by Sean Wallace
“Where is the mother?” stammered Vargas, notably perturbed. He had seen the pregnant woman a few times in the newspapers. Then she had disappeared completely.
Dom Pedro caressed the baby.
“A good woman,” responded the old man. “Faithful to her country. She’s in Europe, now.”
“You insult the Emperor with this type of question,” admonished Bernardes. He wiped his glasses with a handkerchief. “Which, by the way, is becoming common among your equals.”
Vargas perceived some kind of tension forming there. He had expected it.
“So we’re back to institutional jests?”
“This is more than a mere jest, General. I’ll go direct to the point. We will no longer tolerate the Army’s insubordinations. Your boys need a muzzle.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that half-penny lieutenant publishing paid articles in the newspaper. What we least need at this moment is officials of our own Armed Forces criticizing the Cabinet and disrespecting His Majesty in public. It is not an opportune time for that, General.”
“And when will be the moment, Mr Minister-President? When we’re victims of an armed uprising by the revolutionary groups? Because that’s exactly what I came to discuss. There are indications that the AIB is receiving German weaponry by way of the Plata. And of the Anarchist-Luddites and Socialists articulating themselves around the ALN. They’re preparing something big, and soon. When that happens, I’m certain that you won’t like having an Army in rags begging around for ammunition.”
Bernardes began to fidget. He did that when nervous.
“The National Guard is prepared to defend us, in case the Army proves incapable.”
“This revolt could assume catastrophic proportions,” insisted Vargas, trying to ignore the provocation. He shot a discreet look at Dom Pedro, who snored once again in the chair. “Brazil could end up in the hands of an enterprising fascist. Or worse, opportunistic communists.”
“Yet to me, the Army has revealed itself much more problematic than the communists, General. Know that the article by this lieutenant, or whoever is behind it, won’t go unpunished.”
“Don’t threaten an armed man, Mr President,” Vargas riposted in an icy tone. His thumb grazed the leather holster.
Bernardes followed the gesture.
“I also know how to use a revolver, General,” he said. He tossed his jacket back, revealing a nickel-plated .38 at his belt. The two stood there, motionless, each one conscious that it was nothing more than a game of will that would never come to pass.
Another coughing fit from the Emperor put an end to the embarrassing scene.
“The natural order will return when the Heir Apparent is officially presented to Brazil, as the Law of Succession requires.” Dom Pedro III squinted at the General. “Don’t worry, Vargas. No conspiracy will overthrow the Empire.”
A Pawn in the Tower
Nomio straightened the tailcoat’s collar. He detested that kind of clothing: too tight, too uncomfortable. For twenty minutes he had circulated through the elevator hall among a sea of people, trying to pass as a messenger, waiter, anything of the type. He found the integralists ill-humored; when they laughed their teeth showed and their eyebrows arched like the evildoers that Democrata, his favorite superhero, confronted. They seemed to be scheming something.
He kept an eye on the door. He concluded that it wouldn’t be difficult to block it when the time came. Passing a chain and padlock in a loop through the handles would be enough, and nobody would get out of there until his father finished the job.
He pulled up the tailcoat’s collar when, arm in arm with a man with huge bags under his eyes, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen passed him by. She wore a gray dress and a white hat, which revealed only bits of red hair. She reminded him of his mother. She had never used makeup like this woman, not that he knew, but that didn’t diminish the intensity of the sensation. He stood there, immobile, watching the woman and feeling an immense longing.
“What is it, boy?” asked the baggy-eyed man. “What to ask the lady in marriage?”
Nomio turned red.
“That was mean, Cassiano,” laughed the woman, playfully slapping her companion’s forearm. “And you, boy, you think I’m pretty?”
“You look like my mother, ma’am.” Nomio struggled to force the words from his mouth.
“How sweet. And where is she?”
“She died.”
