Hilda Hurricane

Hilda Hurricane

Hilda Hurricane A novel

Roberto Drummond Translated from the Portuguese by Peter Vaudry-Brown

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN

This publication received support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Hilda Furacão copyright © 1991 by Beatriz Moreira Drummond English translation copyright © 2010 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2010 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Drummond, Roberto. [Hilda Furacão. English] Hilda Hurricane = Hilda Furacão / Roberto Drummond ; translated from the Portuguese by Peter Brown. — 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-292-72190-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-292-72191-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Brazil—Fiction. I. Brown, Peter. II. Title. PQ9698.14.R777H5613 2010 869.3'42—dc22 2010006340

Author’s Dedication To Alberico Souza Cruz, Afonso Celso Guimarães Lopes, Antônio Telles, Argemiro Ferreira, Breno Milagres, Cyro Siqueira, Dodô Caldeira, Euro Arantes, Eraídes Bruschi, Evandro Brandão, Glória Amorim, Geraldo Matta Machado, Hélia Ziller, João Carlos Viegas, José da Rocha Viana, José Maria Rabelo, José Flávio Carvalho, Lauro Diniz, Maria Lúcia Saponara, Ponce de Leon Antunes e Rubens de Oliveira Batista, in Brazil. To Esther Pérez and Arsenio Cícero Sancristóbal, in Cuba. To Anabela Drummond Lee, Young Lee, and Roberto Lima, in the USA. To Guy de Almeida, in Italy. And to Hilda Hurricane, wherever she is.

Translator’s Acknowledgments To my Mom and my Dad, of course. To Rick Barthelme, who has always kept me going. To Rie Fortenberry, who has always kept everything in control. To Ryan Ward, who inspired me to be a good bad example. And to David Foster, who pointed me Roberto Drummond’s way. To my own Beautiful B, who made me love BH so much. And to Norma and to Aisha, who look the same-ite, but for a difference in the curls . . . I love each of them the same . . . The vowels probably outdo the consonants in this small, cold world. But I’d take either one of ’em as a wife . . . I would. And, most importantly, to Tutu, my buddy, my eternal friend. I wouldn’t have made it this far without you, buddy.

In general, life isn’t easy. Turgenev I never made up stories or intrigues. I used what real life offered. Life is infinitely more rich than our inventions. There isn’t an imagination that could give us that which, sometimes, gives us life! Along with everything else, respect life! Dostoyevsky Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; they are the life, the soul of reading! Take them out of this book, for instance, you might as well take the book along with them. Laurence Sterne Where will dreams take us? Thomas Mann

Hilda Hurricane

One

0 A Man Dying in His Room During the era of the events involving Hilda Hurricane, I was working as a reporter at the Folha de Minas newspapers in a Belo Horizonte that smelled of jasmine and the tear gas that the police were using on the students and ended up being the perfume of those days. I was a slim youth, I smoked if-you-can-spare-ones, I suffered from three or four imaginary illnesses, I had an open file with the secret police, the Dops, and, to give you an idea of my politics, I believed that, like Castro, I would still have my Sierra Maestra. During that time, I really liked some verse by the poet Joaquim Cardozo that said: “I’m a marked man in a country occupied by the foreigner . . .”

There was some exaggeration there, but that was how I felt; after all, I was followed day and night by Nelson Sarmento, the most notorious and in some ways most feared police operative of that time; short, plump, Prince Valiant–style hair, a key ring spinning on one finger, if he wasn’t marking something down in his notebook, Sarmento was omnipresent. Further forward he’s going to reappear in this narrative. At that time I asked myself, “Why does Sarmento make so many drawings of me, from the front and in profile, in his notebook?” After my arrest, I nevermore had peace with Nelson Sarmento; I was arrested for the first time on an unforgettable September morning while organizing a general strike of the workers of the Cidade Industrial of Contagem, a few kilometers from Belo Horizonte, and, on being made to get into a patrol car with my comrades Maurício Junqueira and Carlos Romeu Andreazi, I shouted:

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“Long live the Working Class!” At the Dops office in Belo Horizonte, after being photographed for my mug shot and being fingerprinted and being introduced to the “boys,” the name that they gave to both good and bad cops, I was taken, at dusk, with Maurício Junqueira and Carlos Romeu Andreazi, to a cell that was considered very honorable around the Military Police barracks in Santa Efigénia; you see, this ample and comfortable cell, if it’s possible to say such a thing about a prison cell, was where they kept comrades Roberto Costa and Dimas Perrin, accused, based on the surveillance film of the already mentioned Sarmento, of having commanded the mob that torched the U.S. consulate and burned the American flag. It was proof of revolutionary status to occupy this illustrious cell, and we were received with great happiness by our two imprisoned colleagues; even so, and considering that the mattress was soft, I lost any urge to sleep that night and discovered that even political prisoners snore—and that Liberty, whose noise from outside the barracks made it even to my bed, was more simple and less political and ideological than I had imagined: Liberty was a happy young couple exchanging kisses and hugs and whispered secrets as they leaned against the wall of the barracks; it was someone who went by listening to a football game on his transistor radio; it was the voice of a mother calling, “Carla, get to bed”; it was Carla responding, “I’m going, Mom!”; and it was, finally, a drunk who shouted in the wee hours: “Marta, why did you do this to me, Marta?” After the drunk went by, I managed to get to sleep. I woke at the crack of dawn and to the sound of soldiers assembling in the courtyard of the barracks; half asleep, I suspected that I was going to face a firing squad; half asleep, I decided when they asked me if I had a last request, I would say: “My last request is to live and love the Beautiful B.” But I wasn’t shot that day or on any day; after lunch (flank steak and fries, with rice and beans and tomatoes and a glass of milk), since we weren’t allowed to receive any newspapers, magazines, or books, Comrade Dimas Perrin, already with those first insistent white hairs hinting at the silver-haired dome he’d have later, after

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the military coup of ’64 (when, then, yes, they put him on a wooden rack and tortured him until he confessed to what he did and didn’t know), he proposed: “Let’s do a mental session of political study.” Each one of us was to lie on his back in bed and remember passages from One Step Forward, Two Steps Back by Lenin; after, in accordance with our recollections, we would have a debate. Listen, I had never read One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, nor any other book by Lenin—so when I stretched out on the cell’s bed, I followed the movements of a spider, which is the old and constant companion of the world’s political prisoners; after, I started thinking about, one by one, the women who, in one form or another, I had loved; from the black woman Das Dores, to whose magic hand I owe the start of my own sexual life, in the old days in Araxá, up to who was really the first: she was named Big Alice and she earned her living in the red-light district of Santana dos Ferros, and, on seeing me, with my child’s face, I who was at the front of a line that led to her door, there in the dim light of her room (she could’ve been my grandmother), she was taken by a sudden devotion and ordered: “First, kid, you kneel and say an Ave Maria.” I obeyed. After, she pulled me to the bed that seemed to pulse with a strange song and kissed my face with her rough lips, which seemed to have calluses picked up in the long exercise of her profession; still lying on the cell’s bed, I forgot Big Alice and rooted uselessly for a mosquito that, after having attempted a flight at freedom, got caught up in the spider’s web; then I went over the very white body of Maria Teresa who, in truth, I hadn’t made love to but only watched change clothes through the blinds at Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana’s, in Santana dos Ferros. When Comrade Dimas Perrin started the debate over One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, I remembered Neli, a passion from my childhood years whose legs I used to spray with water back in Araxá. Now on the third day of prison, I started to think: “And when I get out of here, will I find out that my father has died of disgust?” On the fifth day, I was freed.

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My father dreaded communism and was an Americanophile; but he didn’t die on finding out that his son was in prison for being a communist, he died a while later, not from disgust, but from a heart attack. In the story “The River Is a Strong Brown God,” I told a story based on his agony—and even though it transgresses literary norms, I’m going to publish it here: 1 My father is dying in his room. 2 The room is dark and my father is dying there. 3 Here in the living room, we are waiting for my father to die in his room. 4 The doctor said that my father was going to die before eight at night, but it’s already past ten at night and my father continues to die inside his room. 5 In the room where my father is dying stretched out in bed, my mother is a white figure seated at its head. 6 At times my father cries out inside his room. 7 When my father cries out inside his room, the neighbor girl, who when she passes leaves a trace of happiness in the street and who is seated on the sofa here in the living room, continues looking at me and I feel like singing, but singing is the last thing I should be thinking about now, because my father is dying in his room.

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8 She’s morena, youthfully thin, maybe she’s twenty or at most twentythree, her eyes are gray and I want to look at her, but I look at the floor, because my father is dying in his room. 9 She’s sitting on the sofa right in front of me and, if my father wasn’t dying in his room, I could look at her legs. 10 I could look at her knees when she crosses her legs. 11 I could see a bit of her thighs. 12 I could look at her bare and brown shoulders. 13 And her mouth, which gives me so much thirst, I could also look at, if my father weren’t dying in his room. 14 Even so, I look at her, even knowing that my father is dying in his room, I look at her. 15 She lights a cigarette and I like the way that she holds it and that she swallows the smoke and then the smoke comes out of her mouth, but I hear a cry and remember that my father is dying in his room. 16 Then she looks at me again with her gray eyes and I feel like singing, my father is dying in his room and I feel like singing.

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17 I try to think of my father who is dying in his room. 18 Never, in all my life, not even when I was a child, has my father embraced me, kissed me, or run his hands through my hair and now my father is dying in his room and the room is dark and he is dying there. 19 I don’t remember having seen my father laugh anytime either; he only ventured a slim smile when he heard Alvarenga or Ranchinho singing on the radio. But that’s a long time ago, when we still lived in the interior, and now my father is dying in his room and now he can’t laugh. 20 There on the sofa, the neighbor girl crosses her legs, she shouldn’t do that, because my father is dying in his room. 21 I could tell her that my father was always a sad man. I think she would understand, but it wouldn’t make sense, in the end, with my father dying in his room. 22 My mother comes out of the room where my father is dying, stops in front of me, and says that my father is calling for me in the room where he is dying. 23 Everyone in the living room looks at me and the neighbor girl watches me as well with her gray eyes and, yes, I want to sing, and I go in the room where my father is dying.

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24 I kneel at the head of the bed and my father’s hand starts to trace the features of my face in the dark. After, my father weaves his fingers into my hair and says, “My little sonny boy.” 25 My father never called me that and now that my father is dying in his room, he repeats, “Sonny boy.” 26 My father takes my hand and asks if I remember when we hunted wild ducks. I tell him yes and my father laughs and says, “We were happy then, eh?” I say yes, that we were happy, and again my father laughs; he’s dying in his room and he laughs. 27 I leave my father dying in his room and return to the living room, and there she is, the neighbor girl with the gray eyes, like a slim flag of happiness; but it’s not the time to be happy, and I go up the stairs to the upper level of the house, lie down on my bed with my head buried in my pillow and stay there thinking of my father who is dying in his room. 28 I hear footsteps climbing the stairs and I think that someone is coming to tell me that my father has just died in his room. 29 But when I look, I see the neighbor girl with the gray eyes entering; I want to shout, sing, and this hurts because my father is dying in his room. 30 She sits beside me on the bed and I kiss her mouth with really dry lips.

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31 She gets up, closes the door to the room where we are and returns, and I embrace her and kiss her. 32 I used to compare her to an angel when I’d see her going by in the morning, but now that my father is dying and I’ve got her in my arms, I suspect that she is a devil come to tempt me. 33 Naked in the room, she and I make love. 34 A wind blows a slight breeze across our naked and sweaty bodies. I sense in my mouth the salty taste of her skin and I say that I like it. And she says, “‘The salt is on the briar rose.’” She asks, “Do you know your T. S. Eliot?” I say no. She recites: “I don’t know much about gods but I think that the river is a strong brown god . . .”

35 She is in an embrace with me; I feel that she is something of me: my hand, my leg, my mouth, my rib. And a song starts playing inside of me like a fiesta, but I know that it’s not the hour for fiestas, because, at the end of the day, my father is dying in his room.

0 The Good of the Truth It’s time to clear up that, contrary to the story you just read, as soon as I left my father’s room, I didn’t go up any stairs; I went down them

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and waited to hear the feet of the little babe with the gray eyes from next door coming down them as well; days later I would make a discovery about her that maybe I’ll tell you about, if there’s time; to continue clarifying: it’s very probable that if it were today, that my father wouldn’t have died; today he wouldn’t stay at home waiting for the second heart attack like he did; but Renato Pena, the cardiologist that looked after him, was a fatalist, he had lost a brother to heart disease and he said to me, the oldest son: “If the second one comes, adios.” The whole family was arriving at the house on Ceará Road, coming from Santana dos Ferros, the interior of Minas Gerais; aunts, uncles, cousins—and the event that was most anticipated, going by what Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana said (by whom, in some way, I was raised), was the moment when my father would call me into the room where he was dying to make a dramatic appeal: “My son, promise, on my deathbed, that you’re going to get these communist ideas out of your head.” I myself feared that he would ask me something similar. One night, I was having some soup at home when my mother came up to me and said: “Your father woke up feeling a sharp pain in his chest. He doesn’t know if he dreamed it or if it was a real pain.” It wasn’t a dream; it was a real pain and I went to get Dr. Renato Pena, whose house was next door to ours. He announced that it was the second and feared heart attack. Now, there was nothing more to do. A countdown began among the family (aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, distant relatives, friends) to the moment that my father, moments before death, would call me into the room and ask me to give up communism. When my mother came out of the room where my father was dying and said, “My son, your father wants to see you before he dies,” everyone looked at me and Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana patted my shoulder, whispering, “Courage!”; but at the time I only saw your gray-colored look, little neighbor girl—and with weak legs, I walked to the room where my father was dying. When I came out of there, I was surrounded by everyone asking me:

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“What did your father ask you? What did he ask you?” I was still hugging and kissing the neighbor girl when my father took my mother’s hand and said, “Be happy.” And died.

0 My Most Unforgettable Character (Now I should, before I begin to narrate what in truth is the principal objective of this tale, open a parenthesis for everything indispensable: I imagine that, at this point, Aunt Ciana must have closed her book and started a novena asking the Christ Child of Prague to save the soul of her wayward and sinful nephew; but I hope Aunt Little Heart and you readers will continue: if only because, after my father’s interment in the Bonfim Cemetery, there was a gathering in the house on Ceará Road, without myself, my siblings, or my cousins knowing about it—not even my mother knew; a gathering of aunts and uncles, brought about by my Uncle Asdrubal, who made a proposition: they should take my mother aside and get her to disinherit her communist son. At that moment, Aunt Ciana fainted (there was a suspicion that it had been faked), and the meeting was suspended; when it picked up again and Uncle Asdrubal repeated his proposition, another uncle of mine said hotly: “You all can do what you want. You can ask her to disinherit the communist, as you call him, but before”—and here he slapped his chest—“you’ll have to do it over my dead body!” Was it that the one who spoke, my Uncle José Viana, was a leftist? No. Was he a liberal democrat? No. His political biography consisted of: during the Second World War, he had supported Hitler, whose photo he carried in his wallet beside his then girlfriend’s, my Aunt Lúcia; he was a Green-Shirt, which means he was a member of the Integralist Party of Plinio Salgado, who was himself favored by God; my uncle had one enemy in life: communism; whatever, if one day, as I still hope happens, Reader’s Digest comes to me

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and asks me to write an article on my most unforgettable character, the person I’m going to pick is my Uncle José Viana because, even being a confessed Nazi, in practice he was, without doubt, the best democrat I have ever met. When my father was still alive, I would go spend my holidays on the farm where my Aunt Lúcia and Uncle José Viana lived. When I dismounted from their best horse—Cimarrón, which belonged to my father—and went into the farmhouse, after the greetings, Uncle José used to pass me a packet of magazines and newspapers that were sympathetic to communism: “Now you read these so that we can argue,” he would say. “They’re so that you’ll have arguments and be able to have a serious discussion with me.” During the day, I would read the articles avidly; at night, since I was afraid of sleep, we would stay up talking, while the cattle lowed outside, until the wee hours; this, when we didn’t go and listen to the stories of Mr. Quim, a great yarn spinner who, smoking a cigarette rolled from straw that he would make slowly as he talked, would go on recounting and getting us more involved in his tales; his stories came and went and didn’t follow any sort of straight line—and that’s how Mr. Quim would get us. Now that I am proposing to really tell what happened during those years, I’ll resort to the narrative strategy of Mr. Quim. If you all read to the end, and you feel drawn in and seduced by the story, if you’ve taken pleasure in reading, you should give all the credit to him. To he who broke with all traditional notions of time and always exuded an air of mystery. The last news I heard of Mr. Quim was that he was working as a professional beggar in São Paulo; he had a spot on Paulista Avenue and he was so successful that every year he took holidays and returned to my Uncle José Viana’s farm, bringing presents for everyone. Close parentheses.)

1 The Three Musketeers In truth, this tale starts here, so that the readers are free to do what they want with the previous pages; you can consider them or not as part of this book and can tear them up, destroy them, etc.; having said that, I’ll say that on a certain morning in the house on Ceará Road, I received an urgent telegram from Aunt Little Heart; it said: “Is the rumor true that’s going around here?” I responded in the same tone: “The rumor that’s going around there isn’t going around here.” Before I raise any hypotheses on the rumors that would attract the notice of Aunt Little Heart, it’s probably time to portray her briefly; her and Aunt Ciana, both of them my father’s sisters, his only ones, both very similar yet at the same time completely different; separating them, before anything—the two of them both being practicing Catholics—were the saints of their faith. Aunt Little Heart was a devotee of San Antônio, who, if he didn’t make her marry the man she loved, turned her into an eternal fiancée: there had been a good thirty years that Aunt Little Heart was a fiancée, an engagement that recently had become confused with the first pains of rheumatism, with arthritis in her left knee, with the coughs and sore throats of dusk—and with a happiness that was like the breezes of her youth: to lean in the window (Aunt Little Heart had calluses on her elbows) and see surge forth there far off, on the road on this side of Santana dos Ferros, the incredibly black horse, just like when they had first started to date, the fiancé that we, the nieces and nephews of Aunt Little Heart, named Uncle Pedro. Aunt Ciana had already, and I don’t deny her reasons, broken relations with San Antônio when she lost her enchanted prince to the cousin whom she detested the most; she turned everything, in her prayers, her novenas, her promises and offerings, over to the

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Christ Child of Prague. I just said on the road on this side of Santana dos Ferros—that’s just it; there are only two roads that twist like two immense and lazy cobras along the banks of the San Antônio River, a river—I’m warning you—that is disloyal; a black wooden bridge that reminds you of a train crossed the river and linked both sides. Today, it’s true, there’s a cement bridge that, if it doesn’t have the same poetic significance as its predecessor, has one important fact: it was built by my father, an engineer dedicated to opening the way. Aunt Little Heart has the habit of, on the first Friday of each month, leaning on the railing of the bridge and throwing flowers to San Antônio into the river bearing his name; and imagine what Aunt Ciana does: there, on the same bridge, she spits into the light green waters—this when the floods don’t rise too high—and mumbles between her teeth, not to the river but to the saint: “You fair-weather saint!” I’ve laid out what should have been a quick paint stroke—this profile of my aunts—it’s getting longer than I wanted, but, to review, Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana—who made up a shocking household—are divided not only by their saints, San Antônio and the Christ Child of Prague; they are also divided by the plebiscite over Father Geraldo Cantalice, the new vicar, to know if the congregation should knock down the older traditions of the Mother Church in favor of the new, modern, and daring dictates. Santana dos Ferros divided itself along the colored and the celestial—the colored (the case of Aunt Little Heart) were aficionados of the modern church, the celestials (the case of Aunt Ciana) were defenders of the old church. Aunt Little Heart wore a red bandana in her breast pocket and sang of victory—the old church had been defeated and a new one, modern, in the building of the chapel of Oscar Niemeyer at Pampulha, was rising, and wait: it’s about to be inaugurated. Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana lived a perpetual cold war; it was only at night they made peace, when Uncle Pedro would leave them both alone and the fear of ghosts would bring them together. They and Joli, the intrepid little dog, which belonged to Aunt Ciana, and to whom they had been unable to transfer their fear of ghosts; the reference to Joli should be grown out to include this confession:

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among the best friends I’ve had, Joli figures in; when I lived in the domestic mélange of Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana and had been dumped by the Beautiful B, who couldn’t resist paternal pressures (don’t worry, I’m going to tell this story too), what would’ve become of me without Joli? One morning, I thought I heard her, Joli, speak, with a strong dog’s accent: “You have to react, man. Comrade.” I had, then, the certainty that I was going crazy and I went back to Belo Horizonte. But, I’m losing the narrative thread. What should I say now? I’ll return to the telegram of Aunt Little Heart, which started this chapter—and when I read it, I thought: “It must be a rumor involving the Three Musketeers.” The Three Musketeers of this narrative are us: Malthus, also known as the Saint; Aramel the Handsome; and me; we managed to get ourselves called the Three Musketeers because we were the only three students graduating from the local middle school; when we went on to study sciences in Belo Horizonte, we had a nice good-riddance speech from Professors Benedito and Nelson; all of this put a lot of responsibility on our shoulders—maybe, because of that, we dared to dream of great things: Malthus wanted to be a saint, and was proud of never having masturbated, which would have led to hair on his palm and difficulties in the confessional; Aramel the Handsome, the best-looking guy who’s ever existed, wanted to be a Hollywood star and, even in Santana dos Ferros, had already learned to speak English; and me, well, I wanted to be a writer, but that as a profession wasn’t well thought of in my family and I had to pretend to want to be a medical student. On the day that the telegram from Aunt Little Heart arrived, years after our arrival in Belo Horizonte, the saint project of Malthus had moved along very well; soon-ish, he’s going to show up in this narrative and you all will see him wearing a Dominican friar’s white robes. That’s Brother Malthus. Listen, since there aren’t any rumors about the sanctity of Brother Malthus, the telegram of Aunt Little Heart can only have as suspects Aramel the Handsome, or this writer; the two of us, as you’ll see, were good targets of rumors. Already, in the next few days, Brother Malthus would be news himself, on or

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in all the TV stations and newspapers, but now I’m stuck (and not only to get up the interest of Aunt Little Heart for this tale): the sainthood of Brother Malthus would run a serious risk on suffering its first challenge—a beautiful, handsome, unforgettable challenge. But that comes later.

2 To the Beat of Frank Sinatra Maybe, since Brother Malthus was doing a good job of maintaining and defending his sainthood’s potential, among the Three Musketeers the object of the rumor was Aramel the Handsome, because of the strange—although well-paid—way he had of making money. I’ll tell you beforehand that Aramel the Handsome’s father had, when his son was still a child, lost his shirt in the casinos, a fortune left to him by his in-laws; since then he had become a “teacher’s husband,” a kept man, and wearing a smoking jacket from India, the only thing left from the good years, he would put Frank Sinatra records on and decree with what remained of his authority: “Here in this sainted and blessed house, while Frank Sinatra sings, bad news won’t visit us.” Since Frank Sinatra sang night and day, the sicknesses and deaths in the family, the catastrophes, the wars, and, even, the suicidal shot that President Getúlio Vargas put in his own chest, none of them made it into that house; it’s easy to guess that Aramel the Handsome hated Frank Sinatra as much as he hated his father: “I don’t know what Ava Gardner saw in that shrimp,” he’d say in moments of fury. “And Bing Crosby is a much better singer than him.” Aunt Little Heart who, of this I’m sure, is reading this tale, will say at this point with impatience: “Quit it with your Hitchcock act; tell them what Aramel the Handsome is up to!”

3 Since I Didn’t Nationalize Esso On reading the telegram from Aunt Little Heart, I was taken by the following suspicion: “And what if she found out that I nationalized my name?” My baptismal name, as it says in my file at Dops, is Robert Francis Drummond; I never liked my name; to begin with, as soon as I arrived in Belo Horizonte, the theaters had really popular movies about a talking mule; and you know what he was named? It was Francis the Talking Mule, and this coincidence cost me terrible and repetitive insults when the professors from San Antônio High School called my name: “Robert Francis Drummond.” “Present,” I would respond, in the middle of a wave of chortling. The following year, when I transferred from San Antônio to San Arnold, which was also run by the church, and not as liberal as the Franciscans, I had the same problem: I had to put up with the laughs when the teachers called my name; I thought: “I have to think of a way to get free of this Francis in my name.” It was, of course, my father’s name—born Francisco de Alvarenga Drummond—that he made the middle name of his three sons. When I went to study at San Arnold and left San Antônio, in its house on Pernambuco Road, I went to live in a mythical house: Bahia Road, exalted at that time in a big Carnival hit by Rômulo Pães and Gervásio Horta: “It is, it is, Maria, ’s time to go to Bahia Road . . .”

I lived across from the municipal library’s main branch, beside the Grande Hotel, in whose doorway, one day, shaking with emotion, I

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waited for the novelist Jorge Amado to ask for his autograph. I was always running late for things because of the afternoons I spent on Bahia Road reading Jorge Amado, José Lins do Rego, and Graciliano Ramos in the municipal library, things that made me a communist; later, I would be active in the campaign to nationalize our oil industry, the victorious “oil is ours” campaign; I went to assemblies and demonstrations, some of which were broken up by the police, according to custom, with tear gas. I tried to nationalize Esso, Shell, Bond and Share, Nestlé, Philips, etc., etc.; since I didn’t succeed, I decided: “I’m going to nationalize my own name.” I Brazilianized Robert to Roberto, I eliminated the uncomfortable Francis so that, finally, when I entered the Communist Youth, so insistent on joining that they suspected me of being a “reactionary agent” wanting to get in, I only signed Roberto Drummond; and received a membership card in my new name—it had a hammer and sickle superimposed on it and the initials UJC (Union of Communist Youth). My comrades warned me: “Keep your membership card at home, well hidden. Don’t walk around with it, or the cops, Sarmento, will get you.” I didn’t follow their advice and soon it would come back to bite me.

4 Eating Roasted Babies You wanna know what happened? Follow my steps: the slim young man, with a sports shirt and a quick step, walking down Paraná Avenue on this night is me; to Aunt Ciana I advise skipping this chapter and picking things back up in Chapter 5; but, Aunt Little Heart, with your immaculate heart, and you, you the readers, a nice surprise awaits you, so don’t give up on me; if you’re really paying attention, you’ll notice that I’m smoking one cigarette after another—a sign that I’ve put together some money to buy my much-loved Continentals;

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no, on this night I won’t be smoking if-you-can-spare-ones, and, if I am walking fast, it’s because I’m on the hunt for women—I’m looking in the darker regions of Paraná Avenue, a woman, but not just any woman: on this night I’m looking for a black woman that’ll make me remember Das Dores, she that initiated me in Araxá; on this night, I want the scent of Mother Africa, I want to feel the AfroBrazilian heat of some black thighs. But, for now—you’ve probably noticed—I’m only finding bleach-blondes and such on the length of Paraná Avenue. But, at the corner of Tamoios Road, close to the all-powerful Bank Workers’ Syndicate, the source of general strikes at the time, there, a black woman is stopped; I go over by her and she smiles; she has big dark eyes, thick lips, smooth dark skin, and I hug her and she says she has a room on Mauá Road. Mauá Road was very dangerous; the papers were always talking about the ‘countdown’ that women there were always using to attack innocent farmers from the interior of Minas who came to town to spend their nut; sort of forgetting about my communist ID card, I went down Mauá Road with my victim; look, we went in a red-light house—and I made love to her as if she were Das Dores, back in the Araxá times. At payment time, when we were done, she wasn’t happy with what I was offering—she had already gotten dressed, and pulled out a straight razor, and was leaning against the door in a way that I couldn’t get out. She said: “Give me your money.” “It’s all that I have,” I said. “Gimme everything,” and she took my pants and found my Communist Youth card. I waited for her reaction. “Ah,” she said after getting it out. “Be a good boy and give me all your money or I’ll turn you over to the cops.” I offered her an agreement: she could keep my Communist Youth card as a deposit and I would go home to get more money or something more valuable. She agreed. The only thing I managed to get was a Parker 51 that I had inherited from my dad. The scene repeated itself: I came in the room, she took out her straight razor, leaned against the door, and looked at the pen I was offering.

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“The cap’s pure gold,” I lied. Without taking herself away from the door or putting away the razor, she looked at the pen, saw the name ‘Francis’ engraved on it, my father’s name, and took it and stashed it between her pretty black breasts; then she returned to me my Communist Youth card and, still holding on to her razor, she watched me walk to the door and asked: “Friend, you’re really a communist?” “I am,” I said. “And you eat roasted babies?” “I do,” I said. “The meat’s good?” “Very good.” “What does it taste like?” “Regular people meat.” “And regular people meat is good?” “It’s the tastiest meat around,” I said. For a second, with her razor in her hand, she looked at me with her big dark eyes: she seemed to be thinking about, on that nervous Saturday night, that she should experiment with human flesh; but her anthropomorphic tendencies gave way to her need to get another client—and she opened the door and let me leave.

5 Earning My Bread, and Besides, My Tobacco I can imagine the impatience with which Aunt Little Heart must be saying: “If he’s a saint, Brother Malthus, he’ll have his saintliness challenged by a ‘beautiful and handsome challenge’—that’s what I want to read about.” I could advise Aunt Little Heart and readers who are both curious and pressed for time: skip ahead and see the temptations that

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the good and sainted Brother Malthus is going to suffer; but talking about respect—I’ll leave Aramel the Handsome for later, when it’s really opportune—but I have to say that a student strike and my last name Drummond got me a job as a cub reporter at Folha de Minas. I was one of the organizers of the strike and since the newspapers in Belo Horizonte at the time were very conservative, reactionary really, like we used to say, and didn’t send anyone to cover the strikes, we would go to the editorial board with the news of what happened during our strikes. Folha de Minas was located on Curitiba Road across from the Art Palace cinema, which was well-known for its festivals like the retrospective on Italian neo-realism, where I was dazzled by Miracle in Milan, by De Sica and Zavattini, and slept during the ten o’clock showing of Umberto D., and I spoiled, through my behavior, the exhibition of Rome, Open City, because I never forgave Roberto Rossellini for what happened with Ingrid Bergman. To get to the editorial offices of Folha de Minas, you had to climb some stairs that only allowed two slim people to go up side by side, but, as I’m going to tell you, the stairwell didn’t really handle a fat man very well; when I went up the first time, accompanied by four comrades from the strike committee, little did I know how many times I would come to climb those musty stairs again, how many times I’d go by the snoozing black doorman, and how I’d work there. The old black guard was the security for the building and the day we walked by him with our news of the student strike, he woke up and looked at us as if he couldn’t believe it: it wasn’t that common for that many people to take those stairs. Folha de Minas was owned by the state government and was a dying publication; it was in a constant state of penury and was always six months behind in its payment to the staff and the black security guard. Upstairs, on seeing us, already in the deserted territory of desks and old Remington typewriters, a reporter whom I recognized from the photo that used to appear beside his byline, which was the custom of the time, stood up from his desk and greeted us; he was wearing a checked sport coat and a brown shirt with an open collar, no tie, and black pants; his hair was black and short, and when

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he realized what had brought us there, to an empty press room, he opened his arms in greeting: “Viva!” he shouted. “We’ve got a strike!” He pulled out chairs for us and grabbed a pad of paper and took a pen out of his pocket: “Okay! What are your names?” We all responded and when I said my name, he said: “I’m Felipe Hanriot Drummond. You’re a Drummond from where?” “From the interior.” “You’re a Drummond from Santana dos Ferros?” “I am.” “Well, then, you’re my cousin. Do you wanna work here? At the Folha? We need a reporter to cover the student happenings.” On the following afternoon, almost without believing it, I went up those same stairs to turn in “Student Life,” which would go on to become a daily column and for which I wasn’t paid. I worked for free for four months and, then, having Felipe Hanriot Drummond as a sponsor, I was hired as a reporter for Folha de Minas. My salary was six months late and I had to ask for loans, that I never paid back, from my mother, and for the first time in my life, if I wasn’t earning my daily bread, as Gorky did, I was able to buy my two packs of Continentals that I smoked, even though I wasn’t completely able to get rid of the if-you-can-spare-ones.

6 An Update about the Saint As an appetizer for lovers of spicy facts, and more important than spicy, emotional facts, which are to come, a bit about our candidate for sainthood, the Saint—in those days, Brother Malthus was very busy in the convent. He led the Young Boys’ Choir of God, an old and dear idea from his days in Santana dos Ferros, whose young star, as we’ll see, will take a surprising path; Malthus was an idealist,

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founder, director, master, and his dream was that everyone, all those who heard his choir sing—from this he drew his exhaustive work— would believe in the existence of God. “Your days as an atheist are numbered,” he said to me during the afternoon that he invited me to the Dominican monastery, worried as he was about what Aramel the Handsome was up to. “When you hear the Young Boys’ Choir of God, as a prodigal son, you’ll come back to God’s house.” “Did Brother Malthus not have crises or doubts?” Aunt Little Heart asks. He had them, and they weren’t few, but he resolved them with the jabuticaba jelly made by his mother, Dona Nhanhá, exigent cook and banquet host; in this way, when the war between the two Malthuses, the saint and the sinner, would appear to be leaning toward the sinner—in contrast to the Dominicans who would selfflagellate and damage their own body, Brother Malthus would slip two or three spoonfuls of jabuticaba in his mouth and the Saint would win out. He was worried, yes, and a lot, about something: he was a saint who hadn’t yet pulled off even one miracle—he’d only beaten the temptations of the flesh; but we’re going to leave Brother Malthus with his concern—that’ll reappear further forward—and accompany a young reporter that I was then—and from there, you all will meet Hilda Hurricane.

7 Camellia City In my first days as a real reporter for Folha de Minas, I went out on foot to get my stories—the paper didn’t have a car—running with my cousin Felipe; it was like a form of newspaper internship, at that time there were no journalism courses, and I learned how to

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interview, how to push the facts, how to cover important events. The first lessons were on the rising price of milk, the threat of bad water quality, one or another strike—and I dreamed of covering a war or some guerrillas like one of my heroes at the time, Hemingway. Well, a war didn’t happen, nor guerrillas, but a passionate theme came up and I had the illusion that I was at the front: the idea of creating Camellia City in Belo Horizonte; the newspapers opened big space to a subject that was passionate, dividing, stealing our dreams: the idea was to take the Bohemian Zone from the heart of Belo Horizonte, there, where Guaicurus Road was the center of attention, and take the prostitutes, hotels, rooming houses, and bars and even the mythical Montanhês Dancing and the less mythical Miracle Hotel (the erotic temple where Hilda Hurricane drove men crazy) to Camellia City, which would be built in the distance, on the outskirts of town. Folha de Minas gave two pages a day to the coverage, and I split those with Cousin Felipe and only went home to sleep; I would eat lunch and dinner at Café Palhares, which wasn’t far from the offices of Folha de Minas and the Bohemian Zone; thus stimulated, Felipe Drummond, who was used to spending the evening in Montanhês Dancing, would say: “We’re really immersing ourselves and giving the best coverage of the Camellia City thing.” We did surveys on the street, the first and rudimentary research conducted in Belo Horizonte—they showed that eighty-five percent of people we talked to were in favor of Camellia City; and a model of Camellia City, reminding one of Lilliput, was on view in the area in front of Pérola Café and Plaza Seven, where the responders to the poll could both participate and be able to join any council meetings on the subject. Certain things were unclear, such as: who, at the end of the day, was behind the creation of Camellia City? The real communist Orlando Bomfim Junior said his piece: “Camellia City has become a cruel and brutal real estate speculation.” And he promised to give the name that was really behind it all, while the leader of the political party pushing for Camellia City, the PDC, Father Cyr Assumption, the author of the bill, said:

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“We are faced by the expressed will of God. And no one can pretend to know God’s mind.” The League of Moral Defense and Good Customs, led by Dona Lola Ventura, a fat, fiftyish widow who dyed her hair light blue, was another main actor in the campaign for Camellia City. Everyone had an opinion for the surveys; everyone except those with the most to lose: the prostitutes. In those days, the Bohemian Zone was going through a phase of great splendor, reminiscent of the mythologic times of Madam Olympia, the women’s hotels, the rich ones and the poor ones, were crowded with men coming and going, Montanhês Dancing was always packed, and, ah, the colonels were back from the interior; the colonels were the plantation owners who had beaten feet for the country when the state had closed the casinos and the beef bubble had burst; it was they who made Montanhês Dancing what it was, from the money they spent there, smoking cigarettes that they had home-rolled, cheroots from thousand-cruzeiro notes, while dancing the night away consuming ten cases of champagne. The Bohemian Zone’s folklore was passed down through Maria Man-Killer and the transvestite Thin Waist; enormous, almost six foot three, mulatta, with thick and sensuous lips, Maria Man-Killer became manly when someone sang or whistled the uncomfortable refrain from the Emilinha Borba and Luiz Gonzaga hit: “Paraíba, masculine, I dance with the boys, yes sir . . .”

To arrest Maria Man-Killer when there was a full moon, when she had the sadness of a dog, four or five patrol cars were necessary; her spot was on Guaicurus Road, close to Montanhês Dancing, and during the day, when the Bohemian Zone turned into a commercial zone, she unloaded sacks of coffee from the trucks from the interior, working as a stevedore, to guarantee she’d have enough money to buy food, because, in spite of her big dark eyes, men were afraid of her, and, because of that, Maria Man-Killer had to have someone paying her rent (they say it was Hilda Hurricane). Maria Man-Killer and Thin Waist would fight over the territory on Guaicurus Road,

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between São Paulo and Curitiba Roads, where Montanhês Dancing was, and, beside that, the Hotel Marvelous. With her big dark eyes, and a few scars from a straight razor, and her singsong accent, she was from Recife, the Northeast, and where another song, by Luiz Gonzaga, was the hymn of the transvestite Thin Waist: “Come here thin waist, fine waist, girl’s waist, come here my heart . . .”

To avoid the fights between Maria Man-Killer and Thin Waist, a patrol car was always stationed close to Montanhês Dancing; one unforgettable night I was there when the police tried to separate the two of them and they had to resort to the tear gas bombs that they used to break up student demonstrations, which were so common in Plaza Seven; that time, Maria Man-Killer had been crying about something and Thin Waist had provoked her, singing: “Paraíba, masculine, I dance with the boys, yes sir . . .”

The tear gas bombs were useless: Thin Waist, with her straight razor, and Maria Man-Killer, with her bamboo arrows—him and her already bloody, tears in their eyes from the gas, the cops asking for help from other patrol cars, the two of them were going to kill each other soon. It was then that Hilda Hurricane showed up; no, no, I won’t describe her now, that’ll come in good time, like the spring winds; for now, I’ll say that she was accompanied by a few colonels from the interior that were waiting for their dream moment; she put herself between Maria Man-Killer and the transvestite Thin Waist, a target for the razor cuts and arrow shots, but her magic presence stopped the fight; she said, her hoarse voice chilling listeners: “Girls, here there’s room for everyone. Maria de Socorro”—she never called her Maria Man-Killer—“give me the bow and arrows” (and she was sweetly obeyed). “Thin Waist, now you give me your

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straight razor” (in this also she was sweetly attended). “And now come to my room with me and I’m going to give a cure to y’all.” Yes, she said, “y’all,” which was enchanting—but she was also crying because of the tear gas or the emotion that made her voice hoarse, something she got from her Italian mother.

8 Go Home, Hilda Hurricane Every night, except Mondays, when she’d go to an unknown locale, there was a line starting on Guaicurus Road and going up the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous, continuing up to the third floor and twisting down the corridor and ending at the mythical Room 304, which was a twin of Room 303; it was there that Hilda Hurricane drove men crazy. There in the hall, you could already smell the sweet scent of Hilda Hurricane’s favorite perfume: Muguet du Bonheur. She had been created on the Fridays that were colonels’ nights, reserved only for them, who had come from the interior with their cigarettes home-rolled from thousand-cruzeiro notes; she was such a big hit that colonels’ nights got extended to Saturday. The women of Belo Horizonte, the mothers of families, the spouses, the fiancées, the girlfriends hated Hilda Hurricane, but the men, oh, the men loved her, she made them climb the walls and see paradise; from there, in concurrence with the colonels’ nights, her prices went up and up. If Hilda Hurricane was the Bohemian Zone’s main reason for existing, as a sexual myth she was also the first motive for which the mothers of Belo Horizonte adhered to the campaign of Padre Cyr and Dona Lola Ventura in favor of Camellia City. During the demonstrations in favor of Camellia City, Dona Lola Ventura and the other ”poorly loved,” as the militants of the League of Moral Defense and Good Customs were known, carried placards that said:

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“Go Home Hilda Hurricane!”

Or: “Leave Our Husbands Alone Hilda Hurricane!”

I’ll leave for another time, if there’s space, the publication of “Invocation to Exorcise a Demon Who Is Disguised as an Angel to Tempt the Innocents,” read in most churches and attributed, according to most folk, to the sharp tongue of Hermegildo Chaves, aka Monzeca, a columnist for Estado de Minas and director of Folha de Minas; and I’ll leave a notice, directed especially to Aunt Little Heart: an Exorcism Night is being organized, during which Guaicurus Road and its temples of sin will be sprinkled with holy water, and it was made with a promise: Hilda Hurricane will be exorcised to free the angel that she was during the time of the Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club, when she was known as the Girl in the Gold Bikini, and to expel the demon that had taken control of her heart.

9 The Mystery of the Girl in the Gold Bikini But what was the mystery of the Girl in the Gold Bikini? What caused her to leave the edge of the swimming pool at Minas Tennis Club, whose members belonged to the Traditional Family Mineira, the celebrated TFM, and go to make the men climb the walls in the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte? She was a beauty, an unforgettable young woman; she’d sit on the edge of the Olympic-size pool at Minas Tennis Club, where the future author Fernando Sabino broke all the records as a swim champion; where a young man who would become the famous surgeon Ivo Pitanguy used to dive in. They say that an ode was written about her by the poet Paulo Mendes Campos, and she inspired a story (although he denies this) by Otto Lara Resende.

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In truth, the beautiful Hilda Gualtieri von Echveger, Italian mother, German father, wasn’t just the big attraction at the edge of the pool at Minas Tennis Club, always wearing her gold bathing suit; she was always the attraction at the Dance Nights, say those who lived during the time, attraction existed wherever she could be found, because it meant the happiness of men, too. Just as beautiful as her were Teresa and Sônia Vargas. But, when she sang in German Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” as a soloist in the Minas Tennis Club choir, she made men want to cry—weaving her mystery with another, mixed with her perfume, Muguet du Bonheur; they asked: “What’ll become of the Girl in the Gold Bikini?” There was, at that time, the suspicion that she would end up serving God, but . . . what then? After, on the first of April, 1959, the news went around that nobody really believed because it was April Fool’s: the Girl in the Gold Bikini had left the side of the pool at Minas Tennis Club and its Dance Nights and taken up residence in Room 304 of Hotel Marvelous, on Guaicurus Road, in the heart of Belo Horizonte’s Bohemian Zone. Soon, with the passing of days and the absence of the Girl in the Gold Bikini from the side of the pool and the Dance Nights, the news was confirmed—and each question also contained one question: “Why?” I asked the same question—“Why?”—of those who had lived around the Girl in the Gold Bikini; some ideas generated controversy: some said her father, descendant of a German baron, had lost everything he had during the nightly card games at the Auto Club, which others denied: “He never set foot in the Auto Club.” The hypothesis that her father’s bankruptcy had caused everything was hard to confirm because “after the scandal,” as it was called, the German father and Italian mother of the Girl in the Gold Bikini sold their house in the Lourdes part of the city and headed for parts unknown; I thought that aided the theory that money was the reason for her new lifestyle, but I investigated and found out that there had been a mortgage on the house, but the bank hadn’t

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foreclosed on it or anything. If it wasn’t financial necessity, could there be some heartbreak that could explain it then? “Oh no. Forget that. She’s been driving men crazy since she was fifteen, when her first boyfriend killed himself over her.” Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to the psychoanalytic study that, relying heavily on Freud, the psychiatrist Hélio Pellegrino (whose analyst’s divan the Girl in the Gold Bikini was still frequenting in Belo Horizonte) made of the deep reasons that had taken her to the Bohemian Zone; later, as you’ll see, I’ll talk about it with Hélio Pellegrino. From everything that I got at, from former friends, ex-boyfriends, and secret admirers together, all of whom, in the future, I would seek out again, I offer the following list: • She was given to sudden bouts of sadness—in general her Italian laugh, which brought out what she’d gotten from her mother, would convert itself to sadness—and she’d cry. • She used to take communion on the first Friday of every month in San Antônio Church. • During Carnival balls at the Minas Tennis Club, she’d spend the three nights alone, dancing by herself on top of a table, costumed almost always as a Hawaiian. • On one occasion, having three boys, all swimmers at Minas Tennis Club, trying to win her, she said to them: “Okay, fine. I’ll be the exclusive girlfriend of the one who manages to swim twenty thousand meters in the Olympic Pool.” • Since none of them ever managed twenty thousand meters, she started dating the ugliest member of Minas Tennis Club. • On Dance Nights, she would choose only ugly young men for partners, and would say: “I love those who’ve been orphaned by the world.”

10 The Challenge for the Sherlocks (It’s necessary, one more time, to interrupt this narrative to offer a clue: Hilda Hurricane or, if you prefer, the Girl in the Gold Bikini, isn’t just a complex person—she is, in and of herself, a complicated plot; she requires sherlocks, she requires Freudian and non-Freudian analysts to uncover her eyes, she requires journalists, and she is a challenge; I promise, in the course of this narrative, I will try to answer the question: “Why did the Girl in the Gold Bikini trade Minas Tennis Club for the Bohemian Zone?” Until I do, in the meantime, what if we have ourselves a game, since this isn’t really a proper sort of novel, but rather a lucid toy that has Hilda Hurricane as its center? And let’s not forget, the one who knows the most about the Girl in the Gold Bikini isn’t allowed to tell us anything; he’s her old confessor, Father Aguinaldo, of the San Antônio Church; at the proper moment, I’m going to seek him out; that you can be sure of.)

11 The Game of the Seven Errors If a crime happens, even a mysterious one, then soon there are clues and theories; in the case of Hilda Hurricane and her move to the Bohemian Zone, I even have theories that I want to share with the reader through the game of the seven errors, only with words and

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not with drawings or pictures, the game form to which Aunt Little Heart is addicted; I will give the following seven clues, some true and some not, on the mystery of Hilda Hurricane; game: number these in the order which you find the most plausible to clear up the mystery of her going to the Bohemian Zone: • Hilda Hurricane suffers from a sick and incurable sadomasochism and, because of it, she, as they say, descended the ladder and left for the Bohemian Zone. • She adores being a victim and went to Guaicurus Road to satisfy a compulsion that Freud explains. • At the bottom of her heart, Hilda Hurricane is very religious and gave herself the penance of being a prostitute. • She was traumatized when, as a fifteen-year-old, her first boyfriend killed himself over her and since then she has been punishing herself, opting, later, to become a prostitute. • It wasn’t because of finances, but the Girl in the Gold Bikini’s father, despite how things appeared, was having other serious problems. • Hilda Hurricane was very competitive with her cousins and because of this, to become richer than they were, she headed for the Hotel Marvelous after having failed to win the Minas Lottery. • A fortune-teller told her that to find her Prince Charming she would have to suffer more than Cinderella, because her fairy godmother would be her own life.

