by João Almino
After reflecting on it a great deal, I came to the conclusion that no one other than Eduardo Kaufman could have been behind that attack. He was running for Congress and we were approaching the elections. My denunciations might not only have reached his ears but could also have begun to have some effect. Perhaps fearing what was still to come and above all the damage I could do to his campaign, he had ordered me killed: nothing less.
At first I considered my conclusion mere supposition. But I deduced that there was an extremely high probability that the supposition was true when I had a visit from Eduardo Kaufman and learned directly from him that he had been the intermediary of my hospital transfer. What could justify such kindness other than the need to throw me off the scent of his criminal act?
When I was absolutely sure Eduardo was the guilty one, there was only one question remaining: how to get even with him. Using the same methods? If I were in the Northeast or the Amazon, it would only cost two hundred reais to hire a hit man—and that was worth more than Eduardo Kaufman, who wasn’t worth anything. As a matter of fact, to say that he wasn’t worth anything was to overvalue him. In truth, he made a negative contribution to the world; his value was less than zero.
Fortuitous circumstances delivered an answer. One day Bigfoot and Termite came to see me in the hospital. They were shocked by my cast and the bruises from the blows I’d received. That unexpected visit brought us back together. So much so that when I felt better I returned to Vila Paulo Antonio to continue my photo-essay.
On a Saturday afternoon after walking through the streets of that satellite city in search of new faces or angles, Bigfoot brought me some top-quality marijuana and the two of us joined in harmony with the universe, sharing our intimacies and ignorance. This is how I found out about Bigfoot’s aptitude for robberies and lightning kidnappings, while he learned of my hatred for Eduardo Kaufman.
– Virtue isn’t worth it, Bigfoot said.
He was making plans to get together enough money to move to the Lake.
– I want to eat high-class pussy, he announced.
My plans were more modest: to take revenge on Eduardo Kaufman. I had not only the key to the universe but also to his apartment. I discarded my plan to be an exemplary guide for my son. He was a grown man, I wouldn’t be able to change him. He was the one who could perfect me, freeing in me a certain dose of malevolence to be directed to the right person. We combined my hatred with his greed and began to plot the strategy for my revenge.
Bigfoot proposed staking out Eduardo’s arrival in order to kidnap him. He wanted money, a lot of money. I, on the other hand, thought it’d be better to act in the absence of Eduardo, who was at that point focused on the final months of his election campaign. I only wanted his computers, all three of them, on which I would find the proof I was seeking. I didn’t want any money, much less to become involved in a kidnapping. I was too cowardly for that.
– Nothing but the computers, I repeated.
Deep down, I was a good person. The good are afraid, they never know for sure and that’s why they leave room for doubt. They’re not able to close their eyes or cover their ears. On the other hand, the bad are sure of what they do. They’re passionate and they don’t weigh the consequences of their actions. Maybe they do weigh them and have the courage to face death without fear. That was Bigfoot.
It was already dark when I left his house. On a nearby street a fortune-teller’s sign caught my attention. At the window a woman with large eyes invited me inside. She took me into a darkened room with rough whitewashed walls, on which a crucifix could be seen, and laid the tarot cards on the table.
–Who’s the tall dark woman smiling at you? she asked, showing one of the cards.
Since I didn’t answer, she added:
– She’s going to appear when you least expect it.
It couldn’t be Tânia, she had fair skin and I was always waiting for her. I remembered Antonieta and what the medium at the Garden of Salvation had said, that there are no missed appointments or accidents, only fate dictated by the wisdom of time.
The fortune-teller also foresaw the outcome of an old dispute:
– A satisfactory solution will require a great deal of daring on your part.
Although I didn’t believe in fortune-tellers, it made sense to be my most daring in the case of Eduardo Kaufman which, on second thought, meant agreeing with Bigfoot. Bigfoot could do whatever he wanted to as long as he brought me the computers. Let Eduardo get his just deserts, equal to the assault on me. I didn’t need to tell anyone I had his computers in my possession. I would simply extract additional information from them to incriminate Eduardo and, based on this, I would supply the newspapers with solid leads.
I thanked the fortune-teller for having opened the doors to my future. As I left I took the photograph above, # 50. The window frames her gentle figure in blue. She has very large eyes trying to leap out of her round face, wavy hair down to her waist, and a body out of a Botero painting. In the foreground, to the right, a pequi tree displays its exuberant blossoms in five hairy brushes shaped liked yellow fans. In the left corner the moon is an enormous illuminated biscuit rising at the end of the long avenue lined with small trees and light posts.
[September 25, night]
51. Ballet with police van
I didn’t need to go to Vila Paulo Antonio to take the photos that Aida had so often suggested. The next day, a Sunday, near the bus terminal several police officers kicked two blacks into a police van. The men reacted by kicking back. They were then held down and had their arms twisted. One of the officers started beating them with his nightstick.
– It’s a lie, I didn’t do anything! said one of the beating victims.
– Shut up, shit-head! yelled an officer.
