Hotel Brasil

by Frei Betto

  His fear of being rounded up in the increasing furore of repression was such that he gathered together the most prized possessions of his library and made for the farmhouse of a distant aunt. There he would write the first great classic work of Brazilian Marxism, exactly what Karl Heinrich Marx would have produced had he lived in Brazil in the Sixties.

  The aunt was a prickly woman with a mean stare and short hair that she tucked under a straw hat. She had skeletal arms and leathery sun-baked skin. A childless widow, she diligently spent her days administering the plot of land she’d inherited from her husband. Fruit from the orchard and greens from the vegetable patch, milk from a handful of cows and the sale of a few chickens and eggs, was enough to provide her with a basic subsistence.

  She welcomed the boy, the son of a cousin she’d not seen for quite some time, with sincere hospitality, though little genuine enthusiasm. She didn’t want to come across as a busybody, so she didn’t ask why the lad was swapping the big city for the countryside. He was at an age when inner turmoils could result in strange behaviour. Perhaps he’d felt the earth calling him, as it had her husband, who’d left his office job in engineering to come and plant orange trees. Or maybe an amorous affair had ended in disappointment and required distance and introspection.

  She didn’t care what his reasons were, but what she couldn’t understand was why someone with such poor eyesight sat in the dark all day looking at books. Furthermore, why such a strapping rapaz would prove so impervious to her calls for help: to rebuild the fence knocked down by the cow, spread the plastic awning over the greenhouse before the onset of rain, climb the abacateiro trees to pick the fruit before it fell and squashed on the ground. At her age, and with her constant migraines, she was no longer able to do the heavy work and would have appreciated a helping hand.

  Realizing that straightforward resistance was not going to shut her up, Pacheco adopted a new tactic: he tried to win her over with the strength of his arguments. At table, over a bolinho de feijão or pão de queijo, chicken and quiabo or mincemeat and angu, he tried to convince her that a new means of production was set to burst forth and change history. Soon, every human being would be set free from the chains of centuries of oppression. Under a state cooperative, she would no longer have to rush about frightening the cows or harvest the land with her bare hands in the middle of a thunderstorm.

  She asked him when such a paradise would reach her side of the valley, and the question met with a long, sagacious lecture that covered the road to revolution, its inevitable triumph and his personal contributions to the field and its theory. This only served to make her headaches worse, and make her lament all the more that, though he was very studious, her first cousin once removed was a waste of space.

  Luckily for her, Pacheco decided he was running too great a risk by remaining in Brazil while engaged in such a thorough critical analysis of Marx’s oeuvre (despite the fact that the regime’s organs of oppression had never shown the slightest interest in him). He climbed aboard a train and was soon crossing the Mato Grosso pantanal.

  The hardships of travel were lessened by his recalling Marx’s trip from Germany to France a century previously, and Lenin’s subsequent journey from St Petersburg to Cracow.

  EXILE

  Pacheco crossed the Bolivian border and reached Santa Cruz de la Sierra, where the vagaries of the soul led him to try cocaine for the first time and think he was Che Guevara reincarnate. From there, Pacheco headed to La Paz, and from La Paz on to Paris via a bumpy flight that convinced him there were potholes even in the sky.

  For a number of years he enjoyed his status of political refugee, able to attend lectures by Althusser, rub shoulders with Sartre over lunch at Les Deux Magots and have endless discussions with exiled compatriots. They would start with the general absurdity of the world, move on to predictions of the imminent failure of capitalism and polish off the last bottle of Beaujolais debating the future of Brazil.

  Pacheco attended classes at the Sorbonne and enrolled at the École des Hautes Études, and if he didn’t finish any of the courses he started, it was because he found the majority of teachers lacked the competence to teach him.

  The more he got news from home of the imprisoned, tortured, disappeared and dead, the more he felt guilty for living on the banks of the Seine. He tried to compensate by working deep into the night, drafting Quatorze Ensaios Críticos, an epic work that would finally drag the Brazilian left out of its prehistoric political slumber.

