His Own Man

by Edgard Telles Ribeiro

  I set the album aside. Her sadness had only increased with each photo.

  “I felt completely alone,” she continued. “The house was far from the city. My marriage, already a sinking ship, ended up going under for good. One day I packed up the kids and left.”

  We talked about other things, but in circles, without getting anywhere. One painful impression gradually came over me: the hour spent together had produced incomplete fragments rather than the tapestry I had hoped the two of us would weave. The remarks about Max, which had reflected a whole series of truncated perceptions, the revelation about her Italian lover, the abandoned snowman in the yard, the questions I didn’t dare to ask — and the photo album itself, incomplete as they always are — all made us feel farther apart.

  When I showed signs that I wished to leave, our gazes converged on the empty whiskey bottle. We realized we’d drunk too much — and yet remained sober.

  Marina closed her eyes, as if lost in thought. She seemed to be mustering the courage to face a test beyond her strength. “One cold winter afternoon, walking around Montevideo, I bumped into Nilo. We hadn’t seen each other in years, since I was a kid, back when he used to spend a lot of time at our place. What a happy coincidence. It was as if a whole past full of joy, hope, and creativity had suddenly sprung up at my feet. We weren’t just two Brazilians lost on a corner of some distant city. We didn’t even feel the cold! For a few brief moments, we rekindled memories of Dad’s parties for his artist and intellectual friends. We were surrounded by Cinema Novo and the theater, swept up by pop music …”

  The jitteriness with which she lit a cigarette belied her subject. “We were both elated,” she went on. “I still remember the corner we met on: Sarandi and Ituzaingó … Elated,” she repeated.

  Something in her demeanor had changed. She stopped short for a second, like a horse that balks before an obstacle. “Nilo was living in exile in Uruguay.” She seemed ready to move ahead now. There was no turning back. “He wanted to know what I was doing in Montevideo,” she continued in a controlled voice. “He asked casually, as though still caught up in the thrill of our meeting. And with the same ease, I answered that I was married, that my husband was a diplomat and worked at the embassy. I added that I’d just found out I was pregnant.”

  A new pause, this time to settle against the sofa cushions. She’d hurdled her obstacle, but landed on the other side depleted. “A shadow flickered across his eyes. Just for a second. He must have made a heroic effort to control himself. Only it didn’t work.”

  I removed my arm from the back of the sofa.

  “He pulled away from me. As if I suddenly no longer belonged to his world.”

  I turned toward her. Her eyes were dry. Her story had already taken its toll of tears from her.

  “Even worse: as if I no longer belonged to my world, as if all the memories that had enveloped us moments earlier had vanished.”

  She lowered her voice. “At first I didn’t understand a thing. I stood completely bewildered on the sidewalk.”

  Her hand moved slowly toward the ashtray to snuff out her cigarette. An almost languid gesture, which seemed to emerge from that gray afternoon in Montevideo. A farewell gesture.

  “He turned and slowly walked away, without a word, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched over. I started to understand then. Each step he took, I understood a bit more. By the time he rounded the corner and disappeared, I had realized everything. Everything. One block was all it took. A single block.”

  She turned toward me. “Then I began to comprehend the reticence of our colleagues’ wives, the young ones, especially. They treated me quite formally, in contrast with the courtesy the ambassador’s wife showed me. She and the military attaché’s spouse would always invite me to lunch or suggest going to a movie whenever Marcílio was traveling for work. The attaché’s wife was actually even kind. But her husband …”

  She was offering up a new character, as if wanting to leave that corner of her past for good. “He was a terrible man. Once, at a dinner at our place, I heard one of Marcílio’s colleagues telling a new appointee that the attaché had formerly served on the police force, where he’d killed people. He said the man was a known torturer.”

  She closed her eyes again. “The young man who was listening had his back to me, but the one speaking was facing me. When he saw me standing there, with my tray full of desserts, he grew pale. It was the first time in my life that someone” — I had to lean in to hear what she was saying — “looked at me with fear.”

  We hugged again, as we’d done on my arrival. What mattered most were those two embraces, two parentheses around a conversation so intense that it had withstood all the alcohol we had consumed.

  As she walked me to the door, Marina spoke up again. “Many years went by until, desperate, I got up the courage to seek out my father. By then, my suspicions were driving me crazy. I was afraid of confronting so many doubts. My father listened to me in silence. When I was done, he drew me close to him. And, to my surprise, since we were alone in his living room, he whispered very softly in my ear, ‘Sweetheart, anything is possible in Brazil these days. But listen to your father: focus on your children. And leave the rest for later.’ Only then did I realize the reason for his caution: he too was afraid … afraid that someone might be listening.”

  Here, she paused briefly and finished with a wistful goodbye smile. “Fear had even wormed its way into our old house in Santa Teresa. My last stronghold had fallen.”

