STRANDED IN RIO
I had long expected far-famed Rio to be the climax and end of my South
American wanderings. Portuguese civilization had never aroused any great
interest within me; a glimpse of Brazil, with possibly a glance at
Venezuela on my way home, to complete my acquaintance with the former
Spanish colonies, seemed a fitting conclusion of a journey that had
already stretched out into almost three years. When I had “fiscalized”
the “Botanical Garden” street-car line for nearly a fortnight,
therefore, and seen the chief sights of the Brazilian capital, I began
to think of looking into the question of getting back to the United
States.
Contrary to my earlier expectations, it would not be necessary to sign
on as a sailor or stoke my way across the equator. With my unanticipated
salary of six thousand a day and by dint of long experience in
sidestepping high prices, I had succeeded in clinging to the equivalent
of a hundred dollars from my consular earnings, as a reserve fund for
this last emergency. With that munificent sum on hand, I might even
scorn the long-familiar steerage and treat myself to a second-class
passage on any of the steamers sailing frequently from Rio to New York.
Unfortunately I had not been keeping my ear to the ground. Years of
care-free wandering in those sections of the earth where life is simple
and in which man learns to depend chiefly on himself had caused me to
overlook certain characteristics of the more complicated world I was
rejoining. There even a vagabond is only to a limited degree a free
agent. The reserve fund I had unexpectedly saved from the maw of
Brazilian profiteers was in paper milreis and as one had been able for
more than a decade to turn 300$000 into twenty English gold sovereigns
at will, I had neglected to do so at once. On the bright “winter”
morning of Saturday, the first of August, I strolled out of my modest
hotel and along the Avenida Central with my habitual air of a care-free
man of unlimited leisure—almost instantly to recognize that there was
something strange in the wind. Before the offices of the _Jornal do
Commercio_ and the _Jornal do Brazil_ were gathered seething crowds,
eagerly spelling out the voluminous bulletins in their windows. I paused
to read with them. Some one, it seemed, had kicked over the balance of
power in Europe and France and Russia had decided to try to give Germany
the trouncing for which she had so long been spoiling.
The news came to me out of a tropically clear sky. I did recall having
glanced at a brief newspaper paragraph somewhere during my journey
northward from Uruguay, to the effect that some prince of Austria and
his consort had been killed at a Serbian town of which I had never
heard; but I had known other assassinations of Europeans of high degree
to blow over without a war resulting. Squabbling was always going on in
the Balkans anyway. Pessimists had it that there was going to be a long
and a real war; in common with all other wise men of the period I smiled
condescendingly at the silly notion.
Yet here were very decided rumors of war. Maps were already appearing in
the windows of newspaper offices, with scores of black and red-headed
pins on them to show the advance of the various armies. The flurry might
not amount to much, but it was high time I turned my paper milreis into
real money, bought my ticket, and got out of this temperamental country
before something serious really did happen. I strolled on and dropped
into one of the countless “exchange” booths that flourish in and about
the Avenida Central. Handing out my three hundred thousand reis I
requested the man inside to hand me back twenty gold sovereigns. He
looked at me scornfully, pointed to a small paragraph in the newspaper
under my elbow, and went on painting a sign on a piece of cardboard.
Perusing these I learned the astounding news that the milreis, which had
been rated fifteen to the English sovereign as far back as men with
average memories could recall, had dropped overnight to _twenty-three_
to the pound! In other words of the same profane nature, my hundred
dollars had dwindled in a few hours, merely on the strength of a bit of
news from squabbling Europe, to about seventy. I refused to be “done” in
that fashion. It was merely the old familiar trick of bankers who were
taking advantage of a temporary scare to rob the garden variety of
mankind of our hard-won earnings. In a day or so honesty, or at least
competition, would prevail, and my three hundred milreis would be worth
more nearly their honest value again. I re-pocketed them and decided to
wait until the exchange moderated—and two days later my seventy dollars
was worth less than sixty!
It may seem ridiculous that a man with three hundred thousand in his
pocket should worry—at least to those who do not know Brazil, her
currency, her prices, and her profiteers. But I began to feel uneasy.
Not merely was the money I had by superhuman efforts saved to carry me
home calmly melting away in my pocket without even being touched, but
before long touching became unavoidable. In less time than would have
seemed possible a third of my miserable bills had disappeared. Even if I
got away at once, I should have to go straight home without stopping at
Venezuela, and if I did not hurry I should not get home at all. I raced
to the steamship offices—only to get a new shock. Not only had the value
of my money been cut in two, and a third of it used up, but the price of
steamship tickets had suddenly and mysteriously doubled, and only
English gold was accepted. If I could have jumped upon a steamer that
day, I could still have paid for a third-class passage. But there was no
boat due for three days, and there were good chances that this would be
several days late!
The air was full of war-bred excitement. Before it was announced that
England had declared war, the British cruiser that had been lying in the
harbor for nearly a week with her fires up was out stopping and
searching all traffic along the coast. Several ships flying the German
flag were anxiously awaiting orders in the bay, little realizing that
their last voyage under that banner was over. Another German vessel
forcibly put ashore fifty Russian steerage passengers who had embarked
in Buenos Aires with all their savings, generously giving them back
one-third the money they had paid for passage to Europe. Detachments of
rifle-bearing Brazilian policemen patrolled the wharves to preserve
order between the various nationalities. The German consul general had
ordered all Germans on the reserve list in Brazil to report to the
nearest consulate prepared to sail for home. German reservists poured
into the capital from the southern states until it was only by climbing
over a score or so of them that I could reach my room, into which two of
them had been thrust. A standing client of the hotel, a business man of
some standing and education, presumed upon our slight acquaintance to
insist one evening that I walk out with him. As we stood before the
bulletin-blinded window of the _Jornal do Brazil_ with its pin-spotted
map of Europe, my companion gloated loudly over each piece of news:
“In two veeks ve are in Parees! I go mineself to-morrow morning to offer
me to der gonsul. Oh, py Gott, ven only Eng-lant stop noytral, ven only
Eng-lant stop noytral!”
Unfortunately, from the German point of view, England did not “stop
noytral,” and a few days later the German reservists began drifting back
to the _fazendas_ and _chacaras_ from which they had been called.
A twelve-day holiday was declared by the government, so that even those
who had money in the banks were as badly off as I, and as the value of
the milreis went steadily downward, prices went skyrocketing. Day after
day I invaded every steamship office in Rio, without distinction as to
race, color, or customary rascality. I took captive every ship’s captain
who ventured ashore, offering to do anything for my passage from
shoveling coal to parading the poop with his wife’s pet poodle. Nothing
doing! Even if a ship did now and then lift anchor and sneak away in the
general direction of the United States, there were crowds of would-be
passengers with vastly more influence, and far more mesmerism over the
root of evil, than I, who were quite as willing to do anything within
the pale of respectability to reach “God’s country.” I might, of course,
have cabled home for passage money. There were one or two persons in my
native land who probably had both the wealth and the confidence required
to answer properly to such an appeal. But I had long since made it a
point of honor that when I got myself in a hole I should get out again
without screaming for a rope.
