Hotel Brasil

by Frei Betto

  “Rosaura is a fool,” Dona Dinó went on unmoved, her fingers combing Osíris’s hair. “Aside from going to work, the menina spends her whole time daydreaming of becoming a telenovela actress.”

  II

  THE COLLECTION

  1The Proposal

  Cândido put the phone down, feeling confused and intrigued. He hadn’t entirely understood what Eduardo Lassale was proposing: something to do with an editorial project. It was hard enough to understand the publisher face to face, let alone over the phone. Lassale was as incoherent as he was ambitious.

  Lassale had inherited a small livraria from his father. Besides books, the shop had sold stationery, which enabled it to survive in times of crisis. Aldo Lassale, a stout Italian with a round face and fat fingers, had come to Brazil fleeing the war. After first working as a translator of operas and plays, he’d opened the livraria, without knowing that Brazilians had neither the custom nor resources to consume books like the Europeans.

  The Divina Comédia had occupied a white corner building in Tijuca, with wide doors leading onto both streets. When first opened, the shop had stocked only classics, but space on the shelves was soon found for popular fiction, serials and almanacs. A magazine section came next, and before long half the shop was given over to exercise books, notepads and pens.

  Aldo Lassale passed on to his son a firm belief that Brazilians did in fact read, indeed they read a lot; they just didn’t read books, because books were expensive and, as a general rule, written in a language that was inaccessible to most of the population. Brazilians read adverts, leaflets, calendars, newspapers and magazines, anything that used simple, straightforward vocabulary. There was a huge untapped market for the publisher who managed to find a way of exploiting such reading habits by providing books that were accessible to the public at large.

  Eduardo grew up believing his mission in life was to realize his father’s dream. When old Aldo died of pneumonia – provoked, according to the doctors, by the mould on his collection of antique works, which he insisted on leafing through every night before bed – his son sold the livraria and used the money to buy a property on Alto da Boa Vista, where he founded Editora Hellas. The building was a two-storey house with a garden. It had a veranda extension that served as the publisher’s entrance hall and held a display of recent publications.

  INTRUSIVE

  Cândido’s uncertainty may have had something to do with the old lady staring at him from the other side of the room. Dona Dinó, dressed in espadrilles and a faded brown-and-white checked dress, sat watching him as he used the phone, her hands gripped to the red handle of her broom. Her affection for him was evident in the warmth of her eyes. It certainly wasn’t obvious in her speech: she was a woman of few words and short sentences; minimal punctuation and much reticence. But although she wrapped herself in silence, the force of her inquisitive eyes gave her a strange magnetism.

  INTERLUDE

  “Did he not explain himself properly, or is it my head that’s fuzzy?”

  “No, you’re right, man,” Odidnac reassured him. “He was over-excited.”

  THE INTERRUPTED SHOWER

  The phone call had been an offer of work. Most likely another of the publisher’s hare-brained schemes, but it was hard to tell: Lassale’s enthusiasm had been such that he’d failed to get the message over. He suffered from a stammer and had trouble expressing himself when he got excited. His thoughts seemed to sprout wings and take off, but when it came to articulating them, they came out like the plodding steps of a rheumatic dancing to a samba batucada.

  Nevertheless, he’d sold a million copies of How to be Happy in Times of Crisis by Ricardo Kost, and The Handbook of Conjugal Survival by Ciça and Zezito Alves – partners on and off the page – was on its thirty-eighth edition. Hug a Tree and Feel Happy by Tiago Camporubro was the latest title flying off the shelves and filling the publisher’s coffers.

  PRESENTIMENT

  Cândido was feeling crabby, and not because of the old lady’s indiscreet snooping or the way her eyes questioned him. It was because he’d been in the shower when she’d called him to the phone and he hated having his morning routine interrupted.

  He’d been standing under the water with his eyes closed and his mouth open, shampoo rinsing from his hair, nakedness freeing his head of all thought and leading him towards the imperceptible, when he’d heard a dry tap-tap at the door.

