His Own Man

by Edgard Telles Ribeiro

  My friend … That’s still how I picture him on that late morning, when he whispered “fortuitous” in my ear and invited me to lunch. From the very start, he fascinated me. For his congeniality and intellectual brilliance at first. And, as the years went by, for something I always had trouble pinpointing but would today define as a kind of wistfulness, which would lead him to try to recover his lost childhood — knowing only too well that, of all his dreams, this would be the only unattainable one.

  To make his social ascent feasible, and for added emotional support, Max surrounded himself with a diverse group of friends. The circle included young people of assorted leanings ranging from idealism to full-blown alienation. The fact that he was accepted and courted by his peers gave him added confidence in carrying out his projects. The group — whom I met when I accepted my new companion’s invitation to listen to jazz in his apartment and into which I was quickly integrated — essentially consisted of Max’s girlfriend, Ana, a young actress I had already seen onstage in Rio de Janeiro more than once; Moira, an artist who lived in Santa Teresa (inundated with debt and cats, according to Max); Olavo, a millionaire who owned a silver-gray Lancia in which he would cruise around Rio late at night, and whose appeal owed a lot to the jazz albums he would bring back from his trips to New York; Efraim, a poet whose genius was celebrated by Max alone, since no one else had access to his verses; and, finally, Flávio Eduardo, a film critic who would later get caught up in political militancy, go underground, and die a few months later in a bank robbery.

  Each of us unwittingly played a role in Max’s master plan. Mine was having lived in countries he knew only through literature and speaking (without an accent) two or three languages Max had taken great pains to learn at his boarding school. Ana’s consisted of shining onstage and being courted by theater and film bigwigs, who envied our friend because once the night came to a close, it was his bed the beauty would seek. Olavo’s could be summed up as flying his fiery meteor along the city’s deserted streets, awaiting the tree that would eventually kill him. The young poet Efraim’s was pondering verses with the implicit condition that he would remain unknown. I never understood what Moira was doing in our midst, which in a way also confirmed the group’s unorthodox profile. Flávio’s role would be unveiled only after his disappearance: dying for a lost cause. And even this extreme case would leave the impression of having to do with some whim of our friend and host.

  But all of these hidden clues would become clear to me only as time went by. The afternoon of my initiation, finding the street-level door open, I’d gone up to the building’s third and top floor, from which voices and music were drifting down. Max seemed to have forgotten that he’d invited me. He looked surprised at first but quickly recovered: placing a hand on my shoulder, he asked everyone to quiet down and lowered the stereo, relegating John Coltrane to the background — utter sacrilege. He then formally announced, “This guy has read everything. Even more than I have.” He made the statement as though bestowing a title of honor on me — yet the brilliance was all owed to him. Ana, to whom I hadn’t yet been introduced, confirmed my perception with an amused wink, which I caught by mere chance: Max was the benchmark to which the achievements of others were compared.

  Without further ado, Max turned the stereo up, bringing John Coltrane back to the scene, and I was thrown into a rarefied atmosphere, as if I’d suddenly been given access to a greenhouse filled with exotic plant species.

  We were young, we drank a lot, and the country was imploding at our feet — without our realizing what exactly was taking place. What was censored was more telling than what was revealed in the media, giving rise to a host of rumors. And these only grew. Dead, missing, tortured … The imagined horror magnified the actual, since it had no defined shape or limits. What could we do? Take up arms? Jazz symbolized freedom. The louder and more abstract, the better. Drinking, fueled by anxiety and chaos, took care of the rest. The word of Flávio’s death, however, eventually brought a particular depth to our silence, which went far beyond pain and confusion: our safe haven had been violated.

  In spite of it all, during those early days, I never stopped seeing Max through admiring eyes. He in turn gradually adopted me as a younger brother: an honor, true, but one that reflected a distinct hierarchy — assigning the role of mentor to himself. After my having built Max’s pedestal with such enthusiasm, it took me years to dismantle it, in a tormenting, drawn-out process.

  Looking back now, and considering everything that transpired in Brazil after the military coup — particularly following the AI-5 decree — I see Max as one of the most pitiful symbols of our country at that time. All the same, the decision to tell his story was difficult, requiring four decades. The urge to do so, initially daunting, ended up becoming inescapable. Not so much in order to reveal what we always knew within our group: namely, that the devil was in our midst. Not even because of the alternately perverse and tragic circumstances of the players involved and the sad situations they lived through. But out of my own need, as a witness to the adverse effects the period had on people I cared for.

  The statements bordering on confessions that Max made to me over the years, often thanks to too much whiskey, or in response to remarks of mine — which weren’t always kind or conciliatory — I have included here in order to give a fuller sense of other complex aspects of his character. The rest — no small amount, as will become evident — I gathered, often unexpectedly, from reliable sources close to Max (his ex-wife, former superiors, subordinates, acquaintances, friends, enemies), people who admired or abhorred him, as well as those whose careers may well have been jeopardized by his actions — but who nonetheless fell under his spell.

  3

  Max had been appointed to the first position of his diplomatic career more than five years earlier, in August 1963, after finishing his studies at the Rio Branco Institute.

