Chapter XVI: Easternmost America (2)

Properly speaking, Recife is the older section of the town, out near the reef, and given over mainly to business. The modern city covers several times more territory than that, including country-like outskirts of such suggestive names as Capunga, Afflictos, and Sertãozinho among its suburbs. There is Afogados (Drowned Man) out past the Five Points station on the beach, a big suburb of mud and thatched huts among swamp bushes and a network of tidewater, with lanes of mud that snap like the cracking of a Sicilian whip when the tide is out and the tropical sun blazing down upon them. In other directions, still within the city limits, are miles of old estates and aged plantation-houses living out their dotage under magnificent royal palms. To get about this broken up city there were big new English and American street-cars, so new that passengers were not yet permitted to put their feet on the seats. It was less than a year since the old mule-cars for which Pernambuco was long famous, had been superseded—in the outskirt of Torre they might still be seen—and ragamuffins who had never heard the word “bond” in its ordinary significance made frequent use of it in its Brazilian sense. The new company was pushing its lines in every direction and already the tramway was advertising itself as ready to furnish electric-light to business houses along its lines. Thus, though one had the sense of treading on the heels of modernity in Pernambuco, in all northern Brazil, the pre-invention age always succeeded in eluding one and escaping just over the edge of the horizon.

Besides its brand new electric street-car system and the three lines of the “Great Western” leaving it in as many directions, Recife has five amusing little railroads, “toy locomotives hitched to a string of baby-carriages,” as “Tut” called them, which do a volume of noisy, dirty, dusty business to the north and northeast of the city. For many years these ancient contrivances of an English company were the only urban traffic in and about Recife. One crowds into a tenement-house of a station, wages pitched battle about a knee-high hole in the wall to buy a ticket, enters an ancient closed wooden box on wheels suggestive of what trains must have been in the days of Charlemagne, amalgamates with variegated Brazilians on a hard, misshapen wooden seat, and waits. When one has waited long enough to run down to “B.A.” and back, there come ten or twelve ear-splitting screeches and back-breaking jolts, and the train is off for some other “station” fifty yards away, with a deluge of smoke, soot, and cinders which penetrate to the utmost recesses of one’s person. For a long hour the contrivance screams its sooty way through endless dusty streets in which the irreconcilable tropical sunlight of February strikes one full in the face like the fist of an enemy, and at the end of that time the weary traveler may descend five or even six, miles away, at Olinda, or at some of the plantation-town suburbs shaded by many trees, yet dreary with their sand in place of grass. There are two such lines to Olinda, out past Santo Amaro with its British cemetery and across a broad swamp by a causeway; but the company claims that the concession is no longer worth the holding since the coming of electric competition. No doubt _Pernambucanos_ considered these medieval trains a wonderful innovation and convenience when they first appeared, but it is more pleasant now to depend on electricity—or to walk.

I waded for miles barefoot along the beach to Olinda one day. Palm-trees edged the curve of the shore with their inimitable plumage, streaking the staring white sunlight with slender shadows. Thatched huts along the beach, with all the Atlantic and its breezes spread out before them, suggested where many a well-to-do family of Recife spends its summers. An old wreck here and there protruded from the surface of the sea, relics of some collision with the easternmost point of the New World. Olinda piled high on its hill amid palm-trees and many huge old churches, takes on the air of both, of age and reverence and the regal dignity of the royal palm. Its many old buildings are clustered rather closely together; it seems still to scorn business as thoroughly as in the olden days, and to spend most of its time gazing across the swampy flatlands at its materialistic rival, or out upon the blue sea which is so rarely seen from Recife.

