“It’s time to put that thief behind bars!”
The officers, however, believed the old man. These were honest cops, almost all of them, but possessed of an excessive honesty, bordering on mysticism. The fact that they came, most of them, from the same environment, were raised amid those same criminal characters they arrested, still weighed on them. Many consulted alufás and mães-de-santos, cropped their hair close, attended jira dos catiços to call on spirits, lit votive candles on Mondays. They had associated with capoeiras, gone to the batuque and pernada circles. They had, naturally, acquired the vice of gambling, and they did not just bet on the jogo do bicho, they also played in illegal card games with heavy pots. Intellectually, they were malandros too.
“It wasn’t him, lieutenant. The old man doesn’t lie.”
Their argument was simple and very rational: in his interrogations, Rufino either gave compromising statements that put himself at risk—for example, revealing that the capoeira who had given him the earrings would be paying a visit to his home—or he would remain absolutely silent.
He kept quiet when it would have been natural, or at least less suspicious, to answer evasively. For example, questions like “Do you know Fortunata, the prostitute?” the sorcerer simply did not answer, when it would have been much easier just to answer, “No.” Thus, it became clear that the old man was tacitly admitting knowing Fortunata—a woman sought by the police, and whose acquaintance could only bring complications. Not answering, “I’ve never heard of her,” had, in a sense, been foolish.
The police, who had dealt with all sorts of street-smart criminals over the years, knew the customary procedure of those people. If Rufino had said nothing, it was because he did not—could not—tell lies.
The captain, for his part, disagreed with everybody. A truculent and idealistic type, he boasted of never having detained an innocent suspect, never having failed to substantiate a hunch. As far as he was concerned, Rufino did have ties to Fortunata and was being protected by the chief of police. And his main argument revolved around the gold earrings, which belonged to the woman and were found in the old man’s possession.
“Think about it. Ponder the facts. In less than six hours, a woman, a fugitive from the law, gives a pair of gold earrings to a man, and a little while later those earrings end up in the hands of a sorcerer. It makes no sense, I’m sorry.”
The men, accustomed to police reason, could not refute his argument through logic. The captain felt he was close to prevailing. And he plowed ahead. For him, the nature of the crime committed by Fortunata mattered little. Whether or not Rufino practiced his magic at the English Cemetery did not matter. He wanted to know what interest the police had in that old man and that woman. He insisted on that point, and that something big was afoot—that the entire Mauá Square Brotherhood was being left in the dark on purpose.
The captain reminded them that on the 13th, Rufino was surprised at the English Cemetery with the gold earrings in his possession, and that between the 26th and 27th he had also been there (forensics had found the bare footprints, very likely his). If Rufino had been paid one pair of gold earrings for his first job for Aniceto, on this latest occassion he must have received something of equal value.
Obviously, the old man must enter and exit cemeteries at every time of day, and at least twice a month (an average they had just ascertained), because everyone knows cemeteries are not protected. So, if he really were over a hundred years old, as the officers themselves claimed, by now he must have accumulated a vast fortune in gold pieces—or gems, silver, or even cash—whose value must be immeasurable.
This gave a great deal of credence to one of the legends spread about him, the only story that, unfortunately, his own men seemed to deride: that Rufino owned a magnificent treasure, buried somewhere in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
Then, suddenly, it happened. It all made sense to them. Because this is the effect, the virtue, of treasures, which for hundreds of centuries have driven human history.
What was at stake was not honor or integrity; it was not a dilemma concerning moral concepts. Nobody wanted to steal, or even thought of it. The First District police always refused any type of bribery. They would never commit a crime for money.
But they were men, too. And none of them—none of us—can resist the ancient fascination of a treasure hunt.
And the discussion continued, and the policemen remained there, drinking and smoking, completely infatuated with that mirage, with that concrete possibility, with the material existence of that legendary treasure—which they had only vaguely heard about, which they maybe even believed in, but which they never imagined they could be so close to.
