Tropical winter

Tropical winter

For most Europeans, the tropical winter doesn’t really count as winter. However, on that grey August day, as we were standing at the foot of Corcovado, looking up at the trail that led into a dark forest, a point from where we could only imagine the huge statue of the Christ up top, the atmosphere was truly glacial.

I’d been quiet on the taxi ride there, my face turned away from you, my shoulders hunched forwards in a pitiful attempt to hide the tears that were pouring down my cheeks. At first, you had tried to look at me and then you’d given up, turning round instead to look at the city sliding past your side of the car.

Rio de Janeiro is a beautiful city but unlike the most celebrated European towns, which seem to have been designed to be at their best in tepid weather, an overcast sky doesn’t become it. When the weather is glum in Rio, the trees and flowers that you see on every single pavement, the potted plants that the Cariocas proudly put front of their houses or on their windowsills and the extravagant pieces of street art celebrating the beauty and the history of Brazil just aren’t enough. Despite their best efforts, they just can’t make up for the potholes, for the peeling plaster and pockmarks on the house facades or for the huge knots of electric cables that dangle down far too low for human safety. What looks glamorous and risqué under the blazing sun just looks poor and dangerous in the grey weather.

We rode in silence, looking our separate ways, both relieved that we had stopped arguing and making the most of the truce to re-arm. The taxi drew to a stop and we stepped out. You grabbed the small tote bag that contained our provisions for the hike: two water bottles and a few cereal bars each. I’d left my bag in our room. As you’d pointed out, most of Rio is right next to a favela and there is no point in carrying valuables because they will most likely get stolen.

I headed in the direction you showed me but kept my head turned away from you. There were crowds of tourists visiting the Botanical Garden but as we proceeded, the numbers thinned. We were heading for the Christ the Redeemer trail: five steep kilometres through the Atlantic jungle, leading up to the famous landmark. I was wearing jeans and smooth soled trainers… this was going to be a piece of cake.

“Are you going to be OK? It isn’t too much for your back? For your knee?” You asked.

I looked at you coldly, I didn’t want your concern. I shrugged my shoulders and said: “Let me carry the bag for a bit, you can take it when I start to feel tired.” I strode ahead with the tote bag over my shoulder, ignoring the muscle knot that was tightening below the weight of its narrow strap. We had planned on doing this hike and we were bloody going to do it.

We reached the entrance of the trail and signed in, the path ahead of us is narrow, green, lush and a just a little threatening. I’m impressed; I am in such turmoil that it would take more than the splendour of nature to impress me. As I step onto the path, my right knee protests with an angry twinge, I shut it up, telling it to not be a baby and that it will feel better in an hour.

We start walking up the narrow path, slowly leaving the noise of the crowds behind us. I look up to the tall trees to our left, at the jackfruit hanging from their branches. Usually when I see jackfruit in the wild, I wonder what would happen if they were to fall on someone’s head, Newton style. This time, however, I mainly see the resemblance between the large prickly fruit and my heart, whose every beat seems intent on tearing up my insides. The main difference is the colour, my heart is red, as red as the red flags and red lines we threw at each other angrily this morning.

Your voice comes from behind me: “Speak.”

I open my mouth and speak my love for you. My love for you courses through my body like a red-hot iron. My love for you is pain, pure exquisite pain that I need to get out of my body. My love for you spurts out angrily for what seems hours as I carefully tackle the steep paths, with my arms out for balance and taking extra care because of my slippery soles.

As I speak, my other, my past love, comes back to me: the one it feels so sweet by comparison. The love that was gentle, the one that buoyed me and that softly rocked me to sleep every night. How easy it was, how nice…I think back to our walks through his city, chatting like best friends do as we traipsed through the tidy little streets.

Something passes over our head, flapping loudly. Startled, I look up but it is too late, and I see nothing. My other love’s city had a park in its centre: “El Campo Grande” (the “Big Field” …). In the centre of the parc was a little lake, with dozens of mallards who’d waddle up obesely towards you and quacked to ask for snacks. There were peacocks as well, they roamed freely through the park and not one of them had a full tail wheel because the children pulled their colourful feathers out whenever they got a chance. It was just so… nice. How I miss them…Here the trees are huge, millennial, vines come tumbling down their branches. I look up to their crowns but only make out green watery sunlight filtered by the leaves above.

“Watch out!” you say, and I stop mid-sentence. There is a spider web in front of me. You step in and carefully push it away with a stick. Then you start walking again.

“You know I’m not scared of spiders, don’t you?” I ask stiffly.

“You know how many varieties of venomous spiders we have here?” you retort. Then after a pause you add: “I’m listening”.

My love encompasses me; I am my love for you. Today though, my love is like the flesh below a recently pierced abscess, angry, red, pulsating and recoiling in exquisite pain at the softest touch.

