Incompatible

by Mauricio R B Campos

  Giacomo stared at him for some time and smoothed his baldhead, with his eyes tightening behind his glasses, without the least conviction the young man who had appeared to live in that community coming from god knew where was not lying, deceiving or escaping through the tangent. As for the others, that topic did not draw their attention, nor did they give importance to the sudden change of subjects. Henrique wanted to know how much of each ingredient he used in the recipe of the handmade beer, burying that subject for the last time.

  “I used a stem of basil, a stem of rosemary and 10 g of chamomile for 20 l of beer. But I think the flavors became very evident in the beer.

  Next time I will put a little less to make the taste softer.”

  “I like it this way.” Henrique said. “I love this taste of wood in the beer, it gives a sensation of freshness, perfect for our environment.”

  “Thank you very much. What did you think?” Arthur asked, almost superseding the prior embarrassment.

  “I think you’re right, if you diminish the flavors, it will become softer”, Leo agreed.

  “Invite me to drink the softer one. I like this one here and would like to try a variation. Placido smiled.”

  Giacomo was the last one to give his opinion, still working with several hypotheses about that story of a wizard in Vigo:

  “Since it has hop, malt and barley, I drink any beer, even of pepper, if you have.”

  “Yes, there is — Tibiriçá Ecovillage’s honorable homemade beer maker answered —, even here in Brazil. The Coruja brewery produces a very peppery beer, called Labareda, and another one I drank was by Jupiter, called Chipotle something; this one was softer, but with the characteristic taste of pepper.”

  “We could make some to sell in the little market along with the greens, couldn’t we? Would it make success: a bumpkin homemade beer?” Placido suggested.

  “Tibiriçá Ale!” Arthur exclaimed “I know of a website that produces beer labels for fifty cents each.”

  “This is the real entrepreneur spirit!” Placido took one more sip of the refreshing beer.

  The group that was at the counter turned to Henrique, who was opening the mass and showing off with every type of cooking juggle, spinning it in the air to knead it back again.

  “Henrique worked many years in pizzeria” Leo said, proud of his love, “but I cooked the tomato sauce, very fresh, straight from the organic vegetables garden.”

  “So, we already have a master brewer and a pizza chef. We will never starve on a Saturday night anymore”, Placido kidded.

  Thrilled with the perspective to produce his own beer and even sell it to help in the maintenance of the ecovillage, Arthur let his mind wander on a thousand possibilities it opened. Would it be possible to cultivate malt or barley there? He mentally took note to research in the internet later. But anyhow, the flavors used in the recipes were organic. Or almost. Creating something with his own hands was something that gave him a lot of satisfaction. His conscious mind knew that in the command of the companies group of his family, his leadership was felt by hundreds of families, his decisions affected the world, even more than his work in Tibiriçá; but there his action echoed immediately; he saw the results of his actions in the real world. It was at the table where Henrique kneaded the pizza dough, at the oven where a flame was shining, in the beer present in the glasses of people who shared the work so that all the community could use. There was a wall in the large round construction, like a hut, dividing that environment of the oven with the area where they were installing a library and a kind of community internet café. All he did since his arrival there was palpable, while in the NM business group there was not the heat of a flame crackling, the flavor of a fermented beer, the scent of that fresh tomato sauce, only the cold shine of graphic numbers and performance financial plans. There he was fortified in an office, protected by security guards and monitoring cameras, here he was monitored by the stars in the sky that glowed majestically.

  * * *

  Erica lived alone in the Santos Dumont Building, a building that had already been the residence of the elite of the city in the seventies. With the migration of the dwellers of the place to the closed condominiums from the eighties, the building started losing his influent dwellers progressively, but still maintained a certain air of nostalgic elegance, without been touched by the shadows of decadence yet. The condominium fee had become so high that Erica managed to obtain a low value for the rental; the property owners, in despair to get rid of the monthly cost, did not care about this value anymore, since the condominium fee was religiously paid.

  All this story was told to Lara in her first visit to her friend’s house, and Erica said it was a surprised that she prepared to be appreciated with popcorn and soda.

  “Will it be a movie session, then?”

  “I don’t know if movies are the suitable word”, Erica said, putting a popcorn bowl between the two in the sofa and aiming the remote control to the TV.

  The TV set blinked and then the YouTube symbol filled up the screen. Lara stared at the TV in expectation, getting into her friend’s game, her friend who had made so much mystery about what that popcorn and surprise night would be. The screen was soon filled up with YouTube Mixes videos and the recommended ones (which in her case were all the videos about biking and hints on fitness). So, the cyclist scrolled the menu up to the section called Watch Again and clicked on the shoot with the title Interview - Orlando and the Mystery of Tlön, dated three days before.

  In the screen they had the announce of the YouTube channel, with the journalist Rubia Campos; the youtuber smiled; her long hair put together in a pony tail, her blue eyes remarking on the skin slightly tanned.

  “I follow Rúbia’s channel, do you know who it is? That journalist who abandoned the news broadcast to try the luck with her own YouTube channel”, Erica began to clarify, “look what I’ve found these days, this is the first part of the surprise.”

