Free City

by João Almino

  Why all the interest in Valdivino? I imagined Valdivino sucking on Aunt Francisca’s breasts, and her delighting in that act, which I didn’t have the courage to do with Aunt Matilde in the wee hours of the day before. I liked Valdivino because he was affectionate towards me, but at that moment I wanted him to die, to disappear from my life, he wanted to steal Aunt Francisca from me, and I didn’t think that he deserved her.

  Roberto and Dad were going to march in the parade with the people from Newcap, even though Dad wasn’t a Newcap employee. It wasn’t easy for Vadivino to get permission to march, Aunt Francisca clarified.

  It was a hot day, the sun was casting lively colors upon the city, and I was carried along, like a strand of cotton in the wind, by the rhythm of the crowd. As the blog-reader who had abandoned me but has now starting following me again pointed out, Brasília had one hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, but there were two hundred thousand people spread throughout its major thoroughfares and plazas.

  Later on, the clouds began to turn shades of yellow, orange, and pink, suddenly a rainbow cut across the sky from one end to the other, planes passed overhead, sketching the outline of the Pilot Plan with their exhaust, the column of Naval riflemen who had come from Rio de Janeiro on foot presented a diploma to JK, and then my aunts and I managed to settle down in a good spot to watch the parade on the southern side of Grand Axis Highway.

  As each group approached, Aunt Francisca would comment that perhaps Valdivino would be part of it. After five thousand soldiers, more than ten thousand workers passed by with the tools of their trade, then students, and miles and miles of tractors, jeeps, eighteen-wheelers, cranes, and machines made for leveling, digging, transporting, and building, but no sign of Valdivino.

  The leaders of Newcap also passed by, as well as architects Oscar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa, and Dad and Roberto marched past with the Newcap employees, as expected. We waved and yelled to them and were pleased when Dad waved back. I felt intimately satisfied that Aunt Francisca hadn’t seen Valdivino march past, although it bothered me that his absence occupied so much of our conversation.

  At six o’clock, while the planes from the squadron with the exhaust smoke streaked the sky with white and blue, the Naval Rifle Corps Band played for the crowd, and the athletes arrived with the “flame that symbolized national unity” together with the military columns that had come from Rio and Salvador on foot, it looked like it was going to rain, We forgot to bring the umbrellas, said Aunt Francisca, but the sky began to strip off its black garments little by little, and the weather cleared up once again.

  Around seven in the evening, my aunts and I accompanied a river of people from the Grand Axis Highway to the bus station. Soon after, I’m not sure if it was seven-thirty or eight o’clock, they began to set off over twenty tons of fireworks, tracing colorful designs in the sky like I’d never seen before. My aunts sang on the Monumental Axis Highway, right in front of the bus station, and a few other people followed suit. Aunt Francisca, her dress cinched tight around her waist with a white belt, danced nimbly, comfortable in her flat-heeled shoes, spinning in her full-skirted dress with its blue pattern, which revealed the bottom of her slip. Aunt Matilde, balancing on her black high-heeled shoes, shook her large breasts, which were delineated by her lustrous dress. It was a mint-colored satin with black straps, with a narrow strip of the same black fabric at her breasts, and three buttons, also black, running down from the low neckline. The slight honeycomb pleating below the waist flattened her stomach and accentuated her backside. I also tried out some dance steps, and there we remained, in song and dance, until, at nine at night, an enormous party began at the bus station.

  At that point we joined the crowd at the Three Powers Plaza in hopes of meeting up with Dad and Roberto. The two of them had been invited to a state reception that the president was throwing for three thousand people at the Planalto Palace, Dad being among the small group of invited guests from the local press. Out in the plaza it was said that “Little Tony from the Pharmacy,” Antonio Soares Neto, had arrived at the Palace, the same guy who, on April 4, 1955, at a rally in Jataí, Goiás, asked then-candidate JK if, when elected, he would move the capital of Brazil out there to the Central Plateau of Goiás, thus introducing that topic into the campaign for the first time.

