A Brazilian Tenement     by Aluizio de Azevedo, Translated by Harry R. Brown Original title: O Cortiço Original language: Portuguese Country: Brazil   Published by Fertig: NY Pub. Date: 1976 Pub. Place: USA Not available for ordering

Crowded, seamy, noisy and bustling tenement houses cluttered urban Latin America during the final decades of the nineteenth century and were beehives of activity for the European immigrants, skilled and unskilled Brazilian workers, slaves and ex-slaves who poured into the imperial capital and port of Rio de Janeiro. Aluizio de Azevedo, a master of realism in Brazilian literature, captures the pulsating throb of the humid, sultry tropical city, caught in the throes of transition from slavery to free labour as the monarchy that had reigned since Brazil’s independence in 1822 faced the onset of a Republic.

The tenement house draws residents from near and far and is a microcosm of working people’s daily lives and shared intimacies, the whispered or audible confidences that filter through paper-thin walls or echo the shouts and gossipy hilarity of the washer women who curve their bodies over the tubs in the yard outside. Barely is the sun in the sky before Alexandre, the policeman, arranges his appearance in readiness to order the lives of the citizens of the city during his daily beat. Packing their worn and tattered valises are the Italian immigrants who ply their wares door-to-door in the searing sun or endure the squishing of their soaking socks during torrential rainfall. The flashy, sensuous mulatta Rita Bahiana awakens to the sounds of the dance of the evening before and observes her lover, the capoeirista Firmo, in the embrace of the paraty, the intoxicating cane whisky that is the companion of the poor in good times and bad.

Rita Bahiana’s lover was an unambitious mulatto, of slender, wiry build and agile as a goat. Boastful and impertinent, he enjoyed the reputation of being a clever thief who was enabled to live without steady work so long as windows could be pried open or chickens stolen. Past thirty, he looked like a youth of twenty, with his closely knit frame which appeared to be equipped with springs rather than muscles... Occasionally a fortunate evening with dice or at roulette increased his capital, and then would he enjoy a period of riotous idleness with Rita Bahiana, such as they had spent during the last three months. If not with Rita, then with some other, for he often observed that ‘women are not scarce when a fellow’s got money to spend.’ 82-83

The tenement represents a way-station between the very poor who occupy rudimentary shacks on the city’s hillsides and the very wealthy who, like the Portuguese merchant Miranda, his unfaithful wife, Estela, and their daughter who live next door to the tenement, uncaringly flaunt their opulent lifestyle, aiming to please and appease those in the imperial court who might bestow upon the family a coveted nobility title. It is to this lifestyle that the Portuguese owner of the tenement, João Romão, aspires. From modest beginnings, the crafty man has gained the confidence and affections of the slave, Bertoleza, convincing her that he purchased her freedom with her savings from the vegetable stand when, in fact, he has expanded his purchases of land and built the tenement house whilst eyeing and eventually purchasing the profitable quarry that lay behind.

Greed, chicanery, lust, and deception favour those who wish to move up the social ladder, only to find that they share the very fate of the monarchy and the slave-based system upon which it rests. A Brazilian Tenement and the varied rivalries and tales of the successes and downfalls of its inhabitants entice the reader down the tortuous alleys and back streets of working class Rio de Janeiro, a riveting read of a city and its people as they come of age.

He had but one preoccupation — to accumulate wealth. From his garden he picked for himself and Bertoleza only the poorest vegetables and fruits that nobody would buy. Much as he loved eggs, the many his hens produced were sold, to the last one. Not infrequently their food consisted entirely of the scraps from the plates of customers. This was not economy; it was the manifestation of a disease, a mania to possess, to turn everything into money. 18