  “Hey, stop with this suspense, let’s see it now...”

  “I have here Cesar Del Manto”, then the camera approached a little, to frame both in the screen, “a moviemaker who will direct the adaptation of the detective novel Orlando and the Tlön Mystery, by the renowned author Arturo de Oliveira, a best-seller published in eighteen countries, who is winning a record publication in China at this moment[33].”

  Lara did not know what to think. She looked at her friend who filled her mouth with popcorn, smiling, like someone who wants to be quiet. Cesar was with the same clothes of when as wanted to impress: sneakers with black pants, black T-shirt and blazer. He tried to seem calm, but the uneasy foot denounced him.

  “Cesar”, the youtuber began, with the frozen smile of the communications professionals, “welcome to our channel, and the first question that comes to our mind is how a first-timer professional managed to direct the first feature film from the series of books of detective fiction by Arturo de Oliveira. How was that?”

  Cesar looked at the camera and then back to the host of the program, then back to the camera, and released a rehearsed speech:

  “Hello, thank you very much for the invitation, I follow your work since your times of TV Gazeta and I love your channel. It’s an honor for me to be here with such a beautiful woman like you.”

  “Cheesy pickup lines!” the architect exclaimed.

  “Yes, this ex-boyfriend of yours is such a con man, Lara, you haven’t seen enough”, Erica smiled.

  On the TV screen, the video kept its course. Cesar was explaining now how he managed to direct the film:

  “To answer to your question, Rúbia, I have a degree in the Communications and Arts School of USP in the audiovisual area and I was a remark in my group...” Erica paused the video to see her friend’s reaction.

  “Liar!” Lara grunted to the TV. “He only skipped classes to get stoned.”

  The other laughed. And Cesar continued:

  “But in addition to this incredible curriculum, what took me to

  A
rturo Oliveira was a friend in common, the rock star Tony Perry.”

  “Tony Perry, that Brazilian who plays in the American band Nemo?”

  “Exactly! He already knew me from the short films I’ve produced, he said he was a fan, and so a very beautiful friendship began between us, a brother kind of stuff...”

  Lara felt something spinning inside her. She had taken Cesar to Tony Perry’s. She had introduced them to each other! Now, in some way she could not imagine how for sure, her losing ex-boyfriend had managed to get an agreement for the production of a movie that would certainly become a TV series and be on air in the whole country. And to make matters worse: it would be in streaming ad eternum. No, it was not a matter of envy, nor that she wanted her ex-boyfriend to remain the loser he deserved to be, laid down in a filthy gutter waiting for the dogs to came and lick his big mouth full of teeth (not that this mental image was not delicious); but surely revolt for he still used her influence to launch himself as a moviemaker. Or deceive someone by saying he was a moviemaker, because the productions he presented recorded in his iPhone were fully low performance. And the scoundrel still insinuated it was Tony who searched for him because he was a fan of his videos.

  She felt like putting out all of her indignation, but would Erica be ready to receive all the truth from her past life? Would she believe the well-behaved architect she knew was a tattooist so talented that she managed to move in the house of a rock star? Would not a rebellious past be exactly a novelty in the life of most of the people? But how to explain the reasons for so radical change of personality? She could invent a story, say she found Jesus or something like, but she did not want that.

  “Oh! You know what? Turn it off!” she asked, irritated.

  “Didn’t you like it? I thought you would like to see your ex; I didn’t think you’d be so angry.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t like. You may not believe it, but I introduced

  Cesar to Tony Perry, do you believe it?”

  “Are you serious? This guy is famous, isn’t he?”

  Lara already knew Erica’s musical knowledge was limited to the gym’s playlist and the music she heard in the local radio. And for sure a heavy band like Nemo had never been played at Intersom or at Pop FM.

  “Famous? Think of a Brazilian man who manages to establish himself in a market consolidated and competitive like the American market is.”

  “And how did you get to know this guy?”

  “Oh, Erica, it’s a complicated story. I think it’s time to go...”

  Her friend raised the eyebrows and stared at the ceiling:

  “No, our popcorn session hasn’t even started. Ok, if you don’t want to comment about your involvement with the rock star, it’s all right, forget about it. But let’s go to the next video, I thought you would like it.

  If you don’t want to watch it, we can watch something else on Netflix. On the day we found Cesar on that black van, he had come to film a documentary here in the city, there at Tibiriçá Ecovillage. I researched and found it”, she aimed the remote control and the ecovillages documentary began.

  The architect did not really enjoy the sensations that video had awaken. But it was the first time she visited Erica’s apartment and she did not want to spoil this first invitation, but if she accepted to change the video, she could see some more of it and then ask her to change it, she thought. The surprise did not certainly have the intention to be pleasurable; at last, they were closer and closer, not only in the bike riding of the weekend.

  The video began with images of trees leaves being overpassed by the sunlight, while the elegant subtitles showed the definitions of the ecovillage and permaculture. Then they had a passage of the testimonial by Placido, in which he speaks of the experience in Australia, and later Giacomo narrates the time he had spent in Amazon.