  Before we could take notice of it, JK had already descended the ramp of the Palace and was heading in our direction. Aunt Francisca kneeled before him. JK, smiling, held out his hands to her, which she kissed, then helped her up and embraced her as if he had known her for ages. He also embraced Aunt Matilde, then left, doing the same throughout the plaza, ever smiling. Aunt Francisca even mentioned something about introducing me to the president, but the opportunity had already passed.

  The three of us stayed there until two in the morning, when they announced that the president had left the party, but that there was still dancing going on inside—we later learned that it had lasted almost until sunrise. I recall that as we returned home, Aunt Francisca was still lamenting the fact that we hadn’t seen Valdivino march in the parade. Do you think that something happened to him?, now it was Aunt Francisca asking this, as if she were repeating the foreboding that Aunt Matilde had felt the night before.

  After inauguration day, or rather, on April 22, in the early afternoon, when Dad arrived in his Ford Coupe, I noticed that he was restless, he spent hours rooting around in the boxes where he kept his notebooks and called me over to show me the hole where he was burying all his papers. He was burying his very soul there with those papers.

  He told Aunt Matilde and Aunt Francisca about his suspicions, causing much commotion. For me, it was a mystery as to why Dad himself didn’t just publish what he knew about Valdivino in the Tribune or even in the newspaper that had just been founded, the Correio Braziliense, the inauguration of which he’d attended, and I was frightened by Aunt Francisca’s comment days later, I think Valdivino was killed, family is sacred, you can’t mix it with sex.

  I imagined Valdivino with his mouth on the breasts of some aunt of his and became terrified. Could it be that the woman who came to get him in the Three Powers Plaza was his aunt? What would happen to me if what occurred between me and Aunt Matilde were discovered? Ever since then, the possible death of Valdivino, the inauguration of Brasília, and Aunt Matilde’s breasts have been mixed together in my head, along with my own guilt for having wished so intensely for the death of Valdivino, who only wanted the best for me. Ruminating on my guilt, I developed a singular fixation: one day I would discover what truly happened to Valdivino, that is, until Dad came back under suspicion.

  Third Night: Landscapes with Termite Mounds

  On the third night, between four dingy white walls, Dad recalled the day that we met Valdivino, at the end of October in 1956, a month that had begun with President JK’s visit to Brasília, the month in which Catetinho was built, and soon after Dad had returned from Luziânia with Bernardo Sayão, bringing back construction materials for the first building projects.

  Dad sometimes took me out hunting around the Free City, and every once in a while we’d make it out to the banks of the São Bartolomeu River, but on this occasion he decided to go on an even longer expedition, out toward the Descoberto River to the southeast.

  We took Typhoon, our guns, and two mules we borrowed, on whose backs we traveled for more than a day and a half, with five days worth of provisions.

  Typhoon barked at the raccoons and possums, as well as the red-dirt whirlwinds that spun from one place to another. We shot a guinea pig and a giant armadillo, which was all we took on the outbound trip.

  In those days, the virgin savannah was a treasure trove of animals. We smelled a skunk, managed to see a stag, a maned wolf, and a sloth hanging from the branch of a peppertree, as well as an enormous amount of birds perched up in tortuous, gnarled trees of faded colors, many of them defoliated, covered in thick, wrinkled bark. There, in the smaller trees, as well as in the bigger ones near creeks, and up in the
jatobá trees and pacara earpod trees, I saw every bird that perched or flew, following them with my slingshot, though I never managed to hit them, or else at times I purposefully refrained from shooting when I thought they were too pretty to die. We saw green parakeets with yellow elbows, blackbirds, saffron finches, mockingbirds, hyacinth macaws, parrots, vultures, yellow-headed caracaras, pygmy owls, a red-headed woodpecker, and a black ani, which Dad said ate the ticks off of other animals. We spent the night at a spot more than halfway to the Descoberto River.

  The next day, on trails that followed along the banks of the river, I saw, for the first time, the horned dung beetle and the black dung beetle—on piles of animal dung—I found a grasshopper and a praying mantis, and we came across termites and wasps.