Psychologists as well as mere world roustabouts will probably admit that
the more nearly penniless a man is the more ready is he to “take a
chance.” His condition cannot be worse, and it may suddenly become much
better. A vagabond evidently is subject to the same laws as more
respectable members of society. At any rate, with only a few milreis
left, I grew bold and instead of squeezing the last loaf of bread out of
them, I squandered them for lottery tickets. On the following Saturday
there was to be a “drawing extraordinary,” with the first prize nothing
less than a hundred million reis! With that amount I might even buy a
steamer for the trip home; besides, I had long wished to know how it
feels to be a multimillionaire. Even in real money and at normal
exchange a hundred million reis reached the respectable sum of $325,000,
and though Brazilian shin-plasters had dropped to half their pre-war
value, though every “piece” of ticket must pay a commission to the
vendor and must bear the ubiquitous “consumption” tax in the form of a
stamp, though the government takes five per cent. of all winnings and
loads down the lucky ticket-holder with so many other stamps, taxes, and
grafts that it requires a lawyer to dig him from under them, there would
still remain the price of the bridal suite on any steamer plying the
east coast of South America.
A crowd of mainly collarless and rather vacant-faced men and women, who
for many years had been chasing that will o’ the wisp called the winning
number by buying a “piece” of ticket whenever possible, were already
gathered in and about the frontless shop down behind the main
post-office of Rio when I reached it. No small number of them were
plainly so carried away by visions of what they were going to do with
their winnings that they had played hooky and jeopardized their real
source of income. Even I felt the subtle breath of hope, fed mainly on
ardent desire, that swept through the sour-scented throng as the
formalities began. Five little girls in spotless white, but of several
shades of color—as if the officials in charge had sought to have every
complexion of their clients represented—stood behind as many whirligigs
fitted with the figures from 0 to 9. Every twenty seconds the girls gave
these a simultaneous whirl, and when they stopped the number indicated
by the five figures visible to the audience was called out by an
official in the front row. Then another girl thrust a hand into a
globe-shaped urn and, with averted face, drew out a wooden marble on
which was engraved the conventional signs for a sum of money. That
represented the amount of the prize for the number just whirled, and,
like it, was called out and then written down three times on as many
printed slips by dozens of men and boys seated around the walls of the
room, some of them government officials, some representatives of the
various lottery agencies.
There are at least fifty prizes at each drawing, ranging all the way
from about the price of a ticket, the occasional winning of which keeps
the disgruntled clients from abandoning the game, up to the capital
prize. The deadly sameness of the process made the formality a soporific
which, combined with the tropical heat and the fetid breath of the
multitude, soon left me drowsily leaning against my compact neighbors.
Time and again some insignificant prize was announced and set down by
the scribes around the walls, until I began sleepily to wonder if the
hundred million ball had inadvertently been left out of the urn. When
the “_cem contos de reis_” was at last droned out by the wooden-voiced
announcer in the same bored, monotonous tone with which he had so often
mentioned the equivalent of a dollar, my thoughts were wool-gathering
and it was not until a flutter went through the crowd that I recognized
the significance of the announcement. I glanced at the ticket in my
hand, then at the number on the whirligigs. Protector of the Penniless!
They were the same—at least the first three numbers on them were! An
African-pated blockhead of unusual height blotted the last two of those
on the platform out of my field of vision. I shouldered him aside,
treading under foot a few immediate by-standers. The surge of pleasure
that was mounting my spine turned to angry disgust. The last two figures
were not even near enough my own to give me the “approximation” prize.
With my usual carelessness and stupidity I had bought the wrong ticket,
and the glamor of being a multimillionaire faded to the real but
familiar experience of being “dead broke” in a foreign land. My
disappointment was evidently widespread, for the tightly packed throng
began instantly to melt away like molasses from a broken jug, so that by
the time I reached the street there were hundreds of other glum-faced
individuals shuffling off in both directions. Only then did I realize
that the _cambio_ in which I had spent my last milreis was quite
fittingly named “_Sonho do Ouro_”—the “Golden Dream.”
But at least, if one must be stranded, there were few finer spots than
Rio to be stranded in. I returned to my sight-seeing duties on the
street-cars, and, by dint of outwitting the German proprietor of my
hotel that evening, managed to save enough of that day’s six thousand to
run an appeal next morning in the two principal newspapers of the
capital. In all frankness it should have been lachrymose, but I had long
since learned that a bold and boastful manner, with a facetious tinge,
is more likely to bring real results:
American Writer and Explorer,
university graduate, widely traveled
but still young, knowing fluently
Spanish, French, and German, and
understanding Portuguese and
Italian, being marooned here by the
present situation, will accept
temporarily any reasonable
employment, in Rio or the interior,
of sufficient interest to pass the
time.
With no available means of moving on, I had time for anything—except to
be bored.
That very evening I came within an ace of getting employment without
even waiting for replies to my printed appeal—or at least I came as near
it as did the suitor who would have been accepted but for the slight
matter of the answer being “no” instead of “yes.” The first Brazilian
singer ever heard in grand opera in Brazil was announced to appear at
the Municipal Theater, and with that splendid sense of propriety for
which the Latin-American is noted he had chosen, or been chosen, to make
his début before his admiring fellow-countrymen as the hero of Puccini’s
“Girl of the Golden West.” The ticket speculators were out in full force
when I scuffed my way down the mosaic-paved Avenida, but their
machinations were naturally of little interest to a man who could not
rub two coppers together. What had won my attention was rather a rumor
that a group of stage cowboys was needed, and as my worst enemy could
not have failed to admit that I came more nearly looking that part than
anyone else wandering the streets of Rio, here was my opportunity to
behold at close range the Brazilian misconception of the American wild
west and its bloodthirsty denizens; besides, the two milreis paid to
“supers” looked good to me. A veritable mob of loafers, rowdies, and
_gatunos_ surged back and forth in the narrow street behind the theater,
sweeping down upon the fist-less old “master of supers” as often as he
ventured outside the stage door. Several times he fled in dismay, but at
length, when the opera was about to begin and the marshaling of cowboys
was imperative, he ventured forth with the air of a man who is taking
his life in his hands and began letting his selections be thrust upon
him. I footballed my way through the crowd that was swinging to and fro
with his every footstep and offered my services. My wide-brimmed felt
hat alone should have won me a place. The harried functionary glanced at
me, mumbled something to the effect that I did not in the least fit the
part, and finally retreated within the stage door, followed by a motley
collection of spindle-shanked _Carioca_ street loafers who would have
made an ideal background to a melodrama set in a tar-brushed
Whitechapel.
Hardly was my last milreis gone when exchange improved and Brazilian
money came halfway back to normal. The inevitable profiteer had already
grasped his opportunity, scattered groups of _populares_ took to mobbing
the shops that had most flagrantly boosted food prices, and though even
the courts did not function, because of the twelve-day holiday, the
government was finally compelled to take advantage of the state of siege
to punish a few of the most heartless offenders and publish a list of
prices which could not be exceeded without loss of license and possible
imprisonment. But the ways of the Brazilian are devious, and no great
improvement was accomplished. The semi-military police, their rifles
loaded with ball cartridges, patrolled not only those parts of town in
which the various European nationalities might meet, but wherever
disgruntled bands of the _povo_ were likely to gather. It would probably
not have been difficult to start a revolution in Brazil during those
eventful days.
Meanwhile, not an answer did I get to my stirring call for employment,
except an offer to become a combination door-keeper and office-boy,
which I did not consider interesting enough even to pass the time. It
was after three of a blazing afternoon that I rode out in my official
capacity to Ipanema, where I had found behind a mass of rocks a little
cove in which no bathing-suit was needed. There was a marvelous private
beach, and a rock-walled dressing-room where only a stray negro wench
might see me if she chose to look, but from which I could see the tips
of the Corcovado and the “Sugar Loaf,” and, across the turquoise bay,
silhouetted at this hour against the sun side of the sky, box-shaped
Gavea, hazy blue with distance.