There is no faith, there is no truth, that has so much power to move people. Especially in Rio de Janeiro. And so, just past midnight, Mixila himself slammed his fist on the table’s grimy marble:
“Damn geezer!”
The first treasure to disappear in Rio de Janeiro was probably not buried in the earth but rather was lost at sea, near the mouth of Guanabara Bay, in a Spanish galleon weighing over three hundred tons. Reportedly, the ship was returning from an expedition to the Rio de la Plata, laden with Inca gold, and was dragged adrift by a formidable storm, bursting its hull against giant rocks, possibly Cagarras Islands.
A few of the survivors—who had escaped in rowboats or floating on planks—were picked up days later by another vessel from the same flotilla, which had temporarily gone off route, thereby escaping the fatal storm.
These are all sailor stories, backed by very little documentation. But if the shipwreck did in fact occur, and if we take the Inca gold as fact, it makes no sense to imagine that one of those survivors would have been able to battle the breakers on a piece of wood while clinging to a chest filled with dozens of kilos of precious metals, only to bury it ashore.
So, these legends of lost treasures summarize the essence of humanity. It was this legend, the treasure of the Spanish galleon, that brought the first pirates to Guanabara Bay, and, years later, in 1531, led Martim Afonso de Souza to drop anchor at the western rim of the bay, opposite the mouth of the Carioca River, and to erect a fort and organize futile expeditions in search of that gold.
This circumstance—the galleon’s treasure that has never been found; the fact that treasures in general are never found—is, for these hunters, the greatest proof of its existence. The fame of perhaps the greatest treasure in Carioca history—the one belonging to the Jesuits, which has been missing ever since they were expelled in 1759—is based on similar foundations.
There is little doubt that the treasure exists. What is not certain is whether it was hidden beneath the college at Castelo Hill. After a lengthy resistance put up by priests, the building was finally evacuated, and then slaves, students, bands of soldiers, and a throng of people from all walks of life searched the building, probing all of its entrails, never finding a thing.
That was when talk began about a secret passageway connecting the college to Calabouço Point. Society informants would have alerted the priests in Brazil in time, who would have preemptively loaded this immense fortune onto clandestine brigantines, whose whereabouts today are impossible to ascertain. Let’s face it, this story borders on fantasy literature: no ship at the time would have been able to cross the entrance to the impregnable bay—which only once in its entire history had been overtaken—without being detected.
Therefore, I do not think the thesis that the treasure was smuggled out has any merit. The Jesuits’ treasure stayed in Rio de Janeiro. Another indication of this is that it continued to be actively sought during all major construction projects requiring excavation in the city, particularly during the razing of Castelo Hill in the 20th century.
It should come as no surprise that a second (totally fictional) version of this legend links the Jesuits’ treasure to alleged Phoenician inscriptions on Sugar Loaf Mountain, which (fraudulently, in
my opinion) make mention of a Prince of Tyre. That great treasure, so the story goes, initially belonged to the Templars, and before that to King Solomon, discoverer of the mines of Ophir.
The Jesuits, by virtue of their erudition, would have been the first to identify the Carioca tomb of the Asiatic prince, discoverer of the Atlantic route to Guanabara, later hiding the treasure found next to the sarcophagus in a location that remains hidden.
One detail of the story is particularly noteworthy: even after they were arrested, deported, and tortured, which indeed the priests of the Society were, none of them ever revealed the hiding place of the treasure. This is another feature of those who bury vast riches: their code of silence.
Such was the case of a treasure of emeralds brought to Rio de Janeiro before Garcia Rodrigues Paes had opened his trail—proof that the Cariocas joined the fray for the mines around the same time that the fierce São Paulo prospectors did.
Even before the city was founded, there were already rumors of precious green stones in the hinterlands. Martim de Góis, who left in 1695 to go up the Inhomirim and reached as far as the Piabanha, had no other goal than finding these famous stones. Perhaps he made it as far as the headwaters of the Tocantins. Martim de Gois, however, never came back. He was killed, along with several of his men, by a faction of rebels led by the mameluco Nuno Esteves.