The woman blushed, not knowing what to say. She ended up allowing the baggy-eyed man to lead her away to the ballroom. Nomio shrugged and concealed himself among the plant vases nearby, where the backpack with the radio was hidden. He turned on the device.
“When he enters, I’m going to lock the doors,” he said, not forgetting the face, a spitting image of his mother.
True and False Futilities
Trains originating from the four corners of the Empire converged in the subterranean terminals of Estação Central do Brasil. Its hexagon-shaped top received cruise dirigibles from the entire world. Joana Bras had already been on top of the largest station in South America on other occasions, but this was the first time she allowed herself to enjoy the view.
She didn’t like what she saw. Rio de Janeiro was ugly from above. Old chimneys of exposed brick vomited columns of dense smoke that went, almost motionless to those who watched, to mix with the huge, perpetual gray cloud that covered the city like a velvet blanket. Tubing of every form and fashion passed through the streets from top to bottom, transporting gas, oil, and every kind of chemical fluid necessary to grease the good performance of the hundreds of ovens, bellows, cauldrons, exhausts, gears, valves, stacking machines, drills, belts, forges, presses, pulleys, spotlights, printers, dynamos, vaporizers, band saws, hydraulic jacks, conveyors, assembly lines, treatment stations, workshops. The pipes pierced the asphalt, stretching above and below the earth, coupled with buildings and monuments. Shanties pockmarked the city’s many hills, which, from time to time, enormous tractors would knock down. But it was impossible to remove the hundreds of habitations which arose every day. Immense slums grew and spread out in waves around the neighborhoods, the shacks made from whatever could be found: cardboard, tiles, wood, zinc sheets.
Joana surprised herself with the thought that progress charged a high price to the poorest, and knew that the time she had passed with the communists had infiltrated that kind of idea in her head. But it was difficult to think differently. At five in the morning, sirens rang in the manufacturing plant habitation complexes, strident and tremulous whistles that added up until becoming a single sound, which advised all the workers of the start of a new work shift. One by one, the houses – identical, cublical, crammed together – lit up. The workers, repeating movements made automatic by routine, got up, made their beds, drank coffee. Those that lived far away crammed the buses, the trains, the streets. They passed their perforated cards in the punch clocks, put on their overalls, performed their functions. At noon, they ate lunch, had a shot of coffee, smoked a cigarette, and started everything again. Modern times.
Tall constructions were not permitted around the Estação Central do Brasil due to the dirigible traffic. From the panoramic window of the convention center, high above the clock, Joana could see from far away the immense skyscrapers of steel and glass, symbols of the modernist architecture that intruded into the tastes of their proprietors, in general, foreign companies. Inside of them, she thought: magnates, financial operators, executive secretaries, and directors observed the Empire’s capital with greedy eyes, managing every detail of the production worksheet, overseeing by way of a hierarchy bound to the work progress from all sectors. When things went as planned, the smiles were whiter than anything else in the city managed to be. When they didn’t, they berated subordinates shrunken with fear. To compensate all this was a blurred sea of orange from the sunset. That was something that could still make her smile.
In the glass’s reflecti
on she saw behind her a man break away from the circle of intellectuals, grab two glasses of champagne from a waiter’s tray, and slide toward her. Joana breathed deeply and prepared to be frivolous.
“A million reís to know the motive for that sweet smile,” said Cassiano Ricardo.
“I was thinking that Marx might have had a point.”
Cassiano Ricardo seemed mildly disturbed by the unexpected answer, but composed himself when Joana giggled.
“It’s dangerous to say that kind of thing at an integralist meeting, my dear.”
Joana accepted the champagne glass he offered.
“Artists shouldn’t be afraid to express themselves, Cassiano. A poet like yourself should know that better than anyone.”
“Political preoccupations almost make me forget the Arts.”
“Yet they shouldn’t.” Joana offered him an arm. “Come on, I want to hear Menotti and Lucia’s funny stories.”
