The Mystery of Rio

by Alberto Mussa

  Jean du Clerc was a murderer, an enemy of the city; Little Brígida was a traitor, false and insidious—not just because she lay with a pirate, but because it was forbidden, strictly so, for female players to give themselves to men who were not in the game.

  So, Fernão da Moura stabbed du Clerc. And he could have ravished Little Brígida, because it was his right, because the mere possession of the Jack represented the fulfillment of two conditions: that of the suit of clubs and that of the completed challenge, for he would allege that he had found Gaspar d’Almeida’s card in the pirate’s bedroom, and that he had killed him to avenge the second lieutenant. Little Brígida would not be so crazy as to tell the truth, and Estevão Maia would not confess his complicity either.

  So, Little Brígida, who had wrapped a sheet around herself during the fight, let the sheet drop, surrendering to the winner. But she did not expect the humiliation that followed:

  “I just want the manilha of clubs.”

  Needless to say, Fernão da Moura was merciful, he was a gentleman. He carried the pirate’s body back to his quarters and helped dress him.

  The story of the masked intruders, which to this day everyone believes, was a touch suggested by Little Brígida. And, for it all to be believable, she needed to disappear with the Frenchman’s papers. Among those documents was Lourenço Cão’s map.

  There was another occasion when the destinies of Baeta and Aniceto intersected randomly, and of which they had no knowledge. The location, of course, was the House of Swaps. The date, August 21st, was a Thursday, when one of Miroslav Zmuda and Madame Brigitte’s communal sessions took place.

  The police narrative, strictly speaking, could just as well omit this passage, but it is deeply relevant to another aspect of the book: the difficulties that the “the Aniceto Problem” posed to the Polish doctor’s sexual theories.

  The reader should keep in mind the layout of the upper floor of the House of Swaps: beside the Oval Parlor (which functioned as reception and coatroom), there was the front room, where the guests could drink and speak before selecting their partners. The two side wings had rooms—some which could be locked from the inside, some which could not. To the right was the showroom (where we saw Aniceto’s performance with Palhares and the tall woman), and to the left, in the room today known as the music room, there was a large area that could accommodate several couples for parallel explicit relations, where the emphasis was not so much on the show but on greatly increasing the opportunities for swaps.

  I mentioned that it was preferable for guests to introduce themselves while wearing hoods (excepting the proprietors and nurses). This had the effect of hiding (as much as was possible, or desirable) the identity of the participants. However, each disguise, or hood, was unique, and had its own distinct design embroidered on it with a golden thread, representing an animal or a plant, or sometimes an abstract figure. There was the tower, the anteater, the water lily, the hummingbird, the crown, the sword, the spiral, etc.

  Madame Brigitte obviously arranged for hoods to be randomly distributed to encourage a certain level of intentional confusion. She would tell participants a story that all accepted, that their logo was only for the purposes of that particular event, hence the rotation.

  The real reason, however, was different altogether: the nurse who handed out the hoods would write down the individual’s name so that Dr. Zmuda could then record in his notebooks the exact behavior of each patron.

  On that day, Baeta and Guiomar (he wore the palm tree; she, the jaguar) found themselves in this previously mentioned room. They were in the throes of a deep kiss, and next to them was another couple, the wife of which was wearing the dove hood. The goal, as we know, was to attract women for Baeta, with Guiomar acting as bait. And things were headed in that direction when another group began gradually getting closer.

  This other group was also made up of two couples, but how they were approaching was somewhat unusual. One of the men—there for the third time, and who that day had on the diamond mask—seemed to be intimidating, even trapping the other couple, particularly the woman, who had the water lily design and seemed terrified, as if she were actually fleeing.

  Her husband or partner was retreating with her, without even hinting at putting up any resistance. Suddenly, the diamond, demonstrating a certain impatience, spun the water lily around and threw her hands against the wall. Abruptly raising her tunic, he had his way with her, as if riding her, even simulating whipping her hips and pulling on the reins.