  The military coup of April 1964 was only months away and the country was seething with prerevolutionary Marxist ardor. The leftists, to use the language of the old-timers, were rolling up their sleeves, while the right held back and got organized. There were so many leftist groups that one had the impression the right didn’t even exist. Or if it did, it lacked teeth. At the universities, Socialists and Communists voiced greater misgivings about the right-wing students than about the military, for those stocky young men were going around armed and preying on intellectuals — who were almost always frail by comparison. They wore their repression with pride — outwardly and aggressively, in contrast with the more conservative Tradition, Family, and Property movement.

  Besides Brecht, Mayakovsky, and Sartre, Max read selected works by Mao and Che Guevara — among others attuned to the moment. Thanks to his journalist friends, he enjoyed direct access to Rio’s intelligentsia. He would go to hear jazz musicians at the Beco das Garrafas and circulate among the boxes at the Municipal Theater. In bohemian circles, he expounded on Godard’s films, which he said he preferred to those of Resnais. And he regarded those of Truffaut with a condescending smile.

  Max had originally been assigned by the ministry to serve in the Middle East division. However, before he assumed his duties there, he received another offer. Through the intervention of a senator — for whom Max, as an intern in the ministry’s consular sector, had secured a diplomatic passport in less than an hour — he was invited to switch divisions and serve in the minister’s office.

  Despite the good news, Max was worried about the repercussions of this unexpected distinction. What luck that the senator happened to be a friend of the minister. But what would his colleagues say? Wouldn’t his move run the risk of being misinterpreted? And how would he concoct an apology to the head of the Middle East division, who was awaiting him with open arms and to whom he’d made a commitment just two weeks earlier?

  On Max’s first day at the ministry, he had all the forced seriousness of a young man who wished desperately to appear older than he was. The effort wasn’t entirely successful,
however, for it was contradicted by his natural exuberance. In his right hand, he carried a briefcase of worn but fine leather, which for the moment held only the day’s newspaper. To offset the sobriety of his dark suit, he allowed himself two concessions: his hair, without being long, extended beyond his jacket collar, and his shirt was of a relatively striking color. Max sailed past the reception area staff, who regarded him in silence. Ignoring the swans in the pond, he made a right upon reaching the stately row of palm trees on the Itamaraty Palace grounds and headed toward the Personnel Department.

  The head of Personnel, informed of the transfer by a phone call from the minister’s office, was waiting for him. An unhurried older fellow, short and stout, with a thin mustache, he had witnessed similar — and even swifter — maneuvers in his time, but rarely involving someone so young, who hadn’t yet officially joined the ministry. This point, in particular, intrigued him: that the first act of a play could occur before the curtain went up, in a kind of secret prologue to which the public hadn’t had access.

  Max hesitated in front of the man. Should he settle into one of the two armchairs? His superior, who was seated, had asked for the official transfer papers, which he was rereading now in silence, as though looking for some error or inaccuracy. Like a new recruit, Max waited, standing between two empty seats. He had put his briefcase down but was unsure what to do with his arms; not wanting to cross them, he simply let them hang at his sides. He wanted to smoke but didn’t dare, despite noticing the used ashtray on the desk.

  In less than an hour he would be ensconced at the minister’s office, but right now he found himself paralyzed before this simple public servant. Three whole minutes had already elapsed, an inordinate amount of time for Max on that chilly winter morning. The hand on the wall clock kept marching forward. Max was undergoing the defining moment of his career. Like many a colleague before him, however, he was unaware of the fact. In that modest setting, a far cry from the more sumptuous ones that awaited him, he was relinquishing a substantive job that could have brought him great professional satisfaction in favor of the choreographed roles he’d surely be offered in the minister’s office, where he’d probably do nothing but open doors and receive files destined for more capable hands.

  The head of Personnel, who kept Max waiting, was well aware of this. His experience told him just what kind of path Max would follow from then on, and where it generally ended up.

  “Good luck,” he mumbled as they parted ways. But his farewell went unheard, since Max was already disappearing down the hall, his heels echoing on the marble floor.

  The career Max had just embarked on was extremely competitive, with strict criteria for advancement, contingent on a sequence of promotions. It took thirty years, on average, to move from bottom to top. The faster the ascent, however, the brighter the panoramic view from above, not to mention the associated perks, among which was the most coveted one of all: the exercise of power. Very few ever made it to the highest offices, let alone gained access to the major posts abroad. Thus the frantic competition. For contacts, invitations, and prestigious positions, as well as for smiles and pats on the back from those in power.

  This was the environment in which Max was to navigate. Difficult under normal circumstances and unpredictable in a context of randomness and ambiguity, as would become clear over the subsequent twenty years. But it was still a few months before this more disturbing scenario began to take hold. For the moment, the military was still champing at the bit in their barracks, while Max did the same in the solitude of his room in Humaitá, the neighborhood where he lived with his mother. It would be two years before he relocated to the more upscale Urca. In the meantime, he earned his place in the minister’s office — but not in the man’s heart.