The city we call Pernambuco claims 200,000 inhabitants, and of these perhaps one in three could pass as white. Even in the huts lining the water or mud labyrinths of the outskirts whites are numerous, though often as trashy as the negroes. It is surprising that as one nears the equator in Brazil the proportion of Caucasian blood increases, but it is easily explained. All that part of South America which thrusts itself halfway across the sea to Africa had many slaves, but Bahia not only grew a crop which required more labor, but, its port being then the national capital, it had the advantage of fame, as well as its great bay as a safe landing-place. The result is that while Bahia is a negro town, Pernambuco is a city of mulattoes, with a mixture of types that can only be differentiated by the rich color-terminology of Brazil. On the whole, the _Recifense_ is a more pleasant individual than the blacker, more slovenly, more impudent _Bahiano_. Like most of the people of North Brazil, he talks in a kind of singsong, ending almost every sentence with _não_ (no) or _ouvioú?_ (did you hear?). There are few really masculine voices in Brazil, and the persistent cackle of poor, cracked trebles, chattering constantly at high speed about nothing, eventually gets on the nerves, unless one has been spared that troublesome equipment. The chief business of the city is still that of the “mascates,” in a larger sense,—the exporting of sugar and cotton and the importing of things needed by the growers of sugar and cotton, with the usual large proportion of the benefits sticking to the fingers of the fortunately placed middlemen. _Carregadores de assucar_, or sugar porters, wearing a sort of football head-mask over their hats, are among the most familiar sights of the old city, and the pungent odor of crude sugar strikes one in the face everywhere in the wharf and warehouse section. The sugar comes from the _engenhos_ in crude, dark-brown form; the tropical heat causes it to ooze out until not only the bags but the half-naked negroes who handle them are dripping and smeared with molasses from top to bottom. When the rotting bag bursts entirely the contents is spread out in the sun and barefoot negroes are sent to wade ankle-deep back and forth in it, until it is dry enough to be shoveled up again.

There are not so many churches per capita in Recife as in Bahia, but they are by no means scarce, while the schools are if anything worse,—miserable little one-den huts hanging on the edges of mud-holes or salt-water marshes, according to the state of the tide. The president of Pernambuco asserted in his annual message that the state schools could not afford to import from the United States the school furniture needed, because of the high tax imposed upon it by the federal government! Of higher institutions, of course, there is no such scarcity as in the elemental grades. The Gymnasio Pernambucano, or High School of Pernambuco, where are promulgated the bachelor degrees that make men “doctors,” and not much else, is a large conspicuous building next that of the state congress—and it had 69 pupils. Of the Faculdade de Dereito, or Law School, similar remarks may be made. In the old business section of Recife especially the condition of streets and buildings left much to be desired, but under the energetic and honest new president promising progress was already beginning to be made.

On Saturday night our share of the receipts had been more than a conto and toward midnight on Sunday I carried home a roll of ragged Brazilian bills large enough to choke a rain-pipe. I was somewhat surprised, therefore, that the “bust-up” came as early as the following Wednesday. I knew it would come sooner or later, but I had expected to be able to stave it off a week or more longer. When “Colonel” Ruben turned up that night, we had already been reduced to “reheated soup.” This, coupled with the fact that he had loudly and widely advertised “Six Days Only!” and had now decided to stay five more, had greatly reduced our audiences. Ruben took one look at the house during the first section, suddenly decided that he had received a cable from his wife requiring his immediate return to Bahia, and disappeared in that direction so swiftly that I have never seen him since. Up to the last he had insisted daily, if not hourly, that I must return when my contract with Linton expired and become manager of his theater-to-be. He departed owing me a paltry 83$ as our share of that evening’s receipts, but he left on my hands not only the “Theatro Moderno” until the following Sunday at a rental of 300$ daily, two dusky young gentlemen whom he had brought with him from Bahia as his assistants, and the unpaid bills for several half-page advertisements in the local papers, but so many other creditors that he saw fit to embark at daylight from an unusual place.