I had ridden halfway back to town when I looked up from reading one of
Brazil’s epics and caught sight of the back of a head that looked
familiar. The hat above it and the coat below I had certainly never seen
before, and I could make out little of the face, but that little merely
increased my conviction. By the time we had passed the tunnel I decided
to make sure and, moving up close behind the man, I pronounced a name in
a mild voice that would probably not have attracted attention if it were
not the right one. The man turned around quickly, then thrust out a
hand. As I had suspected, he was Raymond Linton, not only a
fellow-countryman but a fellow-statesman, whom I had last seen in Buenos
Aires.
A year before, Linton had acquired the Spanish-American concession for
Edison’s recently invented “Kinetophone,” or “talking moving-pictures,”
and, having played before all the uncrowned heads of Peru, Chile,
Uruguay, and the Argentine, was still operating two separate outfits of
this theatrical novelty in the last two of those countries. The
entertainment had taken so well in Spanish-America that he had purchased
the rights for Brazil also, and, having left Buenos Aires on the last
day of July, little suspecting what the world had in store for itself,
he was planning to start a third outfit in Rio de Janeiro.
“But I’m in tough luck,” said Linton, after our preliminary greetings
and immediate personal history had ended.
“How come?” I asked, rather idly, to tell the truth, for my thoughts
were still chiefly on my own predicament.
“You remember my B. A. manager?” he replied. “Splendid fellow and just
the man I needed to handle the proposition up here in Brazil as soon as
I get it started. But he is a Frenchman, and the day after I sailed he
was called home to join the army. So now I’ve got to rush back to B. A.
to keep that end going, and I have a brand new outfit, with special
films in Portuguese and a man fresh from the Edison plant, landing
to-day from the States. This man knows all the mechanical and electrical
part of the job to perfection, but he probably never heard of the
Portuguese language and couldn’t tell a Brazilian from an honest man. So
I am mighty hard up for someone to take charge up here, and I don’t know
where on earth I’ll find another fellow like the Frenchman.
“By Jove!” he went on a moment later, as the street-car swung out upon
the Beira Mar, “I wish you felt like staying down here six months or so
longer. I’d make you a proposition.”
“For instance?” I asked, merely out of idle curiosity. “I will not spend
another month in South America under any circumstances, but I may have
to in spite of myself.”
“If I could get a man who knows the South American from spats to
hair-oil as well as you should after three years down here,” went on
Linton with great earnestness, “I’d offer him a salary and a percentage,
guaranteeing that he would not get less than——” naming a considerably
larger sum than I had ever been paid as a respectable member of
society—“a month, with all his actual traveling expenses, first class,
all arrangements to be in U. S. currency, to take charge of the
Brazilian end of this business and play in every city of over fifteen
thousand population in the country—there are about fifty of them—and
cover the whole republic, coast and interior, from the Uruguayan border
clear up to where the Amazon begins to run down off the Andes. It would
mean about six months’ playing the principal towns, and after that the
man could take the thing around for another half year to the smaller
places, and by the time he got through he’d know Brazil better than
Edison knows electricity.”
“Mighty interesting proposition,” I remarked, as the street-car drew up
at its destination beside the Largo da Carioca, “and I hope you find the
man you need. I have a serious problem on my hands, too, and that is how
to get back to the U. S. A. early enough this fall to join in an
important coon hunt.”
For I did not for a moment seriously consider the offer as made to me,
or at least as acceptable. I had already been three times as long in
South America as I had expected to be when I first set out to explore
the traces of the old Inca highway between Quito and Cuzco. I was
decidedly “fed up” with “Spigs” and all their ways; too long a time
outside the United States atmosphere is not good for the mind one wishes
to keep American, just as too long a time in the tropics is injurious to
the body one would keep robust. Moreover, never having seriously tested
it, I was not at all certain I had the charlatanism indispensable to any
success in the realms of “practical business”—and there was still a
possibility that I might get aboard something or other northward bound.
Next day I took to pursuing ships and skippers with renewed energy. But
the town was swarming with stranded Americans willing and able to pay
any sum that could be mentioned in one breath for the privilege of
sleeping in a stokehole of anything bound for the United States. That
afternoon I dropped in on Linton at his hotel and entertained him with a
hypothetical question.
“Suppose,” I said in my most casual tone, “suppose such a man as you are
looking for would sign a contract for only six months, that he wanted
his salary to start at once, instead of the first of September, and that
on the day he signed he would need an advance of about five hundred
thousand—er—reis to get a proper movie-magnate silk hat and diamond
solitaire, what would be your private remarks when you reached the
bathroom?”
“If he had your experience with South Americans, for instance,” came the
prompt reply, “I’d have the contract ready within half an hour.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” I replied. “I just wanted to know, from a
sociological point of view.”
Whereupon I set out once more and went over all the steamship offices
and captains’ favorite bar-rooms with a fine-toothed comb, only to be
more than ever convinced that my native land had lost all desire ever to
see me again. So, late that evening, having paused at the edge of the
impassable sea to shake a fist at the northern horizon, I stopped at
Linton’s hotel to sign the contract he had just drawn up. By its terms I
was to take full charge of the tour of the Kinetophone in Brazil,
playing the entire country, except the states south of São Paulo that I
had already seen, ending up on the Amazon six months later, and
receiving my first month’s salary at once—as soon as the banks opened.
Early next morning a messenger from the steamship-office I had most
often pestered brought me word that if I would report at once I could
sign on a ship sailing that evening for Pensacola, Florida; and later in
the day I was offered a chance to go to New Orleans as a deck-hand. But
then, it would have been a long walk from either of those ports to the
place I called home.
During the remaining half of August I did little but spend my first
month’s salary, chiefly among the tailors of Rio, at prices which made
the advertisements in the New York papers look enticing. Linton had
arranged his Buenos Aires business to run on without him until we could
give the customary special performance before the president of the
republic. This he hoped would be within a week, but he had reckoned
without Brazilian red tape. The “outfit” arrived the day after I signed
the contract,—eight large pieces of what looked like the baggage of a
barn-storming company, and Wayne Tuthill of Long Island and the Edison
factory. “Tut,” as it was natural he should be quickly dubbed, was a
tall, handsome, ingenuous lad of twenty-four, of that clean-cut,
clean-minded type of American youth which makes the libertine _juventud_
of South America stand out in such striking contrast. He had never
before been outside the United States—which I rated an asset—but had
been the unhesitating choice of the company when Linton wired for their
best practical electrician and operator who would accept a year’s
contract.