  These moves distracted Baeta, Guiomar, and their respective targets. Guiomar stared at this man who was imposing his will so sovereignly. At that exact moment, he, the diamond, returned her glance, and for a brief instant he stared deeply into the eyes of the jaguar.

  Baeta had not noticed because he was still busy trying to conquer the dove. But he heard Guiomar, who had assumed a position similar to the water lily’s, against the wall, ask him to take her in that manner.

  Baeta did not refuse, but he found little excitement in such a change, because he had been born a protagonist, and he felt a certain embarrassment at copying others. Just then they heard louder spanking, as the evil, predatory diamond abandoned the natural avenue for the path that had made Sodom infamous. By now, Guiomar could not contain herself, and begged her husband:

  “Hit me!”

  Baeta, however, did not respond well to such a request. Perhaps he did not want to see the jaguar debased in public. What excited his interest in her was not the image of female submission; on the contrary, it was the haughty air with which she refused other men that excited him. It was the most attractive aspect of his wife’s sexuality.

  The Polish doctor, of course, was watching everything closely. Since he knew his clients in intimate detail, and since he had a greater interest in all of this, Guiomar’s reaction did not escape his notice, and, in a certain sense, her reaction contradicted the hitherto dominant trends of her eroticism.

  He did not, however, immediately associate her behavior with the man wearing the diamond: none other than Aniceto. He considered only the stimuli of the scene itself, not giving due importance to the actors in question.

  Minutes later, however, Aniceto would give Dr. Zmuda cause for reflection: he achieved the rare feat of producing an orgasm in the water lily by the method of penetration he had chosen—a climax so intense and so sincere that it infected bystanders, inducing a series of subsequent orgasms, including in Guiomar herself.

  The symbolizations, or sexual fantasies, that Miroslav Zmuda considered promoters of female orgasms, although they were unique and specific to each individual, could be divided into four categories, plus a fifth, as yet misunderstood, provisionally called “residual.”

  The first—perhaps the most important—was comprised of the symbolizations of violence. Here I must digress in order for the reader to grasp the doctor’s thinking.

  The Polish doctor began from the assumption, or prejudice, that human beings in their natural state, in their primitive and tribal life, had a very simple, very elementary sexuality because, paradoxically, it was very free.

  It was civilization and its moral coercion that, after elevating the family to the position of the basic cell of society, had sophisticated sex.

  Zmuda, therefore, believed that prohibition, censorship, was the foundation of pleasure. And that it was this constriction of desire that had led to the development of certain techniques of sexual stimulation in human history—for example, the kiss, where the emphasis is on lingual friction. And the Polish doctor chafed at the notion that this component could have ever figured, for example, in the sexual practices of savages such as the Botocudo people, and he produced arguments as to why it did not.

  Studying primitive collections of erotic art as opposed to that of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean and the Far East, Zmuda concluded that masturbation, fellatio, sodomy, and cunnilingus h
ad arisen among advanced peoples, and were probably contemporaneous to the invention of writing.

  Miroslav Zmuda, a Slav and an Aryan, was an enthusiastic champion of civilization. He even went so far as advocating (in one of those articles that were always so abhorred) that virgin girls, in the interest of family, should practice in their youth all of the highly civilized modalities (because they were, in fact, civilized), such as manual, oral and anal sex, thus avoiding unintended pregnancy and the embarrassment of wedding night surprises.

  The great legacy of civilization, therefore, as far as human sexuality was concerned, and particularly female sexuality, was providing the conditions for the expansion of fantasies. And the symbolizations of violence, Zmuda’s first category, illustrated this well.

  For the Polish doctor, mere penetration already represented an act of aggression. And not a small number of women enjoyed vigorous, forceful movements that subjugated them, approaching rape.

