The Mystery of Rio (24 page)

It was to pay the price demanded by Madame Brigitte, and also to explain the disappearance of the whip, that Guiomar simulated the theft of her own home. The neighbors, of course, would not find it strange to see her force open her own window (which could have just been stuck). Inside, it was easy to turn over the drawers and give verisimilitude to the lie.

One thing is funny: while Guiomar knew the basic postulates of dactyloscopy, it never occurred to her to take any measures to plant the fingerprints that would typically be found in a crime scene of this type.

This error, thus, directed all of the expert's suspicions against the officers of the First District, who loomed over their house in Catete, without her noticing. Unfortunately for Guiomar, they were drawn into the story as well.

I said the neighbors would not think it odd to see Guiomar force open her own window, but Mixila was not a neighbor; he was police. He perceived her agitation, her strange behavior, and he followed the expert's wife when she went off to Machado Square to deliver the whip and pay the fee. The intermediary waiting for her was none other than Hermínio.

The Brotherhood of the First District did not hold women in high regard. The police chief himself was in the habit of saying that a faithful woman in Rio de Janeiro was the one who died before having had the chance to cheat. But adultery never occurred to them in this case. It was perfectly clear to them that this had something to do with Rufino's treasure—so much so that the rower Hermínio had been asking around about the old man, and Guiomar was the wife of a man who, it was well known, was mixed up in this business.

Mauá Square, however, especially after the disappearance of three of its members in Tijuca Forest, could not assign its entire force to monitor around the clock the gang made up of Rufino, Baeta, Guiomar, Hermínio, and perhaps others.

If they had surprised Hermínio the moment when he delivered the whip to Aniceto, the story might have had a different outcome. Instead, the one they followed, the one Mixila followed, was Madame Brigitte's go-between when he rented the mansion on Alfandega Street on Friday the 10th.

The certainty that there was something big there increased when, by Monday evening, neither Hermínio nor anyone else had entered the townhouse. The expectation, however, ended on the 14th, when first the capoeira entered (without the whip), and half an hour later the expert's wife was being pushed and shoved as if it she were a slut by the former São Cristovão rower.

Uncomfortable with three revolvers pointing at him, Hermínio was forced to do an about-face as soon as he exited the building. The three walked back upstairs, Hermínio in front, followed by Mixila and two other policemen, who did not have a clue what was happening. They would have seen much more if they had only arrived a little later.

Instead, they kicked open the door with the immense urgency that only treasures justify, and took in the scene: Guiomar, with her dress lowered, her breasts exposed, her hair pulled back by Aniceto as he wandered with his tongue over her exposed nape.

The three barged in at once. Their mistake was pushing Hermínio onto the bed. It was a mistake because the capoeira needed only one stingray kick to carom one officer off the other and flee down the stairs. Hermínio, the former rower, reached for a fallen gun, which only facilitated Aniceto's escape as the two officers were needed to take him down.

We know how this story ends: Mixila chased the capoeira, discovered he was headed toward Santa Teresa, and went there in pursuit. There he entered the forest never to come out again.

 

Although it is one of the most studied cities in the world, much of Rio de Janeiro's history still remains obscure. This ignorance is severe for the 18th and 17th centuries. It is extremely severe for the second half of the 16th century. And it is alarming with relation to the entire period previous to that, which includes the city's pre- and proto-histories.

The resulting damage is immense for the native mythology. For example, there is today, in Niterói, an imposing statue of Arariboia—resolutely looking out at Rio de Janeiro as if he were a foreign conqueror.

Although this hero, the first native to wear the vestment of Christ, had received land grants on the eastern rim of Guanabara Bay, he was in fact a Carioca Tuxuau, in the most legitimate sense of the word, because he was born and lived in Paranapuã, the former Cat Island (i.e, “
maracajás
”), currently Governor's Island.