On the following day I bade farewell to my little inside room in the
German hotel down in the raw-coffee scented heart of Rio, and moved into
a new home with what their “want ad” in the _Jornal do Brasil_ described
as a “family of all respectability.” There were hundreds of private
families only too glad to patch out their income by taking in a “serious
cavalheiro” as a paying guest. My new quarters were on the Praia de
Botafogo, in the district out beyond the tiny _praça_ and statue of José
de Alencar. From my easy-chair I could look out across the bay at one
end of the harbor and, though a headland cut off the “Sugar Loaf,” I had
a splendid view of all the long, fantastic sky-line of Rio, now
silhouetted against the sun-lighted clouds, now standing out in the
brilliant sunshine as if barely a stone’s throw away. The room had a
southern exposure, too, which is important in Rio, especially toward the
end of August with summer coming on. True, there were a few drawbacks. I
had to take board as well as lodging, though I was by no means sure that
a glimpse into Brazilian family life would offset the heaviness of
Brazilian family food. There were good electric lights, but no carpets
or rugs, virtually unknown in Brazil, and not a suggestion either of
bookshelf or wastebasket, while the table was a tiny thing implying that
at most the occupant might have now and then to write a perfumed lover’s
note.
Though it was some time before we got our show started, or even got the
outfit ashore, we were a busy trio. First and foremost there was the
Herculean problem of getting the thing through the customs. This was no
such simple matter as going down to the ugly little green _Alfandega_
building on the water front, opening the boxes, paying our duty, and
taking them away. Things are not done in that breathless manner in
Brazil. Knowing that it costs more to get a moving-picture film into
Brazil than to buy it in Europe or the United States, we were prepared
to be held up by the mulatto footpads masquerading as a government, if
only they would have it over with at once and let us go our way with
whatever we might have left. What we needed first of all, it seemed, was
a _despachante_, a native customs broker, familiar with all the ins and
outs of the laws on import duties—and an expert in circumventing them.
But could we not attend to this matter ourselves, seeing there were
three of us in the prime of life, two speaking Spanish and one more or
less Portuguese, and with nothing else whatever to do? We could not. We
must have the services of a regular _despachante_—just why, we learned
all in due season. The broker, however, did not rob us of occupation; in
fact, we were still permitted to do almost all the work. We spent
several hours one day hunting out our boxes amid an orderless jumble of
many ship-loads of warehoused merchandise and wrestling them out into
plain sight. The rest of the afternoon we wasted in coaxing the swarm of
supercilious officials who lolled about the place to examine them. They
paid us not the slightest attention, until our _despachante_ came to
vouch for our existence. Then one of them “examined” the eight boxes by
gingerly lifting half of the wooden cover of one of them, glancing at
the unopened inner tin casing, and ordering the covers nailed down
again. This, however, was only a preliminary formality, and while our
broker prepared for the next moves in their regular, deliberate order,
we contained ourselves in such patience as we possessed.
Meanwhile we learned many interesting details about Brazilian customs
laws and those who enforce them. Portland cement, we found, pays duty on
gross weight. More than half the barrels of such a shipment had been
broken in transit, or by the wharf stevedores who landed it, and all
vestige of cement had been lost. The customs men carefully gathered the
scattered barrel-staves together, weighed them, and charged the assignee
duty on them as cement! Regular merchants in Rio have a _despachante_,
we learned, who does all the customs business of his client at a fixed
rate of twelve milreis a box, large or small. If he succeeds in avoiding
any part of the duty due, the merchant pays him half that amount as a
reward. Thus there arrives a box of twenty pairs of shoes, on which the
duty would be sixty dollars. The _despachante_ arranges with some of his
friends in the customhouse to let the box in for twenty dollars, and the
assignee pays that amount in duty and gives the broker, in addition to
his customary twelve milreis, one half of the forty dollars saved. The
Brazilians have no word for bribery; they use the expression _comer_ (to
eat). A merchant who has been forced to pay full legal duty on a bill of
goods asks his _despachante_ anxiously, referring to the strict new
customs official who passed on it, “_Elle já come?_” To which, perhaps,
comes the sad answer, “_Não, ainda não come_” (He doesn’t eat—yet). A
few weeks later the merchant sends the honest man a few bottles of
perfumery or some equally welcome present. If he sends them back, he is
not yet “ripe.” But at length word goes round, “_Já come_” (Now he
eats), and the merchants whose goods pass through his hands heave a sigh
of relief.
“When your shipment arrives,” a foreigner long engaged in business in
Rio explained, “and the duty is large, say twenty or thirty contos, you
go to the customhouse yourself and say to the _conferente_, ‘I shall be
in my office from three to four to-morrow.’ Then you go away. The
_conferente_ is the official examiner; his assistant, who opens and
closes the boxes and does the other manual labor, is called his “fiel”
(faithful one). You cannot be a successful merchant in Rio without being
on friendly terms with your _conferente_ and his “fiel.” When his work
ends, at three, he drops in to see you before he goes home, and the
matter is fixed up to the satisfaction of both parties. If you try to
fight the system you are up against it. Only half the articles that come
into Brazil are on the tariff schedule, and if a _conferente_ has it in
for you he will decide that your declaration is made out wrong, no
matter how you make it out, and will fine you for trying to flimflam the
government—and a certain percentage of all fines go to the man who
discovers the ‘irregularity.’ Then before goods leave the customhouse
they must have the government consumption-tax stamps on them, and there
is another fine chance to ‘eat.’ The man who was at the head of the
stamp-selling down there for thirty-two years was recently retired on a
pension and written up in the papers as ‘a life-long and faithful
servant of the Republic’; yet ever since I have lived here he could be
‘fixed’ at from one fourth to one half the legal price of the stamps.
The young fellow who now has his job doesn’t ‘eat’ yet, so all the
merchants are cursing him, and his fellow-officials accuse him of
_fazendo fita_—of showing off. But word is going round now that he is
beginning to ‘eat’.”
Beautiful scenery evidently does not beautify character. The dishonest
officials cannot plead the excuse of necessity, for their legal income
is high. Inspectors get three contos, _conferentes_ eight hundred to a
thousand milreis a month, which surely is generous to men who work only
from eleven to three, with much “tolerance” as to absences during that
time and at least sixty-five legal holidays a year. “Tariff
legislation,” says an outspoken Brazilian publicist, “more than any
other one thing, has been the source of the corruption that has rotted
public service, and in the growth of the sinister privileges fostered by
the ‘protective’ system there is almost sole responsibility for the
widespread perversion of ideals.”
It took a full week to get our outfit through the customs, and it would
have taken longer had nature not gifted me with an impatience capable of
developing into profanity. Both our _despachante_ and the endless
gantlet of scornful officials which our case was forced to run were firm
believers in the efficacy of “amanhã”—which is our old friend “mañana”
of Spanish-America. How many sheets there were of laboriously
hand-written documents, signed every which way by scores of insufferable
loafers in the crowded _Alfandega_, in the intervals between smoking
cigarettes, gossiping with friends, scowling with a haughty air upon
whoever dared insist on attracting their attention, I have no means of
computing. Typewriting is illegal in government business in Brazil, as
in most of Latin-America; too many old fogies who know only how to
scratch with a pen would have to be dispensed with to make way for such
an innovation, and they are the backbone of political parties. In the
end Linton had to deposit $700, which it was solemnly promised would be
returned to him when the outfit was taken out of the country.
Officially, the American dollar is worth 3$120 in Brazil. I immediately
reduced the $700 to milreis at that rate, and Linton prepared to pay it.
But, we were informed, the government accepts its own money only at
4$120 to the dollar! More figuring resulted in the discovery that we
must entrust the Brazilian government with nearly three contos.
Thirty-five per cent. of this deposit must be in gold. I began to
compute this percentage by dividing by 4$120. The broker smiled at me as
at an amusing child. When the milreis is figured _back_ into gold, he
explained, the dollar must be taken at 2$120. In other words, a
Brazilian government official can demonstrate before your very eyes that
thirty-five per cent. of seven hundred dollars is $480!
