio through its fictional garb. I moved virtually through Flamengo, Copacabana, Ipanema, Santa Teresa, but none of these places had more reality for me than an imaginary city in science fiction might. After a couple of years of such traveling I was starting to have a yen to see what this place was really like, since unlike a city on the moon, or Mars, or Venus, this place was less than a day's travel away, and I began to put aside my spare dollars for a future flight. Finally, four years after I had begun to study Portuguese, I was able to plan a visit.

As it happened, I had been in contact (being responsible for listings of new recordings in an American magazine on early music), with harpsichordist Rosana Lanzelotte, one of the earliest Brazilian musicians to have a website, had exchanged CDs with her, and was hoping to write a feature on early music in Brazil. When she learned that I would be visiting, she invited me to propose a concert to promoters in Rio, and within a few weeks I had a concert scheduled for my visit, at IBEU, an important language school in Copacabana.

Like almost everyone in the USA, I had never met another American who had visited Brazil. I had no friends who could give me a first-hand account of Rio. Even with all my readings of fiction and Brazilian newsmagazines, I had no real sense of what things were like. My general impression was that I had to be careful, having no idea how dangerous the streets were, no clue as to how much I would be able to blend in to the general population. My level of concern rose somewhat when Rosana told me that it wouldn't be a good idea to walk the half-hour or so through Copacabana to the site of our first rehearsal. And on my van to my flight out of JFK, I was an unwilling listener to a fellow passenger who insisted on telling me about all of the grudges he held against Brazil - it was filthy, smelly, dangerous, the women all had AIDS, and so forth.

Since I was an utter novice, I had no clue that my hotel (part of a package with the airfare) was in the least savory part of Copacabana, Avenida Princesa Isabel, with various establishments of ill-repute catering to sex-starved tourists (it at least had the advantage of being close to the only subway stop in Copacabana at the time). My exciting ride in from the airport included a near-collision with another taxi (or at least so it seemed - perhaps I just hadn't gotten used to Rio traffic yet). I remember a 10 days with my sensors on at full, particularly to avoid street crime (even Leblon seemed like it might be full of potential assailants), but also in an attempt to take it all in, with my language skills barely coping with real vernacular Portuguese. I was completely captivated by the friendliness and charm of all the Brazilians whom I met in the course of preparing our concert at IBEU. You could say that the first visit was a psychedelic - that is, "mind-expanding" - experience. And even with only two days sun out of 10, the physical beauty of Rio was evident.

I continued to be in contact with the musicians I had met, planning concerts in the United States, New Jersey and at the Boston Early Music Festival. I prepared for a joint recording with the flutist Laura Rónai. I had been bitten by the bug, knew I had to go back and managed to arrange three months of research leave to prepare an article on Brazilian piano music in the library of UFRJ. I didn't know it yet, but I had begun to be part of a turma, a group united by common interests, friendship, and with the right and responsibility to look after the behavior of other members of the group (think Harry Potter with Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley). And I still was not aware that nothing important gets done in Brazil without connections, without using your QI ("quem indicou", "who recommended you", a pun on IQ, which translates as QI in Portuguese.).

Spending three months in Brazil with a task to complete would give me a better sense of what life was like for a carioca, something I could only glimpse as a tourist. I struggled to improve my comprehension of spoken Portuguese, finding it difficult to understand children, nordestinos, and even those with a particularly carioca style of speech (a little sloppy, slurring some sounds, omitting others, and with plenty of slang which I hadn't learned yet). I felt a sense of achievement when I managed to spend hours communicating in Portuguese with friends who didn't speak English, including the moments I spent in the Dona Marta favela with Rodrigo Belchior, who grew up there. I began to hear people say "você fala direitinho" and was dismayed to learn that this meant "you speak pretty well for a gringo,” rather than "you speak good Portuguese". But at least my Portuguese was getting fluent enough that my friends would take the trouble to correct my pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

