Time Travel

Don Pedro II with his daughter, Isabel, on his right arm.

Brazil is the only country in the Americas that had a king. In 1808 the Portuguese royal family moved its entire court to Rio de Janeiro, fleeing Napoleon. Fourteen years later, the king's son, Pedro I, declared Brazil an empire separate from Portugal. Some credit this unique birth-of-a-nation story for the unity of this vast country amid the fragmentation of Spanish South America. Pedro's son, who was born in Brazil, Pedro II, was a polymath — photographer, scientist, linguist. He allowed a free press to flourish, among other accomplishments, then in 1889 he liberated Brazil from its colonial status without a shot being fired. Brazil was born and a year earlier his daughter, Isabel, abolished slavery.

The territory of Brazil was discovered in 1500 by Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral of the same breed of maniacal European sailors as Columbus. However, Brazil remains mysteriously eons behind the US. Large cities in Brazil have the same feel as a small Midwestern town in the US. Neighbors are friendly and strangers say hello. The women's movement hasn't yet arrived. Men hold doors for women and stand up when a woman enters the room. Brazil practices an ancient Roman type of feminism. It's something like benevolent-chauvinism-toward-women-goddesses. There are many older middle-class Brazilian women who have never worked, nor do they cook or clean. They have maids for the cooking and cleaning and nannies to help with the kids.

A bygone era resides in the country's language as well. Portuguese continues to hold the reins of its sexist past. Filho is the word for son and filha is daughter, but filhos expands to cover children. Thus, a parent can say, Tenho dois filhos (I have two sons), and then tell you one of them is a girl. Similarly, it's appropriate to say goodbye to a group of middle-aged women, “Tchau, meninas,” addressing them as girls without offense.

Like the language, the division of the sexes remains steadfast. Groups of women go shopping without their husbands, and four middle-aged men can eat and drink in a restaurant for hours without upsetting their wives. The height of counter-tops and stoves is lower than in the US because Brazilian women average about 5'2,” and men don't set foot in the kitchen. The height of paintings hung on the walls is lower because the women are in charge of the home and the pictures are hung at a woman's eye level.

My wife told a friend that her mother had been in the hospital and was now convalescing at home so my wife was spending a lot of time with her mother, preparing meals and doing her food shopping and laundry. My wife's friend asked, “So who's taking care of your husband?”

Go into any hair salon here and you'll find ladies having their hair dyed and wrapped in strips of aluminum foil while sitting under hair dryers that look like 1950s space helmets. Manicures are done without nail dryers, and pedicures are enjoyed with your feet up in the girl's lap.

Brazil is so old-fashioned that only now are half the country's women working outside the home. There are still travel agents and Blockbuster movie stores. Take-out food arrived in the 1970s, along with the car industry and home telephones. The word for take-out is marmita, named for the stackable covered pots that Brazilians used to carry food. People brought four or five empty marmita pots to a neighbor's house who had a business out of her own kitchen. Every weekday neighbors filled the dishes with beef in one, rice in another, beans in the largest. It's rare to see homemade marmita nowadays except in rural areas, but restaurants provide round, take-out, aluminum containers still called marmitas.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle imagined his tale The Lost World set on Mount Roraima, a mountain peak with a mysterious flat-top plateau located in Brazil's most northern state. This adventure story follows explorers who discover dinosaurs deep in the jungle, and it later inspired Michael Crichton's tale Jurassic Park.

As late as the 1980s, Brazilians were sharing phones. Not party lines, but using the neighbor's phone because of the years-long waiting list. It was like the US in the 1920s, when the neighborhood boy would get paid 3 cents to sit by the phone in the pharmacy and fetch anyone who received a call.

Jobs that require a backhoe in the US are dug by hand here. Manual labor takes on ingenious proportions, such as rope pulleys used to haul bricks to the upper floors of a construction site. A Brazilian woman who lives in Japan told me her Japanese neighbors recognize Brazilians as the two guys carrying a refrigerator down the street without a hand truck.

The country's agrarian roots have not been lost; there's no word in Portuguese for a weed. It's as if the industrial revolution hasn't yet arrived, so the country is moving from ox plows to smartphones. All the beef consumed still comes from oxen.