On the day after our outfit had at last been admitted to practice in
Brazil, and the _despachante’s_ seemingly exorbitant demands had been
satisfied, one of us happened to be in his office when in dropped the
bewhiskered old fossil who had “examined” our stuff. He was cheery and
gay now, all dressed up, his sour and haughty official manner wholly
gone, and he greeted everyone in the office like old and esteemed
friends. After the first embrace or two he and the _despachante_ sat
down on opposite sides of the latter’s work table, their hands met once
under it, then the fossil rose and went away with a satisfied smile
scattered among his untrimmed whiskers and a hand lingering
affectionately about one pocket.
Our next task was to hire a lawyer to get the trademark “Kinetophone”
registered in Brazil in the name of the Edison Company. This matter is
of prime importance to anyone introducing a new invention into the land
of “amanhã.” It is not that the Brazilians are so inventive that they
can readily imitate new contrivances; on the contrary, their mechanical
genius is close to zero. But if he seldom invents or initiates, the
“Brazie” is not lazy in the sense of complete indolence. He has the
gambling instinct as well as the tropical desire to get through life as
easily as possible, and laborious trickery seems to him a lesser effort
than work. Being quick to appropriate the ideas of others, he is much
given to stealing trademarks.
To tell the truth, the Argentine is worse than Brazil in this respect.
There is a regular band of rascals in Buenos Aires who do nothing but
steal and register foreign trademarks, while in Rio the traffic is at
least unorganized. The laws of both countries give the first person to
deposit a trademark in the national archives the sole right to use it.
The mark may have belonged for half a century to an American or a
European company; it suffices for some _argentino_ or Brazilian to get
it registered in his own name to prevent the legitimate owner from using
it in that country without paying the thief blackmail. One of this
gentry reads in a newspaper or a catalogue of some new foreign invention
with a catchy name, rushes to register it as his own, and then lies in
wait for the real owner. Even a trademark of the French government
tobacco monopoly was stolen by an _argentino_ and France was forced to
pay him a handsome sum to get it back. Upon his arrival in Buenos Aires,
Linton had found the Kinetophone already registered. But as the native
whose eye had been attracted by the word had not understood what it
represented, he had registered it as the name of a _lechería_, or
milk-shop! Nevertheless Linton was compelled to pay him several hundred
pesos for the privilege of using the word in his advertising or even in
the theater, for the moment he put up a poster or ran a film and record
in which the word “kinetophone” appeared, he could have been arrested
and his outfit confiscated. It costs only 120$000, including lawyer’s
fees, to have a trademark registered in Brazil, yet Americans have been
blackmailed out of as much as 30,000$000 for neglecting to do so in
time.
It turned out that the Kinetophone had been overlooked by Brazilian
tricksters, but we had to wait three days to make sure of this before we
dared publicly use the name. Meanwhile we had visited incognito the
fifty cinemas then running in Rio, with a view to classifying them for
future purposes; we had offered the “A. C. M.” a benefit performance
later for the privilege of trying out our apparatus in their hall, and
had set out in trio to make our first contract.
The chief moving-picture man of Brazil, with a string of cinemas in Rio
and São Paulo and connections elsewhere, was a Spanish ex-bootblack.
Like his colleagues and rivals, he informed us that it was not customary
in Brazil to pay a fixed sum for such a novelty as we had to offer, that
he “never risked a cent,” but that he would be willing to talk to us on
a percentage basis. Then we found that the ex-bootblack had Missouri
blood in his veins—perhaps because he had once driven mules—and that he
would not believe in the drawing powers of Edison’s new invention until
he had been shown. We had no misgivings as to our ability to show him,
so we went out along the Mangue Canal, with its mirrored double row of
royal palms on either bank, and rented for a day the old open-work
wooden “Theatro Polytheama,” where we gave the doubting Thomases of the
“movie” world, and a throng of newspaper men and “influential citizens,”
a convincing private exhibition.
Next day we signed a “fifty-fifty” contract with the ex-bootblack to
play for sixty days in his establishments in Rio, São Paulo and
vicinity. By that time it was already September 7th, the first of
Brazil’s two Independence Days, and “Tut” and I had taken up our abode
on the Praia do Flamengo in the district called Larangeiras, or
“Orange-trees.” It was nearer town than my former room; moreover, while
I am duly exhilarated by the beauties of nature, no amount of scenery
will make up for a constant diet of black beans and dry rice, surrounded
on four sides by a constantly caterwauling Brazilian family dressed in
soiled underwear or grease-spotted kimonos. As a matter of fact I lost
nothing even of scenery by the change. We had a marvelous view of the
“Sugar Loaf,” of all the great bay and its islands, of Nictheroy and the
hazy outline of farther Brazil beyond. With our feet on our own railing
we could see the steamers that might be bringing us news from home come
slipping in at the harbor’s mouth, or watch a blood-red sunset on the
cloud billows across the bay. We were four doors from the President’s
palace of Cattete, and in the morning we could stroll across the Beira
Mar in our bathing-suits to dive off the president’s private wharf and
swim out to the little warship he always kept ready for the day when
motives of health should force him to leave Brazil in a hurry. Men,
women and children, with a towel over their shoulders, were familiar
morning sights all along the Beira Mar—the women, of course, chiefly of
foreign origin, for no real Brazilian lady would ever dream of
bathing—at least in semi-public. Swimming was allowed along Rio’s
magnificent driveway until nine in the morning, and some bathers were to
be seen now and then at other hours, for, as the resplendent black
policeman on our corner told us, while he watched several of them pass.
“Oh, yes, they do bathe after nine, but it is against the law.”
Finally, at one o’clock on the afternoon of Monday, the fourteenth of
September, we gave the first public exhibition in Brazil of the
Kinetophone—and before midnight we had given eleven of them. We had
opened in the “Cinema Pathé” on the Avenida Central, in many ways the
proudest and most fashionable motion-picture house not only of that
sumptuous thoroughfare but of all Brazil; but our début was not attended
with the customary formality. For a week Linton had been cooling his
heels in the anteroom of the Cattete Palace, hoping to have the
honor—and incidentally the prestige and publicity—of giving the
president of the republic a private exhibition before disclosing the
virtues of the new invention to the general public. But those were busy
times in government circles, for, in addition to his manifold political
troubles, the president had recently acquired an eighteen-year-old wife,
so that at length we were forced to start without his blessing and the
customary send-off of important novelties in Latin-American countries.
By this time the World War was on in earnest and Brazil was loudly
complaining of “_A Crise_,” or hard times; yet when our first day at the
“Cinema Pathé” was ended, we found that the box-office had taken in
considerably more than three million—reis! Even in real money that was
better than a thousand dollars.
That very night Linton fled to Buenos Aires, leaving behind a document
making me the “Brazilian concessionary” of the Kinetophone, and the
weight of the whole enterprise fell abruptly on my shoulders. My first
duty was to get our share of the opening day’s receipts. High noon
having been agreed upon as the time to divide the previous day’s
earnings, I called at that hour upon the general manager for Rio of the
“Companhia Brazileira,” to get our half of the three million in
cash—Brazilian cash, unfortunately—and carried it to the British bank.
That was a daily formality thereafter, for while we had all due respect
for the Brazilian and his business methods, we adopted the same
viewpoint in dealing with him as the Scotchman who, asked for a
recommendation by a retiring clerk, wrote:
“This is to certify that Sandy McCabe has worked for me the past twelve
years. Regarding his honesty I can say nothing, as I never trusted him.”
