The Mystery of Rio (7 page)

Even before the city was founded, there were already rumors of precious green stones in the hinterlands. Martim de Góis, who left in 1695 to go up the Inhomirim and reached as far as the Piabanha, had no other goal than finding these famous stones. Perhaps he made it as far as the headwaters of the Tocantins. Martim de Gois, however, never came back. He was killed, along with several of his men, by a faction of rebels led by the
mameluco
Nuno Esteves.

The
mameluco
and his men reached Rio de Janeiro, bringing back bodies of several Indians wrapped in hammocks, all with their heads crushed.

Nuno Esteves' story was hard to believe: that while passing by an Indian village on the banks of Iguaçu, three days' march from the city, they had surprised a mob of savages ready to cook those dead, whom they had just sacrificed in their fashion.

The dead must have been from the Jacutingas Nation, previously catechized, as the village had its own cross. Nuno Esteves and his followers managed to drive away the cannibals, recovering the bodies of pious Jacutingas in order to give them a proper burial.

Despite the nuisance caused by the odor, the
mameluco
insisted on holding a wake for the Indians, claiming that he had vowed to do so. It was this strange show of devotion that alerted people that something was amiss.

The next day it was discovered that, besides the broken skulls, the bodies had been torn open from the base of the neck to the bladder, and that their guts had been totally emptied out.

He could have explained everything away: that they had been eaten by the other savages, and that their entrails had already been removed. However, someone pointed out that the victims were not properly painted, according to tradition. This was evidence of the fraud perpetrated. And sure enough, while handling the corpses, an emerald slipped out of one of their throats.

The men of the expedition were tortured, but they never revealed where the stones were hidden. The
mameluco
Nuno Esteves also never admitted to the murder of Martin de Goís and those who had been faithful to him. They all died on the gallows, in a dignified manner, shortly thereafter.

What about those treasures that cannot be found even though it is known where they are buried? Such was the case of the celebrated Manuel Henriques, the Gloved One—a nobleman bandit who tormented travelers along the the gold roads and trails, stealing heavy loads of the metal mined in Minas Gerais that had to be brought down, as the law stipulated, to the city of São Sebastião.

The story of the nobleman is interesting. In love with Queen Maria, the Mad, he once was allowed to stand in a receiving line to kiss her royal highness' hand, but only managed to touch the tip of her fingers. From that day on, as a pledge of his love, he never took off his glove.

They say Queen Maria began to lose her wits from that moment on, and that this angered the court, resulting in the persecution of the Gloved One. Even if the incident did not truly make the queen mad, it did lead her would-be lover to seek consolation in a life of crime.

Manuel Henriques was the terror of the northern part of the state of Rio de Janeiro and the southern part of Minas Gerais during the last decades of the 18th century.

He grew rich like a king. But he never did win the love of his life.

His treasure is in a cave lost in the confines of Vargem Pequena, on the edge of the Guaratiba parish, in a seemingly impenetrable place in the Grota Funda hills called Cova de Macacu. I even went there myself when I lived in Recreio, and I have foraged through those woods. They say the slaves who carried the treasure, the only witnesses who knew its hiding place, were murdered shortly after they buried it.

The most extraordinary Carioca treasure, however, is that of the king of the Ivory Coast—or, better said, the treasure belonging to Chica da Silva. The theme here is the subjective value of the treasure, not the impenetrable secrecy that surrounds it.

The king of the Ivory Coast was actually a prince of the mighty Ashanti Empire who came to Brazil to expand the slave trade, dropping anchor in Rio de Janeiro. Here, he praised the beauty of the women and, quite naturally, wanted to meet the queen of the land.

Coincidentally, Chica da Silva had just arrived from Tijuco Township to see the sea for the first time. And she was introduced to the Ashanti embassy as the sovereign ruler of Brazil, which was not exactly a lie.