  “Shit, this guy is big crook”, Erica stated when she saw Giacomo on the screen.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I doubt he has spent any time in Amazon. He must have invented this story to deceive the peace and love people there.”

  “Do you know him?” Lara asked, considering her familiarity with the crook to be strange. She was not used to speak ill of anybody; if she was regarding that guy as someone so bad, she must have known his story well.

  “I’ve worked with him. He was the chief of the city hall accounting. There runs a rumor he discovered some irregularity that could damage the mayor and blackmailed the chief of office. He soon was retired and appeared with a brand-new car.”

  “Gee. I thought these stories would only be the case in Brasília.”

  “Yep. Unfortunately, not. It seems we’re not immune to corruption.

  He had disappeared; I hadn’t seen him since he retired.”

  “Well. I never heard you speak like this of anybody. Did he damage you?”

  “I wouldn’t say he did. But he was the nasty kind of man, always with a pickup line, always with indirect talk and harassment.”

  She stared at Giacomo in his testimonial; he was in a garden in front of a beautiful house, despite some old-fashioned traces in decoration, like the statue of a wood carved Green Man41 in natural size, holding a cane, beside which the accountant gave his “spectacular” testimonial.

  Lara was going to say something, but, while they talked, the video was running, and then Arthur Nunes de Mendonca appeared in the video. She had a shiver. The man on the screen was very different from the executive that took her to his farm in a SUV. He was wearing an ochre and worn Australian hat; his beard was to be shaved, his clothes definitely did not agree with his social position. What was he doing there if

  41 Green Man: The Green Man is a sculpture, drawing or other representation of a face surrounded by leaves. Branches or lianas may get out of the nose, mouth, nerines or other parts of the face and those pieces of nature may have flowers or fruits. Generally used as decorative ornaments, Green Men are frequently found in sculptures, churches and other buildings (both secular and ecclesiastical ones). “The Green Man” is also the popular name of the English pubs and different interpretations of the name appear in façades of inns, that, sometimes, show the full picture, instead of only the head.

  The Green Man motive has many variations. Found in many cultures around the world, the Green Man is many times connected to plant divinities in different cultures along the time. Essentially, he is interpreted as a symbol of the Renaissance, representing the cycle of growth at each springtime. Some speculate that the myth of the Green Man was developed independently in the traditions of ancestral separated cultures and evolved to the great variety of examples found along the history.

  The expression. “Green Man” was created by Lady Raglan, in her article “The Green Man and the Ecclesiastical Architecture”, of 1939, in The Folklore Journal (Wikipedia).

  about two months ago he was in a restaurant talking to her about the project of a new library in the university?

  “Did you see this one! Do you know who this one is?” she asked with her voice strained.

  “No, but it seems you shoot what you saw, and hit what you didn’t see!”

  “This is Arthur Nunes Mendonca” she said trying to get her breathing in place, feeling her heart accelerated “Don’t you know him?”

  “I’d surely like to”.

  Lara followed each phrase of his in full attention state. She had lost the hope to see him again, but now this story of the ecovillage gave her a new perspective; he was not anymore in an inaccessible office of the university administration building. Now he was there, some little pedals riding distant from her. And all she wanted to know was if that night had meant anything to him. Because, since they met, there was that nonsolved situation, and she felt that prevented her from stepping ahead, this thread of hope should be broken once, or then...

  “Erica?”, she asked, feeling waves of hope spreading through her body. “Do you know where this Tibiriçá Ecovillage is?”

  CHAPTER 26

  Tha
t night Giacomo sat in the sofa, put his feet on the pouf and shook the ice in his glass of whiskey. The DVD set was reading the disk that he had just put in it. He had decided to see again his collection of the series the X-Files, from the first episode. The opening announcement of the series began with the creepy and strange music that Mark Snow said he had created by accident upon supporting his elbows on the keyboard. But he could not immerse in that world of alien conspiracies as he planned, because his mobile phone rang. He paused the DVD and saw who it was on the phone: it was an old man he knew from the time he worked in the city hall accounting. It was a stupid individual, who had come to visit him some two or three times; one of the many people who visited the ecovillage and said they loved that life style, and wanted to sell their houses in the city to buy a piece of land in Tibiriçá, but who had never had courage enough to do so. He decided to answer, Mulder and Scully were not going anywhere anyway.

  They exchanged traditional phrases for beginning the conversation and then his friend said he watched the documentary about the ecovillage, produced by Cesar Del Manto. He said again that when he saw those images, he imagined himself living there: they could drink a beer in the verandah listening to the sound of birds, who knows observing some wild animal — perhaps, a monkey! Were there monkeys in Tibiriçá? But at that moment it was not possible because his mother was undergoing a health treatment and needed him to be close to accompany her with doctors and exams and who knows other complications; she might need someone close to her available, which would be unfeasible living in the rural zone. However, he assured they would still be neighbors; he was going to buy a piece of land to call his own. Then he said he had recognized Arthur, the heir of the Nunes de Mendonca’s empire. So, he wanted to know what he was doing there.