Not only did I have to communicate, but it was a matter of survival to blend in (as much as possible for someone melanin-deprived like me). I learned that gringos could be identified by the way they walk (a bouncy spring off the toes with every step, instead of the laid-back sway over the hips of the carioca), the style of the haircut (mine was too long for someone my age in Brazil), the length of the beard (mine was far from Jerry Garcia, but I had to go for the Rodrigo Santoro look), the kind of clothes (God help you if you wear a "gringo" shirt, one of those with the colorful tropical pattern - even if you can find them in most clothing stores in Rio), the type of sandals (Birkenstocks are completely out - they mark you as an "ONG", an employee of a non-governmental organization, and the nadir is to wear these with socks). Shirts must always be worn with the shirttails out, not tucked in. Sandals (the hip kind you can buy at Armadillo, Wöllner, etc.) may only be worn with shorts, never with trousers. The list seemed endless. But when the payoff was not being mugged, it seemed like a small price to pay.

I began to learn the little "jeitinhos" that smoothed the way through the daily vexations faced by cariocas. An American can have no conception of the amount of waiting in line faced without quailing, generally in banks, which, unless you are far enough up the social ladder to have an account at BankBoston (recently sold to Itaú), say, don't focus on service, since many clients have little or no choice of where to bank. The most egregious example I saw was a friend, who facing a line which would have taken at least an hour, approached a clerk at a different window, struck up a conversation, and after about ten minutes of chatting about family, children, etc. asked whether her new friend might possibly be able to help her out by cashing that check she just happened to have with her.....another case of using your QI.

In addition to falling in love with the city, I (perhaps inevitably) fell in love with a particular carioca, leading to all manner of complications (separation, divorce, and the difficulties of maintaining a new relationship where the two parties lived on different continents). This meant that over a period of a few years, I was not simply bicoastal (like those who orbit between NY and LA) but bicontinental. And perhaps the most charming thing about the carioca is that he/she assumes that no one in their right mind would want to live anywhere else, in spite of all Rio's problems, so that a decision to pull up one's roots elsewhere and settle in the Cidade Maravilhosa is simply a matter of time. Each time I would return to Rio my friends would first rag me about how bad my Portuguese had gotten while I was away, and then ask the most important question: "When are you moving here for good?"

As it happened, my most recent job in the USA had been "temporary," and since it had other points in its favor (proximity to my children chief among them), I took it, figuring that "life is temporary" and something else would pop up by the time it turned into a pumpkin. Inevitably, it did turn into a pumpkin (though one never expects it), and using my QI, I offered my services to the University of Rio as a visiting professor, rather than waiting for the unemployment checks and the next position in New Jersey. (This meant turning down a promising offer in Istanbul, but given the ferment in that part of the world, which has only increased since then, hindsight has shown it to be the right choice).

As a visiting professor I am still not quite across the threshold, living on year-long visas, but I have started to accumulate some of the paperwork necessary in dealing with the Brazilian bureaucracy - a CPF (the Brazilian equivalent of the Social Security number) for starters, which means the possibility of opening a bank account.

For family and friends, one's presence abroad (and absence from the US) provokes a variety of reactions. Just as Brazilians do, Americans seem to think that it's only a matter of time until the expat abandons the Homeland for good - which would seem to show that Brazilians and Americans agree on the attractions of Brazil as a place to live. American patriotism demands that an American citizen suffer along with his fellows in North America, or renounce any right to criticize mores and political happenings.

Becoming a Carioca (rather than just an starry-eyed visitor from outside) means learning to grumble at all the things that grind you down in the marvelous city - maniacal bus drivers, bicyclists and motorcyclists ignoring any and all traffic laws, the downtrodden and crazy living on the streets, the corruption of the politicians, the way that the tourist attractions are so badly run, the loud music from the campaign vans, the shootouts in the favelas (especially the ones close to where one lives), the glue-sniffing teens robbing pedestrians a few blocks away, the difficulty of finding a middle-class job paying a middle-class salary....the attractions of an American salary..... and yet, and yet, and yet it's hard not to agree with your Brazilian friends when they argue that your destiny is here, between the mountains and the sea, with Christ looking down benevolently from Corcovado.