#iguape

The trip was quite unexpected. We drove all day Friday, from 10 in the morning to 11:30 in the evening, on an unbelievable road, shaken like a salad basket, our mouths gagged by a red dust that made us Guarani Indians (us, four men including two Brazilians). We had to cross the virgin forest road, in the middle of the night, cross three rivers on primitive ferries to finally arrive at Iguape*, the goal of the trip, where we slept in hospital. The hospital is called "Happy Remembrance" (it is true that the penitentiary in Sao Paulo is strewn with signs that read: "OTIMISMO!").

As a matter of fact, I only remembered that this hospital had no water. I had to shave and wash myself, so to speak, with the mineral water we had in the car. But the kindness of the welcome made up for everything. The Iguapens are nice courtesies. The next day was the festivities of Iguape, whose main attraction is the procession where we walk the statue of The Good Jesus who arrived here on the waves, washed then in a place where now tirelessly grows a miraculous stone. I saw the procession, which was indeed the most heterogeneous gathering of races, classes, colours and clothes.

Above the urubus (peeled vultures) and a plane mobilized for the occasion. Firecrackers everywhere and Orpheon music. Gauchos, Japanese, mestizos, mulattoes, club-footed, bearded, a North African Parisian, you can see it from here, in the middle of an old city as if isolated from the rest of the world except for the brave. Some of the pilgrims had indeed been on the road for five days. In the evening a child had a finger removed by a firecracker and was amazed with loud cries that The Good Jesus allowed this.

On Sunday we returned. Still shaken and varnished to dust, supported by the black beans which are the food of the country and the pringa, brandy of cane that would awaken an academician. Busy day today. Judge for yourself: 11:00 a.m. Colloquium with Brazilian philosophers. 1:00 lunch with local Frenchmen. 2:30, interview at the Alliance française. 4:00 pm visit to the Serpentine tour and snake fights. 8 p.m. conference. I will be given all day long the honorary titles of "doctor" and "professor". I'm tired of it in advance. But I am also tired of the days to come where I will eat kilometers and parallels accompanied by meridians.

Tomorrow morning indeed I leave for Porto Alegre in the South. The day after tomorrow I fly to Chile. It's true that time passes and that it brings me closer to you at last. Yesterday, on the road, I was thinking about you and I told myself that if you had been there we would have often smiled together. I could see better how you also occupied my daily life, mixed with the smallest detail, literally entered me. That's why I carry this emptiness, this absence in me, this distraction of the heart. I'll call you then. But you are so far away.

Saturday night in Iguape between the forest and the river, in the soft air that came from the sea, I was looking for something in the sinking night. I didn't know what. And then I suddenly thought of your arm under mine, simply, and your shoulder leaning a little against my chest - your dear eyes - a common silence - and we would have been happy in this lost place, at the end of the world. Ah, let the wind rise... Write to me. Tell me what you're doing and what you're thinking. Open yourself to me - write that you are mine. I embrace you, my love, always from afar, but with the same fervor. I am waiting for you. Two more weeks and I'm getting ready to leave. I tremble a little, thinking of you that day. Will you be there at least, and still mine?”

— Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, August 8, 1949 [#79]

Morro do Espia is now captured! No cloud will stop the Hater Empire from conquering!

Iguape, São Paulo, Brazil

Captured by Claudinei (GothCartoonistClaudinei)

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