  He could tell it was Dona Dinó from the deadness of the sound: she always used the handle of her broom to knock at the door.

  Cândido hated being hurried. He liked doing everything in his own time. The unexpected flustered him.

  CAREFUL

  Yet Cândido really couldn’t complain about Dona Dinó. She treated him like the son she’d never had, always worrying over the fact that he ate so little, studied so much and spent all his spare time trying to help young delinquents. He ran himself into the ground, she said, so much so that he often mistook the salt cellar for the sugar shaker.

  THE ARRIVAL

  Cândido had been living in Rio for several months. He’d arrived one sunny, humid morning after a long and tiring bus journey. The descent through the Serra das Araras, with the road twisting down mountain slopes, had upset his stomach. His queasiness was not helped by the foul smell of rotten water he encountered on Avenida Brasil. On first impression, he thought with some disappointment, there was nothing very maravilhosa about the so-called Marvellous City. There was rubbish piled up at the roadside, barraco shacks behind garages and warehouses, fire and smoke pouring out of the chimneys of the Duque de Caxias refinery, buses flying along at breakneck speed – everything was dirty and noisy compared to the town he’d left behind.

  He got off the bus at the rodoviária, thinking he’d entered Rio de Janeiro by the back door. A human ant trail filed in with the spluttering motorcade of buses, exhaust fumes clogging the platforms with carbon gases; the information desk was closed, the toilets stank of urine. Taxi drivers fought over fares with a ferocity that spoke of ill intentions.

  It was only much later that Cândido discovered that, despite the filth and poverty, Rio was an enchanting city, with a beauty to delight the eyes and revitalize the spirit.

  On arriving at Hotel Brasil, he was examined from head to toe by Dona Dinó’s lynxlike eyes. The old lady looked into the depths of his soul and scrutinized his slim, beardless face, his broad forehead, his straight fringe and his hazelnut eyes – eyes that held a certain sadness.

  His white shirt was soaked with sweat. He carried minimal luggage: one small holdall containing a few clothes, basic toiletries and a copy of The Cloud of Unknowing, the work of an anonymous fourteenth-century Englishman.

  THE FATAL BLOW

  A week earlier, Cândido’s fiancée had told him she was in love with another man. His face had frozen in fury. He’d held her and shaken her, as if trying to dislodge the errant feeling. All he’d managed was to make her cry, an uncontrollable bout of sobbing, as if she were cleansing her soul ready to welcome in her new love. Cândido secretly admired her courage. If it had been the other way round, he’d never have dared upset her so. But she was a woman, he told himself. Women didn’t do things by halves.

  He’d always thought love at first sight only happened in novels and films. He was deeply hurt. He became fragile, blinded by the swirl of emotions. He felt his soul dry out, jealousy seep through his pores, humiliation shatter his self-esteem; his steps became hesitant, his head was unable to complete thoughts, sadness suffocated him.

  It wasn’t a physical pain, localized, something the spirit might defend itself against or reason relieve. His spirit had crumbled and been swallowed up by a vast chasm. He loved ngela, who loved another man. He took up an ascetic lifestyle, the crazed martyrdom of the estranged.

  He realized his suffering was too big for the small Minas town where he lived, a town that obliged him to be too close to ngela’s joyful heart when his own heart was in pieces.

  He decided
to leave.

  RECEPTION

  That first day in Rio, he’d wandered about the city-centre streets for several hours, choking on the heat coming off the tarmac. Then a mansion on Largo da Lapa caught his eye: Hotel Brasil. It was a grey building in neoclassical French style, sombre-looking and dilapidated, but shaded by exuberant mangueiras.

  The entrance stood at the top of a rotting wooden staircase with a handrail ravaged by termites. A rusty old sign read: “Rooms for single ladies and gentlemen. Family environment.”

  The landlady led him into a parlour, which was desperately dark compared to the outside light that still reverberated in his eyes. Dona Dinó weighed up his moral stature and placed Osíris at his feet. The cat opened and closed its glowing eyes and licked its front right paw.