The wistful atmosphere reminds me of b/w movies with a British cop swirling his nightstick walking past gas lamps on the foggy nights of 18th century London. Until recently, there were security guys in my neighborhood who had the same role, strolling the darkened streets. They would blow their whistles to signal all was safe. I find it a charming display reminiscent of a time when all men wore hats and women wore skirts.

Old customs aren't questioned here even if they fly in the face of logic. My wife opens the windows each morning to refresh the air inside our apartment but insists the curtains remain closed in the afternoon. Why? It's tradition! Keeping out the punishing sun? Or the class status of privacy – poor people can't afford curtains? Only close relatives are invited to tour a home they've never seen, while friends or neighbors never leave the living room, where there is a half-bathroom for guests. Refreshments are served on a silver tray. A scandal would ensue should someone get up and walk into the kitchen to serve herself.

Laws that we take for granted in the US are new here. Divorce was legalized in 1977. Asbestos was finally banned in 2017. Until 1979, there was a law banning girls/women from playing soccer. Abortion is still illegal unless the life of the mother is in danger. (Then again, women didn't get the right to vote in Switzerland in federal elections until 1971.)

Protest against “gay cure,“ June 2013. Photo by MisterSanderson

Brazil is attempting to enter the 20th and the 21st centuries simultaneously. Cellphones, women working outside the home, gay cohabitation, and cars with automatic transmissions are all appearing at the same moment. The average family size has fallen from six children to less than two in 50 years. Teens are on Instagram while their grandmothers who live with them prepare herbal remedies for bruises and believe the Church will overturn divorce.

When the military dictatorship ended in the mid-80s, a 20-year bulkhead against an ocean of modernity collapsed. The 1960s have come to Brazil. For the first time gay men and women are holding hands in public. There's a tidal wave of braless women and men with dreadlocks.

For me, moving to Brazil required a leap into a time tunnel ala H.G. Wells. My time machine was a Boeing 767 out of JFK Airport that landed in a world where every day is a retrospective film festival, a b/w renaissance of days gone by, complete with kitschy knickknacks that are sold in Soho shops only because they're camp.

Such a leap backward can be a formidable challenge, which is why tourism is not a booming industry in Latin America. Travelers do not cherish waiting on long lines at the bank or riding in crowded buses without air conditioning. Brazil is so provincial no one has heard of backgammon.

Curitiba, a city of two million where I live, is more like a quaint town. Newspapers are delivered by boys on bicycles, and people use propane gas for cooking and hot water. Many sinks have only one faucet for cold water, and where there is a hot water tap, the propane must first be turned on with a pilot light. Some people still have refrigerators without freezers. When my neighbor bought her first fridge with a freezer, I had to calm her frenzy that the smoke coming from her freezer wasn't a fire.

With small-town congeniality, warmth and friendliness are the norm, like the delivery boy who put plastic slippers over his shoes before entering my apartment because it was raining outside. Delivery guys on motorcycles being paid by the piece take the time to say thank you and have a nice weekend.Then there was the time I bought an inexpensive pair of sneakers and after I'd paid, the salesgirl carried my sneaker box from the cash register in the back of the store to the entrance, walking me out. Clothing stores offer free alternations. It's a hands-on country with legions of women who sew and men who do carpentry. Salespeople in shops work on commission so store owners can afford to hire many of them. It's common to have half a dozen clerks working inside a little shop; you won't be more than three feet into a store before someone is assisting you. Credit card machines are hand-held and brought to the table after a meal.

The best hands-on service is at the gym. There are personal trainers for hire but they're superfluous because three or four trainers are employed by the gym to roam the small health club morning, noon, and night offering free advice. Their sole purpose is to assist members, and they all have college degrees and know the physiology of exercise. There are two or three maids always on hand to mop the floors and wipe down the equipment. The trainers say hello with the standard Brazilian handshake – both hands in a sideways hug with the left hand finding a place on the other's shoulder. The female trainers greet everyone with a kiss.