Still, this was little compared with what he might have done, and probably we had made more money with his experienced assistance than we should have made alone. I, too, might have run away, had I cared to leave Americans in general and Edison in particular in such repute as Ruben enjoys to this day in Pernambuco. Instead, I spent a breathless Thursday preparing to meet the new conditions that had been forced upon us. We were certain to lose money that night and the next, but by special advertising and improved programs I hoped to make it up on Saturday and Sunday. We still had the two _calungos_, or ten-foot monk and dancing-girl figures on men’s legs, for though one of Ruben’s creditors had attached these, he allowed us to use them until our departure. I sent them out with drums and handbills, not only through the town, but to all its suburbs and outskirts, including even aristocratic Olinda. In short, for the first time I was a full-fledged theatrical manager, renting, advertising, managing, auditing, running the whole show—even mechanically, too, for that night “Tut” got a touch of some tropical ill and had to be sent home—and, unfortunately, paying the bills. For in spite of all our efforts Saturday night left us with the balance slightly on the side of expenditures. I had already begun, however, to prepare the territory ahead. J. A. Vinhães, Junior, a _Carioca_ engaged in the film-furnishing business in North Brazil, had offered to take over Ruben’s contract and extend it to the Amazon. He was an unusually honest-looking, energetic young man, good company and experienced, as well as widely known in “movie” circles, and before the week was ended he had sailed away toward Pará, and possibly Manaos, as our self-paid advance agent.

My troubles apparently ended, “Tut” and I were sitting at “breakfast” Sunday morning in proper best-boarding-house-in-town style when the waiter suddenly handed me several letters from Linton, bearing neither stamps nor signs of post-office handling. They had been written on board ship on the way north from Buenos Aires, and announced that, the Kinetophone having ended its labors in the Argentine, Linton was on his way home, as soon as he could find a wife he had left in Rio, with the two Spanish-speaking outfits. With the letters he forwarded some new posters and Turco Morandi, formerly manager of one of the largest theaters in “B.A.,” lately advance agent for the Argentine Kinetophone, and noted for his double-width, steel-riveted honesty. It was he who had brought the letters to Pernambuco, and about noon he appeared in person, dressed in the latest Jockey Club style, and announced himself as the new manager of the Kinetophone in Brazil.

There was nothing niggardly about Linton. My six months being up, he offered to let me turn over the job at once, take the first boat either to Manaos or to the United States at his expense, draw my salary up to the time the show started south again, collect traveling expenses from Manaos back to the mouth of the Amazon, and promised to pay me later whatever might be due on my commission basis. “Tut” was to get a percentage of the receipts for taking charge of the show, and to make such use of Morandi, to whom Linton had already advanced a considerable sum, as he saw fit. When they ran out of audiences in the North, the three were to take the show back down the coast, playing in the smaller towns until Linton himself returned to pick them up.

Had there been any evidence that my labors had been unsatisfactory, I should have vanished forthwith. But the letters expressed satisfaction, and Linton was not a man to indulge in flattery. Moreover, I wished to see the rest of Brazil, and I did not want to see it as a foot-loose tourist. I much preferred to go on to Manaos as manager of the Kinetophone, with all the prestige thereunto appertaining, to be forced to mix with all kinds of people, to be mistaken now and then for Edison himself. Besides, I could not take advantage of Linton’s extraordinary generosity. Instead of needing another man we could easily have gotten along with one less, for “Tut,” who was some little inventor himself, had improved upon Edison by wiring the phonograph in such a way that it could be touched off from the booth, and any fool could be taught in a few minutes to put on and take off the records. Then there was Vinhães, already on his way. If Morandi had arrived a few days earlier, I might have sent him on ahead instead, or left him with the show and played advance agent myself. Worst of all, however, Linton, as almost any American would have done under the circumstances, had chosen the worst possible man to send to Brazil. Morandi not only spoke Spanish, but was an _argentino_, and if there is one thing Brazilians resent more than being spoken to in Castilian it is to hear it spoken with the accent of their greatest national rivals. In the end I coaxed the fashionable newcomer to go away somewhere and lose himself, while I spent what I had looked forward to as a pleasant Sunday afternoon wondering who I could get to drown him.

For the first time in Brazil I had to cut out the Sunday matinée and announced an evening performance given over entirely to the Kinetophone—six numbers in each section, with a ten-minute interval in which to change audiences. This meant double labor for “Tut” and Carlos, but it would save us 50$ for the rent of ordinary films, 10$ for a native operator, and should prove a great drawing card. It did. Unfortunately I had set the opening at the early hour of six, and the coming of Morandi caused both “Tut” and me to forget the change. Accustomed to arrive at the theater at 6:30 and have half an hour of ordinary films before our turn came, we sauntered down town as usual, and, as we stepped off the street-car, what should greet our astonished ears but the notes of one of our numbers known as the “Musical Blacksmiths.” It was like hearing one’s own voice issuing from the lips of a stranger. Never in all Brazil had a Kinetophone number been given without either “Tut” or myself in attendance. We dashed into the theater—and found Carlos calmly running the show! The audience had taken to stamping and giving other evidences of impatience, and the plucky _Paulista_, having taught a native how to put on the records, had started the performance. I raised his salary forthwith.

