His Own Man (38 page)

Brasilia, April 5, 1973

My dear Max,

Here I am, in the apartment you’re familiar with, on yet another night in Brazil’s heartland, sitting in the living room that serves as my library, dining area, and guest bedroom. The absolute silence around me is surreal, even though it’s not yet ten p.m. by my watch.

Any other city in Brazil, or elsewhere in the world, would be alive and hopping at this hour. Brasilia is in a deep slumber, however. How many decades will it take before our capital finally wakes up?

I feel like a privileged witness to this deserted stage, as I’ve just spent a good long while at the window, smoking and watching a still life in which only the night doormen shuffle by, not even a stray cat honoring us with its presence. A landscape made up of the fronts and backs of low buildings, all identical, which seems to imprison me in an enclosure of cold light and concrete — the perfect urban metaphor for the political system we live under.

It’s unbelievable how these homogeneous residential areas lend themselves to this role and replicate the Fascist realities we’re all trapped in. Not to mention the monumental Esplanade of Ministries with its glorious structures — which today serves as the setting for parades and other demonstrations of patriotism rooted in oppression. One day, though, this architecture will breathe again, without a single brick having to be moved from its place.

I’m hoping that you’ve made headway in your translation of Eliot’s quartets. I liked the excerpts I read and have never understood why it’s taken you so long to try your hand at the second quartet. Especially after the fine reception your rendering of the first deserved, in 1970. Or was it 1971? But beware:
traduttore traditore
, etc., etc. So much for small talk, even though it does have its place in our line of work, doesn’t it?

I decided to write you this letter for two reasons. The first is that I’ve just been betrayed, which is always disheartening, and am reeling from the pain of having been passed over. To make a long story short, I lost the opportunity to be transferred to Geneva. A shame, because there I could have continued in my areas of interest, which bring me such satisfaction — among other reasons by keeping me away from the thorny world of politics.

As a consolation prize, I was offered Los Angeles, where I could work in the consulate’s commercial sector. At first, I didn’t know what to do. But after thinking it over, I accepted. It might be interesting to dive headfirst into California during this amazing, tumultuous time the US is going through. Nixon and the Watergate mess, the American debacle in Vietnam, the protest marches, feminism, the Black Power movement … Maybe that will all compensate for the more challenging work in Geneva, and LA will prove to be stimulating. At least I’ll be able to hear a lot of good music there, from Bob Dylan to Joan Baez, not to mention the classics, as well as the movies I’ll have a chance to see after so many years of censorship in Brazil.

But the second reason I’m writing to you is, by far, the more important. It has to do with things that I never seem to be able to tell you personally when we see one another. Not that you intimidate me.
It’s the issues themselves that are unnerving
. Something serious happened during our last meeting — and I can no longer keep quiet.

The rumors about your upcoming transfer from Montevideo to Santiago stunned me. You must have noticed my uneasiness. Max, the likelihood of a military coup in Chile increases every day. Just as it does in Uruguay.
Everyone knows this
. The two countries’ newspapers cover nothing else — and if ours say little about it, it’s because they’re being censored, not because of lack of interest or concern. I don’t mean to come across as a
champion of truth and sacred values, but I’m afraid that you’ll end up confirming the suspicions of everyone, within the ministry and beyond, who believes you’re working for the right.
Working for them by choice
. And that, willingly or not, you may become part of the intrigue being talked about at the ministry, scheming said to be inspired by your boss in Montevideo.

Since I have no way of meddling in a decision you might already have made, my only recourse is to relate a certain story to you. A very simple story, which may somehow convey my feelings about what’s happening in Brazil these days. There’s nothing exceptional about my characters: a lower-middle-class brother and sister from São Paulo. The boy was around twenty, the girl eighteen, when they went through their ordeal. The facts were told to me by the boy first. Two weeks later, by his sister. And finally, sometime after — in the presence of their mother, with whom they’ve been living here in Brasilia, ever since they were able to relocate —
by both
. Each adding to the other’s sentences.
A montage!
as the boy proclaimed at the end of what seemed more like a theater production. (He’s a film student of mine at the university; we became friends after I showed his class
Battleship Potemkin
and we got to talking about Eisenstein and Pudovkin during the break.)

