The Mystery of Rio (10 page)

On that day, in a bedroom without windows on the second floor, the heiress was naked, facedown. Aniceto lay next to her, his outstretched hand wandering over the nape of her neck and the swell of her buttocks, sometimes drifting to the shoulders, sometimes the back of legs, in a motion that was rhythmic and gentle, but firm.

He did this while whispering in her ear, foreshadowing the obscenities he would demand of her. There was another element to this game: the capoeira would tell her that these obscenities had to be done in front of people present in that room who were hidden, watching them. She, with her legs slightly open, sighed, and writhed, and raised her hips. And these people, this small audience, did not only include strangers. In her imagination, there was someone very special there, a privileged spectator, watching everything, all of the vileness: her industrialist husband.

 

Let us go back in time a little, to the moment when Aniceto passed in front of the Colombo, head down, and proceeded to knock on the townhouse door. Dressed in a style that mimicked all of the elegance around him, no one paid him any mind.

The heiress, in turn, arrived in a poplin wire-frame dress, with silk gloves and a lace hat, and was much noticed by passersby as well as the clientele at the café.

The open admiration of beautiful women is a tradition in Rio de Janeiro. And the heiress, who was accustomed to that type of attention and liked to show off in public, did not realize that she was being followed, and that she had been from the moment she left her majestic mansion in Botafogo. It is not difficult to guess that it was by the industrialist himself.

The heiress's husband was very nervous, lifting his collar and looking at his watch every chance he got. He seemed to want to register the exact time when the adultery would be committed. In the café, he drank three glasses of the best pomace brandy. And he began to sweat. Many knew him in that café, and his nervous demeanor was attracting plenty of attention.

So, when he tossed too much money on the table, and did not wait for the change, and knocked on the same townhouse door, many eyes were upon him.

Of course, the industrialist knew the widow. The owner of the house could not help but open the door, and invite him in, though she must have been terrified. But these saucy old ladies are cunning: she imagined that from street level he would not be able to hear anything upstairs, and that she would be able to send him on his way quickly, because a man like him would not have much to discuss with a distant relative of his wife's. She realized her mistake when he drew his revolver:

“Where is she!”

It did not take long for the industrialist to kick open the door and rush into the room, catching the adulteress by surprise in that unmistakable position I have already described, just as she was in the throes of her exciting fantasy. Destiny truly has amazing coincidences.

The industrialist—though he was armed, though he had long suspected everything—trembled when faced with the truth, and was slow to act. Thus, he missed with the first shot he fired at his rival, and when he tried to fire a second one he felt the blow: his wife struck him with a wooden Saint Anthony, adding two or three additional blows to the head once he was on the ground.

Meanwhile, the widow had sounded the alarm, which coincided with the shots. There was a commotion in the street, and the entire café emptied out, hoping to intervene, but the police arrived straightaway. The heiress was arrested then and there, naked, bloodied, and in tears.

Aniceto did not even try to escape, hoping to avoid getting charged. After all, the man had fallen on the chair, spattering the capoeira's jacket all over with blood. Aniceto was also taken to the police station.

The crowd huddled in front of the house included the fine Colombo clientele. They did not know quite what had happened, and they applauded the adulterers and jeered the industrialist, noisily shouting, “Here comes the cuckold!” A few minutes later, though, there were plenty of embarrassed faces as they saw the corpse being carried out, its skull shattered.

The case would have proceeded unexceptionally except for the behavior of the woman, which mortified the police. Still in the bedroom when they went to arrest the capoeira, she threw herself on the officers, scratching and biting them and trying to prevent them from taking Aniceto away. She cried hysterically all the way to the police station, saying he was innocent, demanding that he be freed. She had to be restrained when Aniceto was taken away to jail, and she screamed and let it be known that she would pay for her lover's lawyer.

Forensics made quick work of their investigation, and concluded that the woman acted alone. The police captain, however, tried to lay the groundwork for another version:

“All you have to do is give your statement, and I'll arrange something with forensics. Just say he smashed your husband's head with the saint.”

