“Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival Parade Class One-A is the biggest, most amazing human spectacle in the world,” Teodomiro da Costa had said, inviting Fletch. “Except war.”
The parade starts at six o’clock Sunday afternoon and continues until past noon Monday. About twelve samba schools, of more than three thousand costumed people each, compete in the parade.
I’m not sure I can stand three more days of Carnival.” Even speaking over the noise, Adrian Fawcett’s voice was a deep rumbling chuckle. “Days of elation or depression have the same effect on people, you know. I’m drained already.”
“It’s a mark of character to be able to survive Carnival intact,” Laura answered. “It’s a matter of having the right attitudes.”
She beamed at Fletch.
Fletch said: “It’s all beyond belief.”
“Next is Escola Guarnieri.” Teo peered over the rail at the bateria in the bull pen. “Yes, that’s Guarnieri.” Then he said to Fletch, “After that comes Escola Santos Lima.”
The parade route, on Avenida Marques de Sapucai, is only a mile long.
To the left along the parade route are the stands, built as high as most buildings, crammed with tens of thousands of people. They arrive in the stands, take and protect their seats, bake in the sun, eat their sandwiches, hold their bladders, chatter and sing beginning at noon, a full six hours before the parade starts. Almost all stay in their seats for the full twenty-four hours.
To the right along the parade route are the boxes, vastly expensive vantage points, some done up in bunting. In the boxes are government dignitaries, Brazilian and foreign celebrities, and people who are simply rich.
The parade route between its two sides is as wide as a three-lane road.
It is as wide as the line between shade and sun, sickness and health, tin and gold.
Also along the right-hand side of the route, ten meters high in the air, are the watchtowers where sit the various parade judges, one for costumes, one for floats, one for music, one for dancing, etc. They sit immobile, expressionless, alone, many behind dark sunglasses so that not even a flicker of an eye may be a subject of comment and controversy. Their names are not released to the public until the day of the parade. And so complicated and controversial is their task that the results of their judging are not announced until four days later, on Thursday.
Diagonally across the parade route from da Costa’s box, to the left, is the bull pen filled with hundreds of costumed ritmistas, the bateria of drummers of Escola Guarnieri. Their drums are of all sizes and tones. It takes the drummers up to an hour to put themselves into their proper places in regard to each other, to get their rhythms up, their sound up. Now their rhythm and their sound are full, and fill everyone at the parade, fill their ears, their brains, their entire nervous systems, control the beatings of their hearts, make their eyes flush with blood, their hands and feet move involuntarily, their bones to vibrate. This is total sound, amplified only by human will, as primitive a sound as Man ever made, the sound of drums, calling from every human, direct, immediate response, equalizing them in their numbness before the sound.
Everyone in da Costa’s box is standing at the rail. Laura has taken off her wig and opened the collar of her eighteenth-century-styled shirt. The faces of everyone at the rail shine with sweat. Their eyes, their lips protrude slightly, as if the sound of the drums reverberating within them were seeking a way to burst out of them. The veins at their temples throb visibly to the beat of the drums. Being host, Teo stands back behind the people at the rail. Being tall, he can still see everything.
Down the parade route from the left, passing the bateria in the bull pen like the top of a T comes the Abre-Alas, the opening wing of Guarnieri’s presentation. This group of sambistas, moving of course to the sound of the drums, wear bright, ornate, slightly exaggerated costumes presenting a hint of the time and place of the samba school’s theme, in this case nineteenth-century Amazon plantation ball gowns, their hoop skirts a little too wide, the bodices a little too grand, the bouffants a little too high; for the men, spats a little too long, frock coats a little too wide in the shoulders, top hats a little too high. This is the slave’s view of plantation life. The exaggeration is a making fun. The exaggeration also expresses victory over such a life.
Immediately behind the Abre-Alas comes a huge float stating the literary theme of Guarnieri’s presentation. On the slowly moving truck invisible beneath the float is a mammoth book open for all to see the letters G.R.E.S. GUARNIERI (Gremio Recreativo Escola de Samba Guarnieri). It is desired that the spectator know that it is of history that the school portrays, a kind of written, authoritative history, which may be a kind of joke, too, or an exaggeration, as there is very little authoritative, written history.
Then comes the Comissao de Frente, a line of formally dressed men doing a strolling samba. It is desired that the spectators accept these aging sambistas, honored for their contributions to past Carnival Parades, chosen for their grace and dignity, as the samba school’s board of directors. Few, if any, actually are directors. The real directors are working hard in the school’s parade, all sides of it at once. The presentation-dancers, drummers, floats on trucks and flatbeds, floats that are pushed by hand— must move at exactly one mile an hour, without gaps or holes, keeping the balances of colors and movements perfect.
Behind this line of dignitaries comes the first and most distinguished dancing couple, the Porta Bandeira and the Mestre Sala, the Flag Bearer and the Room, or Dancing Master. These are mature people, in their prime, dressed in lavish eighteenth-century costumes regardless of the theme, those decided by everyone in the favela to be absolutely the best dancers, those dancers everyone else most enjoys watching. Their dance step is incredibly complicated, to most people an incomprehensible wonder, with patterns within patterns, movements within movements. They too must move forward in their dancing at exactly one mile per hour. And while she dances, the lady of the couple must carry a flag, the samba school’s emblem on one side, the symbol of that year’s theme on the other side, waving it so that both sides are visible to everyone.
It is obligatory that every person in the parade, every dancer, dignitary, drummer, director working or parading must constantly be singing the samba enredo, the song presented by that school that year, as loudly and as well, as continuously, as he or she can.
As the Alas come by, the theme of the school’s presentation becomes more and more clear, however broad the theme may be. An ala is a group of hundreds of vigorously dancing people identically dressed depicting some aspect of the theme. Here one Ala is costumed as Indians from the Amazon Basin, dancing steps suggestive of that cultural area. Another ala is again of plantation life, the costumes modified, of course, so that the beauty of the people of that favela, their flesh and movement, the joy of the dancers’ bodies may be revealed and enjoyed by all.
In among the alas come the Figuras de Destaque, the prominent figures which relate to the theme, in this case mythically huge figures of Amazonian plumed birds and monkeys.
All these groups cross in front of the bateria of drummers filling the air with sound in the bull pen.
In da Costa’s box, Jetta in particular wilts. Her greatly abbreviated costume of a Foreign Legionnaire looks hot and heavy over her breasts and hips. Her back leans against a stanchion. Her chin is on her chest. Her eyes are open, watching, but glazed.
The most important obligatory Ala of any presentation is that which honors the earliest history of the samba parade in Rio de Janeiro. After the drought of 1877, women who had emigrated from Bahia danced slowly down the main street of Rio in their long white gowns on the Sunday before Lent, inviting the men to join them, as they had done in Salvador. So here comes the Ala das Baianas, scores of older women, usually the blackest in the favela, dressed, dancing in the flowing white robes of Bahia.
The passistas cause the greatest excitement and appreciation. Young people from the favela, the youngest fully formed, girls and boys, the most beautiful and most handsome, clearly the most athletic, as near naked as possible without being cumbersomely nude, dance down the