Are there other clues and theories than those I’ve brought up? Certainly, and so I leave the following white space for the readers to jot down their ideas and, later, as the book’s events occur, they can see how they fared.

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This ends the space reserved for the readers’ notes; I hope it’s been sufficient, even for my Aunt Little Heart, who can be verbose.

12 The Spell against the Wizard Let’s go back to my job as a reporter at Folha de Minas: the training I got with Felipe Drummond couldn’t have been better; I and the photographer Demétrio Barbosa (always wearing a jacket and a tie, which wasn’t common at the time) were on permanent duty in the Bohemian Zone; that is, at six every evening, we arrived, when the stores were closing their doors and the first women, with their just-showered scent, started to arrive at their spots in front of the hotels and boarding houses. Those favoring Camellia City always threatened demonstrations and could appear there without warning. I recall one of my first dispatches from Guaicurus Road as a vignette and with your permission I’ll reproduce it here: “The spell has turned back on its wizard. Since the campaign in favor of Camellia City was launched, the Bohemian Zone is an island of happiness, reminding one of the last days of Pompeii. Everything is charmed there. The main street, Guaicurus Road, is having unforgettable nights and has never seen so much money. The barbeque stand has tripled its sales. In the Baghdad Restaurant, where they serve Arab food, it’s hard to find a place to sit. The women from the hotels of the first, second, third, and fourth category have never been so sought after. And on the night of last Thursday, the police were called to control the spirits of those who wanted a place in the line that led to magical territory: Room 304, on the third floor of the Hotel Marvelous, where Hilda Hurricane is a sexual sprite.”

13 Bolivia, Capital Lima ”And Brother Malthus, our candidate for Saint: what’s he been doing all this time?” I imagine that Aunt Little Heart, with her immaculate heart, and the readers (why not?) are asking themselves this question, but I have to leave it a mystery for now—in truth, the campaign for Camellia City on the one hand and against the Bohemian Zone and Hilda Hurricane on the other was growing. After some suspense, Dona Lola Ventura, of the League of Moral Defense and Good Customs, invited the children of Adam and Eve to a grand demonstration in full enemy territory, in the very heart of sin, on Guaicurus Road. And the movement had just managed an important addition: that of Bishop Dom Cabral, in his wheelchair; he who blacklisted the modern chapel that the then governor, Kubitschek, had had built because the architect—Niemeyer—and the mural painter—Portinari—were communists; during a collective interview that both Felipe Drummond and I were present for, Dom Cabral supported the construction of Camellia City and accused the Bohemian Zone of being a main source of sin; the following day, an editorial published in Estado de Minas caused an uproar; “Render unto Magdalene what is Magdalene’s,” written by Hermegildo Chaves, or Monzeca, defended the right of the Magdalenes to exercise their profession, yes, but not in the heart of an important metropolis . . . The walls of the city, where things were still written, already a little faded, slogans such as “Petroleum is ours!,” were filling up with new graffiti for and against Camellia City; and some jokers had marked the bridges and Guaicurus Road with a new order: “Hilda Hurricane is ours!” In this febrile environment, Felipe Drummond said: “You’re going to interview Hilda Hurricane!”

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And I went; I and the photographer Demétrio Barbosa one Tuesday afternoon went up the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous; I had called Hilda Hurricane ahead of time, from the newspaper’s office, and a rough voice, a hereditary voice, more Italian than German, agreed, saying: “Come at three pm, to Room 304. . . . Then I’ll decide if I’ll give the interview or not.” My heart was beating faster when Demétrio Barbosa and I got to Room 304; the door was half open, and I stuck my head in and saw, seated on a sofa, the Girl with the Gold Bikini, whose description I’ll skip one more time, I’ll leave it for when she reappears, in special circumstances, during this narrative; she had a book in her hands, General Geography, by Moisés Gikovate, and I could smell the strong and sweet smell of Muguet du Bonheur that she was wearing; when she noticed us, she closed the book, marking her place with her finger—everything around her was her slave; rising from the sofa, she walked towards us—she walked with a manner that the colonels from the interior, country people, described as: “She walks like an unbroken mare in a pasture.” She shook my hand and then Demétrio Barbosa’s hand and ushered us in, closing the door behind us; then she asked if we’d like a soda, and crossing the room, she poured out three glasses without waiting for our answer; she looked at me and asked, referring to Miss Minas Gerais: “Ya kin to Glorinha Drummond?” “I am,” I said, thinking of my uncle trying to cut me off, “That hasn’t stopped being true.” She returned to her place on the sofa, crossed her legs, leaving only her knees, her unforgettable knees, still on view; she had a very Minas Gerais–way of talking, saying “Uai” and “Y’all” and “Ya” often; she liked expressions that made you have to leer and, laughing, she opened Moisés Gikovate’s book and said: “I’m fas-cin-at-ed by geography.” She sipped at her soda. “Y’all like geography?” “More or less,” said Demétrio Barbosa in English.

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“Uai, do you speak English?” and she laughed, looking at me. “And ya, ya like geography?” “I like it a lot.” “Um, I like to have geography quizzes. Let’s have one?” “What’re we playing for?” asked Demétrio Barbosa. “For a kiss,” she said. “Whoever answers right gets a kiss. A simple and stupid question: what’s the capital of Bolivia?” “The capital of Bolivia? It’s Bogotá,” said Demétrio Barbosa. “Ab-so-lute-ly wrong,” she said. “Bogotá is the capital of Colombia. It was where the infamous Bogotazo happened.” She looked at me and waited for my response. “The capital of Bolivia is La Paz,” I said. “La Paz?” she laughed, standing up. “Ab-so-lute-ly wrong: La Paz is the capital of Peru.” “No ma’am,” I said. “You can give me the kiss that I won. The capital of Bolivia is La Paz.” “It’s Lima,” she insisted. “It’s La Paz.” “Okay,” she said. “Let’s look. Here’s the geography book, so I can’t lie.” Standing, she swayed while she flipped through the book, Demétrio Barbosa and I beside her; she stopped swaying when she found the answer: “Uai! Dear Lord! Ya were right: the capital of Bolivia is La Paz.” She turned to me, saying, “Who owes pays.” She kissed me with that mouth that contained all the sin of the world. (No, Hilda Hurricane didn’t give the interview, it was still too soon to talk, but she promised: when the time comes, she’ll give me access to whatever I could want to know, so I asked: “You’ll tell me why you came to the Bohemian Zone?” She didn’t answer—something clouded in her, in her gray eyes, as if it were going to rain: she excused herself: at five pm, as with all the first Tuesdays of each month, she had a date with a colonel from Bahia, a big producer of cocoa in Ilheus and, according to him, himself the inspiration for a character in Jorge Amado’s novel

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Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon; she walked us to the door of Room 304 and said, as if it were the Girl in the Gold Bikini speaking: “Until we see each other again.” I changed the episode from that afternoon into the story “Bolivia, Capital Lima,” that the literary supplement of Folha de Minas—directed by the poet Jacques do Prado Brandão—published, marking my debut as a real writer; so that I wouldn’t go back to the office empty-handed, I interviewed Maria Man-Killer, who declared, in her way of talking, about her possible move to Camellia City, something that would put her on the front page: “It would be better if they carted me out of here with my boots on, that from here on Guaicurus, I won’t leave, from here no one can get rid of me.” I’ll close the parenthesis, because it’s almost time to talk about the big demonstration planned for Guaicurus Road by the supporters of Camellia City: Exorcism Night.)

14 We Need a Saint Brother Malthus—in the end, he doesn’t make a secret of this—was in the Dominican monastery enjoying some jabuticaba jelly, because he had had a night where he doubted the existence of God, when his secular brother announced that the pro–Camellia City commission, led by Dona Lola Ventura, had arrived to see him: “Brother Malthus?” she said. “I’d thought you were older. So young and with this aura of sainthood. Well, it’s a saint we need. Brother Malthus.” Listen, the Saint was in crisis, like I said, and when Dona Lola invited him to assume command of the campaign in favor of Camellia City, he accepted; and the truth was that since Santana dos Ferros, he had been orienting himself against the Bohemian Zone. As the president of the Literary Guild of the Santana High Schools,

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he supported Father Nelson, the ex-vicar, in a polemic prohibition; after a wild Carnival where there were so many things to condemn, Father Nelson decided to limit himself to the narrow straits of Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice, mother, daughter, and granddaughter, the three main prostitutes of Santana dos Ferros—they were left with their territory even more limited: from the lane where they lived and they could get only halfway across the bridge across the San Antônio River; one afternoon, Aramel the Handsome and I were crossing the bridge when we ran into Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice: “Aramel and Roberto,” Big Alice said. “I broke both of y’all in; I’m allowed to ask y’all for a favor.” “You can ask for a favor,” said Aramel the Handsome. “I beg y’all, Aramel and Roberto, that y’all there in the front yard of the church and y’all smell good and you’ve come back to say how things are there, that I’ve forgotten how they are, and most nights I don’t sleep, but I’d like to. But don’t forget us.” We return to Brother Malthus and the commission led by Dona Lola Ventura, in the conference room of the Dominican monastery— our candidate for sainthood accepted with pleasure and devotion the invite; he himself was going to conduct the exorcism ceremony; he was going to exorcise that sin factory, to liberate Guaicurus Road and its neighboring streets from the presence of the devil who, according to information, assumed the face of the angel—and thus was more diabolical—of Hilda Hurricane; the next day, the newspapers’ headlines cried: “The Saint Promises to Exorcise the Devil from Hilda Hurricane.”

In our city they didn’t talk of anything else until the Exorcism Night on Guaicurus Road. Poor Brother Malthus, Aunt Little Heart would say, he doesn’t know what a hornet’s nest he’s getting into.

15 The Disguises of the Devil Cars with loudspeakers were out on the streets before the sun was even up, inviting people to the Exorcism Night in which the only living saint would, in flesh and blood, facing up to the earth, “exorcise the way of the devil in Hilda Hurricane.” There was nothing to lose. Around noon, in the Dominican monastery, the Saint was eating lunch while a Cessna was firing pamphlets over the city; a pamphlet fell in the monastery’s courtyard and the lay brother hurried the copy to the Saint for him to read: “The Saint will exorcise the Demon!!! “Today at eight o’clock, on Guaicurus Road, the big march against the presence of the devil and his dealer Hilda Hurricane, here in Belo Horizonte. “A saint is going to exorcise Hilda Hurricane, rip the devil from her heart, and make her become again the Girl in the Gold Bikini. “Today!!! The Grand Exorcism Night! The Meeting before the Strike: Seven thirty in front of the train station. Don’t miss the train to History!! Help us construct Camellia City. “God yes!, the Devil no.” (The Saint reads the pamphlet, looks to the retirees that supported him, opens a jar of jabuticaba jelly and asks to have an urgent telegram sent to Santana dos Ferros to his mother, Dona Nhanhá; the text: “Dear Mother: please send me, urgently, more jabuticaba jelly Stop Salutations in Christ Stop Your son, Brother Malthus.”)

16 The Exorcism Night At the front of the crowd carrying lit torches, which created flickering, shadowy ghosts along the walls of the hotels and rooming houses of Guaicurus Road, among the shouts of: “God yes! The Devil no!”—walks the Saint, thin, wearing the white robes of a Dominican friar. He walks with a measured and light step, as if he were about to levitate soon; his tortoiseshell glasses have slid down to the tip of his nose and tickle his left ear; the Saint’s hair is short, and parted from the side—it makes him look younger. In his hands he carries a crucifix, in his heart he asks the anguished question: “Is this why I’ve been put here, Lord?”; and along with the question, even stronger, insistent, the awareness of the extremes between the saintly and the sinful. Ah, we enter the heart of the Saint: today, on this night that has gotten dark early, when he goes to exorcise the Devil, pull him from the heart and body of a woman who is the ruin and at the same time the adventure of men—on this night, when he has stepped onto the street of sinners, Guaicurus, he has been taken by his doubts; on leaving the Dominican monastery and handing over the holy water with which he will sprinkle Guaicurus Road, on its buildings, its houses, its trees, its light-poles, its stray dogs and cats, its beggars, its loonies, its women, its ruffians, its pimps, its transvestites, its wanted men and women; on handing over the holy water to the lay brother that would accompany him, he thought and said: “Take along a bit of jabuticaba jelly, lay brother.” Behind the Saint, pulling along the crowd, comes the lay brother along with young seminarians who sprinkle the street where the sinner lives; and behind the lay brother and the seminarians comes Dona Lola Ventura, an enormous rosary in her hands, and behind her, a cluster of the faithful, lit up by their torches, their voices joined in prayer and intermingled with the shouts of “God yes! The Devil

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no!” and the sirens of patrol cars and fire trucks, because among the crowd are interspersed those fanatics, some of whom are far gone enough that they would put fire to the sinner, burn her like the sinner Joan of Arc; the shouts increase from the crowd with the lit torches, led by the Saint, and penetrate the territory of the damned; the hotels and boarding houses have their windows open and lights turned out, reminding one of a ghost city. The exorcism ceremony will happen in front of the two principal temples of sin in the Bohemian Zone: Montanhês Dancing and right after the Hotel Marvelous, there where in Room 304 is the very incarnation of the Devil; up until they get to the corner of Rio de Janeiro and Guaicurus Road, the crowd led by the Saint hasn’t encountered any opposition: only a dog, which Freud said was a symbol of guilt—thinks the Saint, as he would later confess—, only a dog barks at the crowd, from the window of an empty house; when the protesters leave the intersection with Rio de Janeiro and head down Guaicurus, the sky begins to darken, the Saint is watching the dark, low clouds, and notes the scent of rain in the air, thinking of the rainstorms of another time, the rains of his childhood and asks himself: “I wonder what Mother is doing now? Is she listening over the radio to Exorcism Night?” He feels his mother’s absence and, as Freud used to ask, why, in our most difficult moments, do we return to infancy? They say that soldiers in combat cry out for their mothers. Flashes of lightning brighten the scene for a moment and then thunder drowns out the sirens, drowns out the shouts of: “God yes! The Devil no!,” drowns out the prayers of the faithful moving with Dona Lola Ventura, drowns out the heartbeats of the Saint, so that he feels as if there is a drum beating in his throat; a shiver goes across his skin, reminding him of the sicknesses of his youth; now his happiness is stronger than his remembrances and the Saint tries to imagine the moment when he will exorcise Satan. “And if Satan doesn’t show up?” When the Saint crosses the frontier of Guaicurus with São Paulo Road and penetrates the territory that they call enchanted, where Hilda Hurricane rules, another silent crowd approaches them, compact, dark, not carrying torches; soldiers from the Military Police,

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armed with clubs, revolvers, and tear gas, advance quickly as well, leaving the corner of São Paulo where they had been stationed: it thunders and the sky grows even darker, and the soldiers, aided by the Civil Guard, block off the area in front of Montanhês Dancing and the Hotel Marvelous and make a small neutral territory, a noman’s-land in which the battle will be held. A few steps beyond the cordon of soldiers and Civil Guards, further into no-man’s-land, the Saint stops; he turns to the crowd with the lit torches and shouts: “God yes! The Devil no!,” and makes a gesture, soon heeded, asking for quiet; he takes three more steps forward, which makes Dona Lola Ventura and the lay brother jump in anticipation, and he raises his crucifix in the direction of Montanhês Dancing and the Hotel Marvelous; he fights against the urge to eat some jabuticaba jelly and shouts in a voice that, since he is a saint, has a musical tone (and not one of a shower-singer): “Satan! I exorcise you!” It is then that Hilda Hurricane comes down the stairs at the Hotel Marvelous and walks towards the Saint.

17 As If She Were an Angel In truth, the Saint had never seen Hilda Hurricane; not even seen a photo of her—so, like everyone, saints or sinners, who didn’t know how she looked, he could imagine her writ large, well-formed ass barely contained by short skirts; and with a pinch of bad taste, he’d given her big breasts, bigger than Jayne Mansfield, than Jane Russell, and than Gina Lollobrigida, that he would be better able to understand the temptations suffered by men; ah, and the Saint (as he would confess to this writer), dealing with an incarnation of the Devil, hoped to see her with an enormous and obscene mouth covered in lipstick, wild hair, big hoop earrings, and, in her possibly black eyes, a certain exhaustion with her life of orgies and everything

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lascivious in the world. Because of all this—and he sensed it was her coming towards him by the strange reaction of the soldiers and Civil Guards who, on seeing her pass and without blocking her path, took off their headgear reverentially, some of them even falling to their knees, while a huge silence held over both crowds—because of all of this, he doubted what he was seeing. “Help me, Saint Antoine,” he muttered, “because I can’t believe what I’m seeing.” She continued walking towards him as if it were a party; the way she walked—and this was natural to her, she had never had classes—carried all the happiness of the world; she was fair, had her Italian mother in her skin and her German father in her smokecolored eyes and a certain blondness to her hair that was prettily captured; and the arrogance, that of not lowering head, or not avoiding eye contact, where does it come from? Her dress was a black whatever-I-put-my-hands-on, thrown on, that assumed the surprisingly youthful form of her body, a leftover from the Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club; and the Saint—who turned the crucifix towards her—feared that he noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra and her breasts reminded him of a couple of Argentine apples and they pulsed and moved like a couple of birds of paradise; she wore high-heeled shoes decorated with bits of glass, also a carryover from the Dance Nights at Minas Tennis, shoes that seemed to shine more and more and suggested enchanted evenings. “It’s as if she were an angel,” thought the Saint. “Ah, Saint Antoine, the Devil knows how to disguise himself to tempt us!” She stopped a few steps from him; the neon lights of Montanhês Dancing cast a gold tinged fog about her, golden blue, golden green, golden red flickered around her; then the Saint sensed the strong, penetrating, and sweet scent of the Muguet du Bonheur perfume that she wore; he was allergic to perfumes—some provoked hyperventilation in him, others gave him a very bad headache—and he implored Saint Antoine, who himself knew the temptations of the Devil dressed as women or angels: “May my head burst from the pain, Saint Antoine, but keep me from sneezing, amen!”

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Saint Antoine heard him; with his crucifix held high, without sneezing but with his head throbbing from the pain, the Saint decided to confront her, meaning: the Saint decided to confront the Devil in an angel’s skin.

18 I Cast You Out, Satan! He then shouted, his crucifix held high and in her direction: “Satan, I cast you out!” A clap of thunder struck then as if it were announcing that what was happening here on Earth would have repercussions in heaven, and the first drops of rain, heavy and infrequent, began to fall; she looked at him with her gray eyes and half smile; she waited for the rumble of thunder to die in the distance and her sultry voice, charged with emotion, was heard to say: “Does this mean that I am the Devil and you sir, Brother Malthus, more than a Saint, are God?” “Hold on there!” interrupted Dona Lola Ventura, moving beside Brother Malthus. “How dare you, Magdalene, sinner, talk in that disrespectful a way with a Saint?” Shouts of “God yes! The Devil no!” came from the crowd with the lit torches, besides an even more worrying shout, “Burn this heretic!” The soldiers and Civil Guardsmen put their headgear back on; the dark, silent crowd on the other side of Guaicurus, which did not carry torches and was made up of prostitutes, ruffians, pimps, ne’erdo-wells, fugitives from the police, good and bad thieves, fellows who loaded and unloaded the trucks that delivered to the stores in the Bohemian Zone—that dark, silent crowd took one step forward; huge, at over six feet, strong as a stevedore, a red flower in her hair, Maria Man-Killer moved up on the right and just behind Hilda Hurricane; soon the transvestite Thin Waist, with her straight razor

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hidden in her blouse, set herself to Hilda Hurricane’s left—for the first time she was on the same side as Maria Man-Killer. The Saint continued holding his crucifix towards Hilda Hurricane and his headache became worse. “Hold your tongue, Magdalene!” cried Dona Lola Ventura. “Learn to address a Saint properly.” Half smiling, which brought out her dimples, Hilda Hurricane said: “My dear Dona Lola, I hope to be treated by you ma’am with the same hospitality (here she smiled as if the very idea seemed funny to her), I repeat, with the same hospitality that my family treated you when you ma’am were our neighbor back in Lourdes and you were widowed and came to the house to borrow sugar and coffee and such; things that, I say this in passing, that you ma’am, never paid for.” Maria Man-Killer and the transvestite Thin Waist applauded and the crowd without torches followed their lead, and soon shouts went up of: “Viva Hilda Hurricane!” Certain of the achieved effect (Dona Lola Ventura only adjusted her blue hair), Hilda Hurricane faced the Saint with her gray eyes: “You sir, wait a second . . .” She looked him up and down. “Sir, you are very young.” She spoke as if she weren’t short of her twenty-first birthday herself: “You are very young, Brother Malthus, so we can be informal with each other. And I’ll challenge you to something. Lower your cross and respond. Say what kind of Saint you are: a Saint of the rich or a Saint of the poor?” Thunderclaps in the sky drowned out her voice.

19 And If It Was God Who Sent Me? ”A challenge,” she continued when the thunder had died away. “Lower your cross and respond: what kind of Saint are you? By what right do you speak in His name?” Brother Malthus was silent; his head was exploding, the Muguet du Bonheur seemed even stronger; he thought about asking for an aspirin from the lay brother, who had a portable pharmacy in his bag; he lowered his crucifix as the partisans of Hilda Hurricane clapped. “I also applaud you,” and those magic hands, those sinful hands, came together to clap. “Tell me this, Brother Malthus: have you, you who are a Saint, learned how the Brazilian worker lives? Because I, who you call the Devil, know how the Brazilian worker lives. I know the hunger of the Brazilian people, the hunger of the workers, the slum dwellers, the underemployed, the unemployed, and those who have nothing and feel a hunger for much more than our daily bread, Brother Malthus. They feel a hunger for care, a hunger for hope, my dear Brother Malthus.” That “my dear Brother Malthus” got to him, and everyone, Hilda Hurricane, the lay brother, everyone, could see it did; Dona Lola Ventura gave him a discreet, but for its discretion not any less violent, poke, as if to say, “Do something!” Now the dark clouds were even lower; thunder rumbled in the sky like a pride of lions and it started to rain harder, a tropical rain, violent, furious, rain whipping down, but nobody moved a foot from Guaicurus Road. The Saint’s cassock is soaked and he sees her wet hair (“Give me strength, Saint Antoine,” he murmurs to himself), and he sees her whatever-I-putmy-hands-on dress stick to her body (“more and more strength, Saint Antoine”), and he feels a crazy, irresponsible desire to say:

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“Go change your clothes; if you don’t, you’ll get a chill that could develop into pneumonia!” Earning applause and no response, because the thunder stopped Hilda Hurricane from speaking, what he said was: “This is a blessed rain that has come to wash away the sins from Guaicurus Road!” The driving rain is harder each instant; it comes from a sky that brightens from flashes of lightning and shakes from the claps of thunder, giving the impression that Belo Horizonte is under enemy bombardment or that God doesn’t like what He is seeing; suddenly everything gets dark; the lights have gone out, Guaicurus Road is dark, lit only by the thunderstorm, and a bolt of lightning is attracted by the lightning rod on the antenna of Radio Independence. Hilda Hurricane is illuminated and, on seeing her, according to what he’s told me, Brother Malthus has a strange fear: that a bolt would strike Guaicurus Road and kill her. A new poke from Dona Lola Ventura and the Saint raises his cross in the direction of the sinner and shouts in the blackness: “I exorcise you, sinner! You are sent by the Devil to tempt men here on Earth.” She replies: “And if it was God, Brother Malthus, who sent me to Earth to make a report on what happens in the hearts of men?” She stops speaking, she’s wet, and her breasts push insistently at her whatever-I-put-my-hands-on dress during the brief moments she’s lit by lightning; and she continues: “Tell me, Saint of the rich: what miracle are you credited with to earn the title of Saint?” He didn’t need Dona Lola Ventura to poke him this time; he shouted: “You’re going to be my first miracle, Hilda! I’m going to exorcise you and convert you to the kingdom of God.”

20 Cinderella’s Slipper It was the last sentence of the night: a diluvian inundation fell from the sky onto the heads of saints and sinners alike that made it really seem as if Belo Horizonte was being bombed by enemy planes; the Baghdad Restaurant, struck by lightning, was in flames and caused confusion, shouts, and rushing about; in the confusion, grabbed up in the protective hands of Maria Man-Killer and Thin Waist, Hilda Hurricane lost one of her shoes; illuminated by the flames from the Baghdad Restaurant, Brother Malthus found it and put it in the large pocket of his Dominican cassock. In the wee hours of the following morning, having in my hands a freshly printed copy of Folha de Minas with a story on the events of the previous night, I went down Guaicurus Road and, if it hadn’t been for the ruins of the Baghdad Restaurant and the traces of smoke that rose from it, it made me think of the calm after the storm, because somewhere, maybe in the hearts of the men and women who were sleeping, a violin played softly.

Two

1 The Saint and the Sinner Let’s find out what’s happening right now with our candidate for the Saint, Brother Malthus, after the night of the exorcism on Guaicurus Road when, in the middle of the pouring rain, as has been said, he found the shoe lost by Hilda Hurricane; he believed that at the moment he picked it up from the wet pavement and, controlling the desire to kiss it, he put it in the pocket of his Dominican robe, and saw that no one had seen what had just happened; then he thought: “Only God was a witness!” We’ll leave the Saint to continue in his innocence—he didn’t suspect that this narrator caught him at the moment of weakness: and in justice one must say he vacillated, unsure whether or not he would keep Cinderella’s slipper; even now, at the Dominican monastery, the Saint heard the declarations that Hilda Hurricane made to reporters. Do you know that Madame Janete, the same one who predicted Getúlio Vargas would shoot himself early one morning when only the cats were awake around the palace grounds, had said to Hilda Hurricane, during the time that she was still the Girl in the Gold Bikini and was still keeping the regulars from the pool at Minas Tennis Club awake at night, Madame Janete had said to Hilda Hurricane: “To find your enchanted prince, first you’ll have to suffer more than Cinderella, because your challenge will be your own life. After, you’re going to lose your shoe, the one you love the most, the one you wore on Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club, and he who finds it, for better or for worse, will be your Enchanted Prince.” Do you know that Hilda Hurricane, after that night in Guaicurus Road, told the media:

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“I promise to cover with kisses and hugs whoever returns my shoe, which is an esteemed object for me, but, if someone prefers, I’ll give a thousand dollars to have my shoe back.” (A little after the radio news began to broadcast the sultry voice of Hilda Hurricane, tremulous men began to arrive at the mythological Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous, some of them struck dumb in her presence: they carried one shoe and they said it was Cinderella’s; no, no they didn’t want money: they wanted the hugs and kisses, but all of them—around twelve—Hilda Hurricane dismissed in a short while; the shoes that they brought weren’t any good, too big or too small for Cinderella’s foot; the spectacle would continue to feed the journalists of newspapers and radios for the next few days, while the Municipal Council debated the proposal to transfer the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte to Camellia City, to be constructed far from the febrile nights of the downtown. I close the parenthesis and continue at the refuge of the Saint.)

2 A Very Strange Dialogue Come with me to the Dominican monastery; it’s in the Upper Mangabeiras District, there where the afternoon breeze (or is it only the impression of the friars?) carries the scent of women’s skin. This one that you see coming to greet us is the lay brother; look at him: everything about him is neutral; his voice is neutral, neither male nor female; his pallid face is neutral, as befits a lay brother; his walk is neutral; the look in his eyes is neutral; but we won’t leave aside the shameful impression the lay brother gives: he makes you think of— forgive me—of castrated roosters on the farms of a bygone era that bore their solitude, while hens around them pecked at the ground. The neutral voice of the lay brother says when he sees us: “Blessed be Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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It’s advisable to respond: “May He always be praised!” We have to get in the good graces of the lay brother to get to the Saint; we’ll be friendly with him: “Good afternoon, lay brother.” “Good afternoon, indeed, if that is what our Heavenly Father wishes.” “How have you been, brother?” “As God wills.” “And Brother Malthus, the Saint, where is he, brother?” “He’s there.” “Pardon, brother: where there?” “There.” He points to the depths of the monastery’s garden. “Brother Malthus is back in the garden, brother?” “Not really, no.” “Where is he then, brother?” “In the purification house.” My advice is to act surprised: “Purification house, brother? What would that be?” “I thought you knew, sir.” “No, I don’t know, brother.” “The last two nights, Brother Malthus slept in the purification house.” “No, I’m not getting something, brother.” “The purification house sits at the rear of the Dominican monastery’s garden. Its walls are soundproof. From here on the outside, nobody can hear any noises from inside.” It’s worth it to pretend a lack of comprehension: “What noises, brother?” “In the purification house, the friars and even us, the lay brothers, can flagellate themselves, whipping our own bodies, without anyone outside hearing the lashes or our cries.” “You mean, for the last two nights, Brother Malthus has been flagellating himself, whipping his own body, brother?” “Of course, sir.”

3 News of Cinderella’s Slipper I invite you all now to follow me on tiptoes up to where our candidate for Saint is; there’s a secret door and if we’re lucky we’ll be able to see him without him seeing us; look, there he is, kneeling before Cinderella’s slipper, but he doesn’t see the shoe: he’s got his eyes closed, and the jabuticaba jelly that he always enjoys whenever his sinful side menaces his saintly side is close at hand. What does our poor hero see now, with his eyes shut? He sees a rain-soaked Hilda Hurricane, just like the one he and everyone else saw on Guaicurus Road during Exorcism Night. Is Hilda Hurricane wearing shoes? No: she wears only one shoe—she’s missing the right one, which she lost. What does our candidate for Saint do? He takes Cinderella’s slipper and puts it on her foot. What happens then? Hilda Hurricane covers him with hugs and kisses just like she promised in the interview that the Saint heard on the radio. And, next, what does the Saint see with his eyes closed? He sees Hilda Hurricane even wetter from the rain. What most draws his attention? Her rain-soaked hair. And besides her rain-soaked hair? Her whatever-I-put-my-hands-on dress that she’s wearing and that’s glued to her body. And what else? Her left breast, which threatens to slip out of her dress, with a deep breath, and fly like a bird of paradise. What does our Saint say to Hilda Hurricane?

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That she go barefoot, that he will keep her shoe, since he feels a desire to walk barefoot in the rain with her. She takes off the shoe? She does and he puts it in his robe’s pocket. What do the two of them do then? They go out walking hand in hand, barefoot in the rain. And what else? They play at running in the rain. Why does she suddenly stop running? To look straight at him with her smoke-colored eyes. What does he feel when he looks in her eyes? He feels a desire to be good, to love the simple and the humble. What does he see in her eyes? He sees the pain of the world. What does he do then? He asks forgiveness from her. What happens next? A violin is playing the bolero “Quizás.” What does she say to him then? She says: “Let’s dance.” And him? He answers: “I don’t know how to dance.” And what does she say? “I’ll teach you to dance, come on.” And what does he do? I’m sorry to have deceived you: he opens his eyes, as he would later tell this scribe; fearful of being taken over by the Evil of Hilda, our candidate for Saint puts a spoonful of jabuticaba jelly in his mouth and promises: “I’m still going to save you, Hilda Hurricane. I must exorcise the Devil from your heart.”

4 In Which We Speak of the Evil of Hilda, with a Basis in Facts and Rumors Let’s leave our Saint enjoying his jabuticaba jelly and hurry off to see the events of those days, to the night when the Municipal Council is debating, in preparation for a vote on the project that creates Camellia City and ends the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte; the marches organized by Dona Lola Ventura, for reasons that we’ll reveal later, were attracting more and more women (and few, very few, men), and, among the councilors, the arguments stirred themselves up. Before the events that are about to come, we arrive at the Municipal Chamber on Bahia Road, across from the Grande Hotel, always fully booked by country colonels attracted by the enchantments of Hilda Hurricane; that councilman who wears the Ray-Bans even at night is the communist Orlando Bomfim Junior; he makes a grave charge: he’s going to show with “irrefutable documents” that land speculation, “having the notorious Antônio Luciano” at its head, is behind the campaign for Camellia City, with an eye towards increasing the value of the properties in the Bohemian Zone on Guaicurus Road and its adjacencies, in the heart of Belo Horizonte. He possesses documents and photocopies that show that Antônio Luciano and his partners, along with other actors interested in building Camellia City with public money, as called for in the project of councilman Father Cyr, are the ones financing the campaign against the Bohemian Zone, from the printing of the signs to the publicity flyers thrown from airplanes. Everything is paid for by property businesses owned by the notorious Antônio Luciano, such as Fayal, and even the house in the Functionários District, from which the League of Moral Defense and Good Customs, presided over by Dona Lola Ventura, belongs to Fayal, as does the office of the Badly Loved Committee, and the feminine wing of the Lantern Club; his discourse is loudly booed.

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Now look: Father Cyr, fat, slow-footed, steps in front of the council; deliriously applauded by the audience, he says: “Based on unimpeachable documents that I have here in my hands, provided to me by the illustrious Detective Antônio Dutra Ladeira, director of Dops, I can confirm that there’s a communist finger in this calumnious denigration against the defenders of Camellia City. Moscow’s sickles are hand in hand with these excoriations,” he said from the lectern, “wanting to put an end to Christian, Western civilization and bring about chaos, with the intention of creating a new Sodom and Gomorrah and thus, like the Big Bad Wolf, the communist wolf, swallow up Brazil’s fragile democracy, which is as weak and defenseless as Little Red Riding Hood.” He pointed at the council. “Here, noble councilors and brave women of Minas, are the documents and proof that Moscow’s gold is financing the campaign to stab our traditional families in the back.” “Show the proof,” councilman Orlando Bomfim challenges. “Show Moscow’s gold trail that I, by the way, am going crazy waiting to examine.” “Here they are,” says Father Cyr, holding up a black file. “I offer them to the noble president of this esteemed council, Councilman Álvaro Celso da Trindade.” He was armed for war: the following day, the papers, including Folha de Minas, had headlines about Moscow’s gold. An informal poll had found that the voting was knotted—nine councilmen in favor and nine councilmen against the Camellia City project. On that weekend, which could be the last one of its existence, the Bohemian Zone and in particular Guaicurus Road experienced business like never before. The line for Hilda Hurricane went up the block and around the corner; seeing so many colonels in line, filling the air with their cheroots that, according to them, were rolled from thousand-cruzeiro notes, could make one think: “If Hilda Hurricane survives this night, she’ll be a millionaire.” But I’m getting away from what I was going to say. Let’s be straight: the papers were only talking about the Evil of Hilda, an evil that had no cure, a disgraceful evil without remedy; according to surveys done by this narrator and published in Folha

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de Minas, where I worked, the Evil of Hilda was beginning to infect everyone, before even the celebrated kiss for which the colonel from the interior of Minas promised to Hilda Hurricane a Brahma bull (if the kiss really made him climb the walls); even in line, which formed every night on Guaicurus Road, with the exception of Mondays, as has been said, and going up the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous until arriving at the most famous room in the city, 304, each man experienced an unforgettable sensation; some would say: “It makes you shiver like a fever and you feel like hugging the world.” Others would add: “It’s like experiencing a marvelous new perfume.” And what I haven’t stopped finding strange: “We end up wanting to turn the world inside out.” There were those who saw a “dangerous political and ideological component” in this effect of the Evil of Hilda; of course, in those days, the bank workers were on strike and were asking for a one hundred percent raise, more than what the cost of living dictated (the continuous rise of bread, meat, and milk), a circumstance brought on by the fact that the price of Hilda Hurricane had doubled; they said that the strike fever of the bank workers was brought on by the Evil of Hilda more than by any support from the Communist Party, whose cells dominated all the banks; Estado de Minas, which prided itself not only on being the most read, but also as being the best representative of the values of the Traditional Family Mineira, or TFM, like everyone said, wrote in a third-page editorial: “It is lamentable that the Cinderella of Guaicurus Road, the muse of sin, transgressing all tolerable limits, has extended her erotic powers and, in concubinage with atheist and anti-Christian communism, has brought fire down on peaceful and orderly assemblies and transformed strike into a word so lacking in greatness that Marx and Lenin would have become even more red . . . only this time, from embarrassment.”

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While the line ran down Guaicurus Road, new effects of the Evil of Hilda were manifesting themselves; maybe because of those who came down from Room 304, like those who had returned from Paradise, those rapt grinners who had made love with Hilda Hurricane said: “She made me climb the walls. I’m never going to forget that I climbed the walls.” Some, the richer ones—of course the price went up every week— got in line again, wanting to repeat those three magic minutes, timed by a doorman who beat on the door of Room 304 to say that time was up. But what were the symptoms of the Evil of Hilda felt by those in the moving line? I answer: a shiver that climbed and a childish happiness; the joy of a child who receives a long-dreamedof tricycle or a saved-for-and-postponed bicycle; and something close to delirium, a polite je ne sais quoi, strange as that may sound. I turn to testimonies here, like those I published in Folha de Minas: “When the line on Guaicurus Road arrived at the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous and I felt that, very soon, I was going to see Hilda Hurricane nude, I discovered that happiness is the best political vindication that humanity has.” (César Luigi Romano, twenty-three, single, member of the strike commission of the bank workers) “I was able to be happy! I was able to be happy!” (Carlos Matusalém, third-year engineering student) “What do I know? I know that I wavered and believed in socialism.” (Maurino Freitas, Secretary of the Central Student Organization) When the line started the climb up the stairs at the Hotel Marvelous, a mulatto doorman, a boxer in decline, posted behind a small table, sold erotic photographs of Hilda Hurricane; the police forbade the sale on the street outside, but there at the foot of the

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stairs, already on enchanted ground, sales were permitted and Hilda Hurricane surged forth nude before everyone’s emotional eyes, in eleven different positions. “I’ll take them all,” one colonel, a planter from Ilheus who smoked a cheroot rolled from thousand-cruzeiro notes, said one night. It won’t be long before he’ll reappear in this narrative. “But, the gentleman is going to have many photos that are repeated?” answered the doorman. “I am,” replied the colonel. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but I’ve got express orders to sell only eleven photos at a time.” “And if I pay in dollars, son?” “In dollars? Paying in dollars, Colonel, the gentleman can take everything but Hilda Hurricane with him.” “One day I’ll take Hilda too, to Ilheus,” promised the colonel. “You all’ll live to see it.” The photo of Hilda Hurricane that was the most popular showed her nude, seated on the bed, leaning back, her breasts thrust up, a half smile promising not only wildness but much more: it promised happiness; although the Evil of Hilda had as a consequence a total and absolute loss of the Girl in the Gold Bikini, there in the stairs, looking at the photos, the men, of all ages, felt feverish passion for her. I transcribe here fragments of various letters published in the most-read romantic advice column in the city, by Dona Ivone Borges Botelho, in Estado de Minas, which give an idea of what was happening: “. . . tell me, dear Dona Ivone, what I should do about the situation that I find myself in. I’ve already thought of dying, Dona Ivone. The truth is that, only seven days short of my wedding, my fiancé was attacked by the Evil of Hilda, during his bachelor party, and changed the date of our wedding.” (Desperate Fiancée, Belo Horizonte) “. . . and now, Dona Ivone? I feel like a rudderless ship since my husband, under assault of the Evil of Hilda, began to behave strangely, avoiding me constantly. He now wanders around lonely

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corners of the house, singing the bolero “Quizás.” What do I do, Dona Ivone?” (Rudderless Ship, Belo Horizonte) There were three particular instants that always stuck with those who waited in line on Guaicurus Road: the moment of entering Room 304—Hilda Hurricane received everyone as if she were going to a Dance Night at Minas Tennis Club, which meant, of course, the dresses that she wore at that time; she used to say: “I can’t cheat anyone of that.” After, with the closing of the door of Room 304, there came the celebrated kiss for those afflicted men and left them “afflicted” by the Evil of Hilda. Finally, the ritual of taking her clothes off—she removed them slowly, one piece coming off completely with each gesture, until she was wearing only a pair of black panties, which deserved a verse by the poet Edison Moreira; the timer started only when a red light went on over the door of Room 304—then the most-awaited moment had arrived: the time to make love with Hilda Hurricane and climb the walls. Nobody escaped; whoever came out of Room 304, carrying with him the scent of the Muguet du Bonheur perfume worn by the Girl in the Gold Bikini, was incurably infected with the Evil of Hilda. During that time, a really powerful rancher who raised Brahma bulls in the interior, going against the stereotype of the greed of the wealthy, on stepping back out into Guaicurus Road after visiting Room 304, started throwing cheroots made from thousand-cruzeiro notes into the air; and as will be told, with all the details during the course of this narrative, he who threw them was, according to witnesses, the first to challenge the colonel from Ilheus, a rich cacao planter who—according to his own account—was the model for the character of Jorge Amado (of whom, besides, has already been spoken herein): “I’ll cover any and all bets: I want to be the big dog and not just the largest breeder of Brahma bulls in the world; I want to take Hilda Hurricane to the interior with me.” But that’s a subject for later; now, I’ll leave you all with a mystery: Hilda Hurricane.

5 In Which Adam, Unquestionably Nude, Becomes a Part of This Narrative What I’m going to narrate next is going to slow down the responses, among others, to two questions such as: (1) What does Brother Malthus intend to do with Hilda Hurricane’s shoe? and (2) Who won the duel on the Night of Exorcism: the Saint or the sinner? On the first question, I will only say that Cinderella’s shoe would remain the subject of all the papers, alongside the Evil of Hilda; as far as the second question, if you believe the poll taken by Rádio Itatiaia and the other broadcasters, the sinner came out ahead; that made Dona Lola Ventura distribute a protest note in which she accused “certain determined parties playing the devil’s dirty game and conspiring against God and His divine will to construct Camellia City.” I announced in the title of this chapter the special participation of Adam; let’s go then to the events: it happened then that there was then inaugurated a modern church in my hometown, Santana dos Ferros; taking into account the controversy over “dangerous agents of Moscow along with atheist and anti-Christian communism,” this scribe didn’t go, obviously, even though I was invited by the celebrants, them not counting on the participation of Brother Malthus, since our Saint had been defeated in the plebiscite: he had been in favor of keeping the old church; but the episode that gained honorable space in Time magazine—it all started when Father Geraldo Cantalice charged the painter Yara Tupinambá with preparing a mural that would occupy one of the interior walls of the new church; it was a paradisaical scene and the father gave full freedom to the painter to create. The new Mother Church was opened to the faithful: when Dona Naná Stanislau pulled the inauguration string to drop the plastic that covered the panel, Adam appeared in all his naked glory to the eyes of everyone; Dona Naná Stanislau fainted; there followed

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a collective fainting ritual, the loudest of which was the beatific Fininha, whose fainting was anticipated by her favorite invocation: “Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows: have pity on us!” The sixteen beatifics who fainted, along with Aunt Ciana (whose effort managed to show up in the pages of Time), accompanied by the faithful dog Joli, fought back and started a practice that attracted dozens of followers: they entered the church walking backwards in order not to see Adam naked and shouted: “Signor Vicar: tell them to cover Adam’s shame!” During this time of confusion, Father Geraldo Cantalice climbed into the pulpit and announced: “My dear brothers and sisters, the nudity of Adam is a purified nudity, it’s the nudity of Paradise!” There was a petition started, on the initiative of Aunt Ciana, and opened with the rich signature of Dona Naná Stanislau, demanding that the painter Yara Tupinambá “cover the shame of Adam” with one or two fig leaves, seeing as how Adam was a well-endowed Adam; since then, Aunt Ciana started entering church backwards so as to not see Adam naked and, in a move of solidarity, which she never told her sister—Joli learned to enter the church also walking backwards; but Aunt Little Heart, very curious, couldn’t resist: she wanted to see Adam in all his nudity. Aunt Ciana advised: “They mustn’t wait: the shame of Adam will be covered by a fig leaf or my name isn’t Emerenciana Drummond!” But let’s get back to our story, where there’s still a lot to tell.

6 A Headache I was still staying in my room at the house on Ceará Road when the neighbor from next door, the girl with the gray eyes who showed up at the beginning of this narrative, came to tell me that there was someone who urgently wanted to speak to me on their phone (during this time, my mother still didn’t have a phone) and I went to

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answer it; when I went in my neighbor’s living room, the neighbor girl said that I should stay as long as I liked, and then she shut the main front door because she was going out, that there was a man who was in his death throes, and she was going out to encourage his eldest son, who seemed fragile and unprotected; as I picked up the phone, I looked at her and was again struck by her and wondered what type of angel she was, and then there was a familiar voice in my ear: “This is Brother Malthus. I need to talk to you really badly. How ’bout we have lunch together?” “Up there in the monastery?” “No. You’ve spoken so well of the cret at Café Palhares that I’d like to try it.” “Great. Do you know where Café Palhares is?” “No.” “It’s on Tupinambás Road, just before Afonso Pena, across from the ex–Santa Teresa Hotel, which today is called Hotel San Miguel.” “I’ll be there.” I was certain that Brother Malthus was going to make me the carrier of Hilda Hurricane’s shoe so that I could bring it back to its rightful owner. We ate the cret (the c of cachaça, the r of rice, the e of egg and the t of tongue), which was unforgettable, reminding each other of the latest happenings; after, we left and walked down Afonso Pena Avenue, one of the big main streets, and, since Brother Malthus was still suffering from the headache brought on by the Muguet du Bonheur that Hilda Hurricane wore the Night of the Exorcism, we went to buy an aspirin; even though there was a San Felix Pharmacy on Afonso Pena, he preferred to go to the Araújo Pharmacy, on Curitiba Road, right on the border with the Bohemian Zone; he took the aspirin right there in the pharmacy and, making an effort to show how concerned he was with the activities of Aramel the Handsome, we returned to Afonso Pena after a last look, on his part, towards the Bohemian Zone, and we decided to go find Aramel the Handsome. Not even once did the Saint talk about Cinderella’s slipper.

7 Is It Benedito? Aramel the Handsome lived in Apartment 702 of the Financial Hotel; in the lobby, waiting for the elevator, Brother Malthus and I ran into a person of mythological and folkloric status, the former Speaker of the State Legislature and now Senator Benedito Valadares, the big dog of the old Social Democratic Party; he was elegantly dressed, wearing a gray suit, black shoes, and a blue tie; seen in profile, his head looked like a map of the state. “Is it Benedito?” I whispered to Brother Malthus. “It’s really him.” He was a man of big moments. When the ex-governor of Minas, Juscelino Kubitschek, insisted that he would run for president, in spite of the veto of the military, Benedito Valadares broke his silence and said to reporters: “Juscelino wants to inspire our people to forget all heroes of Independence.” In my innocence and seal-like enthusiasm, I decided I would take advantage of the situation and conduct a rapid interview with the senator on what he thought about Camellia City. “Camellia City?” he answered when we were all going up in the elevator. “I read it and enjoyed it. It’s the best book by José de Alencar.” Obviously, I couldn’t publish the declaration of Benedito Valadares in Folha da Minas, but, given that the old dog had feigned ignorance and confused Alexandre Dumas with José de Alencar (at that moment, his eyes shone with a brilliant irony and the confusion appeared intentional), and I said to Brother Malthus, when we got off on the seventh floor: “You heard that, didn’t you? If Benedito is still sitting on the fence, it’s a signal that the campaign for Camellia City isn’t going so good.”