  As we rode upstream alongside the Jaguar Grove Creek toward the headwaters, the tree frogs and cane toads began to celebrate our arrival. It was already starting to get dark, and we found a flat, clear spot that was open to the sky, where tons of fireflies were keeping watch over the forest. We gave the mules corn, found a spot for them, ate cheese, and made sure the provisions were nice and safeguarded, then spread out our tarps on the ground and fell asleep looking up at the starry sky, molested by mosquitoes, horseflies, and a few leafcutter ants.

  We awoke to Typhoon barking in the early light at five in the morning, and caught sight of a slender young man, all of seventeen or eighteen years old, up on his feet, as if he had been keeping watch. Good morning, I was holed up here, ready to shoot, he yelled over to Dad in his sharp voice, Why were you holed up?, asked Dad, distrustful, I passed by here really early and saw that there was a jaguar closing in, it was a good thing she didn’t have cubs, and wasn’t in heat, and wasn’t with a male, I managed to scare off the damn thing, pumas, panthers, and ocelots all pass through here, they come to drink water from the creek, I was worried about you two, so I kept watch, since another one could pass by, right? You can’t sleep out in the open out here, they don’t like my meat, since I hardly have any meat at all on my bones, and what I do have is too tough, but they’d have a field day with you two.

  That’s how the conversation began, his name was Valdivino, he’d become separated from his traveling companion, a woman, and had been walking all night long, but that was normal for him, he often stayed up all night, walked without stopping to rest, listening to the babbling of the rivers and learning about plants and animals, his greatest passion. He concealed his slim body in an oversized shirt and pants, and his round, shifty eyes radiated sincerity and friendship. He told us that he’d come out here with a group to help Master Yokaanam found the city of Universal Brotherhood, for the master had created the Eclectic Doctrine of the Americas, which opened the way to the Just and Brotherly Unification of All the Religions and Schools of the Planet, and he, Valdivino, had come to work on the construction of the city, or, more precisely, on the construction of the church, for it had come to him in a dream that it was his destiny to build churches and cathedrals. Construction was going to start on November 4, upon the arrival of the Caravan of Pilgrims. The pilgrims were coming on a special train that would stop for the night at Leopoldo de Bulhões, then continue on to Anápolis. From there to the Campo Limpo farm—a little to the south from where we were, close to Santo Antônio de Montes Claros, where they were going to set up over seventy tents—the pilgrims, with Master Yokanaam at the lead, were going to travel in six open-backed semi-trucks, as well as a bus for children and the elderly.

  Valdivino and his friend had initially left Bahia for Rio in the back of a flatbed truck, along with hundreds of their countrymen, and there they’d joined the Eclectic Universal Spiritist Brotherhood and learned the rites of Spiritism and umbanda. When, soon after, the Brotherhood decided to found a holy city in the Central Plateau, the two of them obtained authorization from Master Yokaanam to come along as pioneers, to assist him in his mission of the moral and spiritual salvation and renewal of humanity before the end of time, For the Eclectic City shall be the New Jerusalem, and Yokaanam prophesied: all shall come to an end when the star passes by, said Valdivino, What religion do you all practice?, asked Dad, It’s not a religion, it’s a mixture of the best of all religions, so that there can be universal harmony among them.

  Valdivino helped Dad start a campfire, which they used to grill up the guinea pig we’d brought with us and two field doves that Valdivino had shot. He had also brought cassava flour and a block of raw brown sugar, and Dad laid our provisions out in dishes on the ground, which included some jerky that Aunt Francisca had made. I made the trip by train, one of the first to come from Rio to Anápolis, accompanied by my only true lifelong friend, and we set ourselves up at the Campo Limpo farm, before everyone else arrived. The two of us and twenty or so other people have already set up the first tents, explained Valdivino.

  When we spotted a jararaca viper coiled up on a rock, Valdivino armed himself with a stick, but eventually decided that it wasn’t necessary to kill it, since it was far enough away from us. There are also vine snakes, rattlesnakes, and bushmaster vipers out here, said Dad, yellow-headed caracaras and other kinds of falcons, as well as the greater rheas and seriemas, are the animals that prey on those snakes.