  Well, it was in the primitive world that such scenes should have been considered trivial. Savages and barbarians routinely treated their women exactly this way, with the brutality that, according to Zmuda, was peculiar to them.

  Therefore, when a civilized woman wishes to be taken forcefully, she is at heart yearning to be free from restraints, from the fetters imposed by civilization. It was, therefore, a pleasure whose origins were atavistic. Madame Brigitte and Rio de Janeiro revealed to Dr. Zmuda that most women felt nostalgia for barbarism.

  Sexual fantasies involving staged violence—as described by the nurses or as orchestrated by Madame Brigitte—covered a vast symbolic spectrum, from those who wanted to copulate with their wrists bound to those who essentially liked to be beaten—a desire that Guiomar expressed, surprisingly, at the party of August 21st.

  There were those that liked go down on all fours like beasts (almost always slapped by the man), or those who preferred verbal humiliation. Even fellatio or sodomy could involve a sense, or an atmosphere, of abuse and female submission, particularly with regard to anal intercourse, which presupposed, at least in theory, some degree of pain.

  In some cases, this real physical pain was considered necessary, and accessories such as whips, neckstraps, or ropes could also be brought into the mix.

  Among the most frequent fantasies (still in this same sphere) was being seduced or even forcibly taken by strangers, generally men of inferior status—the stronger, cruder, and more brutish the better, such as longshoremen, sailors, or gangsters. Madame Brigitte had made several fantasies of this type come true, with Hermínio or other individuals hired specifically for that purpose.

  Women loved to feel prostituted—this could be achieved by the use of intimate, characteristically obscene apparel, or by more direct gestures, such as the offering of money. Fortunata was an extreme example of this: she wanted to be a real prostitute (this was the only way that Dr. Zmuda could make sense of her coming to the House a virgin).

  The prostitution fantasy was, for the doctor, very symptomatic, because this was not a primitive institution, a custom of savages; on the contrary, for Dr. Zmuda it represented one of the seminal achievements of high cultures. To understand this apparent impropriety, it was necessary to analyze the symbol.

  Indeed, symbolically, prostitutes are people to be used, and are available to anyone who wants them or can pay. In the barbaric world, women were also available, in that case for use by the strongest, which in today’s societies are those who can pay.

  It was clear that, for Zmuda, the symbolizations of violence included what might be called psychological violence or humiliation; in other words, any situation wherein women are put on a level below men.

  On the other hand, another type of fantasy that reaffirmed this idea was that of women who preferred to be in charge or to harm their partners. For Dr. Zmuda, they represented dangerous, vindictive personalities: they were women who sought revenge for barbaric sexuality by reversing roles.

  And the best proof of this was the fact that they almost never allowed penetration, for the one who penetrates, dominates. Women who exhibited their feet to their worshipers were engaged in such behavior, and the same is also true of those who beat or humiliated males.

  Zmuda concluded that the secretary probably had not penetrated Fortunata on the fateful evening of the crime.

  The first dead woman appeared on Pinto Hill, the place still known as Nheco’s Ramp, on Saturday, September 13th—officially dawn of the 14th, since days begin at sunrise according to the Carioca calendar.

  Police were notified on Sunday, on account of the scandal raised by the mother of the victim, a girl of fifteen, who—having snuck out of her home on Senador Eusébio Street to go to a samba party with some unsavory types on the 13th—had still not returned by the next morning. Some dockworkers recognized the body and then called her mother.

  The first complications were as follows: the body had been removed at dawn, around 4 AM, from the scene of the crime to the entrance of Santa Teresa Church, one of the city’s landmarks, built atop a hill around 1760. It was there, in front of that church, that three or four mourners kept vigil and stayed with the body until authorities arrived.

  Two quite contradictory facts should be mentioned. First, all of the people deposed by police along that route, between the seat of the First District in Mauá Square and the summit of Pinto Hill, where the church stood, spoke only of murder, without any direct testimony or evidence to that effect.