  THE RETURN

  With the dictatorship in its death throes, an amnesty was granted to all exiles. Pacheco was on the first plane home, manuscript tucked away in his suitcase.

  Alas, his luggage was lost in transit. He sued the airline, prayed to Santa Rita and tried to jot down from memory a summary of the central themes of his thesis, but all to no avail. His masterpiece was lost for ever, and he became convinced that the lack of a firm theoretical platform was the principal reason Brazilian politics advanced so slowly.

  Pacheco, who liked to be addressed as doutor, though he was neither a qualified medic nor academic, quickly found a job as a political aide for a new party, one dreamed up overseas in the salons of European capitals.

  PROMISES

  “Another month or two now and I’ll move into my own penthouse apartment,” Pacheco would declare from time to time, without any prospect of it ever happening.

  “Pacheco, when are you going to stop eating salami and start belching caviar?” teased Diamante Negro.

  “Doutor Pacheco, can’t senhor get me a job as a television actress?” begged Rosaura.

  “Talk to Marcelo. He works in the media.”

  “I already did. He said that senhor’s got more influence than him.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Don’t worry, there are elections coming up.”

  BACK TO THE SUBJECT

  “Where was senhor at the time of the murder?” asked the detective.

  Pacheco scratched his head and rolled his eyes, as if refreshing his memory.

  “At a reception at the palácio. The governador himself can confirm it.”

  Del Bosco broke into an ironic smile. He saw he was dealing with a man who thought himself above suspicion because he strode the corridors of power. Del Bosco knew his sort well, the way they puffed out their chests to arrogantly enquire: “Do you know who I am?” All the same, the detective decided to avoid getting into a scuffle.

  “Does senhor suspect anyone of killing Marçal?”

  “He must have been involved in some sort of nefarious business,” said Pacheco. “He was a strange person. He’d talk about himself without you asking, recount fanciful stories. He saddled up to all of us, trying to sell us his shiny stones. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that behind his macho appearance, Marçal was a pederast. That would explain the sophistication and the perversity with which he was killed.”

  HERCULE POIROT

  Del Bosco didn’t care for the suspect’s haughtiness. He cleared his throat, as if his next question was stuck in his windpipe, and asked:

  “Doutor Pacheco, why the delay in complying with my summons to come in and testify?”

  “Apologies, my learned friend,” Pacheco said, attempting to justify himself. “But I didn’t attend to the summons immediately because I deemed it appropriate first to contact the Secretário de Segurança Publica, with whom I have direct dealings.”

  “Sim, the secretário’s aide called me,” said Del Bosco. “I’m sorry to so inconvenience senhor,” the detective added with little conviction, “but I can’t do without doutor’s invaluable contribution.”

  “Of course,” Pacheco said, although raised eyebrows and a creased forehead gave his discomfort away.

  “What was senhor’s relationship like with Seu Marçal?”

  “My relationship?!” spluttered Pacheco with a rather unedifying smile. “Ora, I can hardly remember what he looked like, whether he was tall or short, handsome or ugly – I’m a very
busy man. I only go to the hotel to sleep. Why would I have anything to do with a travelling salesman?”

  “Doutor is an intelligent and insightful man,” said Del Bosco, flattering Pacheco’s ego just as the Manual prescribed. “Who would senhor point the finger at?”

  Pacheco rearranged his tie and sat up in his chair.

  “It just so happens that I’m a very keen reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. I’ve been giving the matter considerable thought. Seu Marçal’s death was a hideous crime, but extremely well planned. Among the hotel’s residents, I would rule out the obvious ones, the ones you’d expect to be guilty in a trashy whodunnit: Diamante Negro and Jorge, the caretaker. Neither has the stomach for it, and if it had been one of them, they’d have at least stolen Marçal’s aquamarines and emeralds, and probably that ridiculous ring he wore on his finger.”

  “Doutor would, therefore, consider,” ventured the detective, “Professor Cândido and Marcelo Braga as suspects.”

  “If I were Hercule Poirot,” said Pacheco, “I’d be following both their trails.”

  “What about the women?”