The mameluco and his men reached Rio de Janeiro, bringing back bodies of several Indians wrapped in hammocks, all with their heads crushed.
Nuno Esteves’ story was hard to believe: that while passing by an Indian village on the banks of Iguaçu, three days’ march from the city, they had surprised a mob of savages ready to cook those dead, whom they had just sacrificed in their fashion.
The dead must have been from the Jacutingas Nation, previously catechized, as the village had its own cross. Nuno Esteves and his followers managed to drive away the cannibals, recovering the bodies of pious Jacutingas in order to give them a proper burial.
Despite the nuisance caused by the odor, the mameluco insisted on holding a wake for the Indians, claiming that he had vowed to do so. It was this strange show of devotion that alerted people that something was amiss.
The next day it was discovered that, besides the broken skulls, the bodies had been torn open from the base of the neck to the bladder, and that their guts had been totally emptied out.
He could have explained everything away: that they had been eaten by the other savages, and that their entrails had already been removed. However, someone pointed out that the victims were not properly painted, according to tradition. This was evidence of the fraud perpetrated. And sure enough, while handling the corpses, an emerald slipped out of one of their throats.
The men of the expedition were tortured, but they never revealed where the stones were hidden. The mameluco Nuno Esteves also never admitted to the murder of Martin de Goís and those who had been faithful to him. They all died on the gallows, in a dignified manner, shortly thereafter.
What about those treasures that cannot be found even though it is known where they are buried? Such was the case of the celebrated Manuel Henriques, the Gloved One—a nobleman bandit who tormented travelers along the the gold roads and trails, stealing heavy loads of the metal mined in Minas Gerais that had to be brought down, as the law stipulated, to the city of São Sebastião.
The story of the nobleman is interesting. In love with Queen Maria, the Mad, he once was allowed to stand in a receiving line to kiss her royal highness’ hand, but only managed to touch the tip of her fingers. From that day on, as a pledge of his love, he never took off his glove.
They say Queen Maria began to lose her wits from that moment on, and that this angered the court, resulting in the persecution of the Gloved One. Even if the incident did not truly make the queen mad, it did lead her would-be lover to seek consolation in a life of crime.
Manuel Henriques was the terror of the northern part of the state of Rio de Janeiro and the southern part of Minas Gerais during the last decades of the 18th century.
He grew rich like a king. But he never did win the love of his life.
His treasure is in a cave lost in the confines of Vargem Pequena, on the edge of the Guaratiba parish, in a seemingly impenetrable place in the Grota Funda hills called Cova de Macacu. I even went there myself when I lived in Recreio, and I have foraged through those woods. They say the slaves who carried the treasure, the only witnesses who knew its hiding place, were murdered shortly after they buried it.
The most extraordinary Carioca treasure, however, is that of the king of the Ivory Coast—or, better said, the treasure belonging to Chica da Silva. The theme here is the subjective value of the treasure, not the impenetrable secrecy that surrounds it.
The king of the Ivory Coast was actually a prince of the mighty Ashanti Empire who came to Brazil to expand the slave trade, dropping anchor in Rio de Janeiro. Here, he praised the beauty of the women and, quite naturally, wanted to meet the queen of the land.
Coincidentally, Chica da Silva had just arrived from Tijuco Township to see the sea for the first time. And she was introduced to the Ashanti embassy as the sovereign ruler of Brazil, which was not exactly a lie.
It seems that the contractor João Fernandes de Oliveira, Chica’s husband, slept well during the night the two of them spent aboard the prince’s galley. And at the farewell banquet, hosted by the slave trader Manuel Coutinho, Chica da Silva received a huge gift in African gold, jewels, and rich pieces carved in ivory, which astonished all of the guests.
