I will continue listening to Tony Goes tell me: ‘Il faut y aller’ – 02/28/2024 – Zeca Camargo

Among so many affectionate words that were written, many of them by myself, about Tony Goes, the columnist for Sheet dead two weeks ago, one trait of his infinitely curious personality has perhaps been little highlighted: he was a great traveler.

He was also one of my best friends, as I made clear in my own text about him here. But above all, he was a precious traveling companion, something I realized the first time we went outside Brazil together, in the early 80s.

We pretentiously named our itinerary “Classic Europe”, guided by a budget not much bigger than our backpacks. We were still university students and I remember looking in London, our first stop, for a hotel that wouldn’t cost more than 10 pounds a day.

We closed on Trebovir, which I talked about here. The only window in our accommodation had broken glass that allowed the cold wind of a London January morning to easily overcome the little heat that the thin blankets on our beds offered.

The bathroom was at the end of the corridor, with just enough light not to discourage you from taking a shower at least every other day. And the breakfast was laughable, even by the standards of a London before the “Cool Britannia” veneer of the 90s.

But Tony didn’t care about that and I went along with him. We were two young people in the coolest capital of pop music and we wanted to explore everything. Or even, everything he had put on his list of traveler priorities.

With his infinite appetite for culture and information, Tony, before traveling, always sketched out itineraries with things, places, monuments that anyone passing through a certain destination should visit.

“If faut y aller”, he said, insistently quoting an expression in French that can be translated as “we have to go there”. This argument, even if joking, silenced everyone else.

Tiredness? The night is for sleeping. Budget? We can go a day without dinner! Lack of interest? There was no uninteresting place in the world for Tony.

And that’s how I got to know London and its surroundings in details that I never revisited again. But even the eighth church on a Thursday with Tony tasted like the seventh wonder of the world.

With curiosities that he took from his prodigious memory at a time when there wasn’t even a glimpse of Wikipedia, Tony created fascinating narratives about any corner. Throughout our more than 40 years of friendship.

And there were so many destinations…

Butterfly garden in Luang Prabang? “Il faut y aller”. Neo-Gothic bookstore in Porto? “Il faut y aller”. Taquile Island, in Lake Titicaca? “Il faut y aller”.

And so it was through the medina of Marrakech, Morocco. Among the ruins of the bridge of Avignon, France, sung by its (our) hero Tintin. On safaris in Etosha Park, Namibia. Shaking in the back of a pickup truck between Campo Grande and Amambaí (MS).

I went around the world four times, but Tony had done one before we met. I already know 117 countries, but he had the advantage of having gone to Iran, for me, a dream destination. He was always updating the lists of the countries we visited together or even the cities we were in at the same time.

I teased him by saying that I would still visit every country in the world and he always disdained my achievements with a fine irony, another trademark of his. Now I just keep traveling. But wherever I go, I know I will always hear him telling me “Il faut y aller”.

From where he is. On the final scale. To the destination that we all have to go one day.

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