Tropical Bella Lugosi is undead!

23rd July. Japaratinga is a lovely village, where the tourist in search of self-affirmation can frolic on the beach all day and go to the central plaza in the evening to munch on a roasted corn cob. However we soon sense a dark presence, invisible yet constantly portentous. One stormy night, the demon revealed itself: the count, protected by the auspicious climate of local religious fervor, hiding under the cloak of local benefactor padre Cicero during the day, hunting for haemoglobin at night! Undead, undead, undead.

la mordue.

Sao Paulo museum of contemporary art (miam!).

17th July. The Sao Paulo museum of contemporary art, the MAM, has two locations, one in the Parque do Ibirapuera and one in the University campus. Both quite far from where we live, so the trip is beleaguered with touristic perils: by the time we get to the University location, Miss Pill is peeing her brains out, while hordes of students are cycling, rolling, running and walking all over the place, making her usual bush guerrilla tactics inapplicable. As usual, she keeps her cool under such duress (I’m the annoying panicky/whingey type), but she seems unusually happy to find the museum building, even for such a lover of contemporary art . Both locations are free and we were utterly mesmerized by both: enlightening stuff, curated very intelligently, way beyond my scraggy words - so I'm posting some photos. First, above, some from the temporary exhibit of communist-era Polish posters. Beautifully designed, in the fairly particular aesthetic style of the time and place, they are even more remarkable in their lack of commercial purpose: their sole point was to be a metaphor for the symbolic content of the event advertised. Unfortunately, I do not know the names of the artists, I apologize for that...

We have become so unfamiliar with such a ‘devoid of financial goal’ approach to art: most museums in Toronto, where we find ourselves stranded at the moment - on the particular circumstances leading to this, later - do ‘blockbuster’ exhibits, boasting such avant-garde themes as ‘The Amazing World of the Pharaohs’, ‘Vanity Fair portraits of celebrities’, ‘Unusual dildos of the Middle Ages’ or ‘Contemporary Espresso Machine Designs'. I suppose contemporary art has to be wholesome family fun around here; without doubt, more risque stuff would cause enuresis in the bourgeois kids, curl the bourgeois mum’s uterus, inflame the bourgeois dad’s hemorrhoids, pervert the bourgeois family dog and not go so well with the art-themed bonbons purchased in the museum cafeteria.

The rest of the art in the photos is by a couple of French artists we found interesting, Jean Rustin and Herve Fischer (another temporary exhibit). Sorry for the poor quality of the photos, they are taken with a shitty point-and-shoot that cannot cope with dim light (a Sony actually, if we are to point fingers...).

tchuss-tchuss, la mordue.

Klepp shrimp pizza moment.

15th July. Today we’re back from roaming the city and are starving. And at the desk, the reception guy and another fellow are munching on a ‘shrimp pizza’. It is greasy and gooey because of all the cheese and oil and it stinks of sea food and we’re both drooling like snails in heat. And before you know it, they are offering us about 2/3 of that gigantic pizza! Manna! We must’ve looked famished? Plus, Brazilians often have a slightly amused-slightly intrigued momsy attitude towards the looks, habits and incompetence of foreigners. Anyway, we refuse politely once and, after waiting breathlessly for it to be offered a second time, which it very fortunately does, we plunge our naked fingers into the soft, warm mass, lift up big, sloppy chunks that cling to the mother-ship in long filaments of melted cheese, and gulp them down, various fats running down our fingers, inebriated by the aroma of garlic and camarao. I will remember this meal as one of the most remarkable Klepp moments.

“Oskar knocked, entered and was hit by the smell that is so characteristic of Klepp. To call this effluvium acrid would be to overlook its density and sweetness. ... To say sweet and sour would also be misleading. This Munzer, or Klepp as I call him today, this corpulent, indolent, yet not inactive, superstitious, readily perspiring, unwashed, but not derelict flutist and jazz clarinettist, had, though something or another was always preventing him from dying, and still has, the smell of a corpse that never stops smoking cigarettes, sucking peppermints, and eating garlic. ... We struck up conversation, taking pains at first to give it an easy flow, and sticking to the most frivolous topics. Did he, I asked, believe in predestination? He did. Did he believe that all men were doomed to die? Yes, he felt certain that all men would ultimately have to die, but he was much less sure that all men had to be born; ... We both believed in heaven, but when Klepp said “heaven,” he gave a nasty little laugh and scratched himself under the bed covers: it was clear that Mr.Klepp, here and now, was hatching out indecent projects that he was planning to carry out in heaven. ... Then it happened. This was just what I had feared, but hoped that a long and widely ramified conversation might avoid. “Ah, my dear sir, won’t you please join me in a plate of spaghetti!” There was no help for it. We ate spaghetti prepared in the fresh water I had brought. I should have liked to give his pasty cooking pot a thorough scouring in the kitchen sink, but I was afraid to say a word. Klepp rolled over on one side and silently, with the assured movements of a somnambulist, attended to his cookery. When the spaghetti was done, he drained off the water into a large empty can, then, without noticeably altering the position of his body, reached under the bed and produced a plate incrusted with grease and tomato paste. After what seemed like a moment’s hesitation, he reached again under the bed, fished out a wad of newspaper, wiped the plate with it, and tossed the paper back under the bed. He breathed on the smudged plate as though to blow away a last grain of dust, and finally, with a gesture of noblesse oblige, handed me the most loathsome dish I had ever seen and invited Oskar to help himself.

After you, I said. But nothing doing, he was the perfect host. After providing me with a fork and spoon so greasy they stuck to my fingers, he piled an immense portion of spaghetti on my plate; upon it, with another of his noble gestures, he squeezed a long worm of tomato paste, to which, by deft movements of the tube, he succeeded in lending an ornamental line; finally he poured on a plentiful portion of oil from the can. He himself ate out of the pot. He served himself oil and tomato paste, sprinkled pepper on both helpings, mixed up his share, and motioned me to do likewise. “Ah, dear sir,” he said when all was in readiness, “forgive me for having no grated parmesan. Nevertheless, I wish you the best of appetites.”

To this day Oskar is at a loss how he summoned up the courage to ply his fork and spoon. Strangely to say, I enjoyed that spaghetti. In fact, Klepp’s spaghetti became for me a culinary ideal, by which from that day on I have measured every menu that is set before me.”

(Gunther Grass, The Tin Drum, Vintage Books, 1964: 501-5; singled out and transformed into myth by Miss Primrose Pill)

Tchuss-tchuss, la mordue.