CHAPTER #7

Brazil revisited.

One good thing about being in Petropolis again was that we would be living in a familiar house: the one that the MacFadyens had occupied on Rua Coronel Veiga, only this time it had a big swimming pool in the front garden.

Our Bolivian fur rugs looked great on the tile floors and my harp fitted nicely into a niche beside the fireplace. The master bedroom upstairs opened out onto a small balcony and there was a second bedroom off it which shared the ensuite bath room. A large kitchen with adjoining “play room” and two more bedrooms downstairs made for very comfortable accommodation. Far too much space for two people, of course, but there was a maid to do the cleaning and a gardener who lived in a small apartment in the back garden so there would be little for me to do except prepare meals.

Our social life in Petropolis had never been very active but at least this time I was a bit more experienced at coping. The first thing I decided to do was to get myself a dog for company, so I visited the local pet shop. Bypassing the rabbits, guinea pigs and tropical fish, I put in an order for a small dog - not a Pekinese (we had had too many of those when I lived in Cottesloe), not a female either, just an ordinary small, cuddly male dog. Two weeks later I received a call from the pet shop to check out a new arrival: it was a small brown dog, with huge sad eyes, crammed into a cage just barely large enough to contain it.

I paid for the dog quickly and rushed home with it. Well, you never saw a pooch happier to be liberated than that one. As soon as I opened the cage it shot out, ran yipping through the garden like a whirlwind, squatted in three or four places and then peed for at least five minutes.
Oh, oh! I could see that, not only had I forgotten to do a gender check and bought a female after all, but if her mother wasn’t a Pekinese she must at least have had sex with one. Never mind, I named her Mouse and we soon became best friends.

On second thought, let me qualify that statement. Mouse, it seemed, had a taste for luxury and she must have decided early on that when she had to “go”, she had to go on something soft. She chose, as the repository of her liquid waste, one of my lovely soft alpaca rugs.

Because of the dampness in Petropolis it was necessary, periodically, to put leather items out in the sun to dry. So it was on one of those occasions that Mouse’s secret vice showed up in the shape of ten or twelve ragged mouldy spots growing on the underside of the brown alpaca rug. This unpleasant discovery was followed closely by several expletives, some detergent, lots of scrubbing and a course of strict disciplinary action against one small dog.

A canary in the mine shaft.

The water in our new house was heated by gas - about 12 enclosed jets which would flare into action in the bathroom whenever the hot water tap was turned on. This system was very effective for most normal people but, as it turned out, I was like the canary in a coal mine: an early warning system for too much escaping gas.

One day, while taking a leisurely bath, I began to feel strangely discombobulated; my hands lost their ability to hold the book I was reading, allowing it to slide slowly into the water. Feeling dizzy and disoriented I pulled the plug out and called to Bill. Next, as I struggled to stand up and step out of the tub, I fainted, hit my head on the washbasin and split my face open, from lower lip to chin, on the edge of the toilet seat. When Bill arrived on scene he found a crumpled heap, covered in blood, eyes rolled back into my head. A pretty scary sight.

Panicked, Bill called Paolo Barros (from the office) who immediately phoned for an ambulance to be sent to our house. Paolo also rushed over to give what assistance he could. By now Bill had managed to pull some pyjamas on to my semiconscious body and, with Paolo’s help, carried me into the bedroom. I was aware that my wrists were being rubbed vigorously and that my name was being called, but I couldn’t utter a word. Finally, with a lot of effort, I did manage a slow, encouraging wink of one eye. This caused Bill to rush into the bathroom and throw up all over the floor.

As soon as the ambulance arrived, I was whisked off to a clinic, placed on a stone cold table and sewn up under fluorescent glare. Leaving me alone in the surgery, everyone then retired to the porch for a breath of fresh air. After a while, feeling stronger, I decided to join them but, just as I reached Bill’s side, passed out again. This caused Bill to throw up into the bushes once more and prompted the doctor to suggest that I should not be left alone with Bill that night. Paolo agreed, so the three of us returned home - one to nurse a monstrous headache and the other two to clean up the bathroom.

After that experience I always made sure the bathroom door was left open while I bathed but even that was no guarantee against at least one more embarrassing recurrence. Some months later I experienced the same sensations of being overcome by gas in the bathtub one morning. This time I got all the way to the telephone before passing out and hitting my head on the edge of a table. The maid found me, naked and dripping wet, beneath the table with a knob on my head and another splitting headache. Naturally, everyone thought that I had fainted because I was pregnant but, unfortunately, that was not the case. I was simply doing my job as resident canary on duty.

A Paraguayan friend reappears.

In Asuncion we had been particularly friendly with Rollie and Marjorie Bryce, an American banker and his wife. Theirs was a story book marriage, troubled only by the fact that their 4 year old son, Clay, had accidentally stuck an ice pick in his eye the year before. Sadly, Clay’s eye had to be removed and an artificial one put in its place. The previously happy little boy became querulous and difficult and Marjorie, too, began to show signs of stress and unhappiness.

It was customary for us to play bridge with the Bryce’s each week; however, one day, out of the blue, Rollie called to say that Marjorie had left him. Apparently she had been having a secret love affair with another young banker in Asuncion and now felt unable to stay in her marriage or to deal with her son’s handicap. She left the country in tears and without saying goodbye to any of us.

Besides devastating Rollie and Clay, the whole community was rocked by Marjorie’s sudden departure. Like several other friends, I did all I could to help the two of them cope: baby-sat Clay when necessary, took him to the doctor on occasion and generally tried to cheer him up. As usual, Bill did not appreciate my involvement with Rollie and suspected me of having an affair with him. I was so exasperated by Bill’s jealousy at this point that I was sorely tempted to actually give him just cause for suspicion.

