The policeman answered politely: ‘No. You’re being detained so that you can provide us with some further information and then you’ll be released. But before we leave, we’ll just take a quick look around the apartment.’
Paulo’s heart was beating so fast he thought he’d have a heart attack: they were sure to find the cannabis. Standing in the middle of the room with his arm around Gisa’s shoulder, he followed the movements of the policemen with his eyes. One of them took a pile of about a hundred Krig-Ha, Bandolo! comic strips, while another rummaged through drawers and cupboards, and the third, who seemed to be the leader, scrutinized the books and records. When he saw a Chinese lacquered jar the size of a sweet tin, he picked it up, took off the lid and saw that it was full to the brim with cannabis. He sniffed the contents as though savouring a fine perfume, put the lid back on and restored it to its original place. It was only then that Paulo realized that the situation was infinitely worse than he had supposed: if the policeman was prepared to overlook a jar of cannabis, it was because he was suspected of far graver crimes. The Ponta Grossa incident came to mind: could it be that he was once again being confused with a terrorist or a bank robber?
It was only when they arrived at the Dops headquarters that he and Gisa realized that they would not be dining with his parents that evening. They were separated as soon as they arrived and ordered to exchange the clothes they were wearing for yellow overalls with the word ‘PRISONER’ written in capital letters on the top pocket. During the night of the twenty-eighth they were both photographed and identified and fingerprinted for the police files that had been created in their names; Paulo’s number was 13720 and Gisa’s 13721. They were then interrogated separately for several hours. Among the personal items confiscated along with their clothes were their watches, which meant that they lost all idea of time, particularly in the circumstances in which they found themselves–imprisoned in a place where there was no natural light.
The interrogation did not involve any physical torture and mainly had to do with the psychedelic comic strip that accompanied the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! LP and what exactly was meant by Sociedade Alternativa. This, of course, was after they had spent hours dictating to clerks what in the jargon of the Brazilian police is called the capivara–a careful, detailed history of a prisoner’s activities up to that date. When Paulo said that he had been in Santiago in May 1970 with Vera Richter the police pressed him for information on Brazilians who lived there, but he had nothing to tell them, for the simple reason that he’d had no contact with any Brazilian exiled in Chile or anywhere else. Gisa, for her part, had a problem convincing her interrogators that the title of Krig-Ha, Bandolo! had come up during a brainstorming session at Philips when Paulo, standing on a table, had bellowed out Tarzan’s war cry.
In Gávea, the Coelhos were frantic with worry. With the help of a friend, the secretary of the governor of what was then the state of Guanabara, the journalist and businessman Antônio de Pádua Chagas Freitas, Lygia managed to find out, to everyone’s relief, that her son had been arrested by the Dops and was being detained in their prison in Rua da Relação. This was some guarantee, however flimsy, that he would not join the list of the ‘disappeared’. Since habeas corpus no longer existed, all they could do was to try to find people who might have some kind of link, either family or personal, with influential individuals in the security forces. Paulo’s brother-in-law, Marcos, suggested seeking the help of a friend, Colonel Imbassahy, who had connections with the SNI (Brazil’s National Intelligence Service), but Pedro decided to try legal routes first, however fragile these might be. It was Aunt Helói who suggested the name of the lawyer Antônio Cláudio Vieira, who had worked in the offices of ‘Uncle Candinho’, as the Coelho family called the ex-procurator general of the Republic, Cândido de Oliveira Neto, who had died a year earlier.
By five in the afternoon, they were all at the door of the prison. When he was told that only the lawyer, Vieira, could enter, Pedro mentioned that he knew one of the stars of the dictatorship. ‘We’re friends of Colonel Jarbas Passarinho.’ He was speaking of the ex-governor of Pará, who had held ministerial positions in three military governments (he had been one of the signatories of the AI-5) and had been re-elected senator for Arena, a party that supported the regime. The policeman was unimpressed, saying that even someone in Jarbas’s position had no influence in Dops.
