The Godfather Part IV

Notes on Jose Carlos Dias de Carvalho

If Juan Valdez had played the Godfather instead of Marlin Brando, you'd pretty much have the start of Ze. Throw in an impish sense of humor and a penchant for mischief and now you are getting even warmer.

Ze wears a fedora and a mustache. He refused to be photographed without his hat on. His button down short sleeve shirts are left open. He has tiny feet and wears tiny cowboy boots.

When Ze wakes up at 5:00 am, he starts cooking, and he doesn't stop until after dinner (he is semi retired). Feeding large quantities of people large quantities of food seems to be his passion (along with cacti, of which he has over 200). Ze has been cooking since he was 11 (unusual for a man in these parts), and cooking is no joke for Ze. He doesn't let anyone else in the house cook, not even his wife. Once he fired a maid for burning rice in the bottom of a pan.

Ze will put a meat dish on the table at lunch and tell Rachel and I it's cat. Ze will make a shrimp dish and tell Rachel (who doesn't eat seafood) that he made it just for her.

When Ze decides everyone else in the house should be up, usually around 9:30, he goes up to the terrace and cranks the Brazilian Forro music on the sound system. Forro is music from the northeast of Brazil that combines African drums with, oh my god, the accordian. It's not pretty. I feel like I am back in my Opa's house listening to German polka and I wonder how on earth did northeastern Brazil, which was mostly populated by African slaves, get hold of the accordian and why on earth, once they got it, did they keep it? It was funny the first five times.

Ze's neighbor calls to ask him to turn the music down and he hangs up the phone and turns the music up. He thinks the neighbors are uptight and too religious and he likes to antagonize them.

When Ze summons you to play canasta, you will be playing canasta. Canasta is another thing Ze takes seriously besides cooking and cacti. Ze sits across from Mariza and cusses at Rachel and I in Portuguese. When we don't discard a card he can use he pounds his fist on the table and cries "damn you!!!" and then giggles because we don't understand him. When we put a black 3 on the pile preventing him from snatching it he grumbles "punta merde." That's "bitch shit," another popular (if inexplicable) combination of cuss words.

By the way, people cuss alot down here. Cussing is an all occaison pastime. Spill some juice? Stub your toe? Just say "caralho!" (cock!). They say "sperm" alot too. Sperm is a good one. The word is porra and it also means cum. Dog peed on the floor? "porra!" works fine.

Rodrigo comes up and Ze tells him that he's been cussing at us the whole time and we don't even know it, then he chuckles so that his shoulders bounce up and down like he has the hiccoughs really fast. Ze is happy when he wins at canasta. Ze says Barack Obama is fixing the game if Rachel and I have a good round. I get the feeling it's not smart for us to win.

When Brazil beat South Africa in the FIFA Confederation Championship semi final and Brazil was going to play the U.S. in the final that Sunday, Ze started threatening Rachel and I that if the U.S. won, we wouldn' eat.

Ze calls me Kreecheena, because pronouncing Kristin is a pain in the ass. Or sometimes he just calls me "the tall woman."

Ze's last name is Carvalho, which means "oak" in Portuguese. Interestingly, Carvalho is only one easily unenunciated V off from caralho, "cock." There is a saying in Portuguese you use when you're pissed at someone: "I'm gonna send you to the casa des caralhos." I'm gonna send you to the house of cocks. Ze intentionally answers his phone, "Casa de Carvalho" and nearly drops the V.

Ze wants to marry me off. When he asked Rachel about me before I came down, he wanted to know three things: Is she a picky eater? (no), Does she drink? (um. a bit), and is she religious? (about drinking). All right answers. So Ze wants me to marry one of Rodrigo's 1800 cousins because he is tall like me and speaks English. I meet him and immediately decide on e-Harmony. Ze is fired along with Melie.

Before my arrival on the scene, Ze had a conversation with Duck. In Portuguese, the verb "comir" means "to eat." It is also used as a double entendre for "to fuck." Moecco asked if I liked to eat Duck. Ze shook his head and said, "No one likes to eat Duck."

Ze likes to tease me when I get up late in the morning by saying "good afternoon," even if it is clearly still morning, and I insistantly tell him "good morning."

When Ze is finished cooking for the day, he goes to his bedroom, stretches out on the bed and watches his Tele Novellas. These are Brazilian soap operas, which everybody, even the men watch down here. They are more dignified than the Spanish and Mexican one's I've seen, like Fuego en la Sangre." He turns the volume up super loud, like the Forro music, and falls asleep.

Political correctness is not in Ze's vocabulary. When Ze commented about Barack Obama Mariza said "whatever, you had an afro in the 70's." In Portuguese the words for afro literally translate to "black power." The actual hair style is called black power. Ze looked chagrinned and defended himself, "the black power was the style then!"

I like Ze.