  14

  By the early 1980s, Brazil’s military regime was in its death throes. The most recent general who had been appointed president went around sullen and scowling, hidden behind dark glasses, distant from the country and its people. He paid more attention to his horses and barbecues than to the government, giving everyone who watched him closely — his uniformed cohorts included — the impression that he no longer felt comfortable in his skin. There was speculation that his discomfort had something to do with the very institution he had helped devise at the initial stage of the coup: for this man had been second-in-command of the National Intelligence Service in 1964. The monster had turned against yet another of its creators.

  This sad figure was the fifth and last of the parade of military presidents who had emerged two decades earlier. The country around him had altered dramatically, and the national security system, overloaded by a perverse combination of incompetence, dishonesty, and arbitrariness of every kind, had succumbed to its own contradictions. The population, driven by the ghosts of their dead and encouraged by the press, which grew bolder each year, returned to the streets in growing numbers demanding justice and, above all, changes. These would come — in a form that couldn’t be ignored. Throughout South America, the domino effect would again come into play, this time in reverse, toppling dictatorships.

  This was the backdrop when, less than four months after my reencounter with Marina, I returned to Brazil from Quito to spend Christmas with my family. One evening, entirely by chance, I came across Max at the wedding reception of the son of a mutual friend at an old colonial home in Alto da Boa Vista.

  As sometimes happens in situations brought on by fate, we ended up seated at the same round table in the garden of our hosts’ residence. I had greeted him from a distance. Not out of callousness or unease but because right then the newlyweds had flown by us like two birds at the beginning of a journey, doling out hugs and kisses. By the time the young couple moved on to neighboring tables, we were already seated, busying ourselves with unfolding our napkins and watching, with warm smiles, as the bride gathered the train of her white gown and the groom proudly and confidently greeted friends. As far as I recall, this bridal party fly-by — marked by bursts of laughter, hearty congratulations, and brief waves — provided me with the only light moment of the evening.

  There were eight of us around the table, which was decorated with white linen and a floral centerpiece bearing a corresponding number of candles. Of the group randomly
brought together, only the two of us were from Itamaraty. The others were lawyer friends of the bride’s father or architects and journalists associated with the groom’s family. The only woman present, wed to one of the lawyers, was seated to my right.

  During the hour we spent together amid this group of strangers, we didn’t exchange two words. Max talked plenty, but to the others. And I had followed his example, which ended up being easy as we were opposite one another at the round table. Waiters circulated serving food, wine, bread, and occasionally relighting the candles that would go out every so often with the soft breeze. At one point, I had helped the woman next to me redrape a shawl over her shoulders. The property was near the woods, and a chorus of cicadas had welcomed us moments earlier — only to fall silent, like a theater audience when the lights go down and the curtain rises.

  Max had come with a young woman he would marry a few months later, who was seated some distance from us. He remained inflexible where protocol was concerned, never sharing the same table with a wife or girlfriend on such occasions, just as he never sat beside them at restaurants or group gatherings. At his home, before leading us into the dining room, even when we were among close friends and there weren’t more than eight or ten of us, he would always insist, “No lovebirds together.” And he’d add, “Preferably at opposite ends of the table.” For Max, only a provincial couple, intimidated by someone else’s radiance — whether real or imagined — would choose two seats together, a nearness he considered “socially incestuous.”

  Two or three times that evening, perhaps putting those strict rules to the test, his companion had risen from her table and walked across the lawn to him. She had whispered a few words in his ear before pulling a cigarette or a lighter out of his jacket pocket. Watching her stroll back between the tables, I couldn’t help but agree with the message her body was sending: her curves were indeed lovely. Good thing, for the journey she was preparing to embark on with Max would hardly be straightforward.

  Max, on the other hand, had put on weight. And he seemed tense, if not nervous. This tension, which first manifested itself as an occasional drumming of his fingers on the tablecloth and then evolved into the two cigarettes smoked between the main course and dessert, ended up being detected by the others for a more apparent reason: the way he imposed or defended his arguments, no matter what the topic of discussion happened to be.

  From the very start of the meal, as was his habit, he had dominated the conversation on his side of the table. And, given the increasing silence around him, he had extended this domination over the entire small group. He had invited me more than once with his eyes to join the discussion, even if it were to disagree with him, as long as he wasn’t left alone speaking in the arena. It wasn’t a call for help, brought on by the eventual awkwardness, which he was either unaware of or pointedly ignored. Rather, it was a sign of distinction: in that social context, he considered me his equal. I pretended not to notice his appeals and revisited a topic already covered with the woman to my right, or raised my eyes skyward in search of some constellation of stars to console me as sadness set in.

  I wondered how the man seated across from me — whose erudition had given way to an intellectual frostiness that barely hid his personal disenchantment (with life, the country, the economy, technology, and even soccer) and whose speech, once so forceful, amusing, unpredictable, and full of life, had become cynical, if not bitter — could possibly be the same individual who had won me over in the early days of our career, sending a mysterious and unexpected fortuitous my way.