People began to gather. I, who always avoided crowds and fled scenes of violence, was enjoying being there calmly witnessing the events unfolding. I wasn’t afraid to take a bullet. There was something heroic in my attitude. If I were to die it would be like dying for Aida. I was prepared to accompany her to the next world.
– You have to respect human rights, a girl screamed.
– To hell with human rights, yelled a middle-aged man. Hooligans deserve beating.
– Let them go, they didn’t do anything, shouted a street kid.
Images forced themselves in front of my camera. I would take photographs of the feeling of impotence in the face of injustice. One of the prisoners managed to get free. An officer fired into the air. A confused ballet enveloped me, people leaping in all directions. I was the only one who continued watching the scene at close range. I snapped the lens on the last scenes until the prisoners were placed inside the police van.
I printed one of those photographs. It’s a shame Aida was no longer there to see it. If I were to write about it, I would talk about the crowd’s protest and the use of the expression “human rights.” Maybe it was for good reason that no one was on the side of the police, just as rarely was someone on the government’s side, be it left, right, center, or sprawled in all directions like a compass rose. What had the boys done? Certainly the treatment used on them was proportionate to the amount of African blood they carried in their veins. Perhaps they had broken some law, but there were laws and there were laws, the ones enforced and those that weren’t. Aida would have said, correctly, that if I followed those prisoners and unraveled their stories I would surely discover moving dramas, endless anguish, great tragedies—and that was reality, something much larger than my skepticism, cynicism, or indifference.
If I had any doubts about the social or pedagogical function of that photograph, it seemed less doubtful that it would earn me a few reais. It was a good photojournalist image that I should sell to a newspaper. I added it to the ones I had taken in Vila Paulo Antonio. It’s # 51 (above).
[September 26]
52. Akiko on an August afternoon
No matter how much I disbelieved the fortune-teller’s words, I couldn’t forget th
em. I was determined to employ all my daring against Eduardo Kaufman and I hadn’t expended my ammunition yet. While waiting for the computers Bigfoot would bring, I could execute my Akiko plan. I didn’t have money to squander on prostitutes, but Eduardo Kaufman justified my extravagant investment. It would be the first time I’d bonked anyone since Aida died, ending a seven-month abstinence. Akiko plied her services in house calls, in hotels—as long as the client paid the bill—or else she saw clients in an apartment not far from mine in North Wing, which I preferred. I paid the extra twenty percent for full service, interested in what she could tell me.
Not only had she heard of Eduardo, she even intended to vote for him in October if she could get to São Paulo, where her voter’s registration was filed.
– He’s handsome and a great speaker, she said.
– Have you gone to any of the parties he’s given?
– What parties?
– You’re covering for him.
– Are you here to talk or what? she asked, lying on the bed.
She opened up for me in every possible way, but no matter how much I tried I couldn’t get a hard-on. She sucked me, slowly massaging my testicles gently. She caressed my anus with her slender fingers and with her tongue, promising that it would definitely excite me, and nothing. She sucked me again, applying her best techniques. When the delay began to seem a losing battle, she said:
– You’re a hopeless case. The first guy who couldn’t get it up with me.
I tried several more times, rubbing my penis against the entrance to her vagina, her buttocks, thighs, breasts, lips—nothing doing. Eduardo Kaufman was getting in the way of my erection. Akiko was unrelenting. She wouldn’t deduct the twenty per cent surcharge.
– In a case like yours, I should charge a lot more.
I didn’t place the blame for my failure on the fortune-teller. Perhaps her prediction hadn’t been wrong; it was my daring that had been insufficient.
In the end, I proposed to Akiko that I substitute a photograph for a fuck. She agreed if I’d pay her double. Standing naked in front of the computer monitor chewing her nails, she reminded me of Marcela. From her Asian heritage she’d retained not only slanted eyes but also a gentleness of movement and tenderness of speech. I set up the camera and took photograph # 52 (above). The arrangement of the space and the books on the shelves are those of an educated woman. Her slender, lithe body and small bottom have almost no tan lines. Her body is tattooed with a red and black bird below her navel and is totally waxed between her thighs, where the vertical line of her sex is clearly and discreetly visible. Akiko leans her head to one side like a bird. Her look has something angelic about it. Her jutting lower lip is like a baby’s, about to cry.
Thus I diligently began to classify my failures, which I called experience, so that they serve as a step stool for the final, fatal blow to Eduardo Kaufman.
53. The strategy of appearances
I recall it was September of 2002, eight months after Aida’s death, and I was alone with Tânia in the living room of her apartment. Carolina, seven months old, was playing in her pen.
– Enjoy it, I told Tânia. This is the golden phase of babies. They know how to sit but they can’t run yet.
Tânia was silent and pensive. We stood at the window close to each other, looking at the mango trees and also the bougainvilleas that seemed to want to bloom early.
– I’m still taking photographs for my panel of flowers that I’ll soon consider completed.
Those bougainvilleas brought back the memory of some royal poincianas, or, more specifically, a conversation I’d had with Aida.