  The minister hardly knew him, given the complex internal system that, like everything around them, followed protocol. Even when Max first shook the minister’s hand, the conversation he’d been rehearsing all week was cut off by a phone call from the president’s office. Max created a mental montage based on that first meeting, splicing together a half-truth and a half-lie. He would tell his colleagues that his meeting with the minister “was interrupted by a call from the President of the Republic” — which had the benefit of being true. From there, however, he would go on to fabricate an imaginary conversation with his superior, embellishing it with a wealth of details that would vary depending on his audience but that always revolved around the minister’s interest in what he had to say.

  His colleagues would listen in silence, without betraying their feelings, hiding as best they could the envy eating away at them. And Max in his somber suit would remain undaunted, as he continued to spin his tale, attempting to disguise the bulk of his impudence. If he handled the challenge gallantly, it was because he sensed that the burden would be only temporary. To his dismay, however, he didn’t feel welcome in the minister’s office. His name had been suggested to the minister by an outside source, meaning the idea hadn’t come from within the institution itself. Max reasoned that someone else must have been under consideration for the position, which increased his insecurity: he didn’t know whom he might have been competing against.

  He wasn’t treated poorly. Far from it. But he was assigned menial tasks that he considered beneath him, such as reading the newspapers each day and cutting out anything that might warrant his superiors’ attention during their morning coffee. This obliged him to arrive before eight o’clock. And since no one left work before eight in the evening, his daily routine ended up being exhausting. Most of the time he was dying of boredom, but he made it a point to appear busy whenever coworkers or visitors stopped by, constantly opening drawers in search of some nonexistent document, or making an unnecessary request of someone nearby, in a voice that often sounded too loud even to his own ears.

  The furniture, rugs, paintings, and decorative objects were all museum-worthy. His first day on the job, he discovered there was a Corot painting on the wall behind his desk. Astonished, he mentioned the fact to a colleague, who not only deemed this completely normal but added in a blasé tone, “That’s nothing compared to what’s in the minister’s office.” The remark stung, not only for belittling his discovery but also for making his lack of access to the big boss all too obvious.

  The small painting depicted a pastoral landscape in grayish tones, with a few cypresses swaying in the wind. In the foreground, two stooped peasants were carrying hoes as they made their way toward a shack. Although the work measured only sixty by eighty centimeters, excluding the ornate, almost baroque frame, the artist’s signature was quite visible in the bottom right corner. Max realized that the painting was worth a fortune. Still, its presence soothed him. It enabled him to go home again — to the idealized family home he’d dreamt about throughout his childhood.

  Max’s desk was imposing and well proportioned. Seated, he could barely stretch out his hands to the far corners, and it took some effort just to reach his pens and ink. On the far right corner of the glass top protecting the varnished surface, Max set out a portrait of his mother. It remained there less than an hour — just long enough for him to realize that his coworkers’ desks held nothing but file folders and papers. Lacking the courage to take the picture back home, fearing that his mother would notice, he ended up hiding it in the back of a drawer.

  To his pleasant surprise, however, he soon found out that simply by occupying a seat in that particular area, he had become a key player in the eyes of those who came to meet with the minister or his chief of staff. It was an illusion — of which he himself was the first victim.

  It didn’t matter. Max was delighted by his position’s inherent magic. Gradually, like a plant warming to the sunlight, he garnered strength by nourishing himself on the respect of others, proudly noting how the secretaries and typists, all young women from good families, appreciated his suits and ties. It was the first of many mirrors he’d face throughout his career — that of vanity. Mirrors that would lead him farthe
r and farther from himself.

  After his first two weeks, once the weight of his shamelessness had lessened and his somber suits felt lighter, he was able to have a few relatively spontaneous exchanges with his coworkers. For the first time, he discovered that he was being listened to and, before long, that he was being seen. Whereupon he realized that he had finally arrived at the minister’s office. That same night, he paid for dinner among a circle of friends. The novelty didn’t go unnoticed. His peers were as fascinated as they were flushed — the latter for having drunk three bottles of Château Duvalier, the label of which hardly hid the wine’s true provenance.

  He reported directly to the chief of staff, who over time began to exchange a few words with him. Nevertheless, Max would still be interrupted by other diplomats just as he was about to wrap up something he was saying. He would keep his composure despite feeling indignant, and even managed to smile at his colleagues — as they completed, in a rather mundane way, a thought that had been his own. Thus he learned, at great personal cost, to control himself, thereby initiating a circuitous process that would lead him to laugh at bad jokes at the right time, rounding them out, whenever possible, with a phrase that made them more amusing.

  All in all, he remained unhappy. Matters always went sweeping past him without his being able to examine and elucidate them so as to produce a trace of a more substantive idea that would call attention to him in that environment, where each and every toehold was ferociously fought over. After a few weeks, despite all the business cards he collected while zealously distributing his own (with the title “Assistant to the Minister”), he began to grow impatient. He didn’t allow himself to become completely discouraged, however, convinced that he simply needed to stand his ground and persist. And so he contemplated his Corot — and daydreamed.