Who would guess? Rachel fell in love with a Russian, Ruth with an American.... The saying in lower latitdues is that anything is possible below the Equator. Not even the infamous Portuguese or Spanish Inquisitions were very successful in extraditing heretics back to the Old World! Gracias a Dios!
So, Alex Balbachevsky arrived in Brazil as a young man largely as a result of a Romanov connection, his father being a high ranking officer attached to the tzar. However, that is another strong story, better narrated in Ricardo Balbachevsky Setti's blog (in Portuguese for those of you who can...!). Anyway, the two 'foreign' suitors to Ruth and Rachel had to pass through the approval of Swedish mum Eva Landahl and her energetic husband Hildebrando Oliveira, a publisher of car and fashion magazines in São Paulo, educated in Brighton, England. Oliveira was as much an adventurer as a businessman. Eva passed away in 1944 and Oliveira remarried a Southern 'girl' - Mildred Avellar
Whatever chemistry was involved in the prenuptial arrangements, Eva and Hildebrando got it right... Dick and Alex, were to the best of my knowledge great admirers of each other, and loving spouses of Eva's 'girls' to the ends of their agreements. Coincidentally, as a young engineer, Dick had spent some time in Russia, and Alex definitely was very fluent in English, AND they both enjoyed chatting over a little aqua vitae, especially with a good sailing motif on the bottle's label such as
Legal o post, gostei de saber um pouco mais de family history. Me fez lembrar de outra coisa, Bridge of Allan primary school. Antes de ser navio ou marca de whisky, cutty sark era uma personagem do poema Tam ´o Shanter de Robert Burns. "Cutty sark" quer dizer "short skirt" em dialeto escocês. "Weel done cutty sark!" é o que ele, Tam, o protagonizador da estória/poema diz a uma bruxa adolescente que dança vestida apenas em suas roupas intimas, num bosque bem sinistro, cheio de espíritos etc, junto a suas amigas tambem bruxas. Assim que é visto por elas é perseguido. Foge a galope em sua égua Maggie e consegue escapar da morte, porém Maggie nao tem a mesma sorte...
ReplyDeletetrecho do poema:
"...Tom lost his reason all together,
And roars out: ‘ Well done, short skirt! ’
And in an instant all was dark;
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied."
read the full poem in Scottish or English at
http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/tamoshanter.htm
Até que Bridge of Allan primary me ensinou alguma coisa de útil ! hehehehe