  The landlady stressed that the hotel was a hotel residencial, then handed him a guest form and asked him where he was from.

  Cândido told her he’d been born and raised in Minas Gerais, then become a novice in a monastery in the Mantiqueira mountains. After giving up the frock, he’d taught Portuguese in a rural school.

  “I consider it divine providence,” exclaimed Dona Dinó, “to welcome into my house a guest of such distinguished background.” She was a pious woman, though her church was broad and she lit candles to an assorted assembly of gods and saints: she made umbanda offerings at crossroads, visited candomblé temples, attended séances, drank indigenous potions, observed horoscopes and cowrie-shell divinations, and followed Egyptian esotericism and Indian asceticism, all with equal conviction.

  THE HEIRESS

  A poor girl from the favelas, Dinó first got a job as a cleaner in the house she’d go on to govern, then turn into the rather grandly named Hotel Brasil. When she’d started out, the owner of the house had been Hórus, an Egyptian. A devotee of Thor, he taught his young maid to worship the natural world and introduced her to the spirits of the Nile and Ganges. He would often spend months in the Amazon, fascinated by indigenous beliefs, river legends and forest myths. While he was away, he would entrust his mansion to Dinó, the only disciple he ever raised in Brazil.

  One day, overcome with supernatural inspiration, Hórus took down the hammer that adorned his study wall and made to leave without explanation. He bid Dinó farewell, telling her to take care of the house and giving her a present she was to look after “with the same affection the Madonna showed Jesus”. That present was Osíris, the cat with the golden eyes.

  MOVING

  Dona Dinó was only too pleased to have Cândido in the hotel, though she thought it sad that God had not seen fit to find for the former novice a good woman. Nevertheless, she made sure to repeat her customary warnings: rent must never be in arrears; no visitors allowed in any of the rooms; never touch her broom or feed the cat.

  Three days later, a removal van pulled up outside the hotel with a few personal belongings and two big boxes of books.

  Dona Dinó convinced herself she was housing a genius. Perhaps Cândido was even as far advanced along the spiritual path as Hórus had been.

  THE PHONE CALL

  Landlady and tenant kept a healthy distance in front of the other guests, though if anything this strengthened the bond between them. She even broke one of her golden rules for him, excusing him his rent when he was out of work. And she allowed him to use the phone. She did so to aid his voluntary work with street kids, but, regardless, it was an exceptional privilege: the other guests were only allowed to receive calls; to make calls, they had to go out and use the phone booth in the street. For incoming calls, Dona Dinó hurried along to the guest’s room and tapped at the door with the tip of her broom, taking messages with undisguised displeasure if the guest happened to be out.

  She tapped harder than usual that morning: the voice on the other end of the line sounded imploring, as if desperate for help. She hammered away with her broom handle, trying to make herself heard over the noise of the shower.

  Cândido shouted for her to wait a moment – “I heard you, I’m coming” – feeling harassed and fighting a strange urge to go out into the corridor nude, as if it really was that urgent, as if someone was calling to tell him the end of the world was nigh and they had two days to live.

  He turned the tap on full blast, rinsed, turned the water off, dried and put his dressing gown on inside out, all with the haste of someone who hated making people wait. When he got to the dining room he found Dona Dinó sitting on the window sill, holding her broom and waiting patiently to listen in on the conversation, showing no scruples about it.

  Cândido held the phone away from his ear: Lassale was shouting as if he were calling from the top floor of a burning building. The publisher was garbling his words. Syllables raced off his tongue but tripped over his lips, making everything come out disjointed.

  Unsure whether the problem was the way the editor was talking or how he was listening, Cândido cut his losses and said he’d drop by the publisher’s to discuss things.

  SCRUPULOUS FORGER

  Given the intellectual training he’d received, first at the monastery and later as a teacher, Cândido passed the Hellas entrance exam with little difficulty.

  “What is it you want me to do?” he asked Lassale, on being admitted into the fold.