– Aida told me I should marry you.
– And you, what did you think of the suggestion?
– You know I’ve always liked you.
– There’s Paulo Marcos . . .
– Will you put me in line, then?
– You’re not just first in line. You’re the only one. She gave me a maternal kiss on the forehead.
– And Guga?
– It’s crazy for you to be jealous of your brother. It’s offensive even. Don’t forget I’m a married woman.
She spoke in a serious tone but soon emended it with a smile:
– Silly . . . She pinched my cheek and ran her hands through my hair as if wanting to muss it.
Ever since my conversation with Tânia at Antonio’s house Guga had stopped talking to me.
I held Tânia’s hands.
– Agree to have dinner with me?
– What am I going to tell Paulo Marcos?
– Isn’t he away?
– I’d better not. I’d go out with anyone else but you.
– May I know why?
– I’d rather not say.
I tried to kiss her.
– Stop. I said you’d get your chance. But you have to wait your turn, and behave yourself.
– All right, if you tell me you love me.
– I love you.
We kissed slowly.
– Ah, she sighed. That was the last one. From now on our agreement applies. Promise?
That kiss unleashed exaggerated confessions on my part that I’d been in love with her ever since the first time I’d seen her, and on hers that she’d had a hot dream about me in which “everything” had happened. We kissed again.
– If Paulo Marcos weren’t such a wonderful guy I could do something crazy, she finished.
I don’t like the photos I took of the mango trees that early afternoon. They’re too trite, as trite as the mango trees in Brasília. But photo # 53 (above), with its colors striped by the bougainvillea shadows against the noonday sun taken on the same occasion, could never be trite for me because it’s inextricably linked to that kiss.
54. Failure achieved with great effort
I only heard about the robbery at Eduardo’s apartment when the police approached me. Bigfoot was such a moron, a simple theft of electronic appliances! Since no door to the apartment had been broken down, I was suspected. Bigfoot hadn’t been in touch, not even about the computers.
I didn’t turn him in to the police even when they decided to arrest me. I spent only a few hours in jail. Eduardo Kaufman had me released and then called:
– I know you’re innocent. You could never do something like this.
[October 5, night]
I looked for Bigfoot.
– I need to tell you something very serious, I announced after several draft beers at the bar.
– If you want to get any money out of this business, forget it. There were no computers there.
– I’m your father.
– What’s this? Have you gone nuts?
I told him all the details.
– You’re my father? He shook his head, seeming not to believe it.
– I want a photo with you.
– No. Forget it. He turned around, perhaps suspecting I wanted to hand him over to the police.
– I have so many pictures of you, I said, to remind him that I didn’t need anymore if that were the reason. But I don’t have one of the two of us.
He still refused to pose. That’s the reason for photo # 54, from the back, white letters printed on his tight red T-shirt, a yellow cap with red embroidery in the shape of a Chinese ideogram worn backwards in the direction of the camera, loose wide Bermudas over strong stocky legs, cell phone hanging from his belt like a pistol, multicolored lights on the left side. A photo the photographer wanted to throw in the trash but the father kept. I had failed, and that was the photograph of my failure, another for my collection. A failure achieved by great dedication and effort.
October 7
After so many years, two days ago Bigfoot came to see me, which led me to recall a photo in which he appears from the back and that my goddaughter Carolina helped me locate yesterday. I then inserted it in my Book of Emotions.
Today he’s a respectable fellow with at least one great dream fulfilled: he lives in South Lake. I noticed from the hug I gave him that
his body is even bulkier. While he was talking I could hear the light tinkling sounds of several bracelets on his restless arms. He decided to file a lawsuit to force me to acknowledge paternity and he’s demanding a DNA test. He may think I’ll be leaving an inheritance and doesn’t realize my debts total more than my assets, even if he got a good deal for my Hasselblad and my old Leicas.
– The test isn’t necessary, I told him. Recognizing you as my son, as far as I know the only one I have, is fulfilling for me. It will serve as proof of the greater meaning of a passing pleasure.
Nonetheless he wants the test.
October 8
Carolina reminds me more and more of her mother, even in the attention she pays to me. She wanted to come have lunch here and brought me food she’d made herself: pork loin and stuffing. We talked about the fantastic developments in genetics and medicine, the challenges of the Amazon and the Northeast, the continual poverty, the most recent wars, and the world’s new economic geography. I’m old enough to know that the future we glimpsed never was and never will be attained, but I’m still young enough to live without past or future and most of all to talk leisurely with a charming young woman.
– When reality disappoints, don’t give up. And never stop enjoying the good side of life, I advised her.
My goddaughter offered to help with the organization of the photos if Laura can’t come as often. The possibility startled me.
– Why can’t Laura come anymore?
– I’m not saying she can’t, I don’t know. She didn’t say anything to me. I just think that having to reconcile her work with the duties of a housewife . . .
– But she can keep working in my darkroom. The darkroom is hers.
I prefer not to know if Laura and Mauricio are about to get married. It would be a mistake for them to make this kind of decision in haste.
