Ten Days in Rio

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

This poetic novella describes the adventures of Bernardie, a Canadian
visitor to Brazil. Bernardie spends 10 days in Rio de Janeiro, leading
up to Ash Wednesday and the annual Carnival festival, renowned for its
colorful excesses. The typical tourist’s view of Rio (featuring such
attractions as the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, the Botanical
Gardens, Sugar Loaf Mountain, and the statue of Christ of the Andes) is
contrasted with Bernardie’s observations of everyday life in the city,
with its vendors, beggars, street kids, swindlers, amputees, crooked
police, transvestites, black-magic operators, shoeshine boys,
prostitutes, and the like.

At the centre of these pre-Carnival days is Bernardie’s relationship
with a Colombian surgeon, Maria, whose superficial knowledge of Pierre
Trudeau and his ex-wife forms the basis of her notion that Canadians are
nice. Part of the poem is devoted to Maria’s account of her romantic
adventures in London and Saudi Arabia, and her unsuccessful search for a
“real” man—a search colored by her unhappy family situation
(parents separated, brothers exiled in Spain). As the city prepares for
Carnival, Bernardie prepares to say goodbye to Rio and to Maria.

Ten Days in Rio may be a tourist’s narrative, but its poetic, musical
form captures something of the spirit and the rhythm of the Brazilian
city.