by João Almino
In the Free City the Carnival celebrations weren’t as fun as the São João festival later in the year, and to me they didn’t mean anything more than playing around with a plastic bottle that looked like the ethyl chloride sprays of Carnival, which I filled with water so I could soak the neighbors. I’d also sit on the sofa in front of the hi-fi, listening to the Carnival hits, along with Aunt Matilde, Aunt Francisca, and some of my friends who lived on our street: “He dresses like a Bahian girl to pretend he’s a woman/ You’ll see that he’s a . . . / You’ll see that he’s a . . . / At the ball at the theater he claims he’s Salome/ You’ll see that he’s a . . . / You’ll see that he’s a . . . ”
I hoped that at this point one of the readers of this blog would remind me of the many, many other songs that I can no longer recall, but over the weekend these pages weren’t accessed a single time. I make brief note of this not to complain, it’s pointless to waste time complaining, and I’ll quickly change the subject to say that at home there was only one pleasure greater than listening to hits on the radio, which was to explore every gap between the wooden boards of the wall when Aunt Matilde and Aunt Francisca were together in their bedroom, or when Aunt Matilde, light-skinned and tall like Dad, with a full-figured beauty that intimidated me, ensconced in dresses that traced her backside, left for her job as a civil servant. Then I could spy on Aunt Francisca as she changed clothes or took long baths, I would listen to her undress, the sound of her clothes being hung on the hook on the door, the splashing of water against her body, the swish-swish of the soap in the recesses of her body. In my daydreams I could see her pitch-black hair fallen about her shoulders, the soap bubbles sliding down her shiny skin, the curls frothy as a cotton ball down where her thighs met, and then I’d fantasize about us bathing together, I could hear Aunt Francisca’s prolonged urination into the toilet and I’d imagine her sitting in there nude, I could hear the sound of her brushing her teeth and then I’d reckon that, if I were to open the door, I’d see her directly before me, with her back to me, and perhaps she wouldn’t even notice that I was watching. One time, as I lay on the floor, I pushed the bathroom door open slightly, and Aunt Francisca, naked and wet, covering herself with a towel, opened the door and shot me a severe look, So it’s you, you shameless boy. I promised myself that I’d never again perform that vile act, but the temptation was great because the house was small, Aunt Francisca’s butt was desirable, and the gaps between the boards were plentiful.
As a child, I wasn’t afraid to be at home alone with the door and windows open, or walk about nearby, pointing out hotels, stores, bars, and restaurants to the newly arrived. I’d take my faithful mutt Typhoon—white with black spots, the delight of all the boys—with me along the smoothed dirt avenues, turned to mud by the rain, listening to the crude, rhythmic music of the generators, which ensured the lights would stay on while the construction at the Saia Velha Hydroelectric Power Plant still remained incomplete. A powerful generator here, a weak one over there, further on a house lit up by oil lamps, another by gas lamps, and thus the colors of the lights painted the shadows, now blue, now various tones of yellow, white, or grey.
Especially in the early years, since there were few buildings and, thus, few lights, which were only illuminated by the generators for a few hours, their owners generally turning them off before ten at night, and since not all of the buildings even had generators, the sky was a field of stars whenever there was a new moon. Don’t point with your finger, it’ll cause warts, Aunt Francisca warned me, and then showed me Orion’s Belt and the Southern Cross.
I remember the times when I would walk through the streets late at night, back when the Free City didn’t sleep, its stores open, selling wares into the wee hours, since Brasília was built at a frenzied pace, and it was at these times that I’d watch guitar players or drumming in bars or even serenades out in front of houses on moonlit nights.
Sometimes Typhoon would lead the way, and I’d follow him through the open-air market and avenues, hearing advertisements for films and job opportunities, folk music—both baião and xaxado—and sermons blare from loudspeakers. When he was a pup, Typhoon liked to visit the shoemaker, Mr. Albuquerque de Pinho, because he could smell the leather, glue, dye, and polish, and much later, at the beginning 1959, he invariably wanted to go inside the Bom Jesus Butcher Shop to try to snatch a piece of meat.