While the lawyer was trying to get news about Paulo from the officer on duty, Pedro, Lygia, Sônia and her husband Marcos had to wait on the pavement in the drizzle.
After some minutes, Vieira came out with good news: ‘Paulo is here and should be released today. The officer in charge is phoning his superior to see whether they will allow me to see him for a few minutes.’
The lawyer was summoned by the doorman and taken to a room where he would be allowed to speak to Paulo briefly. He was shocked by Paulo’s appearance: while he hadn’t been the victim of any physical violence, Paulo was very pale with dark rings under his eyes and had a strange zombie-like expression on his face. Vieira reassured him, saying he had been given a promise that he would be freed in the next few hours. And that was that. Lygia insisted that they remain on the pavement outside the Dops until her son was released, but the lawyer dissuaded her from this idea.
At about ten o’clock on the Tuesday night, one of the policemen, who had always seemed to Paulo to be the most sympathetic and least threatening, opened the cell door and gave him back the clothes and documents he’d had with him when he was arrested: he and Gisa were free to go. Paulo dressed quickly and met Gisa in the lobby, and the policeman accompanied the couple to the café next to the Dops, where they smoked a cigarette.
Anxious to get away from such a terrifying place, Paulo hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take them to his parents’ house in Gávea. The driver set off; then, as the cab was travelling at speed past Hotel Glória, it was brought screeching to a halt by three or four civilian vehicles, among them two Chevrolet Veraneio estate cars, which at the time were the trademark vehicle used by the security police. Several men in plain clothes jumped out and opened the two rear doors of the taxi in which the couple were travelling and dragged Paulo and Gisa out by force. As Paulo was handcuffed and dragged along on his stomach across the grass, he caught sight of Gisa being thrown into an estate car, which drove off, tyres squealing. The last thing he saw before his head was covered in a black hood was the elegant white building of the Hotel Glória, lit up like fairyland.
Once in the back seat of the car, Paulo managed to murmur a question to one of the men with him: ‘Are you going to kill me?’
The agent realized how terrified he was and said. ‘Don’t worry. No one’s going to kill you. We’re just going to interrogate you.’
His fear remained undiminished. His hands shaking, Paulo was able to overcome his fear and shame enough to ask his captor: ‘Can I hold on to your leg?’
The man seemed to find this unusual request amusing. ‘Of course you can. And don’t worry, we’re not going to kill you.’
CHAPTER 17
Paulo renounces the Devil
IT WAS NOT UNTIL THIRTY YEARS LATER, with the country’s return to democracy, that Paulo learned he had been kidnapped by a commando group of the DOI-Codi (Department of Information Operations–Centre for Internal Defence Operations). Pedro Queima Coelho was concerned about the damage all this might inflict on his son’s fragile emotional state and made a point of being at home so that he would be there to receive Paulo when he was freed. He spent a sleepless night beside a silent telephone and at eight in the morning took a taxi to the Dops. When he arrived, he was astonished to be told by the officer at the desk:
‘Your son and his girlfriend were freed at ten o’clock last night.’
When Paulo’s father stared at him in disbelief, the agent opened a file and showed him two stamped sheets of paper. ‘This is the document for release and here are their signatures,’ he said, trying to appear sympathetic. ‘He was definitely released. If your
son hasn’t come home, it’s probably because he’s decided to go underground.’
The nightmare had begun. Paulo and Gisa had been added to the list of the regime’s ‘disappeared’. This meant that whatever might happen to them, it was no longer the responsibility of the state, since both had been released safe and sound after signing an official release document.
What happened after their kidnapping is still so swathed in mystery that in 2007, when he turned sixty, the author still had many unanswered questions. Records kept by the security police confirm that Raul was not detained and that on 27 May the Dops arrested the couple, having identified and questioned them during the night and throughout the day of the twenty-eighth. Documents from the army also show that following their kidnapping outside the Hotel Glória, Paulo and Gisa were taken separately to the 1st Battalion of the Military Police in Rua Barão de Mesquita, in the north of Rio, where the DOI-Codi had its offices, although there is no information about how long they were held at the barracks. Some family members state, albeit not with any certainty, that he could have spent ‘up to ten days’ in the DOI-Codi, but on Friday, 31 May, Paulo was in Gávea writing the first entry in his diary following his release: ‘I’m staying at my parents’ house. I’m even afraid of writing about what happened to me. It was one of the worst experiences of my life–imprisoned unjustly yet again. But my fears will be overcome by faith and my hatred will be conquered by love. From insecurity will come confidence in myself.’
