Free City

by João Almino

  Calm down, think it through, talk to the young woman, It’s not something that can be talked over, Mr. Moacyr, her dad is fuming mad, Well, I can see if they have any use for you out on the highway, but I can’t promise anything, construction is almost done out there.

  I don’t know what women see in him, Dad said to Aunt Matilde when he arrived home. Typhoon barked three times, as if in protest. He’s simple-minded, naïve, but he really is a sensitive young man, and it’s not just Francisca who thinks so, replied Aunt Matilde.

  The next day, as expected, Dad took off in a twin-engine plane and after a couple of hours arrived at the construction site of the Belém-Brasília highway. We’re ready for this challenge, Moacyr, said Sayão, wearing khaki canvas pants, boots, and a long-sleeved white shirt that was open at the chest, the sleeves rolled up over the elbow, displaying his muscular arms, we have a helicopter and a mail-plane, and once we’re finished with all this customs bureaucracy, fifty-four machines are going to arrive here from Santos.

  Dad felt buried by all the vegetation, his sweat flowing in rivulets in that humid, end-of-year heat. In the jungle there was an intensity and density that contrasted with the emptiness of the Plateau and it instilled fear in him. He always expected some surprise as he walked around, a falling branch, the appearance of some animal, some movement that would shatter the mysterious permanence of the jungle. He heard the constant rustling, an atonal symphony pierced through by various melodies of whistles and warbles, of sounds that buzzed in his ears or softened almost to the point of silence, and he could smell the humidity, the rotting wood and animals, the scents of flowers, fruits, and other essences that were still unknown to him. The diffused radiance of a sunbeam would twinkle, then all of a sudden thunder would roar, and the rain would begin to pour forth. Stream upon stream of water would descend between the leaves like transparent curtains, cleaning the forest with their wet, heavy sadness, and once the rains made their way to other regions, thick drops would continue to fall for some time, one by one, rhythmically, like monotonous notes. The darkness of the night was blacker than Dad had ever seen before, it swallowed up the trees, erasing the contours of objects out there where the curious or impatient eye of an animal would sometimes shine. The forest was his enemy, Dad concluded, the enemy of all those who were there, it needed to be fought against and defeated by the highway.

  Dad stayed out in the jungle a little over a month, time enough to witness the terrible accident. It was January 15, 1959, and they were smack in the middle of the jungle in the state of Pará, thirty kilometers from the border of the state of Maranhão, between Imperatriz and Guamá, at a spot where they were finishing work on a camp where, on February 1, the two highways would meet up, the one from Belém, in the north, and the other from Brasília, in the south, and Bernardo Sayão, fifty-seven years old at that point, was in the door of his tent, which he had relocated the day before so that he could be closer to accompany the work in progress. A little before noon, Dad made his way up there, together with a topographer and an engineer, and around one o’clock, as they were watching the felling of a gigantic tree that was stuck to other trees by vines and parasites, a dry branch, weighing forty-five kilos and about two meters long, broke free from a nearby tree, fell ferociously through the air, and hit Bernardo Sayão’s head as it came down, as well as his left arm and leg.

  There was little to be done for Sayão out there in that region. They had to wait until three in the afternoon when an airplane spotted the commotion below and sent a helicopter out to them a few hours later. Sayão was transported to Açailândia, in Maranhão, and died on board the helicopter around seven in the evening.

  Dad had the lumberjacks help him erect, at the spot of the accident, a large cross made with the murderous branch.

  Only the next day, January 16, did the body arrive in Brasília. In the Free City, where the commotion had spread throughout every house, there was a candlelight vigil in the Don Bosco church.

  That branch that killed Sayão, Aunt Matilde explained to me, is “the enchanted stick,” a vengeful stick that is mentioned by a character in a book by Monteiro Lobato, I’m going to give you a copy of the book Urupês as a present, so you can read the story called “The Revenge of the Peroba Tree.” She had a space set apart on one of the shelves in her room for about a dozen books, which I would see her leaf through on the weekends. She was the only one in the house who read works of fiction, a quality that I only came to value when, as I was just getting started with my professional life, I met up with Aunt Matilde again many years later.