It seems that the contractor João Fernandes de Oliveira, Chica's husband, slept well during the night the two of them spent aboard the prince's galley. And at the farewell banquet, hosted by the slave trader Manuel Coutinho, Chica da Silva received a huge gift in African gold, jewels, and rich pieces carved in ivory, which astonished all of the guests.

This treasure, however, never made it back to the Castelo da Palha in Tijuco. When João Fernandes ordered the chests opened, he found only sand and shells. The contractor was in an uproar. He summoned his slaves and threatened to kill the responsible party. Chica da Silva took no notice: for someone who would never see the immensity of the sea again, it did not seem like such an unfavorable exchange.

 

When the expert Baeta left the House of Swaps at five in the afternoon on Wednesday, June 18th, he had already concluded a series of formal interviews with the doctor, the nurses and house manager, and thus had amassed all of the available information on Fortunata, even the secret list of her major clients—obtained with great difficulty—which would undoubtedly have been of interest to the chief of police, for it included some well-known military and political figures.

That's what the expert thought. But Madame Brigitte, evidently, had not revealed everything. She had omitted one essential fact: that she had detected a contradiction—a lie, actually—told by nurse Cassia, the senior nurse, who had referred Fortunata and insisted so vehemently that she be allowed to work there.

Fortunata and Cassia had been neighbors. Their mothers were each other's godmothers, and they themselves had been childhood friends. Madame Brigitte noticed that the two did not show much affection, and never exhibited much intimacy, but she did not pay it any mind; she attributed the behavior to modesty. After all, Fortunata was very reserved with all of them.

The time arrived, however, for Cassia to get married. A former client had asked for her hand three weeks after her childhood friend had come to the House. That excited the imagination of the other girls, who were very hurt when they did not receive an invitation to attend the ceremony. Not even Fortunata was invited, which did not escape the notice of Madame Brigitte.

Madame Brigitte, however, did go. As the guests were congratulating the couple, she was introduced to Cassia's mother. She asked her about her friend, and she discreetly mentioned Fortunata. The mother's look of confusion said it all: the story of the childhood friendship was false. And Madame Brigitte, though upset, did not make a big deal of it. She concluded that the lie was well-intentioned, and that it was not worth provoking disagreements with a nurse already so well established in the House and who had shown herself to be so good-natured.

Madame Brigitte regretted having told the expert that Fortunata's admission process had deviated from the norm. It was a rare occasion—perhaps even the only time—that such an oversight had occurred: a nurse hired without a corresponding job opening, without a demand for a new nurse. For this reason, Madame Brigitte blamed herself for the secretary's murder. Miroslav Zmuda, of course, did not know any of this, and asked no questions when he saw her, soon after the expert's departure, writing a letter whose content he had no interest in knowing.

Madam Brigitte, in fact, was more than simply a house administrator. She first met the doctor at the old clinic in Glória, shortly before the court order transferred to him the ownership of the Marquise of Santos' house. At the time, Madame Brigitte was a recent arrival from Espirito Santo, residing on Lapa Street at a boarding house for young actresses, and she had not yet adopted the French moniker.

When she took her clothes off and lay naked before the doctor, she felt she could not resist; she ended up betraying herself, unable to conceal the subtle contractions in her gluteals. Dr. Zmuda, experienced in these matters, understood the offer. And, without neglecting to examine her, he satisfied her in just the right spot.

Miroslav Zmuda visited the Lapa street address and became a client, and made of her a kept woman, taking her away from that life once he became a widower. By the time he took possession of the House, Madame Brigitte—already going by that name—was his sweet concubine.

The Marquise's House was a find, for both of them. Ever since she had first moved into the boarding house, the dream of that humble girl from Espirito Santo had been to be French and to own a brothel. Not only for the money: the future Brigitte was fascinated by the sexuality of others. She loved to know the small perversions that made up personalities. She believed that it was possible to predict the behavior of people based on their sexual character.