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“Such foolishness,” said Brother Malthus, who at that time belonged to the National Democratic Union and the Lantern Club. “Benedito always has and always will be on the fence.” Aramel the Handsome wasn’t in his room; we rang the doorbell five times and after left a message on the door telling him to get in touch with me or Brother Malthus on an urgent matter. But the truth is Aramel the Handsome was avoiding us, as you will see.

8 Fatman and Skinny (INVOLVING A FAK E FATH E R )

At Folha de Minas, my desk was in the teletype office, which of course really belonged to the UP and was silent from lack of payment for the subscription, and I had, as neighbors, Fatman and Skinny; Skinny kept himself slim with hard choices in his diet and lifestyle and Fatman was so fat that he had a special chair, reinforced to support his four hundred pounds that he gained and held on to from the beer and empanadas that he consumed in the renowned Mocó da Iaiá. Skinny, as they said at the time, doubled as both a football referee and a sports reporter; his name was Alcebíades Magalhães Dias and everyone knew him as Little Sid Our Ball because of a controversial episode that happened during a game between Atlético, the team he rooted for, and América when, after a side out, the left halfback of Atlético, Afonso Bandejão, asked: “Whose ball is it, Little Sid?” Little Sid answered, without pausing, “It’s our ball, Afonso.” Every Monday, Little Sid sat in front of the old Remington, the one missing the letters A, M, and W, and analyzed his last game as a referee, dropping jewels such as the following, which only a paper like Folha de Minas could publish and that belong to my files now:

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“Hurt who it hurts, the truth is that Mr. Alcebíades Magalhães Dias, better known as Little Sid, is found to have been almost perfect as an arbitrator in the classic of the people, this past Sunday, between Atlético and América, in front of a stunned crowd at Independence Stadium.” Earlier on, after having lauded himself for his good physical preparation and criticized his rival referee, Fuad Abras, whom he called obese and censured for an exaggerated love for empanadas: “It’s worth remembering that Mr. Alcebíades Magalhães Dias, better known as Little Sid, is made from the same fragile clay as Adam and Eve; that Yours Truly committed a sin, if we take into account that the center forward Atleticano Mauro Patrus, the author of the goal that decided the day in favor of the team from Belo Horizonte, was taken down in the penalty area. But in defense of Yours Truly, the fact is that Little Sid had his vision blocked by the center half of Atlético, Zé do Monte . . .” And it closed with another golden beauty: “Summing up then the pros and cons, it’s only fair to give eight and a half stars to Mr. Alcebíades Magalhães Dias, better known as Little Sid, for the job he did. He deserves ten stars, with a bow, if it weren’t for the mentioned episode where a player got between me and the brilliant goal of Mauro Patrus, so the villain of this story is the player Zé do Monte.” One Monday, Little Sid showed up in the teletype room very scared. “What happened to you, Little Sid, child of God?” the voice of Fatman boomed. “I saw Death up close yesterday, in Nova Lima,” Sid said. “If it wasn’t for the help of Father Eusébio, I was dead.” In truth, he only escaped being lynched by the supporters of the other local side, after a game between Atlético and Cruzeiro,

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because he managed to take refuge in the church near the stadium and the vicar there lent him a cassock; dressed as a priest, he managed to get on a bus back to downtown Belo Horizonte while the radio was already announcing his death.

9 Fatman I have received the impression from Aunt Little Heart (and also from you the reader) that you’re impatient and even a bit irritated, what the two of you have in common, like the victim of a passing summer shower: “If this half-assed writer who, God keep me and guard me, is my dear nephew doesn’t tell soon if Brother Malthus will or won’t return Cinderella’s slipper, that is, Hilda Hurricane’s, I’m going to stop reading as a protest signal.” Well, I could say to Aunt Little Heart and the impatient readers; Cinderella’s slipper reappears on page X, not that far from this one. But I advise Aunt Little Heart: dear aunt, continue reading page after page, if not, you’ll lose the main narrative thread and details on Fatman, who was my other workmate in the teletype room at Folha de Minas; finally, it’ll serve Fatman well that Aramel the Handsome will enter into this narrative in a live manner, revealing his activity that Aunt Little Heart wanted to know about, when she sent this narrator that telegram about a rumor. Having said this, I invite Aunt Little Heart and the readers to come in with me into the teletype at Folha de Minas: there’s Fatman, the Fatman, sitting in his special chair built to support his four hundred-ish pounds, the chair that Skinny calls the “armored chair”; Fatman himself calls it the inspiration chair—see for yourselves how he types with one finger and how his face is sweaty and how he doesn’t stop smoking; he complains about the fan and about the

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insupportable heat in the room. Now, Fatman is working on his radio-oriented column that runs in Folha de Minas and that he signs with the pseudonym that he’ll be known by in this narrative: MC. His column always begins with a few words against his nemesis, television; come closer and read the diatribe he has written against his eternal enemy: “Television isn’t a gift from God: it’s a tool of the Devil.” MC’s column in Folha de Minas is not widely read, but the story that he writes daily for Rádio Inconfidência and that goes on the air at noon, Mondays through Fridays, and is read by the mellifluous and dramatic voice of Seixa Costa is the audience leader in its time slot, doing even better than TV shows at that time; it’s called “Speaking to the Heart” and MC receives dozens of letters, the majority of them from women, perfumed and filling the pockets of his sandcolored blazer. Whenever one of us ran into MC climbing or descending the stairs to Folha de Minas’s office, it was necessary to wait: only one man the size of him, MC, could fit in that stairway at a time, and the Fatman ascended and descended those stairs more than once a day, he used to go eat empanadas in the Mocó da Iaiá and if he was really hungry he would go to Café Palhares and eat the cret; so, that afternoon, days after the Night of Exorcism on Guaicurus Road, after I left Brother Malthus in front of the Financial Hotel and was going to the editorial offices of the Folha de Minas, on passing in front of Café Palhares, an unmistakable booming voice called out: “Come here, young fella!” “Young fella” was what the Fatman called me. “Before anything else,” he averred as soon as I was standing beside him at the bar in Café Palhares, because they didn’t have a seat there that could handle him and his four hundred pounds, “Congratulations on the coverage of Cinderella’s slipper. You nailed it, young fella! You nailed it. Would you like to eat a cret with me?” “Thanks. I ate one here earlier, at Palhares, with Brother Malthus.” “What? With the Saint? So, the young fella’s made friends with the Saint?”

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“We’ve been friends since childhood,” I said. “Close friends.” “I’d like to die your friend, young fella. You know who called for you, young fella, very worried that no one’s found Cinderella’s slipper that she lost in the confusion on Guaicurus Road?” And then he looked around and lowered his voice, saying spiritedly, “Hilda Hurricane. She asked that you call her, young fella.” Taken thus by a sudden need to go, I started to walk away, when the Fatman, MC, before digging into his cret, asked me: “Do you wanna make some side money, young fella? A xilipe?” Xilipe was extra money, the only live money that circulated at Folha de Minas, for some extra work; back when I was still writing the “Student Life” column, the Fatman paid me xilipes to write newspaper stories about the Carnival competitions and beauty contests that he promoted. So when he spoke about a xilipe, I could only imagine that, in truth, or in my temerity, he wanted the following: he wanted something to do with Carnival or the krewe of Rei Momo, which he also promoted. “Do you or don’t you want a xilipe, young fella?” “Of course I do, MC.” “Then, young fella, when you finish work, stop by the Mocó da Iaiá so that we can have a few beers together and I’ll explain what you’ll have to do.”

10 In the Mocó da Iaiá The Mocó da Iaiá, where up to then I had never been, was close to the editorial offices of Folha de Minas, just before the corner of Carijós and Curitiba, in an old house whose days seemed numbered by the land speculation in the downtown area. When I went down the stairs of Folha de Minas, happy about the resonance of my work on the Camellia City case, which had made my mentor, Felipe Drummond, so proud, I asked myself: “What the hell does MC want with me?”

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MC wasn’t a real fatty that way, if there exists that kind of fatty, other than the candidates for Carnival kings. He was already over forty and had already given up on all the diets and magic formulas for getting thin, but I’m not certain that he wanted to lose the one hundred and fifty or two hundred extra pounds that he carried. In his stirred-up soul, the four hundred pounds, the main gains of a crazy love for empanadas, chicken dishes—mostly chicken livers— beer, and the cret of Café Palhares, all of them functioned as a salve that gave status to a poor heart with an inferiority complex because of skin color: MC was a mulatto and this hurt him. The tragedy of MC—something I ask myself today—was whether it was a tragedy of a fat-ugly man or a tragedy of a mulatto-fat guy in a society during an era that exalted the typical Hollywood type? Beyond the penitence of climbing and descending the stairs at Folha de Minas, the four hundred pounds of MC were tormented by the constraints, disgusting things, vexations, and frustrations. The “armored chair” that occupied that teletype room at Folha de Minas, for example, needed frequent repairs. It was sitting in it, smoking one cigarette after another, that MC wrote his enormously successful hit on Rádio Inconfidência, for which he didn’t receive very much, but it made his name famous. But never his image, MC avoided photographs and, even more, he fled from the cameras of his major enemy, television. Up to then, I didn’t know much about MC; from the moment of our encounter in the Mocó da Iaiá, I would have a better idea of what really was bothering his soul; I would get a chance to know the human drama that judged him as ugly and that, besides being ugly, he was fat and mulatto and from the wrong side of the tracks and whose suffering really occurred at the moment of making love with a woman. What position should she get in? And the bed: was it going to collapse? What woman, no matter what amount of love she felt, could handle MC on top of her? “You see me like this, fat, right?” the Fatman would say one day. “But what really hurts is the soul of a little bird that I have inside me.” His stories on Rádio Inconfidência, meanwhile, had made him famous and a target for the women, who sent him passionate letters; he even received marriage proposals—but he suffered terribly: he

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imagined that his fans wrote him because, since he was a radio personality, not on television, they didn’t know what he looked like— fat and mulatto—and because of this they dreamed of an enchanted prince. But it’s necessary that we go to the Mocó da Iaiá, where MC is waiting.

11 In Which Gabriela M. Makes Her First Appearance When I entered the smoky darkness of the Mocó da Iaiá, my first reaction was to wait for my eyes to adjust, the way you do when you go into a movie theater and the film has already started and everything already seems darker than it really is. I never would have thought that I’d be in the Mocó da Iaiá, but starting from that night, I would be, yes, to be around MC, and I became a regular client. As soon as my eyes got used to the dark, I saw, at the back of the Mocó da Iaiá, the table where MC was sitting; I went up to him: there was a line of large empty beer bottles in front of him on the table, only leaving a small space to see the Lincoln packet with a lighter on top of it; MC was seated on a special bench, made from concrete. When I pulled up a chair, a wooden one, MC called out in his booming voice to the bartender: “Hey, Sylveira! Bring another beer and a cup for my friend!” Without waiting for the beer to arrive, he ate a ground beef empanada, indicating that I should eat one as well, then he took something out of the inside pocket of his gray blazer, which was hanging on the back of his concrete chair, a manila envelope from the office, and lit his lighter to improve the light conditions in the bar and passed me something to read; it was a special for his radio show for the next day, that the announcer Seixas Costa would be reading at noon on Rádio Inconfidência; in it he spoke tenderly and sympathetically about the lost shoe of Hilda Hurricane and, between the lines (like any storyteller, MC was a master between the lines), he set

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himself against Camellia City; even today, I can still quote stretches of the text: “Ah, Guaicurus Road, home of all sins, road of my poor and adolescent loves, which during the day smells of freshly unloaded coffee in the neighboring warehouses and the sweat of the world’s abandoned, and at night smells of the magic that you have, with your perfume to continue our illusions, which I know are sinful, but always illusory . . .” And, further on, closing the column: “The lost shoe of Cinderella from the night of that terrible storm means, to this dear chronicler, he who has a bird’s soul and dares to say to everyone, in the form of a question: and if in truth, because if when viewed from above, among the curved lines of this prose, what if Cinderella’s slipper is magic and Cinderella is the ghost that inhabits our dreams, then the Cinderella in all of us has no heart? And if it were like that, my brothers and sisters of sins and dreams, if it were, what would be the point?” When I finished reading it, I was very moved and said to fat MC: “It’s marvelous! Simply marvelous!” That quality was confirmed the following day: the telephone at Rádio Inconfidência didn’t stop ringing, nor did it stop ringing at the offices of Folha de Minas, where the operator forwarded calls for MC that I and Little Sid Our Ball answered pretending we were him; the truth was that MC was two people: as a columnist for our paper, he wrote without inspiration, he used clichés and pat phrases, but as a storyteller for the radio, he entered his bird-soul self and became the other him. But what did MC want with me? He put out his lighter, folded the story and put it away in his blazer’s inside pocket, ordered another beer for us, and took out a packet of letters from the outside pocket of his blazer (how many of these blazers did he have?). He then lit his lighter again: “Read this, young fella!”

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What he had were letters from one fan, who called herself Gabriela M., and I started reading them. Where was this going? Why was he asking me to read these letters? When I finished, he handed me a photo of a blond girl who was very pretty. “It’s her,” he said. “Her who?” I asked. “Gabriela M.,” he answered. MC put the photo away in his blazer and gave me a note on which Gabriela M. said, in the same round and dreamy handwriting: “I’m going to wait next Friday night at eight o’clock in Marília Dirceu Plaza. I’ll be wearing a red dress, with a red purse as well, and you’ll recognize me from the photo. XO, Gabriela M.” “And you’re going to meet her, right, MC?” “That’s the question,” he answered. “That’s where you come in.” “Me? What? But how?” MC lowered his booming voice and said: “I want you to meet her in my place, young fella.” I didn’t get it right away and he could tell. He continued: “I want to contract you professionally. I can pay you a good xilipe. How much do you want for the first date? After, we’ll get together on a rate for future dates.” I couldn’t believe any of this, without even knowing if I would accept or refuse MC’s proposal, which was something exciting. But I only had one thought: my dream girl, the Beautiful B. It was at that moment that I had an idea and said: “I know someone who can do all this better than me.” “And who’s that?” he asked. “A friend of mine.” “And what’s he like, young fella?” “Handsome. Very handsome. He’s considered the best-looking man in Brazil. He’s known as Aramel the Handsome.” “And when can I talk to this Aramel?” “Tomorrow,” I answered. “Here, then,” he said. “At nine o’clock, in the Mocó da Iaiá.”

12 Aramel the Handsome, and the Villain Like I already said, Aramel the Handsome lived in Apartment 702 in the Financial Hotel; at that time, there were residents there, permanent or transitory, many of them politicians, congressmen, or senators, like the already mentioned Benedito Valadares, and, if you believe Pina Manique, the irreverent columnist of Binômio, none of them paid anything—it was a courtesy of the owner of the Financial Hotel, considered by many the richest man in Brazil, richer than even Count Matarazzo; he owned half of Belo Horizonte, and besides owning the hotel, he owned a sugar mill, eight ranches, thousands of head of cattle, all the movie theaters in the city, with the exception of two, and even a plane that, on the nights he was having trouble sleeping, he flew in the skies over Belo Horizonte so that he could overfly the houses of his lovers, which had arrived at the total of 365, from the time that he wasn’t happy just being the richest man in Brazil but also wanted to be the biggest stud; all his lovers were beautiful and young, all of them poor, but the smell of poverty was his aphrodisiac, more efficient than any shot or any other product he brought in from Japan. A medical doctor who never practiced, if it wasn’t for his own consumption, he was taking, along with the sexual stimulants, drugs for twenty-seven imaginary illnesses that, along with being a hypochondriac as number one, he was monitoring; his lovers he referred to like this: “They’re my Little Bunnies!” Aramel the Handsome didn’t pay any rent either at the Financial Hotel as a permanent guest; Aunt Ciana would say: “Lord have mercy!” Aunt Little Heart, already very interested in the activities of Aramel the Handsome, would think the opposite:

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“Tell us about it soon or I’ll abandon this book. It’s already enough having to imagine whether Brother Malthus is going to return Cinderella’s slipper!” Aramel the Handsome worked for the owner of the Financial Hotel; he had a business card with his name printed on it which said: “Assessor of Special Subjects”; his job consisted of winning the hearts of young, beautiful, and poor girls and after, turning them over to the hands of . . . I’ll say the real name, won’t I? I have my doubts. He’ll be, up to this point anyway, the major villain of this story (there’s been a couple other villains show up before now, trying to be heroes). Up to now, all the major characters, without exception, like Hilda Hurricane, Brother Malthus, the Fatman MC, Aramel the Handsome, and even this narrator have appeared with their real names; others—at the very least I’ve indicated who they are by revealing their initials, such as the Beautiful B, or a last name limited by a letter, such as Gabriela M., who is going to show up physically very soon. Why then would I hesitate to identify the villain by his real name? Is it because he’s that powerful? I ask myself: “I can identify by initials, like I’ve done with some other characters. For example: A.L. Or, being a bit more explicit: Antônio L. Ou, who knows, I can arrange a pseudonym for him, like Lucky Strike or the Marlboro Man.” I’ve thought about it and decided that I’m going to call the villain by his real name: Antônio Luciano, also known as Luciano do Banco, from his ties to the former Financial Bank, the largest bank collapse there had ever been in Brazil (the failure happened in three days, and thousands of account holders lost everything, including Aunt Ciana and Aunt Little Heart). Even having lovers for every day of the year, catalogued on index cards with their names, addresses, telephone numbers, their weaknesses, and even the flowers that they liked, our villain was a solitary man; he had his main woman, to whom he was married, but he rarely went home; he lived alone on the top floor of the Financial Hotel; I’m lying: he had for company a spotted jaguar named Teresa, which lived uncaged, she was tame with him, but, as we’ll see, she’d threaten the infrequent visitors. He was, in his youth, a poor man; as a medical student he began to amass his incredible wealth:

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he lent money to classmates at high rates and everything he earned he put towards property—it was from that time that he had acquired a belt of lots surrounding Belo Horizonte. Our villain contracted handsome young men, generally financially desperate ones, unemployed young men, like Aramel the Handsome, to conquer the virgins that he needed, always beautiful and poor. He had various Don Juans in his service and two personal challenges to meet: to father one hundred children, whose mothers were already fighting him in court over each child’s share of his wealth, and to manage to get one thousand lovers in his “implacable archives,” as he called them. Aramel the Handsome didn’t receive a salary: he received some help with his expenses for his gigolo work, even receiving a car, a red Karmann Ghia, gasoline, and the elegant clothes that he wore as part of the bargain. He also had his apartment in the Financial Hotel, with the right to imported liquor and wine to undermine the resistance of the girls, and he received additional money for each one he conquered. “But I can’t deflower any of them,” Aramel the Handsome confessed to me once. “That right stays with him.” I said to Aramel the Handsome: “You’re playing with fire.” A few times I tried to get Aramel the Handsome to leave that work, but he answered that he needed to get a stake together to follow his dream: to conquer Hollywood; it was around this time that he started avoiding me and Brother Malthus, but, when I went to see him over MC’s case, I had the luck to find him eating lunch in the restaurant of the Financial Hotel; he was very interested; it was an acting exercise for him, because he hadn’t stopped dreaming of conquering Hollywood. “There’s only one perhaps,” said Aramel the Handsome, in his manner of slipping English words into his conversation. “I can’t do this just for the challenge. I’m going to have to spend some time on it, and time is money.” I explained that he could talk money that night with MC, who was planning on paying for the service, and, after he wrote down the address of the Mocó da Iaiá, Aramel the Handsome smiled:

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“I’ve read your stories in the paper. I’m very proud of you, man! When I say that I’m your friend, no one believes me. And our dear Saint, eh? I don’t know who said it, but if he manages to fix up Hilda Hurricane, he really will be a Saint.”

13 Speaking of Business That night, in the Mocó da Iaiá, there was a certain suspense: would Aramel the Handsome show up or not? While we waited, I had a demonstration of the fury with which MC could eat empanadas—I amused myself by counting: he ate forty-five in the half an hour that Aramel the Handsome ran late. When we were beginning to think he wasn’t coming, MC said, “If he doesn’t come, I’m counting on you,” then Aramel the Handsome was there, apologizing for being late. Before they began to talk about what he would earn posing as MC, he looked at the photo of her in the light of MC’s lighter. “She’s a babe,” Aramel the Handsome said. “She’s a real little babe.” “Of course,” said MC. “It’s you who should be paying me. I’m putting a real cookie in your hands.” “I’m an actor, MC. Or are you in favor of actors dying of hunger?” Smiling, MC extended the plate of empanadas to Aramel the Handsome, who repeated: “This Gabriela M. is really a little babe.” Finally, after a lot of discussion, the two arrived at a financial agreement. Now, all that remained was to wait for the night that the false MC would go meet Gabriela M. in Marília Dirceu Plaza.

14 Waiting for Gabriela M. MC had a used Impala; when he bought it he wasn’t so fat, even though he had had to make some adaptations to the front seat; however, when Gabriela M. began writing to him, his consumption of empanadas in Mocó da Iaiá and the cret in Café Palhares doubled, and he gained even more weight; thus, on that night, when we were getting ready to go to Marília Dirceu Plaza to witness the meeting of the false MC with Gabriela M., the task of MC getting into the Impala was hard and embarrassing to watch. In the front seat, MC was the only one who could fit—I sat in the backseat; he was crushed up against the steering wheel and, leaning to one side because of the four-hundred-pound driver, the Impala made its way heroically to Marília Dirceu Plaza. MC parked in a strategic spot, in the darkness under a tree, where we had an excellent field of vision but wouldn’t arouse suspicions. The Fatman smoked ceaselessly and I took advantage of the opportunity for if-you-can-spare-ones and also smoked a lot. It was eight in the evening. The meeting was set for eight fifteen. At eight ten, Aramel the Handsome pulled up in his Karmann Ghia, which he parked far from MC’s Impala, and got out and walked around the plaza. Before long, since Gabriela M. hadn’t shown, he showed some signs of impatience. “And if she doesn’t come?” asked MC. “Eh?” I didn’t say anything, listening to the hoarse breathing of MC’s heavy body; a bit later (five, ten minutes?), Gabriela M. arrived, wearing a red dress, like she said, and also a red purse. She was a nymph, even more beautiful than the photo she’d sent to MC, and she happily took the arm that Aramel the Handsome offered her; they walked around the plaza for a while before sitting down together on a bench. The following day, Aramel the Handsome gave a full report to MC over what he talked about with Gabriela M. and

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received his payment in the Mocó da Iaiá; the encounters continued on other nights, and MC wrote passionate columns based on the information he received. When, finally, on a Saturday night, Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. disappeared in the darkness under a tree in Marília Dirceu Plaza, it was clear what was happening, and MC began to cry as he hugged the steering wheel. The rhythm of his sobs was such that the whole Impala shook, as if it were crying too.

15 Tonight I Got Loaded The Fatman MC entered into a crisis phase: he believed that Aramel the Handsome was having secret meetings with Gabriela M., but he didn’t stop going to Marília Dirceu Plaza, and I always went with him; to maintain the front with Gabriela M. and leave her with the illusion that Aramel the Handsome was really him, MC, he wrote passionate columns that were read on Rádio Inconfidência, which infuriated his other jealous listeners—the letters he received had some very strong language in them; he continued to cover for Aramel the Handsome and, on a certain night, in the Mocó da Iaiá, an unbelievable thing happened: Aramel the Handsome asked for a raise and MC turned him down, saying in his booming voice: “You’re nuts! I put a cookie in your hands, and you want a raise?” “And my work as an actor?” replied Aramel the Handsome. “Your apprenticeship as an actor, isn’t it?” “That’s fine, MC. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to find someone else.” “For the love of God, man, don’t do this,” MC said. “I’ll double your xilipe, and we won’t say another word about it.” On the night that Gabriela M. got in Aramel the Handsome’s Karmann Ghia, MC drank more than usual at the Mocó da Iaiá, where we had gone, and he sang a popular song:

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”Tonight, I got loaded . . .”

In the wee hours he decided to go home, planning on taking a taxi because he couldn’t drive the Impala; the bartender and I helped him get outside, but MC slipped and fell; we tried to get him up and, since we couldn’t manage it alone, the bartender called some of the retrogrades that were still drinking inside the Mocó da Iaiá to help us. It was hopeless, and the bartender said: “Only with a tow truck can we get him home.” Well, MC will still have a few more appearances in this narrative, which I consider a shame—but that was how it happened. Aramel and Gabriela M. will also have more happy appearances, and it’s good that they enjoy themselves because good things aren’t waiting for them at the end.

16 The King, the Prince, the Saint, and a Well-Endowed Poet Since the Exorcism Night, the news had been sympathetic to Hilda Hurricane, the papers had covered any news of Cinderella’s slipper, and the Camellia City movement was losing some of its followers; the street surveys that were becoming increasingly popular with all the media to look at public opinion showed some movement as well—and the number of undecided grew. It was only a few days until the Municipal Council of Belo Horizonte was set to vote on the project that would lead to Camellia City, still largely headed by, as has been said, Father Cyr, when a radio journalist created a minor uproar by saying that if the vote were held today, instead of before the Exorcism Night, when it would have been approved by two votes, now the vote would be rigorously tied—seven councilors in favor and seven against, with four undecided. That began the battle to win over the undecided.

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Dona Lola Ventura, Father Cyr, and Dona Maryjane, from the Badly Loved Committee, decided to play their trump card; they were going to hit the streets, but, no, this time they wouldn’t go to Guaicurus Road; this time they would gather the great Catholic population of the city to pray in front of the Municipal Chamber, where an orator would lead them in prayer. Everything could have gone off like clockwork, but Dona Lola, Father Cyr, and Dona Maryjane forgot one important detail. If you think it’s the absence of the Saint, you’d be wrong; I don’t know if it’s been clear, but he had pulled away from the movement; Dona Lola tried to cover his absence by getting a respected columnist from the Catholic Daily; but Brother Martin, the columnist in question, and who was even more conservative in political terms than Brother Malthus, demurred, saying: “I plan to initiate a program with the Magdalenes or Camellias, wherever they may be, to bring Christ to their dark and afflicted hearts. That being the case, I have to withdraw myself from consideration.” Either way, Dona Lola Ventura, Father Cyr, and the rest of the Badly Loved set a date for the meeting for Wednesday night, the fifteenth, a few days before the Municipal Council voted on the Camellia City project; cars with loudspeakers drove through the streets inviting people: “Come say an Ave Maria of morals, the family, and good customs. Wednesday night, the fifteenth, in front of Municipal Hall at eight o’clock. An act in favor of Camellia City. Don’t let Belo Horizonte become another Sodom and Gomorrah.” The walls and the lampposts of the city were covered with posters inviting everyone to the demonstration, pamphlets were distributed, and even a Cessna pulling a banner alluding to the demonstration flew over Belo Horizonte. I interviewed Dona Lola Ventura and she said: “Listen, sweetie, there’s going to be a tidal wave of us!” When I asked about the glaring absence of Brother Malthus, Dona Lola said, disconsolate: “Look, sweetie, I sent five urgent telegrams to the Saint, who’s in Santana dos Ferros, and I didn’t get an answer.” She preferred to blame the National Telephone and Telegraph Company, like the good conservative that she was:

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“It’s a travesty. Nothing works in this country, sweetie.” But, if despite all their efforts, the Saint was unable to be present, Dona Lola promised to have a big name to substitute for him as the orator. She had been told that the Saint was involved in a good and moral mission in Santana dos Ferros: to convince the vicar there to remove the obscene mural showing Adam nude. “Who is the big name you’ll get to replace him, Dona Lola?” I asked. “It’s a secret, sweetie. It’s under lock and key. But as soon as I can say, I’ll tell you.” That same day I got a letter from Aunt Little Heart and the PS, which was always bigger than the letter itself, was a lot more revealing about events in Santana dos Ferros; she wrote, poor thing, that she wasn’t sleeping much, worried as she was about Aunt Ciana, who had decided to conduct a hunger strike against the presence of the nude Adam in the mural at church, going against the warnings about her delicate health from her brother and doctor, Uncle Júlio Drummond; Aunt Ciana had gained a lot of followers, not only for entering the church backwards so as not to see Adam’s shame, but also for her nocturnal vigil at the patron saint’s statue outside, Santana, whose ancient image had been pulled from the river and whose Asian features were attributed to the famous sculptor Aleijadinho, so that the patron saint wouldn’t hold the existence of the nude Adam against the congregation; now, Aunt Ciana and her followers didn’t just want to cover Adam’s shame with a cloth or some leaves, no: the painter, Yara Tupinambá, in a TV interview, made some revelations that horrified even Father Geraldo Cantalice; she said, for example, on painting Adam nude, the controversy over which had ended up in Time (an example of the magazine they had for the interview), that she had used a live model, an unemployed young actor whom she paid to pose nude and was the model for Adam. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” Yara Tupinambá explained. “Michelangelo paid Roman citizens to pose for him.” When the interviewer, Carlos G., asked the painter of the divisive mural if all of the nude Adam, from his toes to the top of his head, was inspired by the young actor, there the painter complicated everything:

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“From his toes to his head, not really,” she said. “For one small detail of Adam I was inspired by the poet whom I’m married to.” Feigning a lack of comprehension, the interviewer asked the camera to show a photo of the nude Adam from Time, asking her: “Well, is this the small detail?” “Yeah. That’s the small detail,” said Yara Tupinambá. “I think we can all agree,” said the interviewer as the credits rolled, “it’s not such a small detail; in effect, the poet’s well endowed.” Aunt Little Heart thought that Aunt Ciana was right, at the end of the day, that the nude Adam was an unemployed actor, a mercenary, and the small detail on Adam, which Aunt Ciana preferred to call Adam’s shame, was inspired by a poet; thus the nightly vigil in front of the image of Santana grew and, in spite of Uncle Júlio Drummond’s having advised Aunt Ciana that she was risking her life, she vowed: “If I have to, I’ll give up my life to defend the honor of Santana and the morality of the house of God.” In the PS of her letter, Aunt Little Heart spoke about the deception of “poor Ciana,” who had been counting on the help of Brother Malthus for her war against the nude Adam and, strangely, “the Saint changed colors” and told Aunt Ciana that the mural showed Adam in his biblical state; he refused to support the movement to enter the church backwards and he, Brother Malthus, went in facing forward, coaxing poor Nhanhá, his mother, to do likewise. Aunt Little Heart in her PS gave me the news of the five telegrams sent to Brother Malthus by Dona Lola Ventura, inviting him to the big demonstration in Belo Horizonte. To the surprise of Dona Nhanhá, the Saint tore them up as they arrived, throwing them in the garbage without bothering to send any reply. Every morning, the Saint would go fishing but he never caught anything, and the blessed Fininha, assiduous visitor to the Saint’s house, discovered, after connecting a few dots, that Brother Malthus brought a pole and a hook but never any bait; seated on the bank of the river, he tanned very well, gaining a skin color incompatible with sainthood. And, if you believe the blessed Fininha, while he fished, he conversed with the San Antônio River in Latin or in some dialect that only saints and rivers understand, which the blessed Fininha believed was Russian.

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The estrangement of Brother Malthus earned another mention in the PS of Aunt Little Heart: the great consumption of jabuticaba jelly, which Dona Nhanhá kept a great stock of, but, worried about running out, she now asked of everyone if they didn’t know where she might find some ripe jabuticaba fruit to stave off the emergency; at this point I concluded that Brother Malthus was in crisis and must be suffering a lot. Every afternoon—continued the PS of Aunt Little Heart—the Saint went on long walks through town and surprised Aunt Ciana in a new way, with a gesture that she, Aunt Little Heart at a future time, would “decide whether to applaud and support” or not: if Father Geraldo Cantalice permitted dances during Carnival, previously forbidden, without any signs of protest; if he permitted the girls to show their legs at the beach down by the river, wearing daring swimsuits; if the boys and girls of the town could kiss in public without being remonstrated by a churchgoer or a policeman; if everything was like that now, the three infamous prostitutes of Santana dos Ferros, Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice, of whom I’ve already spoken, continued their confinement: they could only leave the little alley where they lived to go halfway across the bridge to enjoy the afternoon breeze. So, what did the Saint do? He picked the three most beautiful roses from the flower garden that poor Dona Nhanhá cared for and kept to offer to Santana, and not caring if he was followed by the blessed Fininha, he gave one rose to Big Alice, another to Alice, and the third to Little Alice; having done this, he promised the three: “I’ll go now and suggest to Father Geraldo Cantalice that he revoke your confinement, this absurd prohibition that wounds the goodness that Christ has in his heart.” And he fulfilled the promised: always followed by the blessed Fininha, he went to the parochial house and Father Geraldo Cantalice didn’t just attend to the suggestion of the Saint: he asked that the Saint have “the Christian goodness” to communicate in his name to the three Magdalenes that they were free to come and go, free even to attend any of the three churches. Then, to the even greater surprise of the blessed Fininha, Brother Malthus invited the poet Geraldo Matta Machado and the homeopath Dodô Caldeira, who

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had previously been known as dangerous heretics and now, with his arms around their shoulders, he called on “my dear heretics” to accompany him on his mission. Aunt Little Heart didn’t have any news about Cinderella’s slipper, but she provided a clue: the blessed Fininha swore that, observing Brother Malthus through the keyhole, she saw him kneeling in his bedroom, adoring something, not a sanctified image, but something else, something glittery like an amulet that momentarily “blinded” blessed Fininha. (The reading of the length of the PS of Aunt Little Heart brought me some suspicions that I should share with the readers: 1. Did the movements of Brother Malthus in relation to the confinement of the three prostitutes Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice seem to indicate that our Saint had changed his opinion in regards to the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte and the construction of Camellia City? 2. Did the gesture of Brother Malthus throwing away the five telegrams of Dona Lola Ventura inviting him to the manifestation on the fifteenth suggest that he had left the movement in favor of Camellia City? 3. Up to where was it possible to infer if the roses that Brother Malthus gave to Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice symbolized the rose that he would have liked to give to Hilda Hurricane?)

Five days before their demonstration and prayer, when the whole city of Belo Horizonte was inundated with posters and paid announcements in the papers and on the radio, Dona Lola Ventura, Father Cyr, and Dona Maryjane sought out the young auxiliary archbishop of Belo Horizonte, Dom Serafim Fernandes de Araújo to be the orator on that night; he smiled very sympathetically and said: “Dona Lola, ma’am, Father Cyr, and Dona Maryjane, don’t you have another day for your demonstration? Because on Wednesday, the fifteenth, at nine at night, Santos, with Pelé wearing number ten, will be taking on Atlético here at the stadium . . . and forgive me . . . an Atlético game I won’t miss for anything in this world.” The whole city had started talking about the game between Atlé-

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tico and Santos; it brought about a war of cars with loudspeakers and planes with banners, some inviting the public to see Atlético against Santos and King Pelé, others calling for the Ave Maria that night so that Belo Horizonte wouldn’t become Sodom and Gomorrah; it appeared that the passion was higher for Atlético—whose fans would root against the wind if there was a black-and-white jersey hanging on the clothesline during a storm—but the stadium was too small for as many as wanted to see the game and another crowd big enough to fill the stadium again was left outside; meanwhile, only some wet cats shared in the demonstration in favor of Camellia City, much to the disappointment of Dona Lola Ventura and Dona Maryjane, and not even Father Cyr (who was seen at the game) nor the council members were at the council chambers that night. As far as the game, Pelé scored a beautiful goal on a header, but the hero of the night ended up being the center forward Little Tomás, author of three goals, by which Atlético defeated Santos three to one; the papers the next day, as if they had planned it together, published the same headline: “Whoever Went to See King Pelé Saw Little Prince Tomás.”

They said that even Hilda Hurricane was in the stadium, much to the frustration of those who, in spite of the big game that night, had entered the line at the Hotel Marvelous to discover why she was the temptation of all men.

17 Revealing the Mystery of Melons On Monday, when I arrived at the offices of Folha de Minas to work, I noticed in the stairwell the scent of Royal Briar aftershave, and I smelled it as well in the teletype room, where the booming voice of MC cried:

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“Stay calm, young fella: things are getting hot for you.” I asked what it was, and the Fatman said that Antônio Luciano’s lawyer (who was responsible for the smell of Royal Briar that I noticed in the stairwell) had spent an hour in the office of the publisher of Folha de Minas, Amável Costa; and the lawyer had given him a copy of my communist membership card from Dops and was asking for my dismissal, saying that I was an agent of Moscow infiltrating the campaign against Camellia City. “Your cousin Felipe is in there now with Amável Costa,” said MC. “He’s already announced that if they fire you, they’ll have to fire him as well. Things are hot!” Soon Felipe came back to the teletype room, more agitated than usual: “You already know what’s going on. I told Amável Costa that if they fire you for being a communist, they have to fire me. He pulled back. But, unhappily, you have to understand that he’s taking you off the coverage of Camellia City. But don’t worry; I’ve recused myself as well.” Not much later, I was called into Amável Costa’s office; with his nasal voice, he said that the melons that his wife liked so much had been going through sudden and ridiculous price increases, and he wanted to give me a big assignment: to reveal the mystery of the augmentation in the price of melons in a series of stories that, he could guarantee me, would result in prizewinning work, since there was no question of my talent. I left Amável Costa’s office feeling sick inside; Felipe Drummond patted me on the shoulder sympathetically, and, back in the teletype room, MC, seeing me disconsolate, pulled me to him and gave me a slow and fat hug; he said: “It’s nothing, young fella. One day, you’ll remember this and laugh about what they did to you.” And with his booming voice trembling with emotion, he continued: “If you want to cry, young fella, go ahead. The shoulders of friends are made for such storms!” A little bit later, I went down Folha de Minas’s stairs alone, lit a Continental, and walked down Curitiba Road towards the Municipal Market, trying to figure out a double mystery: why in a Western and

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Christian civilization the price of melons went up so unexpectedly, and why girls like Hilda Hurricane, also in an unexpected manner, were going to the Bohemian Zone. A short time later, I was hired by the weekly paper Binômio and I left Folha de Minas; but before that, important facts worth mentioning took place, like the historic and tumultuous vote on the Camellia City project, in the Municipal Council of Belo Horizonte, and the terrible toothache that I had.

18 Rise Up, Oh Victims of Hunger (Internationale) The episode of my toothache ended turning into the biggest act of revolutionary bravery of my poor career as a militant, and for this it deserves to be told: I was in the Municipal Market interviewing farmers, stallkeepers, and housewives over the mysterious rise in the price of melons (very soon the photographer Demétrio Barbosa would arrive to get his photos), when one of my molars started to hurt. I should have already done something about it, since I would be dealing with an excellent dentist and be supporting a Party member, Comrade Alencastro Carvalho, who, by a coincidence so commonly used in children’s stories and that Dostoyevsky used so well in Crime and Punishment, was from my neck of the woods—he belonged to the Carvalho clan of Santana dos Ferros. It happens that, taken by my enthusiasm to cover the Camellia City campaign, and the panic that the dentist’s chair caused me, I had missed all my appointments with Comrade Alencastro. When, on arriving at the Municipal Market, I felt the first twinge of pain, succumbing to the tendency of someone who also does analysis, which I had also been letting slide, I ventured an interpretation: “This pain in my tooth has a psychosomatic character. I’m repressing what happened today at Folha de Minas, and the pain that it caused me is showing up now in my molar. It’ll soon pass.”

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But it didn’t happen, and, when I had finished making notes on the news of the rising price of melons (sixty-eight percent in less than five days) and turned them in to the secretary at Folha, Célio Horta, I called Comrade Alencastro, whose office was on Rio de Janeiro Road and hurried over there to be taken care of. Comrade Alencastro was a small man, thin and a bit hyper; he had the wild white hair of a professor and nervous tics: with dentist tools in his hands, he conducted imaginary orchestras. He had given names of famous “heroes of the working class” to his sons: one was Marx, another Vladimir, another still was Lenin, and there were Gorky and Luís Carlos (because of Luís Carlos Prestes, the Brazilian Knight of Hope), and he had even paid homage to himself, giving his name to the oldest son from his first marriage—who was called Alencastrinho. When he was attending to his patients, as in my case, if he wasn’t conducting imaginary orchestras, he would fulminate against “bourgeois infamies.” That afternoon, or to be more exact, that evening, for it had gotten dark, first he railed against the bourgeoisie, then he looked at my tooth. “Be brave, Comrade,” he exhorted me, knowing of my fear. “I’m going to have to pull your molar, but this shouldn’t scare a revolutionary!” He gave me an anesthetic—but it didn’t take; while we waited, he condemned the “cynicism of the bourgeoisie” in the case of Camellia City, speaking in support of Hilda Hurricane; he gave me a second shot and it didn’t take at all, but he had a salubrious and revolutionary solution for my case: “It’s going to hurt a bit, Comrade,” he said, already with his pliers in his hand. “But I’m going to sing the ‘Internationale’ to encourage you . . .” He started to sing: “Rise up, ye starvelings, from your slumbers,” sticking the pliers in my mouth. “Rise up, ye prisoners of want”—he grabbed the tooth with his pliers—“So, comrades, come rally”—he started to pull the tooth. He was pulling it and singing, “And the last fight let us face,” and he gave a final tug—with my bloody tooth held in the pliers, as if it were a small red flag for the accompaniment of

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my revolutionary extraction, he conducted an invisible orchestra in the “Internationale” and he victoriously sang: “And the last fight let us fa-ce, The In-ter-na-tion-ale unites the human ra-ce!”

Sitting in the dentist’s chair, so as not to cry out in pain, I thought: one day I’ll write a story or a scene in a novel using what has just happened.

Three

0 On the Subject of a Miracle With the events that are about to happen, maybe it’ll be hard to find a place further ahead for an episode that—I hope—the readers will no doubt enjoy, even if it comes at the expense of Aunt Ciana, and for this I’m going to hurry and get it down, warning that it has nothing to do with facts of Aunt Ciana to come, as I will tell them, rehabilitating and gathering her strength while leaving off the idea that the stray dogs and cats, which crossed her path in Santana dos Ferros, were, in the depths of their hearts, mocking her. “Never has a Drummond been so humiliated in this life,” complained Aunt Ciana to Aunt Little Heart. “But a Drummond doesn’t give up so easily, no. I, Emerenciana, Ciana to my friends, with two proud m’s in the middle of my Scottish Drummond, will get back on top. Those dirty dogs and cats with nothing better to do will be switching places with me, or my name isn’t Drummond.” Given these explanations, I’ll tell what happened: during that time in Belo Horizonte, everyone was waiting for the vote on the Camellia City project, whose climax was so urgent, even the bookies who worked the Corner of the Afflicted by the Café Perola were waiting for a tight result, one vote more for YES or for NO—during all this, in Santana dos Ferros, Aunt Ciana had started a countdown to the start of her hunger strike against the presence of Nude Adam in the nowfamous mural; the nocturnal vigil—done with prayers and offerings to the image of Santana, in the Mother Church—gained adherents and was growing, awaking in those shocked hearts the memory of when Father Nelson, an iron hand, yes, but a saint, which didn’t save him from having to leave because of some anonymous calumny that reached the local bishop about him. It’s true that during Father Nelson’s time, as has been said, everything was forbidden—Carnival, open collars, any type of dance,

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tight clothes, short skirts showing the wearer’s knees, dating after eight at night on regular days and nine at night on saints’ days, Sundays, and holidays; even happiness could be forbidden—for example, Dona Nevita, a beautiful young woman from Dores do Indaiá, came to Santana dos Ferros, married to a doctor, a landowner, Dr. Ademar Moreira; she had a laugh that, without effort, echoed throughout Santana dos Ferros and woke in those who heard a je ne sais quoi, a desire to be happy, to go out, to leave to go find better luck elsewhere, to pack a bag and head for parts unknown, to refuse the reverses of life in the way a bull accepts the yoke or, worse still, the way it accepts the matador; so—Dona Nevita now belonged to a powerful local family—Father Nelson put a penitence on her: that she remain quiet instead of laughing. “But what’s my laugh got to do with anything, Father?” asked Dona Nevita. “You still have to ask, my daughter? It awakes in those who hear it forbidden dreams,” said Father Nelson. “I can’t make a trade, Father. Can I pray a third of each Sunday while kneeling on seed corn, but be free and unimpeded to laugh my laugh?” “No, my daughter, no: your laugh is prohibited even in your dreams.” “Even in dreams, Father?” “Yes, my daughter.” “And when can I return to laughing my laugh, Father?” “The day of St. Never, my daughter.” It’s just that Father Geraldo Cantalice had come and liberated everything, in a slow and gradual way, it’s true: he liberated the Carnival dances, costumes, parties, open collars, swimsuits, even the most daring bikinis, and, after ending the confinement of Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice, as has been told, he gave amnesty to the laugh of Dona Nevita, and even made a public apology, from the pulpit of the new church, where Nude Adam heard everything; and now Dona Nevita laughs her laugh and men and women start thinking: “Sure, I can find a way to get by in my life, I swear I can.”

