Published: May 01, 2008 12:32 pm         

A Gift of Tongues ...

Jim Atwell is taking a week off from writing his column for the Crier. Therefore, we are running one of his personal favorites.

We’re just back from the City — parked at Albany, rode Amtrak down along the Hudson to Penn Station. We’d gone down to see “The Lion King,” a birthday gift for Anne. Her birthday was in early July, but this was the earliest I could get tickets. They were good ones — orchestra, halfway back, and on the aisle. During the opening’s spectacular parade of animals, Anne, delighted, pointed across me. I turned toward the aisle just as a gigantic trunk swung in front of my face and back again. Swaying in time to Elton John’s score, a great, raggedy gray elephant was just passing me. He had all the clumsy charm of “Sesame Street’s” dear old Snuffulufagus. All the pretend animals were terrific — soaring birds, galloping roebucks, creeping cheetahs, prancing zebras. After that raggedy elephant, my favorites were the statuesque giraffes and the really hideous hyenas.

The show was a great experience: a whole theater packed with children — little ones, of course, but also grown-ups who’d been drawn back into childlike wonder. Elton John and Tim Rice had tapped the universal language of childhood.

The other highpoint of the trip was supper at Via Brasil on West 46th St. Brazilian cuisine, like the Brazilians themselves, is a splendid meld of native, Portuguese, and African strains. Anne’s entree was a rich shrimp stew made with onions, herbs, tomato puree and coconut milk, served with rice and yucca flower puree. I pigged out on the Brazilian national dish, feijoada: a stew of black beans, fresh and dried beef, salt and fresh pork, bacon, linguica sausage, and ribs, sprinkled with ground manioc and served with rice, chopped collards and orange slices. We’d each primed ourselves for this feast with a glass of caipirinha; that’s a lime drink based on cachaca, a fermented sugar cane liquor. One sip swept me back 15 years to (of all things) a Rotary Club meeting.

The club was a small one about 20 miles from Rio de Janeiro. I arrived for the luncheon meeting and found myself the only English speaker. One smiling man pumped my hand and exhausted his whole English vocabulary. “Eisenhower!” he said warmly. “Eisenhower!” “Sim, o Presidente Eisenhower!” I said back, pretty much exhausting my own Portuguese. It promised to be a meeting of smiling and nodding for me.

Until, that is, waiters passed among the men, distributing small glasses of a clear fluid. It was cachaca, straight up, about a double shot in each glass. The club president then raised his glass and shouted, “Viva America!” We tossed down the burning liquid; and while I was still gasping, a fresh glass was pressed into my hand.

I raised it, shouted, “Viva Brazil!” and seared my gullet again. Now I was being embraced, clapped on the back — and suddenly, the miracle occurred. A Gift of Tongues came upon us. I kept talking English, they replied in Portuguese — but we understood each other completely, every word.

The meal that followed was a bit blurry, but I remember good food and more cachaca, more toasts. At the end, the club president stood and said, I’m sure, very kind things about the U.S. And then I was invited to speak. Well, I was great! Holding tight to the lectern, I delivered a paean of praise to international brotherhood. I gestured dramatically (still holding on with one hand.) I told jokes, and everyone laughed. I told a tender story and saw tears run down cheeks. And at the end I sat down to thunderous applause. The whole membership accompanied me out to the car where (mercifully) a driver waited to take me back to Rio. I was hugged some more, kissed repeatedly on both cheeks. The final farewell was from the man who’d first greeted me. Face wet with tears, he pressed his face into my collar and sobbed, “Eisenhower! Eisenhower!“ “Eisenhower!” I blubbered back, patting his shoulder. And then I was loaded into the car and driven away. Potent stuff, that cachaca. Maybe they should serve it at the U.N. ...