The city’s biggest attraction, and a source of pride for me, was that it gave the impression of being the Wild West, a city straight out of American movies, which, as Dad used to say, didn’t exist in other parts of Brazil. Since it was meant to be provisional and would be destroyed once Brasília was inaugurated, all the houses and shacks—usually with roofs made of asbestos or zinc tiles, sheets of aluminum, or straw—had to be made of wood. Hence, all the conflagrations, which spread rapidly, and which I also witnessed out in the fields, where every year, a freak occurrence, the vegetation would catch fire and then shamefully sprout forth again, afraid to grow.
Back in 1957, Dad enrolled me in a class of thirty-three students at the Baptist Institute, a building made of horizontal slats of wood, with a two-tiered roof, and a single classroom, the first private school in the Free City, but he soon transferred me to a public school, the much larger Scholastic Group Number 1, or SG-1, located in the residential and administrative center, which, since it had been the first location of Newcap, came to be called Oldcap, and which also housed the SWAS restaurant—where Aunt Francisca eventually became caterer—and the headquarters of the PD, the Police Department of Newcap, later called SPB, the much-feared Special Police Force of Brasília, which, according to one version of the story, could have been responsible for the death of Valdivino, if it were indeed true that Valdivino was dead.
Dad was filled with pride about the fact that the school was a project of the architect Oscar Niemeyer, completed in just twenty days, a long, raised shoebox on stilts, inaugurated on September 21, 1957 by JK himself, who, a month later, planted a cabralea canjerana in the backyard, just a stubby thing back then, which I worshipped as if it were the god of an indigenous religion. At the time, I didn’t notice how barren the schoolyard was, that place where we had our little parties, perhaps because the sun often gave life to its colors and illuminated its sparse foliage. I woke up at six-thirty in the morning to go to school, taking my drowsiness and ignorance along with me, and when our hijinks—tossing paper airplanes and passing doodles and notes—weren’t enough to jolt me awake, I’d nod off on my desktop in the back of the classroom until it was time to head back home at two o’clock.
I made some friends, whose names I omit so that you all, the few readers of this blog, don’t waste your time with people who won’t reappear in this story. Suffice it to say that they had varied builds, abilities, and temperaments. One of them, a large clown who largely just clowned around, didn’t even need to speak, he could crack us up with just a facial expression, formed by his toucan eyes and nose. Another came to school in starched clothes and brilliantine in his well-combed hair, and I tried to imitate him at home whenever we expected a visit from Aunt Francisca’s friends, all much older than me, whom I hoped to woo. Another still was a dark-skinned kid who liked to show off his vast knowledge of curse words. To my astonishment he could list off a dozen different names for the genitals of both men and women, and would draw a triangle on the cement with chalk, with streaks all over it, like sunrays, It’s a pussy, he’d say. A teacher noticed one of these chalk drawings one day and wanted to know who had done it, at which point I believed that the drawing faithfully represented the female genitalia, since even the teacher had recognized it. There was also a violent sort, always ready to stir up a fight, who gave everybody nicknames and once yelled at me, Come here, Joli, gesturing with his fingers as if he were calling for a dog. I slapped him square in the face and threw him on the ground, we scuffled and dirtied ourselves in the mud, his nose was bloody and his shirt ripped, and instead of him having to explain himself, I was the one who was sent to the
principal’s office. I’ll never forget the chubby, nervous, effeminate kid who liked to recite poems, rolling his eyes and gesturing exaggeratedly with his arms, nor the big fat boy with a baritone voice who sang at school festivities, a talented student in every subject and the teacher’s pet, always protected and praised by her. I even have recent news about that guy: he became a lawyer. My best friend was a sports star, strong and tall, with a wide face and big ears, who always wanted me to play soccer with him in the afternoon. I didn’t trust any of them, except for him. He’s an engineer now and lives in Goiânia. I don’t remember anything about anyone else. As for me, I was always out on the streets and only stood out because of my knowledge of the city’s avenues, and also because I was the smallest of them all. Even though I never studied, I wasn’t among the worst in the class and I’d cry in secret whenever Aunt Francisca saw my report card and complained about my grades.