After we had been in Brazil for 6 months or so, we received a letter from Rollie saying that he and his son would be passing through Rio on their way back to the States. Would it be possible for them to stay with us for several days? Bill immediately said “No way!” but I insisted that it would be churlish to refuse the request. So they came... and we dutifully showed them all the sights around Rio and Petropolis. True to form, Bill took a week’s holiday so that Rollie and I would never be left alone for one minute. He may have been able to read my mind, after all.

Nevertheless, it was fun having house guests for a change and I was pleased to see that Clay was coping relatively well without his mother. They left within the week, promising to keep in touch, but we never did hear from them ever again. However, I like to think that when he grew up Clay found someone with whom he could live happily ever after. Rollie, too, of course.

My harp, golf, and sundry rodents.

I tried to keep playing my harp after we left Asuncion and, for a while, succeeded in remembering much of what I had learned. However, the wooden pegs that tightened the strings soon became so swollen with moisture that it was impossible to keep the harp tuned properly. Eventually it simply split itself into two parts and, sadly, ended up being just one more thing that had to be abandoned when the time came to move again.

Bill had played a lot of golf in Paraguay - his handicap was 14, I think. I played, too, but with a handicap of 33, clearly my interest was more in the 19th hole than the 18 that preceded it. It was really the potluck lunches in the clubhouse every Sunday that I enjoyed most for they always provided a chance to meet and socialize with other friends and golfers.

Because of those pleasurable experiences, Bill decided to check out the golf course in Petropolis and I went along for the ride. The view from the club house was stunning - mountainous, lush and gorgeous. There was even a swimming pool which allowed golfers to cool off after the game. I valiantly walked the course with Bill but by the time we had reached the third hole I was out of breath and ready to go home. That course was so difficult and mountainous, and the fees so prohibitively expensive, that we decided not to join and so I never did learn how to play golf properly.

I have always had an affinity for field mice, dating back to the first little mouse I found huddled in my shoe, by the fireplace, one winter in South Africa. They are so small and soft, with big eyes and pink ears, who wouldn’t like them? Oh, I know some people are afraid of mice but I’m not one of them, which is just as well because I’ve have had lots of adventures with mice during my lifetime.

Not that my experience with mice in Brazil was all that good - but that was before the invention of Have-a-Heart traps and a partner who shared my respect for all living things.

For some time I had been aware that there was a burgeoning family of mice living in the playroom. Sometimes they would skitter through the kitchen but because they didn’t bother me, I let them be. Then one night I was woken from a deep sleep by loud squeaking. Switching on the light I saw two small twirling dervishes mid-floor. Shooing them out of the room, I shut the door quickly.

Although Bill slept through this episode without waking, he almost hit the ceiling next morning when I pulled back the top blanket to find a small mouse huddled between his legs. Alas, from that moment on, the fate of every mouse in the house was sealed. It was to be a war in which Bill would take no prisoners.

In the end, the saddest sight of all, for me, was the discovery of one little mouse behind the fridge, stretched out cold on a bed of torn paper which had been stacked neatly into the shape of a brick.

Time flies and so did we, eventually.

Somehow that year in Brazil did not seem as long as either of the two we had spent there when we first got married. Perhaps being a seasoned traveller, more confident and self-reliant, made the time pass more quickly for me.

During the summer we took a short holiday in Cabo Frio as guests of Charles and Dimmie Reade. Charles, a director of the company, had a sumptuous summer retreat on a remote beach some distance north of Rio. We stayed in a round guest house equipped with every comfort and convenience - it even had a mosquito net on a hoop above the bed which draped around us like a tent.

For the space of that vacation the harmony that Bill and I had somehow lost was restored by the beauty and peacefulness of Cabo Frio. Pristine beaches, glorious sunsets, the smell and feel of the sea all served to put our lives into a completely different perspective.

However, stress came back like an avenging angel when we took a side trip to see an island of seals. When the trip was suggested, I imagined that we would step off the boat onto a nice wooden dock, check out a few seals basking on the rocks, and then have a nice cup of tea with some delicious cakes at an island restaurant. Sounded very pleasurable to me.

So the next day we boarded a rather small, stubby boat at the local shipyard, along with a dozen other tourists. The boat had high railings around the deck and bench seats lining the walls in a cabin below. We opted to enjoy the view from the deck. That is, until the craft got well underway. Soon the bow and the stern began to seesaw up and down; waves became more robust and smashed against the boat until everyone on board was completely soaked with spray.

By now the boat was not the only thing that was seesawing: my stomach heaved right along with every breaking wave and I fled to the cabin below. The rest of the trip was spent with head shoved down between my legs, coming up only briefly when we reached seal island: a barren rock with not a dock or a tearoom in sight. To add to our misery, the air was heavy with the smell of excrement bobbing about in the sea all around us. Thousands of seals lay in tiers on that barren rock, barking and biting and staring at us with their large lustrous eyes.

At journey’s end the general concensus was that it had been an extraordinary experience. Well, maybe. However, it was not one I would ever repeat again.

Towards the end of our stay in Brazil I began to hope that we would soon be able to return to South Africa. But Don MacFadyen put a spoke in my wheel again and, this time, offered Bill a two-year contract to work in Chile.

What a dilemma. I was no longer very happy living with Bill: his moody retreats into reading and silence, his unwarranted jealousy and unwillingness to discuss our growing incompatibility, all had to be weighed against being with my family again and/or experiencing a new country and its culture.

Filled with uncertainty, I decided that I would delay any life-altering decision for the time being and accompany Bill to Chile. Perhaps there would be a chance to visit South Africa alone once we were settled in Santiago.

Separation from Bill might even help me to make a wise decision about our future together.

It was wintertime in Santiago so, putting all troublesome thoughts behind me, I set about making a warm little coat for Mouse.