"Good morning! A friend told me you guys have a courier service with very cheap tickets. I was wondering if you offer this service to Brazil," said I.
"Of course, we do! What city in Brazil do you wish to go to?", the voice astonished me with her knowledge that we had cities in Brazil! At last I am dealing with somebody who belongs to the group of rare exceptions.
"You see, I was planning to go to SALVADOR, the capital city of BAHIA," I articulated every vowel and consonant in the American style to avoid misunderstandings to which I had grown used, due to the frail geographical knowledge that abounds here.
"Yes, we do fly there," replied the nice voice. "We've got flights to San Salvador with a stop in San Juan."
"Uh-oh! It's gonna start all over again!" the thought of a faux pas crossed my mind.
"Listen!," said I somewhat apprehensively, fearing a different dénouement and end up in the midst of a guerilla in Central America, as it used to happen in the sixties. "I am speaking of Salvador, capital city of the state of Bahia, B-A-H-I-A" (I spelled out each letter), in Brazil, SOUTH America! Although some people in Brazil call Salvador, São Salvador, it is not located in El Salvador, the Central American country, you see?," I stressed the word south, already used to having my letters being missent to El Salvador until the day I learned to write in headline letters SOUTH AMERICA next to the also headlined word BRAZIL, since the name of the country by itself was no guarantor of destination for the US mail workers. Memories of my adolescence came to my mind, of when I took the exam of proficiency in English from the University of Michigan. The exam had to be postponed because the exam papers were sent to San Salvador, instead of Salvador.
"I know it very well, sir. San Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. We do have flights to this place!"
I couldn't believe it! The voice really surprised me! On top of that, she knew the term of endearment São Salvador, this tender way which we, compatriot city dwellers, use among ourselves. I found it so neat for somebody in NY to call my dear Salvador São Salvador. Echoes of Dorival Caymmi, who immortalized this name in a song, reached my ears through the sweet voice of Gal Costa, bringing back a nostalgia for our laid-back, singsong, candid, friendly rhythm:
São Salvador
Bahia de São Salvador
Pedaço de terra que é meu...
All of a sudden, in a total contrast with the noise, rush, and the famous New York attitude, I am enveloped by the Bahian magical mystique. I can even smell the fragrance of acarajé, that yummy African delicacy sold on the streets by women dressed in African attire. I felt guilty for having misjudged the geographical knowledge of the voice. Well, after a year telling my Ph.D. fellow classmates that the capital of Brazil was not Buenos Aires, nothing else surprised me. I had developed a nonchalant blasé attitude to deal with similar questions or comments. The voice was a real exception!
"And how much does the ticket cost?," I was eager to find out.
"A round trip ticket costs $280.00."
"Are you sure this is the correct price to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil?," I repeated incredulously, attempting a sweet tone to avoid denoting confrontation.
"Sure I'm sure! We have a flight which leaves the day after tomorrow. Would you like to make a reservation?"
"The day after tomorrow?! It's too early for a quick decision," I thought.
"Listen, can I call you back for a confirmation later? You know, I wasn't planning on flying that soon, so abruptly. I need some time to think things out and see if I'll be able to make it."
"That's OK, sir. What's your name?"
"Cruz," I told her my last name, since my first name presents lots of difficulties for people to pronounce. "C-R-U-Z," I spelled it out so that she wouldn't mistake me for a relative of Tom Cruise's, as it'd happened several times due to phonetic similarities.
"Oh, is it a Spanish name?"
"Oh, yes, how did you guess?" (I didn't know if she meant Hispanic instead of Spanish, and one never knows if this is a biased remark or not). "Actually, my name is Brazilian, but my presumed genealogical tree indicates that my family originated in Seville, Spain, before my ancestors took to the rest of the Iberian peninsula, crossed the seas, and lost themselves inside the Brazilian forests in the 1500s, interfering in the lives and businesses of both the native Indians and the forced immigrated Africans, if you can get the irony of my post-colonial discourse. Come again? No, we don't live in forests nowadays, the only original forest left is the Amazon, for my ancestors were as unecological as yours, maybe a little less, because at least the Amazon is still there, God knows for how long. We live in houses and buildings, located on streets and avenues, in modern and old colonial cities, some big, some small, some gigantic, just like here. My other name, Torres, comes from Toledo, no, not from Toledo, Ohio, from that beautiful old pearl in Spain. In Brazil we are a total mixture, and I think it's because of my Spanish background that people here keep asking me if we speak Spanish in Brazil, don't you agree? Oh, so you didn't know that either? We understand Spanish, because it has the same root, since we are all romance languages. No, it's not that we use the language only for romance, we also do, but it's romance because we all originated from Vulgar Latin. No, we don't speak Latin in Latin America, but we speak a lot of vulgarity, mind you. Like I said, we can understand Spanish, but Spanish speakers cannot understand us that easily. Why's that? I think it's because of the phonetic system; our language has more sounds than theirs. No, our language is not Brazilian, Brazilian is our nationality, you see, and although many people think our language is Brazilian, as many people here think that you speak American, we speak Brazilian Portuguese and not Portuguese Portuguese, see? Yes, of course, from Portugal! How did the Portuguese end up in Brazil? They say it was due to a lack of wind in the sea, but I don't buy that. Actually, the Portuguese were cruising some Indian girls, or women, to be politically correct, you know, I don't want to offend you, I had to learn how to use the feminist jargon the hard way after I got here, to avoid being reprimanded, or worse, being sued for my innocence. Spanish? Oh, yes, Spanish, French, Dutch, and after that people came from all over the world, just like here, the difference is that it became a real melting pot there, since the Portuguese, after having cruised the oceans, cruised the Indians and the African women as well. Yes, I know they were politically incorrect, but that was some centuries ago, you see, and they were not Puritans at all!"