The blog reader who objected to this new paragraph will note that, for the most part, I’ve incorporated the revision he suggested. I agree that I don’t need to go into detail about my childhood imagination in regard to the female sex, especially if I’m unable to treat the subject delicately. However, I’ll retain the basic observation made: since there were more families in Oldcap, I saw more women and kids out on the street than I did in the Free City. On account of the girl with black braids who rode around on a man’s bicycle, I began to dream of owning a bicycle. If I were to pedal beside her on Central Avenue in the Free City, she would look at me with her black eyes and smile at me, I would embrace her, she was so pretty, and she would be my first girlfriend. So I asked Dad to get me a bicycle as a present; I’d ride to school all by myself and cross paths with the girl with braids, I’d heard that women could reach orgasm rubbing their privates on the bicycle seat, and I would be right beside her, pedaling, pedaling away, she would smile at me again, and we’d get off our bicycles and kiss passionately like they did in the movies that Aunt Francisca forbade me from seeing.
Whenever I got good grades, I’d ask Dad again to buy me a bicycle, as a present, a present that never came, but in recompense Dad rewarded me by taking me to the National Radio amateur talent shows on Sundays, where we’d watch the stage show from the packed auditorium, or else we’d go to a football game and cheer for Guará, a team that competed for the championship against various other teams that were named for construction firms, and after the game we’d go see a movie at the Brasília Cinema, located on the central city block, or else at the Countess Cinema or the Trailblazer Cinema, which was past the market and close to the end of one side of the city.
On the exact opposite end, a little removed from the city proper, was a place that existed only in my imagination, for going anywhere near it was the biggest of the various prohibitions that Aunt Francisca had decreed for me. I knew that Dad sometimes frequented that red-light district, known as Placa da Mercedes, and had become the associate of a corpulent, mustachioed man who did business out there. How can you go into business with a guy like that?, Aunt Francisca demanded of him one day, He gave up the brothel a long time ago, Francisca, he’s in the construction business now, I don’t know about that, sounds fishy to me. I suspected that Aunt Francisca was right and later on I also thought that that guy, in one of the possible scenarios, had some involvement in Valdivino’s murder, if it really was a murder.
For me, one of the differences between the region of the Das Almas River and Brasília was that here there weren’t any almas, any souls. Dad was the one who explained it to me. Dad, are dead souls going to appear here in our house?, I asked him. What souls, child, are you going crazy? The kinds of souls that used to appear in Ceres, that Aunt Francisca once said she saw. Have you ever seen one? Not me, but Valdivino said he did. It must have been back in Bahia, because they don’t exist here. But you’ve never seen one, Dad? No, and you’re going to be disappointed: dead souls don’t exist in Brasília. Is it because they don’t like new cities?
I was no longer afraid of dead souls, but when they said that Valdivino had possibly died, I feared that he would appear to me late at night or that he’d come pay a visit to Aunt Francisca, passing right through the zinc roof-tiles or wooden walls.
Amid much forgetfulness, these were some of my memories, but none were so present for me as the ones that Dad called to mind when he spoke, between four walls, about the suspected murder of Valdivino around the time of the inauguration of Brasília and the dazzling story of the Prophetess of the Garden of Salvation, according to whom Valdivino hadn’t died and perhaps never would, that he was wandering aimlessly around the Central Plateau, in search of Z, the lost city. Well, that’s not true, more vivid than these memories was the recollection of that episode with Aunt Matilde, during the wee hours of the morning on the day before the inauguration of Brasília, parading around her bounteous breasts and backside in the room where I slept, thus beginning a story that would only be carried to its conclusion many years later, as I’ll have the opportunity to discuss further on. I felt more distance between the two of us than between me and Aunt Francisca, she had taken on some of the mannerisms of someone from Rio, said things that I didn’t understand, and maybe for that reason I was afraid to approach her, I never dared play with her, pinch her, or pull her hair, as I did with Aunt Francisca. I had always slept there in the living room in a hammock, but on that night, for the first time, I was sleeping on a new mattress that had been placed on the floor, one of four mattresses that had arrived at the house that day, since, as there were no vacancies at the hotels, Newcap had bought twenty thousand mattresses to give out for free to residents who would accommodate visitors, and Aunt Francisca had made up a story about receiving three nieces from Minas Gerais.
