Olinda's nightlife during the dictatorship.

Cícero João de Lima, artistically known as Peneira, owns the best bar in Olinda in recent times. Located in the city's Quatro Cantos district, his bar features drawings by J. Borges on the walls and is frequented by talented painters, with his paintings on full display. Peneira himself is good-natured, a mulatto in the style of Caymmi, almost Zen-like. But he possesses an almost imperceptible keen eye for his clientele, which he often disguises by pretending to doze behind the bar, well-protected by his unassuming and ample demeanor. But no, Peneira is at his post, observing everything. Without malice, he sees everyone—musicians, poets, journalists, painters, communists, bohemians—with a heart that has sheltered more than one Olinda artist who fell from grace. I remember the movement he led in support of Erasto Vasconcelos when Naná's brother was hospitalized without resources.

It's a sunny, Sunday-night bar, even if it's another day or night. Peneira's bar features in my novel "The Longest Duration of Youth." It was there that a key character in the book – Luiz do Carmo, whose model was the writer Marco Albertim – had an illuminating conversation about literature:

"There at that table at Peneira's, I know, and I can't say at what time, I spoke with my friend Luiz do Carmo before his last day. Young people pass by the door of Peneira's Bar, smiling, looking, smiling and waving at us. We respond impulsively, but like in a Chaplin film, the wave was for someone else in the bar. And we smile at the mistake. Then, on the fifth drink, we somehow arrive at what is crucial for Luiz do Carmo, at what is a value higher than Goethe's delayed puberty. And I tell you, I don't know by what movement of the alcohol or the ice in the alcohol:"

Your writing is praised, Luiz.

Then he looks at me, surprised and curious, and confronts me with the truth:

- By whom?

- For the people, for the intellectuals we trust.

"But who?" Luiz do Carmo asks, his eyes even wider. And I answer him:

- Take Zacarelli, for example. You know, Zacarelli represents a level of intellectual competence among us.

"I know, he's a friend," he replies, between disbelief and belief.

- And José Carlos Ruy, and José Reinaldo, who are valuable intellectuals and communists.

I know. But they are generous, they are good friends.

I understand what Luiz do Carmo wants. And I understand him because we are of the same nature. He, like every writer, has absolute doubt about his own talent. No matter what level of universal recognition he has reached, for the writer there will always be doubt at some point in the early morning: 'What if it's all a lie? What if all this praise is a mistake? After this moment, this present, I won't I be forgotten, like so many mediocre people?'. 'I don't like the fame of my name,' a character of Chekhov once said. I understand Luiz do Carmo's anguish, but I can't help but be moved by his anxiety."

Returning to the bar last Thursday, I interviewed Peneira about the iconic bar of the dictatorship in Olinda, Bar Atlântico, better known as Maconhão. You'll understand why. Peneira was a waiter at Maconhão, and even there he saw what the customers didn't know, because he was discreet in his observations. As he recalls here:

"I was born on October 26, 1955. The first bar I worked at was Maconhão. The iconic bar, the trendy bar. I started as the manager. The bus passed right in front of Maconhão in 1977. All the tribes of Olinda gathered there. When I arrived, it was already Maconhão. The owner was Clodomiro. The bar stayed open until dawn. Everyone was there: hippies, white people, black people, gay people, artists, leftists, young people, bohemians. Everyone."

What I remember most about Maconhão is that every artist who came to Olinda had to stop by Maconhão. It could be anyone. It was the bar of the moment in Olinda. I remember several artists: Zé Ramalho, Fagner, Elba Ramalho, Elke Maravilha, Chico Buarque's sister, Miúcha. Elke Maravilha even closed a night there. All the visual artists went. They were just starting their careers, weren't they? Martinho da Vila, everyone. At Maconhão there were no rich or poor people, anyone could be there. There was no such thing as lesbians or gays. Everyone in that bar was my friend, to begin with. It could be anyone.

The Wurlitzer jukebox had records in a format exclusive to Maconhão. No other bar in Pernambuco could find the music we had on that jukebox. We made the selections based on suggestions from some of our customers. The Wurlitzer technician made two copies of the record in the jukebox format for us. Maria Bethânia, Gal Costa. Everything by Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Ednardo, and Pavão Misterioso. We had other music too.

On the day of the biggest police raid at Maconhão, I was there. They arrested everyone, everyone. My friends were arrested. Batata, from Bacalhau do Batata, was arrested. Lawyers, journalists. They surrounded the bar and took all the customers away. A lot of people were arrested. They said the customers were marijuana smokers. That was the pretext. It was the Federal Police, really.