  “They can all be ruled out,” said Pacheco emphatically. “Madame Larência is a retired puta who earns a living trafficking false affections. Life has been cruel to her and she hasn’t the strength left for hating, much less for killing! Rosaura is a caipira fool. She spends her whole time begging me to help her become a telenovela actress. Dona Dinó is a typical lumpen proletariat. She struck very lucky in inheriting the hotel, but as she has no learning, the place will never amount to anything more than a flophouse.”

  “And why does senhor, so well connected as he is, live in a ‘flophouse’?” Del Bosco said, emphasizing each syllable, and more.

  The detective immediately regretted his bout of verbal diarrhoea, asking a question which had nothing to do with the interrogation, but it was too late.

  Pacheco went red. Shame flushed through his face whenever anyone enquired as to his social standing. His eyebrows lurched forward, shadowing his eyes. He considered living in Lapa to be humiliating and he always found a way of dodging the question when people asked where he lived. He saw himself as having the profile of someone who lived in Ipanema or Leblon, and many of his acquaintances indeed believed he was the happy owner of a beachfront penthouse suite in Jardim de Alá.

  “My apartment is under construction,” said Pacheco, stroking his moustache. “I’ll move in just as soon as the complex is ready.”

  “Senhor said that if he were Hercule Poirot he’d follow Cândido’s and Marcelo’s trails. Why?”

  Pacheco sat up straight and adjusted the position of his glasses.

  “Marcelo is a busybody. He thinks that just because he’s a journalist he has the right to stick his nose into everybody’s business. Who knows, maybe he was investigating Seu Marçal’s role in the contraband of precious stones? Does senhor have any idea how much money the country loses every year from the smuggling of gemstones? Over a billion dollars! I’ve discussed it with the ministro —”

  “I’m aware of all that,” Del Bosco cut in, “and I have no intention of discussing or investigating the contraband smuggling of gemstones. That’s the Polícia Federal’s job. But from what I can deduce, Marcelo goes about prying into doutor’s affairs.”

  Pacheco blushed again.

  “Bem,” he said, fiddling with the knot in his tie, “not into my personal affairs – he’s not quite that impertinent – but his newspaper accused the deputado I represent of tripling his wealth since taking office.”

  “And is that not true?” said Del Bosco.

  “It is true, but it was all totally legitimate,” said Pacheco defensively. “A congressman’s income corresponds with the function he performs in society. Does senhor not earn more than an investigador?”

  The delegado preferred to get back to what really interested him:

  “And what are senhor’s motives for suspecting Professor Cândido?”

  “Cândido is a strange guy. He says little, lives locked away in his room, has no proper job, somehow surviving on casual editorial work, and he hangs about with young hoodlums. Does Dona Dinó let him live in the hotel rent-free? Who knows, maybe he supports himself by illegitimate means. I think the reason he gets on so well with the landlady is because they’re both esoteric initiates. And as senhor surely knows, certain esoteric practices can be very dangerous: black magic, child sacrifice, pins in dolls and so on.”

  Del Bosco interrupted him, annoyed by all the inconsistent speculation: “And does senhor not believe in the supernatural?”

  Pacheco bent forward and placed his hands on his knees.

  “At most, I believe in two, maybe three saints. If there were a God, delegado, Marçal’s head would still be attached to his neck!”

  7Jack of All Trades

  “Jorge Maldonado,” said the suspect.

  The hotel caretaker’s bright green eyes projected out of a face full of pockmarks. He had long curly hair tied in a ponytail, fixed in a bun behind his neck. He was the hotel’s jack of all trades: he fetched the groceries, prepared the meals, washed and ironed the linen, did all the cleaning and performed checks and repairs on the hotel’s electrical and water systems.

  He slept in a damp room that was only marginally bigger than he was, tucked in among brooms, squeegees, cloths, buckets and tools. He was literate enough to write his own name, but not much more.

  Dona Dinó treated him like a serf who had abdicated all basic human rights in exchange for board and lodging. He didn’t seem to mind. As long as he got to listen to the radio and go to the Maracanã to watch Botafogo, he never complained.