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Before, during the proper times of Father Nelson, Aunt Ciana was thinking, the line for communion on the first Friday of the month stretched almost a kilometer; Father Nelson demanded a detailed confession and interrogated everyone, men and women, like God’s sherlock, and he gave hard penitences: fasting, sexual abstinence, infinite Ave Marias, hundreds of Our Ladies and Our Fathers. Now, Father Geraldo Cantalice listened quietly to the sins confessed, and gave out penance thus: “My daughter, dedicate some thought to the poor of the world.” Or: “My dear sister, with all your heart, pray an Ave Maria for the children of storms and tumult.” Oh, how such penitence frustrated people! Blessed Fininha summed up the general perception of Father Geraldo Cantalice’s absolutions in a sentence that became popular: “God forgive me, but, for the love of God, now he’s taken all the fun out of sinning.” Aunt Ciana went from house to house inviting people to the nocturnal vigil. “Dearest Santana,” pleaded Aunt Ciana as she knelt with two kernels of seed corn under each knee, “give us a sign, Santana, a signal that the Lady is on our side, against the obscene presence of the shameless Nude Adam and against those who want to turn your city, Santana, into a Sodom and Gomorrah, into a valley of sins.” Still entering the church backwards to avoid seeing Nude Adam, Aunt Ciana found new subjects every day to get more converts to her nocturnal vigil: in the pre-Carnival dances, where the scent of perfumes lay heavy in the air, there were Adam and Eve costumes, with only leaves covering their shame; girls in tight dresses had their collars more and more daringly open; and what was even worse, each night women in short skirts and wearing strong perfume got off the bus from places like Itabira, Guanhães, Peçanha, and even Belo Horizonte, coming from living city life. And let’s not forget the communist publications (these were sent by Aunt Ciana’s nephew, who is, of course, the narrator of this story) that found their way into families’ homes; women were leaving their husbands; husbands

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who had been betrayed no longer regained their honor through bloodshed; and even the sacristan Zé Didim, who had earlier camouflaged his homosexual condition, now took on feminine airs and gestures; and what did Father Geraldo Cantalice say to the commission of the Daughters of Mary who came to ask for Zé Didim’s dismissal? He said: “Each as God has made him!” Aunt Ciana knew which buttons to push; she swore: she was going to give her life, if necessary, to make Nude Adam go away; and she got another subject to win converts, when respectable men got involved in a low intrigue and made a petition to Father Geraldo Cantalice about commissioning a mural that showed Eve nude. “This is about, Senhor Vicar,” said their petition, “a discrimination against Eve that we want to repair.” On the other hand, in her true conscience, she couldn’t fault Father Geraldo Cantalice nor Nude Adam; everyone’s lives had gotten worse, everything went up in price—rice, beans, bread—and the inflation of Juscelino Kubitschek’s government stayed high, because, Aunt Ciana knew (she had to agree with centrist political parties in this) that the fault of it all lay in the early construction of Brasília; and she would complain: “In the proper times of Father Nelson, when the Mother Church was that which was built by our grandfathers and fathers, our daily bread didn’t cost the eyes from your face the way it does today.” And every night, when Aunt Ciana knelt with two kernels of seed corn under each knee and with her back turned to Nude Adam, she asked the base of the image of Santana: “Give us a sign, Santana. A simple sign is what we’re waiting for, Santana!” Until one night, Santana gave a sign: Santana cried; the one who saw the first tear was Aunt Ciana—but she preferred to wait; when she was a teenager, she had had visions, of Santana dressed in white, saying: “Emerenciana, get the sin out of your heart!” At the time, she was taken in restraints to Belo Horizonte; it wasn’t a case for her brother, Julio Drummond—some said she was

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a visionary, a medium or, sadly, that she was crazy, and they lowered their voice to say: “schizophrenic.” Dr. Aristides, the ultimate medical authority of all of the children of Santana dos Ferros, where he was from, diagnosed her: “Foolishness! This will pass with age. It’d be serious if she was saying she was Joan of Arc . . . or what about Napoleon!” So, kneeling before the image of Santana, Aunt Ciana waited— and a second tear and soon a third descended from the eyes of Santana; and Aunt Ciana was quiet: could it be the return of the hallucinations? Could it be . . . ?—she didn’t have time to finish the thought, for blessed Fininha bellowed: “It’s a miracle! Santana is crying!” “Miracle! Miracle! Santana is crying!” everyone shouted, elbowing each other and squeezing forward to wet their fingertips in the blessed and miraculous tears of Santana; a rushing about started, the bells of the church called the faithful—so that everyone could see it, children ran through the streets, Santana was crying—and amid the shouts of “miracle, miracle,” those women and those men who were there drank Santana’s tears, passed Santana’s tears over their wrinkles, on rheumatic knees, on exhausted legs, on bald spots, on toothless gums, on young chests whose hearts dreamed wild dreams, and Aunt Ciana—Aunt Ciana always carried with her a polished stone cup because she had a mania for cleanliness and hygiene and wouldn’t drink water from other people’s glasses, not even in her relatives’ houses—she filled the stone cup with Santana’s tears and drank it; it was a celestial flavor, even if the tears were a bit salty and warm; Aunt Ciana wanted to get her inseparable dog Joli to drink a cup, but Joli sniffed at it and refused; against her better judgment, Aunt Ciana lent the cup to blessed Fininha, who also filled the cup and drank, afterwards shouting: “Don’t push people! There’s enough of Santana’s tears for everyone!” It was then that something unforeseen happened! In the middle of all the shouting and crying, the bells ringing, passing through the kneeling and sobbing people, Dona Maria Profeta made her way to the image with her eleven-year-old son;

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shoving her way in front of Santana’s image, she filled a chalice with the tears and, twisting her son’s ear, ordered that he: “Drink Santana’s tears so that the Devil will leave your heart and you’ll be a child of God.” “You can pull my ear off, Mom, but I won’t drink,” said the child, to the perplexity of those around him. “That’s not Santana’s tears, no, Mom: that’s the urine of the priest’s nephew who was locked in the vestry and peed on top of her from inside.” Aunt Ciana fainted; poor dear, the nocturnal vigil ended and she had to postpone, indefinitely, her hunger strike against Nude Adam’s presence; but be sure that the word of Aunt Ciana is the word of a Drummond and that means don’t give up; even if it were to cost her her life, Aunt Ciana will have to do her hunger strike: I’ll give you the news on that; during the wait, we’ll return to Belo Horizonte.

1 During Those Innocent Years Every Monday during those innocent years, even when I started working at the weekly Binômio, I would wake up earlier than usual and around six thirty in the morning, along with other young men and women with a sleepy air about them, some wearing high school uniforms and carrying books under their arms, would enter (individually, so as not to awaken any suspicions) into the house that served as the “apparatus,” where he of whom I have recently spoken, Comrade Alencastro, lived, in the San Antônio, a tranquil middle-class neighborhood; at seven in the morning, religiously, in a deep cellar, a class on communist morals started, given by a Party director who lived clandestinely, Comrade Zico, who would later return to legal life under his real name, and not his nom de guerre, and to his real profession: Carlos Olavo da Cunha Pereira, journalist. Still young for the role that he occupied—he was not yet thirty years old and was a member of the Regional Committee—his hair

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was short and black, and he wore a cleaned and pressed sport shirt and was very eloquent. On some mornings, he would limit his instruction to the collective reading, out loud, from the novel Thus They Temper Steel, and he “tied up” the meeting, using our jargon, called the meeting to a close at eight fifteen, also religiously, with maxims like this: “Have no doubts comrades, the new world man, tempered in steel, will be cast and keep himself for a union founded in love and on mutual respect with his life’s companion.” The classes on communist morals were not open to everyone, only to those who, through their dedication to the cause, merited the honor; besides the mystic director who lived clandestinely as Comrade Zico, other attractions were the three most beautiful militants of the Communist Youth, Comrades Zora, Lucília, and Rosa. At that time, I was dating Comrade Rosa, who studied at the state college at night and worked in a department store during the day. One morning, after starting the class, Comrade Zico said: “Comrade Lima (that was me) and Comrade Rosa: when class ends today, I have to pass along to you two comrades a special order from the Party.” Comrade Rosa and I were very curious; Comrade Zico was starting the class on communist morals on the theme “Man tempered in steel and sexuality,” when Comrade Zora, with the light hair that fell across her beautiful face betraying her Italian heritage, gave things a surreal turn: “A question of order, comrades. I would like to know, Comrade Zico, before you begin to speak to us on communist morals, that you explain to us what you were doing last Wednesday afternoon in the middle of the Bohemian Zone.” There was a silence that was more than constrained; it was a stupefied, incredible silence, and we looked first at Comrade Zico, then at Comrade Zora, who waited for a response. “Comrade Zora,” Comrade Zico smiled. “There must be some sad mistake. If I had a twin brother, I’d say it was him, but since I don’t, I’m obliged to say: that couldn’t have been me personally, Comrade Zora.”

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“Yes, it was,” Comrade Zora insisted. “I saw you, with my own eyes. And not only me: here is Comrade Rosa, who was with me on the bus, returning from an ‘action’ to get signatures for peace, and she also saw Comrade Zico in the Bohemian Zone.” “Do you confirm this accusation, Comrade Rosa?” he asked in a dejected tone. “I do,” Comrade Rosa answered. “It was Comrade Zico himself and he was wearing that same shirt as today.” “Listen, comrades, if it was me, I could only be there, as in all places, in service of the Party.” “Service of the Party how?” asked Comrade Zora. “If Comrade Zico was on the infamous Guaicurus Road, wasn’t he climbing the stairs of the no-less-infamous Hotel Marvelous, where the no-less-infamous Hilda Hurricane tempts men? Wasn’t that it, Comrade Rosa?” Trembling and pale, Comrade Zico interrupted the class and left, without saying to me and Comrade Rosa what Party word or order the Party wanted him to transmit to us, and we never again had a class on communist morals. (Some years later, I ran into Comrade Zora in Rio de Janeiro and I asked her: “Zora, tell me frankly: why, on that morning, in the class on communist morals, you brought up, with such emphasis, the question of Comrade Zico going to the Bohemian Zone?” “You really want to know?” she answered. “I’m going to tell you what I’ve never told anyone. It wasn’t because of any ideological motivation nor for communist morals. I only said that because, at the time, I was crazy in love with Comrade Zico, who never realized it, and I was so jealous when I saw him on Guaicurus Road climbing the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous.”) On the afternoon following that stormy Monday morning, I had a “point”—an appointment in communist slang—with Comrade Alves, who, much later, would end up marrying Comrade Zora. When I got close to the area behind the building where the Secretary of Health was located, an area above suspicion, I saw Comrade Alves pacing back and forth, his hands behind his back holding a book and his head down.

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When Comrade Alves got to a meeting early and we could see him pacing back and forth, it was a bad sign of what was coming. There would be black clouds and a tempest in a teapot, with Stalinist lightning and thunder, going to fall on our heads. One time, Comrade Alves was just like that when I went to meet him under the Santa Teresa Viaduct across from the Municipal Park; some days earlier, I had gotten some money from him to buy a bus fare to Patos de Minas, where I was to take part in an important mission: Comrade João Nogueira, one of the richest men of the area, was the owner of a brick and tile factory that supplied the whole area; we decided then that we would unleash a workers’ strike in Patos de Minas and our strategy was the following: Comrade João Nogueira should hold off paying his workers until it reached a breaking point, which would make them go on strike. By chance, was Comrade Alves going to say that all of the plan was the product of a childish infatuation with communism? The truth is that when I arrived under the Santa Teresa Viaduct, Comrade Alves already knew that after buying the ticket to Patos de Minas, I had used part of the money for the trip to get a hole in my shoe repaired. “It was a petit-bourgeois and anti-revolutionary attitude!” exploded Comrade Alves. “You carelessly spent the working class’s money. Now you’ll go to Patos with whatever you have left.” And since I only had a bit of change left and the bus trip up there would be a long one, Comrade Alves, with the knowledge of a third-year medical student, a course he interrupted to enter into his clandestine life, suggested, when the Stalinist storm had passed: “Comrade, buy a bar of Black Diamond chocolate and nibble it a bit at a time, from here to Patos de Minas. At least you won’t faint from hunger that way.” That’s what I did and I arrived safe and sound in Patos de Minas. And now? What Stalinist storm was about to fall? Comrade Alves didn’t congratulate me; soon he was saying: “Comrade Lima, what are your real intentions with Comrade Rosa?” “What intentions?” I managed to get out.

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“Do you, comrade, intend to marry Comrade Rosa?” “Well, not marry her.” “You want to be her steady boyfriend?” “Well, not steady, no.” “Then, what are your intentions?” I stood there without knowing what to say, until Comrade Alves ordered: “Well, understand this, comrade, the Party has given you twentyfour hours for you to end things with Comrade Rosa.” I felt very sad; but I complied, with a lot of embarrassment, but not so faithfully, as you will see, with the Party’s resolution. But it’s time to go to the Municipal Council, where they will vote on the project to create Camellia City.

2 Between the Yes and the No A CITY D IVID ED

The voting was going to start at eight at night; at six, this narrator and Felipe Drummond, in the role of spectators, because we had been taken off the coverage, arrived at the corner of Bahia Road and Augusto de Lima Avenue, where the Municipal Chamber sat; traffic was already backed up, there was a lot of to and fro, a deafening symphony of honking horns, and the supporters of the YES and the NO were engaging each other in the middle of the customary tear gas bombs. In the fights, the supporters of the NO, almost all leftist students, got two valuable reinforcements: Maria Man-Killer and the transvestite Thin Waist, with her straight razor—two of the first to arrive; the students had the know-how to handle the tear gas, and a girl gave Maria Man-Killer a handkerchief to protect herself, saying: “You wet it with water or soda or beer, and breathe like this, you see?” and put the handkerchief over her nose. The whole city was taking part; even popular local figures ended up involved; Lambreta—a docile local crazy woman of alternating

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fits of sadness and happiness, who waited each year for the arrival of the swallows at the beginning of summer, who waited for news of Rome and of the Pope—was decked out with an enormous red NO sign on her chest and was having a great time; another street character, Coreia, had ended up with SIM, but he didn’t appear happy, having been bought off with a pair of shoes and an old suit. Militants of the Communist Youth, reinforced by students from the Nationalist Movement, made quick announcements of what was coming from soapboxes or on the streetcars that run up and down Bahia Road; at seven o’clock, all traffic was suspended on Bahia Road and the streetcars stopped; Augusto de Lima Avenue was interrupted by soldiers from the Military Police, after much booing, leaving the Municipal Chamber isolated from traffic, and they made a human corridor through which would pass the councilors and invited guests. The arrival of Father Cyr provoked both applause and boos, while the arrival of Councilor Orlando Bomfim Junior, who wasn’t well known by sight and didn’t even have a name tag identifying himself, passed without being bothered or paid homage to. At seven thirty, two radio patrol teams, with six guardsmen, got into a fight with Maria Man-Killer. They called for backup. Two more patrols came. There were lots of sirens; some tear gas bombs went off at the entrance of the Law School a block away; when the guardsmen were about to subdue Maria Man-Killer, Hilda Hurricane arrived; everything ceased: there were only looks directed at the sexual muse.

3 The Saint, the Sinner, and the Loony She was wearing a sand-colored outfit, known to the participants of Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club, and had on light blue Louis XV heels, which made her taller; she was lightly made up, she had on lipstick that matched her shoes; her hair was short and hung loose; she also wore a string of imitation pearls; when she walked, pleasing

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the world, down the human corridor formed by Military Police, and the nocturnal breeze spread the strong and sweet scent of Muguet du Bonheur around, the first reaction—which made the guardsmen forget at once Maria Man-Killer—was a silence so profound that Father Cyr rushed out of the yellow Municipal Chamber to see what was happening and even joked with Orlando Bomfim Junior: “I wonder how Marx would explain Hilda Hurricane?” After the silence, full of enchantment, came perplexity: Hilda Hurricane was more beautiful than they said; then the applause started, drowning out any attempts at booing; next came the whistles and appreciative male sounds that, strangely, made her blush; when she passed by me, at the foot of the stairs to the Municipal Chamber, still blushing and visibly embarrassed, she took my arm, surrounding me with Muguet du Bonheur, and she said: “Ya don’t go without talkin’ to me, ’kay?” With the arrival of the Saint, who Dona Lola Ventura and, I suppose, Hilda Hurricane (much less myself) didn’t expect to see there, two unusual episodes occurred: Episode 1: when, wearing his white robe and tortoiseshell glasses, he passed down the human corridor formed by the MPs and was identified, being applauded by the supporters of YES, the NO adepts booed him, soon interrupted by the timid Maria Man-Killer: “Forgive the people for their boos, sir,” and she fell to her knees at his feet, kissing his hand and marking it with her red lipstick. Episode 2: on seeing who was coming, Lambreta broke through the human chain, following the example of Maria Man-Killer, and with total liberty and intimacy, because he was her countryman, made a sweeping gesture to the Saint and took his hand too, provoking laughter when she asked him: “Uai, Saint, where’s the miracle you promised me?” And without letting go of his hand: “And Dona Nhanhá, Saint, is good?” “She’s good, Lambreta,” responded the Saint, putting his hand on her shoulder. “And you, Lambreta, how are things?” “As God and the Sainted Pope want them to be, but I’m waiting for the miracle you promised me in Santana dos Ferros.”

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“Keep hoping, Lambreta. Keep hoping that the miracle happens.” “The Sainted Pope has sent an invitation for me to go to Rome, Saint.” “Really, Lambreta?” said the Saint. “It was the sparrow Sofia who summers in Rome that brought me the invitation.” “Congratulations, Lambreta; now I have to go inside,” said the Saint.

4 Witch or Spellcaster God knows how to weave his fabrics. When the Saint got up to the council, after ascending the curving stairs of the Municipal Chamber, and smelled the Muguet du Bonheur perfume in the air, there was only one empty space, one unoccupied chair, as if it had been saved—beside Hilda Hurricane; he looked at the open seat and even made towards it, and it wasn’t the look of censure from Dona Lola Ventura that made him prefer to stand in the gallery on the right, where there were no chairs and everyone was standing; it was his fear of another headache because of Hilda Hurricane’s Muguet du Bonheur. She seemed impassive, seated in the front row, but she was biting her lips; as she told this narrator later: “I took offense to that and I bit my lip and swore: that Saint is going to pay!” The Saint remained standing, exactly where the militants of the Communist Youth and the Nationalist Movement were going to create a disturbance; they were only waiting for Councilman Álvaro Celso da Trinidade, the famous Babaró, to open the session; when Babaró rang the bell and in his unmistakable voice, which everyone was used to hearing narrate soccer games, said, “The session is open,” the student Afonso Celso Guimarães Lopes, who never

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missed a chance to give a speech, and who was carried on the shoulders of his companions from the Nationalist Movement, Aureclides Ponce de Leon and Evandro Brandão, started talking, to the general spectators: “Noble councilmen, at this moment, in which the worried and justified heart of the world transfers itself—” “Silence,” commanded Babaró, ringing the bell. “Silence!” “At this moment, in which the worried and justified heart of the world transfers itself to this esteemed chamber—” “Silence!” insisted Babaró, ringing the bell more insistently. “Silence or I will have to have the chamber cleared.” “Gentlemen of the Council,” continued Afonso Celso, “say NO, don’t let evil triumph over good! Down with Camellia City!” “Communist!” shouted Dona Lola Ventura. “Babaró, throw this communist out!” In the midst of the tumult, Babaró announced: “The session is interrupted. I will reopen it in five minutes. Any new disturbance, and I will have the chamber cleared.” During the confusion, only the Saint and the sinner remained impassive; the Saint was observing the sinner, the sinner was observing the Saint, and this narrator, with the spirit of Aunt Little Heart in his chest, was observing the Saint and the sinner; when Babaró reopened the session and the Camellia City project was on its way to a vote, starting with a speech by Father Cyr and followed by a rebuttal by Orlando Bomfim, the sinner started a game of seduction that particularly irritated the Saint; in a strategic position, even though they could only see her from the waist up, and couldn’t see her crossed legs, the sinner stared intensely at the councilors who were undecided or who, even having taken a position on YES or NO, still vacillated. They were gray eyes, which this narrator has already described; from them came, at certain times, a sense of a party in the world, they gave one the desire to sing, to laugh a crazy and happy laugh— but from them also came, when she looked on at someone as if she were blaming him for something terrible that had happened to her, for which she was suffering a lot, from them came a look of all the

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pain in the world, a silent cry for help for all the poor in the world; the councilmen chosen by the sinner couldn’t manage to free themselves from those eyes; seeing the game as it was happening over there, the Saint noted in his diary: “I don’t know if she’s a witch or a spellcaster, which ends up being the same thing. No matter, she’ll be my first miracle as a Saint.” To one indecisive councilor, Olavo Leite Bastos, the mythic Kafunga, ex-goalkeeper of Atlético during an eternity, who had already promised Dona Lola Ventura to vote YES, she sent more than a look—noted the Saint in his diary—she blew him a kiss from her hand and its long and slim fingers, from her sinful hand.

5 What Did She Say in Your Ear? When Kafunga was called upon to vote, there was a tie: seven for YES, seven for NO and already three abstentions; in the silence, the breathing of fat Babaró (he was as fat as MC) was heard by everyone, and the Saint noted in his diary: ”The obese are like cats: they purr.”

Creating suspense, Kafunga, finally, announced in the microphone: “Mr. Council President Álvaro Celso da Trinidade, I vote with the NO!” It was delirium in the galleries and in the streets, where everyone was listening over the radio; I wasn’t close to Hilda Hurricane, but she sought me out with those eyes, which now showed her child-ofthe-world side—she waved and shouted: “C’mere! C’mere!” I went over to her and she said:

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“Ya not gonna hug me?” I hugged her and she said something in my ear, a message for the Fatman MC; at the exit the Saint asked this narrator: “What did she say in your ear?” I preferred to be mysterious: “Nothing very important!” But what Hilda Hurricane said in my ear was going to unleash big and unexpected consequences: Aunt Little Heart and readers, be patient and wait.

6 News about Cinderella’s Slipper The next morning, in the house on Ceará Road, I was trying on my peg-legged pirate costume that I was going to be wearing in a few hours to Costume Night at Montanhês Dancing, when I was called to the phone by the neighbor girl; it was the Saint; could I come right away to the Dominican monastery, he had an SOS need to talk to me, on a grave and confidential subject; I caught a cab in the ABC Plaza and went—the lay brother was waiting for me at the door of the monastery, and he took me to the Saint’s rooms: the Saint opened the door and, after ushering me in, closing the door quickly and turning the key to lock it, he patted me on the shoulder and smiled— and his smile was rare; he believed that saints didn’t laugh. “I have great news.” He moved over to a bureau against the wall where there was a green package in the place where I always saw the jar of jabuticaba jelly. “You wouldn’t believe what’s in this green package,” and he laughed a laugh that was far from being happy; he never broke down laughing that I could remember. “I’m going to show you in a bit,” and he pushed his tortoiseshell glasses back up from sliding towards the tip of his nose. “Would you like some jabuticaba jelly from Dona Nhanhá?”

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“It’s going to ruin my appetite,” I answered. “I’m going to have lunch in a while.” “Good, well, you’re going to have now more complete and definitive proof of my friendship,” he went in the other room. “Wait a second.” He came back with a plate full of empanadas that his mother, Dona Nhanhá, made and that I liked a lot. “You see?” he was saying and extending the plate with the empanadas towards me. “Dona Nhanhá took advantage of someone coming to town and sent them to me. I only had to heat them up. And if I weren’t your friend, more than this, if I weren’t your brother, you wouldn’t know anything about these empanadas. They dissolve in your mouth like the host.” There were six on the plate: he took one and I grabbed two at once, which made him say: “You only have the right to one more. Let’s split the empanadas equally and, after, you’re going to be shocked by what I’m going to show you.” When he had finished eating his second empanada, he showed me the palms of his hands, where there were calluses: “You’re in front of a new hero of the working class. I worked five days as an operator in the Mannesmann factory,” and still with his hands open, “and no longer can anybody say I don’t know how the Brazilian worker lives.” He was apparently referring to what Hilda Hurricane said to him on Exorcism Night. “What’s happening with you, Saint? You trying to say that the Lantern Club is going to lose an illustrious militant?” “They’ve already lost him. Being one of them absolutely doesn’t go with being a coordinator of the YCW.” “Coordinator of the YCW?” I said. “You’re saying the Young Catholic Workers?” “Why should that shock anyone?” “Because you’ve always been conservative, on the right, and the Young Catholic Workers, at least so they say, are on the left.” “They say, but no. The Young Catholic Workers is leftist, only where you see Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev . . . and now

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Fidel Castro, the YCW sees Christ. Of course, Christ is at the heart of the Young Catholic Workers.” “Whatever, Saint, you, almost overnight, have become a leftist? A hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, no more and no less.” “Didn’t I just finish saying”—and he stopped eating the last empanada of his share—“that, following the examples of the worker-priests in France, I worked one week as an operator in Mannesmann?” “But the worker-priests in France aren’t just workers for five days. And after five days working for Mannesmann, you’ve turned to the left?” But the Saint was good-humored: “So, you’re going to the Costume Night today?” he asked. “Uai, how do you know about Costume Night?” “I’m a very well-informed person . . . I read the papers! But let’s leave this aside. You’ve seen the great proof of friendship that I’ve just given you, haven’t you?” “It’s true, I have to admit it.” “You believe then, in my friendship?” “I will believe a lot more if you go inside and bring back, at least, four more empanadas for us.” “This is culinary blackmail! But I have Christ in my heart and it doesn’t matter to me that you have Marx in yours . . . and I’m going to get six more, three for each of us.” When we finished eating the six empanadas, it was time to see what the green package on the table contained. “Come see,” he said, opening it. “I’m entrusting you with a grand secret of a life dedicated to Christ. You’re going to be shocked. Get ready.” He finished opening the package and I saw it: there was the slipper that Cinderella lost on Exorcism Night. “You aren’t surprised?” “I knew that Cinderella’s slipper was with you.” “You knew? How did you know?” “I saw her lose it and I saw you pick it up during the confusion and put it in the pocket of your robe.” “You swear?”

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“I swear.” “Do you swear on the beard of Fidel Castro?” “I do.” “And she knows that I have it?” “No,” I answered. “You didn’t tell her anything?” “No.” “You didn’t tell anyone?” “No.” “So, it’s a secret between us . . . and God, then?” “It is.” “I can trust you?” “You can.” “Thank you.” “Aren’t you going to give Cinderella her slipper back?” “No. For the time being, no.” “Have you seen the reward for the return of the shoe?” “I saw it.” “And it didn’t tempt you?” “It did. But I went to the purification house and locked myself in there.” “And what did you do there?” “I whipped myself.” “And that fixed it?” “Some.” “You’ve never really kissed a woman, have you?” “Never.” “And wouldn’t you like to know what it’s like?” “I’m dying to know. I feel a fever for it.” “And what do you do for that?” “I take an aspirin.” “And the fever passes?” “It does.” “But you’re going to keep her shoe forever?” “I don’t know.” “What do you do with it?” “I like to look at it.”

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“And that’s good?” “I think about the Earth’s poor.” “You think about what?” “About the poor of the Earth.” “My God!” “You said, ‘My God!’” “I did, but it’s just a way of talking.” “I look at her shoe and I think of the shamed and disadvantaged, of those who have no hope or anything in this world. Listen to something.” “Go ahead.” “Do you think that she, besides her body, has sold her soul to the Devil?” “Not her body, nor her soul.” “Really?” “Really.” “I want to help her find the path to Jesus.” “And if she doesn’t want that?” “I’m going to make her want it. She will be my first miracle.” “I wanna see that.” “You doubt it?” “I do.” “You’ll be the first to know.” “You . . . it seems like you . . .” “Go ahead.” “It seems like you love her.” “What do you call love?” “What a man feels for a woman and vice versa and that is better than anything and transforms us into the sanest crazy person on the face of the Earth.” “I love Christ.” “Only Christ?” “But my love for Christ spreads across everything: I love the birds, the trees, the rain, the sun, animals, and men and women.” “Do you know what a clairvoyant said to her?” “How could I know that?” the Saint lied.

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“A clairvoyant told her: ‘Hilda, to find the love of your life, you’re going to have to suffer more, a lot more than Cinderella, because your cross to bear in life is going to be life, and one night you’ll lose your favorite shoe, and he who finds it, Hilda, is going to be your enchanted prince, the only one who can get you out of the life that you’ll be living.’” “And you believe that!” he shouted. “I do,” I responded. “You’re the strangest communist who exists. The book in your head is the Bible and not Das Kapital. I, who am considered a Saint, eat meat during Lent while you only eat fish or smoked cod. Even now, you fast on Good Fridays, while I enjoy a shrimp empanada Dona Nhanhá makes. Now you’re coming to tell me that you believe in clairvoyance? It’s because of this that the Communist Party isn’t worth anything in Brazil.” “The story of the clairvoyant bugged you, eh?” “It did. What did you expect?” “I didn’t say it to bug you.” “I know.” He was more calm. “Sorry. Do you want to know the truth?” “Go ahead.” “I don’t sleep at night anymore.” “Hm.” “At night, I sit there adoring her shoe and sensing her perfume.” “Perfume?” I asked. “Perfume.” “And there’s no danger of them seeing you?” “God sees me.” “And besides God?” “I already told everything to Brother Estéban, who is my confessor.” “And what did he say?” “He said that I should go till the end of this story. So that I don’t wonder about what might have been.” “That’s a good plan.” “I look at her shoe and I love the world.” “Really?”

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“It’s the truth. But I don’t know where this is going to end.” “Stay calm.” “I’m afraid.” “But it’s not necessary to be afraid.” “I think about her night and day.” “I think sometimes that she thinks about you.” “She said something to you? Did she?” “No. But it’s exactly because she hasn’t said anything. Only once, she said, ‘And the Saint?’” “And you find this symptomatic?” “I do.” “What’s going to happen to me?” “What God wants to happen.” “And not what the Devil wants to happen?” “No.” “Why not?” “Because the Devil only does what God permits him to.” “My God, what will become of me? I think of her and I feel like singing. It seems like I’m at the door of Paradise. I’m really going to need you.” “You can count on me.” “Can I?” “You can.” “How about some more empanadas?” “Great idea, then I won’t have to eat lunch.”

7 Costume Night Aramel the Handsome came by the house on Ceará Road for the two of us to go together to Costume Night at Montanhês Dancing; he was dressed as Fidel Castro, with a fake beard, and was chewing

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a still-unlit cigar; he had traded the Karmann Ghia for a scarlet Mercedes, a sign that things were going well for our rent-a-Don-Juan. On seeing me dressed as a pirate, ready to get into the Mercedes, he sang: “I am Peg-Leg Pete, with a glass eye and face, you wouldn’t wanna meet . . .”

And showing good humor, which was normal for him, he added: “Where’s the pirate’s glass eye?” “And Fidel’s cap?” I shot back. “Fidel Castro wears a cap, eh, buddy?” “Of course he does. But let’s go—we’re running late.” I got in the back of the Mercedes with my costume that simulated a wooden leg; a Cleopatra was sitting up front. “Let me introduce you two: this is Cleopatra, this is my childhood friend, the Wooden-Legged Pirate.” “Gabriela M.,” said Cleopatra, turning back to me and offering her hand. “I already feel I know you inside out. Aramel only talks about you and the Saint.” “A pleasure, Gabriela M.,” I said and shook her hand. “And the Saint? Have you seen the Saint?” asked Fidel Castro. “I was with him today in the monastery. He’s fine.” “I don’t know,” continued Fidel Castro, looking back at me. “Something tells me the Saint is caught up in something.” “Your impression.” He tried to start the Mercedes, but it didn’t catch. “Start, little girl, start . . . I’m missing the Karmann Ghia, I . . . Start, little girl, start,” and without turning around, he asked, “Where is it we’re going to pick up this worker?” “She’s not a worker. She’s the daughter of a worker.” “It’s the same thing, buddy.” “Head for the Renaissance District. There I’ll show you where it is.”

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“Check this out, Gabi: the Wooden-Legged Pirate there is a communist, I already told you that, eh? Well, one time, he wanted to get me to join the Communist Youth. He gave me a book by Jorge Amado . . . What was the name of the book?” “The Peace of the World.” “Of course, he gave me The Peace of the World to read and wanted to recruit me, the guy who wants to be bourgeoisie, who plans to be richer than Luciano and Matarazzo combined.” “Oh, if Fidel Castro knew who was dressed as Fidel Castro,” I said. “He would die of jealousy,” laughed the Fidel at the wheel. “He doesn’t have green eyes and I do. Now, tell us the truth, Pirate: you like this worker?” “I already said that she’s not a worker.” “You see, Cleopatra? The communist gets mad when you call his girlfriend a worker.” “Cut it out, damn!” “Tell me something, Pirate, do you get a ’tariff’—’tariff’ is how you guys talk?—to date this worker?” “You’re going to see real soon if anyone needs a ’tariff’ to date this girl. So wait and quit bugging me about it!” The truth is that I and Comrade Rosa, whom I already talked about here, were dating clandestinely, without the Party knowing. After the prohibition communicated to me by Comrade Alves, one afternoon I went by the department store where she worked, to see how she was, and Comrade Rosa said: “You know what I think? We could date hidden from the Party.” “Great idea.” “Do you want that?” “I do.” “Then we’ll have to be very careful. Do we start today?” “Let’s.” “Where are we going to find a safe place?” “In São José Church.” It wasn’t far from the store. “There, no one from the Party will see us.”

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We started meeting in the São José Church whenever she left work; we got used to staying there until the blessing for eight o’clock mass, but, since we couldn’t do more than hold hands, I did a survey of the locations that Party or Communist Youth didn’t use for their “points” and I concluded that the safest place was Liberty Plaza, that was always full of “boys” because of the Security Service and Dops, which had a building close by at that time—and we moved our affair there. We didn’t just have to fool the Party, we had to fool Comrade Rosa’s father, an Italian who was very loyal to Party decisions—so much so that, on that night, when Fidel Castro drove the Mercedes towards the Renaissance District, Comrade Rosa told them at home that she was going to the dance at the workers and laborers club, which was controlled by the Party (and really was having a Carnival ball that night, too); Rosa was at a friend’s house, a few blocks from where she lived, in the Renaissance District, a working-class neighborhood, and when Fidel Castro stopped in front of the house I pointed at, after checking the address, a Jayne Mansfield left the cover of the awning and came towards us. “You see, Fidel Castro,” I mocked him. “Anyone need a tariff to date a girl like this?” “Holy mother of God,” said Fidel Castro. “Now my opinion of you has improved.” “Stop it, Aramel!” broke in Cleopatra. “Stop it, okay?” Jayne Mansfield sat beside me in the back of the Mercedes. We arrived in the Bohemian Zone and, since it was impossible to park close in, Fidel Castro left the Mercedes on Santos Dumont Avenue and we walked the rest of the way. Guaicurus Road was taken up by a huge crowd watching a parade: Black Mouth of the Forest and the Maids of Lourdes, the two most famous Carnival blocs, paraded on top of trucks, as was the custom; the imperial court, made up of King Momo and the Carnival princesses, paraded in an old car, which was no longer used by the Fire Department; it was raining confetti and streamers and the air was full of the scent of perfume. Fidel Castro presented each of us with a masquerade mask to cover our eyes.

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“Oh, if Mom could only know where I was!” said Cleopatra, putting her mask on. “And if my father realized?” said Jayne Mansfield, also putting on her mask. “I can’t even think what he would do.” “Be calm, ladies,” said Fidel Castro. “But, I tell you what. You’ve got to take your hat off to Hilda Hurricane! She put this masquerade together.” “To tell the truth,” said the Wooden-Legged Pirate, “in Belo Horizonte today, the most powerful people are the governor, the bishop, of course, the mayor, not so much, he drinks a lot, the general commanding the infantry division, the colonel leading the Military Police, and . . . Hilda Hurricane.” “Is it really like that?” Jayne Mansfield wanted to know. “It is,” confirmed Fidel Castro. “And taking out the bishop, for obvious reasons, she gets what she wants from the others.” “I don’t know if she controls the military types,” agreed the Pirate that was me, “but the rest, she runs.” “I want to meet Hilda Hurricane,” said Jayne Mansfield. “Will you introduce me to her?” “Today, I don’t know if there’ll be a chance,” said the Pirate. “Don’t forget that it’s a costume dance and no one will be easy to recognize.” “What a shame,” said Cleopatra. “But one day I want to meet her, I swear I do!” We got in the line of costumed people waiting on Guaicurus Road to go up the stairs to Montanhês Dancing; in the general jostling of the line moving forward, it was possible to see all the characters of Brazilian Carnivals: jesters, harlequins, Nero, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Czar of Russia, Marie Antoinette, Chiquita Banana, and, since it was fashionable then, various Fidel Castros. The line moved slowly, in spite of the protests of Napoleon Bonaparte, and we still hadn’t gotten to the foot of the stairs leading into Montanhês Dancing when the first notes that opened Carnival dances sounded and soon Delê’s orchestra played the first music of Costume Night, accompanied by the singer Lagoinha:

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“O your hair doesn’t deny it, Mulatta, Because you’re a mulatta by color, but as if the color doesn’t stick, Mulatta, Mulatta, I want your love.”

The ballroom of Montanhês Dancing, on a night where they wouldn’t be using any coasters, was full and well decorated. It was impossible to identify any costumed guest, much less Hilda Hurricane; the only person who wasn’t wearing a costume, only a sailor’s cap and streamers hanging down his chest, the Fatman MC, who was watching everything from a special box seat, seated in his “armored chair” that he had to have sent from Folha de Minas—he was paid homage to by the Wooden-Legged Pirate and Jayne Mansfield, and he was avoided by Fidel Castro and Cleopatra, for obvious reasons.

8 Como si Fuera la Ultima Vez Everything smelled of perfume and Montanhês Dancing was more animated with each passing moment; Delê’s orchestra was unbeatable for getting a Carnival ball jumping, mixing up old and new hits, and now they were playing a bossa nova: besides a good mix of marches and sambas, to allow the dancers some rest, they would play a bolero, permitting antithetical couples, like Fidel Castro and Cleopatra, the Czar of Russia and Marilyn Monroe, to dance cheek to cheek; it was a bolero that, later on, would allow us to see what costume Hilda Hurricane was hiding behind, and not only that: we realized that she had a boyfriend, not a conventional gigolo but a real boyfriend; but, before that bolero, no one recognized anyone and, when a Carmen Miranda, her head overloaded with fruit,

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fainted on the dance floor; as she smelled strongly of perfume, everyone shouted: “It’s Hilda Hurricane! It’s Hilda Hurricane!” It was widely known that once at a Carnival ball at Minas Tennis Club, the Girl in the Gold Bikini, costumed as a Hawaiian, danced alone on top of a table, as she liked to do, to tempt men even more it was said, and then, after being sprayed by someone’s perfume, she fainted: “It’s Hilda Hurricane!” they shouted in Montanhês Dancing, because she had fainted before. “She’s allergic to some perfumes.” “How good,” said Jayne Mansfield. “I’m going to meet her.” “Let’s get close,” shouted Fidel Castro, pulling Cleopatra. But it wasn’t Hilda Hurricane; it was, yes, surprise of surprises, the Ceremonial Chief of Liberty Palace, known for his dubious sexuality; as soon as Carmen Miranda was brought to, the whole of Montanhês Dancing laughed, because Delê’s orchestra went right into a big hit by Joel de Almeida, that the singer Lagoinha sang full of malice: “If one dresses as a Bahiana, to pretend one is a woman, you’ll see she is you’ll see she is.”

Around one in the morning, it was a round of sambas; one of the most played of the night: “If I die in the morning I won’t be sad or uncouth I did what I wanted During my youth . . .”

It was then that a Cleopatra, not she who came with Fidel Castro, another—there were many of them in the ballroom—left Hamlet dancing with a skull and went and dragged a dejected-looking

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Sheikh, to whom she began to teach dance steps, as later on the Fatman MC would tell me; he saw everything from his box; at the time, Montanhês was cooking: “I’ve loved and been loved I kissed who I really wanted if I die tomorrow morning I’ll die happy, real content.”

Cleopatra kept teaching the Sheikh, with grace and patience, and bit by bit the mysterious Sheikh loosened up; but Hamlet danced close, with the skull in his hands, and another hit of the night began to play: “I loved, I loved too much after I ended up all alone our love died but I have faith in resurrection.”

From what the Fatman MC said—he knew who Cleopatra was, he knew who Hamlet was, but he didn’t know who the Sheikh was— there was a moment when Shakespeare’s character grabbed Cleopatra’s arm; Cleopatra resisted, shoving him away, and Hamlet’s skull fell to the floor, exactly at the moment when Delê’s orchestra played a bolero that Lagoinha sang in Spanish: “Bésame, bésame mucho como si fuera esta noche la última vez . . .”

9 Pugilism in the Ballroom So, various couples started kissing each other; for example: Jayne Mansfield and the Wooden-Legged Pirate; when Hamlet was newly in possession of the skull, he saw his Cleopatra kissing the Sheikh on the mouth. “And it was Cleopatra who took the initiative,” said MC, after everything. Hamlet moved towards the Sheikh and before any of the doormen from Montanhês Dancing, who were considered the best of the city’s guardians of nightlife, could contain him, Hamlet landed a punch on the Sheikh’s left cheek. “The strange thing,” recalled MC, “was that the Sheikh didn’t show any reaction. On the contrary: I had the clear impression that he offered the other cheek for Hamlet to hit.” It was Cleopatra who came out in defense of the Sheikh—even before the doormen contained Hamlet, she slapped him; the orchestra played “Mama, I Want It” as if nothing was happening, but, suddenly, the lights at Montanhês Dancing went up, no more dance hall lights, and the orchestra stopped; Hamlet pulled the mask off of Cleopatra and everyone saw: it was Hilda Hurricane; grabbed by the doormen, Hamlet had his real face revealed: it was a fair young man, angelical, the guitarist of one of those rock bands that were becoming popular; a little older than twenty, he was Hilda Hurricane’s boyfriend; in truth, she protected him because he was the face of purity, he had the air of an angel; and since she had traded her situation as the Girl in the Gold Bikini and the myth of the Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club for the Bohemian Zone and the Hotel Marvelous, and turned into the collective passion of Belo Horizonte, Hilda Hurricane (and who hasn’t missed this fact) pursued purity.

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“Where’s the Sheikh?” shouted Hamlet, not so angelically. “Where’s that bastard?” “If you lay another hand on him again,” shouted Hilda Hurricane, also furious, “you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life!”

10 The Mystery of the Sheikh But the Sheikh had disappeared. “I had the impression that he had evaporated into thin air,” said the Fatman MC. “As if he were made of smoke.” His adrenaline and anger gone, Hamlet burst into tears; Hilda Hurricane put her mask on again and, as Cleopatra, ordered: “Maestro, music!” Again, the dance hall lights took over, and Delê’s orchestra and the singer Lagoinha, in one of the best moments of the night, played an unforgettable samba while Hilda Hurricane danced alone: “You’re not my love anymore because you only whine about the government the new one in your place is kind.”

The Costume Night went until five in the morning, when Fidel Castro and Cleopatra, the Wooden-Legged Pirate and Jayne Mansfield left Montanhês Dancing, got in the scarlet Mercedes, and went to see the sun come up from the shores of Pampulha Lake; but some questions and mysteries went along with the four: “So, in the end, what was the real identity of the Sheikh?” “Why, having been punched on the left cheek, did he offer the other for Hamlet to hit?” “What would make him react so biblically?”

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“Why would he disappear like that, during the confusion, as if he feared being identified?” “Why didn’t the Sheikh want to be identified?” “Who was he anyway? A major political figure, some husband who couldn’t afford to be identified?” “In the end, who was he?”

11 My Own Suspicions I tried to talk to the Saint two days after the Costume Night, when my hearing had come back; I went once to the Dominican monastery and the lay brother said that he wasn’t there; I came back a second time and he said: “Brother Malthus went away.” “Where to, brother?” “Rio de Janeiro.” “And what was he going to do there, brother?” “He was going to take a vow of poverty.” “A vow of poverty, brother?” “He’s going to live seven days and seven nights in a favela.” I perceived that the lay brother knew more: “Brother Malthus hasn’t improved from his crisis, brother?” “I’m sorry to say, no. He’s gone a lot to the purification house, and I can sadly say that Brother Malthus has gotten excessive there.” “Excessive how, brother?” “On the last night he was there, he flagellated himself so much that he ended up with two bruises on his face.” “Two bruises on his face? Explain that to me, brother.” “There isn’t any better way to explain it: two bruises, one on each side of his face.” I didn’t say anything about what the lay brother had to say to Aramel the Handsome nor to anyone—only now I make these

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revelations. When he returned from Rio de Janeiro, ten days later, there were no more signs of bruises on Brother Malthus’s face: he was bronzed from the sun, and we didn’t talk about Costume Night. He spoke with great enthusiasm about his time among the slum dwellers in Rio de Janeiro and of his encounters with Dom Hélder Câmara, the then auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro. “My Church, now, continues being Christ’s Church, according to everything Dom Hélder Câmara told me.” His enthusiasm grew when he spoke of the Young Boys’ Choir of God, which he had founded, and that he was the maestro of; they were finally going to debut. “We’re going to give a short open-air concert on Oiapoque Avenue, which, as you know, is in the territory of the Bohemian Zone. It was a suggestion of Brother Martin: it will be an homage to the creatures of God who live outside of God’s grace there.” Even though the crowd wasn’t large, the Young Boys’ Choir of God’s concert, with Brother Malthus as its maestro, it was marvelous and had only two songs; the “Ave Maria” of Franz Schubert, sung in German, opened the concert: “Ave Maria! Jungfrau mild erhore einer Jungfrau Flehen aus diesem Felsen starr und wild soll mein Gebet zu dir hin wehem Wir schlafen bis zum Morgen ob Menschen noch so grausan sind . . .”

At this point, Hilda Hurricane appeared on Oiapoque Avenue; the second selection of concert was “Panis angelicus”: “Panis angelicus, fit panis hominum dat panis coelicus figuris terminum . . .”

Then Hilda Hurricane, wearing the same sand-colored ensemble as the night of the vote on the Camellia City project in the Municipal Council, got up on stage, barefoot, and sang:

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”O res mirabilis manducat Dominum pauper, pauper servus et humilis . . .”

And she continued singing with the Young Boys’ Choir of God, with Brother Malthus conducting: it brought tears to your eyes; but Brother Malthus remained impassive, because, as he said to me after the concert, when I accompanied him back to the Dominican monastery, he had decided, during his time with the favela-dwellers in Rio de Janeiro: “My place is in Christ’s Church and beside Dom Hélder Câmara.” Will our Saint be able to maintain his decision?

Four

1 The Marked Man It’s time for secret agent Nelson Sarmento, who appeared at the beginning of the first chapter, to return to the narrative; as has been said, I left Folha de Minas and went to work at the weekly paper Binômio. At the beginning, when Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo founded it, it seemed like a student’s joke: the name came from the ridiculous political platform of Juscelino Kubitschek, the thengovernor of Minas Gerais; as a humorous tabloid, Binômio caused an uproar with its malicious and scandalous headlines, which were based in truth and wordplay. Another reason for the success of Binômio was that for the first time, the controversial and untouchable figure of the ex-banker and Don Juan, Mr. Antônio Luciano, who up to now is the villain of our tale, showed up in the pages of a newspaper. One front-page cartoon showed a line of girls going into the Financial Hotel, our villain’s lair, with empty hands and, in the second panel, coming out carrying babies in their arms. For each joke and, later, when it became a serious publication, for each story, Antônio Luciano filed suit against Binômio, and just one reporter, Dídimo Paiva, collected seventeen such charges. During the time, a Carnival march, recorded by Leo Villar, exmember of the famous group Angels of Hell, made an obvious allusion to Antônio Luciano and helped to create the reputation of the Binômio reporter, which I would also become: “You did your thing you looked to the sky and didn’t see the moon it was dark and no one saw you but a reporter from Binômio

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discovered it and published it then you got mad.”

And the refrain repeated: “Discovered it and published it then you got mad.”