The brother and sister are truly fond of one another. And, from what I gathered in talking with their mother, that’s been the case ever since they were little. It’s unusual to see that explicitly among relatives, even close ones — for me, at least, it was a novelty. In my family circle, we were always more reserved where our feelings were concerned. And that’s what moved me about this story: its emotional undertone.

The episode they took part in, or found themselves ensnared in, much to their surprise, happened in São Paulo, more than four years ago, right after the military tightened its grip. And that’s what made me think of you, because we met around then — when you elevated me to “lunchable” status.

The facts, then, took place back in those days, toward the end of December ’68. One afternoon, when the two were at home (and their mother fortunately wasn’t), the boy writing a paper for school, his sister ironing a skirt, they suddenly found themselves thrust into a nightmare: they were forced apart
without having time to utter a single word to one another
. Informed on by a militant who had been jailed and tortured, the boy barely escaped through a window at the back of the house where they lived on the city outskirts. He jumped a wall and disappeared into the woods.

He was no terrorist. He’d graffitied a few walls, participated in protest marches, those kinds of things. But it so happens that, under torture, people end up turning in their own mothers — to whom they attribute the worst crimes. They’ll confess anything to make the electric shocks stop. Can you imagine what it’s like to be shocked in the balls for hours on end? Or to have an electric wire shoved into your urethra and see four guys falling over laughing around you while you writhe in pain on a floor soaked with your own excrement? That’s what happened in the case of my student’s comrade. He held out as long as he could and then gave up several names out of pure desperation.

For nearly a year, neither the mother nor the sister had any news of the boy. They knew their home phone was being tapped and sensed they were being watched. During this entire time, without arousing suspicion, they kept a close eye on friends and acquaintances, seeking any sign that would restore their hope. Trips to the hospitals and prisons turned up nothing. The same was true at the army quarters and police stations. Like many relatives of political prisoners and other victims of the system, they had no powerful friends. They didn’t know people who could assist them in any way. They concentrated their thoughts on him alone. Was he dead or alive? And, in either case,
where
?

Then one afternoon, on a bus stuck in traffic in downtown São Paulo, the boy caught a glimpse of his sister sitting at the
back. He lowered his head and considered the possibility that she might have been followed. The thought couldn’t be dismissed because, in the meantime, he’d taken part in undercover operations and was now seriously wanted by the military. He reckoned that they might be able to exchange at least one look. To do so, however, it was vital that his sister not be startled when she saw him.

Taking advantage of the flow of passengers getting on and off, the boy, who was standing near the driver, gradually moved toward the center of the bus. And stopped there. Every so often he’d glance toward the back, but without lingering on his sister. Flanked by two older women, she remained absorbed in her book. He waited, relying on his right eye to let him know when to act. Each time the bus slowed, he noticed, his sister would lift her head from her book to make sure it wasn’t her stop. He realized that this was simply a reflex, common in public transit riders absorbed in their reading, and that it would be repeated every time the vehicle stopped. There would thus be an opportunity for eye contact, depending on the gaps between people.

Now, Max, try to visualize the subtlety of the scene the boy went through. He stood still in the middle of the bus. Bringing his left hand up to his chin, he began to rub his index finger over his lips, “the gesture,” as he put it, “of someone lost in thought.” An unconscious motion suggesting peaceful musing. Thanks to which, at the decisive moment when his trusty eye gave the signal — confirming that his sister had suddenly seen him — he was able, in profile, to raise his finger for a second, “in a vertical line that went from his chin to his nose.” With this, he sent a clear warning, which made the girl keep her eyes glued on her book — “a novel,” in her words, “that now anchored her.”