"That bar had many incidents with my gay friends, like Bugs Bunny, who would show up and put on a show, then shut the place down. We'd argue almost every day. I'd kick him out, and he'd come back the next day. 'If you want to punch me, go ahead. But I'm not stopping coming here. I like it here.' And he'd stay. Bugs Bunny smoked everything, drank everything, mixed all sorts of things, and took over the bar's dance floor imitating Carmen Miranda. He'd climb on a stool and sing and dance. It was a show."

For those younger and unfamiliar with Pernambuco's history, I remind you that Pernalonga was the most famous actor in Olinda. Antônio Roberto de Lira França was his legal name. An arts educator, dancer, singer, and performer, Pernalonga was one of the pioneers of the Vivencial Diversiones revue theater movement, a landmark of political and cultural resistance in Pernambuco during the 70s. Vivencial was a theater where homosexuals and transvestites had a voice against prejudice during the dictatorship in Pernambuco. Pernalonga was killed by a stab wound to the leg in 2000. He lost a lot of blood and agonized for hours in the street until he was taken to the Hospital da Restauração. He was HIV-positive, and because he was bleeding heavily, the neighbors were afraid to help him and become infected. The artist arrived at the hospital dead.

And Peneira returns, to conclude the interview for now:

"- There were two more arrests of friends at the bar. When things were getting out of control. There were a lot of people there. People from the film industry, Jomard Muniz de Brito, from Super 8, used to hang out there a lot."

And at this moment comes the greatest moment in the history of Maconhão. What Peneira's objective memory recounts is recovered from a literary point of view by the writer Marco Albertim in the novel "Conspiração no Guadalupe" (Conspiracy in Guadalupe). Marco Albertim gave intimate life to the nights of the dictatorship at Bar Maconhão. And in a reflection on those years of Olinda's nightlife, in the book couples form and break up. They are an amalgam of socialist militants and bohemian night owls. Which is to say, politicians against the dictatorship, but not at all orthodox, because they are made of the clay of experience. Like here:

"The four crossed paths, two meters from another couple. At that point, Maújo considered Gertrude and Caetano a couple; because of his comfort with Chica, and because of the hope that the former pair wouldn't be completely abandoned. He would be capable of sitting at the same table with all four of them, each couple betting on the happiness of the other; with or without the effect of daiquiris..."

In Marco Albertim's novel, there is a recognition and creative legitimation of the bars of Olinda's nightlife during the time of fascist repression.

"Estrela and Maconhão share the common thread of the putrid air. Maújo and Chica silently inhaled it, mitigating indistinct guilt. The distant sound of the rumba comforted them. Outside, two couples plotted their delirium in another retreat, in multicolored beds, their eyes sparkling with marijuana."

Marco Albertim wrote like no one else about the Maconhão bar in Olinda's nightlife. The nature of the narrative reflects Olinda itself, with its intellectuals, artists, young people, alcohol, and tobacco. This Maconhão was the bar of unforgettable stories of falls, failures, and encounters. Once, a friend wanted to show solidarity with a teacher who, drunk, had lain down next to a mangy dog ​​on the floor. He asked her to get up from that dirty place where she lay beside the dog. And she, quickly, with sarcasm in her spirit and a bitter taste in her mouth:

Why? Are you jealous?

That was Maconhão, better known by its civilian name, Bar Atlântico. In the novel, it's a place of dissolution for the characters. The bar that was destroyed, there, next to the Olinda Fort, or São Francisco Fort, or Queijo Fort, always returns in the novel.

"At midnight they went down to Maconhão, by taxi. Lots of people, inside and outside the bar. The dark room, fluorescent on the liquor shelves, an uncertain glow in the lights of the jukebox and stars dripping rays onto the outside tables. On the tables, anarchist dreams, of impossible happiness."

The waiter brought the drinks and tokens for the jukebox. The two nodded in agreement with the commotion of the scene. A meteor streaked across the sky, its light illuminating the strip of sea in front of Maconhão. Boats and canoes, lit up.

Gertrude and Caetano raved for another two hours; they slept with their heads and shoulders together, leaning on each other. The radio, playing at half volume, provided the musical backdrop to their dreams. In the morning, the waiter woke them with polite taps on the shoulders. Startled, they thought they had been surprised by the general in pajamas.
The waiter was Peneira. And Maconhão, a bar frequented during the dictatorship, is immortalized in the pages of the novel "Conspiração no Guadalupe" (Conspiracy in Guadalupe). The writer Marco Albertim passed away in 2015. But he continues to live on in his longest work: breaking the hard stone of Brazil's insensitivity.

Published in Vermelho