The Harmonica, the Jandaia, and the Hurdy-Gurdy – Folha de S. Paulo, October 21, 1977

 

by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

 

“Peaceful coexistence.” The phrase came to mind, immediately bringing an image to my mind and a smile to my lips.

I live and work in Higienópolis, where thousands of unwanted noises fill this neighborhood from sunrise to sunset. I occasionally distinguish among them the archaic yet familiar, affable harmonica of a knife sharpener, who announces his presence. In this sonorous way, he walks the streets step by step, offering his services just as his colleagues and predecessors did between 1920 and 1930 in the then-noble and comfortably residential neighborhood of Campos Elíseos.

 

At the corner of Rua Maranhão and Rua Itacolomi in Higienópolis, the capital of São Paulo, early 20th century. The residence at the corner is the oldest still standing in that neighborhood. Below is a photo of the same location in mid-2000, when the headquarters of the Brazilian National Council of the TFP were located there and are now the headquarters of the Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira Institute.

Tradition is a force. It is a power. Among other wonders, it works; it impregnates even the old sound of a harmonica from yesteryear with poetry and charm. This would be less appealing if it weren’t old and didn’t evoke memories of times gone by. What force is capable of preserving life and charm even in the archaic, if not Tradition?

Compared with the Campos Elíseos’ long-standing survival, another walking tradition that still runs through today’s Higienópolis seems almost new: a neighborhood of moloch apartment buildings and the haunting noise of street traffic. In turn, this other tradition recalls a milestone in the history of São Paulo, very old yet less archaic than the Campos Elíseos: the Higienópolis of large European-style mansions built at the bottom of gardens with gently curving lawns, in the shade of trees that protected the intimacy of the home (oh! the “privacy of the home,” a more or less sacred expression of those times, is now completely obsolete, as homes are dying and privacy hardly exists).

In those distant days, São Paulo was still entirely Paulista. It was not today’s cosmopolitan Babel. It was very much the great Paulista way I like. The “intimacy of the home” was protected not only by lawns and groves but also by iron railings and gates that kept curious onlookers, intruders, and nuisances at bay. These railings and gates were not merely “functional,” as might be found at a school or zoo. They were beautiful, ornate railings and gates that often aspired to the monumental.

The atmosphere of Higienópolis, at once familiar and somewhat hieratic and pompous, was occasionally filled with musical waves from a sturdy but ordinary barrel organ playing some cheerful music by Strauss, if I am not mistaken, with the same light and carefree Viennese spirit with which he also played the Giovinezza. The grumpy and dramatic Duce would certainly have made one of his sternest frowns had he heard his anthem interpreted in this way.

Be that as it may, ignoring Strauss and unconcerned with the Duce, the maids of the time (“the servants,” as they were called, in a less legal and more familiar term) rushed out into the street from one house or another, searching for the barrel-organ man.

This was because he carried an ugly cage that barely fit a fat jandaia. The jandaia—a kind of slow, mute green mini-parrot—was the organ grinder’s best collaborator and the maids’ most loyal fan. She was trained to pick up, with her beak, at the sound of the barrel organ, and on the orders of her owner (an “owner” who gives “orders”—something else that is dying out in this world, which has fewer and fewer owners and more managers, and in which orders are obeyed less and less), some folded pieces of paper on which the skilled director had written optimistic predictions. Eagerly, the maids paid a coin (where did the coins go? All that remains of them are small, depreciated aluminum discs that some decree attributes to forced circulation of money), and in exchange, they received the prediction from the fortune teller, which they immediately began to read. Then they would return home happy, carrying with them the dream of the week: valid until disappointment killed it, or until new predictions and new dreams came back again with the man, the barrel organ, and the fortune teller.

The barrel organ still passes through Higienópolis from time to time, even today. I’ve never had time to go to the window to see whether the same man is still playing and whether the fat Jandaia is still in the cage. The answer is probably yes, at least as far as the Jandaia is concerned. They say that parrots, poor things, live longer than men, and (I recall in passing) it is quite certain that they will not have a heaven to compensate them for their cages and the hardships of life.

Why am I bringing all this up?

I was going to deal with another old “barrel organ,” as insistent and repetitive as the one I mentioned and as full of illusions as Jandaia’s predictions: peaceful coexistence. From there, I intended to move on to human rights, the ticket Carter offers today’s utopians in his beak.

But I must stop and leave it for another time. Two friends have just entered the room. One is an old friend from the Campos Eliseos days, serene, distinguished, and cultured, like so many gentlemen from that neighborhood. Moreover, he is a university professor who honors our class. The other, much younger—a dear friend for over twenty years—was born in the not-so-distant era when Higienópolis was being replaced by the Jardins borough. He is a brilliant, active, highly skilled, and dynamic business manager. Both want to talk and have announced they are bringing a delicious “breaking news” to the conversation.

Dear reader, I’ve forgotten the parrot, the barrel organ, and the maids, and I must end this article. Who doesn’t enjoy fresh, authentic news brought by friends like these?