Joana found the AIB meetings tedious, full of ultranationalist bravado, shows of authority, and dubious art. To be fair, Cassiano Ricardo’s poetry wasn’t all that bad. Songs of My Tenderness even proved to be an agreeable read. But watching Plinio Salgado recite sterile verse while being applauded by men in green shirts in no way matched her idea of a good time.
She wasn’t there to have fun, however. The ring on her finger, slightly tight, didn’t let her forget that. She performed an important role, infiltrated in the increasingly radical group captained by Salgado. But she was a woman of action, and there was nothing worse for someone like her than being among those people, pretending to worry about fashionable dresses or the hairdos of movie stars. To reduce the tediousness of the inflammatory speeches – repetitive with every comma – and the dead conversations, she sought out the company of the Green and Yellow group, composed of painters, futurists, Dadaist writers, and modernist poets (or any of those combinations). Men and women like Menotti del Picchia, secret admirer of the literary trash of an American editor called Gernsback; Lucia Amado, with her paintings which, according to herself, were a scream against the emptiness of the modern feminist mind; and Cassiano Ricardo himself, who predicted he would one day have a seat in the Brazilian Academy of Letters. They were artists. A bit bridled by the integralist ideas, but artists nevertheless.
When she met with them, Joana only pretended to drink. When the alcohol began to elevate heads and loosen tongues, she inserted apparently innocent questions to try and uproot some relevant information. She had been hearing rumors that needed to be confirmed, like the one that LATI was being used by the Italian fascists to send German money and weapons to the AIB; or that an upcoming insurrection was being planned, now that the Emperor had one foot in the grave and no one to succeed him directly, according to an 1893 constitutional amendment. The Green and Yellow group, however, didn’t know much of those things. Probably because of their frequent bouts of drinking. Plinio Salgado, although a mediocre poet, was intelligent enough to know that not everyone who shouted “anauê” was worthy of confidence.
While she laughed with the others at Menotti’s jokes, Joana discretely studied the conversation groups which spread through the convention room. The very space chosen for the meeting, a ballroom with panoramic windows above the Estação Central clock, was a clear indication that the AIB now disposed of a great deal of money. The place’s rent was exorbitant, as must have been the buffet with formal waiters and an immense flag – a black sigma inside a white circle – which took up the entire wall, floor to ceiling, behind the pulpit. A lot of money seemed to be flowing into the integralist coffers. If it were true, then there was a good chance the rest of it was as well. But the Green and Yellow group didn’t know that. She needed to approach the right people.
Plinio Salgado arrived in the convention room and was greeted with a thunderous anauê by those present. He waved to them all, shook hands with a few, drank water from a crystal jar. Joana always thought his figure a contradiction. A thin man, his bony face decorated by a square moustache, his hair meticulously parted to the side, stuffed into an excessively starched integralist uniform. Not impressive to look at, but with tremendous charisma when he spoke to his partisans. Joana was still studying his movements when his eyes fell upon her for a few seconds, before declaring open the extraordinary meeting of the AIB, and giving the projectionist the signal to roll the film.
Black curtains covered the sigma. The lights went out. A beam of light projected “3, 2, 1”. Joana wasn’t familiar enough with the cinema to know if Leni Riefenstahl was an expressionist or not, but understood the motive for the civic ecstasy that the movie caused among the integralists in attendance. It was basically composed of close-ups of perfect Aryan faces, colossal battalion marches, and images of an imposing Führer, filmed from below looking up, to salute the brave German people, the eagle standard waving in the background. Wagner’s music lent an almost Biblical tone to the film, and each time the swastika appeared there were those who responded with a proud anauê.
When the lights came on, a round of applause exploded in the ballroom. Plinio Salgado ascended the pulpit and began to speak. He laughed playfully at being informed that the microphone was turned off. A brief, shrill sound from the microphone, and the problem was resolved. He drank another glass of water and opened his mouth to let loose what would be his most fearsome speech.