I joked all along, a thing which I love doing, revealing a little of family and historical intimacies to break the impersonal tone these phone conversations always have. I remember when calling NYNEX to have my new phone hooked up, I spent hours talking with the operator, who, unexpectedly, seemed to have nothing else to do but talk on the phone. She ended up telling me about half of her life: her children, her cats and her dogs! After all, telephones exist for communication, don't they? These endless talks, so common in Brazil, also happen here, mainly when loneliness hangs over our souls.
"And what are the restrictions?," I asked interrupting my reverie.
"Well, you won't be able to carry any luggage except for a small carry-on suitcase, and you will have to return within a week. Obviously, as this is a courier service, you will have to carry some envelopes or a package with you."
"Oh, really? And how am I to know if I am not carrying some smuggled item, like drugs, or a bomb, or some top secret piece of information?" I asked to make sure I wouldn't be running into trouble. "I don't think I'm cut out for the role of a spy or a blade runner."
All this enveloped the trip with an aura of transgression, of risk and adventure James Bond-like. What if I were to carry something forbidden and they stopped me at the Customs. I can imagine the newspaper headlines: "University Professor, allegedly finishing a Ph.D. program overseas, caught red-handed smuggling drugs into the country!" What would my friends and colleagues think of that? "DÉCIO, THE SPY WITHOUT A CAUSE WHO FOOLED ME," I mix film titles from the seventies.
"Sir, our services are perfectly safe and highly trustworthy," the voice reproached me while destroying the balloon of my comics fantasy.
"I'm sorry, it was just a joke," I lied. "I'll call you later to confirm."
"That's all right, Mr. Cruz. I'll be expecting your call."
"And may I know by what name would you smell as sweet, Your Grace?", I tested her.
" ' beg your pardon?"
She had not understood the punning joke, Shakespearean style. It was too much to ask of the poor voice totally used to the precision of well-defined tours, objectively traced from place to place. In the voice's tiny office where she probably takes calls, there wasn't much room left for imagination or abstraction. Everything was restricted to the objectivity and precision of language. Without metaphors.
"What's your name so that I can contact you directly when I call you back, without having to get lost in the Borgesean labyrinth and the Kafkaesque penal process of phone bureaucracy?" I asked, and obviously omitted the literary references so not to bore the girl (or woman, or man, God knows! Who can guarantee that there was not a transvestite with a soft voice, like RuPaul, at the other end? Everything's possible in this postmodern city, and all I had as a reference point was just a voice).
"Oh, yes, I'm sorry. My name's Mary!", she said, giving me her first name. I guess we had become intimate by now.
"Mary! What an impersonal, however pure name! What would it feel like to have a name which always implies a symbol of virginity and sanctity?", I thought to myself.
(Is there any other way of thinking but to oneself? Language has such crazy expressions! After two years away from my language, I delighted in language games, both in English and Portuguese, and I missed the familiarity of the latter. Brazilians play a lot with language. Americans are too serious for that, at least in academia.)
"Thank you very much, Mary. I'll call you later."
Suddenly I was overjoyed! How wonderful it would be to spend a week in Salvador for the same price I had paid to go to Daytona Beach over the spring break, those week-long vacations conceded to the American students so that they can catch up with their work, but also escape the infernal boredom of the wintry West cold. I called my friend Daniel, who had tipped me on this service, to make sure that it wasn't a setup, and then went for a walk on Manhattan broad avenues toward Central Park. Translated literally, the name central park, I don't know why on Mars, always reminds me of the brand of a Brazilian cracker, Águia Central. Only Freud could explain the reason for such an association. Conversely, the name in English reads Central Eagle. How would it feel to eat that Brazilian cracker in Central Park? Like an eagle cracking? Oh, philosophical nonsensical doubts which transport me to the impromptu gags of an actor friend in Nunsense, or the Rebel Nuns, as the translation read in Portuguese, in a parody of the translation of the title of the film The Sound of Music. Translations! Words, words, nothing more than words! So much is lost in the process, so much is gained.