When I went to work at Binômio, two dreams were responsible for the crossfire that stirred my heart—one, to find, at an uncertain and unknown location in Brazil, my Sierra Maestra, where I would become a guerrilla; the other, to conquer once and for all the girl who, here, will be known only as the Beautiful B, and who was in love with God and the world and held me in disdain. The two projects kept me awake—tossing and turning in my bed, in the house on Ceará Road; two fantasies brightened my insomnia: in one of them, speaking to a huge throng in Station Plaza, the place for big demonstrations in Belo Horizonte, I, the victorious guerrilla commander, asked Camilo Cienfuegos: “How am I doing, Camilo?” And Camilo Cienfuegos responded to me as he had responded to Fidel: “You’re doing well, Roberto.” In the other fantasy, I convinced the Beautiful B to leave her engagement to live not with a guerrilla in the Brazilian Sierra Maestra but rather with the reporter from Binômio. During this time, when the bossa nova was becoming popular, I had a type of hymn that helped me hold out hope to win the Beautiful B: “Chega de saudades,” by Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Morães, which João Gilberto sang various versions of: “Arrive longing the reality is that without her, there’s no peace, there’s no beauty there’s only sadness

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melancholy that doesn’t leave me doesn’t leave. But, if she comes back what a pretty thing, what a special thing then there’ll be thousands of hugs and little kisses and caresses without end it’s almost over this business of her living far from me.”

I return to Sarmento: he frequented, as we’ve said, locales preferred by the leftists, such as the Café Pérola, the open area in front of the Rex Bookstore, the Bandejão, a café under Cine Brazil; Sarmento dared to try spying in the celebrated Mocó da Iaiá, but the bartender kicked him out: “Not here, Sarmento. Keep it outside,” shouted Euro Arantes, an elected state deputy as well. “The Mocó da Iaiá is a free zone of the Americas.” Never again did Sarmento dare to enter the Mocó da Iaiá, but in the other temples of the left, there he was, with his key ring spinning on his finger and a hunter’s heart. In the student assemblies, Sarmento, who stood out, brought along an entourage of dubious figures who reeked of naphtha and tried, each time with less success, to influence student demonstrations. At that time, I lived a Kafka-like story with Sarmento as a character: Comrade Rosa and I continued dating clandestinely, hidden from the Party, and we discovered that the safest thing to do was see each other in movie theaters; we would buy our tickets, go in, and stay there kissing and hugging, my avid hands seeking out her Jayne Mansfield–like breasts; we had the smarts to avoid political or art films, those so loved by the militants of the Party. For example, the Art Palace was out of consideration for any plans, and we determined that the safest theater, of those downtown, was the Brazil, on Plaza Seven, which showed the most popular films, pro-USA ones, that the comrades from the Party, naturally, detested. One night,

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when the lights went up and Comrade Rosa and I were leaving, a ghost crossed in front of us: it was Sarmento; he hissed, showing that he was a well-informed secret agent: “Let the Party find out that you’re both here kissing and hugging in the Brazil, disobeying the orders of the directors!”

2 Invoking Kafka Again (We’d already forgotten the Kafka-like episode in the Brazil when, some days later, Comrade Rosa and I were invited to a Party meeting so secret that one night we got in a car driven by a doctor—who I’ll call here only the Doctor, with whom I had consulted various times about my hypochondria—who picked us up on Afonso Pena Avenue, in front of the offices of the People’s Journal and ordered us: “Now, close your eyes, comrades.” There was in the front seat a comrade whom I had never seen before who watched us to make sure we kept our eyes shut; the Doctor started taking interminable detours through the city; finally, when the sounds of the city [cars passing, horns, etc.] faded away, the Doctor stopped the car and we had permission to open our eyes; we went into a chalet with banana trees out front and we heard train whistles off in the distance; then we discovered the reason for so much secrecy: the meeting that Comrade Rosa and I were going to participate in would have the “assistance,” that is to say the leadership, in Party slang, of a myth: Comrade Rocha, the famous Little Red who inspired the character Ruivo, a character from the novel The Cellars of Freedom by Jorge Amado. The Ruivo, or Little Red, who found himself in Belo Horizonte more than anything because the climate was good for his lungs, wore a khaki linen suit and tortoiseshell glasses with dark lenses, and broke matchsticks ceaselessly while seated at the head of the table. We were going to find that out; the meeting opened tensely, with

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Little Red busy with matchsticks, the Doctor very serious, while the comrade who had come in the front seat scribbled on a paper; Comrade Zora, of whom I’ve already spoken before, was also there and invited Comrade Perdiz, one of the so-called “worker-leaders” of the Party, to open the meeting: Comrade Rosa and I were accused not only, as Comrade Perdiz said, pounding the table once, of: “fatally wounding Party discipline, by ignoring a decision of the Party and dating clandestinely. “The two comrades, contaminated by petit-bourgeois morals who insist on defying the morals of the working class, were seen kissing and hugging in a theater popular with the working class, the Brazil.” He pounded the table twice more and continued: “As if that weren’t enough, Comrade Lima and Comrade Rosa, again wounding communist morals, were seen costumed, him as a Wooden-Legged Pirate, her as Jayne Mansfield, in Montanhês Dancing, which is a symbol of bourgeois immorality, fraternizing with a representative in whom exists the worst of capitalism, the prostitute known by her pseudonym Hilda Hurricane.” Three more pounds on the table, and Comrade Perdiz exploded: “Do Comrade Lima and Comrade Rosa have anything to say in their own defense?” “Hold it now,” protested Comrade Rosa. “What are you going to do with us?” Silence: in the distance, a train whistled. Comrade Rosa went on, “Dating clandestinely, sure, but how does this hurt the working class? Does it increase what’s most important, Comrade Perdiz? Does it increase the exploitation of one person by another?” I tried to kick Comrade Rosa under the table so that she’d take a less abusive tone in how she was responding. “We went to the Brazil, it’s true. We didn’t do anything embarrassing, Comrade Perdiz. Do you think that Comrade Lenin never kissed Comrade Krupiskaya? Do you?” “Comrade Rosa, you no longer have the floor,” said Comrade Perdiz.

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“No,” disagreed Comrade Zora, who at that time was dating Comrade Alves. “Comrade Rosa has the right to speak and defend herself!” Everyone looked at Comrade Little Red: he continued breaking matchsticks, having already made a small mound of broken ones; since he didn’t even look at us, it meant that he supported the intervention of Comrade Zora. “We went to Costume Night at Montanhês Dancing, yes,” continued Comrade Rosa. “So what, Comrade Perdiz? Did we betray someone? Denounce someone? Eh, comrade?” Pointing at me, she said, “Comrade Lima and I are companions dedicated to the Party and to Communist Youth. I don’t accept the accusations.” Again, we all looked at Comrade Little Red: he continued with his task of breaking matchsticks. “Comrade Lima,” said Comrade Perdiz, without hitting the table, “do you have anything to say in your defense?” “I make my words those of Comrade Rosa,” I answered. “She’s said everything I could say.” Everyone looked at Comrade Little Red; he took a second box of matches from his pocket and continued breaking matchsticks. “What I propose, comrades,” said Comrade Perdiz, without pounding on the table, “is the following: in the name of communist morals and of Party discipline, that Comrades Lima and Rosa get married here, in front of the highest Party authority in Minas, since there are three members of the secretariat here.” “Get married?” shot out Comrade Rosa. “I would even like to marry Comrade Lima. But not like this, Comrade Perdiz. Like this, not even if it meant death, comrade! Even if it meant death!” And, surprising everyone, she continued: “I don’t even know if Comrade Lima loves me. To me, he doesn’t even love me. So, know this: there won’t be any wedding today.” “And Comrade Lima, what do you say?” Comrade Perdiz asked. “I agree with Comrade Rosa,” I said. Comrade Perdiz said, “Well, my proposal then is the following: either Comrades Lima and Rosa get married to fix what they did or they be excluded from all activities of the Party or Communist Youth.”

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“Let me put my oar in again,” said Comrade Zora. “I think this is a big and sad misunderstanding. It’s a given that Comrades Lima and Rosa were having a hidden relationship. But they didn’t betray the Party, nor the working class, nor the communist movement.” “What does the comrade propose then?” asked Comrade Perdiz calmly. She looked both ways, then at all of us, she looked at the second mound of matchsticks that Comrade Little Red was making, and she said: “That bygones be bygones, and as long as they stay loyal to the Party and to Communist Youth like they have been, Comrade Lima and Comrade Rosa do what they want with their lives.” Everyone looked towards Comrade Little Red: he was now comparing the height of the two mounds of matchsticks; the one on the right was a little smaller, and he broke a few more matchsticks to make them even; then he looked at us all and said: “Good, comrades, let bygones be bygones!” After that night, since it was no longer a clandestine thing, my relationship cooled off, and I returned to thinking about the Beautiful B.)

3 In My Police File Many years after these events happened, I got access to my police file that Dops had put together on me and managed to read the dossier on me, elaborated mostly from the reports of Nelson Sarmento; I discovered why he thought ill of me for a time, and used his drawing talents to portray me in his notebooks; the drawings were annexed to my Dops file—Sarmento was trying to discover the cause for a light that I had in my eyes and made exactly twelve drawings of me; he wrote down:

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“. . . there’s a strange and suspicious light shining in his eyes; it’s a febrile shine: if it weren’t for the annexed drawings, I’d say he was tubercular; taking that away, what else do we have? It’s known that he has a great love, a blinding love, a veritable idee fixe for the Beautiful B, whose farmer father prohibits her from loving him because of his communist ideas; it’s quite true, from what I’ve been able to find out, that the Beautiful B loves him, without mentioning the couple of boyfriends that she had or has (she’s seeing someone now). Is it possible that this febrile shine in his eyes is from having discovered that the Beautiful B loves him? No, on the contrary, he has a lot of doubts in that respect and because of this he changes girls so much and is always looking for passion (this is his weakness, which we should explore). If his eyes don’t shine from fever nor from love, this light that he carries in his eyes can only be related to clandestine political activity; that makes him a suspect of belonging to the recently formed Fidel-Guevara Movement, whose mission is to start a guerrilla war in Brazil by creating a Sierra Maestra in Minas; this is the path that this agent will start to investigate . . .”

In truth, as we will see, Sarmento did his investigations and realized how to exploit, to the benefit of his spy service, my weakness for women; I’d say he was diabolical, but we’ll wait for that. In other reports from those years, Sarmento saw ghosts, as you can see in the notes from the part of my dossier that deals with Hilda Hurricane: “. . . they are very suspicious and deserve meticulous investigation, his constant visits to Room 304 in the Hotel Marvelous, during intentionally unusual hours, so as not to awake suspicions; for example: at two pm every Tuesday, the door to Room 304 almost always remains open, making it possible to smell Hilda Hurricane’s Muguet du Bonheur perfume from the hall; according to revelations by the doorman, who is our informant, never do the subject of the investigation and Hilda Hurricane have sexual relations; almost always they chat and use a front to do so: they play checkers, which is the grand vice of Hilda Hurricane since the times of

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the Girl in the Gold Bikini; many times, they play checkers until four o’clock, when one of the colonels who’s fighting for Hilda Hurricane (the cocoa grower from Ilheus and the beef rancher from the interior) comes by; it’s suspicious that the Brazilian Communist Party was very critical of itself for despising prostitutes, which it should consider an integral part of the lumpenproletariat, and now they want to recruit Hilda Hurricane, have her as a sympathizer or an innocent tool at their service; another suspicion: Hilda Hurricane is a very romantic woman and could be financing the FidelGuevara Movement, or FGM; craziness in her heart isn’t something the so-called Cinderella who lacks Grace lacks; she could be, if she wanted to, the wife of a powerful banker, and not the sex symbol for the city . . .”

In his suspicions about Hilda Hurricane, Nelson Sarmento was entirely wrong, as I’m going to show next.

4 The Hour of Sherlock or Investigating Hilda Hurricane Before I reveal the circumstances by which I went to work at Binômio, I’ll talk about the afternoon, right after the Exorcism Night, which the readers must remember, during which I interviewed Hilda Hurricane about Cinderella’s slipper, which she had lost; she served me a soda after the interview, and we talked about the events of the night before; she manifested the happiness of a teenager and hopped with contentment; after a while, she said: “And the Saint, eh?” And laughing, “Poor Saint.” Later, she picked up the newspapers spread out on her bed: she was happy because in all of them, besides looking beautiful in the photos, with her wet hair, she was the target of great sympathy.

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“Ya see, what a beauty!” And picking up a Parker pen and the coverage of Folha de Minas, she said, “Now you’re gonna gimme an autograph here. Make a dedication to Hilda Gualtieri, you hear, I wanna pretty dedication to remember that night.” I remember writing, with a bit of a trembling hand: “To Hilda Gualtieri, as a souvenir of an unforgettable night when, like a star, you lit up what had been dark. In the hope of one day writing a novel about you, a friendly hug, your friend, Roberto Drummond.” “Beautiful,” she said, her voice even rougher, and kissed me on the forehead. “Uai, ya wanna be a writer then?” “I do,” I confessed. “Well, my life’d be a novel. I’ll even make a deal with ya.” “What is it?” I asked. “That ya write in the dedication that you’re my friend, eh?” and without waiting for an answer, “That’d make me happy, because since I left the outside world for Guaicurus Road, I’ve lost all my friends, I’ve lost them all. My best friend makes like she doesn’t see me, turns away when she runs into me on the street. Ya know how that hurts? So, I would be real happy to be called your friend.” She drank off some soda. “I propose the following,” she continued. “One day, I’ll tell you my life. Ya gonna see that it’s enough for a novel, and ya gonna be big like Jorge Amado, I swear. But there’s a deal with it.” “What deal, Hilda?” I asked. “Wait for it, kid. Drink a little more soda. One day, I’ll tell you everything about my life.” “Will you tell me why you came here, Hilda? You didn’t have to come and you came.” “I will. It’s a sad and beautiful story,” and at this point she crossed herself. “A pretty story. But there’s a deal, that if ya accept it, is going to leave me happy and satisfied.” “What is the deal, Hilda?” “We’ll be friends: me, Hilda, you, Roberto.” “Yes . . . and then?” “For this, I want to feel at ease and certain, very certain, that never, at any time, can ya come here for me as a woman, know

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what I mean? That ya never come for that. With the rest of the world, I’m only doing penance, until one day that I don’t see being too far off, but with you, no, for the love of God, no. Can I trust ya in that, Roberto?” “You can, Hilda,” I said. “Then shake this hand here. Friends, eh?” “Friends.” (Questions that I didn’t manage to answer and that stuck with me after I left Hilda Hurricane’s Room 304 and was walking down Guaicurus Road to Curitiba Road, where Folha de Minas was, with a quick stop at Café Palhares for a coffee: —Why did Hilda Hurricane, only once, in almost two hours of conversation, mention Brother Malthus? —Why, even then, did she refer to him as the Saint? —Why did she sound so ironic when she said, “and the Saint, eh?” —What did she mean to say by saying, “poor Saint”? —Why did she cross herself after referring to the story of her life? —On saying, “I’m only doing penance, until one day that I don’t see being too far off,” did she reveal a thread of the mystery of her life?)

No, no, don’t think that one time Hilda Hurricane answered the key question to unravel the mystery of her going to the Bohemian Zone; she always avoided it charmingly, even though I always wanted to know the truth: “Someday, when ya least expect it, I’ll tell ya everything.” When I was invited to work at Binômio, Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo took me to a room in the main office whose door they could lock, so that no one could overhear us; my first mission with Binômio would be as a reporter, but with a fascinating theme: “You’re going to have to be a sherlock,” said José Maria Rabelo. “A Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, you choose, according to your preference.” “And have no doubt,” broke in Euro Arantes, lowering his big voice. “You’re going to get a national reporting prize for this.”

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“And after,” continued José Maria Rabelo, “you could even write a novel.” “But, in the end, what reporting am I going to be doing?” I asked, between timid and curious. “You’re going to do a series of six reports here at Binômio on Hilda Hurricane,” said José Maria Rabelo. “I already have the title of the series: “Hilda Hurricane: The Mystery of the Girl in the Gold Bikini.” “The key to the reporting,” said Euro Arantes, “is your putting an end to the enigma of Hilda Hurricane: why, in the end, instead of marrying an all-powerful banker, did she prefer to go to Guaicurus Road?” “You’re going to have to be a sherlock,” José Maria Rabelo insisted. “It’s a job for a real sherlock; if I had time, I’d do the series myself.”

5 Fidel’s Things It happened that—and it was from here that, from the facts that you will see, my life really changed—pressured by the Governor Bias Fortes, the owner of Diário de Minas, Otacílio Negrão de Lima announced to Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo that he couldn’t print Binômio anymore. The solution was to stop printing it in tabloid format, but rather go to the format of a full paper, printed in the offices of Diário de Notícias, in Rio de Janeiro. It was the time of a revolution in journalism, begun at the Jornal do Brasil by Odylo Costa Filho, in Rio de Janeiro. What died, in the manner of a firing squad, was the wax nose, that type of beginning blah-blah-blah that all news stories began with, and what was born (even though the Diário Carioca and the Tribuna Imprensa had already adopted them earlier) was the era of the lead: the who what when where why and how—questions that all reporters should ask. The Brazilian press gained a new myth: the copy editor’s desk

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at Jornal do Brasil, with which, years later, the playwright Nelson Rodrigues would fight in his column in Globo. Everyone began to cultivate the lead or the sub-lead, and Dauro Mendes would go on weekends to Rio de Janeiro to accompany Binômio’s print to the offices of Diário de Notícias; on Monday, he would return, boiling with ideas that Wilson Figueiredo, a native of Minas, a transplant and a powerful man at Jornal do Brasil, had told him. During this time, I began to classify people into two categories: 1—those who liked Fidel and were always good and pure and idealistic; 2—those who knew how to write leads and sub-leads. Outside of Fidel and the lead and the sub-lead, there wasn’t any truth; as radical as us, the young followers of the Cuban Revolution and the revolution in journalism, a certain Monzeca (that “a certain” was one of my favorite reflexive signatures), who handwrote his editorials of the traditional Estado de Minas, using an old Parker 51 pen, reacted against the winds of change, saying, from the office at Goiás Road, #36: “This story of the lead and the sub-lead is a communist thing.” Speaking of that, Guy de Alameida, who supported both the Cuban Revolution and the revolution in journalism, and was one of us, had been to Cuba and came back singing a song that said: “If Fidel’s things are things of the communist then put me on the list then put me on the list . . .”

During these sweet times, Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo brought from Rio de Janeiro popes of modern journalism (Wilson Figueiredo, Jânio de Freitas, Araújo Netto, all of them from the Jornal do Brasil) to give us lessons. How could anyone forget Jânio de Freitas, young and thin, wearing a suit and tie, redirecting our admiring eyes (those of Dauro Mendes, of Ponce de Leon, and mine) to the reporting on “The Red-Flower Crime”? How could anyone forget the emotional nature of waiting for the arrival of A Tribuna da

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Imprensa in its new phase, which had an ephemeral duration, with the soccer chronicler Armando Nogueira? Finally, Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo ended up contracting as a chief editor a strange person. He called himself Pedro-Paulo, but this didn’t mean anything; he always wore a gray suit, with a white shirt and a black tie, and black shoes as well, with a twice-shaven face, and short hair, parted from the left (his only concession to the dominant ideology of the editorial office); I don’t remember seeing him smile, nor his full name. But here and now I see him, electric and tyrannic (but how much do I owe you, Pedro-Paulo?). He had one religion: the lead and the sub-lead. He was like the overseer to whom Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo had given a strong hand, full powers. One of our most innocent pleasures was to go down for a coffee or eat an empanada in the Mocó da Iaiá. One afternoon, at that time, the reporter Dídimo Paiva went down to have a coffee; he went down without arousing suspicions; he left his coat hanging on the back of his chair, a cigarette pack in its pocket, the paper in the typewriter with the incomplete sentence: “Mr. Antônio Luciano, the user and abuser of incautious young girls . . .”—and he never came back. There was his blazer, like a warning; so Pedro-Paulo decided to lock us in the editorial offices. Nobody came in, nobody left, while he was clapping his hands and marching back and forth, shouting: “Make the lead, gentlemen! Make the lead!” We could only leave, the young reporters under his command, to go to the bathroom or to get a drink after having written the lead. I remember the glorious afternoon that I wrote my first lead. PedroPaulo grabbed it, in his fingertips, and lauded my raw material and left the eighth floor of the Pirapetinga Building, which Binômio occupied, announcing the good news: “Roberto wrote a lead! Roberto wrote a lead!” (Oh, what ever happened to you, Pedro-Paulo? How I hated you, Pedro-Paulo, and, since then, now, what tenderness I feel for you, you who helped me so much. The last news I had of you, PedroPaulo, said you had bought a truck and were earning your money on the road. One afternoon, desperate because business was going

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bad, you took out a .38 and fired five shots into the engine while shouting: “Bitch! Traitorous bitch! You didn’t bring in what you should have! Bitch!”)

6 Trust Me, Hercule Poirot At that time, Binômio had a press run of around thirty thousand, fought for every Monday at the newsstands; the readership of each issue was four people, so one hundred and twenty thousand, and the newspaper generated a lot of word of mouth, creating a lot of repercussions, since our readership came from every point on the political spectrum. All this above so that you’ll have some idea of my responsibility in regards to the reporting on Hilda Hurricane: Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo hoped to double the circulation of Binômio during the six weeks that the series would last. “We’re going to set off a whole new kind of coverage,” said José Maria Rabelo, standing, shadowboxing, as if he had trained for real boxing, like what ended up happening. “Pay attention: there aren’t any better ingredients to attract readers other than sex: women, beauty, and mystery. The Hilda Hurricane story brings them all together.” We made a list with everything that I should find out, starting with her birth, her childhood, and the adolescence of Hilda Hurricane until the day of April 1, 1959, when she stopped being the Girl in the Gold Bikini in order to go to the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte; and I was supposed to, with each story, leave certain things up in the air, unresolved, talking about my suspicions, and investigating all of them in a way that would grab the readers and make them want to read more. “A big reporting prize is certain—if we were in the U.S., it would be a Pulitzer,” Euro Arantes would say. “The theme is too good and

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the way that you’re going to use it to narrate is entirely new for Brazilian media—no, even worldwide.” It was then that José Maria Rabelo took something small, the size of a lighter, out of his desk drawer and said: “This is your weapon, Sherlock Holmes. A Japanese camera, a Minolta, that’ll even take pictures in the dark. Even the photos about Hilda Hurricane for your stories will have a touch of mystery to them.” I started then following a routine, invoking Hercule Poirot, whom I preferred to Sherlock Holmes, trying to do what Agatha Christie’s detective would do if he were in my place. I was under pressure: I knew that my luck at Binômio and, in a certain way, in real journalism, depended on Hilda Hurricane, mostly if I managed to unravel her mystery and respond to the question: “Why did the Girl in the Gold Bikini leave everything to go to the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte?” From what I know about Hercule Poirot, before starting the investigation, he would have gone to Hilda Hurricane to have a frank conversation, even on the chance he hadn’t discounted that she herself would be ready to tell the truth, as she had promised this narrator. That’s what I did: I found Hilda Hurricane, and she said: “I’ll give ya my word: on the First of April 1964 I’ll tell ya everything, the truth.” “But I can’t wait until then, Hilda. My career as a journalist is in play here.” “I’ll let ya investigate to your heart’s content. But pass by me anything that ya find out.” “But that’s censorship. You don’t tell me anything and you still want to censor what I find out about you?” “I promise I won’t censor anything. It’s only feminine curiosity.” We agreed then that every Tuesday afternoon, I’d go to Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous to recount the results of my investigations into Hilda Hurricane. We pretended to play checkers while I was telling her everything; she listened without making any commentaries, and I tried to discover, by her reactions, if I was on the right or wrong track; in general, her physiognomy didn’t show any reaction,

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not even when I went to Barbacena, where her mother and father went to live out of disgust with their daughter’s decision, which surprised them, naturally, more than anyone else in Belo Horizonte. I went to meet them in a suburban house in Barbacena; they made a living from roses that they planted and that were considered the most beautiful roses that had ever existed; I went ready to talk about, as would Hercule Poirot, the mystery of roses. How, at the end of the day, had they managed to grow such a beautiful rose? They were explaining, in voices charged with accents, his was German, hers was Italian; they were trying to find a pure rose that everyone could inspect, and the more that people looked, they would be unable to find any imperfections. When they talked about the pure rose in the living room of the house in Barbacena, I saw on the wall a photo of the two of them appearing beside the Girl in the Gold Bikini; the photo must have been taken a bit before she went to the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte. “Tell me, Hercule Poirot,” I asked myself. “What should I do now?” It was as if the voice of Hercule Poirot answered in a heavily accented French voice: “Get up and go look at the photo from up close.”

7 On the Purity of the Rose When I got up to look at the photo, Hilda’s mom blocked my path and nervously said, with her Italian accent: “You didn’t come here for the roses?” “Not only them,” I managed to get out, believing that Hercule Poirot would be damning me for my innocence. “I also came because of your daughter Hilda.”

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“Let’s talk about roses,” said Hilda’s mom, when I returned to my chair. “We’ve already failed our daughter. We wanted her to be pure as a rose. But look”—and Hilda’s mother held out the rose she had in her hands—“Answer: have you ever seen such purity in a rose?” On hearing my report on this last scene, while, for effect, we played checkers on Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous, Hilda Hurricane was very moved; she walked about with her walk that messed with men so much: she went back and forth, saying: “That bitch! That bitch! That’s what she said? Poor thing! Poor little thing!”

8 Ask Freud On the following Tuesday, I brought Hilda Hurricane three photos of her parents, which I took using my Minolta, without them knowing they were being photographed. “These are for me? You said I can keep them, you said so.” “I brought them for you, Hilda.” “Wow, how Mom has aged! Dad, not so much. Look: these wrinkles near her eyes, Mom didn’t have these before.” Continuing my investigations, inspired by Hercule Poirot, I made an appointment with the powerful banker who did everything to marry the Girl in the Gold Bikini, which she refused, and some days later, she went to the Bohemian Zone. He asked that his name be left out, a promise that I’m fulfilling now, and when I asked, in his opinion, why the Girl in the Gold Bikini had gone to the Bohemian Zone, he answered: “You shouldn’t ask me; you should ask Freud.” “Why Freud?” “Because what she’s doing is in the interior of the soul. You wanna know? She can’t coexist with happiness. When she was happy, it made her sick. She was always mystic and religious. Oh, what I

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would have given to marry her. I wasn’t trying to buy her, no. I’d give her even the moon, if I were able. I told her: ‘Marry me, that your wedding present will be an apartment in New York.’” On hearing what I have just finished saying, Hilda Hurricane lit a cigarette and paced back and forth in Room 304: she smoked and didn’t say anything.

9 Nothing Besides a Rose I imagined that Hercule Poirot would tell the banker the anecdote of the pure rose that Hilda Hurricane’s parents were trying to find; that was what I did; he lost his serenity and exploded: “Don’t compare her to a rose! It’s an insult to the rose. She’s diabolical. When I asked her to marry me, I offered her an apartment on Atlantic Avenue in Rio de Janeiro, besides one in New York. You know what she answered? That she would tell me her answer on April 1, 1959.” As the readers know, the first of April 1959 was the day that the Girl in the Gold Bikini turned into Hilda Hurricane and started keeping people in the city awake at night.

10 Following Other Clues The days were going by, Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo were giving off signals of impatience, and I already had in my hands good facts about the life of Hilda Hurricane, but I didn’t have the main one: the answer to the mystery that captivated the city more than, for example, knowing who killed the millionaire Aziz Abdi, found

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dead during that time in his palace on Olegário Maciel Avenue. So I played two critical cards: I went to talk to the psychoanalyst Hélio Pellegrino and to Father Agnaldo, both of whom I mentioned, I think, in the first section of this book; José Maria Rabelo called Hélio Pellegrino, because they had been in the Socialist Party together in Belo Horizonte, and I went to Rio de Janeiro to interview him; it was a Monday afternoon, the day on which no one knew what Hilda Hurricane did, and when I went into Hélio Pellegrino’s consulting office, I could smell Muguet du Bonheur in the air; I almost asked: “Has Hilda Hurricane been here?” But Hercule Poirot would never ask that question, and I shut up; Hélio Pellegrino was, initially, very friendly and, to my irritation, asked the questions of me that everyone did: was I related to the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade? Was I related to that Miss Minas Gerais, Glorinha Drummond, who had just married the columnist Ibrahim Sued? Only after that did he confirm it: yes, the Girl in the Gold Bikini was his client, she underwent analysis in Belo Horizonte, but he couldn’t tell me much about it because of professional ethics, beyond saying that, as much at that time as in the present, he held her “in very high esteem,” and he added: “Absolutely, I don’t judge her.” There was in the office a strong smell of Muguet du Bonheur; with my Hercule Poirot’s eyes, I noticed that the consulting office had two exits, and I thought: Hilda Hurricane comes to Rio de Janeiro every Monday to undergo psychoanalysis, and she had just left; I asked: “Is Hilda Hurricane still a client, sir, Dr. Hélio Pellegrino?” “If she were still my client, I wouldn’t tell anyone.” And giving the sign that the interview was over, he stood up; as if it were a better way to end my questions, he said: “It must be a hard task to be Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s cousin, eh?” I answered like a naughty child: “Not at all! Hard is being a stevedore and loading the ships with coffee down in Santos.”

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I left Dr. Hélio Pellegrino certain that Hilda Hurricane was still his patient, which José Maria Rabelo agreed with, in his Sherlock Holmes persona; I changed to another trail: Father Agnaldo, Hilda Hurricane’s confessor during the time that the Girl in the Gold Bikini was creating such a hit at Minas Tennis Club.

11 A Vague Perfume As if I were Hercule Poirot and he, José Maria Rabelo, were Sherlock Holmes, we balanced each other in regards to the clues that could take us to the solution to the mystery of the Girl in the Gold Bikini: listen, at that level, there was a remote possibility, much talked about in Belo Horizonte, that Hilda Hurricane had gone to the Hotel Marvelous because of the financial failure of her father; it wasn’t true—her father hadn’t failed: when he and his wife had gone to Barbacena, fleeing the scandal of their daughter having gone to the Bohemian Zone, they only rented out, which I verified, the house that they had at the confluence of the Lourdes and San Antônio districts. They could have sold it if their German restaurant was getting them into financial trouble; on the other hand, and I think that Aunt Little Heart and the readers have to agree with me, if the Girl in the Gold Bikini was wanting to resolve her parents’ financial troubles, she would have accepted the millionaire offer to marry the banker. I had already interviewed her ex-friends, both boys and girls, along with a few ex-boyfriends, and all of them talked about the Girl in the Gold Bikini as someone who wasn’t too hung up on money; a former girlfriend said: “She’s Machiavellian.” Another girl, a former friend, asked: “But Machiavellian with whom? Only if it was with herself. Because she’s the big sacrifice in this whole story.”

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It was also remote as well that a disgust for or frustration with love was the cause; no: our subject, from what her ex-friends said about her, didn’t know what it was to love and be loved; and, according to most of them, she had never been romantically in love. “But she’s a sadist. She enjoyed making men suffer,” said exfriend number one. Then lowering her voice: “Do you wanna clue to explain everything she does? Hilda has a sick need for men to fall in love with her. Do you know what her reaction was when she heard about the first guy who killed himself over her? She said she felt a great need to dance and because of this she went to a Dance Night at Minas Tennis Club and didn’t stop dancing.” I began to suspect that the Girl in the Gold Bikini went to the Bohemian Zone because of the necessity to make as many men as possible fall for her; as if the Evil of Hilda, of which I have spoken here, could contaminate everyone, and she could be satisfied: every night, a minimum of twenty-five men (she was used to handling fifty) fell in love with her. But Sherlock Holmes, or José Maria Rabelo, preferred working with the hypothesis that, at the very least, would increase sales of Binômio every Monday, and could be better: the Girl in the Gold Bikini had made a pact with God or the Devil: “Let’s shout it from the front-page headlines: The Damned Penance of Hilda Hurricane!” We would always say that the Girl in the Gold Bikini gave herself five years of suffering in the Bohemian Zone as penitence. But . . . why? And our sherlock, José Maria Rabelo, used to explain: “It’s to be pardoned because of the men who’ve killed themselves over her. For this, it’s urgent that you go talk to Father Agnaldo.” It was a Thursday afternoon, the evening before the first Friday of the month, when Father Agnaldo received me in the parochial house of the San Antônio Church; he was in the doorway waiting for me, as if he had just let someone out there; when we went in the living room, I detected the vague and unmistakable scent of perfume: Hilda Hurricane’s Muguet du Bonheur; Father Agnaldo was a tranquil man, an evolved pastor, one of those who during that time were often taken to be communists. Calling me “my son,” he invited me to sit down.

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“What I can tell you, given my role as shepherd of souls, is that the Girl in the Gold Bikini, as everyone calls her, received communion on the first Friday of every month and that she was an excellent Catholic.” “And today, Father? Does she still take communion on the first Friday of each month?” Strangely, Father Agnaldo gave me an ashtray, as if he were trying to gain time to think: “You can smoke if you want, my son.” I repeated the question, and Father Agnaldo responded: “If she came here, she’d be welcomed by me.” “Even with her being considered the sex symbol of the city, Father?” “She’s a child of God and will be treated as such.” I left there certain that Hilda Hurricane had gone to confession with Father Agnaldo because it was Thursday, the evening before the first Friday of the month, which would explain the vague smell of her Muguet du Bonheur in the air.

12 Interrupting the Investigation The investigation of Hilda Hurricane was going along, when I got some news about a disturbing fact through a PS of Aunt Little Heart, in a letter that talked mostly about her concerns with the impending hunger strike of Aunt Ciana against the presence of Nude Adam in the mural of the Mother Church in Santana dos Ferros: the troubling news was that the Beautiful B had, finally, yielded to parental pressure and agreed to get married; she had negotiated and she was going to get a trip to Europe, rare at that time, in exchange for her agreement. I decided to cure my frustration by dedicating myself, not to journalism, as the secretary at Binômio suggested, but in the most romantic and heroic way to forget a great love.

13 A Beard under Suspicion Let’s return to the files of Nelson Sarmento, which, as I’ve said, I managed to read years later. Here are his observations regarding the beard that I let grow: “. . . he’s growing a beard; it’s a patchy beard and I’d call it sorrylooking, if it didn’t remind one of the beard of Ernesto Che Guevara; thus, it’s useful to ask: what’s behind this beard business? Since we’re talking about a romantic, it’s possible that the beard is linked to a personal reverse: according to investigations that I’ve conducted with people linked to the Beautiful B, she capitalized on her parents’ desire to see her set a wedding date. Fidel Castro said one time, during his exile, in Mexico, that he would only shave his beard off on the day that he managed to overthrow Batista; he said it and didn’t fulfill his word, the beard continues. I have a strong suspicion: the suspect in question may have sworn: ‘I’ll only cut my beard off when the Beautiful B breaks off her engagement.’ Since the newly bearded one has been seen in the Mocó da Iaiá drinking a Cuba Libre, in a circle of leftist dipshits, another hypothesis is worth considering; ever since the bearded boys from the Sierra Maestra triumphantly entered Havana, all beards, until proven otherwise, are under suspicion; it’s necessary to investigate more . . .”

We’ll leave Nelson Sarmento doing his investigations; I must give you news about the Saint, who has disappeared from this narrative.

14 The Effects of the Evil of Hilda Today I know: every Tuesday, when she played checkers with me in Room 304 of Hotel Marvelous, during my reports on the state of my investigation, that Hilda Hurricane wanted, even if she pretended she didn’t, news about the Saint; it was me who told her that Brother Malthus had decided to accept the invitation of Dom Hélder Câmara to work together and, because of this, he had to move to Rio de Janeiro and live among the slum dwellers; she was very moved and said something typical: “Oh, yeah, really?” This “Oh, yeah, really?” is possibly attributable to an occurrence that would stock the pages of the daily newspapers; what’s certain is that, when Brother Malthus told this scribe that he had accepted Dom Hélder Câmara’s invitation, he also revealed why he was prepared to live among the poorest of the poor: he felt he was a carrier of the Evil of Hilda. “I was infected by her shoe.” I suggested, then, that he give the shoe back; he answered no: he would take it to Rio de Janeiro; he would, if things didn’t happen to make him change his mind. Time out: before the readers and even my own Aunt Little Heart accuse me of telling Hilda Hurricane that Brother Malthus loved her, I never said anything to her about that.

15 Searching for the Sierra Maestra During this time, as had been said, a movement had been founded in Belo Horizonte, the Fidel-Guevara Movement, which allowed us to really dream about our own Sierra Maestra, and, with the news that the Beautiful B had set a date for her wedding, I brought all my disgust together and got involved in becoming a guerrilla inspired by the Cuban Revolution; now, every morning, I would go to guerrilla training under the orders of Comandante Lorca (his code name), who had fought in the Spanish Civil War and gave us precious training; there were only eleven of us guerrillas, but if, with only a few more, Fidel Castro managed to get to the Sierra Maestra in Cuba, we believed we could do the same thing in Brazil. Comandante Lorca was crazy enough to believe that even though we didn’t have a dictatorship in Brazil—on the contrary, we lived under a smiling democracy led by the elected president Juscelino Kubitschek—we could launch a guerrilla action that would be imitated all over the country; even though he was Brazilian, Comandante Lorca spoke to us only in Spanish, the official language of his training. Our training occurred in the woods of an enormous site, an island of green in Garden City, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Belo Horizonte at that time, where Vila Paris is located today; it belonged to the parents of the painter Wilma Martins, a militant in Communist Youth who, wanting to help the Fidel-Guevara Movement, had allowed us to use the site, from which we could hear, while we were training, the “Bolero” of Ravel played at high volume, from a neighboring sanatorium. But where would our Sierra Maestra be? The choice was made by Comandante Lorca: it would be the famous Serra do Curral, which guarded Belo Horizonte in the Mangabeiras District, like a natural fortification.

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“But, Comandante Lorca,” pondered Comrade Ortiz, “we will all be killed by the air force loyal to the government. The Serra do Curral doesn’t have any trees and we would all be massacred.” Comandante Lorca said that in less than seventy-two hours, all of Brazil would have risen up, and we would have rural guerrillas, urban guerrillas, slum guerrillas in Rio de Janeiro, because the FidelGuevara Movement had various branches, and if we could hold out those seventy-two hours, our movement, in the febrile belief of Comandante Lorca, would seize a Brazil sick of misery, the lack of hope, and the domination of American imperialism; Comandante Lorca repeated his favorite saying: “Hay que buscar el amanecer!” or “You have to seek the dawn!”

16 At Exactly Five in the Afternoon As far as I was concerned, it didn’t matter if I died in a guerrilla war; it would be my vengeance on the Beautiful B; when Comandante Lorca proposed that the following Seventeenth of July, at exactly five in the afternoon, our guerrilla command would take Serra do Curral, the first hand to go up in supporting him was mine. We would have been slaughtered by Army troops and Air Force planes if something hadn’t happened the night before that saved us.

17 You Will All Be Slaughtered On the night before the Seventeenth of July, I was in the Mocó da Iaiá drinking a Cuba Libre, which could have been the last drink of my life, when Comrade Tânia, the only woman in our guerrilla front, arrived.

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“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “I need to talk to you about something important.” I took her to the offices of Binômio, on the eighth floor of the Pirapetinga Building, just down the street, which at that time—a bit after nine at night—was deserted; I had a key, we went in and what happened was unforgettable; it’s worth saying that Comrade Tânia was very beautiful: she was, maybe, twenty years old, light-skinned, and the fingers of her right hand were stained from smoking. When I closed Binômio’s door, she said: “I want to make a confession and a demand of you.” She made her confession first: “I love you.” After, came her demand, just as or even more surprising: “I want you to make love to me.” Pulling off her clothes, she fell into my arms and I loved her; we were still lying on the sofa bed that we had in the editorial office of Binômio, when she put on her dress, which didn’t go with anything guerrilla-like but made her even more attractive, took an airline ticket out of her purse, and said: “I’m leaving for São Paulo on the first flight.” “Are you crazy? What about our Sierra Maestra?” She lit a cigarette, exhaled a long plume of smoke, and, very moved, which made her even more beautiful, said: “You all would be crazy to occupy the Serra do Curral. You’ll be slaughtered. The Army Intelligence Service and the Air Force already know everything and as soon as you occupy the Serra do Curral, you’ll be slaughtered.” “How do you know this?” I asked. She let out another long plume of smoke: “I’m a spy. I work for Army Intel in concert with Nelson Sarmento. I joined the movement to spy on you. But I had bad luck: I fell madly in love with you.” She put her cigarette out nervously and said: “Now I have to go. Tell your friends. And don’t think ill of me.” She went down in the elevator alone and, right away, I went to advise the rest of our guerrilla front what had happened.

18 A Lone Warrior I’d like to be able to say today that we were all saved, but it’s not true; at exactly five in the afternoon, a guerrilla wearing a beret and an old International Brigade uniform, with which he fought the Spanish Civil War, took up his position, alone, on the top of Serra do Curral; with a machine gun in his hands, he shouted into a megaphone in Spanish: “Hay que buscar el amanecer!” A bit later, the Serra do Curral was surrounded by Army troops and combat planes circled overhead, up where the guerrilla was. “He’s crazy,” said some. “He’s a guerrilla,” said others. He was shot by the soldiers who were coming up the Serra do Curral, and these were his last words before an Air Force plane bombed the mountaintop: “Hay que buscar el amanecer!”

19 Concerning the Atlantic Ocean and Minas Gerais’s Nose For two whole days, the newspapers talked about Comandante Lorca, but they forgot him by the third day, when the big subject, the theme of all the conversations, was announced in a press conference given by Hilda Hurricane: she had been proposed to by two rancher-colonels, each a multimillionaire. One was Colonel Poseidon, a cocoa grower from Ilheus—he was said to have been the inspiration for one of the colonels in Jorge

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Amado’s novel Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon; in order to marry her, he offered, simply, the Atlantic Ocean. In his rough way of speaking, he announced to reporters (among whom was this scribe) that he was going to give Hilda Hurricane a rare gift for a woman from Minas, since Minas didn’t have an ocean and this was a source of frustration for all: “I’m going to give Hilda a palace on the beachfront in Ilheus, with windows fronting on the ocean, so that she’ll feel like she’s the owner of the ocean. Her and the water spirit Iemanjá.” Colonel Filogônio, a beef breeder from Uberaba, in the interior of Minas, counterattacked: he offered Hilda Hurricane a ranch so large that the land would completely cross Minas’s nose (if you look at Minas on a map, it looks like it has a nose). While the newspapers talked about the war between the two colonels fighting for Hilda Hurricane, the lines for service at the Hotel Marvelous got longer. One afternoon, a man went to the thirteenth floor of the Joaquim de Paula Building and displayed a banner that said: “I love you Hilda Hurricane” and then threatened to jump. Along with the crowds, the radios reported from there, and the reporter Oswaldo Faria, who was going to go to San Quentin to interview someone about to go to the gas chamber in the United States, managed to speak to the man: “I won’t jump only if Hilda Hurricane comes give me a kiss.” I was in the offices of Binômio when I realized what was happening and went there to see; protected by two firemen, Hilda Hurricane satisfied the man’s desire: she kissed him up there in the window, in full view of everyone, saving him. The prestige of Hilda Hurricane was never so great.

20 Three Important Facts, WELL, FOU R

Fact No. 1: I was in the offices of Binômio when Brother Malthus called: he had been called and asked to help the Young Catholic Workers (YCW) in Belo Horizonte and, thus, he would stop working with Dom Hélder Câmara and the slum dwellers in Rio de Janeiro. Fact No. 2: since I hadn’t gone to play checkers the previous Tuesday in Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous, Hilda Hurricane called. She asked that I come by quickly. In a few minutes she was going to give a press conference regarding the two colonels who wanted to marry her and she wanted my opinion. Fact No. 3: on hearing that Brother Malthus wasn’t going to be in Rio anymore, Hilda Hurricane said that between the Atlantic Ocean and Minas Gerais’s nose, she’d prefer to stay with the Arrudas, the poor trickle of a river that went along the edge of the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte. Fact No. 4: Hilda Hurricane told the reporters during her press conference that she couldn’t accept either proposal from the two colonels, but she gave them both a heartfelt thanks, and explained that her refusal was due to the fact that she loved another man. “It’s an impossible love,” she declared, “but even so, I have to be faithful to him.”

21 The Ultimatum Since Hilda Hurricane had become even better known with the most recent happenings, and I hadn’t even submitted the first of my six reports, Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo gave me an ultimatum: either find a subject as good or, they were sorry, but my services wouldn’t be required at Binômio any longer.

22 The Loony and the Bum Among reporters of my generation, of whom the future guerrilla Fernando Gabeira was one, I was certainly the most unhappy with my career. There was among us the cult of the reporter/hero, a legacy of José Leal, from the magazine O Cruzeiro, whose most successful prose piece was written by pretending to be crazy and getting himself committed to a mental hospital in Rio de Janeiro, which he called a “branch office of Hell.” The deed of José Leal was still remembered among us when a follower of his sprang from among us, who got himself committed to the Raul Soares Hospice, a feared and sinister place. His name (as it said in a lead at the time): Mauro Santayana who, later, during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, was going to shine as a correspondent for the Jornal do Brasil using the pseudonym Lauro Kubelick. After several days in the Raul Soares Hospice, Santayana became a hero. A bit jealous, Felipe Hanriot Drummond, my discoverer and an excellent reporter in his own right, noted:

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“The drama wasn’t in Santayana entering Raul Soares. The problem was getting him out of there. The doctors said: ‘This one, no, this one here is crazier than the others.’” What could I do to unseat Santayana? I thought seriously about another Binômio reporter, who had been a companion of mine during student demonstrations, Aureclides Ponce de Leon; he let his hair and beard grow, dressed as a bum, and barefoot, with an old hat in his hand that he extended to charitable souls, he went to beg on the steps of the San José Church; the result ended up being a very successful series of reports in Binômio, which were going to make their author famous and augment my frustration and badly disguised envy. Oh, young and ambitious reporter that I was: I remember you, desperate, trying to disguise the envy that you felt; you were searching for a theme that would put your name on the tips of the readers’ tongues and, really, would draw the attention of the Beautiful B. You went to speak with your analyst, to whom you went to help you master the fear of illnesses that you had—you suffered from several imaginary illnesses—you believed that a heart attack was going to strike you, as had happened to your father. And you asked your analyst, Dr. Aspásia Pires, to have you committed as a nutcase to the Barbacena Hospice, there, where they kept one of your idols from your teen years, Heleno de Freitas, the glorious center forward of Botafogo and Regatas, who the loudmouths in the crowds called Gilda, because of the Rita Hayworth film, because he was a very pretty man, with looks of a film star. “Okay,” said your analyst, Dr. Aspásia Pires. “I’ll figure out a way to get you committed as mentally ill in Barbacena Hospice.” But you didn’t have to fake being crazy: the big story of your life was waiting for you, putting a halt to your investigations into Hilda Hurricane.

