Brasyl Read Free Page A

defend the face. Marcelina had easily
foreseen and evaded his meia lua sweeping kick. É! É!
the spectators had chanted. The second time they had gasped and
clapped aloud as she dived into a meia lua pulada, the hand-spin kick
that was Rio-Senzala's great gift to the game of capoeira. She had
caught Mestre Ginga in her peripheral vision; he squatted with his
carved stick like an old Angolan king, his face stone. Old bastard.
Nothing she did ever impressed him. You're not Yoda . Then a
chapeu-de-couro had come wheeling in, Jair wholly airborne, and
Marcelina barely dropped back into a queda de quarto, hands and feet
planted on the dance floor, watching the fighting foot sweep over her
face.
    At first capoeira had been another wave on the zeitgeist upon which
Marcelina Hoffman surfed, driven by the perpetual, vampiric hunger
for fresh cool. At Canal Quatro lunch was for losers, unless spent in
a valid pursuit. For a while power walking had been the thing,
Marcelina the first to venture out onto the searing Praia de Botafogo
in the shoes, the spandex, the spider-eye shade and pedometer to tick
off those iconic ten thousand footsteps. Within a week her few
friends and many rivals were out on the streets, and then she had
heard over the traffic the twang of berimbaus, the cheerful clatter
of the agogô, the chanting from the green spaces of Flamengo
Park. The next day she was with them, clapping in her Germanic,
loira-girl way while wiry guys with their shirts off wheeled and
reeled and kicked in the roda. It was a simple recruitment
demonstration by Mestre Ginga for his school, but for Marcelina it
was the New Cool Thing. For a season it ruled; every other pitch at
the weekly sessions was capoeira-related, and then the Next Cool
Thing blew in from the bay. By then Marcelina had donated the spandex
and so-last-season shades to a charity store, given the pedometer to
Mrs. Costa from downstairs, who was haunted by a fear that her
husband was a somnambulist who walked the streets kilometer after
kilometer at night, stealing little things, bought herself the
classic rig of red-striped Capri pants and stretchy little top, and
was taxiing twice a week up the hairpin road up the breast of
Corcovado, upon which Christ himself stood, an erect nipple, to
Mestre Ginga's Silvestre fundação. She was a convert to
the battle-dance. Cool would come around again; it always did.
    Hands locked, the capoeiristas circled. A damp night, clouds hung low
over the Tijuca. The warm humidity held and amplified smells; the
fruity, blousy sickliness of the bougainvilleas that overhung the
fundação's fighting yard, the rank smokiness of the oil
from the lamps that defined the roda, the honey-salt sweetness of the
sweat that ran down Marcelina's upraised arm, the fecund, nurturing
sourness of her armpit. She released her grip and sprang back from
Jair. In a breath the berimbaus and agogô leaped into São
Bento Grande; in the same breath Marcelina dropped to a squat,
grabbed the cuffs of Jair's skull-and-crossbone-patterned pants,
stood up, and sent him onto his back.
    The roda roared with delight; the berimbau players drew mocking
laughter from their strings. Mestre Ginga suppressed a smile. Boca de
calça; a move so simple, so silly that you would never think
it could work, but that was the only way it did work. And now, the
finishing blow. Marcelina held out her hand. When the hand is
offered, the game is over. But Jair came out of his defensive
negativa in an armada spin-kick. Marcelina ducked under Jair's bare
foot easily and, while he was still off-balance, stepped under his
guard and roundly boxed both ears in a clapping double galopante.
Jair went down with a bellow, the laughter stopped, the berimbaus
fell silent. A bird croaked; Mestre Ginga was not any kind of smiling
now. Again Marcelina extended the hand. Jair shook his head, picked
himself up, walked out of the roda shaking his head.
    Mestre Ginga was waiting in the