I laugh at my own reveries. Go or not to go, that was my present question! What if the ticket was not for Salvador? Last year I almost missed my flight to Daytona Beach in Florida because the American Airlines agent had booked me for a flight to Dayton, Ohio, which, as far as I know, has no trace of beach. Besides having to make lots of unnecessary stops, I'd end up paying the triple of what it would normally cost me to go to a place I had no intention of going.
In Brazil, we complain that Brazilians do not know how to write, but Americans are as bad in spelling. Maybe the rules for written language are doomed to forgetfulness everywhere in the world, I wonder while wandering. I remember the story of a man who ended up in Athens, Greece, when he just wanted to go to Athens, Texas. Or was it Athens, Georgia? The poor operators and travel agents are not to blame, though, since they are constantly massacred by a mesmerizing propaganda that the world is here. To make matters worse, several American cities share the names of European and other American cities. Even a replica of New York may now be found in Las Vegas. Cheers for the country of simulacra! As if it were not enough for every city here to be equal one to the other, with a few exceptions, city names don't mean much either. Everything's standardized: the American Standard, which ironically is the brand name of a toilet.
I walk through the park remembering Simon & Garfunkel, Olodum, and John Lennon. The music follows me. In the distance, I hear a group of Andean musicians playing "El Condor Pasa". I think the whole issue over and make up my mind: I must return to my roots. No, my voice wouldn't do such a dreadful thing. She's too pure and virgin for that. And there I went, happily homeward bound to confirm my reservation, looking forward to the pleasures and jouissance of my homeland.
"Good afternoon! Is this Mary?"
"Yes, who's calling?"
"It's that loathsome Brazilian who loaded you with tons of questions in the morning about a ticket to Salvador."
"Oh, yes, Mr. Cruz. Do you wanna make a reservation now?"
"Yes, but I still have a question. Where's the first stop?"
"Let me check in the computer. Your first stop is San Juan, and then you go to San Salvador."
"You mean Salvador, Bahia, right?"
"Yes, that's right!"
"And what airline am I flying?"
"QWFRT Airlines."
"Pardon me?"
"QWFRT Airlines."
"That's weird. I've never heard of this airline before. Does it fly to Brazil?"
"Sure."
"And what's the duration of the flight?"
"From New York to San Juan, it's three hours and a half. From San Juan to San Salvador it takes two additional hours."
"That's odd! Only five hours and a half? It usually takes at least eight hours and a half."
"Like I said, it's only 5 hours and a half from New York to San Salvador."
"Mary, I'm sorry to be bothering you again, but could you confirm if this city you're sending me to is really in Brazil?"
"Just a moment." (Pause. I hear the noise of the computer keyboard at the other end)
"Mr. Cruz, unfortunately our courier service doesn't operate with Brazil, only with Central America."
"What?!!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. "Holy Mary, how could you make me waste my time and all my emotion when from the very beginning I kept telling you I wanted to go to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, South America, and not San Salvador in El Salvador, Central America? What's gonna happen to all the plans I've been feeding from lunch until now? What will happen to my dreams of escaping from this city, where everyone's depressed and irritated, to see my friends, family, my country, and walk on the beach in the June sun, rain or shine, drink coconut water, eat an acarajé with guaraná or beer, stroll along the colonial cobblestone streets of Pelourinho at the sound of Olodum or Ilê Ayê? Do you know what that means? It's not the same thing as eating feijoada on 46th Street or in Newark."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Cruz. Unfortunately I can't understand a word you're saying. I can't do anything about your dreams either. Maybe you should adapt them to your reality. If you want to go to San Salvador, the flight leaves the day after tomorrow. Otherwise, have a nice day!" and she hung up on me, leaving me struck dumb, watching the boats, which so far had been waltzing on the blue sea of Salvador, start to fade away on the blue wall of the apartment.
How can I have a nice day after such disappointment?! Maybe the not-so-virgin Mary was right and I should take the opportunity to know the namesake of my hometown. Or maybe I should write to the city mayor of Salvador requesting the return of the old popular name Cidade da Bahia. Certainly, if the ruling characters had adopted the speech of Jorge Amado's literary characters, I would not be undergoing such tribulations now. But literary characters only make up stories, they don't make history, for History, like Mary's tiny cubicle and her indifference to other people's dreams, has no place for imagination.