The Kinetophone consists of a series of films projected from a booth
like an ordinary motion-picture film, and of a large electrically
operated phonograph, with six-minute records, set on the stage or behind
the screen and synchronized with the film by means of tiny stout black
cords running over pulleys attached to the walls or the ceiling of the
intervening room. As ours could not be thrown from the same projecting
machine as the voiceless films, the usual process was to set up our
special apparatus in the same booth with the other, if there was room,
cutting a second opening in the front of this to “shoot through;”
otherwise we required a special booth to be built for us alongside the
regular one. Our outfit consisted of fifteen films and their
corresponding phonograph records. First of all, on every program was an
explanation of the new invention and a demonstration of its power to
reproduce all kinds of sounds, a film specially made to order in
Portuguese, with the flag of Brazil, the president’s picture, and other
patriotism-stirring decorations in the background. The only other film
in the native tongue was a dialogue called the “Transformation of
Faust,” in which two Portuguese youths, who had somehow been enticed out
to the Edison factory, ranted for six minutes through a portion of
Goethe’s masterpiece. But there were extracts from five popular Italian
operas and three Spanish numbers, all of which took well with
Brazilians, and though the remainder were in English, they were musical
and comical enough to win interest irrespective of language.
The Kinetophone requires two operators, one in the booth and the other
at the phonograph. Thus I was not only manager, auditor and
“concessionary,” but obliged to run the stage end of the performance.
Fortunately we did not furnish the entire program, our part of the bill
consisting of the “Portuguese Lecture” and two other numbers, filling
one-third of the hour constituting a “section” and leaving the rest of
it to ordinary films or whatever form of entertainment the local manager
chose to supply. Every hour, therefore, from one in the afternoon to
eleven at night, seven days a week, I had to be on hand to put on the
first of our records, jump out to the edge of the audience and signal to
“Tut” in his special booth, spring back again and touch off the
phonograph at exactly the right instant, repeat this with the other two
records, thrust these back into their special trunk, lock it—and spend
the next forty minutes, other duties willing, as I saw fit. Never during
those eleven hours a day did I dare go far enough away from the theater
to get a real let-up from responsibility. The most I could do was to
snatch a lunch or stroll down to one end or the other of the Avenida, to
see the ships depart or, on windy days, to watch the sea pitching over
the sea-wall of the Beira Mar, wetting even the autobusses—and then
hurry back again for our part of the next “section.”
Besides running the films, “Tut” had to rewind them after each
performance, so that his leisure time was ten minutes less to the
“section” than mine. I soon found that he was not only a highly
efficient operator, but that he had just those qualities needed to make
a long companionship agreeable. Honest and genuine as gold coin in war
time, easy-going, optimistic, unexcitable, wholly ignorant of foreign
languages, temperaments, or customs, yet pleasant with all races and
conditions of men, he was an ideal team-mate, having large quantities of
that patience so much needed in tropical and Latin lands, and of which I
have so scanty a supply. Thanks to “Tut,” the Brazilians got better
Kinetophone performances than most Americans have heard. The novelty did
not take particularly well in the United States, though for no fault of
its inventor. The essential and all important thing with the Kinetophone
is perfect synchronization. If the character on the screen speaks or
sings exactly as he opens his mouth, the illusion is remarkable; let
there be the slightest interval between the sound and the lip movements
and the thing becomes ludicrous. When the invention was first shown in
the United States there was perfect synchronization, and a consequent
rush of orders for machines and operators. There being no supply of the
latter on hand, they had to be trained in a hurry. Many were ill
prepared for their duties, with the result that when they were hurriedly
sent out on the road they frequently gave distressing performances.
Gradually, therefore, the invention was withdrawn, with the promise to
perfect it further and make it “fool proof,” so that by the time Linton
had taken the concession for Brazil, “Tut,” the expert who had trained
others, was available and the new form of entertainment made a much
bigger “hit” in Brazil than in the land of its origin.
I had only one serious fault to find with “Tut,” one that added
materially to those of my managerial duties which had to do with keeping
on pleasant terms with the somewhat sour manager of the “Cinema Pathé.”
Less fond than I of strolling the downtown streets during our breathing
spells, “Tut” usually spent them with an American novel or magazine in
the unoccupied second-story anteroom of the theater. There the “Pathé”
had stored its extra chairs, and from them “Tut” was wont to choose a
seat, place it at the edge of the stone balustrade of the balcony, where
he could look down upon the crowd surging up and down the Avenida, and
pass his time in reading. But the chairs, as is usual in South America,
were of the frail variety, and “Tut,” a generous six feet in height and
by no means diaphanous in weight, had the customary American habit of
propping his feet on a level with his head—with the result that at more
or less regular intervals “crash!” would go a chair. On the day when the
manager, his eyes bloodshot with rage, requested me to visit the
second-story anteroom with him, during “Tut’s” absence, the wrecks of
eleven chairs were piled in one corner of it. After that I never had the
audacity to go up and investigate, but crashing sounds were still heard
during the half hour devoted to the silent films.
The “Companhia Brazileira” advertized extensively, and the Kinetophone
was well patronized from the start. Brazilians take readily to
novelties, especially if they can be made the fashion, and our audiences
of the second day included both priests and “women of the life,” which
is a sure sign of popular success in Brazil. As our doubled entrance fee
of two milreis was high for those times of depression, also perhaps
because the “Cinema Pathé” was considered a gathering place of the
élite, we entertained only the well dressed, or, perhaps I should say,
the overdressed. They were blasé, artificial audiences, never under any
circumstances applauding or giving any sign of approval; they always
gave me the impression of saying, “Oh, rather interesting, you know, as
a novelty, but I could do much better myself if I cared to take the time
from my love-making and risk soiling my spats and my long, slender,
do-nothing fingers.” But as they continued to bring us as our share of
the receipts more than a conto of reis a day, it was evident that they
found the performance pleasing.
The moving picture might be a real educating influence on the
imaginative and emotional Brazilians, were it not that those who
manipulate this business see fit to put their faith in an intellectual
bilge-water which gives chiefly false notions of life in the world
beyond their horizon. The same “Penny Dreadfuls” in film, concocted of
saccharine sentimentality, custard-pie “comedy,” and a goodly seasoning
of the criminal and the pornographic, that add to the weariness of life
elsewhere, are the rule in the Brazilian capital. Here even the élite,
or at least the well-dressed, flock to see them. This is partly due to
the lowly state of the legitimate stage in Brazil and the atrocious
performances given by nearly all the “actors” who seek their fortunes in
South America. Though some Latin-American playwrights, and a few of the
players, have done things worth while, the stage depends almost entirely
upon “talent” imported from Europe, entertainers of Spanish (or, for
Brazil, of Portuguese) origin, with the crudest notions of histrionic
art, or superannuated discards from the French or Italian stage, mixed
with youthful hopefuls who have crossed the Atlantic to try it on the
dog. These misplaced porters and chambermaids, mere lay figures dressed
to represent certain characters, romp about the stage in their natural
rôles, their eyes wandering in quest of friends in the audience, whom
they give semi-surreptitious greetings and seek to charm by “grandstand
plays,” making the while the mechanical motions they have been taught
and automatically repeating what they are told to say by the prompter.