23 Northeasterner for Sale: WHO WANTS TO BU Y?

Calm down Aunt Little Heart, calm down readers, calm down Aunt Ciana (who I hope has made it this far): I invite you into my mother’s house, on Ceará Road. I have in my hands a copy of the Estado de Minas; I read it while I’m waiting for lunch, when I find buried inside of another story something that made me eat quickly and hurry back to Binômio’s offices with the paper in my pocket—the state legislator Teófilo Pires, who was also a radio personality, had denounced, during a speech in the Legislative Assembly, the traffic in Northeasterners who came in stake trucks and were sold as slaves in Montes Claros. It was the time of the construction of Brasília, a time of euphoria for the government of Juscelino Kubitschek, who promised fifty years of development in five. Various Carnival songs of the time celebrated the intention. Juscelino Kubitschek was a happy man; not equipped with the dry smiles of other politicians, he was always smiling, and his smile was trademarked. Known as Lightfoot, he was famous for his ability to see big projects through, dating from when he was mayor of Belo Horizonte, when he constructed the Pampulha area; the musicians were almost as hard on him as they were on Getúlio Vargas. But Juscelino Kubitschek wasn’t going to shoot himself. It was hard to believe that, under the happy government of Juscelino Kubitschek, with all its hopes and dreams for the country, like a concrete flower or bird designed by Oscar Niemeyer, Northeasterners were being sold into slavery in Montes Claros. When I got to Binômio with the report from Estado de Minas in my hand, José Maria Rabelo got very excited about the idea, and, the following morning, the photojournalist Antônio Cocenza and I flew to Montes Claros.

24 An Atheist Prays At the moment that Antônio Cocenza and I walked onto the tarmac, on that sunny morning at the airport, I had the feeling that I was going to a firing squad. I was afraid of flying and, when Cocenza and I put on our seat belts and the old DC-3 set off down the runway, I was sure I was going to die and decided if the plane didn’t crash, when I got back to Belo Horizonte, I’d come up with a plan to win the Beautiful B. But it looked like I wouldn’t get this chance. As soon as it gained elevation, the DC-3 started to buck; it dropped and it appeared that only the ground would stop it; I tried to draw strength from thinking about the Beautiful B—but when my watch marked the fifteen-minute point, the DC-3 fell into a vacuum without end, and when it finally started to climb again, it trembled like a bird that was exhausted from flying; my atheistic and communist convictions couldn’t stand up to five thousand meters and I began to pray. (May Aunt Ciana forgive me, but when I joined the Communist Youth, I felt a profound sense of relief; listen, being a communist militant with a signed ID card and everything, I didn’t need to pray every night before I went to sleep; mainly, I didn’t have to pay my debts in prayers or masses attended as I’d had to before with my saints and souls from another world; a good example is the copy of Jews without Money, by Michael Gold, one of my constant companions of that epoch, which I still have today, and which is marked with my debts, which I transcribe here: —four masses for the souls in purgatory in thankfulness for passing math at school, without ever having given a cigar to Prof. Kindle, like the other students did; —336 Our-Fathers, 457 Ave-Marias, 300 Our-Ladies for having been passed in religion with Father Kill who, on catching me

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flagrantly reading The Knight of Hope by Jorge Amado, cleverly camouflaged and disguised as a geography textbook by Moises Gikovate, took the book from me and, after announcing, “We have a Red in the class,” promised not only to denounce me to the principal, Father Coqueirão, but also to Dops; —three rosaries and 275 Our-Ladies for Santa Rita de Cássia, the patron saint of the impossible, thanking her for the Beautiful B breaking off her engagement three months before the wedding, much to the displeasure of her father; —five masses and five rosaries in favor of the canonization of Father Eustáquio, who promoted me to the honors science program, from which I was expelled as an undesirable element after the denunciation of Father Kill on The Knight of Hope incident, which, as a sign, was burnt on the school’s patio, in the name of democracy.)

25 It Was a Corral, but It Didn’t Have Cattle: IT HAD PEOPLE

When the plane stopped flipping around and I finished praying, I revealed my plan to Cocenza: not only would we go hear testimony as to the existence of the sale of Northeasterners as slaves, but I myself was going to buy one, bring him with me to Belo Horizonte, and Cocenza was going to document the whole thing on his camera; but I couldn’t imagine that reality would be even better than my dream, as happened later. In Montes Claros, at that time a dusty town full of pretty girls whose eyes didn’t lower shamefully on making eye contact with us, as happened back home, even in Belo Horizonte, everyone denied the existence of the trafficking in Northeasterners; even the mayor, Simeão Pires, brother of the legislator making the charge, Teófilo Pires, denied everything. That stake trucks went through

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Montes Claros carrying Northeasterners who were economic refugees nobody denied—it was public and such a shame—but the sale of Northeasterners as slaves, no, it wasn’t true. We decided then, Cocenza and I, to wait for the following day and hope that a stake truck came through. We passed a strange and unbelievable night in Montes Claros: me, in the arms of a woman who burned with fever, in the Bohemian Zone, Cocenza awake in the hotel room, a slipper in hand, the weak and yellow light turned on, surrounded by cockroaches that he, a big-city man, had confused with the much-feared ticks of that region, which carried Lyme disease. Early the next morning, in the Bohemian Zone, I was awakened by someone beating on the door of the room where I still slept beside the still feverish prostitute: I opened up and was face-to-face with Antônio Cocenza. We went to our hotel, had a quick breakfast, paid our bill, and, in a jeep with a driver that we had rented, we arrived on the outskirts of Montes Claros and waited for the first stake truck to come by carrying Northeasterners. It was a beautiful and innocent morning, as if to show that the weather could be an accomplice to the worst crimes; while we were waiting for the stake truck, the sun and the blue sky appeared to deny, beforehand, what was shortly going to happen; that started to happen when a big Ford truck with Northeastern license plates passed by full of Northeasterners. We followed it in our jeep and, where the road forked between Montes Claros and Pirapora, the Ford stopped at an abandoned corral. The passengers, men and women, as well as at least one old man and one child, began to climb down from the back of the truck; covered in dust from the road, they spread out, they who had until recently been protected from the sun, the wind, and who knows, even the cold and the indiscreet glances of others, by a canvas top. We approached the owner of the truck and of those lives, a thin man with a small mustache, short hair, and several days’ worth of stubble; he had a toothpick in his mouth and the air of a Northeasterner. His name was Mr. Juca, from Paraíba, and I approached him with Cocenza at my side with his camera hanging around his neck; I said I was interested in a Northeasterner to work

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in the processing of coffee on my father’s coffee plantation in Vale do Rio Doce, in Minas. “Take more than one, young man,” said Mr. Juca, with the singsong accent of the Northeast. “I’ll give you a nice break on the price.” “How much is it, Mr. Juca?” I asked. “Fifteen hundred. But if the young man takes two, I’ll bring that down.” “Down how much?” “The two for twenty-five hundred.” “Is it the same price for men and women?” “There’s more value in women, young man, they face up to hard work better than men.” I went over by the stake truck, according to the strategy that, I don’t know if I’ve said already, we had already planned if there wasn’t any chance for Cocenza to use his camera without Mr. Juca perceiving that he was being photographed; we couldn’t alienate him because it was necessary to have a document, some proof that attested to the veracity of the transaction. So, while I wandered around, Cocenza sidled up to Mr. Juca and told him, confidentially, that I was something of a prodigal son and my father didn’t really trust me, and he, Cocenza, was there as a fiscal control, under my father’s orders, and would need a sales receipt. Some photo evidence. Mr. Juca quickly agreed, and, given the high sign from Cocenza, I told Mr. Juca that I wanted to examine the Northeasterners who were spread around the corral. Mr. Juca got them in a line, and I started to examine them. The photo that Cocenza took at the time caused a furor: it showed me, in black pants and a white linen blazer, examining the lined-up Northeasterners, the corral’s fence in the background—I looked at their hands, demanded that they move their fingers to see if they would be able to handle tools, that they open their mouths, show their teeth. Then, I had an inspiration: the story would cause even more furor still if I could buy a Northeasterner couple, a husband and wife. I said to Mr. Juca: “I’d like to buy a married couple.” There was only one couple: Manuel, a typical country type from

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the Northeast, whose right hand had a damaged finger that he tried to hide, and his wife, Francesca, a lot younger than him, delicate, mulatta; she didn’t measure up to Amado’s Gabriela, but she was a woman full of fever and enchantments. I then started to negotiate with Mr. Juca: he wanted five thousand for the couple, but I really didn’t have that much; Binômio had only given me four thousand, because I was only buying one Northeasterner. I offered to pay four thousand for the two, pointing out that Manuel had a damaged right hand; Mr. Juca agreed, and grabbing onto my arm and winking at me, always with his toothpick in his mouth, said that the two of them would work for me forever, that they were mine. “Pay forty-five hundred,” he tried one last time. “Four thousand.” “Done deal, young man,” he agreed. Manuel and Francesca, the recently purchased couple, were exultant, and Mr. Juca sent them to get their things together. I gave him the money and Cocenza photographed the moment of payment. Then Mr. Juca wrote out a receipt and gave it to Cocenza so that he could show it to my father and that Binômio would publish as well. How to forget those moments in the corral in Montes Claros? How to forget the eyes of forty-five refugees, men and women, the eyes of starving dogs, imploring that I buy them too? When Manuel and Francesca came back with their things, which were everything that they had in the world, an old man left the main group in the corral and walked towards me; even now, so many years later, I can see him: he was tall and thin, with a patchy beard and unkempt hair, and he wore torn clothing and used a cane; inside his dark green eyes, a light shone, and he seemed to have a touch of craziness in him. He had the look of a messiah. One meter from me, he extended his cane reverently and said: “Blessed be Our Lord Jesus Christ!” “May He always be so,” I replied. “Poor me was brought to Earth by God to find out what happens in the hearts of men.” Mr. Juca didn’t waste any time:

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“With the prophet here, young man, I can give you a good price.” And faced with my silence, “Pay only five hundred cruzeiros for him. It’s a Scotch buy.” “But what am I going to do with a prophet, Mr. Juca, on a coffee plantation?” I asked, as if I weren’t a disguised journalist. “I can aid the young master’s soul,” said the prophet, returning to leaning on his cane, “because the end of the world is coming and whoever doesn’t have a clean and protected soul is going to burn in the fires of Hell.” Faced with my astonishment, he continued: “I can preview tomorrow for the young master. I can announce that you will be betrayed by the blood of your blood.” Mr. Juca offered: “Take the prophet for two hundred and fifty, young man.” Before I said anything, the prophet continued in the same tone: “I can also announce for the young master: you need to take care with Brazil.” Cocenza pulled me away by the arm: we had to leave quickly; then, a young boy of thirteen or so years of age, chocolate-colored, Indian eyes and straight black hair, fell to his knees in front of me and embraced my legs: “Take me, young master. For the love of God, take me.” I couldn’t take you with me, young Northeasterner, not you, nor the prophet; and the prophet cried out: “The end of the world is coming!” We left there with the euphoria and consciousness that we had gotten a story with international implications. But there was a problem to resolve: our money was spent. How would we get plane tickets for Manuel and Francesca? We managed to get a loan from Edgar, a local journalist who was related to one of the editors at Binômio. Our story had become common knowledge in Montes Claros—as the DC-3 was taxiing down the runway, a caravan of cars—led by the mayor, Simeão Pires, we would later find out—arrived at the airport to take the Northeasterners away from us and thus forbidding that the good name of the town be stained. It was a relief when the DC-3 took off. When the plane went through turbulence and

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dropped into vacuums, Manuel and Francesca invoked the protection of John the Baptist. It’s true that the story that Binômio published with great fanfare on the following Monday had not only domestic repercussions but also international ones—Time magazine talked about it, publishing my photo alongside that of Manuel and Francesca. The couple started living a fairy-tale existence: taken by me and Cocenza to Rio de Janeiro for an interview on Murilo Nery’s famous program, on TV Tupi, they were heroes for a night. The program lasted four hours, and after he interviewed us, Murilo Nery asked that viewers send what they could to help Manuel and Francesca, and clothes, shoes, jewelry, and even elegant dresses arrived without end.

26 We Can’t Eat Freedom I was a successful reporter. Very successful. My life as a journalist had changed as much as that of Manuel and Francesca. They, who had nothing to eat, now had plenty; they, who had nothing to wear, now had lots; and they had guitars, clocks, necklaces, accordions, and radios that they had gotten in Rio de Janeiro; they had received so much stuff that it was necessary to get a cargo plane to bring it back. And they were free. Since they didn’t have anywhere to go and didn’t want to go back to the Northeast, I sent them to my cousin Oswaldo Drummond’s farm in Santana dos Ferros. But they arrived there as heroes and didn’t want anything to do with planting or picking coffee. They got along very badly; Manuel only wanted to play the guitar, and Francesca, with all her beautiful clothes, flirted with the men. When they finally left the coffee farm and appeared at the house on Ceará Road, their only belongings were Manuel’s guitar and Francesca’s blue dress with the white fringe. They had sold everything and were even unhappier than when they had left the Northeast. I asked them if they wanted

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to go back. They said no. Did they want to move to São Paulo? No. Manuel said: “We’re yours, Roberto.” I explained that they were free. But Manuel, supported by Francesca, said they didn’t want to be free; I talked with them about freedom, and Manuel said: “We can’t eat freedom.” I gave them some money, and they left, but they would always come back and say that they were mine, that I had bought them, with a receipt and everything, that they were prepared to follow my orders. Until I didn’t hear from them anymore.

27 Sarmento Rides Again It was great: besides all the national repercussions, seeing the sale of the Northeasterners in the pages of Time, with my photo beside that of Manuel and Francesca, had outclassed what all the reporters of my generation in Brazil had done. I got a raise at Binômio, the measure of success, and the telephone at the office was often for me. It was usually young women attracted to my success as a reporter. Many girls, with whom I was tempted to forget the Beautiful B; then I got a coded telegram from Aunt Little Heart; it said: “B is still in Belo Horizonte Stop Clear skies Stop Hugs Little Heart.”

One afternoon, I was leaving the Legislative Assembly on Tamoios Road when I sensed I was being followed by the secret agent Nelson Sarmento; in my dossier he had recorded that day in a surrealist manner:

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“. . . he shaved his beard, after the failure to turn Serra do Curral into a Sierra Maestra; but he still has that light shining in his eyes— and because of that suspicious light, I could pick him up for questioning; today I was going to put him in jail; I waited until he left the Legislative Assembly, where he went to enjoy his success of his Northeasterners story—he saw that I was following him, he crossed Amazonas Avenue and disappeared; I found him a bit later on São Paulo Road, in the line for the bus to Nova Suíça; I could have taken him, but he had run into the Beautiful B; I kept my distance, spying on the happiness of the two of them . . .”

That was true, and I’ll talk about it in a moment. (The day was going to arrive, after the military coup of 1964, when agents from new agencies such as the DOI-CODI, the Cenimar, and the SNI appeared among us, that we would miss you, Sarmento, with your duck walk, your key ring spinning on your finger, your Prince Valiant hair and a certain familiarity that we had earned with you; in truth, Sarmento—where are you these days?—your presence that we ourselves, of the left, valued, also gave us value: we felt important being spied upon by you because there was a certain innocence in all of it—in you and in us; when the torturing, the deaths, the disappearances of post-1964 began, oh, Sarmento, in the depths of hearts, we missed those days when we dreamed of a Sierra Maestra and you chased us, hoping to find out, before any other agent, which of us would be the next Fidel, the next Che, the next Cienfuegos; here is my homage to you, Sarmento, and I sincerely hope you read it.)

28 Meeting the Beautiful B Fleeing from Sarmento, I went into a perfume store; I had with me a companion in flight, the Binômio reporter Ponce de Leon, who had also been part of the group of Serra do Curral guerrillas; we waited a bit and crossed São Paulo Road: we hid ourselves among the crowds that were waiting for the buses to Nova Suíça and Barbacena; it was then that I saw, in the line for Nova Suíça, the Beautiful B; I said to Ponce de Leon: “That’s her.” “Her who?” “The Beautiful B.” “So, go talk to her,” said Ponce de Leon; and since I was wavering, he continued, “Go talk to her or I’ll go over and say you’re here.” I went to talk to her: I was very worried, but the Beautiful B was happy to see me: later I would find out that she was waiting for me, she came every afternoon, since she had seen me go by there one day. I was almost speechless: she received me with the smile of someone who has already made up her mind, and with all the charm of the girl who I had met for the first time, one morning, many years before, on the field at Airmoré Futebol Clube, in Santana dos Ferros, when she came to a game in which I didn’t play because of a bruised knee. No, I’m not capable of reconstituting what happened there in that line for the Nova Suíça bus; it’s true I accompanied her back to her aunt’s house in Belo Horizonte, where she was staying, on Amazonas Avenue; she invited me in off the street, and we stayed chatting by the front door, sitting on a retaining wall, until it got dark. When it was time to go, I asked the Beautiful B if she had a boyfriend. She did. It was a distant cousin who wanted to marry her. I asked her if she felt the same way about him. She said no. We

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decided that we would see each other again. Where? There in her aunt’s house in Belo Horizonte. As I was leaving, she asked: “Are you really a communist?” “I am,” I replied very seriously. “And you eat roasted babies?” “I do.” She laughed: she was content, and I began a period of explosive happiness. In my innocence, I believed that, being a reporter of relative fame, after the story that even Time magazine talked about, there wouldn’t be any obstacles for us.

29 Clandestine Times I had some favorite poets at that time: —The Chilean Pablo Neruda: “I can write very sad verses for us tonight I’d write, for example, I loved her and, at times, she also loved me . . .” —The Turk Nazim Hizmet: “To go to sleep today and wake up ten years from now . . .” —The American Negro Langston Hughes: “To lie in the sun some place and dance, sing, and jump

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that’s my desire until night falls black like me . . .” —The Frenchman Paul Eluard: “Nothing stronger than love sprawled in its illusion standing in its truth . . .” —The Cuban Nicolás Guillén: “The great deaths never die . . .”

But, in truth, a war was starting and our battle hymn, mine and the Beautiful B’s, from there forward, would be a song by Tom and Vinícius: “I know and you know even if life wanted it that way that nothing in this world will take you from me . . .”

One morning, I received an urgent coded telegram from Aunt Little Heart; it said: “Black clouds in the sky Stop Letter to follow Stop Hugs, Little Heart.”

Was it possible that Aunt Ciana, in the fight against Nude Adam in the Mother Church of Santana dos Ferros, had begun, finally, her hunger strike? No, to talk about Aunt Ciana, Aunt Little Heart wouldn’t have to use code words; anyway, that afternoon, the Beautiful B telephoned the offices of Binômio, saying that she had to see

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me urgently. We met at the line for the bus to Nova Suíça, and the truth (which Aunt Little Heart’s letter was going to say as well) was that the aunt in Belo Horizonte, supporter of the marriage of her niece with the distant cousin, had written a letter to her brother, the Beautiful B’s father, telling him the latest and asking: “What should I do? Decide and I’ll obey.” The Beautiful B’s father ordered an end to the meetings. The aunt in Belo Horizonte called the Beautiful B and told her the decision: the meetings couldn’t continue at her house. And now? We changed hymns: our hymn now was a song by Miguel Gustavo: “Now What?” “They prohibited that I love you they prohibited that I see you they prohibited that I go out asking in vain after you (...) They prohibit a lot more they close doors and raise alarms our love asks: Now what? Now what?”

After some unforgettable confrontations in the house of her aunt in Itabira and her aunt in Santana dos Ferros (who was the one whose laugh had been prohibited for so long), the Beautiful B’s father said that she had to choose: either she married the cousin or she wouldn’t be considered his daughter anymore; it was a scandal in Santana dos Ferros. The world was really turning upside down, and Santana dos Ferros was taking large steps towards becoming Sodom and Gomorrah: the Beautiful B let her father’s fortune slip through her hands in order to marry a communist who didn’t have a red cent.

30 The Siege of the Quarantines It was a sunny Thursday morning, which appeared to symbolize my state of being: I had gotten two days off from work at Binômio and, in the company of Aramel the Handsome and the reporter and photographer Ponce de Leon, who was going to document everything, we were going to Santana dos Ferros to announce my engagement to the Beautiful B, even with the opposition of her father; the ceremony would be in her Aunt Nevita’s house, she of the divinely offensive laughter; while the scarlet Mercedes of Aramel the Handsome rolled down the dusty road, I thought that time changed everything in this world. “Inside two hours, Ponce de Leon,” advised Aramel the Handsome, “you’re going to visit Sodom and Gomorrah!” Aramel the Handsome was obviously exaggerating, but in recent times, less than two years, one year and eight months, Santana dos Ferros had changed so much that it seemed to be another city; there was nothing more that was prisoner of Father Nelson, with his happy prohibitions; since the arrival of Father Geraldo Cantalice, Santana dos Ferros had started to be liberated: it had gotten a modern church constructed in record time, by an open vote; the controversial Nude Adam panel was still in place; dances had been liberated; Carnival was permitted; swimsuits; Dona Nevita’s laugh was free; going to the riverside beaches; the prostitutes Big Alice, Alice, and Little Alice could come and go; the theater, before dedicated to somnolent films on the lives of saints, now showed real classics: there were long lines to see Gilda and Gone with the Wind, and a film festival broke records; Gina Lollobrigida enchanted the men, and Burt Lancaster attracted the women; and the first brothel in Santana dos Ferros was inaugurated—the city had been invaded by perfumed women, even ones from Argentina and Paraguay. In

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this kind of atmosphere, to complete the list of scandals, the daughter of a major landowner, the Beautiful B, running the risk of being disinherited, rebelled, and everyone was saying: “It’s the craziest thing in the world: she’s going to marry a communist!” Thus, as a way of safeguarding her nephew, who for her was the only good communist on the face of the Earth and, when the lights were out, a devotee of God (of this she was sure), a few days earlier Aunt Ciana had begun her hunger strike, protesting not only against Nude Adam but against everything that made Santana dos Ferros a Sodom and Gomorrah. Poor Aunt Ciana: she declared that she was starting her hunger strike in front of the altar of the Mother Church in Santana dos Ferros on exactly the same night that the brothel would be inaugurated, when the city, since early morning, had talked of nothing else, mostly because the news went around, which Carlindo Machado, the owner, confirmed, electrifying the country colonels: Hilda Hurricane would be present and cut the ribbon of inauguration, baptizing it as Enchanted Paradise; about each woman who arrived in town by bus or car who asked after Carlindo Machado, everyone (even blessed Fininha) would shout, thinking Hilda Hurricane had arrived: “It’s her! It’s her!” Even the dog Joli went to see what all the fuss was about, in a way that Aunt Ciana, feeling her lack of prestige, abandoned so quickly “for a sinner like Hilda Hurricane,” herself abandoned her hunger strike, which Aunt Little Heart credited to the good offices of San Antônio—but Aunt Ciana put a curse on everything, praying: “Jesus and Mary punish this Sodom and Gomorrah and castigate it at the height of its sins.” It was true that everyone felt like sinners in Santana dos Ferros— was what I was thinking, while Aramel the Handsome’s Mercedes was leaving a plume of dust behind us; we had arranged that, at my engagement ceremony with the Beautiful B, Brother Malthus would give a blessing and say a few words to assuage the fact that the Beautiful B, who was educated in the Catholic religion and at

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Catholic schools with nuns as teachers, was going to marry an atheist communist; and Brother Malthus had been in Santana dos Ferros three days before our arrival, because, more than ever, he needed the jabuticaba jelly of Dona Nhanhá. “So, the Saint is going to give the blessing at the ceremony?” asked Aramel the Handsome; he asked just to ask or to enjoy himself, which was his way, because he prided himself on already knowing everything; we were about to enter the municipality of Santana dos Ferros, having just passed through Santa Maria de Itabira, when we saw various trucks stopped, as well as the bus to Santana dos Ferros and two or three cars as well, with soldiers from the Military Police keeping them back. “Shit! What can be wrong?” said Aramel the Handsome, and stopped the Mercedes. We got out and went to find out: we couldn’t continue, because they had quarantined Santana dos Ferros two hours earlier because of reports of an outbreak of bubonic plague. “What’s going on there?” I asked a soldier named Aristides, who had gone to school with me. “It was a curse brought down by your Aunt Ciana. The Black Plague spares no one.”

31 The Waves of the Rumors Right there, at the blockade set up by the Military Police under orders from Belo Horizonte’s commanding general, we started to hear news about Santana dos Ferros: “They say that, overnight, the plague has already killed thirty.” “There was an invasion of fleas in the baggage of the women who came to work in the brothel.” “The graveyards can’t handle any more bodies.”

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We returned to Belo Horizonte; in the newspaper offices, in the bishopric, in the Legislative Assembly and Governor’s Mansion, desperate appeals arrived from Santana dos Ferros: “Don’t abandon us!” But the governor, instead of sending doctors and nurses, sent troops; and the armed cordon that was made to stop anyone from getting out, since no one, because of not being this narrator, thought about entering Santana dos Ferros; I telegraphed the Beautiful B: I didn’t get an answer—and if she had been a victim of the plague? I telegraphed Aunt Little Heart and then Aunt Ciana: I didn’t get an answer, and I imagined: they’re all dead. In the papers, the news was alarming; the reporter Mauro Santayana, who had made it out of the quarantined area, wrote a disturbing story in the Diário de Minas: even the birds and the fish in the San Antônio River were dying of the plague, and the people who were still alive and burying the dead waited for death like a castigation, a penance for having turned Santana dos Ferros into a Sodom and Gomorrah; the telegraph was silent, they didn’t send any more appeals for help, and the only radio broadcaster in the city had bid the world farewell and gone off the air.

32 The Ghost City Chapter (IN WHICH HILD A HURRICAN E R E A P P E A R S )

It was morning; the quarantine of Santana dos Ferros had gone on longer than forty days, and Hilda Hurricane asked that I go to see her at Room 304 in the Hotel Marvelous; she was more beautiful than ever, maybe because she was still young (she was barely twenty-three years old). “We have to do something,” she said. “We can’t just stand by with our arms crossed.”

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“But do what?” I was desperate. “Go there. Why don’t we go there, you and I?” “That’s crazy: they won’t let us by.” “But Santayana went, didn’t he?” “They say it was a big fraud. A whitewash, as we say. He was barred by the cordon of Military Police.” “But do they have a cordon of soldiers up to the sky? Do they?” “Up to the sky? No, but I don’t understand.” “We’ll go there in a plane. Eh?” “But . . . and the plane . . . what plane?” “I’ll rent a plane.” “You’ll rent one?” “I will, and we’ll fly over Santana dos Ferros and see what’s really happening there.” “The plane could land on the soccer pitch.” We rented a small plane from Líder, which was just starting its air services; it was the Saturday before Carnival, I was afraid of flying, but such was my state, thinking about what could have happened to the Beautiful B and to the people whom I loved so much, like Aunt Little Heart, Aunt Ciana, and Brother Malthus, that I got in the little plane beside the pilot and Hilda Hurricane without any fear; I had had the idea of preparing a few banners with phrases like, “Stay calm: we are with you” and a message for the Beautiful B: “Beatriz: I love you.” An hour and twenty-five minutes after leaving the airport in Belo Horizonte, we started to get close to Santana dos Ferros, in five more minutes we would be flying over the city—the pilot was particularly interested: he had been born in Santana dos Ferros, his father, mother, grandparents, and sister were there. He was known as Benedito Pães, or simply Pães, and, when he left Santana dos Ferros saying that “one day I’m going to pass through the clouds while flying an airplane and from there I’m going to piss on your heads,” they had laughed at him and didn’t believe he could be a pilot; now he was flying over Santana dos Ferros, but he wasn’t going to fulfill his promise, he wasn’t going to piss on anyone’s head; he said to us:

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“It’s strange, isn’t it?” He was a man who liked mysteries; after flying, the thing he liked the most was reading police and mystery stories—he didn’t miss an edition of Ellery Queen Magazine, and he showed us: even in the plane he carried one for when he traveled alone and knew the route well, he used to reread the most electrifying parts. Suddenly the plane lost elevation, and we saw Santana dos Ferros with the San Antônio River running through it, the two long streets running lazily down the margins of the river, the cement bridge in the middle; the plane descended more and what we saw froze us: a ghost city—there was no one in the streets, anywhere, no matter how hard we looked; it was a bit after eleven in the morning, the windows of the houses were open but no one appeared in them, and the door of the Mother Church was also open, but there wasn’t a living soul in sight. “That house on the river’s edge,” said Pães, “it’s my parents’ house. I’m going to fly over it.” There was no one there either: open windows, nobody. “It’s strange,” said Pães. “How’s it strange?” asked Hilda Hurricane. “It’s strange. I see chickens in the yard there and I see dogs and cats in the street and I see birds in the church steeple.” “So do I,” I said. “How’s that strange?” “It’s strange because if this plague kills birds, why are there birds in the steeple and chickens in the yards? And dogs and cats in the streets?” A hope grew in my heart, and Hilda Hurricane squeezed my hand. “It’s even stranger,” continued Pães, “because I don’t smoke, so I have a great sense of smell. And I don’t smell the scent of death.” “But where are they that we don’t see anyone?” asked Hilda Hurricane. “Where could they be hiding?” “That’s what we’re going to find out,” said Pães. “Secure yourselves well—I’m going to do some pirouettes in the sky; if they’re alive, they’re going to appear at their windows to see what’s happening or even come out into the streets.”

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We tightened our seat belts, and the plane climbed; it went up with the nose first and, as if it were going to bomb the city, it dove down, skimming close to the church tower, to the roofs of houses, the bridge, even the surface of the river; then shouting like a redskin in a fight against the palefaces in a Western, Pães made the plane climb as high as it could, and then its climb stalled and we rolled and fell earthwards; he repeated the stalled climb, and it gave us the feeling that we were going to crash into the San Antônio River.

33 The Laughing Cure It was then—and here this narrator is going with things I heard later—that, in the most modern house in Santana dos Ferros, a woman appeared in the second-floor window because she couldn’t resist her curiosity anymore, and, on seeing the plane stall and dive and disappear behind a tree line and then climb up again, she shouted: “I swear. It’s that loony Pães who’s flying that plane.” She felt so happy that she laughed, that same laugh that was prohibited for so many years, that, since the start of the plague, she had decided to silence again, saying: “If it’s for the good of everyone and the well-being of Santana dos Ferros, tell the people that I won’t laugh anymore.” It had been exactly forty-one days since she had laughed; coming out with the force of a siren, her laugh, which had such influence with the simple souls of Santana dos Ferros, mixed with the engine snorts of the plane, brought those who were in their homes praying and waiting for death the same thought: “If Dona Nevita has gone back to laughing, things aren’t as black as they seem.”

34 Hey, It’s Carnival The first effect of Dona Nevita’s laugh hit a teller of the Banco do Brasil branch in Santana dos Ferros; a tall, thin mulatto, and veteran reveler, Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio was in his room at his father’s house waiting for death; he saw the plane through the window and thought: it’s an illusion, I’m dying and—as he was going to tell reporters—he read a banner attached to the plane: “Don’t lose hope: we love you all”—he took that as an illusion as well and decided: “I’m going to die dressed as a Bahiana!” Only then did he realize it was the Saturday before Carnival—it had always been his habit on Carnival Saturday to dress himself as a Bahiana, with a Carmen Miranda turban, and, perfume bottles in each hand, he would go out parading through the streets of the city as a solitary reveler; during the era of Father Nelson, he would be arrested by Captain Procópio, the sheriff, and end up spending a night in jail—but even so he had never stopped dressing this way for Carnival. “I want to die in costume as a Bahiana and singing a Carnival samba.” He put on his costume, made up his face, applied lipstick and eyeliner, put on his Carmen Miranda turban, took out his perfume bottles, and decided to die singing—he already knew which samba he was going to sing to mock death when he heard, loud and clear, like a siren, the laughter of Dona Nevita; his first reaction was: “Of course!” Now there was no doubt—having decided not to wait for death in his room, but to die in the streets dressed as a Bahiana—he left his room, went into the street, and, as the plane passed over again, he shouted:

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“Hey, it’s Carnival.” Dressed as a Bahiana, he went down the street dancing, spraying his perfume, and singing: “It’s today that may do me in tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll make it there . . .”

Then, while he was singing and dancing in the street, he was followed, first by the various family black sheep: single mothers, suicide threateners, a suicide interrupter, a young man taken for a lunatic, a young woman who drank mouthwash, a girl addicted to cough syrup and because of this was estranged from her father, inveterate alcoholics, shy homosexuals, unmasked communists, the girl with one thin leg and one thick one, a blond married to a black man and a black man to a blond, neophyte prostitutes, poor people of all types—some costumed, some not, but all discovering that they could be happy; while the plane now flew lazily in the sky overhead, the group got larger, dancing and singing in the streets, repeating the refrain that Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio led: “It’s today that may do me in tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll make it there . . .”

When the group passed the rooming house where the women from the brothel were awaiting death, they came out too, with their regular dresses that seemed to be costumes themselves, and they were led by the Argentinian and the Paraguayan, and soon the two had confessed that they were really Brazilian and only pretending to be an Argentinian and a Paraguayan because they knew the weakness of Brazilian men for women from Argentina and Paraguay; and they sang:

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“It’s today that may do me in tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll make it there . . .”

Soon, half the group turned and went down the road leading up to the bridge, cars started coming out in the streets, honking their horns, and parents and siblings of the black sheep also came out into the streets and started dancing and jumping; and when they crossed the bridge, the group led by Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio was even bigger than the procession of Santana and more festive, much more festive than the rosary festivals when each year’s king and queen were coronated, and which had started again after the departure of Father Nelson; and everyone sang: “It’s today that may do me in tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll make it there . . .”

When the group crossed the bridge, they were joined by the musicians from the group known as Santana’s Fury; they got right behind Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio. They were dressed as jesters and, so, Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio, with a signal, combined with them—and revived the biggest Brazilian Carnival hits: “I hope it rains three days without stopping . . .”

Soon the samba came back, as a refrain: “It’s today that may do me in tomorrow I don’t know if I’ll make it there . . .”

The cars came and went, honking; there above, in the plane, Hilda Hurricane and I were crying, and the pilot Pães, seeing it all, with tears in his eyes, kept repeating:

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“Isn’t it strange?” Down below, the group kept only getting bigger: “The band leader has arrived, yes, yes, the band leader has arrived, oh yeah . . .”

And after: “Mama, I want it Mama, I want the teat . . .”

And since it was a day of happiness—Carnival Saturday—and he had discovered that he wasn’t going to die, that everyone had given themselves a punishment for having believed in the curse of Aunt Ciana, Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio himself sang: “If one dresses as a Bahiana, to pretend one is a woman, you’ll see she is you’ll see she is.”

In the plaza in front of the church, the revelers arrived dancing, bringing confetti and streamers and, when the immense group passed in front of the parochial house, Father Geraldo Cantalice, who was watching everything with Brother Malthus at his side, saw the Bahiana with a turban rivaling Carmen Miranda’s; he couldn’t contain himself and said: “God forgive me, Brother Malthus! It’s a pagan festival, but I have to bless it, if only because we’re alive and the nightmare is over!” Zezinho do Raimundo Eusébio sprayed both Father Geraldo Cantalice and Brother Malthus with perfume—who, to me, confessed: he smelled the perfume, he inhaled it as he never had before, he sensed everyone dancing and singing, and he felt that the girl in the plane was enchanted like Cinderella; and he loved the headache

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brought on by his allergy to any type of perfume and was mixing in with the crowd, he and Father Geraldo Cantalice, when, in front of the church, everyone started hugging each other, some even kissing each other, crying and at the same time laughing, and applauding when the plane passed low in front of Dona Nevita’s house—her, the woman with the laugh—towing a banner that said in red letters: “Beatriz, I love you!” (Many things happened after that: the Beautiful B came to Belo Horizonte and stayed with Dona Lily and Mr. Aristides, the parents of Nilde, who was married to Wilson, the Beautiful B’s brother. We got married on February second and not long after I left Binômio to be the chief reporter of the Minas edition of Última Hora; one afternoon when planes were mysteriously flying over the skies of Belo Horizonte, I went to meet the private secretary of the governor, Paulo Camilo de Oliveira Pena, who was going to bring me along as a press agent for the federal government; I climbed the stairs of the Governor’s Palace and I ran into Paulo Camilo and he said: “Have you heard what happened? Jânio resigned.” I went back down the stairs of the Governor’s Palace and returned to the office of Última Hora: the president, Jânio Quadros, had resigned, denouncing “the occult forces”; the military leaders were refusing, headed by General Denys, to allow the presidency to be taken over by the vice president, João Goulart, Jango, who was in China, accusing him of being a communist; Leonel Brizola, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, with the support of the Third Army, commanded by General Machado Lopes, rebelled against Denys and his cronies, and demanded that the chain of succession be respected; we created a clandestine resistance committee against any coup and in support of Jango’s rightful succession that met every night in Última Hora’s darkroom, and, at night, the Beautiful B would go out and slip pamphlets under people’s doors that said: “Listen to Brizola’s Chain of Succession. Say no to a military coup and yes to the legitimate possession of the elected vice president.” The civil war looked like it would start at any moment; one afternoon, we were having a public meeting on the steps of the San

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José Church; I was going to give a speech when an Army truck came towards us, full of soldiers; we started to sing the national anthem, and the Army truck passed by without stopping, only slowing down so as not to hit anybody; from the rear, soldiers with rifles and machine guns nodded to us. Jango took possession of power with the aid of parliamentary procedure and the gavel, as the journalist Sebastião Nery said; a bit later, José Maria Rabelo slapped General Punaro Bley in the face, giving him a black eye; it all happened in the morning—around noon, military troops, commanded by Colonel Roberto, invaded the offices of Binômio and broke everything; nothing was spared, including the darkroom, and I was left without photos of my wedding to the Beautiful B that Antônio Cocenza had taken and stored there; it was starting, under the João Goulart government, a time of a lot of agitation, military conspiracy, strikes, and the promise of land reform, either by law or by force. Around this time, the Malgalhães Pinto Group bought the magazine Alterosa, and I went there as the editor; I was tormented by a phrase that the Beautiful B had said when she arrived in Belo Horizonte, estranged from her father, who later would become her best friend, in order to marry me: “Don’t deceive me!”)

Five

0 The General and the Rose During those days, on the eve of the events that were going to throw everything in this narrator’s life up in the air, as well as the lives of all the characters in this novel, in the agitated time of the João Goulart government, Congressman José Aparecido de Oliveira, the directorpresident of the magazine Alterosa (of which I was the editor) as well as the most influential advisor to Governor Magalhães Pinto, lived with his mother in a house on Santa Catarina Road, across the street from the command post of the Fifth Army Military District in Belo Horizonte; the commander’s residence was over there as well, and from José Aparecido’s balcony you could see, in the early evenings, when the workday was over, General Carlos Luís Guedes with some enormous shears in his hands pruning the rosebushes in front of his house; every afternoon, General Guedes clipped one red rose and took it in the house, and after that we wouldn’t see any more of him, and I used to wonder: “What does the general do with the rose?” José Aparecido’s house was always full of visitors; he would speak loudly over the telephone, cackling, telling stories, and he had the habit of dragging an extension out on the balcony and continuing to talk (even if he was only wearing his white underwear, which at that time was long and made of cotton), ignoring the presence of the general in his garden taking care of the roses. José Aparecido always had certain visitors who couldn’t have been very agreeable to the general: the congressman and ex-governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Leonel Brizola, who had just issued the slogan “An In-law Isn’t a Relative: Brizola for President,” because he was married to Dona Neusa, João Goulart’s sister, and had been called ineligible as a result by his rivals; the governor of Pernambuco, Miguel Arraes, a legend of the left, considered a dangerous communist by the military;

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the governor of Sergipe, Seixas Dória, an inflexible nationalist; and, Congressman Francisco Julião, of the Farm-workers League, also known as Scarecrow, for whom agricultural reform in Brazil, either “by law or by force,” had to be carried out. With all of them, José Aparecido would take them out on his balcony—one at a time, they couldn’t be seen together, and they would chat while the general cared for his roses. One afternoon, when general strikes were shaking the country and people were already talking about a military rebellion, Governor Miguel Arraes, seated on the balcony with José Aparecido, saw the general taking care of his roses and said: “As long as the generals are taking care of their roses, we can sleep easy.” More experienced in dealing with the military, on hearing from José Aparecido what Arraes had said, Congressman Leonel Brizola, with his strong gaucho accent, judged: “I’m just saying, Che, it’s serious when a military man is caring for the roses.” Already an ex-member of the Nationalist Parliamentary Front, Governor Seixas Dória joked: “Whoever thinks the rose is only a rose doesn’t know much about generals.” When the Scarecrow, Francisco Julião, considered a messiah of the left, was having a coffee during a break from congressional debates over agricultural reform, sponsored by the Ministry of Health and the Farm-workers League, the Scarecrow looked down from the balcony and saw the general with his shears trimming the rosebushes, which, of course, sat in the middle of a great green lawn, he said, his hands shaking: “Well, it’s a plantation within the city! Man, we’ll get agricultural reform, by law or by force, down to the garden and roses of the general!” This narrator heard these conversations and, seeing General Guedes indifferent to everything, even the noisy phone calls at all hours of the night, asked himself: “Who’s right: Arraes? Brizola? Seixas Dória? The Scarecrow?”

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Wait: it is not going to take long and we’ll know; in those disturbed days, I kept a diary, because of the insomnia and fear of death that I felt, and wrote down events in general.

1 The Jaguar’s Breath I’ll go over the diary from that time, not to get more information on the general and his roses but in order to see how things are going for our characters; Aramel the Handsome, for example: was he still a rent-a-Don-Juan in the service of the villain of this novel, Antônio Luciano?—he was and, as we’ll see, he was under pressure; was he still dating Gabriela M.? Look at the answer in my diary: August 11, 1963 (at dusk) Aramel the Handsome appeared this afternoon at the Alterosa offices. He was very tense and said he needed to talk to me urgently. I took him into the conference room and he told me he was being pressured to turn Gabriela M. over to Antônio Luciano. I asked: “Why does he only want her now, after so much time?” He answered: “Because he’s only become interested in her now.” I asked: “Are you going to do it?” He answered: “No, I’d rather die.” He believed that his salvation and that of Gabriela M. was the United States, where he wanted to try his luck in Hollywood. Since he needed money for the trip, he asked that I go to Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo at Binômio with a proposition: he would give them a recorded interview to be published after he had left

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Brazil, revealing all of Antônio Luciano’s amorous secrets. In exchange, Binômio would give him two airline tickets to the USA. I promised to talk to Euro and José Maria the following day—and Aramel calmed down a bit. August 11, 1963 (after 11 pm) The same insomnia of my time at Binômio is back: lying in bed, beside the Beautiful B, I can’t manage to get to sleep because of my fear of death. During my time at Última Hora, I slept well because I had to get up at six to be in the office at seven to take roll and give out assignments to the reporters. I touched the Beautiful B’s shoulder, to talk with or make love to her, but she moved to the other side of the bed. I wanted to tell her about a scene I came across that afternoon (of course, I had talked about Aramel the Handsome’s problem only with her): women who were praying out loud, one holding an enormous rosary, were blocking the door of a furniture store that the actor Jonas Bloch had opened on the ground floor of the building where the Alterosa offices were, on Rio de Janeiro Road. I recognized Dona Lola Ventura among the prayers and I moved over to her. She didn’t call me “dearie” the way she did during the Camellia City campaign. She didn’t have her hair dyed light blue anymore either. Now she had it natural: white. She faced me with a savage look. I asked a security guard what was going on, and he pointed to the display window, where there was a topless plaster mannequin with a large necklace, which Jonas Bloch had put there to attract customers. The women, led by Dona Lola, were protesting against the mannequin’s nudity. There were six of them, and those who were passing by on Rio de Janeiro Road, the majority of them, laughed at and insulted the protesters. I went to talk to Jonas Bloch in the office, which was located in the back of the store, to give him my support. He was pale. Jonas Bloch was a Jew, and his blue eyes contained the fear of all the Jews in the world. “You’re going to cover the mannequin’s nudity?” I asked.

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“I’m going to take it out of the window. I’m only waiting for the protesters to leave.” “But there’s only six of them, Jonas.” “Oh, I don’t know!” Jonas Bloch’s hands and lips were shaking. August 11, 1963 (in the wee hours) I was happier when I worked at Última Hora. Was I happier or was it Brazil that was happier? I enjoyed leaning on the balcony railing above the lobby entrance of the Joaquim de Paula Building, where the offices of Última Hora were, watching the people come and go on Plaza Seven, thinking about the nude shoulders of the Beautiful B and waiting for the reporters to return with their assignments done. And it was nice to wait for the Beautiful B at the Cidade Jardim stop, close by, on Amazonas Avenue, across from the Dantes Building, and go to the movies and after go home to Cidade Jardim. The Beautiful B complains that since I’ve gone to Alterosa, I only talk about journalism: “If we have a child,” she asks, “will it be a magazine or a newspaper?” Today, the Beautiful B got a haircut and I didn’t notice. I need to go back to psychoanalysis. I’ll try to think about nice things to see if sleep comes: the caricaturist Henfil, who I discovered, baptized, and published in Alterosa, has created two personalities—they are called the Little Monks. One of them is inspired by Brother Malthus, who is a friend of Betinho, Henfil’s brother. I can’t sleep. It’s better to think about my time at Última Hora. Were we more tranquil or was it Brazil that was more tranquil? Fernando Gabeira fell in love from the balcony of Última Hora: his girl was thin and blond and had very pretty legs. She would come to see him wearing her uniform from the Catholic girls school she attended. When the photographer Antônio Amaral saw her coming, he would sing:

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“Dressed in blue and white wearing a frank smile on her enchanting little face with her pretty purse she rapidly conquers my lonely heart’s place . . .” Gabeira tried to convince his girl (her name was Zulma) to leave her boyfriend, whose grandfather was one of the richest men in Minas, and marry him, Gabeira, who was poor but knew by heart all the most beautiful poems of Pablo Neruda. Another scene from the time of Última Hora that I remember while waiting for sleep to come and dispel my fear of death: the man with the white hair talking on the phone in the pressroom— everyone had left already, there remained only Hélio Adami de Carvalho, the director, Dauro Mendes, the office secretary, me, the chief reporter, and the man with the white hair; he is sitting in a chair and leaning over the telephone; everything about him is impeccable and elegant: well-manicured nails, gray pants, black leather shoes, probably Italian, a blue-and-white-striped shirt with a scarlet tie, gold cuff links, a blue blazer; he speaks quietly into the phone—we know that he’s talking to his wife, who is in Rio de Janeiro in the apartment where they live; suddenly, the man with the white hair raises his voice: “You can’t do this to me, love!” “???” “Are you trying to kill me? Is that what you want?” “???” “No, I beg you, my love! Please don’t hang up!” “???” And the man with the white hair hangs up the phone and stands: he’s crying.

