Three Tearless Histories

by Erich Hackl

  With every move you have to know why you’re making it. He’d taken his grandfather’s advice to heart, Victor says, and passed it on to his students as a golden rule.

  Victor remembers a regularly repeated scene from his childhood: he’s playing in his grandparents’ apartment and at some point his uncle comes home, smiles, waves and goes into his room. During birthday parties and other family gatherings Kurt would sit on one side and remain silent. He wasn’t really interested in people or, to put it more precisely, people only interested him the way objects did. And that, Victor thinks, is not uncommon among photographers. Marta remembers Kurt ringing at the door, many years later, smiling, coming in, looking at all the furnishings without a word, finally going toward her, smiling of course, though not to talk to her but because a detail on the frame of her spectacles had attracted his attention. He always wanted to know how a thing worked. He never went out without his hat and umbrella. He invariably had his camera with him, in a camel-colored case. He drove his car so slowly there was always a great queue crawling along behind him. In the neighborhood he was regarded as an eccentric but was liked, on the one hand because of his smile, which was erroneously interpreted as shyness and not because he didn’t want close contact with people, on the other because of his European appearance. Brazilians, Victor says, had a sense of inferiority regarding Europeans. And the immigrants exploited that a little.

  For a long time Victor didn’t want to have anything to do with his uncle. That was because of his tendency always to have an eye to his own advantage. When he took over his grandparents’ apartment after Fritzi’s death—she died on August 18, 1966—he offered his brothers’ children a sum well below its market value. Victor was outraged but bowed to his mother’s advice. I don’t want to have to argue with Kurt about money, she said. Take what he’s offering and let that be the end of it.

  16

  WHEN THE KLAGSBRUNN FAMILY arrives in Rio de Janeiro, the Estado Novo of the dictator Getúlio Vargas is eighteen months old. Justifying the coup d’état of November 10, 1937, in which he took over power from himself, with the danger of a communist conspiracy, Vargas abolished the constitution, subjected newspapers and radio stations to censorship prior to publication or broadcasting, and banned all political parties. Opponents are locked up, tortured or driven into exile. The regime lets the plantation owners keep their privileges, promotes the industrialization of the country, sets up state energy corporations and banks, and introduces labor laws on the fascist model, by which it wins over the new urban proletariat. Vargas intensifies Brazil’s trade relations with Germany, at the same time, however, issuing a ban on political activity by foreigners that is primarily directed against the population of German origin that sympathizes with National Socialism. Foreign languages are not allowed to be taught at Brazilian schools anymore and only native Brazilians are permitted as teachers. With its corporate-state model and latent anti-Semitism, which appears above all in restrictive immigration regulations for Jewish families, Vargas’ dictatorship must have seemed like a variant of Austro-fascism with a tropical gloss to Leo and his family.

  It is only in the early forties that Brazil changes course in foreign policy, entering the war on the side of the United States and relaxing censorship. In October 1945 Vargas is compelled to retire, and in the following year a new constitution is promulgated which guarantees freedom of speech and the separation of powers until the military putsch of 1964. Getúlio Vargas adheres to the constitution during his second period as president, from 1951 to 1954, as do his successors Juscelino Kubitschek and João Goulart. When Goulart nationalizes refineries, announces agrarian reform, breaks the USA’s boycott of Cuba and secures the support of mass organizations and the unions, he is overthrown by a coup d’état. That, sooner than in most other South American states, is the beginning of the reign of terror of the military that will last for twenty years.

  In 1943, while Vargas was still dictator, the former Austrian ambassador, Anton Retschek, succeeded in getting special papers for the refugees belonging to the pressure group Comité de Proteção dos Interesses Austríacos no Brasil that identify them as Austrians and not Germans. Victor’s grandparents and his father as well will certainly have belonged to this ‘Committee for the Protection of Austrian Interests in Brazil’ and taken part in its meetings. We do know that Kurt taught children and teenagers to play table tennis in the Club Austro-Brasileiro. So he wasn’t always as unsociable as his nephew found him.

  17

  WHEN HE GOES TO UNIVERSITY in 1965 to study Economics, Victor is already convinced of the need for social and political change in Brazil. As he enjoys acting, he joins the Teatro Universitário Carioca. There he falls in love with Marta Maria Saavedra dos Anjos, who is studying Communication Sciences. Her father is a regular officer. Because he didn’t take part in the 1964 coup d’état against the progressive president, João Goulart, he has been arrested by the military regime and, as punishment, transferred to the remote town of Manaus on the Amazon.

  The Teatro Universitário Carioca had been founded by the Açao Popular, a Marxist organization with left-wing Catholic roots, in order to gain influence among the students. In the face of the increasing repression, the young theater-makers rehearse plays that represent the political situation of the country through symbolic figures from the nation’s history, popular legends and myths. One of them, Joaquim Cardozo’s O Coronel de Macambira (The Colonel of Macambira), runs for three months in one of the city theaters.