  Still grilling his field dove, Valdivino explained, This friend of mine is much older than I am, but that doesn’t matter to me, I just don’t know if I want to live forever with her in the Eclectic City, she gets on my nerves but I think I’d be lost without her.

  He was religious, but didn’t attend just one church, because God was present wherever there was kindness, and there was kindness in all the churches, All faiths and all religions are true, to which Dad objected, How can all religions be true if each one considers its God to be the only true God, if one faith is true, then the others have to be false, Are you Catholic, Mr. Moacyr?, I used to be, But you, Sir, must believe in God, because you can be sure of this, Sir, that there are many gods and one God who is above all others, the creator, And who created that God?, asked Dad, you must agree that he would have to be more complex than all of creation, so then how could he have come into being?, What are you saying, Mr. Moacyr?, In your commune, how are you going to treat those who don’t believe, like me?, You’re a good man, Mr. Moacyr, that’s easy to see, I’ll convert you yet, Sir.

  Dad just smiled, and the irony in his smile was clearly visible, Sir, have you ever heard of the City of Z?, asked Valdivino, No, Well it’s a lost city that’s somewhere in this region, near the Araguaia River, where there was once a great civilization, and it seems that the explorer who came out here to discover this city founded a theosophical community where, like ours, there is respect for all religions, one day I’m going to find that lost city.

  Valdivino accompanied us on the stretch along the creek and for a part of the return trip, always smiling, there was no malice, or distrust, or irony in his smile, it was a sweet smile, which perhaps concealed many difficulties and afflictions, Are you married, Sir? No, and João is my adopted son, But did you have a special woman in your life, Sir?, I’ve already forgotten about that, You should get yourself a beautiful woman, Sir, a woman that you really want to love, Too many people compete for the affections of beautiful women, they just end up leaving you for someone else, No, you’re mistaken, Sir, they’re faithful because they learned from an early age to defend themselves against the seductions of men, Alright then, I’ll see if I can’t catch hold of one, but it’s not easy, Valdivino, what beautiful woman is going to want to live out here in the Wild West?, Mine came out here, if you ever saw her you’d fall in love with her, but I don’t want that to happen, you can fall in love with any woman you want, Sir, just not her, because if I didn’t have her, I don’t know what would become of me, women are our future and our salvation, Mr. Moacyr, don’t you think? The conversation was painful for Dad, who had been through an extremely bitter romantic experience, But there are women of all kinds, and sometimes there are great disappointments, Without women we’re not very interesting, Aunt Matilde
is going to come here from Rio, I said to Valdivino—I either said it just to say something or simply because we were talking about women.

  Every once in a while Valdivino would spot a flower and leave the trail to pick it, later he classified them by colors, gathering together yellow ones of different shapes and sizes, like the yellow rhubarb and the pau-terra-da-folha-larga, or the ones with a yellow center, like the wolf apple (violet, with a little yellow wiener in the middle), the santa rita flower (pink, with yellow fuzz), the candombá (white, also with yellow fluff), and the canela-de-ema (light violet with a yellow bud), and to these he added whites ones, the white ipê, the velvety flor-do-pau, and the Cerrado orchid, as well as violet ones, the roxinha, the arnica, and some morning glories.

  I’m going to give these to my friend, he said, she likes white, yellow, and purple. Then he also picked a mimosa (a downy, pink ball), a heart pea (which also blossomed spherically, but was a reddish-orange color), and mixed in some burheads. Take these for yourself, João, he tousled my hair and put his arm around my shoulders as if we were already old friends, later he snatched up a chamomile, which was a dingy off-white color—as well as some showerhead and clitoria flowers—and wanted to give them to Dad. Give them to João, Dad told him, You can make a bouquet of dried flowers with these, said Valdivino.

  My hands were already full of flowers, so Dad found a place for them on the back of one of the mules, The Descoberto River flows into the Corumbá, which, just like the São Bartolomeu, empties into the Paranaíba, which then descends into the Rio de la Plata basin, explained Dad, It’s very beautiful here, but the soil is no good, said Valdivino, Dad replied, Mr. Israel Pinheiro is going to bring in some Japanese who will take care of that.