The offer was made in the presence of the killer's lawyer, shortly after the woman's arrival at the precinct. Her reaction was to cause another scandal, saying she would leak the setup, demanding the presence of journalists.

Appalled by the heiress's attitude, and with no good argument to challenge her detention, the defense lawyer began instead to represent Aniceto, as per her orders, with great success. According to Article 279 of the Penal Code, the crime of adultery was a private matter, and there had been no complaint.

The idea, which someone floated, that he could be framed for vagrancy also went nowhere. Article 399 was clear: despite not practicing the profession of typesetter, he had a livelihood, as the law prescribed, for he had converted his inheritance from Fortunata into bonds, which gave him an income, albeit a modest one.

Aniceto, thus, was freed, though not before meeting with Baeta again. The expert wanted to do a “reconstruction” of the crime committed at the townhouse. Nobody criticized him for excessive zeal; nobody saw this as personal. Baeta wanted to intimidate the capoeira.

“I have no idea how a woman like her can get involved with a lowlife like you.”

Aniceto thought it very funny.

“Women are very strange, boss.”

And it was really very strange—a streetwise thug from the hills, with barely a grade school education, raised amid capoeiras and drummers, snagging himself such a wealthy lover.

And Baeta, who had admired the industrialist's wife and saw her as one of the great beauties of Rio, began to reflect seriously on that mystery and that power.

So much so that, days later, while walking down Favela Hill, after finally being dumped by the flag-bearer, Baeta could not get one name out of his head: Aniceto.

 

Adultery is not, of course, a Rio institution in the chronological sense. Nor are its origins specific to any one city, or to a specific people. In fact, this notion is what differentiates us as modern humans from
Australopithecus
,
Pithecanthropus
, Java men,
Homo erectus
, and Neanderthals.

In the history of cities, however, though it is never absent, its importance varies. Cities like Beijing, Jerusalem, Timbuktu, or Calcutta are not remembered for their cases of adultery. The same cannot be said about Paris or San Francisco and certainly not of Rio de Janeiro.

At least eight thousand years ago, a group of highly skilled sailors approached the Rio de Janeiro coastline. These original inhabitants (called “Sambaquis,” and, later, “Itaipus”) were a seafaring people, peaceful and fond of leisure, but completely dominated by the spirit of risk-taking.

At the time, the sea level was much lower, so neither the coastal outline nor the natural landscape was the same. But it was Rio de Janeiro, nonetheless.

These first arrivals—about a dozen men, women, and children—were not pioneers, but rather fugitives. Living in an anarchic society, devoid of the concept of property, the only crimes possible in the world of the Sambaquis were incest, to which they had an overwhelming aversion, and adultery. The founders of Rio de Janeiro were fleeing this last crime: half of the Sambaquis' wives had been stolen.

We know little about them, but what is certain is that they prospered. Archaeologists have been fascinated by their delicate ornaments made from shells and bones. In this book, they will be remembered as inventors of Carioca literature.

It is said that the Itaipus were of the sea, but they also learned to exploit the rivers. Thus, since they always preferred water, they never made great expeditions into the depths of the forest, and considered the mountains to be the limits of the physical world.

However, it was sometimes necessary to pick fruit, find new mangroves or streams, and maybe catch some small animal. This was a dangerous adventure, because the forest was inhabited by evil and mysterious spirits who had a penchant for pursuing women and embarrassing them into practicing shameful acts.

Life involved certain strictures: just as fishermen preferred to go at it alone (except when they went out onto the high seas in search of
xaréu
), groups that entered the woods, mostly women, sought not to spread themselves too thin or travel too far into the thickets.

Occasionally, however, a woman would disappear only to reappear a few hours later. In the evenings around the campfire, gathered around a shell mound or under an overhanging rock, or on a sand dune, they would tell amazing stories, in which virgin girls were impregnated by water snakes, or wives were seduced by salacious lizards.

This tradition did not disappear with the Itaipus. In fact, invaders coming by land or by sea kept repeating the same legends. The invaders belonged to two great nations of fierce warriors. They arrived at about the same time, some three thousand years ago, and they had so many differences that they hardly ever intermarried. Their laws concerning adultery were also in conflict.