Miroslav Zmuda, for his part, was what we would today call an obstetrician or gynecologist: he performed abortions, sterilizations, and treated venereal diseases. Although not a sexologist in the classical sense, he had a special interest in the physiology of coitus. He was one of the first Western scientists to study the phenomenon of sexual attraction. Born in Krakow, he naturally preferred Rio de Janeiro.

And so the House of Swaps came to be, and Madame Brigitte was its prime mentor. The architecture of the building lent itself perfectly to its purpose: to the left of the imposing main entrance there was a gate for carriages, which drove down a lane lined with giant strangler figs
and royal palms, all the way to the rear, where two elliptically curved iron staircases took guests directly to the second floor. There were so many trees between these staircases and the small lake that graced the garden that visitors who exited there could rest assured they would not be seen by anyone outside the House.

Madame Brigitte wanted the House to be a secret institution whose existence was known only to those whom it served. Thus, she was not merely satisfied with copying similar establishments, whose doors were essentially always open. She devised a space both open and closed, where women and men could give free rein to the most abstruse desire, immune from social disapproval.

Therefore, discretion was the basic rule. The most common type of clients—men seeking prostitutes, for example—never knew that boys were also available, unless they requested them. Group nights were also promoted in secrecy, and nurses who were not invited did not even suspect they existed.

All sexual idiosyncrasies were kept strictly confidential, and only the parties involved knew about them. Madame Brigitte also catered to risky desires; in such cases, though, it was necessary give the personnel the day off and suspend all activities, which required very high financial compensation, as was the case with the lady who wanted to be with four men at once (Madame Brigitte demanded that she be masked), or the gentleman who enjoyed mistreating young men in uniform (usually foreign sailors, recruited at the piers).

Madame Brigitte trained the girls, developing in them the ability to discover inadmissible drives and propose to clients the most exotic adventures. Therefore, the success of the House of Swaps depended on the selection of its nurses, to which Madame Brigitte gave special importance. She wanted only women of great talent with very reputable pasts. In the case of Fortunata, she had failed in her evaluation of this second trait.

Although it was already too late, after the expert's visit, Madame Brigitte decided to set the record straight regarding certain matters, even if it meant saying a few harsh words. So, she sent off the letter, addressed to a distant ranch in the vicinity of Encantado.

The letter arrived at its destination, but from there it was forwarded to another address in Europe. It lay there a few months, until the addressee returned from her summer travels. When the answer came—in late September, well after the point where the narrative is now—Madame Brigitte had a big surprise, and an even bigger disappointment.

In fact, Cassia was not Fortunata's friend. She did not even know Fortunata. She just wanted to leave the life, and sought
someone versed in the magic arts of
mandiga
to win over the heart of the judge, who was a good man and an old client. The sorcerer Rufino demanded a diamond ring, and that she place a person of his own choosing—the prostitute Fortunata—at the House of Swaps.

 

The minimally experienced reader knows that in police novels, or mystery novels in general—at least when there is an honest relationship between the narrator and his readers—there comes a point when the reader has enough information to solve the mystery.

When the reader intuits that this point has been reached, the reader feels compelled to anticipate the end, guessing the narrative ploy that gives coherence to the plot—usually revealed only in the last pages. Therein lies the pleasure of the literary game.

That is precisely the point our story has reached. Although some facts remain hidden, all the clues have been provided, some directly and others symbolically. Nonetheless, for the expert Baeta, I believe it is still impossible to solve the crime of the House of Swaps.

This was the conclusion that Baeta himself had reached, in the confidential report he prepared and signed for the chief of police in early July.

On June 13th, 1913, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, the secretary of the presidency of the republic arrived at the House of Swaps and was greeted by the prostitute Fortunata. Minutes after they entered the room, Fortunata went downstairs to get two glasses and a bottle of red wine in Dr. Zmuda's makeshift wine cellar beneath the grand staircase, where, legend has it, there is a secret passageway built by Emperor Pedro I.

The following fact should be emphasized: the nurses at the House at the time saw Fortunata pass, holding the bottle and glasses. So, the fingerprints found on these objects that are not the secretary's belong to her.