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August 12, 1963 Today I went to Binômio to talk to Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo about Aramel the Handsome’s proposition. They said (it was mostly José Maria who spoke) that, with the journal’s current editorial orientation towards basic reforms, Antônio Luciano held no more interest for Binômio. August 13, 1963 I’ve told Aramel the Handsome the answer from Euro Arantes and José Maria Rabelo, and he started biting his nails, the way he does when he’s nervous. “Why don’t you sell the Mercedes, Aramel, and buy tickets to the United States?” “It’s not mine.” “It’s not yours?” “It’s his”—he was referring to Antônio Luciano—“I can only drive the Mercedes while I’m working for him.” “If you don’t give him Gabriela M., he’ll take the Mercedes?” “He’ll take the Mercedes, he’ll take the apartment where I live in the Financial Hotel, I’ll lose my perks, the expenses and commissions for Little Bunnies that I manage to get for him.” “You don’t have any money?” “Do you know what it’s like to be kept and badly paid? Even the clothes I wear belong to him. Even my underwear belongs to him.” August 17, 1963 It’s just after midnight, and Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. are sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room of my and the Beautiful B’s apartment. I’m writing in the kitchen because the fear of death has returned and I am sleepless; the Beautiful B has been in the kitchen two times—once to tell me that I’ve got to try to get to sleep; the other to say that she had gone to shut the curtains and saw two strange men down below, watching our

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apartment. I looked carefully between the bedroom curtains and saw them: there were two really strange-looking guys watching our apartment. “Could it be that they’re looking for Aramel and Gabriela?” whispered the Beautiful B. “It could be.” “And if they find Aramel’s Mercedes?” “Aramel left the Mercedes at a gas station out by the highway.” The two kept watch for a while and then went away. I returned to the kitchen. Before, I opened the door to the living room a crack and peeked in: Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. slept in each other’s arms. When I got home from work at Alterosa today, the two of them were here in the house. They both were afraid, and Aramel the Handsome told me how that afternoon he had been summoned to Antônio Luciano’s lair, the apartment that he occupied on the top floor of the Financial Hotel, where he lived alone with the exception of a spotted jaguar. Aramel had never been there before. Not even the three times that he had earned a bonus for his performance getting Little Bunnies for Antônio Luciano. When Aramel the Handsome rang the bell of Antônio Luciano’s lair, he couldn’t imagine what was waiting for him. Luciano himself answered the door with the jaguar at his side. “Welcome to my home, Aramel the Handsome,” said Antônio Luciano. Seeing Aramel frozen in the doorway, eyeing the jaguar fearfully, he said, “You don’t know Teresa? This is Aramel the Handsome, Teresa. Treat him well, Teresa.” Aramel went in and sat on the sofa. Antônio Luciano continued: “Teresa’s good people. She has a very good heart. This’s what I say, my dear Aramel: trust a jaguar, but never trust a woman.” Teresa the spotted jaguar didn’t look at Aramel the Handsome in a friendly way, but she seemed interested in the conversation: she didn’t move from where she was standing. “Did you get my message, Aramel?”

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“What message?” Aramel answered, delaying, to pull himself together from the shock of confronting the spotted jaguar. “About the Little Bunny.” “What Little Bunny, Dr. Luciano?” “Listen, the Little Bunny. Gabriela, isn’t it?” “Gabriela M. isn’t part of the deal, Dr. Luciano.” “Can I ask why?” “Because I love Gabriela M., Dr. Luciano, and I’m going to marry her.” “You can get married. Nothing’s stopping you from marrying her, Aramel.” “Not Gabriela M., Dr. Luciano.” “Really, no?” “No, really. Dr. Luciano.” “Then you’re going to have to choose, Aramel.” “Choose what, Dr. Luciano?” “Either you turn over the Little Bunny or you return the Mercedes, the apartment in the Financial Hotel, and even the clothes that you wear that I bought for you.” “Not Gabriela M., Dr. Luciano.” “Don’t be an innocent, Aramel.” As if she were obeying a signal from Antônio Luciano, Teresa, the jaguar, approached Aramel the Handsome until she was faceto-face with him; she was so close that he could feel her breath when she exhaled, and, taken by panic, he said: “I’ll do it, Dr. Luciano.” “And what day will I see the Little Bunny, Aramel?” “First thing tomorrow, Dr. Luciano.” “Look, Aramel,” he said, patting the spotted jaguar’s head, “Teresa is a witness to everything.” But Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. were more disposed to flee to the United States. “America is our best hope,” Aramel the Handsome kept repeating. “Our only hope is America.”

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August 18, 1963 At breakfast, the Beautiful B and I spoke with Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. about the two guys outside the apartment after midnight the night before. “One of them looked strong, like one of those street Tarzans?” “Right.” “And he wore a tight T-shirt like a street Tarzan?” “He did,” answered the Beautiful B. “It’s what made me notice him.” “I already know who it is. I don’t need to know what the other one looked like.” His voice trembled as he said, “We’ve got to get out of here, Gabriela, as soon as possible. I’m not even going to pick up the Mercedes from the gas station.” We took a cab and went to the Dominican monastery, me, the Beautiful B, Aramel the Handsome, and Gabriela M., to look for Brother Malthus. He said: “I know where you can be safe, Aramel. I’m going to take you there right away.” While it was still early in the morning, in a Volkswagen van belonging to the Dominican monastery and driven by the lay brother, Brother Malthus took Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. to Serra da Piedade, where there’s a church, and left them there under the care of Brother Rosário.

2 Still More Jaguar’s Breath (Now that everything has happened, so many years having passed, and when a report in the Washington Post gives details about who Aramel the Handsome is today, it’s hard to believe what I’m reading—and yet it’s true; and I ask myself: “Was it Teresa the jaguar’s exhalation that made Aramel the Handsome change so much?”

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I remember hearing Aramel say, when he still couldn’t imagine that he would one day be known as Pretty Boy: “After I felt the jaguar’s breath, my friend, everything that was good inside me died.” It could also be that it wasn’t the jaguar’s breath but the surprising end of things with Gabriela M. that changed everything. But this comes later, because I imagine my dear Aunt Little Heart complaining to this clumsy narrator: “Don’t you forget that I know what happens with Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. I could cut this part of the book out completely. What I want to know is what is happening with the other characters, such as with you and the Beautiful B and mostly, oh yes, mostly, with Brother Malthus and Hilda Hurricane.”)

3 Where Are the Colonels? I’ll continue to rely on my diary: September 2, 1963 (in the morning) A confession that I make before going to the office at Alterosa: “I have one source of happiness: at least I haven’t let the Beautiful B down.” September 2, 1963 (10 at night) Today in the afternoon, I had an unexpected visitor at Alterosa: it was Hilda Hurricane. I had gone to the National Bank for a meeting with Eduardo and Marcos Magalhães Pinto, who are the owners of Alterosa, and when I came back, she was waiting for me. Even in the elevator, I could smell her Muguet du Bonheur perfume, her unmistakable trademark. She was having a good time in

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the office: the reporter Ponce de Leon—whom I took from Binômio to Última Hora and brought to Alterosa as well—was saying: “Hilda, unlock a mystery: why did you stop being the Girl in the Gold Bikini, who could have had the key to any millionaire’s castle, and go to the Hotel Marvelous?” My arrival freed her from having to respond—the two of us went to the conference room. She looked thin and coughed a lot; she didn’t look as beautiful that thin. She liked the coverage that she received in Alterosa; she took afternoon tea with me, served with bread and butter, and the caricaturist Henfil presented her with a cartoon made on the spot, in which the little monk Shorty said to Saint Peter, on seeing Hilda Hurricane: “If Hell’s got Hilda Hurricane, that’s where I’m going.” Besides being gaunt and coughing, Hilda Hurricane was worried. “This is the only way, right, that I can see you.” “You’re coughing a lot.” “I had the flu very badly. With a really high fever and everything. The cough is a souvenir of the flu. But it’s going away, slowly.” “You seem worried, Hilda.” “And who, in Brazil, isn’t worried? I don’t know, where is this all going? If the abyss really exists, Brazil’s going to fall in it.” “And does Brazil’s crisis make it up the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous and bang on the door of Room 304?” She coughed again before answering: “It’s in Room 304 that the crisis comes before anywhere else. And now it’s come twice. It’s come because of Jango’s inflation, and it’s come because the country colonels have disappeared and they’re the ones that make Room 304 go.” “Where are the colonels?” “They’ve disappeared. They’ve had it up to here,” and she pointed at her neck, “with the land reform that Jango has promised. They’re buying weapons and more weapons.” “And they don’t come anymore?” “They’ve completely disappeared. I don’t know, if Jango brings in serious agricultural reform, I just don’t know.”

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Tomorrow I’ll write the rest of the conversation with Hilda Hurricane. Sleep has returned and my fear of death has disappeared.

4 I Wasn’t Born Yesterday I continue going over what I wrote in my diary: September 3, 1963 Like I said, Hilda Hurricane was sad. She is the strongest person I’ve ever seen—however, she was sad. Could it be from that flu? Could it be the flight of the colonels? Could it be the crisis banging on the door of Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous? She said that lately she was used to going to bed before midnight. And now there were no lines on Guaicurus Road and she missed the lines. “I miss the old Brazil and I miss myself, how I was, ya understand?” Among the big colonels, only one kept coming. The one from Ilheus. Who was the cocoa planter who inspired one of Jorge Amado’s characters in Gabriela. “He’s starting up with talking about taking me to Ilheus again. He insists on building me a beachfront house.” “Are you going to go?” “Me?” she laughed. “I wasn’t born yesterday.” “When were you born, Hilda?” “I was born twenty-six years ago,” she laughed, and something shone in her eyes. “If I told ya the day, ya wouldn’t believe me.” “Funny, you never said, and I, who wants to turn you into a character, have never asked: what day were you born on, Hilda?” “On the first of April. April Fool’s Day. So, I don’t exist, right? And you know what my first night on Guaicurus Road was? The night of my birthday, April 1, 1959.” “It was in 1959? I was sure it was 1958.”

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“It was 1959. And there’s a catch.” (She loved to say, “There’s a catch.”) “What catch?” “I’ll tell ya: on April 1, 1964, it all ends,” she said, positively shining. “Then I’ll leave in the same way that I arrived.” “But why on April 1, 1964, Hilda?” “That catch I’ll tell ya sometime.” “Why five years after, Hilda? Why exactly five years?” “I swear to ya that one day I’ll tell all. If I tell ya all, aren’t ya going to write a novel about my life?” “I am.” “So, after April 1, 1964”—and she crossed herself here—“I’ll tell ya all.” “Why don’t you tell it now?” She hurriedly opened her purse. “Look, I came to see ya because, of course, a married man can’t set foot in Room 304, even to see a friend. I came here because I read in the Estado do Minas that Brother Malthus’s choir, the Young Boys’ Choir of God, was having difficulties and could even be disbanded for lack of money. So”—and now everything in her lit up and I saw again the Hilda Hurricane of old times—“so, I brought a small contribution for the choir that I’d like ya to give to Brother Malthus.” She was alive now, positively shining, rejuvenated and returned to being the girl of twenty when she charmed the Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club. “Tell Brother Malthus not to worry about the amount. It comes from the heart.” She passed me a check, whose value, with the curiosity that I had inherited from Aunt Little Heart, I had to see. “Ten thousand, Hilda? That’s a small fortune, Hilda.” “It’s from the heart,” she said. “I’ll give it to Brother Malthus first thing in the morning.” “By hand?” “I’ll do it myself. By hand,” I promised and put the check in my jacket pocket.

5 She’s the Devil, Don’t You See? It was as if Hilda Hurricane had soaked the check in Muguet du Bonheur, and when I got home, carrying it in my pocket, the Beautiful B said: “Uai, what’s that perfume? It’s very strong and cloying. It can only be Muguet du Bonheur.” “Smell,” I said, taking the check out of my pocket. “Hm, it is Muguet du Bonheur. It makes me nauseous . . . What’s this check about?” I gave it to her to look at and told her what it was for. “Ten thousand? But Hilda Hurricane has gone crazy or . . . so . . . that’s it . . . I understand, she’s . . . Never mind.” “She’s what?” “Crazy in love with Little Malthus”—which was how the Beautiful B referred to Brother Malthus. “Only a woman in love does crazy things with money.” “Lets her father’s fortune slip through her fingers,” I joked with her. “Exactly . . . or signs a check for ten thousand to aid a choir.” When, on the following day, I went to the Dominican monastery to give Brother Malthus the check by hand, as I had promised Hilda Hurricane, the Saint cried: “What’s that perfume?” “It’s from this check. Look.” “Ten thousand? What kind of joke is this?” “It’s not a joke.” “Well, what is it, then?” “Are you going to tell me that you don’t know who this check is from?” “With this perfume . . . it can only be from her.” He corrected himself: “It can only be from who she is. But so much money, what for?”

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“She read in the Estado do Minas that the Young Boys’ Choir of God could come to an end because of lack of funds and she decided to help. She asked you to forgive the amount, but she says it’s from the heart.” “Don’t joke about something serious,” he said in a bad-humored tone. He started pacing around the room with the check in his hand; it seemed like he wanted to both tear it up and raise it to his mouth and kiss it; as if he feared doing one thing or another, he left it on the table and raised his hands to his head: “That damned perfume . . . I already have a splitting headache!” And after dry-swallowing the aspirin that he took out of his habit, he said, “You’re going to take this check back. If you’re my friend, you’ll do this for me.” “Okay. If you give me her shoe to return to her, I’ll take the check too.” “That’s blackmail!” “This isn’t the Saint I know!” “The Saint’s a big lie! A Saint was Saint Antoine! I’m a poor sinner. All because of her,” and he stopped in front of the copy of The Temptations of Saint Antoine, by the Dutch painter Pieter Brughel the Younger, that he had on the wall of his quarters. “All because of her. She is my Queen of Sheba. I flagellate myself every night to avoid thinking about her. I don’t eat anymore. I don’t sleep.” He moved over to a corner of the room. “I swear by Saint Antoine: I had already decided to anonymously return, by mail, her shoe.” He threw himself down on the sofa and raised his hands to his head again: “Now you come with this damned perfume and I’m thinking of her again. I want to sing. I want to dance. I want to embrace the world.” He got up from the sofa and asked me for a cigarette. “You smoke now?” “It’s so that you can see the point to which I’ve fallen. But I’ve discovered what she is. I investigated everything about her. She is the Devil, don’t you see? Do you know how many men have already

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killed themselves over her? Seven. Could it be that she wants me to be the eighth? She’s sadly mistaken.” He stopped again in front of the reproduction of The Temptations of Saint Antoine: “She is my Queen of Sheba.” He took a long drag on the cigarette and looked at me: “I was in Serra da Piedade yesterday. I don’t know what’s going to become of Aramel the Handsome. I swear by Saint Antoine I don’t.” He put the cigarette out half-smoked, picked up the check, put it inside of a copy of Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Antoine, which he held on to, and whispered: “I’m sorry for the explosion. Do me a big favor: give her a call and say that I asked you to thank her for the contribution. Do that for me if you really want to be my friend.”

6 God Save Your Headache The cousin in Itabira called: the Beautiful B’s mother was there and wanted to see her. That night, I was alone in my apartment when Brother Malthus rang the bell; it was my turn to be surprised: “Uai, what’s that perfume?” “It’s her check.” “But, you still haven’t cashed or deposited the check?” “No.” “Why? Aren’t you going to want her money?” “No, it’s just that I want to keep something of hers with me.” “The shoe isn’t enough anymore?” “No.” “And your headache?” “I still have it and am taking more aspirins than I should.” “It’s painful, then?”

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“God save you, headache. It’s a blessed and divine headache sent from God. But I came here because since the Beautiful B has gone away, you can come with me on a mission. I’m in the monastery’s van.” “Is it to go where I’m thinking?” “I don’t know,” he laughed. “Where are you thinking?” “To the Bohemian Zone?” “No,” and he laughed again. “It’s on Guaicurus Road.” “Are you crazy, Saint?” “We’re not going to get out. We’ll stay in the van, and no one’ll see me.”

7 In the Bohemian Zone It was after eleven at night; during normal times, since it was a Thursday, Guaicurus Road would be very busy, but when we got there, we had the impression of decay. Even the number of people climbing the stairs of Montanhês Dancing or the Hotel Marvelous was small and there wasn’t a line of people waiting for Room 304. Brother Malthus parked on the other side of Guaicurus Road, across from Montanhês Dancing, and its luminous neon threw its light on the van; the orchestra was playing a bolero, and a feminine voice sang in Spanish: “When you really want me like I want you it’s impossible, my love, to live so far apart . . .”

The Saint was quiet, listening to the bolero and took Hilda Hurricane’s check out of his habit’s pocket and smelled it:

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“Everything that’s true in this world is in a bolero. It’s nice, isn’t it?” And after asking for a cigarette, he said, “You’ve already been to her room before, right?” “Many times.” “And what’s it like? Is there a Saint George on the wall?” “No.” “And are the lampshades red?” “They are.” “What floor is her room on?” “The third. It’s Room 304, which they’ve combined with Room 303. Privileges of being the goddess of the Bohemian Zone.” “For the love of God, don’t talk like that.” “Sorry.” “I want to ask you a question. Will you answer me honestly?” “I will.” “Have you already . . . have you . . . have you had relations with her?” “No.” “Honestly?” “Honestly.” “That’s great! I would have been horrified if you had done anything with her. All the men in the world, sure, but you and Aramel, no, because you’re the brothers I never had.” “She herself is who asked me never to seek her out the way other men do. It was during one of our first interviews.” “I’ve lost sleep thinking about this. In Serra da Piedade, I put the same question to Aramel, and he also said no. You know what that makes me want to do now?” “I know. But I won’t let you do it. It’ll be a scandal. They’re going to recognize you, and it’ll be all over the city that the Saint was in Hilda Hurricane’s room.” “But if you go with me . . .” “No, not even like that.”

8 Still in the Bohemian Zone He was surprised by the lack of movement and the fact of there not being a line of men on the Hotel Marvelous’s stairs. Only the occasional man went by, and those going to Montanhês Dancing were the majority. “Why would it be that today there is no line?” “It’s the crisis. She says that is even affecting the movement in Room 304. The inflation of Jango’s government and the fear of the colonels because of the land reforms.” “I only wanted to tell her how much I owe her.” “There’ll be another time. Today, no.” “Sometimes, I think that God sent her. He disguised her as the Devil and sent her to save me. Because she opened my eyes. She taught me to see the world another way. She taught me what piety is and real human compassion. Do you see that cat that’s crossing the street? I love that cat and I love that drunk woman who’s heading this way and I love the workers and I love the prostitutes and the simple and those who have nothing and I want to change the world. So, I want to say this to her. I received a beautiful letter from Dom Hélder Câmara in response to a letter I wrote him. Dom Hélder wrote: “You are very daring and will have the kingdom of heaven.”

9 Involving Maria Man-Killer We started to hear sirens and, like magic, Guaicurus Road became crowded, everyone running towards the intersection with São Paulo Road, in front of the Baghdad Restaurant. The patrol cars arrived

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with their sirens on and a tear gas bomb went off in the distance; shouts came from there. “It’d be better if we left,” I said. “There must be something stupid happening. Or the cops must be trying to arrest Maria Man-Killer.” “Poor thing. I won’t let them take her!” “Calm down; the Man-Killer knows how to take care of herself. Not even four patrol cars will be able to pick her up.” A new tear gas bomb went off, this time on Guaicurus Road, and we felt its effects in our eyes, which began to tear up. An enormous and unintelligible shouting went up then. “They threw that bomb at Maria Man-Killer?” “It’s the only thing it could be.” “Let’s go see,” and he drove the van there. When we got to the corner of Guaicurus and Rio de Janeiro, moving slowly because of all the people in the street, we saw Maria Man-Killer with her back to the wall, encircled by eight or more soldiers armed with billy clubs, revolvers, and tear gas bombs in their hands; one soldier took out his revolver, pointed it at Maria Man-Killer, and shouted: “Face the wall and put your hands on your head; if not, I’ll shoot you, Man-Killer!” Then Brother Malthus got out of the van and, with his Dominican habit flying up about him, stepped in front of Maria Man-Killer and shouted to the soldier: “In the name of God, lower that weapon!” “It’s the Saint,” said Maria Man-Killer, and she fell to her knees at his feet. “It’s the Saint; thank you, Saint George!” The crowd applauded and shouted: “Viva the Saint! Viva the Saint!” The soldier lowered his revolver and put it in his holster, and I got out of the van, showing my press pass when I was challenged. “Maria will be under my charge,” said Brother Malthus to the soldiers; without waiting for a response, he said, “Come with me, Maria, come on.” We got in the van, and Brother Malthus left Guaicurus Road going against the one-way, and we drove around the city with Maria Man-Killer.

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“The Saint,” Maria Man-Killer didn’t tire of saying. “My Saint George the Warrior sent the Saint to save me.” In the wee hours of the morning, Brother Malthus stopped in front of the Hotel Marvelous. “Now you get out, Maria,” he said. “Go with God, Maria.” Maria Man-Killer took the Saint’s hand and set herself to kissing it: “What can I do, Saint, so that I can thank you?” “You’ll go to Room 304, knock on the door, and tell Hilda everything that happened. Can I trust you to do that?” “I give my word to a Saint.”

10 It’s There That Things Happen ”However,” a word so loved by the classic authors and banished from my dictionary, with a prominent place on my index at the copy editor’s desk. However—I say it again for the pleasure of repeating it—Aramel the Handsome and Gabriela M. contemplated the lights of Belo Horizonte, visible at night from Serra da Piedade; they were tremulous lights and seemed to promise mad and happy times that one had never before lived nor dreamed; seeing a Belo Horizonte that seemed made of enchantment, Gabriela M. whispered: “It’s there that things happen.” It had been several days and nights that they had been in Serra da Piedade, and the thing they waited most for was the arrival of night to be able to see the lights of Belo Horizonte. “Gabriela, stop fooling around. It’s not in Belo Horizonte that things happen.” “Where is it then, wise guy?” asked Gabriela M., who, each day, was moving from impatience to irritation. “It’s in America, Gabriela,” said Aramel the Handsome. “It’s there that things happen.” “I’ve had it up to here with this America,” said Gabriela M.,

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passing her hand over her chest. “Around here, you understand? I only wanna know one thing from you, Aramel, one thing: how long are we going to rot here?” She didn’t even seem like the Gabriela M. that he had met (do you remember that, readers?) when she was a nymph, barely sixteen years old, lost in love through the tales of the Fatman MC; the first few days in Serra da Piedade, according to the report that Aramel the Handsome detailed to this scribe a few days later, were a honeymoon and a tranquil time; even the fear of being hunted by the street Tarzan, with the tight T-shirt, in the name of Antônio Luciano, knowing that they were being protected calmed them a lot. But with the passing of days and the sight of the lights of Belo Horizonte at night promising paradise, the enchanted epoch was ending and they began to believe that those who came up to Serra da Piedade were Antônio Luciano’s spies; since some of them camped there, they lost their peace of mind, and this only made the bad humor of Gabriela M. grow. There were many times that Brother Rosário had to separate the two. One night, contemplating the lights of Belo Horizonte, Gabriela M. asked for the millionth time: “So, Aramel, how long are we going to rot here?” When Aramel the Handsome didn’t respond, she announced: “I’ve made a decision. Well, two decisions.” “What are they, my love?” “Don’t call me ‘my love.’” “Say it: what did you decide?” “First: tomorrow, I’m going back to Belo Horizonte. Second: tomorrow, I’m really going to seek out Dr. Luciano.” At my request, Aramel the Handsome reconstituted the dialogue of the two and I reproduce it here in my diary: Him: “What, are you nuts, Gabriela?” Her: “Nuts? No. I’m going to seek out Dr. Luciano and have his daughter. And my daughter will be the daughter of the richest man in Brazil, and she’s going to have everything that I didn’t and do all that I didn’t in my shitty life. My girl is going to have money, you understand? Money. Lots of money.”

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Him (trying to calm her): “I’m going to earn money in America.” Her: “What America-mania! It’s easier for an elephant to fly than for you to get anything in Hollywood, or in ‘America’ as you say.” Him: “You’re angry, Gabriela M.” Her: “What angry-mania! Do you know what I’ve gone through in my life? Do you know what it’s like to see a father come home drunk every night and slap around your mother? Do you know what it’s like for a mother to cheat herself to educate her daughter? Do you know what it’s like for a mother to go hungry so that her daughter has bread to eat? To go hungry so that she can get a little dress for her daughter? To get her daughter shoes? And, on the day that my father died, she still cried, poor dear, and felt the absence of his whiskey breath. I know what all this is like, Aramel, and my daughter is going to have a rich father. She’ll be hurt if I stay with you. She will. One day, my daughter is going to visit Europe, France, and Bahia, and”—and here Gabriela M. started to cry—“she’s going to live an international lifestyle and say this: ‘I’m not just me—I’m my mother’s disgrace, who gave herself so that I could travel all these unknown seas!’” At that time, as Brother Rosário told Brother Malthus, Aramel the Handsome slapped Gabriela M.’s face, and she cried: “I’ve had enough of you, Aramel! Enough! Because you are what I always was in life: a fool!”

11 Take Care, Marlon Brando Gabriela M. fulfilled her promise; she turned herself into the villain of this story and became pregnant; Aramel the Handsome went to America, like he said he would, after having suffered a lot, because he really loved Gabriela M. To get his passage to the USA, Brother Malthus called Hilda Hurricane for the first time, using her secret line, whose number I gave him; he asked that she come to the

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Dominican monastery and explained to her the danger that Aramel was in, still sought after by the street Tarzan, with his tight T-shirt; Brother Malthus managed to get not only money for the ticket: he managed to get two thousand dollars more for Aramel to take to deal with his first days in America. On the evening of his trip, the Beautiful B, who wasn’t as bad a cook as she had been at the beginning, made a feijoada for Aramel the Handsome; under the influence of cachaça from home, Santana dos Ferros, he made a confession: “One day, when you all look to the skies over Belo Horizonte and a rain of dollars starts to fall, don’t freak out. I’m going to get so rich in America, so rich, that I’ll come back in my own plane that I’ll have, like Marlon Brando and Paul Newman have, and I’ll make a rain of dollars fall on the city, in a way that’ll resolve the problem that so many have with the rosary around their necks.” When we took Aramel the Handsome to the airport, for his flight to Rio de Janeiro where he would connect with his flight to America, we organized a going-away party, carrying banners that said: “Take Care, Marlon Brando: Aramel the Handsome is Arriving.” “Paul Newman Was Yesterday: Now’s the Time of Aramel the Handsome.” We had twelve people at Aramel the Handsome’s going-away party, and if Hilda Hurricane hadn’t had to service the colonel from Bahia, the rich cocoa grower who wanted to take her to Ilheus and give her a house on the beach, she would have been there as well. When he got on the plane, Aramel stayed in the door, imitating the pose of a Hollywood star; we ate it up as well, shouting: “Adios, Aramel! Congratulations, Aramel!”

12 Waiting for the Dollar Rain (Of course, Aramel, I feel real bad about saying good-bye, now that you, like a son of Latin America’s storms, have left this story to live

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out your dreams of conquering America; your first updates were good, and we believed that Marlon Brando and Paul Newman had something to worry about; anyway, you had a role in a film with Liz Taylor, not an important one—your appearance was so fast that we barely had time to applaud in the Metropole, in Belo Horizonte, when you were gone from the screen; it didn’t matter that you only crossed a room with a tray in your hand, to serve Liz Taylor a sherry and that you tripped over someone, breaking the bottle and the glasses; it didn’t matter: we believed it was a beginning, a difficult one like all beginnings, but that you would get other roles, and we suffered with you when you sent a letter explaining how you got that part in the Liz Taylor film: you had to date a seventy-year-old alcoholic who was financing the film, and since the breath of age depressed you so much, you refused a role in her next film—pay attention—with Paul Newman, because you’d prefer anything, even hunger in New York, or wherever you were, to avoid that breath. In New York, you still had a good part of the two thousand dollars from Hilda Hurricane, even if it was only a loan; you tried to get into the mythic Actors Studio, so that Elia Kazan could discover you like he did Marlon Brando; but not even flirting with Kazan’s secretary got you a place in the class where you could learn to be an actor; your money ran out, and, working as a waiter in a restaurant, along with a couple other Brazilians, who wanted to become screenwriters in America, you sent us a letter—dated from when the events of this story hadn’t yet arrived, but I’ll force myself to copy here: “New York, January 10, 1964. “My Brothers the Saint and Roberto: “It’s three in the morning in New York and it’s snowing. It’s snowing without end and I’m eating the Devil’s bread. I work as a waiter in a restaurant from 8 at night to 2 in the morning and I make a thousand dollars a month, and there’s never anything left over because of the short time I spent in Hollywood, where I got spoiled. I have a room in Greenwich Village, where a lot of people like me live, who come from every corner of the world, to make it in America, just like I did.

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“But today, here in America, glory and fortune are like hamburgers: they’re too small for so much hunger! “I’ve already been to the Actors Studio one hundred times and didn’t manage to get more than a date with Elia Kazan’s secretary. “My only pleasure here is in going to the airport and watching the planes that are going to Brazil. “Pardon my bitterness, but I’m sleepless and I miss Brazil and myself. “Hugs to everyone and a kiss for the Beautiful B. Don’t forget Aramel. “PS. But I haven’t forgotten: a rain of dollars is going to fall on Belo Horizonte; you can wait for it, of this I’m sure because I still believe, in the depths of my heart, that America is the distinguished mother of the world.” Soon after, you had a splendid period of being a limousine driver; you even sent the two thousand dollars to Hilda Hurricane, proving how honest you are; after, Aramel the Handsome, you sent a letter that the Beautiful B read out loud to Brother Malthus and me: you talked about your new profession in America, that now you were earning a living washing cadavers in New York. “Was it there, Aramel, that everything happened? Could it be from washing cadavers in New York that you decided to change your life?” It’s certain that, along with the cadavers you washed, you buried Aramel the Handsome, the innocent and suffering boy from South America, born in the interior of Minas Gerais, and were reborn as Pretty Boy; reading the description that you wrote of modern times, I’d like to know how it happened, how Pretty Boy came out: was it when you smelled the jaguar Teresa’s breath during your conversation with Antônio Luciano? Or was it when you heard what Gabriela M. said to you in Serra da Piedade? Or when you realized, on another day, that she had turned herself over to the villain and become pregnant by him a short time later? Or did Pretty Boy come out of all of this and the sum of the dreams that you dreamed? It’s very hard to believe in your existence, Pretty Boy!

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Where did you learn to handle the bribery, the numbers racket, and the machine guns? Where did you learn to kill? My sister, Annabelle Drummond Lee, who lives on Long Island and who, soon after you arrived in the USA, became my main source for newspaper and magazine stories about you, said that I would only believe in your existence on seeing you—and once she went to Las Vegas and searched you out in the Thousand and One Nights Casino: she had written you a letter saying that she was a Brazilian girl who wanted to see you; you received her during a party, Pretty Boy, and she saw you: it was really you, but your Portuguese, which had once had a strong Minas accent, now had an American one; it was really you, and Annabelle ended up wanting to ask you what I’m asking you now: “How did it happen, Pretty Boy?” I fear that this novel will end and leave several things up in the air—what is to be done, Pretty Boy, if they are the eternal mysteries of life? And I can’t forget the message that you asked Annabelle, in Las Vegas, to give to me: “Tell that jack-off of a brother of yours to keep watching the sky over Belo Horizonte which, when he least expects it, is going to rain dollars.” Another question, Pretty Boy: why, as they say in the news stories about you that arrive in Brazil, do you sponsor recently born children, as long as they’re girls and the parents agree to name each one Gabriela? Is it for revenge, Pretty Boy? Or is it another clue to your mystery—could it be that you don’t want them, Pretty Boy, to sell themselves in America the way that Gabriela M. sold herself here in Brazil?)

13 Revisiting the General and the Rose Aunt Little Heart must be saying now: “What a lie! I was hoping that you were getting to, so long hoped for and yet delayed, what was going to happen between Hilda Hurricane and Brother Malthus!” And without hiding her irritation: “Up to what point are you willing to lay these red herrings!?” But it was a worrying letter from Aunt Little Heart that I received at that time, that makes this narrator leave off on telling until later the emotional scenes linked to Hilda Hurricane and Brother Malthus; having said that, I’ll talk about the letter from my dear aunt: she wrote an entire letter talking about the strange illness that was attacking Joli, the very friendly and esteemed and inseparable companion of Aunt Ciana; she had the status—you all must remember— of a family member; Joli hadn’t eaten for several days, not even her favorites, like beef stroganoff, like chicken and rice, and had become sad in a way that contrasted with her happy and vivacious temperament. Aunt Little Heart asked in her letter: “What if it was one of those strays from Santana dos Ferros’s streets trying to turn the head of the only innocent dog they’d ever seen?” Poor Joli didn’t leave the house wagging her tail like before, and she didn’t accompany Aunt Ciana to her nocturnal vigils in the Mother Church, that poor dog, who had learned to enter the church backwards, as Aunt Ciana had taught her, so as not to see Nude Adam; and it didn’t seem to be a physical pain, it seemed to be a pain in her soul—which Aunt Ciana is able to judge: Joli has a soul; and from the poor gal’s left eye a tear fell each minute; and Joli, certainly, became the only dog in the world who could cry.

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Since a veterinarian only came to Santana dos Ferros once in a while, really to take care of the bulls and cows, and none of the three doctors would accept Joli as a patient, and since the bus from Santana dos Ferros, which would take ducks, swans, hens, turkeys, even suckling pigs, not to mention parrots, discriminated against dogs, Aunt Ciana decided to rent a jeep and come to Belo Horizonte with Joli for a consultation: Aunt Ciana asked that I make an appointment for Monday the twelfth of December, at two in the afternoon, with the best veterinarian in Belo Horizonte to have a look at Joli—which I did with alacrity, because during the time that I lived under the same roof as Joli, the two of us sharing the love of Aunt Little Heart and Aunt Ciana, she was a friend through thick and thin, even taking off with me at night; another dog who wasn’t Joli would have made a lot of noise on seeing me open the window and would have woken up my dear aunts, who, at the time, were probably dreaming about an apparition of the Virgin Mary—but Joli didn’t—she was my accomplice, and she would go to the Bohemian Zone with me; I even got her drunk a lot, almost turning her into an alcoholic, bringing Aunt Ciana to say: “It’s funny, Little Heart, if Joli weren’t an incorruptible dog, I’d swear I was crazy. Because it seems like she has liquor on her breath!” It was in the PS that Aunt Little Heart started to trouble my afflicted heart: she revealed that Aunt Ciana, after having led a campaign that said that the Family That Prays Together Stays Together, even if she had to leave poor Joli at home, was organizing the campaign of the March with God, for the Family and Liberty, with never-beforeseen adherents, and she announced: “We’re only going to stop when we send that communist João Goulart back to Russia or to Hell where he belongs!” Which was the source of my concern; if, for good or ill, some sentiment had taken hold of Santana dos Ferros, it was a sign that it had taken hold of all of Brazil. As if that weren’t enough, Aunt Little Heart added a PS number two in which she said that my Uncle José Viana, who appeared at the beginning of this book as my most unforgettable character and had stopped me from being disinherited for being a communist, was sending along a message to me; read the PS:

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“Your Uncle José Viana was here yesterday bringing a cheese that your Aunt Lúcia sent for us. He was panting, the way he gets when he’s scared or nervous, and told us that he’s buying arms to resist Jango’s land reforms, and he’s already bought a breed of cattle which attacks any trespasser. Well, your Uncle José Viana said: ‘Little Heart and Ciana, things are black indeed. The revolution’s coming!’”

The message for me from my Uncle José Viana was that I shouldn’t worry: when they started hunting down the communists, and I had to flee from the police, or, even worse, from the Brazilian Army, when Jango had been overthrown, he, my uncle, already had a hideout prepared for me, very safe, which the police or the Army could only get to if they could fly; not with a helicopter or a plane, but only if they had wings, like birds; and Aunt Little Heart added: “Since José Viana knows that the Beautiful B is a rich girl and used to comfort, and he said he had already considered that in some of the finishing touches to your hideout for when they come for the communists.”

Listen, I was shocked enough that I decided to go to José Aparecido’s house to see if the commander of the Fifth Military District, General Guedes, was still taking care of his roses in the garden; I went up on José Aparecido’s balcony and waited—before six, General Guedes, in a short-sleeved military uniform, appeared in the garden with his enormous shears in his hand and calmly set himself to pruning while José Aparecido shouted into the telephone: “Arraes, can you hear me, Arraes?” I waited for General Guedes to fulfill his ritual of clipping one rose and taking it inside for the night, saying to myself: “This is nuts or I’m seeing a ghost! Or Arraes was right: as long as the general is caring for his roses, we can sleep well.” Only I didn’t sleep well, not because the insomnia and fear of death were back, but because the recently installed telephone rang at two in the morning.

14 I Can’t Talk Now I got up to answer the phone: it was Brother Malthus. “It happened,” he said, his voice low and mysterious. “What I most feared and most desired happened.” “But, what happened, Saint?” “I can’t talk now.” “What do you mean you can’t talk? You wake me up at two in the morning, get me out of bed and sleeping beside the Beautiful B, and you tell me that you can’t talk?” “Try and understand the serious time I’m going through!” “What serious time?” “I’m on the border between Hell and paradise.” “So what actually happened?” “I already told you: I can’t talk.” “Is it what I think it is?” “What do you think it is?” “That something happened between you and—” “For the love of God, don’t say anything that could make the Beautiful B suspect anything or know what happened.” “But what happened?” “Come by the monastery in the morning and I’ll tell you.”

15 It Was the Clairvoyant Who Said: ” FIND HIM AND TELL HIM Y O U LO VE H I M ”

Smoking desperately, he paced about the front room of his quarters at the Dominican monastery; he held the cigarette awkwardly, as someone who was just beginning to smoke would, or, for that matter, a Saint: “She came here unannounced. And came in without permission. And she stayed there, with her back to the door, which she closed herself, and looked at me with those eyes that today I know, my God, are the eyes of an angel, one who’s only fulfilling a penitence of bearing a cross in the world. She looked at me as if I were to blame for everything bad that’d happened to her. She looked at me, and, as she was tempting me, she was accusing me. I thought: she’s going to cry. So, I said: “‘Since you’ve already come in, do you want to sit down?’ “‘No, thank you,’ she said, and stayed against the door, as if she feared that, even though she’d locked the door behind her, someone would still come through the door. And then she asked: “‘Do you know why I came here?’ “‘I can’t imagine,’ I said. “‘I came not just because I love you. I came not just because I thank God for the penitence that I received, the cross that I bear, and not because the love that I feel for you is a love that’s so large that it doesn’t even have to be reciprocated to be a happy love. Because the love that I feel for you is enough in and of itself.’ “‘So why did you come then?’ “‘I came because I went to see the clairvoyant Madame Janete.’ “‘You believe in clairvoyants?’ “‘I do. And Madame Janete told me this: “Just like I foresaw that you would suffer more than Cinderella because your burden would

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be life itself, just like I foresaw that to meet your enchanted prince, you would have to suffer a lot, just like I foresaw that you would lose your shoe, and you lost it, then I’ll tell you as well who the man was who found your shoe and kept it is the love of your life.” So I said to Madame Janete: “Who is he?” And she said: “It’s the one you’d suspect the least. He who is called the Saint.”’ “‘That’s foolishness,’ I said to her. ‘It was Roberto Drummond who betrayed my friendship and told you that the shoe was here with me.’ “‘No, it wasn’t Roberto. And so that you don’t think badly of a friend, I’ll ask you: does someone know where you keep the shoe?’ “‘Only God knows.’ “‘Does that mean that Roberto doesn’t know?’ “‘He doesn’t.’ “‘But Madame Janete knows.’ “‘How does she know?’ “’Do you doubt it?’ “’I do.’ “’Very good, then. So open the wall safe that’s hidden behind that copy of The Temptations of Saint Antoine, and it’s inside the safe that Madame Janete says that you’re keeping my shoe. Do you deny that?’ “’The shoe really is here with me.’ “’And it’s in the wall safe?’ “’It is.’ “’Very good,’ she continued. ‘But I only came because Madame Janete said: “Find him and tell him you love him.” So I came here to tell you that I love you. And I came to make you a proposition, of my own accord and at my own risk, that Madame Janete said depended on what I wanted and not what she does.’ “’And what’s the proposition?’ I asked. “’I’m going to leave the life that I’m leading on April 1, 1964.’ “’That’s April Fool’s Day,’ I said. “’I was born on April 1, and do you doubt that I exist? Do you?’ “’No.’ “’Well, on April 1, 1964, I’m leaving the life that I lead. Not one day before, not one day after. And so, because Madame Janete told

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me that you love me and I feel that, looking at you, that it’s true, that you love me; do you deny that?’ “’That’s not important.’ “’How is that not important? Do you deny it?’ “’I don’t deny it,’ I said. ‘I love you.’ “’Do you mean that you love me?’ she asked. “’I love you the way that I only love Christ. But that’s not important.’ “’But isn’t it a different love than that you feel for Christ?’ she asked. “’It is,’ I answered. ‘But what are you proposing?’ “’That on April 1, 1964, when I leave the life that I’ve been living for five years of penitence, you leave the habit you’ve also been wearing for five years and that we get married and live together.’ “’But I’m a Dominican brother dedicated to serving Christ,’ I said to her. “’But you won’t stop serving Christ after. Will you?’ she said, looking at me with that look that accused me of everything that she had suffered in her life and was a beautiful and sad look. ‘You’ll stop serving Christ?’ “’No. But I’m a Dominican friar. I don’t have a trade, not even anywhere to lay my head.’ “’I’d live with you under a bridge if I had to, and the smell of the river water would be the scent of my life. I’ll live with you even in a favela if you want to take a vow of poverty and even the hunger that I felt at your side would be my song.’ “’For the love of God, be quiet.’ “’Are you afraid of hunger?’ she asked, looking at me that way. ‘Well, if it doesn’t matter to you, in these past five years, I’ve become a rich woman. I don’t have to work to live. So, until you start to work, you could give classes, couldn’t you? We wouldn’t go hungry and we’d have every comfort. What do you say?’ “’That I love you, but I’m in the service of Jesus Christ, and this bars me from accepting your proposition.’ “’Is that your final answer?’ she asked, and her eyes, to tempt me, changed from sad to happy, and she didn’t allow me to respond. She

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continued: ‘You have until midnight of the 31st of March of 1964 to give me an answer,’—and she opened the door and left in the same way she came, and only left the scent of Muguet du Bonheur, which if you breathe deeply, you can still sense here in the room, and that I still want to smell, even though, God forgive me, my head is killing me.”

16 What Will Dona Nhanhá Think? ”And you, Saint,” I asked after he finished talking, “what are you going to decide before midnight on March 31, 1964?” “I don’t know, I swear I don’t,” he answered. “After all, there’s the question: what will Dona Nhanhá think, poor thing? My mother raised me, you know, to be a Saint. And what will happen when she finds out that I’ve left the Dominican Order to marry Hilda Hurricane?” “Well, you still have until midnight on March 31, 1964, to think about it.” “At a time like right now, when Brazil is teetering on the edge of the abyss, I don’t have the right to put the interests of my heart above those of a cause and the interests of Christ’s Church. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to talk to Dom Hélder Câmara!” And returning to pacing nervously about the room, he stopped in front of The Temptations of Saint Antoine; after he went into the back room and returned with a jar of jabuticaba, two spoons, and two saucers, on one of which he served himself, offering me the other, saying: “Try this jabuticaba jelly and tell me this: when you try Dona Nhanhá’s jabuticaba jelly, you, who are an atheist and a communist, don’t you believe in God?” “Eating an empanada made by Dona Nhanhá makes me believe in God,” I joked.

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“I forgot to tell you something: before she left, I said: ‘Brazil is going through a difficult time, I have obligations to its people, and it was you who opened my eyes. It was you who made me discover the people and the workers in Brazil. It was you.’”

17 A Fight with Jesus Christ Late in the afternoon, Hilda Hurricane was in the offices of Alterosa; we went to the conference room to talk: “Ya already know everything, don’t ya?” and when I nodded, she said, “So ya can see how it is, my fight is the most uneven one in the world: I’m competing with Jesus Christ for the man I love!” She said that she had never loved a man before in her life, she hadn’t had a first love, she hadn’t felt that way about anyone, that she only felt love when she saw Brother Malthus for the first time on the Exorcism Night and thought: Hilda, you were born on the wrong day, born on April Fool’s Day, but there he is, in front of you, the man of your life: this monk is the man of your dreams, certainly you can never have him, but he’s your only chance to love someone, because, besides him, nothing good will happen in your life; she said that she had never felt any sexual pleasure, that she had made men climb the walls and see paradise, but she had never found her paradise. She told me to do the math to see, a minimum of thirty men a day, except for Mondays, from four in the afternoon on, the record being seventy-seven men coming to Room 304 in one day; to do the math: twelve thousand, fifteen thousand, even twenty thousand was possible, and “. . . I never felt anything. I pretended: pretend kisses, pretend orgasms, pretend happiness.” She added that her only chance to find out what a woman felt when she made love to a man who she loved was to win hers from Jesus Christ. “What are you going to do now, Hilda?” I asked.

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“I’m going to need your help: I’m going to give a press conference announcing that on April 1, 1964, I’m leaving Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous, that I’m leaving Guaicurus Road, and that I’m leaving the life of the Bohemian Zone.”