It is possible that, at the time, the Temiminós, or the Maracajás, already inhabited the city's northern coast and the neighboring islands, such as Cobras, Melões, and Moças. So much so that the “Village of Martinho”—as it appears in an old Portuguese map made before 1580—is nothing less than the village ruled by Arariboia (who had been baptized Martim Afonso), erected under the invocation of Saint Lawrence, beyond São Bento Hill, between Prainha and Saco de Alferes. The famous morality play
Auto de Anchieta
, of 1587, was performed in this location, and not on the other side of the bay.

And what about other great forgotten characters, such as Cunhambebe, Guaixará, and Aimbirê? The latter—the mastermind behind the Franco-Tamoia coalition—if for no other reason, deserves to be remembered for the classic scene which so fully embodies the spirit of the city, when, mortally wounded, he chose the fairest among his twenty wives, the stunning Iguaçu, and plunged into the bay with her before dying, fought the tides and swam out to the high sea, and deposited her, safe from his enemies, on Ipanema Beach.

Another attack on the mythical city's memory is making the Carioca River, after many detours and channels, run underground almost its entire length, reappearing as a tiny snippet in Cosme Velho, near the Largo do Botícario. The river's waters were so clear, so pure, that (so the Indians said) it made men strong and women beautiful. This confirms that, at least in legend, there existed a fountain of youth here, the object of Lourenço Cão's lost map.

It is also an unforgiveable crime that not one miserable plaque signals the approximate site of the famous Casa de Pedra—we do not know how, when, or by whom it was erected—a house that is so historically important that from it the citizens of Rio derive their own ethnonym.

By the way, no one knows exactly how Rio de Janeiro's toponym originated, and there is much controversy surrounding it. Varnhagen's thesis—which involves extremely complicated nautical calculations—is that a reconnaissance expedition to the coast, commanded by an anonymous captain, discovered what they thought was the estuary of a great river on January 1st, 1502.

However, as this is merely a logical deduction without supporting documents, conservative historians prefer the year 1504, when the fleet of Gonçalo Coelho would have dropped anchor in Guanabara. However, this is also subject to heated debate.

A strong historiographical strand argues that the name Rio de Janeiro does not appear on maps before 1520. They present as evidence the fact that Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through here on his famous voyage around the world, gave the location the name of Santa Luzia since he was unfamiliar with any other names.

On the other hand, there are those who invoke the 1513 map of Turkish navigator Piri Reis wherein the outline of Guanabara Bay appears very clearly, surrounding a mysterious Arabic name containing the word “Saneyro.” And there are those who remember the voyage of a ship named
Bertoa
, or the expedition of João Dias de Soliz.

This whole controversy attests to the following: that there was intense movement of Europeans—perhaps even Turks—in the regions neighboring Guanabara in the first half of the 16th century, that it is likely that they entered the bay, and that we know almost nothing about the details.

One of the few concrete mentions of this presence is the curious story of the traitor Lopes Carvalho, a Portuguese pilot who served the kings of Spain.

According to at least two sources (Pigafetta's diary and the testimony of the cabin boy Martim de Ayamonte), the traitor Carvalho—who was a pilot in the fleet of Ferdinand Magellan—came to Rio de Janeiro to reunite with the child he had fathered with an enslaved Indian with whom he lived between 1512 and 1517.

Of all of these mysteries, however, the most intriguing, the most impressive, the one most in need of unraveling is the existence, in Rio de Janeiro, of a tribe of Amazons.

Recent archaeological research, done in the area of the Pedra Branca (Jacarepaguá, Bangu, Realengo, Campo Grande, Guaratiba), identified a number of sites belonging to the Tupi tradition, all having in common characteristic ceramics coated with polychromatic decoration of a linear design and a texture of sand and crushed shells.

The oldest sites date as far back as three thousand years and have the following peculiarity: all one hundred and sixty-nine skeletons discovered were of females.

Another remarkable fact is that adult women were systematically buried in their
igaçabas
(or burial vases) with a bone flute and a rare artifact: a heavy, polished stone ring with circular edges. This is an awful and familiar weapon of war, the
itaiça
, with a convenient handle used to smash heads (a fact historically documented among the Guarani of Rio Grande do Sul).

