Encounter

This happened to me more than twenty years ago, when I visited Brazil. I have never told anyone and have tried to forget it, but I cannot. I suppose writing it down, describing it in as much detail as possible, might at least help me get it off my chest and make sense of it, even if that is impossible.

I had just graduated from university and was offered a trip as a graduation present—a journey on my own, a sort of rite of passage before I began working in the family business. My parents said I could choose any country I wanted, and I picked one I had never visited and had always found intriguing: Brazil. It was my first trip completely alone, though not the first without my family. I had taken several short trips with friends to beaches or the mountains and once backpacked through Europe with a friend, visiting cities in Spain and Italy. My parents offered to let me invite someone; they would pay his flights and lodging as long as he covered his own expenses. The truth, however, was that I did not want to invite anybody. I believed traveling alone would help me find things that I could not discover in somebody else’s company. As I would later learn, I was right.

My family was comfortably off, but we were not rich. My parents could afford to send me abroad for a few weeks, yet I knew that my decisions might require sacrifices from them. Inspired by my backpacking experience in Europe, I decided that traveling between Brazilian cities by coach and staying in hostels would let me extend the trip without making too large a dent in my parents’ bank account.

I began in São Paulo, where my flight from Mexico landed. I stayed a week and then started moving between other cities. In retrospect, my route was neither the most efficient nor the most practical, but at the time I traveled almost by instinct. I visited Salvador da Bahia, Belo Horizonte, Florianópolis and Curitiba, and ended in Rio de Janeiro, where I would remain the longest: four weeks. I found a hostel in Ipanema but left after a few days. The area seemed full of tourists, and throughout the trip my aim was to meet local people and truly absorb the culture of every place. Hostels naturally had the great advantage of introducing me to travelers from around the world, making friends, going out at night and so on. But I also wanted the opportunity to speak with residents and see their routines and everyday lives. I must also admit, almost with embarrassment, that I was rather bohemian at the time: I never went anywhere without a poetry book under my arm and believed that smoking unfiltered, rice-paper cigarettes was the coolest thing in the world.

A Frenchman I met at the Ipanema hostel recommended another place where he had stayed a couple of years earlier, in a neighborhood near the center called Santa Teresa. Writing that name a second ago sent a shiver through me. I remember Santa Teresa with a mixture of nostalgia and horror. Nostalgia because it may be the place where I was happiest in my life. The neighborhood lies among hills, with marvelous views of the city and dense vegetation. Cobblestone streets wind into a labyrinth and connect through endless staircases. I arrived at the supposed hostel drenched in sweat, carrying my backpack after climbing slopes that seemed to have no end. The house, its white paint faded by time and weather, appeared deserted. A very old woman opened the door. I explained that I wanted to stay at the hostel, that someone had recommended it, and so forth. Between my terrible Portuguese and her indifference, we were getting nowhere. After a couple of minutes, a younger woman came out—her daughter, perhaps fifty years old—and I repeated the explanation. As far as I understood, they had stopped operating as a hostel some time earlier, but would gladly rent me a room and provide meals if I wished. Her prices seemed far too low, so I decided to stay. Lodging in somebody’s home struck me as the perfect opportunity for the authentic experience I wanted. Besides, I had no desire just then to lose myself again in the maze of alleys merely to leave the neighborhood. If I disliked the place, I would go the next day.

I know this story may seem to be going nowhere, but as I said, I want to describe everything in detail and leave it recorded somewhere. I should also clarify the language question. I had learned Portuguese a few months before the trip. At the time, there was a computer program called Rosetta Stone, and I used it to take a Portuguese course. Once in Brazil, I discovered that the course did not allow me to communicate as well as I had hoped, but whenever I did not know how to say something, I simply said it in Spanish or used gestures. As I remember it, Brazilians were somewhat indifferent to foreigners, but that changed when I told them I was Mexican. Almost everyone cried, “Chaves! Chaves!”—their name for El Chavo del Ocho, the television show—and treated me better from then on.