  When I first met him in 1968, I had the feeling that our paths had crossed socially as well as intellectually, which I took to be the basis for a solid friendship. But now, the scenario around us held little of that past. Something seemed to have cracked behind the façade of my old mentor, as if the suit he was wearing once again weighed heavily and his body could no longer support the burden. This detail, imperceptible to the others, seemed to have embittered him — and explained the silence that had come over our group, in an awkward contrast with the peals of laughter that arose from the surrounding tables.

  This charged scene only grew bleaker, especially once the waiters stopped relighting our candles, convinced there must be some reason for the evening breeze to concentrate its energy on us, leaving all the other tables peacefully aglow. Consequently, as soon as dessert was over (and some were left untouched), the six guests seated around us had taken off in various directions, one of them tipping over his chair in the process.

  The eager stampede made us laugh and the unexpected opening instantly transported us back to our youth. “I think I scared off your friends,” said Max, standing to replace the toppled chair.

  “As usual,” I bantered back, preparing to leave the table.

  In the meantime, however, he had sat back down, and one of the waiters came by with coffee. I could no longer walk away without being impolite.

  “You’ve been following a rather obscure career path, haven’t you?” he asked with a dose of sarcasm after serving himself, as if he didn’t know what posts I’d worked in. “Los Angeles, Guatemala? Where else?”

  “And you, after South America and Washington, you’re roughing it in Paris?” I inquired in the same tone. “UNESCO, right?”

  He laughed again, only this time shaking his head. Still the same old guy, he seemed to be thinking. Had the time come to call him to account?

  “The system is imploding, Max,” I said then, in a cordial tone, accepting the cup of coffee being offered to me. He continued to shake his head while stirring his coffee. “Haven’t you noticed?” I persisted. “It’s falling apart.”

  The constant movement of the spoon in his cup seemed to suggest conceptual consistency: the country, like me, would never change. “You must have taken part in all the protest marches,” he finally remarked, between sips.

  “No, I was out of the country. But I followed everything closely. The youth movement in particular. It’s interesting that this generation projects such genuine indignation. Despite not having lived through what we did. The slogans, the raised fists, the enthusiasm in their eyes —”

  “Elections now! Out with the military!” he exclaimed, echoing the cries that could be heard all over the country. He held up his empty cup as if proposing a toast. How many times had he raised crystal goblets in honor of various foreign dictators, not to mention our own?

  “That’s right, Max,” I went on, giving in once more to the irresistible temptation to provoke him. “And how are you going to get along in this new Brazil that’s emerging?”

  “Better than you,” he teased, offering me a cigar, which I accepted.

  “I don’t doubt that,” I answered coolly. “But what I wanted to know is … with yourself. How are you going to get along with yourself?”

  “Games? Must we, my friend?” He sighed with an ironic smile. “Have you already forgotten our crystal paperweight?”

  No, I hadn’t forgotten the crystal sphere that, years earlier, he had spun before my eyes, trusting in the variety of its facets to deal with my doubts and hesitations. But the fact that he recalled the episode surprised me. I would have thought he’d forgotten the moment long ago. But Max never forgot anything.

  15

  That crystal sphere and the accompanying fear I had felt at the time were hardly subjects I wanted to talk about during a reception. But it was inevitable that they would come up in a conversation that, sooner or later, we had to have. So let it be now, I thought.

  I remained quiet at first. Max’s utter stillness intrigued me. Unlike mine, his was the silence of one who waits. It reminded me of an animal between the attack and the retreat. What he was waiting for, neither he nor I knew exactly. Our conversation evoked a similar one that had taken place twelve or thirteen years earlier in Santa Teresa, when I had said little — and he had done more probing than talking. Only now the roles were reversed. Except that probing wasn’t part of my plans.

  “You h
ad a theory about fear, remember?” I asked when he finally lit his cigar. “You spoke of constancy, of instruments of a system that would last beyond our generation. You spoke of intimidation as though reciting a recipe or the steps of a weight-loss program. But for me …” I paused. I knew that he was eyeing me from his corner, yet the feeling was far from unsettling, as I found myself retrieving something that I hadn’t been able to articulate during that long-ago discussion.

  “But for me,” I repeated, “fear had a shape, which at times seemed so dense as to be almost tangible. Like a thick fog, the kind that leaves us feeling clammy and makes our clothes cling to our bodies.”

  A waiter approached with a tray of liqueurs. We both chose cognac.

  I continued. “It wasn’t a fear that we in Brasilia could associate with violence, insubordination, or arbitrariness, because none of us had ever seen anyone jailed or tortured. Horror lived next door.”

  “That’s a good line, excellent,” he cut in with a laugh. “It’d make a great movie title.”

  After a puff of his cigar and a brief moment of reflection, he added, “It’s better in the present, though. Horror lives next door. Don’t you agree? It has more of an edge to it. Horror lives next door. The story is still to come.…”

  “Lived next door,” I repeated deafly, as if his comments were mere background noise. “It lived in the police stations in Rio, in the cellars of military barracks in São Paulo and the rest of the country. Just as, years later, it would live in the lost villages of the interior, the backlands of Bahia, and dozens of places we’d never heard of, which were always far removed from Brasilia.”