However, among the documents taken from the archives of Abin, the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (the successor to the SNI, the National Intelligence Service), is a long interrogation with Paulo lasting from eleven o’clock on the night of 14 June until four in the morning of 15 June in the offices of the DOI-Codi. The mystery lies in the fact that he swears that he never returned to the DOI-Codi following his release. The lawyer Antônio Cláudio Vieira also states with equal certainty that he never accompanied him to Rua Barão de Mesquita; nor was he called a second time by the Coelho family to help their son. The same version is corroborated by Pedro, Paulo’s sister Sônia Maria and her ex-husband, Marcos, who witnessed everything at close hand. Any suspicion that Paulo, in his terror, had betrayed his friends or put others in danger and now wanted to remove this stain from his record does not stand up to a reading of the seven pages typed on the headed notepaper of the then 1st Army. The first four pages are filled with a reiteration of the statement that Paulo had made in the Dops, a detailed history of his life up until then: schools, work in the theatre, trips within Brazil and abroad, prison in Paraná, O Globo, the course in Mato Grosso, A Pomba, his partnership with Raul…The part referring to his and Raul’s membership of the OTO is so incomprehensible that the clerk had to write ‘sic’ several times, just to make it clear that this really was what the prisoner had said:
That in 1973 the deponent and Raul Seixas had concluded ‘that the world is experiencing an intense period of tedium’ [sic]; that on the other hand they realized that the career of a singer, when not accompanied by a strong movement, tends to end quickly. That the deponent and Raul Seixas then resolved ‘to capitalize on the end of hippiedom and the sudden interest in magic around the world’ [sic]; that the deponent began to study the books of an esoteric movement called ‘OTO’. That the deponent and Raul Seixas then decided to found the ‘Sociedade Alternativa’, ‘which was registered at the register office to avoid any false interpretations’ [sic]; that the deponent and Raul Seixas were in Brasília and explained the precepts of the Sociedade Alternativa to the chiefs of the Federal Police and the Censors, stating ‘that the intention was not to act against the government, but to interest youth in another form of activity’ [sic].
When the police asked him to give the names of people he knew with left-wing tendencies, Paulo could recall only two: someone who used to go to the Paissandu, ‘known by everyone as the Philosopher’, and an ex-boyfriend of Gisa’s in the student movement, whose name he also could not remember, but which he believed ‘began with the letter H or A’. The certainty with which everyone states that he did not return to the DOI-Codi after being kidnapped is corroborated by his diary, in which there is absolutely no record of his making a further statement on the night of 14–15 June. The theory that the clerk had typed the wrong date doesn’t hold up when one considers the fact that the statement is seven pages long, with the date–14 June–typed on every page. The definitive proof that Paulo was indeed at the DOI-Codi on some date after 27 May, however, is to be found in one small detail: when he was photographed and identified in the Dops some hours after his arrest on 27 May, he had a moustache and goatee beard. On 14 June, he is described as having ‘beard and moustache shaven off’.
As for Gisa, during the time in which she remained in the DOI-Codi she underwent two interrogations. The first started at eight on the morning of 29 May and only ended at four in the afternoon, and the second was held between eight and eleven on the morning of the following day, Thursday. On both occasions, she was treated as a militant member of the radical group Ação Popular (Popular Action) and of the Brazilian Communist Party, but, as in Paulo’s case, she had little or nothing to tell them, apart from her work in the student movement when she was involved in several left-wing organizations.
