BRAZIL: Spree

For four days and nights, Rio de Janeiro rocked to the torrid music of samba bands, the tin-shop crash of colliding motor cars, the laughter and shrieks of costumed revelers. Cariocas agreed that it was the greatest carnival they had ever celebrated.

In the course of the jamboree, 41 people were bitten by animals or human beings. A howling burglar was caught after he had run from the scene of his crime smack into a beehive. One policeman shot his wife in the leg and was himself knifed by another man. Another cop had his skull bashed by a man he had just saved from drowning.

A police detective, riding with his wife through whooping crowds in the middle-class Catete district, whipped out his revolver when someone made a disparaging remark about the lady; in the ensuing gunplay, six were wounded. An air force officer, drunk enough to be offended by the sight of two men swimming at Tijuca Beach in their underwear, wounded one and killed the other.

On the first day of Lent last week the bleary-eyed survivors took a look at the toll of casualties. This year's carnival had indeed outdone all others in the past. The score: 28 dead, 4,659 injured.