Wherefore Art Thou, J

"Here Comes Janio," cried the cam paign slogan of President-elect Janio Quadros. Last week Brazilians wondered if the slogan might better read: "There Went Janio." Shortly after his election last October.

Quadros flew off to Europe for an opera tion to correct damaged muscles in his left eye. With the operation long since successfully completed, Quadros is still over there -- somewhere. The President elect of the world's fifth largest nation has been playing a game of hide-and-seek in Europe, and with his Jan. 31 inauguration date less than a month away, Brazil is clamoring for him to come home.

In Italy or Japan? The game started in London, when after his operation on Nov. 22, he registered in three hotels at once, stood up Prime Minister Harold Macmillan for lunch, and moved on to the Continent. Even Brazilian newsmen trying to follow him lost the trail. Early in December, his diplomatic passport was checked through a customs line at Madrid's Barajas Airport, but no one seems to have seen him. He was reported in Rome by Brazil's Madrid embassy and in Madrid by the Rome embassy.

He was said to have left Barcelona on Dec. 12, passed through Montpellier.

France, on his way to Switzerland. Then, in a Fiat borrowed in Vienna, he may have driven to Venice, where he reportedly registered at Hotela Bauer Grunwald as Renato Stafani. In Milan, he is supposed to have registered at the Grand Hotel Duomo using his wife's maiden name of Silva. He was rumored to have visited a Florence art gallery, from there reported ly drove on to Rome and an unidentified friend's villa at Ostia, 20 miles from Rome, where a Brazilian embassy spokes man helpfully announced: "I can't even tell you if he's in Italy or Japan." At week's end, he was supposedly headed for Belgrade to see Marshal Tito.

Janio did manage to keep in hazy contact with his country. A chosen few Brazilians went to Europe and returned bearing unofficial statements. "Quadros will follow an independent policy in international relations," ventured one such in formant. "He will try to maintain good relations with all countries that want to do business with us." Others reported that Quadros was anxious to trade with Red China, that he wanted to meet with Nas ser and Nehru, that he was not (as some feared) going to scrap Brasilia as the capital, that he was studying the administration of Europe, that he was studying Brazilian problems, that he would return in mid-January, that he would not return until late January, that he sent a warm ''abraqo to all Brazilian workers." Country Without a Man? Brazilians were not quick to return the embrace.

"Politicians are perplexed, responsible people are confused, workers are restless and officials fearful -- all waiting for the man ordained by Providence," said the Jornal do Brasil. Besides, cacao shippers wanted to change export policies, hotelmen com plained (naming no names) that Brazilians spend more in foreign hotels than in their own, Sao Paulo politicians wanted Quadros to name a candidate for mayor.

Above all, there was the Pandora's box of pressing economic problems left by out going President Juscelino Kubitschek: an $80 million payment due to private investors on Feb. 1 (Quadros' first full day as President), rampant inflation, soaring deficits in the budget and foreign trade.

"Janio Quadros will not have to busy himself with an art treasury but with an empty treasury," commented Correio da Manha acidly. "The people wanted Sao Paulo's former governor as President, not a Florentine dilettante." Brazil is getting worried; it does not want to be a country without a man.

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