Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [44]
“I see.”
We descended from the bus and followed the other passengers along the dirt track away from the highway. The shacks were further apart here than closer to town, and each one was attached to a small piece of land. Space for a garden, I thought.
“This actually looks pretty, Rita. Not so crowded. I like it.”
“Yeah. It looks that way.” Rita’s voice clearly revealed her opinion to the contrary. She stopped a young boy standing beside the path watching us. “Where does Mestre Paulo dos Anjos live?”
“The Mestre knows you’re coming?” the boy asked.
“Yes.”
The boy thought a moment. “I’ll walk you there,” he said.
We followed him perhaps a half mile to a central square, a dusty dirt area where several tracks met. We continued past a shack bar that looked abandoned, another bar-like structure that appeared to be a store with nothing to sell, and a group of boys playing soccer. Everyone stared at us as we passed.
“Wait here,” the boy said. “I’ll tell the Mestre you’re here.”
We stood in the shade of the tin awning that hung above the outside counter to the shop. “We’re here to see Mestre Paulo dos Anjos,” Rita said as a way of explaining our—or my—presence.
A woman next to us nodded. “The Mestre.”
Soon the boy returned with a frail-looking man.
“Mestre,” Rita said.
“I’ve seen you play before,” Paulo dos Anjos said. “And you play the berimbau. You should come to our roda sometime.”
“I’d love to,” Rita said. “This is my friend, Danger.”
Paulo dos Anjos nodded to me and turned back to Rita. “We have a girl in our group now,” he said. “You should play with her.”
We walked along the path, Rita and Paulo dos Anjos in front, me behind. He took us to the building where he taught capoeira. “Do you mind if we record our conversation?” Rita asked.
Paulo dos Anjos looked at me. “As long as no one makes any money from it, I don’t mind,” he said.
“She’s at a university. I work with her.”
Paulo dos Anjos nodded. “That’s all right. What do you want to know from an old man like me? I don’t know so much.”
Rita laughed. “Mestre. Every capoeira angola group in the city has your sayings printed on their walls.”
Paulo dos Anjos smiled. He knew this to be true. “I have played a few years. Capoeira, she has taught me some things of life. And of death too.”
As they began to talk, Paulo dos Anjos spoke of his life in capoeira, of his many students—now well-known teachers themselves—of his spiritual ideas, of stories he knew of capoeira history, of early fights and escapes from police. Then, gradually, he began to speak of his children, the ones he knew he had, then more about his students.
“We’re having an event soon. You should come.” He nodded to me, extending the invitation to me as well. I nodded, gratified at being included. “Let me show you what we’re doing.” We walked to the back of the building. Some students had arrived for a class, boys in ragged shorts, bare feet, only a few in white. “I teach anyone. I live for capoeira, not from it.” Suddenly we heard rain on the tin roof. It got louder and louder as the tropical torrent increased. We looked out the door. The dirt paths had turned to muddy streams. “You’d better wait,” Paulo dos Anjos said. We waited over an hour. It was well past dark by then.
“What time’s the last bus?” Rita asked.
“Yes,” Paulo dos Angos said. “That is a problem. You don’t want to miss that. You’d better go now.” He looked into the dark outside. “But you shouldn’t go alone. It isn’t safe, you know.” He slipped on his sandals.
“No, no, Mestre,” Rita said. “You’ll get wet.” But her voice carried little conviction and Paulo dos Anjos did not even bother to answer her. So we sloshed through the streams, the three of us, through the dark of Malvinas, two women, one clearly a foreigner, and an old man. But I felt completely safe, knowing that this man’s reputation, built over a half century, protected us. We reached the place where the bus had stopped.
“Oi, Mestre!” a young boy shouted. “You aren’t going to catch a bus,