  Valdivino came by the house, with dark circles under his sad, sunken eyes. For him, it was as if Brasília had died before it was even born.

  On that day, Typhoon whined because he wanted to go with us to the wake, and I wanted to take him, but Dad was categorical, There’s no place for a dog there. We leashed him to a post at the back of the house, where he kept the monkey and the macaws company.

  After we set off for church on foot, Dad accelerated his step, distancing himself from me and my aunts, and Valdivino ran up to him to talk about Carminha, to say that Carminha is beautiful, yessir, Mr. Moacyr, she’s really young, but she has the body of a grown woman, with lots of curves and tricks, which he should have realized right from the start were the tricks of a woman who attracts a lot of men and isn’t satisfied with just one, someone who’s excessively desirous, with a very feminine way about her, daring and impertinent, unable to conform to the rigidity of morals and religion. Only later did he realize that her gaze wasn’t all that innocent, nor were the smiles on that dark-skinned face, her shapely arms, or those breasts that were almost spilling out of her blouse. She flaunted her beauty, she would run her tongue over her lips, lower her eyes to the side and bat her eyelashes, smile bashfully as if cloaking herself in modesty and shyness, the costume of a virginal, virtuous woman, but her shamelessness still shined through in her gestures and skillfulness, in the desire that overflowed from her entire body, that heat that couldn’t be contained, in the heaving of her breasts. She was a woman who’d been with many, capable of orgies even. Carminha is pregnant, Mr. Moacyr, and a laborer friend of mine told me that she goes out to the warehouse almost every night, that he himself knew a number of guys who used to go meet up with her there, she’d even given it up to five guys at once, and had given it up to Aristotle, that guy from the SPB I share a room with, it turns out the whole thing was a set-up concocted by Aristotle, the purpose was to get me to marry her, to help the guy rid himself of that low woman, I thought about denouncing that lowlife, but to whom, Mr. Moacyr?, there’s no justice there, justice is meted out by the SPB themselves, I’m thinking about fleeing, I just don’t know where to.

  They were already nearing the church, and Valdivino began to cry. Dad put his hands on Valdivino’s shoulders, We’ll find a way out of this, he said, You tricked me, I said to Aristotle, you got Carminha pregnant—Valdivino was now sobbing—and then he threatened me, Mr. Moacyr, he told me: Now don’t go around making up stories, you shameless bastard, you don’t know who you’re dealing with here, you think you can fuck that girl and just get off scot-free? That you can just weasel out of it by lying? If you start to spread that story around, the guys around here will cut your balls off, and I’ll take you straight to jail.

  They’d already arrived in front of the church, which was full of people, and Aunt Francisca, Aunt Matilde, and I joined them. Upon seeing Valdivino cry, Aunt Francisca’s eyes filled with tears, but she wasn’t the only one, for, as we managed to make our way through the crowd to attend the wake, I noticed that almost all the residents of the Free City were crying.

  Following the wake, we left for the Pilot Plan in a caravan, for the funeral Mass was going to be at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, between blocks 307 and 308, the first completed architectural work of the Pilot Plan. Since you like building churches so much, Valdivino, you should have worked on this one, said Aunt Matilde as we arrived there, I had to decide
, either stay on at the Palace or work on this little church, and, when I went to inquire about it, construction here was almost done.

  It was the first time we’d visited that sanctuary. We admired its delicacy, its roof slab held up by only three pillars, its shape, which looked like the habits worn by the Daughters of Charity, and some details that Roberto had once mentioned to Aunt Matilde: images of the divine dove and the nativity star, which were repeated on the exterior blue and white wall tiles designed by Athos Bulcão, as well as the painting by Alfredo Volpi on the interior walls—angels, multicolored pennants, and Our Lady with baby Jesus on her lap, both of them without faces. It was the first Catholic sanctuary of the future capital, built in a hundred days and sanctified on June 28 of that year, 1958, in accordance with a promise made by the first lady, Dona Sarah Kubitschek—and the place where Friar Demétrio, a Capuchin monk with a goatee who always arrived on his motorcycle, would say Mass in the years that followed.