18 Will It Be April 1? When Hilda Hurricane gave her press conference in Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous, on Guaicurus Road, Belo Horizonte was particularly stirred up; that afternoon, Leonel Brizola had been stopped from addressing the Congress of Latin American Workers, which was meeting at the offices of the Secretary of Health, and the Military Police, who should have guaranteed his right to speak, had sided with the protesters, the praying women led by Dona Lola Ventura, and some paramilitary groups, including various country colonels who, that night, with the confrontations over, with not too many wounds and a lot of bullets fired and more than a few tear gas bombs expended, went to celebrate the victory over Brizola in Montanhês Dancing and in Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous. While they were waiting for Hilda Hurricane to be available, the narrator was in Room 304 as a friend of she who was giving the press conference; the reporters could only talk about what had happened that afternoon at the Congress of Latin American Workers, about the fact that Brizola couldn’t even get in the building; they were also talking about the arrival of Juanita Castro, Fidel Castro’s exiled Miami-based sister, who had come to talk about the “cubanization” of Brazil; at the same time that Hilda Hurricane started to talk, far from the Bohemian Zone, in the auditorium of the Campaign of Women for Democracy, presided over by Dona Lola Ventura, Juanita Castro was also giving a press conference: she started by alerting everyone about the Congress of Latin American Workers and about the presence of the Cuban communist union leader Lázaro Pena:

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“I’ve known him for years, and he’s a dangerous communist.” But the next day, even with the predominant climate against João Goulart’s government, the papers gave more space to the conference with Hilda Hurricane than to that of Juanita; the headlines said: ”Hilda Hurricane Will Say Good-bye the First of April”

Then the speculation started: “Hilda, why exactly on April 1, 1964, which is well known as April Fool’s Day, and not, for example, March 31?” Already as a follow-on to the interview, the papers were talking about the history of Cinderella’s slipper and the original fortune told by Madame Janete, and, since whoever had found the shoe on Exorcism Night hadn’t shown up yet, the suspicion was that a wealthy bull-raiser’s son from Uberaba had captured her heart. The papers published pictures of Hilda Hurricane when she was the Girl in the Gold Bikini and kept the regulars at Minas Tennis Club awake at night, and they came to a conclusion: that she was as beautiful now as before. Soon, another suspicion came up: Hilda Hurricane planned to move to a ranch that she had in Mato Grosso; the reporters asked her: “Hilda, you aren’t afraid of the agricultural reforms of President João Goulart?” She scandalized the colonels who knew her when she responded: “I’m in favor of agrarian reform. If Dr. Jango wants, he can start with my farm.” Among the belongings of Hilda Hurricane reported in the papers were, besides the farm in Mato Grosso: twenty-two lots in the Pampulha subdivision, a very expensive area; six rented apartments in Belo Horizonte, in the subdivisions of Lourdes, Funcionários, and Santo Antônio, all of which had at least four bedrooms and were very valuable; one apartment on Atlantic Avenue in Rio de Janeiro; six taxis working the plazas in Belo Horizonte; and one house, on I don’t know what street, in Garden City, a real palace. Hilda Hurricane didn’t deny the reports.

19 Questions Without Answers —Why did Hilda Hurricane decide to leave the Bohemian Zone on April 1, 1964, and not, for example, March 31? —Why did Hilda Hurricane decide not to confirm that she was really going to marry the powerful bull-raiser’s son? —What did Hilda Hurricane want to achieve by announcing that she would leave the life she was living in the Bohemian Zone on April 1, 1964? a) Was she really telling the truth? b) Was she trying to get things to pick up in the Bohemian Zone, which had been very dead? c) Was she being sensationalist to get into the papers and on television as much as before? d) Did she want to provoke jealousy in some man who had never been in the news?

20 Target Shooting On the corner of Guaicurus Road and São Paulo, beside the Baghdad Restaurant, there was a popular shooting range and the champion was Hilda Hurricane; almost every day, after lunch (her favorite pastime), she would go shooting; one afternoon, when the papers were asking questions about her at the same time that they were writing editorials against the communization of Brazil by João

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Goulart’s government, Hilda Hurricane broke the range’s record and put twenty rounds out of twenty into the bull’s-eye. But it wasn’t only there that Hilda Hurricane was perfect; if she really wanted to bring business back to Guaicurus Road, she succeeded: the line returned for Room 304 and as a result all the hotels were full; even the country colonels came back, because, at the end of the day, it could have been true that Hilda Hurricane was going to give up that life on April 1, 1964; and there was another motivation drawing those men to Hilda Hurricane’s enchanted arms: “And if these agricultural reforms of Jango are approved and each colonel becomes a pauper overnight?” Others asked: “And if a bloody and much anticipated revolution occurs, what if we die without having made love with Hilda Hurricane?”

21 The Last Round Hilda Hurricane knew—and it wasn’t only because of her passion for great thinkers on the art of seduction—that she was firing her last round with the Saint; well, speaking of him: what was he going to do? It’s true that, besides increasing the consumption of jabuticaba jelly, invoking Saint Antoine, self-flagellating, and immersing himself more and more in the Young Catholic Workers’ social fight, to the point that, in a preparatory speech to the Campaign of Women for Democracy, Dona Lola Ventura had made this accusation: “Atheist and anti-Christian communism has even infiltrated God’s Church, and I’m sorry to say that he who used to be on our side, the Saint, has crossed over to the other side, he’s fallen for the siren call of the communization and ‘cubanization’ of Brazil.”

22 Yes but . . . and the Saint? Yes, but what’s the Saint going to do about Hilda Hurricane? We’ll let him think about it because, in truth, he still has until midnight, March 31, 1964, to make up his mind.

Six

0 The Rose Yes, The General No On the day of March 31, 1964, Belo Horizonte woke to military troops in the street; when I left my apartment in Rio Grande do Norte Road to buy bread at the bakery, an Army tank was coming up Getúlio Vargas Avenue; it reminded me of an enormous green insect and, at the intersection of Getúlio Vargas and Christopher Columbus, ignoring the signal, which had turned red for mortals, it turned right and, applauded by a woman with dyed hair, continued on in the direction of the Governor’s Palace. In the line at the bakery, I heard something that I thought could only be a rumor, but was later confirmed as truth: the governor of Minas Gerais, Governor Magalhães Pinto—who owned Alterosa, where I was the editor, and who had seemed allied with Jango—had rebelled against that same Jango with the support of Army units in Belo Horizonte and Juiz da Fora and the state’s Military Police; all the strategic points were occupied by military troops—on returning to my apartment with the hot, fresh bread for breakfast, I told the Beautiful B, and she went to the window on the Rio Grande do Norte Road side and called out: “Come see!” A line of Army trucks full of soldiers was heading towards the main highway to Rio de Janeiro; the rumors increased all day, Governor Magalhães Pinto put the Freedom Network on both radio and television, and he named a cabinet with the status of federal ministers; he demanded the resignation of President João Goulart. They started to talk about the first prisons. Around three pm, I went to the Banco Nacional, like normal, but this time to find out from Eduardo Magalhães Pinto what was really happening. “The revolution to overthrow Jango has started. Daddy is the civilian general of the revolution,” he said. “You’re not for it?”

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“No,” I answered. “Even if you aren’t, come to the Governor’s Mansion tonight to see what’s happening.” I left the Banco Nacional, on Carijós Road, close to Plaza Seven, had a coffee in Café Pérola, and walked back to the offices of Alterosa; there was a rumor going around that José Maria Rabelo, the director of Binômio who had given General Punaro Bley a black eye, had been arrested. At Alterosa, almost everyone was under suspicion and in danger of being arrested; exultantly, the reporter Ponce de Leon was saying: “Magalhães Pinto is screwed! Jango’s going to screw him and these guerrilla generals!” It was what I believed as well. At the end of the afternoon, I went to José Aparecido’s house on Santa Catarina Road and found the road full of soldiers who blocked my way: “This is a national security zone. No one can get by.” I showed my press card and explained that I needed to get to Congressman José Aparecido’s house, and a soldier escorted me there; when I got to the front gate, José Aparecido called from the second floor: “Come up here!” He was wearing, as usual, his underwear and still had yesterday’s beard, and he was sitting on a stool in front of the telephone, sounding very impatient: “Hello, operator. Governor Miguel Arraes isn’t answering his phone? Then try the Governor’s Mansion in Sergipe. Call Governor Seixas Dórias. I’ll wait, miss.” And turning to me: “It’s been an hour that I’ve been trying to call Arraes and I can’t get ahold of him. I’ve tried Brizola in Rio, in Brasilia, and in Porto Alegre and haven’t talked to him either.” He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling: “Sit down. You’re witnessing a historic revolution.” The phone rang, and he leaped from the bed:

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“Governor Seixas Dórias’s line is busy? Then try Recife, miss, to Congressman Francisco Julião,” and he gave her the number. “I’ll wait, miss.” He returned to the bed, and I said: “I heard you resigned your role as Government Secretary.” “I resigned because I strongly disagree with this military adventure. Listen to a historic revelation—I told Magalhães Pinto: ‘No one knows better than you do, Governor, the ties of friendship that I have to you. So I’d like to say: Governor, respect the historic and libertarian traditions of Minas and stay on the side of the law, against this military crew.’” “And Governor Magalhães Pinto, what did he say?” “That it was too late.” The telephone called him away again: “Julião? Is that you, Julião? It’s not Julião? It’s Colonel Bezerra? But what Colonel Bezerra? I want to talk to Congressman Julião, of the Farm-workers League.” He waited for a while, and then the connection broke off. Gesticulating with frustration, still in his underwear, he went out on the balcony and looked around; I did the same: an Army tank was parked in front of the Fifth Military District; he said: “During the first overflight by planes loyal to Jango over the Governor’s Mansion they’ll be hiding under their beds. This group won’t stand up to the first shot that Jango has fired at them.” There on the balcony, chatting with José Aparecido, I waited for the military commander of the Fifth Military District, General Guedes, to come out with his clippers to take care of the roses in the garden; the roses were there and there was one that was particularly beautiful—but it got dark, and General Guedes didn’t appear with his clippers. “Look at that, José Aparecido,” I said then. “The general didn’t come out to take care of his roses. As Arraes said, now things are serious.” “That shitty general is going to have a lot of time to play with roses in jail. You’ll see.”

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The telephone rang, and José Aparecido rushed to answer it: “That’s dirty! What they did is dirty pool! I’m going to talk to the governor now. Dirty pool!” He hung up the phone, and his hand trembled a bit: “They invaded the offices of the Diário de Minas and arrested Guy de Almeida!” The Diário de Minas belonged to the same newspaper group as Alterosa and was also owned by the Magalhães Pinto family; José Aparecido was the director-president and Guy de Almeida was the chief editor—and if they had arrested him it was a very bad sign. “It’s bullshit; I’m going to talk to Magalhães Pinto now,” and he picked up the phone and dialed the number to the Governor’s Mansion. He identified himself and waited for a moment. “He can’t come to the phone. Did you tell him it was Congressman José Aparecido? Hm.” He hung up the phone and looked across the street at the military base. “If they want to arrest me, they only have to cross the street. At least it won’t be hard for them.” And he stood up suddenly: “But in my underwear and unshaven they aren’t going to take me.” He shaved once and then went over his face again; he got in the shower whistling the “Marseillaise,” saying: “Jango’s waiting too long to act”; he got out wrapped in a white towel, dressed himself in a navy blue suit, a prudent gray tie (he vacillated over whether to wear the red tie that he liked so much), combed his hair, put on cologne, and said: “Now, if they want to cross the road, I’m ready for them,” and he gave a loud laugh that echoed in the room and across the military base. I left him and went to the Governor’s Mansion; I talked to Eduardo Magalhães Pinto about the arrest of Guy de Almeida and he said: “I already know. We’re trying to free him. As far as you go, I’m going to give you two phone numbers to reach me here,” and he wrote them down. “Anything happens, you call me. And if they pick you up, have your wife call me.”

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He lowered his voice and looked to either side: “Who we do have hidden here in the Governor’s Palace, and they’re not going to lay a hand on him, is Ênio Amaral.” He was referring to a journalist and militant communist who I knew from the Party. I went home driven by Eduardo Magalhães Pinto’s private driver.

1 A Message to Ernesto Che Guevara When I opened the door at our apartment, the Beautiful B was very frightened: “Thea, Ponce’s wife, called: armed volunteers invaded their apartment and took Ponce prisoner. And Thea gave me some terrible news: they’ve killed José Maria Rabelo.” I called Thea and got the details of Ponce de Leon’s arrest: the groups of the armed young volunteers, who were being called “storm-troopers” by their victims, before arresting Ponce, ransacked the apartment looking for subversive material, and they had also gone to the home of Celius Aulicus and arrested him. He was known as the General ever since he had signed his humor column in Binômio “The Coup . . . Against the State of Things” with the pseudonym the General. “And José Maria Rabelo, Thea?” She started to cry into the phone: “He’s dead.” “But how did he die, Thea?” “They said it was a street Tarzan? Does that mean anything to you? A really strong guy, like a bull, with an enormous body and a small head that’s out of balance with his body.” “I think I know who that is.” “Well, it was him who picked up José Maria Rabelo and killed him.”

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José Maria Rabelo had been the godfather at my wedding, and the confirmation of his death was very emotional for me and the Beautiful B; in homage to him, we passed a minute in silence. “We have to act fast,” said the Beautiful B. “Act how?” I asked. “To get rid of all the compromising books.” “You’re right.” We took down from the bookshelves the books that could compromise us or get us arrested. Then the moment came to take down from the living room wall the framed Che Guevara poster: You were still alive, Che, and in front of the poster where you appeared smoking a Havana, this poster which had been on walls around the world, wherever anyone had a dream that you inspired, we vacillated: “It would be shameful to burn Che’s poster,” I said. “But we don’t have to burn it. We can hide it,” said the Beautiful B. “Hide it where?” I asked, taking the poster down from the wall. “We can hide it under the bed.” “Are you crazy? They’re going to look under the bed, and then it’ll be worse.” “And if we put it under the mattress?” “But they’re going to notice that the mattress is higher than it should be and find it.” “Then we’ll leave it on the wall in the living room,” said the Beautiful B. “We’ll tell them that he’s a relative of ours.” “Are you totally crazy? Do you think that they don’t know who Che is?” “You’re right, and I’m being silly. But what are we going to do with him then?” “I’m really sorry,” I said. “Sorry for what?” “I’m really sorry that we can’t keep the poster in the house.” “And what are you thinking of doing?” “Take the poster and leave it someplace.” “Not that.” “Che will understand.” “You think so?”

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“He will.” “Well, we can promise something,” said the Beautiful B. “When all this has passed, we can get another poster like it and hang it in the living room.” “Good idea,” I agreed. So, Che, on the night of March 31, 1964, in a South American city occupied by soldiers and tanks, a man and a woman left the house trying to make it seem natural that they were carrying a framed poster wrapped in newspaper and, when they found a dark stretch, under a tree, as if they were a couple of lovers looking for the protection of the darkness for their hugs and kisses (and we even hugged and kissed), we left your poster under that tree; the only witness was a yellow cat who passed and looked at us with his big and mysterious eyes. But now it’s time to see what’s happening with Hilda Hurricane on the night of March 31, 1964, in Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous, on Guaicurus Road, in the heart of the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte.

2 In Spite of the Tanks in the Streets Looking at Guaicurus Road, in the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte, on the night of March 31, 1964, Brazil didn’t seem to be going through the first moments of a military coup to depose the President of the Republic; not even a lost tank, which came down Guaicurus Road at ten pm, ruined the sense of a good-bye party: the last night of Hilda Hurricane in the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte; the way it looked, everyone seemed to know that they were saying good-bye to an innocent time symbolized by the Girl in the Gold Bikini, who’d been transformed into an erotic dream that brought men happiness. The emotional climate even reached the songs that Delê’s orchestra played in Montanhês Dancing, beside the Hotel

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Marvelous—on whose stairs was a line of those who wanted to say good-bye and didn’t care about the wait, nor the price (which had doubled); hits from previous years, boleros, from when Hilda Hurricane had just arrived in the Bohemian Zone as the mythic Girl in the Gold Bikini, were revived, and the papers had sent reporters and photographers to cover the moment that Hilda Hurricane, in the wee hours of April 1, 1964, would bid the Bohemian Zone adieu; radio journalists made their rounds of Guaicurus Road; TV crews could be seen giving updates; in front of the Hotel Marvelous, two myths from the golden years of the Bohemian Zone, years which seemed golden because they seemed to be coming to an end on that night of March 31, 1964, made a sort of truce and fraternized with each other, exchanging cigarettes: Maria Man-Killer and Thin Waist, who wouldn’t miss for the world the moment that Hilda Hurricane would come down the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous for the last time. “What dress will she wear?” asked Maria Man-Killer of the transvestite Thin Waist, who was also a seamstress. “She’ll be dressed as Eve. She’ll come down dressed as Eve.” When, because of a detour or being lost, three more tanks came down Guaicurus Road, there grew in everyone the sensation that, this time, Brazil really was falling into the abyss—and this sensation increased the rate at which people were drinking in the bars, and as the news of the tanks reached Delê, leading his orchestra in Montanhês Dancing, and with the impulse driven by saying goodbye to Hilda Hurricane, he found enough nostalgia to sing, himself, “Cuesta Abajo,” a tango: “It was for my entire life like a springtime sun my hope and my passion can take all the humble passion of my humble heart . . .”

Inside Room 304, in which she had lived for five years, Hilda Hurricane was experiencing a mixture of anxiety and happiness; those men, of every age, some older than sixty, some between forty and

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fifty-five, and other younger ones, including those who were taking advantage of the lack of a curfew that night—those men couldn’t imagine the source of the light in Hilda Hurricane’s eyes and what transferred to everyone a desire to live, a happiness; in order that she could get to everyone, with the price doubled, and then tripled by the management of the Hotel Marvelous, and paid in advance, since she would be coming down those stairs for the last time at five in the morning, the management of the Hotel Marvelous had made three rules: the first—they gave out chits, but everyone had to stay in line; the second—no one would receive a chit after midnight; the third—everyone’s time with Hilda Hurricane was limited to two to three minutes, timed by the doorman, who would bang on the door of Room 304 advising them of the time; from two in the morning on, that time was limited to only two minutes. “But that’s very little,” some complained. “It’s very little.” “It’s better than nothing, great, bacchanal even,” said the Hotel Marvelous’s doorman, demonstrating a strange erudition. “Two minutes in paradise is a lifetime, felicitous even.” Hilda Hurricane was paying attention to the time and the phone, not to time the customers; the reason, you all know; time went by very rapidly; it was already eleven at night on March 31, 1964: inside of sixty minutes the time that Brother Malthus had to decide was going to run out. “And if he doesn’t call?” she asked the young man who she was making climb the walls. “And if he doesn’t call?” “If he who doesn’t call?” said the spent seventeen-year-old boy. “Are you waiting for someone?” “If he doesn’t call,” she continued out loud, after, already putting on her dress, because she got dressed for every client, “you, Hilda, aren’t going to get despondent. You’ll be free of this nightmare in Room 304, your penitence will be fulfilled, and this has to make you happy, Hilda . . . but you’d like it if he called.” Later she looked at her watch: it was eleven fifteen pm on March 31, 1964. And him, what could he be doing now? Is he at the Dominican monastery?

3 Of Mice and Men At that time, eleven fifteen on the night of March 31, 1964, the reporter Ponce de Leon was thrown into a dark cell, waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, remembering the times that he had arrived late to a movie theater with Thea, and remembered fondly when they went and saw Nights of Calabria by Fellini. “I wonder what Thea’s doing now?” When his vision adjusted, Ponce de Leon saw mice in the cell— he enjoyed their company and thought about the novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, who was the author who he liked the most and who provoked arguments in the offices of Alterosa, where the majority (Carlos Wagner, Ivan Angelo, Roberto Drummond) preferred Hemingway or Faulkner to Steinbeck. “What are they doing now?” Ponce de Leon believed that, working for a magazine owned by the governor, he would be freed at any moment. By chance, they had left him with his watch; they had taken his belt, his tie, his blazer, his shirt, and even his shoelaces, taking everything so that he wouldn’t kill himself and get the blame put on them; the watch had phosphorescent hands, and he could tell what time it was: it was eleven seventeen pm on March 31, 1964. “What are they going to do with me?” he asked himself. “And what if they don’t let me out?”

4 Be Still, My Heart At that same moment, in the purification house at the rear of the Dominican monastery’s garden, Brother Malthus was whipping his own body; since eleven that night, when the temptation to call Hilda Hurricane and tell her that he loved her grew, he had been locked inside the purification house and whipping himself; he repeated: “Be still, my heart, your place is beside the poor and exploited, the humiliated and offended, who need Christ’s Church.” But he couldn’t resist: when he sealed himself in the purification house there, where no one could hear the noise of his flagellation, nor his cries of pain, he couldn’t resist and he looked at Cinderella’s slipper, which had been in his care for so long; the more he whipped himself, the more he looked at the shoe and loved Hilda Hurricane. He still kept whipping himself for a while. Desperate, he fell to his knees and implored: “Have pity on me, Saint Antoine!” He was, it’s true, divorced from everything: he was barely aware of the tanks in the streets, the soldiers who were leaving Minas and going to Rio de Janeiro to depose President João Goulart; he was indifferent to the list of names of people who had been arrested—he didn’t even care that his name had been put on a list as the director of the Young Catholic Workers. “Saint Antoine, I can’t resist anymore. Saint Antoine, for the last time, have mercy on me!” and he continued whipping himself, with even more force.

5 And If He Doesn’t Call? At eleven forty-five on the night of March 31, 1964, in Room 304, all her adolescent happiness was at risk. “And if he doesn’t call?” If he doesn’t call, Hilda, she thought, you will hold your head up and leave Guaicurus Road: you have so many happy memories and, after, Hilda, if he doesn’t come, you will have lost him, yes, but you won’t have lost him to a woman, like one of your cousins whom you detest so much—you’ll have lost him to Jesus Christ, Hilda, and that soothes. At eleven forty-eight pm, Hilda Hurricane lost hope. “What’s wrong, little daughter?” asked a country colonel in a very paternal way. “Are you crying, my little girl?”

6 Is It You, General? At eleven forty-nine on the night of March 31, 1964, they opened the cell where Ponce de Leon was being kept and threw in a man who was shirtless and barefoot and wearing only pants; Ponce de Leon helped the man stand up, saw who it was, and shouted: “Is it you, General?” Being deaf, the journalist Celius Aulicus, who everyone called General, didn’t hear anything. Only after his eyes adjusted to the dark did he say: “Uai, Ponce! You got picked up too?”

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Now there were two men in the cell with the mice; at eleven fifty they brought a third, who said: “I’m a congressman’s son. They’re going to have to let me go.”

7 Is It You, My Love? At eleven fifty-one on the night of March 31, 1964, the phone rang in Room 304 of the Hotel Marvelous; Hilda Hurricane was dressed, she had asked for a break of a couple minutes, and she picked up the phone; here’s the dialogue that occurred and that this scribe was able to reconstruct later: Her:—Is it you, my love, is it you? Him:—It’s me, and I’ve decided. Her:—What did you decide, my love? What did you decide? Him:—That my life only makes sense if it’s at your side. Her:—That’s great, my love, that’s great! I’m the happiest woman in the world! Him:—I’m coming there to get you. Her:—Don’t be crazy. We’ll meet tomorrow, at five in the afternoon. Him:—Tomorrow’s April Fool’s Day, and I don’t trust April 1 very much. Her:—You can trust it. I was born on April 1 and I exist, don’t I? Him:—I’m very scared of this April 1 thing. Her:—You don’t have to be afraid, my love. Tomorrow, April 1, at exactly five in the afternoon, I’ll be waiting for you in front of Minas Tennis Club, on Bahia Road. Him:—Does it have to be in front of Minas Tennis Club? Her:—Do this for me, my love. Him:—I’m very scared of this April 1 meeting, but I’ll be there. Her:—I can count on you?

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Him:—You can. Hilda Hurricane hung up the phone and, when the next client came in, allowed to pass by the Hotel Marvelous’s doorman, she was waltzing alone in the room.

8 April 1, 1964 It was five in the morning on April 1, 1964. On Guaicurus Road, in the Bohemian Zone of Belo Horizonte, a small crowd of ne’erdo-wells and prostitutes had gathered in front of the Hotel Marvelous; the musicians from the orchestra at Montanhês Dancing, led by Delê, were there as well; everyone watched the stairs and waited; then Maria Man-Killer and the transvestite Thin Waist shouted: “Here she comes! Here she comes!” Everyone looked, even this scribe and the Beautiful B; invited by a phone call from Hilda Hurricane, we were among the ne’er-dowells and prostitutes, beside the composer Rômulo Paes and the Fatman MC; we all saw when Hilda Hurricane came down the stairs; she wore the same whatever-I-put-my hands-on dress that drove the men crazy on Dance Nights at Minas Tennis Club, the same one that she had worn on Exorcism Night, and that she was wearing on her first night in the Bohemian Zone; the necklace she was wearing that had the imitation pearls was the same as well, the earrings were the same, and she descended the stairs slowly because she was only wearing one shoe; the other had been lost during Exorcism Night. “Viva Hilda Hurricane!” shouted Maria Man-Killer and the transvestite Thin Waist. “Viva!” we answered. “Viva!” Then the orchestra from Montanhês Dancing, led by the maestro Delê, started to play “The Goodbye Waltz,” and everyone sang, while Hilda Hurricane was making her way down the stairs of the Hotel Marvelous:

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“Goodbye my love, I’m leaving I hear a far-off bugle call . . .”

She kept coming down the stairs, she was beautiful, and we sang: “The light that shines in your eyes the certainty you gave me that no one can tear my heart from yours . . .”

When she got down to our level, we were still singing, and she dropped down and kissed the pavement of Guaicurus Road; we kept singing: “Being so far away being so far from me I’ll still hear your voice . . .”

She kissed the maestro Delê’s cheek and the Fatman MC’s cheek; she hugged and kissed Maria Man-Killer and said: “Take care of yourself, eh?”; she hugged and kissed the transvestite Thin Waist and said, “Ya take care of yourself, too, all right?”; when she saw this scribe, she came over to me and hugged and kissed me too, and, after hugging and kissing the Beautiful B, she said, quietly: “We’ll be so happy!” She walked away and, while we were applauding, she got in a sand-colored Peugeot and disappeared down Guaicurus Road; Delê’s orchestra continued playing “The Goodbye Waltz,” and we kept singing for quite a while.

9 Today’s April 1, Shitheads Not far from there, in a deserted spot beside the Arrudas River, three soldiers with rifles waited for a Peugeot to pass by before then ordering Ponce de Leon, the General, and the congressman’s son to get out of the Army jeep; they were barefoot, shirtless, and they had to hold their pants up with their hands to keep them up; they, with the exception of the General, could hear “The Goodbye Waltz” being played and people singing on Guaicurus Road. “Up against the wall, you commies!” said the blond soldier with the Rio de Janeiro accent. “You’re going to have a good sound track. It’ll seem like a Hollywood movie!” When the three were against the wall, and the soldiers had lined themselves up like a firing squad, the congressman’s son started to cry and fell to his knees: “For the love of God, no!” he said. “My father is a congressman!” “Stop shitting yourself, you lousy commie,” said the soldier with the São Paulo accent. “Be a man at least when you die, bastard!” Ponce de Leon and the General tried to keep the congressman’s son on his feet. “Get up, comrade! Don’t let them see your fear,” said Ponce de Leon. “Stand up!” The wind picked up, that wind that Hilda Hurricane knew so well, because it blew every early morning, and “The Goodbye Waltz” became louder for them: “Being so far away being so far from me I’ll still hear your voice . . .”

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The congressman’s son fell to his knees again and the firing squad shot their rifles: Ponce de Leon and the congressman’s son heard the shots, but the General, who was deaf, heard nothing; meanwhile, they were alive, except the congressman’s son fainted—the three soldiers started to laugh and the one who had an accent from Minas shouted: “Today’s April 1, shitheads! Don’t you know that today’s April 1, you shitty commies?” And the one with the Rio de Janeiro accent shouted: “Now get out of here, you commies! If not, we’ll lose patience with you, and you all can watch the sun rise through bars for the rest of your life!” Ponce de Leon ran right away; he was soon followed by the congressman’s son, but the General didn’t run because he was deaf, and only when the soldiers drove away did he realize that he was alive and free; Ponce de Leon got to Guaicurus Road, running to where the music came from that was so ideal for facing a firing squad.

10 Follow the Steps of Brother Malthus At four fifteen in the afternoon on April 1, 1964, Brother Malthus was ready to leave the Dominican monastery, on Dominican Road, in Mangabeiras, and go to his meeting with Hilda Hurricane; he had decided to leave in his Dominican habit—in a small bag he had all his belongings: two changes of civilian clothes, the only ones he owned; toothpaste; his shaving cream and razor; Hilda Hurricane’s lost shoe and that was everything; at the last minute, he decided to take a jar of jabuticaba jelly, repeating a phrase, to console himself, something that he had heard from Dom Hélder: “I am what I am and a product of my circumstances.”

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Yes—later he would tell everything to this narrator—he could have left the Dominican Monastery at four fifteen on the afternoon of April 1, 1964; but at the time, since he believed he had a lot of time before he needed to be in front of Minas Tennis Club, at five o’clock, which was what he had arranged with Hilda Hurricane, he could just get a cab on Afonso Pena Avenue, so he decided to dally sentimentally at the Dominican monastery; he even went back to the purification house—and with his dalliance, he lost fifteen fatal minutes. At the time to leave, he lost two more talking to the lay brother: “Don’t you want me to take you in the van, Brother Malthus?” “No thank you, brother. I’m going to catch a cab on Afonso Pena Avenue.” He said his good-byes then, with a lot of emotion, to the lay brother; they had had a long and monosyllabic friendship and now, when he was going to leave the Dominican brotherhood to live a passion that was greater than that which he felt for Christ, he wanted to embrace the lay brother: “Give me a hug, brother.” He was leaving, and he could have been saved if he had left, but he turned and said: “Brother, I never knew your name.” “Laurence Tanajura,” he said. “Brother Malthus, are you sure you don’t want me to take you?” “Thank you, brother, it’s not necessary.” It was four thirty-eight; he couldn’t decide which would be faster, going up Dominican Road or down; he opted for going up and it was then that he was lost, because he hadn’t gone very far when an Army jeep stopped beside him, and two armed officers got out: “Brother Malthus, I take it,” said the blond one. “Yes, I’m Brother Malthus,” he responded. “We’re sorry, Brother Malthus, sir, but you’re under arrest.” “I’m what?” “Arrested, Brother Malthus. You’re accused of subversive activities, sir.” “There must be some misunderstanding,” Brother Malthus protested.

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“It seems, sir, Brother Malthus, that you’re ignoring that there’s a revolution happening in Brazil.” He thought about running, about fleeing, about shouting, about a way to tell Hilda Hurricane what was happening. He got in the jeep; the swarthy officer said: “We beg your pardon, Brother Malthus, but we have to handcuff you. You understand, sir.” He looked at his watch: it was seven minutes to five in the afternoon on April 1, 1964. “Where are you taking me?” he asked. “You’ll see, Brother Malthus.” “And are you going to release me soon?” “In your place, sir,” said the blond officer, the more friendly of the two, “I wouldn’t hold the same hope.” “But this is offensive,” he argued. “It’s a revolution, Brother Malthus!” “A revolution or a military coup?” “If we win, Brother Malthus, it’s a revolution. If we lose, it’s a military coup.” “But I have a very important appointment at five o’clock. A sacred appointment . . .” he said. “Who with, God?” asked the jeep’s driver, an enlisted man. “Don’t speak that way to Brother Malthus,” said the blond officer. “Forgive him, Brother Malthus, he doesn’t know what he’s saying.” Brother Malthus was taken by the strongest sense of anguish and impotence that he had ever felt . . . And he thought that if he had left earlier—at four fifteen or even four thirty?—he would have missed them and would be free! When the jeep arrived at the military base outside of town, where they had a jail, Brother Malthus looked at his watch: it was five sixteen in the afternoon and he felt a painful desire to cry; he thought: “I told her I was afraid of April 1.”

11 Oh, Happiness, You Gave Me a Good April Fool’s She arrived a bit before five in the afternoon in front of Minas Tennis Club; she parked the Peugeot on Bahia Road and lit a cigarette; there was a lot of coming and going there, because it was beside the Governor’s Mansion—police black-and-whites, military jeeps, and not even a tank going the wrong way down Bahia Road made her suspect the serious events that were occurring. But happy people aren’t bothered by tanks; at exactly five in the afternoon, she got out of the Peugeot; she was wearing the same whatever-I-put-my handson dress that she had left the Hotel Marvelous in and, so as not to limp, because she was only wearing one shoe, she leaned against the Peugeot and looked at the Minas Tennis Club: she remembered the Dance Nights from five years before, when she left for Room 304 in the Hotel Marvelous; before leaving for the Bohemian Zone, she had said good-bye to Minas Tennis Club, saying out loud: “One day I’ll return to being very happy, because then I’ll be in condition to be happy.” Now she was there again; she imagined a scene: Brother Malthus kneeling before her and taking her foot, putting on Cinderella’s slipper; a question that she asked herself was: “Could it be that he’ll arrive here wearing his habit?” At eight after five in the afternoon, she felt a flutter in her stomach, which went away soon: at five fifteen, the flutter came back to stay: “My God, what could be happening?” She thought of all the possibilities, except for the one that had really happened; at five twenty in the afternoon of April 1, 1964, the troops of General Olímpio Mourão Filho, based in Juiz da Fora, began their march on Rio de Janeiro to overthrow President João Goulart; at five forty-five, Hilda Hurricane was, really, scared that something had happened; saying to herself:

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“Hilda, Hilda, and if he’s left you, Hilda? Remember, Hilda, your adversary is Jesus Christ!” At six twenty-five in the afternoon, it was already getting dark, and someone went by saying that a Protestant pastor and some followers from his church had been arrested for belonging to a cult and had been shot by Army troops; a cold shiver went across Hilda Hurricane’s body, but she didn’t think the same thing could have happened to Brother Malthus. She said to herself: “Well, Hilda, you’ve already waited longer than you should’ve. Wait until seven twenty. That’s enough time.” But at seven fifteen, Hilda Hurricane decided to leave; she gave a last look at Minas Tennis Club and said, as if the walls could hear her: “Oh, happiness, you gave me a good April Fool’s joke.” She got in the Peugeot and started driving around the city. And today, I think: if Hilda had gone to my house, if she had called; but no; she didn’t even think of going to the Dominican monastery and left Bahia Road, in front of Minas Tennis Club, at seven fifteen at night, and not at seven twenty as she had planned, saying to herself: “I’ve already waited too long. It’s a shame, but it’s time to go.”

12 Suspicions about Cinderella’s Slipper At seven twenty in the evening of April 1, 1964, an Army jeep stopped in front of Minas Tennis Club, on Bahia Road; Brother Malthus got out and could still smell Hilda Hurricane’s Muguet du Bonheur perfume in the air. “Poor dear,” he said. “Poor thing!” The blond officer accompanied him, a few steps behind; the whole time up to seven twenty he had been interrogating Brother Malthus about the suspicious woman’s shoe, size five and a half, that had been found in his bag; the officer was delicate about the subject:

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“Brother Malthus, what’s with this mysterious shoe?” “It’s Cinderella’s slipper,” he answered. “It belongs to Cinderella, Brother Malthus?” “That’s it: to Cinderella.” “Here’s what I’m seeing: it’s a size five and a half shoe, Brother Malthus. But I believe that here’s the secret and the mystery of your life, Brother Malthus. You were supposed to become a Saint, weren’t you? If you hadn’t started associating with communists after the Exorcism Night, during the era of the Camellia City campaign, you would certainly be a Saint, canonized during his own lifetime. That’s what it says here,” said the officer and held up a file. “What’s that, major?” “It’s the secret service file the Army compiled about you.” “It has that many pages?” “But it’s only missing one detail, which was the big shortcoming of the secret service: we even know that you enjoy the jabuticaba jelly that your mother, Dona Nhanhá, makes with her own hands . . . but Brother Malthus, what woman’s shoe is this that you’ve got in your bag?” “It belongs to Cinderella,” repeated Brother Malthus. “Another thing, Brother Malthus: where were you going when we picked you up? What was this mysterious meeting? By chance would it have been with this Cinderella? Eh, Brother Malthus?” The blond officer who was doing the interrogating was called out of the room; he took Cinderella’s slipper with him, but, when he came back, he still had it in his hands and gave it back to Brother Malthus. “Sorry for the distraction, sir, Brother Malthus. General Mourão Filho’s troop aren’t encountering any resistance on their drive to Rio de Janeiro. Our revolution is going to be successful.” “Congratulations,” Brother Malthus answered, ironically. “Do you know what General Mourão Filho is in favor of, Brother Malthus?” “It can’t be anything good. Wasn’t it his troops who broke that strike?”

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“You’re well informed, eh, Brother Malthus?” said the blond one. “General Mourão Filho stands for the right to summarily execute arrested subversives. So, tell us, Brother Malthus: what’s your last request?” “Last request what?” “Say something that you would like to do, and we’ll try and fulfill your request.” So he said that he wanted to see Minas Tennis Club one final time, because he had enjoyed swimming there so much, and they took him; if he had arrived five minutes earlier, Hilda Hurricane would have still been there and would have found out what had happened to him; when he saw she wasn’t there, he thought of calling this narrator’s home. “Can I use the phone inside?” “Not the phone, no, Brother Malthus. It’s not allowed.” He stayed a while longer inhaling Hilda Hurricane’s Muguet du Bonheur and then told the officers: “We can go now.” They took him away then; they didn’t kill him, nor did they shoot him. When he later heard that General Mourão Filho was in fact in favor of shooting political prisoners, and for this reason the officers had decided to fulfill his last wish, he thought to himself: “I wonder if I had asked to see Hilda Hurricane, if they would have let me go.”

13 Cinderella and the Priest If Brother Malthus had been able to go look for Hilda Hurricane, he wouldn’t have found her anywhere, not even in her mansion in Garden City; since leaving the front of Minas Tennis Club, indifferent to

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the military movements, to the sirens, to the explosions, and even to the “storm-troopers” invading a couple of houses, Hilda Hurricane drove the Peugeot around the city. “I’m an April Fool’s Cinderella. That’s what I am: an April Fool’s Cinderella!” For a moment she considered going to the Dominican monastery; if she had gone, she would have heard what happened, because a neighbor of the monastery saw Brother Malthus get picked up by the Army jeep and went to the monastery to tell them; but her pride stopped her from doing that; she was even near the Dominican monastery, where a secret service agent disguised as a cotton candy vendor was set up; she had an uncontrollable desire for some cotton candy and she stopped and bought some. As the cotton candy dissolved in her mouth, she thought back to when they had some free matinees in Belo Horizonte and she had never missed a free matinee and always ate cotton candy at the matinees; at the wheel of the Peugeot, eating cotton candy, she went down Afonso Pena Avenue and remembered when a famous engineer had said that he was going to make it rain in Belo Horizonte by seeding the clouds with ice pellets; the sky darkened, everyone waited for it to rain, and she, Hilda, rooted very hard for the engineer to succeed; there was even a Carnival song about the event. Hilda Hurricane, the Girl in the Gold Bikini, was returning in time and wanted one thing on that night of April 1, 1964: her mother’s shoulder to cry on, the way she had cried back when the engineer had promised that it would rain and it didn’t. At night, still indifferent to military operations, she drove around in the Peugeot; she was driving down Curitiba Road when she saw a tall priest cross the road; his black habit was a bit short for him, and he didn’t have the gait of a priest—he stopped on the corner of Carijós and looked at the Pirapetinga Building, where the offices of Binômio were located. Then he leaned against a tree and began to sob convulsively. The teenager who loved cotton candy and rooted for the engineer to make rain, into whom Hilda was transforming, felt bad for

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the priest crying against the tree. Getting out of the Peugeot, she went over to him: “Father?” she asked. “Can I help you?” The priest faced her, and she recognized him: it was the journalist José Maria Rabelo, who wasn’t dead, as the rumor he himself had started said. “José Maria Rabelo, you, dressed as a priest?” He also recognized her. “Hilda, is it you?” he said, swallowing his tears. “I’m disguised, fleeing from the soldiers.” “And you don’t want me to drop you somewhere, José Maria?” “No, Hilda. I’m in that car there,” and he pointed at a Ford. “I hope I see you again soon, Hilda.” Dressed as a priest, José Maria Rabelo made it to Rio de Janeiro and asked for asylum at the Panamanian embassy: he would be in exile for many years; when he returned, he confirmed to this narrator Hilda Hurricane’s version of that night.

14 The General, the Shears, the Telephone . . . AND OU R LIVE S

When João Goulart was already in exile, in Uruguay, and the military coup, which had become known as the Revolution of March 31, 1964, promulgated the first institutional acts that suspended political rights, Brother Malthus, who was still a prisoner, became one of the first people affected; around this time, Hilda Hurricane had gone to her farm in Mato Grosso without knowing what had happened; on the afternoon of April 9, 1964, General Guedes crossed Santa Catarina Road, in front of the military base, with the shears with which he cared for his roses, and, bringing an adjutant along with him to carry a ladder, he stopped in front of José Aparecido’s

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house, climbed the ladder, and snipped the phone line to the house with the shears. On realizing that the phone had suddenly gone dead, José Aparecido came out on the balcony, this time wearing striped pajamas and not white underwear—and saw General Guedes returning to his base with his shears in his hands and the adjutant with the ladder on his shoulder. The situation of those who, one way or the other, had seen General Guedes caring for his roses from José Aparecido’s balcony was the following on the afternoon of April 9, 1964: —Federal Congressman José Aparecido: he had his term voided and his political rights suspended for ten years on the first list of the punished issued by the military, but, through the intercession of Governor Magalhães Pinto, was not arrested; —The Governor of Pernambuco, Miguel Arraes: he was removed from office, his political rights suspended for ten years, and was sent to prison on the island of Fernando de Noronha; —The Governor of Sergipe, Seixas Dórias: he was removed, political rights suspended for ten years, and sent to prison on Fernando de Noronha; —Congressman Francisco Julião, of the Farm-workers League: he disappeared after the coup, and some said he was dead, but it was never confirmed; —Congressman Leonel Brizola: he attempted to counter the military coup from Porto Alegre, with the support of General Ladário Telles; he questioned the legality of a military government and gave a radio address that I and the Beautiful B listened to with great hope, in which he directed a comment to the highest remaining general who was uncommitted to the coup: “General Oromar Osório, grab these guerrillas by the tail and show that the Brazilian Army isn’t a bunch of renegades bent on power . . .”

Shortly after, Brizola went into exile in Uruguay.

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As far as this narrator goes, the sensation I felt was that the military coup of 1964 cut me off in the same manner that the shears that General Guedes used on the phone line at José Aparecido’s house cut him off; Alterosa kept publishing, but when I sent a reporter to interview Chico Campos, the father of the institutional acts, and we published the interview in which he said that he knew how the institutional acts weren’t really necessary, what caused a problem was in the epigraph of the story, a sentence by the writer that said: “When Chico Campos turns on his lights, a short circuit occurs in our national democratic institutions.” On Christmas Eve, 1964, Alterosa was closed and I went to work as a copy editor at the Jornal do Brasil, in Rio de Janeiro. Now that I’m looking back on what happened, I can’t help but imagine, with a chill running down my spine, what the copy editor at the Jornal do Brasil that I was would do with this novel’s story if it fell into his hands; I would have started by cutting that “with a chill running down my spine”—and, so many cuts and mutilations would have to be made by me, in the process of editing my own life (things said, thoughts, dreams, etc.), without forgetting to put the events in a straight chronological line, besides having to adopt a dry and distant language, that almost nothing would remain of this story, a thing too barbarous and senseless for anyone’s taste. But I must continue: I didn’t stay very long at the Jornal do Brasil—I believed that every plane I saw taking off from Rio de Janeiro was heading for Belo Horizonte; one afternoon, I was at the beach in Copacabana with the Beautiful B and I said: “Let’s go back to Belo Horizonte?” “Let’s go,” she answered.

15 Waiting for a Rain of Dollars We returned to Belo Horizonte, and I was unemployed for eleven months and twenty-seven days; I was accused of being a subversive, a fashionable word then, and, besides being a communist militant, I was the target of two accusations: that I had been seen being very happy the night that Jango signed the decree of agrarian reform and that I had signed a petition of solidarity with Fidel Castro during the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion; I started analysis again with my psychologist, Dr. Aspásia Pires, during the period of my unemployment, and I stayed home reading Sartre, J. D. Salinger, and the work of an economist named Celso Furtado; one afternoon, I was going up Bahia Road when the journalist Cyro Siqueira came out of a café to talk to me; we had never known each other very well, but he was the only working journalist I could count on during the period of my unemployment: “You wouldn’t want to write some things for the Sunday supplement in the Estado de Minas? It pays very little, but since you’re kind of on the outs, it’d be a chance to get your name back out there in large letters and bring you back to life.” I won a regional reporting prize with my series “An Economic Interpretation of Brazilian Soccer” that I wrote with the knowledge that I had gleaned from reading Celso Furtado, and a bit later, I started from scratch as a reporter in a branch of Jornal dos Sports, whose Minas edition turned me into a sports journalist. In 1969, I was a soccer reporter at the Estado de Minas, having been brought over by Cyro Siqueira; one night, I left the office and went to the Bar do Chico, where everyone was watching the news of the decree of Institutional Act No. 5, further limiting people’s rights. After, I walked out of there: I went into three different bars and

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wrote graffiti in each of their urinals: “Down with IA #5.” I went to see my mother, who was now living in an apartment on Paraíba Road in a building that was owned by the Military Police, which, in times of crisis, was always an inconspicuous refuge—I looked at several stories from the Washington Post that my sister Annabelle Drummond Lee, who lived in the USA, had sent and in which the gangster Pretty Boy announced that he would very soon make it rain dollars in a South American city in his home country, Brazil, a city called Belo Horizonte; this and the certainty that I still hadn’t let the Beautiful B down were the only optimistic things on the night of IA #5’s decree; I walked home, thinking: “Come on, you muchawaited-for downpour of dollars, hurry up and get here”; the next day, Brother Malthus was arrested in Porto Alegre for the fifth time since 1964.

16 In a Window in Buenos Aires As a soccer reporter, I went to Buenos Aires accompanying the Brazilian national team and met up with Hilda Hurricane, who was living there; I visited her in her apartment, and we stood talking and leaning in her picture window, enjoying the evening breeze; Hilda Hurricane said: “This wind comes from Brazil.” After, Hilda Hurricane began to believe that the wind also brought cherished memories of Brazil, and with only them, she thanked God for having lived and didn’t want anything else in the world. “As long as this wind blows from Brazil”—the signs of an Argentine accent showing in her speech—“I’ll always be young and at the heart of the world.” PS No. 1 (in the mode of Aunt Little Heart’s letter)—I fear that Aunt Little Heart is frustrated with this ending and is saying:

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“There are still a lot of things in the air. For example: why don’t Brother Malthus and Hilda Hurricane get together? Another question: what happened to Cinderella’s slipper?” As far as Cinderella’s slipper: wherever he went, even to the prisons he spent time in, Brother Malthus brought it with him; as to why they didn’t get together, Hilda only found out what really happened on that afternoon of April 1, 1964, one year later, when I told her. PS No. 2—I imagine that Aunt Ciana and the other readers are asking: “Hilda Hurricane continues to be a mystery. Why did she go to the Bohemian Zone on an April 1, when she was the Girl in the Gold Bikini and come out five years later, also on an April 1?” I must say that I posed these questions to Hilda Hurricane when I saw her in Buenos Aires, and she avoided the topic; when I said I needed an explanation to give the readers, because I was going to write a novel about her, she evaded, forgetting her promise to one day tell me the answer: “Why don’t you tell your readers that, as I said in your novel, I, Hilda Hurricane, never existed and I’m only an April Fool’s joke that you wanted to pass off on your readers?” I think that’s not a bad solution.