  “Aren’t you Juraci Funga-Funga’s brother?” said Del Bosco.

  “Sim, but I haven’t seen him for a long time, delegado.”

  “But you did kill Seu Marçal, didn’t you?” said the detective, keen to put the pressure on right away.

  Jorge turned pale. He squeezed his thick hands together nervously, making his fingers crack. His lower lip trembled as if exposed to the cold and his eyes became iridescent as they welled with tears.

  He couldn’t believe that he was really there, in a police station. He’d led his whole life determined to avoid trouble with the police at all costs.

  THIRST FOR REVENGE

  Jorge grew up in Baixada Fluminense, the youngest son of a father who owned a corner-store bar and was addicted to gambling. One night, men came and dragged the father out of the family home. His body was found in a ditch next to the Rio Guandu five days later, riddled with bullets. Pinned to the corpse was a piece of paper with a messy drawing of a skull and crossbones and two letters scrawled in blood: E. M.

  The episode naturally left a nasty taste in the mouth, a taste Jorge’s older brother, Juraci, refused to swallow.

  “The velho’s death must be avenged!”

  Juraci slipped a Mauser into his belt and went looking for answers, prowling back alleys and street corners that operated on the margins of the law.

  As he gradually clogged his nostrils with cocaine, Juraci lost his way in life, along with the thread of the trail that was supposed to lead to his father’s killers. To pay off debts, he entered the drug trade, leading gun battles with rival gangs over sales pitches and scratching a dash into the butt of his gun every time he sent someone into the next world.

  When eventually arrested, he was dealt a sentence that would require him to live three times over if it were to be fulfilled. Jorge visited him in jail with their mother, until she surrendered to her sorrow, stopped eating, turned to skin and bone and died.

  As an orphan, Jorge’s visits became less and less frequent, until finally all sense of brotherly feeling evaporated. Yet one thing about Juraci stayed with him for ever: prison life was hell. Even if Jorge’s own life had hardly been one of opportunity, it had at least taught him one thing: never do anything that might mean relying on the justice of mankind, for it was merciless to the poor.

  P
RESSURE

  Jorge was shell-shocked. Ai, meu Deus, how awful! Could the detective really think it was him?

  “Pelo amor de Deus, don’t say such things,” he begged. “Maybe I have nowhere to fall when I die, but I lead an honest life, delegado. If I were a bandido like my brother, I wouldn’t work all day and live in a tiny room full of bedbugs, fleas and cockroaches.”

  Now here was an easy arrest, thought Del Bosco. Jorge was the typical sort of witness police singled out as potential defendants: no profession, wealth or education; no lawyers, acquaintances or family members to defend them. This was the base material – society’s scraps – that they filled the jails with. Del Bosco’s authority as a police officer gave him the power to ignore the fine line that distinguished poverty from delinquency, and he never hesitated to use that power whenever public opinion demanded a scalp. Society’s sense of insecurity could always be temporarily assuaged by locking someone up, some poor sap condemned by his social standing.

  Del Bosco exercised his jaw and moved in closer to the suspect. He tugged on Jorge’s ponytail and whispered forcefully in his ear:

  “Spit it out, then: if it wasn’t you, who did top Seu Marçal?”

  Jorge felt as if his own head was about to be pulled off.

  “Não sei,” he pleaded.

  “Oh, but you do know,” said the detective, before letting go and stepping away.

  Jorge plunged his head into his hands and began to cry uncontrollably. Between sobs, he repeated, aggrieved:

  “In the name of tudo quanto é santo, I swear I know nada… Pelo amor de Deus, I know nada…”

  8Parallel Investigation

  The thick auburn beard that framed Marcelo Braga’s oval face gave him something of a Nordic look, while deep-set eyes suggested sleepless nights. Journalism had a hold on him as strong as did football. Although he was forever bad-mouthing the newspaper’s owner and complaining about his salary, he loved his job. He felt like a fish in an aquarium when he was sitting in his editor’s office, the faces of reporters and columnists, layout artists and illustrators, photographers and sub-editors looking in.