  Valdivino cut through the crowd with his slender body—he wanted to see Bernardo Sayão’s body—and soon returned, upset because it wasn’t an open-casket.

  At first we thought that Sayão was going to be buried in the Planaltina cemetery, as was done, up to that point, with the dead from Brasília and the Free City. Later we found out that Israel Pinheiro, the president of Newcap, intended to bury him in Goiânia, but the news was eventually confirmed that President JK, who’d just arrived in Brasília, had given the order to bury him in the parcel of land that Sayão himself had staked out, less than two years before, as the future cemetery of Brasília, the Field of Hope, which would thus be inaugurated with his burial.

  Mr. Moacyr, nobody’s seen what’s in that casket, they won’t open it, everyone thinks that there’s no body in there at all, just stones or a tree trunk, Don’t talk nonsense, Valdivino, his family members were the ones who decided against an open casket, It’s not nonsense, not at all, Mr. Moacyr, I heard that he was abducted by Indians or that he was swallowed up by a jaguar, Those are just lies, forget about them, the only reason they won’t open the casket is that, before it arrived here, the body had been deteriorating in the heat for over twelve hours, that’s why the casket wasn’t opened, not even by the family, And they’re saying that there was no death certificate, insisted Valdivino, That’s because it was dispensed with, since he died at the battle front, which is the right thing to do, because he hated unnecessary paperwork, explained Dad, But the certificate is the proof that he died, are you saying that no one wanted to confirm that?, I’m confirming it, replied Dad, I don’t believe it, you’re hiding the truth, too, Sir, Don’t you trust me, Valdivino? I don’t trust you, I don’t trust you at all, Well then, you don’t deserve my friendship, Okay then, I don’t deserve it—and then he took off without saying goodbye to any of us, You’re just upset, Valdivino, stop by the house so we can talk, we’ll all go to the burial together tomorrow, Dad replied, raising his voice to be heard as Valdivino walked away.

  It was the first time we’d ever seen Valdivino in that state. He didn’t seem like the same tranquil, well-mannered young man that we all knew, That young man is not well, Dad said to Aunt Matilde.

  The next day, Saturday, January 17, Valdivino didn’t show up. Aunt Matilde decided to stay home, but I went with Dad and Aunt Francisca to the Field of Hope, where it had been necessary to have tractors working all night to open up a path through all the overgrown vegetation.

  Brasília had never witnessed, and perhaps never would again, such a well-attended burial. The cemetery was a sea of thirty thousand people.

  We’re never going to be able to find Valdivino in the middle of this crowd, said Aunt Francisca, If he needs us, he’ll find us, replied Dad, thinking of the entanglement that Valdivino had gotten himself into.

  For the first time ever, my blog is filled with comments, but this isn’t a biography of Bernardo Sayão, and, for me, it’s sufficient to narrate the effects that his death had on my family, I’m not going to waste time saying that so-and-so has confirmed the impressions that I’ve communicated here about his personality, nor am I going to type out page after page of facts that will be used more ably by a historian, or even by me sometime in the future, in one of my newspaper articles. As for the other comments made, which are limited to “cool, wow, love it, beautiful, congrats,” what could they possibly add to these pages?

  With the death of Sayão and the sadness that took hold of Dad, Aunt Francisca, me, and even Aunt Matilde, Dad started sleeping at our house every day, for sadness is capable of bringing people together, and I believe that it was sadness that softened Aunt Francisca’s heart, that made her accept Dad’s return without question.

  Two weeks after the death of Bernardo Sayão, when I was feeling sad and had even cried in secret because the monkey that Dad had brought back from the jungle had died of the flu, Dad came home ecstatic, bearing news that, as planned, the Belém-Brasília had been inaugurated on January 31, and that, by order of the president, it was now called the Bernardo Sayão Highway, This way his name is immortalized, it’s more than just . . . Then he read us the article, on that day JK himself, beaming with pride, had knocked down an old jatoba tree at the juncture of the north and south lines of the highway, he had given the order to knock down the very first tree and was knocking down the last one himself, as the article put it. Seated in the tractor, he had carefully secured the trunk of the tree, which was still upright at that point, then engaged the tracks of the tractor and advanced on the tree resolutely, the jatoba hesitated a bit, but then the tree began to keel over, the pronouncement of its death.