I had almost no dealings with the mother except to wish her good morning. During the first few days she did not reply; gradually she began to answer, almost against her will. I developed a sort of friendship with the daughter. She asked me a thousand questions in Portuguese, half of which I understood, and I replied in Spanish without ever being sure whether she understood me. I normally came downstairs for breakfast in the morning, went out and did not return until night. I explored all of Rio de Janeiro on foot, visited every beach, drank beer with strangers and listened to samba in a thousand improvised venues. Those weeks were simply incredible.

Near the end of my stay, I went out one night with some German women whom I had met through an Italian from the first hostel in Ipanema. We ended up downtown, somewhere with samba—perhaps an empty lot or parking area. Suddenly, I could no longer see the Germans and decided to return to my lodgings in Santa Teresa. I was a little annoyed because, although the distance was not great, the many slopes, turns and staircases made the route a real adventure. I was approaching Santa from a different direction than usual, so I became lost and by some miracle found a street that brought me alongside a cemetery I had often seen from the hill. I never learned its name and have never wanted to look it up, but it is a sloping cemetery beside Santa Teresa with a white chapel at the top.

From the cemetery I did not know which street to take. Here the streets begin to narrow; they are cobbled and winding. I knew only that one direction would take me to Santa Teresa and another to Fallet, a favela. My landlady had said it was not very dangerous but that I had better not enter it. I therefore needed to make sure I chose the right path. Something one does not understand about Rio de Janeiro until living there for a few weeks is that favelas are everywhere; sometimes merely turning a corner places you inside one. This was also when the film City of God, about life in Rio’s favelas, had just been released, so I tried to avoid them.

I chose a street and started toward it when I heard a voice in Spanish: “Are you going to Fallet?” Startled, I said no. “Then don’t go that way,” the voice replied. It belonged to a brown-skinned girl of about sixteen. I noticed she was barefoot. Several thoughts crossed my mind. It was the middle of the night—what was a girl doing there at that hour? How did she know I spoke Spanish? Why did she speak it herself? Why was she barefoot? All those questions, combined with the fear of the night, the feeling of being lost and the mention of the favela, frightened me, but I tried to behave naturally. In my poor Portuguese, still unable to believe that she had addressed me in Spanish, I said that I was going to Santa Teresa but did not know the way. “It’s this way,” she answered in Spanish. “I’ll take you.” Thinking about it now makes me feel like an idiot, because at that exact moment I believed it was a trap. Too many things did not fit. The logical response was to run.

She was pretty. Perhaps that is why I followed her; I do not know. Perhaps I feared that running would make things worse. Perhaps I was ashamed—ashamed to flee when she might be harmless, a girl who wanted to help because she had seen me lost and had saved me from wandering into the favela; a girl who wanted me to reach home safely and show me the way; a girl who was alone before dawn on a street beside a cemetery, barefoot and speaking Spanish. I walked beside her. I asked why she spoke Spanish, and she said she knew many languages. I asked why she was alone so late, and she said she liked walking. We had already traveled a good distance along the street, and I kept wondering whether it was the right way, but I did not dare ask. “Aren’t you afraid to walk alone at this hour?” I asked. “No. Why would I be? Everyone is asleep.” “Aren’t you afraid of being robbed?” “No, I have nothing anyone could steal.” “So you aren’t afraid of anything?” I persisted. “No.” “Not even ghosts? We’re near the cemetery,” I said in a silly horror-film voice. In my mind, I think I was trying to be likable in case my nocturnal guide had bad intentions. “I’ve never seen one,” she replied. “How do you know I’m not a ghost?” I asked. “You don’t look like one,” she said. “How do you know what ghosts look like? Maybe I am one,” I insisted in the same foolish voice. By then the street was narrower and darker. “If you’re a ghost, disappear to prove it,” she said. “How do you know ghosts can disappear?” I replied. “They can,” she said. I turned toward her, and she was no longer there.