Humble people, not needing to cry
I dream living; live a new dream. For how long, I don’t know.
And so goes the menu at Jhony’s Bar and Restaurant (sic), here next to Edificio Anchieta, where I live,
with portions sufficient for male manual labourers, enough for two regular people, and everything already with a lot of salad or whatever you want. If I have lunch there, I eat and leave with packing more than enough for dinner; if on the contrary, the opposite idem.
A black woman and a mulatto woman, in their mid-thirties and forties, three tables away, already asked for the third Brahma beer.
They talk, gossip, and laugh happily.
A pale “sour white” couple enters and arrives at their table: hugs, kisses, joy in seeing each other, despite the age difference. “Goodbye! God accompany you” … “You too!”.
- “Hello professor! What will you want today?”
- “Today, I am a Master, Master of Ceremony of the United Crutch and Cane Samba School”.
Nico laughs. Already let out a small bottle of Heineken beer and writes down my order.
I look at the television: Fátima Bernardes and Willian Bonner move their lips on the nightly news; the sound is low. Good! I do not want to hear of the tragedies and idiocies they usually boast about. I prefer the reality around.
Two drivers order coffees (slushy coffees, already strained with sugar! That’s it: the poor people take this thing for 55 cents of Real…). One greets me.
Two young men in their late thirties and forties sit at the table near the door, sideways towards mine. I didn’t see what they ordered, but they already have a Brahma, an ashtray and smoke. They talk in a soft voice, nobody talks loud here, and nobody flaunts the last car, horse, or yacht bought (but almost everyone has their own auto). Polite people. Real people.
A couple, he in his forties, forties and more, she is in her early thirties, I think, are seated two tables ahead of mine, an empty table between us.
Even if they speak softly, I understand he is Argentinian and her patrician. They talk: he puts his arm around her shoulders; he says, very quietly, things in her ear; he kisses her forehead, face, and neck. Sometimes they talk in normal tones.
I finish my dinner and light a cigarette.
The Argentine gentleman turns around with a cigarette in his hands. I thought he was going to ask me for the lighter. He says, “Now that you’ve finished your dinner, I’m going to smoke.”
They both smoke; I wonder if a scene like this could have occurred in any of the “chic” restaurants I’ve known and frequented.
Here, the waiters are People, and the customers are People, simple and real people. Equals; no frills.
They don’t look us up and down like in so many “In” places, where you pay fortunes for meagre portions where Maitre and waiters want us to be less (or think that we are more) than they are…
And on it goes
Day by, and by night.
This was in 2002 when you smoked inside restaurants and bars freely and when … you didn’t have to wear masks.