  However, according to the forensic report, the cause of death was “total cessation of life”—an expression that, although pleonastic, meant that the death had not been an accident or suicide, much less a murder—in other words, it was a natural death.

  The death, however, still bewildered examiners. Besides the presence of semen in her vagina (confirming recent copulation), the contractions in the facial muscles, the sphincter, the quadriceps, and the glutes indicated that she appeared to have been frozen, even mummified, at the moment of ecstasy. For this was exactly the impression one had: her face had immortalized the rictus of orgasm, and none of the mourners, perhaps out of embarrassment, dared cover this up, even going so far as leaving the deceased’s eyelids open.

  But there were no injuries, toxicology exams were negative, nor could the hypothesis of homicide by suffocation (with the classic use of a pillow, for example) be raised because that would not account for the expression of ecstasy.

  It is important to make this clear: the lewd expression on the girl’s face was incompatible with the expression of someone who had sensed, as necessarily would have been the case in a murder, the coming end.

  What’s more, it defied all known thanatological laws because, even more than twenty-four hours after the cessation of life, the muscles mentioned remained rigid. One of the examiners said something very striking, heartbreaking even, to the mother: that her daughter had died with pleasure.

  When Baeta received the inital information concerning the case, even before the report had been filed, he declined to examine the scene, not only because it had been tampered with when they moved the body, but principally because the death happened at the famous Jereba’s muquiço.

  It is worth interrupting the narrative here to explain precisely what a muquiço is. Even the best dictionaries erroneously spell the word with an “o” and say it is a synonym for a hovel. Indeed, the meaning has very little to do with the appearance of the dwelling that makes up the muquiço. Rather, it is what the house is used for that defines it as such.

  The muquiço is a denial of the very idea of a house: it is a house with open doors, a home where everyone can enter. If houses, or residences, are defined as intimate spaces, the muquiço achieves the supreme contradiction of public intimacy. It is also important not to confuse it with a tenement or a rooming house. In the muquiço, no space is private, however minimal.

  Incidentally, for historical reasons, muquiços were, and still ar
e, poor. Although they must have first appeared on flat paved streets, it was in the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro that the institution really developed. And no case is more emblematic than Jereba’s muquiço.

  Jereba had initially rented the house on the Nheco slope hoping to make it his home and simultaneously the seat of the carnival association of his dreams, for which he had even found a name: Rancho das Morenas. It was a spacious, though rustic, house. However, as fate would have it, Jereba struggled to pay the rent.

  It was neighbors, friends, and drinking companions who helped him not to lose the house. There was no implicit intention behind this help. However, the generosity was so spontaneous that, little by little, Jereba began opening the doors to his home until finally it became a muquiço, with its doors permanently open.

  At night—whether or not Jereba was at home—the muquiço was frequented by couples who went there to engage in illicit affairs. There was no swapping, there were no orgies. In this, and in many other ways, it differed from Madame Brigitte and Dr. Zmuda’s commercial establishment.

  The couples at the muquiço merely took advantage of its impenetrable darkness (Jereba had no artificial light) in order to give cover to their activities. On more than one occasion, husband and wife were present at the same time, with their respective lovers, without knowing it, committing the same crime and sharing the same space.

  Baeta—who had been familiar with the muquiço since he was thirteen—knew that once the body had been moved from its original position it was useless to collect fingerprints or other evidence. First, because it would turn hundreds of people into suspects, and second, because not even the occasional witnesses, even those who dared confess to having been at the muquiço, could identify the dead girl’s companion. The coroner’s report put an end to the whole story, certifying death due to natural causes.

  In the First District, this outcome was met with animosity. Ever since Rufino’s release by order of the chief of police, there was strong resistance to the Relação Street people—and it is worth remembering that the events narrated now occurred before Baeta and the captain’s conversation at Hans Staden, which transformed antipathy into outright war. Therefore, Mauá Square made a point of challenging all expert opinions issued by headquarters.