The microphone amplified a high-pitched squeal followed by a wet pop. One second later, Plinio Salgado’s brains spread out over the flag’s sigma.
To Remove the Hell from Yourself
The big advantage of working for important clients is avoiding the complicated details of the business. How, for example, to get to the top of a building carrying a big suitcase full of heavy equipment. The doorman asked no questions when Jeronimo Trovao crossed the lobby of the Solemar building and climbed twenty floors by elevator with a three-barrel Enfield machine gun, a 96 Mauser, and sufficient ammunition to declare another war on Bolivia.
The building wasn’t tall, principally when compared to the skyscrapers on more distant blocks, but it was one of the only ones to reach the maximum permitted height within the traffic zone of the cruise dirigibles that headed to the station. That meant a much lower possibility of curious spectators. It left only the dirigibles themselves and Estação Central do Brasil as higher observation points. He wouldn’t need to worry about the first, generally filled with wealthy tourists so interested in each other as to prefer traveling days in a superballoon instead of hours in a CD-13; neither the second, on the other side of Avenida Dom Pedro II, a good fifty meters distant, more than enough for the nosey to be incapable of making him out as anything more than a dark point.
Just in case, he mounted the equipment underneath the rust-eaten iron structure which supported an antenna. It took a little more than twenty minutes to prepare all the parts of the machine-gun rifle, oil the triple barrel, line up the sight. He’d brought five-thousand six-hundred ammunition cartridges in four noise-suppressing cylinders. The Contractor wanted to cause a lot of damage. He lay down beneath the antenna, placed his eye in the gun’s sight. He saw the Estação Central clock. He rotated a series of dials to adjust the focus, raised the sight a little. The panoramic window of the convention center ballroom appeared. There were a lot of people in front of what Jeronimo thought was a big E on the wall. The pulpit was there, just like they’d told him. He inserted a punch card in a little box linked to the sight by cables. He pulled a tiny lever. The Enfield vibrated slowly as the box began to automatically adjust the distance and covert the American gauges to Brazilian measures. He coupled the ammunition cylinders to the gas tubes, freed the trigger, and waited.
Half an hour later, the lights went out in the hall. A movie was projected, as expected. Also as was expected, Jeronimo heard Deuteronomio’s voice on the radio: “When he enters, I’m going to lock the doors.”
“Leave the building as soon as you’re done and meet me at the rendezvous.”
The shadows were already be
ginning to stretch across the city. Night would fall in two hours or less. He didn’t need to worry much, however: in forty minutes, the curtains opened and the lights came on. The chaotic noise of traffic on Avenida Dom Pedro II didn’t allow him to hear the round of applause that arose among the integralists.
On the radio, Deuteronomio: “He’s going in, Dad.”
Jeronimo saw Plinio Salgado’s lanky figure cross the ballroom like Caesar himself and ascend the pulpit. The intersection of vertical and horizontal lines in the sight was on the insignificant space between his upper lip and nose.
Jeronimo’s finger was already on the trigger.
You’re a killer, Dream-Man, said the Saint.
He squinted. She was sitting above him, in the antenna’s hardware.
“Not now.”
You’re going to kill a man.
“A bad man.”
Take a life.
“Things aren’t that simple.”
You’re going to turn yourself into a nightmare for Anthony, weaken him in his fight against the demons.
“Be quiet.”
Killer.
“Please.”
If you kill that man, you will unite your destructive path with that of the Boy.
“Please.”
The three souls will be condemned.
“Shut up!”
He pressed the trigger.
Plinio Salgado’s head exploded.
He looked up. The Saint was no longer there. The sweat began to fall into his eyes. He switched the Enfield to automatic. The triple barrel began to spin, the capsules flew like bees. And thus, Jeronimo Trovao sent the integralists to hell. Just to remove it from himself.
Hell in the Tower
The ten seconds after Plinio Salgado’s head disappeared in a red stain were eternal. Joana Bras saw people screaming, but didn’t hear their voices. She heard nothing.