In our three sections that night we took in considerably more than a million, recouping all our losses, and it was a double pleasure not to have to split the receipts with Ruben. But there was that dashed _argentino_ to spoil the effect of our efforts. Luckily, he was already complaining of the “insupportable” heat and complete loss of appetite, while kind, if unknown, friends had filled him full of tales of yellow fever and the plague, so that he had come to me almost with tears in his eyes and called my attention to the wife and five children he had left in Buenos Aires. It took us the better part of Monday and Tuesday, and cost nearly half a million reis to pay his debts, release him from the slimy tentacles of the customhouse, and set him on his way with a ticket to Rio, but the relief was worth the exertion.

By this time we had moved over to the “Polytheama,” an open-air theater in which I had arranged to play three nights at popular prices. I took advantage of this breathing-spell to run out into the interior of the state, not to the end of the line, for that would have meant two days absence and missing a performance, but as far as Bezerros, where the daily train meets itself coming back. The branch runs due west from Recife, and by starting at seven and getting back at five, with constant traveling, I covered 72 miles and return!

Jaboatão on its knoll was buzzing with energy where the shops of the combined railways had concentrated. Hills shrouded in blue veils began to appear as soon as we had crossed the sandy coast strip. Farther inland it grew rolling, everywhere dreary, dry, and bushy, with many tunnels and long iron viaducts. Cotton was growing here and there in the arid soil, but it was scant and small, with one bush where in our southern states there would have been eight or ten. This region of rare reed-and-mud huts bore slight resemblance to that along the line from Maceió northward, with its endless trains of cane, its crowded population, and mammoth old fazenda houses. Negro blood was noticeably less as we left the coast, for slaves were imported chiefly by sugar-planters and were not needed, nor, indeed, useful, in the grazing regions. There were said to be many cattle in the state, but they must have been farther inland, where there was still something to drink. Passengers had to carry water with them, for neither trains nor stations furnished it. Yet only two years before this region had complained of heavy rains! Even the dining-car service of the lines to the north and south of Recife was lacking, because some petty politician of the interior had a contract with the government to furnish passengers an alleged meal at one of the stations, and the English who have taken the line over are compelled, during the sixty years of their lease, to stop every train there for twenty minutes.

At the “Polytheama” that night we had a remarkably good audience, many evidently having put off coming, Brazilian fashion, until the last performance. When we had torn down the show and packed up, “Tut” went home and Carlos to wherever he slept, and after a shower-bath under a spigot, I swung “Tut’s” hammock between two pillars of the open-air theater. This was to be almost my first actual traveling with the show, and it was time I tried out what my companions had been enduring for months. It is many years since I have waked with that curious sensation of wondering where I am, so that I had no difficulty in orienting myself when there came a beating on the cinema door at daybreak. One of the carters I had hired to take our stuff to the station had arrived with one of those tiny, ancient, two-wheeled carts of North Brazil in which the misplacing of a bag of flour suspends the horse in the air. His companion did not turn up until an hour later, after the other had dragged all the trunks to the door, and it was perilously near train-time when I at last sent them hurrying across the cobblestones to the Brum station way over in old Recife. By the time the usual hubbub and quarreling, grafting and exorbitant charges, coaxing and assisting the insufficient and lazy railway employees to get our outfit on board was ended, I was congratulating myself on my foresight in having arranged for another man to pay our traveling expenses. There was 12$500 duty to pay for taking our trunks out of the state, a similar amount for importing them into the next state north, express charges about equal to first-class tickets for each trunk, and while the fares were not high—five dollars for nearly three hundred miles—the twenty per cent. surcharges of the federal and state governments respectively on the tickets made the final total a considerable sum.