My gym is as evocative as single-faucet sinks; people openly socialize like they would in any setting. Teens use the facilities without parental supervision. There's a coffee bar, and people aren't embarrassed to stand around in their gym clothes or pretend sweaty bodies in spandex look the same as in street clothes. One rainy afternoon when the gym was empty, I was on a stationary bike reading a book. I noticed one of the trainers pacing the rubberized floor holding something in his arms. I couldn't figure out why he kept walking back and forth along the same 10-yard path. I walked over to see he was cradling his sleeping infant son, lending new meaning to family membership. People say nostalgia is an illusion, an exercise in futility. We can never go back in time because the past isn't anything like we remember it, but this is exactly how I remember it.

I miss the days when everyone, white and blue collar, belonged to a union. They still do in Brazil. Maids and bank tellers and secretaries and IT managers. Thanks to the unions and stringent work laws, many Brazilians retire in their fifties. Six weeks' paid vacation and three months' paid maternity leave are guaranteed by the Constitution, making Brazil as inviting as Scandinavia. Every employee gets an entire month's extra salary in December. It's called a Thirteenth Salary and works nicely with retail stores for Christmas shopping. McDonald's was fined $30 million for violating Brazilian labor laws in a case brought against them by the Confederation of Hospitality and Tourism Workers. In addition to the monthly social security checks after 30 years of work people receive, every company is required to contribute 8.5 percent of an employee's salary into a retirement fund. The employee doesn't need to contribute anything. Government employees can also open private retirement accounts to which the government must match the employees' contributions.

Speaking of the 1950s, VW was the first car company to open a factory in Brazil; it was VW's first factory outside Germany. Brazilians are still loyal to VW, and there are tens of thousands of Beetles on the road.

The two-hour lunch is disappearing; however, everyone gets an hour out of the office at midday. If an employee prefers a two-hour lunch, she can take it and work an extra hour. In areas in Brazil where it rarely rains, people don't go to work when it does. In Curitiba it rains frequently, but people still use it as an excuse to skip an appointment. Traffic slows down when it's raining as if people were driving on black ice.

Also quaint is the way Brazilians preserve things. They don't dispose of old clothes or appliances. Nobody is having yard sales; instead, there are shops to repair broken typewriters and toaster ovens. In my apartment building, they collect the rain water and use it to water the plants and wash the floors. People sense the importance of preserving the indoor and outdoor scenery. People preserve their meals, too. You are expected to eat everything served on your plate. To avoid mom's wrath, the serving sizes are small. If you're still hungry, you're welcome to a second or third serving.

Brazil is retro – everything from velvet paintings to lava lamps are sold in gift shops and not sarcastically. People love slapstick and corny jokes. Brazil is so dated the same year France outlawed unlimited refills of soda at fast food outlets, Brazil began offering them.

I want to assimilate into my new old world, but after a ride in a Ferrari, can a Beetle be exciting? I can't move at my Brooklyn pace, eating a sandwich while walking down the street. It took me months to realize why everyone walked more slowly than I did and stared at me for eating on the street. If the definition of expat life is changing horses in midstream, I've come to the right place. Even the political energy is retro. The contented populace has received just enough education to be dissatisfied. Young and old are taking to the streets tired of political corruption, impunity for the wealthy, and endemic nepotism. A president was impeached without a military coup. There is tear gas in the air; it's 1970s America all over again.

Imagine waking one day and finding yourself in a benign era. There's a prelapsarian glaze on the world like the vaseline photographers used to put on camera lenses. There's a slow, sweet sheen on everything like the poor boy invited for dinner in To Kill a Mockingbird who coats his dinner with syrup to young Scout's surprise.

Living in Brazil's present/past provides a vibrant theater for reminiscence. Perhaps it's the slow pace or the unknown lyrical language that sparks reverence, the ability to take a step back from the stage and join the audience. It's impossible to appreciate an age while you're living in it. Nostalgia grows from our love of what we've had time to digest. The easy days of my youth are on display in Brazil – fathers playing shoeless soccer with their sons, and mothers passing on recipes to their daughters by guiding their hands over flour-dusted rolling pins.