As we walk, I force my sore knee to lift my leg over a larger tree root, and a terrifying thought hits me.

“How do you tell the difference between, tree roots, vines and snakes?”

“Around the larger cities the snakes are smaller, and we scare them away. It’s in the Amazon region, in the more isolated areas that you get truly big ones, like pythons and anacondas and stuff.”

“Whaaaat? Anacondas? But they don’t exist! They are mythical creatures, everyone knows that!”

“Nope. Anacondas do exist. And they are huge.”

Unlike the rest of South America and of the Latin speaking world, when they refer to snakes in Brazil, they don’t use a variant of “Serpent”. They choose to go one up on the others and say “Cobra”, just to make it clear how powerful, lethal and majestic their serpents are… Charming.

To put my mind off huge man-eating snakes, I start telling you about a book I read a few months ago. I had only bought it because of the blurb in the bookstore: “One of the best books ever about New York! A must read!”.

It is the story of a young woman who meets a man on the day of the 9/11 attacks and who has a passionate relationship with him. They live together, make love and everything is just peachy until he decides to become a war photographer and to leave the US for Afghanistan. Obviously, she is heartbroken, but life must go on, and she manages to work through the pain and after a decent mourning period she meets another guy she likes. It isn’t the same, he isn’t perfect and beautiful, and she isn’t into him as much: it is a slow burning love, without fireworks but it is also a good stable relationship. Basically, they end up getting married and having the traditional 2.1 kids but then the first guy comes back into the picture and they have this secret affair and… anyway, you get the idea… I really hope this isn’t really one of the best books ever written about NYC. I am just mentioning it because it does have some interesting bits about love, including some fun bits with a character who compares different loves to different types of chemical reactions.

I pause in my tale… There is one chemical reaction that is quite explosive only I can’t remember what it is caused by. I should have paid more attention… That one reaction that is just like the woman with the first guy… the one that is just like…

“How does the book finish?” you ask.

“Well”, I explain, “she eventually chooses the passionate love and decides to leave her husband but before she has time to tell him that she is leaving, she gets a phone call about the lover guy who has gone and got himself blown up in Iraq, so she has to fly over there in order to unplug his life support machine because no one else can do it. When she is in Iraq, she realizes that she is pregnant, so she does a DNA test and obviously the photographer guy is the father. But, as lover boy is no more, she goes back to the husband… Obviously”

“That’s just horrible.”

“Yes, it’s tragic. On top of that both guys are Caucasian so the husband will never be able to tell that the baby isn’t his son and to cap it all, they only had girls, so it rounds off the family nicely.”

“How terrible…”

“Awful, it’s such a squib of a book.”

The answer to my quandary won’t be found in book. This is potentially the most unsettling thing today.

We sit down when we reach a clearing that looks over a waterfall pouring onto large egg-shaped stones. As I stretch my leg out, my knee throbs violently and I wince. We open our water bottles and tear the paper off our cereal bars. We sit in silence for a few minutes, eating and drinking, musing. I have to fight the urge to off my trainers and socks and just dig my toes into the soft, rich soil. I distract myself by looking at a long line of ants that just in front of us, each one carrying a large piece of green leaf.

Ruckus over our heads! Surprised, we look up, and I point up at the gang of little black and white monkeys that are leaping from branch to branch: “Oh! Look! Mikos!”

As I was pointing, my body leaned towards you, and you didn’t shrink back. I stay there, our arms only just touching, quietly. Eventually we stand up. I let you take the tote bag, to my back and knees great relief.

Our eyes meet and it hits me. I love you! I am my love for you! And my love lifts me to the crown of the tallest tree of the forest. It lifts me to the top of the mountain and takes me for a twirl above the head of Christ the Redeemer.

We make it to the top of the mountain and decide it isn’t worth it to pay 50 Reals each to go and take a picture of us with The Christ, we’ll just do it on photoshop. We start heading down.

The trees are thick and the light that filters down is eerie, almost liquid, it seems to reflect on every single one of the shiny green leaves. Walking through this forest makes you realise that green is a collective noun and that all the greens are present here, each loudly vying for our attention, sometimes two greens or more are having it out on a single leaf in a chaotic splash of colour. The smell that comes up from the wintry Brazilian soil reminds me of autumnal walks in the woods from when I was a child.

We make it to the bottom of the mountain. My knee isn’t hurting anymore. We call a taxi as we arrive at the gates of the Botanical gardens. We sit down heavily, our bodies are loose from exhaustion, our hands aren’t quite touching as we whizz through the city.

I don’t know who spotted it first, but when she did, she nudged the other’s elbow and pointed. On a damaged house in a run-down neighbourhood, there is a wall with a large picture of a hummingbird, its long beak out and kissing the flowers painted below it. We look in silence; our gazes are turned in the same direction for the first time that day.