It is strange that the often artistic Latin races will endure the
prompter, instead of insisting that actors learn their parts. It is a
rare experience to find a place in the house where one can hear the play
and not hear the prompter snarling the lines five words ahead, so that
any semi-intelligent person in the audience could repeat them after him
more effectually than do most of the louts behind the footlights. As is
the case with literature, the theater in South America is mainly
designed to appeal to the male. Respectable women are rarely seen at the
average playhouse, not merely avoiding the “casino” with its “specially
imported blond artistes” of not too adamantine morals, but even what
corresponds to our vaudeville, where the audience sits smoking with its
hat on and the boxes are graced by demimondaines. In fact, the stage and
respectability have no connecting link in the Latin-American mind. All
over South America, and especially in Brazil, “actress” is synonymous
with less complimentary terms; nor is it possible to convince a
Brazilian that such is not universally the case elsewhere. Rarely
anything better than stupid and salacious appeals to men, it is small
wonder that the living drama has been nearly ousted from South America
by the cinema, with its easily transportable, international form of
entertainment.
The motion-picture having come after all the business part of Rio was
built, there was no room to erect “movie palaces” which have elsewhere
followed in the train of Edison’s most prostituted invention. All the
cinemas along the Avenida Central are former shops, without much space
except in depth, and as the temperature quickly rises when such a place
is crowded, the screen often consists of a curtain across what used to
be the wide-open shop door, so that one on the sidewalk may peep in and
see the audience and even the orchestra, though he can see nothing of
the projected pictures within an inch of his nose. Alongside the “movie”
house proper another ex-shop of similar size is generally used as a
waiting-room. Here are luxurious upholstered seats, much better than
those facing the screen, and some such extraordinary attraction as a
“feminine orchestra specially contracted in Europe.” For the
waiting-room is of great importance in Rio. It takes the place in a way
of a central plaza and promenade where the two sexes can come and admire
one another, and it is often thronged immediately after the closing of
the door to the theater proper, by people who know quite well they must
sit there a full hour before the “section” ends. In fact, young fops
sometimes come in and remain an hour or two ogling the feminine charms
in the waiting-room and then go out again without so much as having
glanced at the show inside. In contrast, many cinemas have
“second-class” entrances, without waiting-room and with seats
uncomfortably near the screen, where the sockless and collarless are
admitted at reduced prices.
It does not require long contact with them to discover that Latin films
are best for Latins, for both audience and actors have a mutual language
of gestures and facial expressions. The lack of this makes American
films seem slow, labored, and stupid, not only to Latins, but to the
American who has been living for some time among them. It is a strange
paradox that the most _doing_ people on the earth are the slowest in
telling a story in pantomime or on the screen. What a French or an
Italian actress will convey in full, sharply and clearly, by a shrug of
her shoulders or a flip of her hand, the most advertised American “movie
star” will get across much more crudely and indistinctly only by
spending two or three minutes of pantomimic labor, assisted by two or
three long “titles.” The war quickly forced the “Companhia Brazileira,”
as it did most of its rivals, to use American films; but neither
impresarios nor their clients had anything but harsh words for the
“awkward stupidity” and the pretended Puritanic point of view of those
makeshift programs—with one exception, Brazilian audiences would sit up
all night watching our “wild west” films in which there was rough
riding. Curious little differences in customs and point of view come to
light in watching an American film through South American eyes. For
instance, there is probably not a motion-picture director in the United
States who knows that to permit a supposedly refined character in a film
to lick a postage stamp is to destroy all illusion in a Latin-American
audience. Down there not even the lowest of the educated class ever
dreams of sealing or stamping a letter in that fashion. An American film
depicting the misadventures of a “dude” or “sissy” was entirely lost
upon the Brazilian audiences, because to them the hero was exactly their
idea of what a man should be, and they plainly rated him the most
“cultured” American they had ever met. Bit by bit one discovers scores
of such slight and insignificant differences, which sum up to great
differences and become another stone in that stout barrier between the
Latin and the Anglo-Saxon divisions of the western hemisphere.
On Thursday came the customary mid-weekly change of bill, and we were
thankful for a new program after hearing the old one more than thirty
times. Also the “music,” which the cinema orchestra ground out
incessantly during every moment when we were not giving our part of the
show, changed, though hardly for the better. We were a godsend to the
musicians of that orchestra, especially to the player of the bass-viol.
Hitherto they had been required to play unbrokenly from one in the
afternoon until nearly midnight; our advent gave them ten or eleven
twenty-minute respites during that time. This they usually spent lolling
around the room behind the screen, about the phonograph and our trunks,
where they frequently fell asleep. Particularly the anemic quadroon who
manipulated the largest stringed instrument seemed never to catch up on
his sleep. Barely did our part of the program begin than he stretched
out in such comfort as he could find in the improvised green-room and
went soundly to sleep, so soundly that no noise under heaven could wake
him—save one. When it came time for them to return, his companions would
shout at him, jostle him, sometimes even yank him erect; nothing had the
slightest effect on his somnolence. But the instant the first strains of
their never-varying “music” were heard in the orchestra pit outside, the
sleeper would awake with a flash, make one spring through the door, and
be automatically scraping off his part with the others by the time they
had reached the second or third note.
Sunday is the big theater or “movie” day in Brazil, for then the
families of the “four hundred” turn out in full force. On our seventh
day they were standing knee-deep in the waiting-room most of the
afternoon and early evening. The congestion increased that part of my
duties which had to do with auditing, for the head of a family often
paused to shake hands effusively with the door-keeper, after which the
entire family poured boldly in, and it became my business to find out
whether there had been anything concealed in the effusive hand, and if
not, why the box-office had been so cavalierly slighted.
One afternoon the Senhor Presidente da Republica came to honor the
fourth performance of the day with his patronage, and to give us the
official blessing without which we had been forced to open. A corps of
policemen was sent first to hang about the door for nearly two
hours—giving passers-by the impression that the place had been
“pinched.” There followed a throng of generals, admirals, and
un-admirables in full uniform, who waited in line for “His Excellency.”
The president came at length in an open carriage, his girl wife beside
him, two haughty personalities in gold lace opposite them, and a company
of lancers on horseback trotting along the Avenida beside them. The
waiting line fawned upon the leathery-skinned chief of state, bowed over
the hand of his wife, then the whole throng surrounded the loving pair
and, pushing the humble door-keeper scornfully aside, swarmed into the
cinema without a suggestion of offering to pay the entrance fee. Luckily
the doors were not high enough to admit the lancers, who trotted away
with the red of their uniforms gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. It
was my first experience with the official “deadheads” of Brazil, but by
no means my last.
We quickly found, too, that the official gathering was bad for business.
Surely any American theater holding 510 persons would fill up when the
President of the Republic and his suite were gracing it with their
presence! Yet here there was only a scattering of paying audience as
long as the “deadheads” remained, which, thanks perhaps to a film
showing them in the recent Independence Day parade, was until they had
heard the entire program once and the Kinetophone twice. The president,
it seemed, was hated not only for his political iniquities, but the
élite looked down upon him for marrying a girl little more than
one-fourth his own age and letting her make the national presidency the
background for her social climbing; and to enter the theater while the
president and his retainers were there was to risk losing both one’s
political and social standing as a high class Brazilian.