  I listened to the story and got scared that the next victim of “the enchanted stick” would be the president, since in the Monteiro Lobato story that Aunt Matilde had given me, I’d read the following:

  In every section of forest . . . there is a vengeful stick that punishes the evil deeds of men . . . It is the enchanted stick. The unlucky person who happens to swing an axe into the core of that tree might as well deliver his soul over to the devil, ‘cause it’s lost. Whether the person gets run through with a jagged point or gets their head cracked open by a dead branch falling from on high right then and there, or, much later, gets done in by objects fashioned out of the wood, there’s no escape. It’s no use to be on guard, the disaster, sooner or later, will ensnare the marked man.

  On February 10, the Tuesday of Carnival, my aunts and I, as well as Typhoon, were at home when Valdivino showed up looking like an apparition. The Carnivals in the Free City, as I’ve said, weren’t as lively as the São João festival, and for that reason we usually stayed home, listening to the radio or the phonograph. Dad and Aunt Matilde, together with her boyfriend, had gone out to the balls the night before, but it was morning when Valdivino showed up, and Aunt Matilde, who had just woken up, her hair still uncombed and wearing a nightgown, was listening to the Carnival hits with me: “Mama, I’m gonna go shopping/ I won’t take long/ Ha! Ha! Ha!/ Said Maria/ And every day she was late for dinner/ Riding round on the scooter seat/ Party’s at Zezé’s house/ Maria, dawn is breaking/ And now you’re late for breakfast.”

  Valdivino came in from the street panting, I need to talk to Mr. Moacyr, He went out, explained Aunt Matilde, is it something urgent, Valdivino? I need to tell him I’m sorry, Ah—and this “ah” was followed by a smacking of the lips of someone who finds something to be of little importance—forget about it, Valdivino, he doesn’t care about that at all, The fact is I need his help, Dona Matilde, I need to hide out somewhere, What’s the matter, Valdivino, why?, asked Aunt Francisca, coming into the living room, I’m worried that my roommate, the SPB policeman, was involved in a serious crime.

  Typhoon went over to Valdivino, as if he apprehended his unease, and licked one of his hands. There wasn’t enough food in the cafeteria, and when two workers from Paraíba at the firm where I work demanded food, they served them some spoiled leftovers, with dead flies on one of the steaks—spoiled food isn’t uncommon there, sometimes
the meat is thrown in the trash and that’s why there are so many flies and dogs around there, That would never happen at the SWAS restaurant, said Aunt Francisca, And don’t compare dogs to flies, Typhoon doesn’t like it, said Aunt Matilde.

  Valdivino didn’t react to the joke, he maintained his circumspect expression and merely stroked Typhoon’s head, The fight started when one of the Paraíban guys threw his plate of food at the cafeteria manager, the SPB police showed up, but a group of workers started to swing at the policemen so that they wouldn’t arrest their friends, and then this policeman who shares a room with me, Aristotle, went to the barracks and told the other policemen that they should come ready for battle. My laborer friend told me all this, the same one who’s been feeding me information about this guy. Well then: him and thirty or so others showed up shooting, they were machine-gunning workers in the courtyard and even in their living quarters, one bullet hit my room, and I saw with my own eyes a worker get hit in the room next door. It appears that the dead were taken away in dump-trucks to common graves in Planaltina and Padre Bernardo. I knew that Aristotle was a liar and a cheat, but now it’s more serious, he’s a murderer.

  Aunt Francisca turned off the radio, on which a noisy Carnival song had been playing, This is a matter for the police, Valdivino, and it’s not you who should be running away, it’s him, Look, Francisca—he called Aunt Matilde by the more formal “Dona Matilde,” but at that point he only ever addressed Aunt Francisca as “Francisca”—the criminals are precisely the ones who go free, sometimes the police arrest them and send them to Luziânia, but they just pop back up soon after, merry and content, here in the Free City. And what happens when the criminals are the policemen themselves? And of course he knows that I saw quite a bit . . .