  “I want you to rewrite books,” said the editor. “Many authors have talent in terms of ideas and style, but border on the illiterate when it comes to spelling and grammar. They mix tenses, repeat words, use multiple adjectives, confuse agreements and endings – they basically can’t get their ideas down properly. I want you to go over badly drafted texts and turn them into something our readers can digest and comprehend.”

  TASKS

  Tucked away in his room in Hotel Brasil, surrounded by the empty orange boxes he’d turned into bookcases, Cândido rewrote texts with the scrupulous care of a forger. Between tasks, he headed over to the Casa do Menor in Baixada Fluminense, where he read the children stories and helped them learn to read and write.

  THIRD MILLENNIUM

  It was late morning by the time Cândido pulled up outside Hellas on his motorbike. He found Lassale in high spirits. The publisher looked like a lord in his study, hemmed in behind a wall of books. When Cândido sat down opposite him, they could barely see one another through the pile of manuscripts on the desk.

  “In this country,” said Lassale, as he cleared away some of the clutter, “there are more writers than readers!”

  He calmed down when his comment received no response.

  “How’s the murder investigation going at the hotel?”

  “It looks like they’re back where they started,” said Cândido. “They question us over and over again, the forensics reexamine the scene of the crime and the Lapa delegado assures us he’ll lay hands on the killer any day now. But I don’t believe him.”

  “Do you suspect anyone?”

  “Seu Marçal was a strange guy,” said Cândido. “He was from the sticks like me, but he loved the big city. He wasn’t uneducated, but he didn’t show a great deal of understanding about anything, either. I think he liked living on the edge. There must have been some kind of funny business lurking behind those gemstones.”

  “A mafia hit?” the editor suggested, quickly adding: “It would make a good book.”

  “There’s no doubt he was killed by professionals,” said Cândido. “You can’t commit an atrocity like that and leave no clues unless you know what you’re doing.”

  “Could it have been anyone at the hotel?” said Lassale.

  “I doubt it. But I wouldn’t rule out one of the guests being an accomplice and having let the killer in.”

  “Like who?” asked Lassale, putting his papers down and laying his hands on the desk.

  “I’d rather not name names; I don’t want to be accused of being an unreliable witness,” Cândido backtracked. He changed the subject: “What was it you wanted to see me about?”

  “I want you to take on a new job,” said the editor, as if handing out a pr
ize. He spoke slowly and precisely, choosing his words with care. “A new century is underway, with society facing a crisis of depression, social and sexual role reversal and mass unemployment due to technological evolution. At the same time, we’re seeing a return of subjectivity and a yearning for spirituality. I want to respond to these concerns and demands by launching a new collection for the third millennium: Terceiro Milênio. We’ll provide readers with a scientific, historical, philosophical – even a religious – perspective on this whole postmodern business of values being relative, traditions disappearing, taboos breaking, generosity disappearing. We’ll publish the collection as serials and I want you to write them up, offering the public insight into its main anxieties. What do you say?”

  Cândido felt cheated. He liked rewriting other people’s texts. Producing his own material didn’t appeal to him at all. Especially when his own literary tastes bore no comparison to Lassale’s.

  INTERLUDE

  “Odid, Lassale has more interest in the market than he does in talent, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Come on, man, why go criticizing the boss?” said Odidnac. “He’s a businessman. Like all businessmen, the first thing he looks for is financial return.”

  “He could at least do so with slightly less vulgar publications,” sighed Cândido.

  “Don’t be so naive. He does whatever offers good profit margins.”

  PLACEBO

  “I think my opinion probably counts for little,” said Cândido, sounding disappointed. “I can tell you’re enthusiastic about the idea, so the best thing for me to do is just embrace it. I assume this won’t mean a doubling of my workload?”

  “Of course not!” said Lassale, with little conviction. “Consider yourself relieved from correcting texts. Now you create them.”

  “My only hope,” sighed Cândido, “is that I can come up with something that amounts to more than a mere literary placebo.”