There was another important relic, not necessarily associated with burials: long sharpened bone fragments whose stems revealed they were meant to be attached not to arrows but rather to very thick spears.

Male skeletons begin to appear at sites only a maximum of two thousand years old. And then things get more complicated: although the pottery remains identical, both the
itaiças
and the spearheads disappear, and the bone flutes—without exception—now are buried with men.

It is also during this period that the first axes fit for agriculture appear.

The ceramic records leave no doubt: all of these sites were occupied by the Tupis. What the experts have been afraid to say is that in the first millennium there was a Tupi society made up only of women warriors—the Itatingas, as they were known. They made pottery (always an exclusively female activity), hunted, certainly collected honey and fruit, but refused the tedious work of slash-and-burn farming.

They also had their status symbol: the bone flute, with which they were buried. The men who arrived seem to have usurped such a prerogative for themselves.

One of the mythic themes recurring throughout South America concerns the origins of male dominance. The peoples of Tierra del Fuego, the Pantanal, and the Amazon have very similar stories to explain how men gained dominion over women. And the Tupi versions (as well as those of the Mundurucus and Camaiurás) say that, in the beginning, women discovered the secret of the spirits that inhabit flutes, and this is why they ruled over men. When men finally conquered those sacred instruments, the situation was definitively reversed.

History thus repeats myth, but in the opposite direction. Friar Carvajal's Amazons and Cristóbal de Acuña's Icamiabas—and forgive me if I forget any others because at this stage I do not have the time to consult any more books—were the women who dared to undertake the same course of action of the Itatingas of Rio de Janeiro: they isolated themselves from men, and they armed themselves heavily, they regained control over the spirits of the flutes in order to be free.

And, of course, they took on lovers; after all, a millennium of chastity is simply unsustainable. The vexing question, therefore, is this: why did they submit a second time?

The archaeological remains are clear: the men who arrived in their midst were not necessarily stronger, they did not possess better weapons; on the contrary: they could barely handle the deadly
itaiça
, and they did not use spears in combat.

The Itatingas, for their part, lived alone for at least a thousand years. Of course, they did not reproduce, and they must have abducted girls from neighboring tribes, tribes that they almost certainly oppressed, given their military superiority, and from whom they extorted maize and cassava, which they refused to grow themselves.

And please do not come at me with that old canard that men are naturally stronger and more aggressive. The Itatingas spent an entire millennium hunting and braving the fauna and the wilderness without requiring the help of men.

The riddle may never be solved in strictly archeological terms. However, there are those who suggest that the Itatin­gas—living a thousand years ago in a superior model of civilization—were driven by a simple fantasy, an atavistic longing to try barbarism once again.

 

While the drama with Guiomar unfolded at the apartment on Alfandêga Street, Baeta had finally managed, at approximately 6
p.m
., to see the chief of police at Relação Street. The expert's anxiety was justified: he had just solved, on a strictly logical level, using purely scientific procedures, the crime of the House of Swaps.

Baeta told the following version of events, omitting only a few facts that did not affect the final conclusion: while reviewing the forensic evidence, comparing the fingerprints found on the bottle of wine and the whip handle with those of Aniceto, he concluded that they were identical. Thus, not only had Aniceto been at the scene of the crime, but he had murdered the secretary, because the hands that picked up the bottle by the bulge were of the same dimensions as those that had strangled the secretary.

This eliminated the problem with the first theory, in which Baeta himself had pointed out that the force used in the strangulation was excessive for a woman.

“But weren't there fingerprints on the wine glasses too?”

It was true. The expert had forgotten this one detail. The police chief's objection was simple: if Aniceto had entered the room with the bottle and the wine glasses, dressed in women's clothing to resemble Fortunata (as Baeta alleged), and then, taking advantage of the fact that the secretary had already been bound, blindfolded, and gagged by his sister (also according to Baeta), had committed the crime, how could one then explain the victim's fingerprints on the wine glass and on the bottle?