The first ones, from the Unas Nation—ancestors of the Puris, or “the crowned ones,” and of the Goitacás, to a lesser extent—failed to prevail for very long in the city of Rio. Though much given to games and competitions of strength and dexterity, they took a very serious view of things, and were very attached to their social hierarchy and rigid customs. Not surprisingly, they considered adultery a serious offense, a question of character.

The individual caught in the act was beaten terribly by the betrayed partner, with no right to self-defense.

Often, such punishments were applied with war clubs, which could be lethal.

Thus, the invaders who remained were those of the sea, those of the Tupi nation—ancestors of the enemy tribes that, in historical times, called themselves Tamoios and Temiminós, or “grandparents” and “grandchildren.”

Lovers of art, good food, good drink, and plenty of revelry, the Tupi had developed a philosophy of contradiction and absolute celebration of life, whose ultimate expression was the cannibalistic rite wherein the enemy was transformed into the redeemer.

The Tupi were compulsorily happy—so much so that they only cried when receiving good news.

In cases of adultery, though wives were entitled to create an uproar, husbands would play dumb to avoid disagreements. But at the next feast—when they would drink plenty of the famous cassava beer—one or more men would go on a rant and pummel the unfaithful woman. The ancient Tupi in Rio de Janeiro would take revenge on their women only if they were drunk.

In the 16th century, two more savage hordes joined the Tupi: the French, who built a fort on the island of Serigipe in 1555, with the endorsement and assistance of Tamoios, and the Portuguese, who considered themselves owners of the land, and who with the help of the Temiminós managed to gain definitive dominion over the city in 1567.

This period was one of tremendous wars, and culminated in the defeat of the Franco-Tamoian coalition, which was forced to withdraw into the high mountains of the interior. Thus the Temiminós—hitherto most populous in the bay's eastern rim—moved into Carioca territory, and even mixed with the remaining Tamoios.

The Europeans—both the Portuguese and the French—though deeply attached to their superstitions, assimilated much of Tupi culture. For example, having come from a strictly monogamous society, they adopted indigenous polygamy—which, according to their laws, would have constituted a crime.

This ambiguity is typically Carioca: every relationship between Tupi women and European men was both legal and illegal. Rarely did this happen the other way around; Tupi men found European women very repulsive.

Thus, the first
mamelucos
of Rio de Janeiro appeared, resulting from the Tupi women's acceptance of French and Portuguese men. From their fathers they inherited the notion of the willful lie and a very buoyant sense of honor, born of the asymmetries and antagonisms of the city, which sometimes led them to punish adultery by death, as specified by the ordinances of the kingdom and the ancient traditions of the Unas.

This did not, however, diminish the impulse to commit adultery. As a matter of fact, Hector Furtado de Mendonça, Visitator General of the Holy Office in Brazil, declined to come to Rio de Janeiro in 1591 because (according to a letter by the Rio de Janeiro Prelate to the Bishop of Bahia), “under the maximum influence of the tropics, judging by the amount of fornication and concubinage that goes on, it is feared that the venerable priest will order us to burn the whole city down.”

 

Naturally, there was another encounter between the expert Baeta and the seducer Aniceto, which is vital for the continuation of the story. The scene takes us back to the beginning, to the House of Swaps. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to describe it in detail.

The building, of palatial dimensions, was built and decorated by artists of the French Mission. It is almost a two-story quadrilateral, subdivided into halls, rooms, corridors, and chambers that communicate with each other via any number of doors, arcades, and passageways.

I described it as almost a quadrilateral because its architects, in designing the rear facade, rather than tracing a line parallel to the front facade, instead gently inserted, at about the one-tenth mark from each corner, two curved walls projecting outward, which then again resolve into straight lines, but are interrupted anew, this time by a large protruding semicircle. This appendix, spanning both floors, is incorrectly labeled as the “oval halls.” It is, in fact, the building's true entrance.