They continued the ride that way. Profoundly joined, profoundly apart. For an indefinite period of time. On a trip that was in no way connected to the space or the men and women around them, “as if the bus were floating,” she said. (Of the
two, she is more introspective, poetic; whereas he’s practical and objective, a man of few words.) Once past the danger of an undesired gasp or a destabilizing surprise, they felt they could steal
another
look. Brief as it might be, they knew it would take place in slow motion, as if it had a life of its own — and time on its side.

It fell to the brother, then, as he signaled the driver for the next stop, to let the girl know that the precious moment was approaching. She remained immersed in her book and nervously wondered if there might not be an opportunity, at that split second, for a quick smile. But seeing him still in profile, wearing the same stern look, she decided to let him take the initiative. She promised herself that, whatever he did, she would try her very best to mirror his expression, so that
he could see in her eyes a reflection of the love they shared
.

It’s a sappy image, you’ll say. Maybe so … but it touched me like few others. Because life, when it comes down to it, is about these very moments. And that’s how things went. Just as that was how mother and daughter, clinging to one another that afternoon, regained the strength to await the day they’d all be together again. It didn’t matter anymore how long it would take. Something had happened to restore a sense of order. The two women learned then to have faith. They felt that the boy would take extra precautions from then on, to spare them further pain — after having brought them utter joy.

And that’s precisely what he did, distancing himself little by little from his clandestine life. He changed his name and, with the experience he’d acquired while undercover, met his family again in a safe place. Eventually, they found refuge here in Brasilia.

Max, when this story was recounted to me by the brother and sister together, in its third and final version, they reenacted the experience for me, each reliving details from his or her point of view. As if they were two cameras capable of simultaneously revealing the images and secret pulse that connected them, they
celebrated their feat, presenting it as if it had all been a game. It so happens, however, that on the previous occasions,
when the event had been told to me by just one of them
, there had been nothing uplifting about those scenes. They were imbued with the anxiety both had faced. The narrative had been the same, but it was perceived through the prism of fear.

That’s what led me to tell you this story. More than the images of the dead and tortured, more than the lists of disappeared, more than the accusations reported by the newspapers, what happened to these young people illustrates the absurdity that’s taken hold among us. Because if the image of a defiled body makes us think of death — and horror — the scene between them is all about life. There had been just two possible outcomes in the tiny, almost invisible scene they went through. Love and hope, on one hand; torture and death, on the other. In the middle, emptiness.

How could we possibly have reached this point in our country? In the name of what? How could it be that one half of our population is dying from hunger and the other from fear?
The fear is real here, Max. Anyone living in Brazil feels it up close — unlike someone who’s abroad, like you. Information travels by word of mouth, despite the censors’ efforts. And conveys vivid images. A father suddenly gone. A voice missing at a university. A bride led to the altar by an uncle or a brother. A teenager who comes home for lunch but fails to show up for dinner. Year in, year out — nothing changes. On the contrary, it gets worse. All of these absences taken together weigh heavily and clamor — not so much for revenge but for explanations. Yet none is provided. Not a word.

Unlike our pleasurable diplomatic missions (and you’ll forgive the grotesque comparison), they produce permanent absences, Max,
which never allow for the joy of reunion
. They don’t bring peace or tranquility. Quite the opposite, they deepen the despair of everyone involved. I’m afraid that the seed planted
in our midst in ’64 will give rise to a sickly tree, the branches of which will end up multiplying out of sight. If pruned, they’ll grow in other directions, poisoned by the same evils.

The day will come, of course, when things improve. In five or ten years. Sometimes I dread that moment almost as much as the present.
Sad to say
,
isn’t it?
Fears evolve; they change with times and circumstances. They retrace the path that led them to panic. Then they’re reduced to misgivings — and a permanent feeling of uneasiness. Caused by an impunity that will last and explain the crimes that will be committed in the future.
Ah-ah!
you’ll say.
Who dares to make such cavalier predictions? Who? Our good old friend on the Johnnie Walker Red label
, Max, the one who never fails, as you’ll recall. The Striding Man from our Old Highland Whiskey, his hat tipped to you. Who proves to be more prophetic with each shot … Who else could it be? Or do you think I’d have managed to write this letter completely sober?