Monday, December 7: Salvadore de Bahia

The oldest city in Brazil and once its capital, Salvadore has about three million inhabitants and, since it was the city most associated with the early slave trade – primarily from Angola and Congo - the population is mostly black (about 80%). Marco, our guide, had a white father and a black mother so he is considered a mulatto, the designation given to such intermingling of the races. Unlike in the rest of Latin America, where the Spanish didn’t intermarry with the Indians and the slaves, the Portuguese believed such intermingling was good for their country. In 1534, when the Portuguese first came to Salvadore, the Indians who lived here practiced cannibalism; their religion taught them that consuming the body meant sharing the spirit of the deceased. Because they worshiped those gods that came from the sea – the sun and the moon – they assumed that the Portuguese, who also came from the sea, were also gods. The city is divided into an upper city and a lower one, connected by a giant elevator (made by Otis). On tour, we walked mostly around the old city, and visited three or four of the more than 390 churches, the most prominent of which are incredibly Baroque with a lot of gold. In the most elaborate one, we weren’t allowed to take any photographs, even without flash. But we were permitted to take moving pictures, one of those incomprehensible rules of the road. At the end of our 3 ½ hour walking tour, we visited the museum of a sugar baron whose wife had established the museum after her husband’s death. The displays were mostly of silver with some incredible glass – many chandeliers and hurricane lamps – and enough jeweled earrings to make your earlobes ache. Again, I wasn’t allowed to take photographs so most of my pictures of Salvadore are vistas of buildings that have a Cezanne-like character and shots down quaint and colorful alleyways. My friend, Dennis, had suggested I go to a church called Jesu de la Bon Fim and get a string bracelet said to endow its wearer with good luck, but the closest I could get was a street sign saying the church was 5.5 kilometers away.
Near the end of the tour, the lady who missed the bus at the Samba Show missed her bus again. She simply didn’t show up at the appointed hour at the appointed time. She didn’t seem disturbed by all this but asked me what to do. I told her to say something to Marco; we had plenty of room on our bus so I was sure she could go back to the ship with us. Later, when I got stuck with her for lunch, she went on and on about her life. The wind was carrying her voice away from me and I could only catch a few words every here and there. I just nodded intermittently and tried to look pleasant while her tiny mouth moved in angry pouts and she used her hands, with the perfect manicure, to illustrate what I guessed were her finer points.
I almost didn’t make it to a tour. Heinz had told me that I had to wait on tour days until all the revenue guests had taken their slots. If there were then tickets left on some of the busses, we could go. The destination lady told me otherwise, saying that I should have asked for a ticket the day before, that waiting until the last minute was incredibly stressful for her (I can’t imagine how, but didn’t go into that) and in the future to please cooperate. I’ve learned never to question anyone in authority here; it’s not productive. And her attitude may have something to do with her relationship with Elsa, the social hostess and my boss.
The tour consumed most of the day and when we returned to the ship I was hot and tired. I nestled up on the fantail with my book and watched the ship at the pier behind us as it departed. One of its passengers barely made it back in time. They had to re-extend the ship’s gangway to accommodate him. We sailed at four, with all the appropriate routine and ritual, the captain blowing the ship’s horn once the pilot had left the bridge and we were again under way on our own, headed for Fortelezza (where, contrary to a plan for gong ashore for some celebration, we will now celebrate on board while docked at the pier. Something about crossing the equator. I’m sure we won’t be keelhauled.)
In a thought that seems typically Cooper-esque, I wondered about the value of the cameras on board. With 700 passengers, and assuming each couple has at least one camera, the total of cameras on board adds up to more than 350. At a value of about $500 each – and many, including mine, cost a good deal more – I calculated that the total value is somewhere in the neighborhood of $175,000.00.
We had more than 15 at Solo cocktail hour and Elsa was close to panic in trying to figure out who should eat with whom. For my table, she selected Maryella, who really does look like an Afghan hound, her friend Marrisa (or Maritza, from Croatia) and Cathy, the daughter of the costume seamstress. With the usual topics already covered – when did you join the ship,. I tried desperately to find some new topic but each time I introduced a new direction, my guests came back to food. After dinner, we enjoyed (if you can stretch it that far) a cabaret concert by K T Somebody, an aging soprano who could hardly carry a tune. Her performance was just awful. Later, at dancing, Shirley asked me what I had thought of K T and I hesitated for fear of alienating a guest. But then I thought, what the heck? So I told her I thought the performance pretty bad. Fortunately, Shirley agreed. Cruise gigs seem to be for the very young, on their way up in their career, or for those, like K T, on their way down.
While I was waiting for the elevator and thinking about the day, it struck me that (among other things) I was struggling to remember the names of the most pampered and boring population I’ve ever had the misfortune of being forced to associate with. And my supply of bullshit charm is running pretty thin.
Shortly after I went to bed, Heinz came into our suite, sat down on the sofa across from my little area, and accused me of not carrying my load. He may be right. The band played mostly Latin music and I’m unsure in Meringue, Salsa and Tango. Instead of dancing, I was sitting in the lounge with Shirley, whose foot was hurting so she couldn’t dance. He said I wasn’t carrying my load. And besides, I snored. Rather than defend myself, I told him I had gotten his message and would try to do better with the dancing but I couldn’t do much about the snoring. He wasn’t placated and wanted to go on about it. I chose not to debate and simply said I was glad he had expressed his opinion. Finally, he got up from the sofa and stomped off to the bathroom. In these situations, I have to remember that I’m a peon. And a peon new to servitude. His mood may also have been influenced by his having fallen on the dance floor when one of the sisters from the Hamptons jiggled him into a fast samba and they both landed on the floor. I’m sure that hurt his German pride. And amused Jackie, the Dragon Lady, with the tightest face I’ve ever seen, and who dances so stylistically that she even lifts the pinky on her left hand as though she were pouring tea, while flinging her poor husband around the dance floor. Stay tuned.