Aunt Matilde came in from the street—she had gone out with her boyfriend Roberto, an engineer friend of Dad’s—everyone was already asleep and she opened the door slowly, trying not to make any noise, then appeared like a dream from the other side of the china cabinet in the darkness of the living room, still within my field of vision. I heard the sound of her hands pulling off her tight skirt, and I leisurely examined her silhouette from bottom to top, from her pointy-toed high-heeled shoes—their red color tinted by the darkness—her silk stockings rose up her long, shapely legs, and her skirt had already started to slide down, tight against her buttocks. Did she notice that my eyes were half open? I remained motionless, only adjusting the position of my eyes and head to better see the dance of her body, which went a few steps forward, then a few steps back, as in a square dance, now displaying her stomach, now her back, I was afraid she’d hear my heavy breathing, sometimes part of her body would disappear behind the hi-fi, and I had to strain my neck to see the gauzy shadows of another article of clothing as it fell from her body, her thighs came in and out of my field of vision, I saw her arms raised to the roof as she took off her blouse, and then her slender waist came into view, a little later her hips joined the playful game of revealing then hiding themselves, just to torment me, Get naked, completely naked for me, Aunt Matilde!, I screamed silently in my reverie, and suddenly, liberated from the tight fabric, her hips came into plain view, and my eyes slid down her thick thighs, which turned into stick-thin legs by the time they reached the ground, just like furniture legs, she was barefoot at this point, her shoes tossed to the right side of the living room, then she bent over to pick up her shoes, and two mountainous buttocks raised up majestically right in front of me. I held my breath, but opened my eyes wide to see that butt, which had grown larger along with my desire. Shh! I saw Aunt Matilde in front of me, naked, with her finger on her lips, telling me to be quiet, whispering to me, Don’t look, little boy, and there came those thick thighs walking towards me, my eyes fixed on her darkened sex, on the breasts that Aunt Matilde’s curvy body seemed to be offering up to me. Shh! she repeated, a shiver went up my spine, my heart pounded, I could smell her perfume, Aunt Matilde naked, completely naked, right in front of me, and what if Dad woke up? What if Aunt Francisca wal
ked into the living room right then when Aunt Matilde, naked, completely naked, was leaning over me with her ample breasts? But Dad and Aunt Francisca were asleep, and the silence of the house was only broken by the sound of my breath. I sat up, opened my eyes, saw close up the large, white thighs of Aunt Matilde, who was squatting beside me, her knees now grazing the mattress, my eyes bulging, as if they wished to read, study, and never forget every millimeter of that body. Shh! Flustered, I rubbed my eyes, Aunt Matilde even closer now, the smell of her skin more powerful, the air rarefied, and then Aunt Matilde’s pointy breasts lightly touched my face, going up and down along it, palpitating. I could smell alcohol, and Aunt Matilde looked beautifully timid, her hair disheveled and down around her shoulders. I was useless, I wanted to grab Aunt Matilde, attack her like a fierce lion, grab her sex, suck freely on those tits, which were pointing toward my lips. She was wildly beautiful, I sat up on the mattress and timidly stared at her; then I looked more, my gaze traversing the grey color of the night, it was the first time that I had seen nudity so close up and amplified. Aunt Matilde then backed away, standing up, her thighs rising like tall trees, and then she again leaned over me, all of a sudden, put my hands on her breasts and whispered, That’s what you want, isn’t it, you shameless little boy, that’s it, isn’t it? She pulled my head forcefully onto her breasts and demanded, Go ahead, suck! My lips barely grazed the nipples of those fleshy breasts, I wonder if milk will come out of them? That’s what I thought, but I didn’t have the guts, and I stayed awake all night yearning for Aunt Matilde’s tits and feeling the pleasure of sin. In the morning, Aunt Matilde sternly told me, You’ll be sorry if you tell your dad what you did. I hadn’t done anything, and I didn’t intend to tell Dad anything about it, ever, but I understood that I had sinned, that I had started down an evil path and that a terrible punishment awaited me. I hoped that there would be time for the priest to forgive me before I died, and suddenly hell appeared before me, complete with caverns, serpents wrapping themselves around my legs, and cauldrons, their enormous flames consuming me, demons stirring them with iron tridents that were glowing hot, a massive sense of guilt burned as hot as that fire and took charge of me, I remembered what my friends used to tell me as we left our catechism classes, about the host that transformed into a bloody piece of flesh when it approached a sinner’s tongue, the wrath of God unleashed on those who took communion without confessing, or in even more drastic fashion, as in the case of the boy who was run over by a tractor.