  It is a natural step from artistic to political resistance. The Açao Popular, that until now has made little impact in Rio’s universities, is becoming more and more important. In 1969 one of its members, the Chemistry student Jean Marc von der Weid, is the president of the national students’ union, the União Nacional dos Estudantes. In his limited free time Victor is busy supporting the action groups of the Açao Popular in the Chemistry Department. For every situation he has a quotation from Mao Tse-tung, whether appropriate or not. That arouses the mockery of the cariocas, who are known for their derisive sense of humor. The members of his cell call him Filho do Mao. Mao’s little boy. Despite his carefree nature, being involved in political work means that he learns to be punctual, disciplined and to toe the party line. Later, at a time when they are being openly pursued, he will, if possible, arrange secret rendezvous in Copacabana, the district he’s known since he was a boy, not on busy intersections any more, but in quiet side-streets with little traffic, at the same time reducing the time to wait for his contact from ten to five then to two minutes. He agrees with the political slogan of the organization: For democracy and the distribution of land, against dictatorship! That is a demand which, in contrast to that of rival groups—Against capitalism! For socialism!—makes sense to the middle classes wavering between resignation and opposition. But the initially huge demonstrations with a hundred thousand participants draw smaller and smaller crowds. At the same time the number of those who see armed struggle as the way out of the country’s crisis is growing. It is to be carried out by a small but determined nucleus of professional revolutionaries. The money needed for it comes from bank robberies. These provide an excuse for the dictatorship to abolish the constitution in December 1968 with the Fifth Institutional Act, close down both houses of parliament and forbid all political rallies.

  In accordance with their idea that the revolution has to start out from the countryside and not in the urban centers of population, the Açao Popular intends to organize the landless peasants. To this end liberated zones are to be created, on the Chinese model. The project demands long, patient groundwork. Like others of their comrades, Marta and Victor are therefore instructed to go to Maranhão in the poverty-stricken north-east of the country. So far they have financed their studies with part-time jobs, Victor as an employee of the Commisão do Plano do Carvão Nacional, the state planning commission for coal mining, Marta in the Brazilian editorial office of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Even though the assignment see
ms risky, they agree in principle. They prepare for the operation, sell or give away the few things they possess and decide to get married—in order to convert the wedding presents into cash immediately so that they can set up a home in the place they’re being sent to. But before they’ve made the final decision, the apartment, which they share with a few other comrades, is stormed by the police. On September 2, 1969.

  18

  FIRST OF ALL they are threatened with submachine guns, which are wrapped in plastic bags. Then they are handcuffed to one of the posts of the large, high bedstead in the colonial style that Marta has been given by one of her colleagues at work. The apartment is searched for weapons, though none are found, and piles of pamphlets, minutes of debates, outlines of strategy and notebooks are collected. During the next few hours Victor and Marta’s comrades, seven or eight young men and women, arrive one after the other and are also handcuffed. Once it is dark outside, they are ordered to get undressed down to their underwear and taken out, two at a time, to a patrol car parked in the side-street. The drive to the center of town takes about twenty minutes. The car is parked in the courtyard of a gloomy old building. Later Victor is to learn that it is the headquarters of the Departamento de Orden Política e Social, the feared political police. There the prisoners are herded up stairs into a long corridor, where they have to stand for hours, arms outstretched, Victor with a telephone directory in each hand as well. When, exhausted, he drops them, he is hit by a policeman and forced to hold them again. Then their details are taken. It’s still dark when they are driven to a quay and bundled into a Navy boat. After half an hour it docks at a Navy base on Ilha das Flores, where immigrants used to be held in quarantine. Beside the jetty is a shed where the prisoners have to line up, faces to the wall, until they are interrogated individually. After that they are each put in a large cell on the first floor of a long building and once more interrogated and beaten one after the other. On the second day the interrogations are suddenly broken off. It is only much later that Victor is to learn the reason: in an audacious operation guerrillas of the Aliança de Libertação Nacional and the Movimento Revolutionário 8 de Outubro have kidnapped Charles Elbrick, the American ambassador, and CENIMAR, the Navy’s secret service, needs all available combat troops to find out where Elbrick is being kept. One month later Victor is put in a cell he shares with Carlos Frederico Frascari Morena, a member of or sympathizer with the Communist Party, whom he knows from the student movement. They are disturbed and frightened and don’t know if they can trust each other. At some point or other the interrogations start again and it isn’t long before Victor recognizes the signs that he is being prepared for torture: on those days he is left out when the food is distributed. The torture is carried out in an empty house the soldiers call Ponta dos Oitis at the other end of the island. Victor has water poured over him and is then hung up on the so-called parrot-swing, head down with the bar under his knees and his wrists bound to his ankles. Then he’s beaten or given electric shocks. The worst is when the wires are attached to his testicles. It’s so bad it can’t be described, mustn’t be described. First of all he is to reveal meeting places and hide-outs, later on the questions are mainly about the organizational structure of the Acão Popular.

