CHAPTER 6
Roberto Barbosa Vieira Filho had invited Carter to Sunday lunch at his mansion outside Petropolis. Roberto, although Brazil-born, was something of a polyglot: He had studied economics at Yale, held a doctorate in literature from the Sorbonne, and was married to a lovely Chilean woman named Celeste. Roberto was an accomplished classical pianist who played regularly at home and occasionally at dinner parties hosted by his friends in their elegant apartments facing the ocean in Ipanema. Carter liked him immensely.
Vieira was the managing director of Light, the Brazilian subsidiary of a Canadian company named Brazilian Traction, after the trolley system that ran through Santa Teresa to Corcovado, which the company built in the 1890s. The trolley itself was called the bonde, after the bond issue, the first in Brazil, that financed it. Light owned the power distribution grids in Rio and Sao Paulo, as well as the telephone network in Rio, which worked sporadically, if at all. He was also on the board of American Foreign Power Company—AMFORP.
“We could fix the phones, of course.” Roberto had told Carter at lunch a few weeks earlier. “But the government hasn’t allowed us a rate increase in four years. With inflation at more than 100%, we’re losing our shirts. We get the blame for the terrible service, of course. You pick up the phone and you can’t get a line. I’ve seen secretaries holding six phones to their ears at once waiting for a line. But it’s not our fault, really. Until we get a rate increase, my shareholders won’t let me invest one cruzeiro in new equipment. Our rates wouldn’t even begin to pay for it. I can’t blame them.”
Like most of the Brazilian elite, Roberto had a weekend place near Petropolis, a small city in the mountains near Rio, where Dom Pedro II had once held sway as the emperor of both Portugal and Brazil, and where Dom Pedro IV, pretender to the Brazilian throne, still lived in a small apartment in a museum that had once been the imperial palace. The road to Petropolis from Rio snaked up the mountains in a series of hairpin turns, through a dense tropical forest, one of the last surviving bits of the Atlantic rain forest—the mata Atlantica—that once covered almost the entire coastal region of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Here and there, at primitive roadside stands made of bamboo, women sold large clusters of tiny bananas for next to nothing, and peasants walked barefoot down the road on their way, Carter imagined, to the city far below. The air from the forest grew cooler as the car drove higher, until the road flattened out at about 1000 meters above Rio, and the air was actually cold.
Joaozinho maneuvered the Cadillac through the narrow streets of Petropolis and on to Nogueira, a small town higher yet than Petropolis itself.
Roberto’s nineteenth-century mansion was placed well behind a black wrought iron gate set in a tall pink wall. Through the gate, Carter could see a tropical garden with a line of towering royal palms, at least a dozen types of bromeliads, a profusion of orchids near the gate (collected, Carter knew, by Roberto himself), and several acres of manicured lawn. Joaozinho sounded the horn lightly, and the gate opened. They drove another 200 meters up the curved drive to the house. Roberto and Celeste were waiting at their beautifully carved jacaranda front door.
“Anthony, how good of you to come. And in such difficult times. I know how busy you must be. It is a treat to have you here.” Roberto’s English was perfect.
Roberto ushered him into the house. Carter had been in the house before: It was one of those wonderful understated combinations of money and good taste. On one side wall of the front hall hung a Di Cavalcanti, on the other a small Picasso. “Roberto,” Carter said, “you are too generous, to give up a Sunday with your orchids and your lovely wife.”
Vieira laughed. “But it is my pleasure,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind, we have invited Alfred Smith Barrington as well. You know him, of course.”
“I’m afraid not,” Carter said, “but I certainly know his name.”
“Well, you’re in for a treat. His name may be British but he is one hundred percent Brazilian. His family have been coffee planters and bankers in Sao Paulo for seven generations. Alfred is chairman of the Barrington Bank, and he flies his own plane. In fact, he’s flying up specially to have lunch with us.” Roberto was clearly pleased.
They were in Roberto’s orchideum when Barrington arrived.
“No problem with the plane, I trust?” Roberto asked. “You’re almost three minutes late.” His eyes twinkled.
“Oh, Roberto,” Celeste said, “you’re always teasing poor Alfred just because his family is British. Or at least used to be.”
“No problem with the plane,” Barrington said. “I just got a little lost over Araras, but the resident birds showed me the way.”
They all laughed. Araras was a town in the mountains near Petropolis named after the large colorful macaws that once lived there in profusion. Carter had a pair of them at the residence in Rio. The birds had been together for years, and were inseparable. Carter loved them.
“Well,” Roberto said, “are we all ready for lunch? Or perhaps you’d like a whiskey first?”
Sunday lunch, as always in Brazil, included an overcooked dry pork roast, rice, beans, chuchu, and a beautiful cheese and vegetable soufflé. The wine was a 1959 Chambertin. The rice, beans, and soufflé were delicious, the roast pork virtually inedible, and the chuchu … well, it was chuchu. Carter had eaten some excellent dinners at Roberto’s house. But Sunday lunch always included that overcooked, dried-out pork roast and the tasteless chuchu. It was obligatory. He wondered why. The wine, as always, was superb.
After lunch, Celeste withdrew and the men moved into the study for brandy and cigars. Business discussions at dinner were strictly forbidden in Brazil, but not over brandy and cigars. That, in fact, was what brandy and cigars were for, once the first snifter had been appreciated over more social matters.
Carter slipped his lips around the brown cigar and his mind drifted to Marina and her brown Brazilian body. And her breasts almost breaking out of her black blouse. But that body was not for him. He was the United States ambassador. This luncheon was the kind of work he was paid to do, not dreaming about a streetwalker.
“Anthony,” Roberto said, “What is the United States likely to do if Goulart attempts to pull off a coup from the left?”
“You know I can’t comment on that, Roberto,” Carter said. “That is an international matter of the Federative Republic of Brazil. Besides, how in hell would I know? I’m only the ambassador, not the CIA.”
Both Roberto and Barrington laughed.
“So, are you saying,” Barrington interjected, “that there is nothing the United States will do to support the forces of democracy here?”
“Who do you mean by the ‘forces of democracy?’” Carter asked. “The military?”
“Well, we can trust them to do the right thing,” Barrington said. “Marshal Braga has said the military will turn the government over to the civilians as soon as the communists have been weeded out. A matter of a few weeks, maybe a month. Of course, you can never be sure.”
Carter turned to Roberto. “Is Braga likely to be the next president if the coup comes off?” he asked.
“If we’re lucky,” Roberto said. “He’s probably the best one out of the military lot.” He paused for a moment. “It’s really up to us Brazilians. There isn’t much the United States government can do short of launching an invasion, and I’m sure you would never do that.”
Carter looked quickly into Roberto’s eyes, but found nothing there. “If Washington is planning an invasion, they haven’t told me about it,” he said. “And I doubt they would try anything like that without the ambassador being on board.” At least I hope not, he thought.
“Well, the phone company is going to play its part,” Roberto said. “This coup is not going to be fought out with tanks and