It soon got on our nerves to know that we were the only persons, alive
or dead, in the whole expanse of Brazil who could operate the
Kinetophone, that if anything happened to either of us it meant a ruined
performance, our income cut off, and an unamused Rio élite. Let one of
us fail to be on the dot ten times a day and the thing would have been
ruined, for the _Carioca_ is nothing if not critical and of so little
patience that, had we missed a single performance, word would have gone
out at once that the “novelty” at the “Cinema Pathé” had failed. I
decided, therefore, during our second week to get and break in a native
assistant, and next morning the two principal dailies contained this
appealing announcement:
_Preciza-se de um operador de
cinema, jovem, sem familia, com ao
menos dois annos de experiencia,
sabendo bem a electricidade e algo
de inglez._
I intended to be particularly insistent on those points of youth,
“without family,” and “something of English,” but I soon found that we
would be lucky even to get the other and indispensable requirements of
cinema experience and a knowledge of electricity. In Buenos Aires mobs
had besieged Linton’s hotel in answer to a similar announcement; in New
York it would probably have brought out the police reserves. Yet hardly
half a dozen applicants turned up at the Praia do Flamengo after our
morning swim, languidly to inquire our desires. The first was a stupid
looking negro who did not seem to fulfill any of the requirements; the
second was a shifty-eyed mulatto with no physique—badly needed for the
one-night stands ahead; the third was quite visibly impossible. I
engaged the fourth man to appear. Carlos Oliva was about “Tut’s” age,
which did not hinder him from already having a wife and four children.
But then, so do all Brazilians, legitimately or otherwise. He was a
_Paulista_, that is, born in São Paulo, though of Italian parents, a
practiced mechanic and experienced operator of ordinary “movie” films,
and he looked intelligent. To be sure he spoke no English, but that vain
hope had died early and it became evident that “Tut” would have to learn
enough Portuguese to get along when it came time for me to go ahead of
the show to make bookings.
I had gradually been acquiring a better command of that tongue myself,
and now made use of it to draw up a formidable contract tying Carlos
hand and foot. Though I was forced to pay him the equivalent of a
hundred dollars a month and traveling expenses, I required him to stay
with the Kinetophone until the tour of Brazil was completed, not to
exceed one year. On every “second feast day” after the first month he
was to get four-fifths of his pay, the rest to remain in the hands of
the “Linton South American Company” until the tour was finished, when
the balance was to be paid him in a lump sum, together with his fare
back to Rio. If he left before that time, both the balance and the
transportation were forfeited, for we did not propose to spend weeks
training a man only to have him leave us at the first whim or better
offer—though the latter contingency was not likely. Lastly, he was not
to engage in any other occupation while with us, he could be discharged
upon a week’s notice if he proved unsatisfactory, with balance and fare
paid, and he was required never to show or explain to others the
workings of the Kinetophone, nor disclose knowledge of anything
connected with our company which he might learn directly or indirectly.
With all these clauses duly included and the document signed in
duplicate, I fancied even a Brazilian could find no means of leaving us
in the lurch. Little had I suspected, when I was tramping the streets of
Rio six weeks before, carrying all my worldly possessions wrapped in a
square yard of cloth, that I should soon be strutting down the Avenida
Central as one of her captains of industry, laying down the law to mere
mortals, and shouldering my way daily through her narrow downtown
streets to deposit a large sum of money.
About the time Carlos joined us I found myself in new and wholly
unexpected trouble—silver trouble. It scarcely seems possible that
anyone could protest at getting too much silver, but many strange things
happen in Brazil. There is no Brazilian gold, except in theory; and its
paper does not suffice for small transactions. One day the Rio manager
of the “Companhia Brazileira” met me at our usual noonday conference
with the announcement that he would have to pay me a part of our
percentage in silver. I saw no reason why he should not, other than the
trouble of carrying it a few blocks to the bank, and accepted 200$000 in
paper-wrapped rolls. But when I dropped these down before the receiver’s
window, he declined to accept them. I fancied the tropical heat had
suddenly affected his sanity, and went in to see one of the English
“clarks.” From him I learned that it was only too true; the banks of Rio
_do not_ accept silver! I had heard of South American bankers doing all
kinds of tricks, but I had never before known one to refuse money. I
tried several other banks of various nationalities with the same result;
they all accepted only silver enough to make up odd multiples of ten
milreis. The English manager of the British bank, who had lived so long
in Brazil that he had lost some of the incommunicativeness of his race,
took the trouble to explain the enigma to me. The year before, the agent
of a German firm had arranged with certain Brazilian officials to issue
a new coinage and the firm had flooded the country, about the capital,
with shining new silver 500, 1000, and 2000 reis pieces. But silver is
legal tender in Brazil only up to two milreis; therefore, when it
suddenly became plentiful, the banks could not accept any great amount
of it because they had no outlet and would have had to build new vaults
to hold the stuff. At the cinema door we naturally took in much _prata_,
so that even after making change a donkey-load of it remained to be
divided each noonday. I could not buy drafts with it on New York; the
government would not receive it—nor its own paper money in most
transactions, for that matter; being “made in Germany” it was hardly
worth melting up. The one rift in the silver clouds was that merchants
were so anxious for trade during this period of depression that they
would accept any kind of money in any amount if only people would buy.
We paid Carlos in silver and we spent silver ourselves whenever we had
to spend. What we could not get rid of in that way I could only sell at
a four per cent. loss, and as I was already paying 5$000 a dollar for
drafts, I finally took to dropping pounds of silver into our trunks.
But the worst was still to come. Commerce was suddenly swamped under a
flood of nickel! Its “refunding loan” having failed, Brazil was hard put
to it to find money for current expenses, and disgorged anything that
could be found lying about the federal treasury. If the government
refused to take its own silver and nickel, it did not by any means
refuse to pay it out. The lower and less influential officials were
paid, when at all, in rolls of silver, those without any political pull
whatever in nickel, and there were cases of being paid in _vintems_, the
obsolete copper coins of twenty reis each which may be seen in use only
among beggars and negro street hawkers. On government pay-days, ever
more rare now as time went on, one might see a government bookkeeper or
a school teacher come in to buy a long-needed bar of soap and a flashy
new shirt, lugging in both hands, like dumbbells, great lumps of
paper-wrapped silver, nickel, and even copper.
It was not until September 25 that I could risk letting Carlos run the
stage end of the show, even under my immediate supervision, but he
learned with reasonable speed and three days later I spent the afternoon
climbing Tijuca and turned up at the cinema after eight, much relieved
to find that nothing had gone awry. “Tut,” however, was forced to stick
close to his booth during all performances as long as we remained in
Rio.
Then came the end of the month, the figuring up of accounts, and the
startling discovery that I was a millionaire! In a single week I had
earned more than I had spent since entering Brazil three months before,
and my salary and commission for the month, little more than half of
which we had been playing, summed up to 1,250,000 reis! What it would
have been under normal conditions, when Brazilians were able to maintain
to the full their reputation as “good spenders,” only the mathematically
minded can compute. Now that I had my first million, by all the rules of
Wall Street I should have had no difficulty in rapidly joining the
multimillionaire class. However, when I found that at the prevailing
rate of exchange my earnings amounted to barely three hundred dollars,
and when I added the knowledge that a five-cent handkerchief sold for
1$500, that it cost 600 reis to have a collar badly laundered, and that
rather a thin letter mailed to the United States required the equivalent
of twenty-five cents in stamps, I realized that I was in no immediate
danger of descending into the pitiable class of the idle rich.