During one of the nights when they were being held in the DOI, something happened that caused the final break between the two. With his head covered by a hood, Paulo was being taken to the toilet by a policeman when, as he walked past a cell, he heard someone sobbing and calling him: ‘Paulo? Are you there? If it’s you, talk to me!’
It was Gisa, probably also with a hood on her head: she had recognized his voice. Terrified at the thought that he might be placed naked in the ‘refrigerator’–the closed cell where the temperature was kept deliberately low–he stayed silent.
His girlfriend begged for his help: ‘Paulo, my love! Please, say yes. Just that, say that it’s you!’
Nothing.
She went on: ‘Please, Paulo, tell them I’ve got nothing to do with all this.’
In what he was to see as his greatest act of cowardice, he didn’t even open his mouth.
One afternoon that week, probably Friday, 31 May, a guard appeared with his clothes, told him to get dressed and to cover his head with the hood. He was put on the rear seat of a car and, having been driven some way, thrown out in a small square in Tijuca, a middle-class district 10 kilometres from the barracks where he had been held.
The first days in his parents’ house were terrifying. Every time someone knocked on the door, or the telephone rang, Paulo would lock himself in his room, afraid of being taken away again by the police, the military or whoever it was who had kidnapped him. In order to calm him a little, Pedro, touched by his son’s paranoia, had to swear that he would not allow him to be imprisoned again, whatever the consequences. ‘If anyone comes to take you without a legal summons,’ he promised, ‘he’ll be greeted with a bullet.’ Only after two weeks holed up in Gávea did Paulo have the courage to go out in the street again, and even then he chose a day when it would be easy to spot if someone was following him: Thursday, 13 June, when Brazil and Yugoslavia were playing the first match of the 1974 World Cup in Germany, and the whole country would be in front of the television supporting the national team. With Rio transformed into a ghost town he went by bus to Flamengo and then, after much hesitation, he plucked up the courage to go into the apartment where he and Gisa had lived until the Saturday on which they believed they had received a visit from the Devil. It was exactly as the police had left it on the Monday evening after searching it. Before the referee blew the final whistle of the match, Paulo was back in the shelter of his parents’ home. One of the penances he imposed on himself, though, so that everything would return to normal as quickly as possible, was not to watch any of the World Cup matches.
The most difficult thing was finding Gisa. Since that dreadful encounter in the DOI-Codi prison he had had no more news of his girlfriend, but her voic
e crying ‘Paulo! Talk to me, Paulo!’ kept ringing in his head. When he eventually managed to call her old apartment, where she had gone back to live, it suddenly occurred to him that the phone might be tapped and so he didn’t dare to ask whether she had been tortured or when she had been released. When he suggested a meeting in order to discuss their future, Gisa was adamant: ‘I don’t want to live with you again, I don’t want you to say another word to me and I would prefer it if you never spoke my name again.’
Following this, Paulo fell into such a deep depression that his family again sought help from Dr Benjamim Gomes, the psychiatrist at the Dr Eiras clinic. Luckily for Paulo, this time the doctor decided to replace electric shocks with daily sessions of analysis, which, during the first weeks, were held at his home. Paulo’s persecution mania had become so extreme that, on one outing, he became so frightened that he fainted in the street in front of a bookshop in Copacabana and was helped by passers-by. When Philips sent him the proofs for the record sleeve for Gita, which was about to be released, he couldn’t believe his eyes: it was a photo of Raul with a Che Guevara beret bearing the red five-pointed star of the communists. Appalled, he immediately phoned Philips and demanded that they change the image; if they didn’t, he would not allow any of his songs to appear on the record.
When they asked why, he replied so slowly that he seemed to be spelling out each word: ‘Because I don’t want to be arrested again and with that photo on the record sleeve, they’ll arrest me again. Understood?’
After much discussion, he accepted that Raul could be shown wearing the Che beret, but he demanded a written statement from Philips stating that the choice was the entire responsibility of the company. In the end, a suggestion by a graphic artist won the day: the red star was simply removed from the photo, so that it looked as though the beret was merely an innocent beret with no sinister communist connotations.
Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life Page 30