  The interrogations are conducted by two men, a corpulent blond naval officer, who calls himself Doctor Mike, and a gaunt, bespectacled policeman who answers to Solimar. Sometimes an older man, probably also from the Criminal Investigation Department, is present as well; the prisoners say he’s called Chico Pinote. Victor’s assumption is that he and Solimar have specifically been charged with eliminating the Ação Popular. They gradually find out who has which function in the organization and take delight in supplementing the information they have extorted from one prisoner with facts they have in the meantime learnt from another. They also gradually manage to decipher code-names. But there are still a few people they haven’t yet identified. Jean Marc von der Weid, for example, who had a false identity card when he was arrested, which means they have no idea that they have him in their power. They do know that he is the president of the of the National Students’ Union, but they don’t know what his area of responsibility within the Ação Popular is. Unintentionally Victor helps them make progress in this through a note they found in his apartment. He’d scribbled down a few words on it. The abbreviation JM with the comment that he is “our most important leader of the masses” puts them on the right track. One day Victor and the other Ação Popular prisoners are taken to Ponta dos Oitis where Jean Marc, blindfolded and still wet from the water they poured over him before the torture, confesses that he is the man they are seeking. They use this confrontation to break the morale of the prisoners, so that they will cooperate with the police and the Navy.

  Then Victor is locked up in what is little more than a crate that all the prisoners have to pass when they are taken for interrogation. It’s probably done because of Marta, so that she will tell all she knows when she sees him in that terrible state. It’s so small that Victor can neither stand upright, nor stretch out fully. At night he is shivering with cold, in the morning swarms of mosquitos descend upon him. Apart from that, his day is subject to the usual brutal routine. If he’s given nothing to eat, he knows the parrot-swing is in store for him.

  Eventually the prisoners are put together in cells that were originally dormitories for immigrants from overseas. Each one has a window just below the ceiling and a double door secured with a chain and padlock. When the prisoners in Victor’s cell are taken out to go to the latrine or the shower, they can see their women through a gap in the door opposite, sometimes even whisper a few words, hear whispered words. Whenever they hear that a new batch of prisoners has arrived, panic breaks out among them. They are constantly afraid that their tormentors, having acquired new information, will send for them to be interrogated again.

  One day Victor is taken to the garrison office, where he finds Marta together with her father who, as a colonel, has obtained permission to visit his daughter, and the commandant of the Island’s garrison, Naval Captain José Monteiro Clemente. He notices that Marta’s father is somewhat put out because they pay no attention to him or the Commandant, but only have eyes for each other. Eyes to see what is unharmed in them, what has been done to them, what will haunt them in their thoughts or dreams. Or in poems that Marta will write years later, for herself, compelled by memory.

  19

  In prison, that’s where she was.

  And the prison was the world.

  The prison kept the hours,

  kept life in time.

  The time for locking the cells,

  the time for sunbathing,

  the time for putting out the lights,

  the time for waiting for the time.

  The unreality of a place on the edge of the world.

  Time roamed up and down between cell and corridor.

  From one set of bars to the next.

  The bunch of keys opened and closed the times.

  Cold on your chest, on your hands, sweat, nausea.

  The bunch of keys announced what was coming next.

  Then, one day, habeas corpus.

  The time for leaving the prison!

  Freedom, from outside

  the early morning of empty streets was dark,

  dense, concealing the mystery.

  FREE, she thought,

  free,

  to be more precise:

  released into unreality,

  set free,

  but not yet free of fear.

  She wasn’t capable of complete freedom.

  The outside was the place of other fears.

  Of the silence of censorship,

  of police sirens,

  of people who scrutinize me suspiciously.

  Why that apprehensive look,

  that startled smile? I don’t know why.

  Sharp eyes on the look-out,

  ears on the alert.

  On which side did the fear gr
ow,

  in here/out there?

  She stood up, went

  without putting her foot on the floor

  under the shower, heard the fear

  in her clothes, felt the cold

  in the mirror, the threat,

  combed her matted hair and

  dragged the prison out into the world.

  20

  MARTA IS RELEASED FIRST, in stages that will almost cost her her life. From Ilha das Flores she is transferred to the normal women’s prison in Rio. An attorney manages to get her and two companions freed. During the journey his car is stopped by a death squad, the attorney beaten up, the three women abducted. Hoods are put over their heads, they are dragged into a building and down a long corridor, then the hoods are taken off. They are in a bathroom with rusty fittings, smashed basins and broken tiles. There are people lying motionless on the floor. They are, as Marta is told, in the biggest torture center of the military police. There she has an epileptic fit. Hours, days pass before the hatch in the door is opened. She shouts her name. Marta Saavedra is here! That night some men from the same squad come, with flashlights, put hoods over their heads again and drive the three women to a far-off, out-of-the-way dungeon that’s covered in filth. There are no bunks, no lavatories, just a hole in the floor. The window is barred and boarded over as well. At some point or other they’re taken back to the torture center, where each one is given a sheet of paper: sign, then you can go. They sign. At two in the morning they’re pushed out of a police car in Botafogo.