This treasure, however, never made it back to the Castelo da Palha in Tijuco. When João Fernandes ordered the chests opened, he found only sand and shells. The contractor was in an uproar. He summoned his slaves and threatened to kill the responsible party. Chica da Silva took no notice: for someone who would never see the immensity of the sea again, it did not seem like such an unfavorable exchange.
When the expert Baeta left the House of Swaps at five in the afternoon on Wednesday, June 18th, he had already concluded a series of formal interviews with the doctor, the nurses and house manager, and thus had amassed all of the available information on Fortunata, even the secret list of her major clients—obtained with great difficulty—which would undoubtedly have been of interest to the chief of police, for it included some well-known military and political figures.
That’s what the expert thought. But Madame Brigitte, evidently, had not revealed everything. She had omitted one essential fact: that she had detected a contradiction—a lie, actually—told by nurse Cassia, the senior nurse, who had referred Fortunata and insisted so vehemently that she be allowed to work there.
Fortunata and Cassia had been neighbors. Their mothers were each other’s godmothers, and they themselves had been childhood friends. Madame Brigitte noticed that the two did not show much affection, and never exhibited much intimacy, but she did not pay it any mind; she attributed the behavior to modesty. After all, Fortunata was very reserved with all of them.
The time arrived, however, for Cassia to get married. A former client had asked for her hand three weeks after her childhood friend had come to the House. That excited the imagination of the other girls, who were very hurt when they did not receive an invitation to attend the ceremony. Not even Fortunata was invited, which did not escape the notice of Madame Brigitte.
Madame Brigitte, however, did go. As the guests were congratulating the couple, she was introduced to Cassia’s mother. She asked her about her friend, and she discreetly mentioned Fortunata. The mother’s look of confusion said it all: the story of the childhood friendship was false. And Madame Brigitte, though upset, did not make a big deal of it. She concluded that the lie was well-intentioned, and that it was not worth provoking disagreements with a nurse already so well established in the House and who had shown herself to be so good-natured.
Madame Brigitte regretted having told the expert that Fortunata
’s admission process had deviated from the norm. It was a rare occasion—perhaps even the only time—that such an oversight had occurred: a nurse hired without a corresponding job opening, without a demand for a new nurse. For this reason, Madame Brigitte blamed herself for the secretary’s murder. Miroslav Zmuda, of course, did not know any of this, and asked no questions when he saw her, soon after the expert’s departure, writing a letter whose content he had no interest in knowing.
Madam Brigitte, in fact, was more than simply a house administrator. She first met the doctor at the old clinic in Glória, shortly before the court order transferred to him the ownership of the Marquise of Santos’ house. At the time, Madame Brigitte was a recent arrival from Espirito Santo, residing on Lapa Street at a boarding house for young actresses, and she had not yet adopted the French moniker.
When she took her clothes off and lay naked before the doctor, she felt she could not resist; she ended up betraying herself, unable to conceal the subtle contractions in her gluteals. Dr. Zmuda, experienced in these matters, understood the offer. And, without neglecting to examine her, he satisfied her in just the right spot.
Miroslav Zmuda visited the Lapa street address and became a client, and made of her a kept woman, taking her away from that life once he became a widower. By the time he took possession of the House, Madame Brigitte—already going by that name—was his sweet concubine.
The Marquise’s House was a find, for both of them. Ever since she had first moved into the boarding house, the dream of that humble girl from Espirito Santo had been to be French and to own a brothel. Not only for the money: the future Brigitte was fascinated by the sexuality of others. She loved to know the small perversions that made up personalities. She believed that it was possible to predict the behavior of people based on their sexual character.
Miroslav Zmuda, for his part, was what we would today call an obstetrician or gynecologist: he performed abortions, sterilizations, and treated venereal diseases. Although not a sexologist in the classical sense, he had a special interest in the physiology of coitus. He was one of the first Western scientists to study the phenomenon of sexual attraction. Born in Krakow, he naturally preferred Rio de Janeiro.
The Mystery of Rio Page 5