The Mystery of Rio

by Alberto Mussa

  Baeta insisted that the girl give more details; he actually wanted to understand how it was possible, how these two children allowed themselves to be seduced so quickly. Incredibly, not even she could make any sense of what had happened. By the way, there is no need to mention that the expert was able to deduce the man’s identity. He did not, obviously, give voice to his suspicions. Admittedly, for him, the case of Aniceto had become personal.

  At the very least, a crime had been committed in this case—perhaps not murder, but certainly statutory rape. Baeta let the officers of the Twentieth District try to discover the man’s identity. By the tamarind tree he collected a button that had fallen off of a jacket, and based on that single piece of evidence he created his plan.

  The expert waited until nightfall of the following day, Saturday, October 11th. He knew that Aniceto would be making his rounds at the pier, attending one of those pernada circles, and that, on such occasions, he did not dress elegantly, preferring instead the ragged clothes of the malandros. This would be his chance.

  At around 8 p.m., Baeta crossed Harmonia Square and knocked on the door to the rooming house belonging to the Portuguese landlady. She was visibly terrified at the sight of the gun. Baeta pulled the woman outside by her dress sleeve, closing the door behind her to make sure they would not be seen.

  “I’m going into Aniceto’s room. Go and open the window. If he or anyone else knows I’ve been here, you die.”

  They say you can know someone by where they live. And that very little room said a lot about its occupant. First, with regard to cleanliness. The expert, who hoped to find soil on the shoes, saw that they were shiny and clean. Second, the contrast of the three elegant suits and the frock coat compared to the overall environment.

  It did not take long for Baeta to realize that one of the jackets, still exhibiting a dirt stain on the elbow, was missing a button, precisely the one Baeta had brought with him, which was an identical match. The side of one of the pants was dirty, too.

  That was the proof. Right then and there, he should have seized the evidence and filed for an arrest warrant. Instead, however, the expert continued scrutinizing the intimate details of his rival’s life.

  Aniceto was superstitious: he had pinned an image of St. Expedito to the wall, dressed as a Roman centurion, wielding a sword and a cross. The only piece of furniture other than the bed (the clothes were hung on a wire) was a trunk. On top of it stood a miniature plaster statuette of Saint Sebastian, along with two bottles containing herbs and twigs soaked in an alcoholic liquid—probably prepared by a healer, maybe old Rufino. In the corners, there were candles tied with ribbons, and all sorts of trinkets.

  Baeta was not satisfied; he removed the figurine and bottles and opened the trunk. Inside, he saw a bundle of money, perhaps more than five hundred mil-reis mixed in with the bedsheets. To his amazement, next to the money were three badly printed volumes: The Black Book of the Souls of Évora, the extremely rare The Invocation of Lucifer, and St. Cyprian’s Black Hood.

  The expert picked up one of those copies. And what he saw next completely unhinged him. Because, underneath the book, buried even deeper among the white sheets, he recognized the whip with the silver handle, stolen from his home in Catete.

  Miroslav Zmuda had relegated to the classification of residual a series of symbolizations which, according to him, represented very dark desires. Even though these were also falling movements, it was not merely a movement toward barbarism or the animal kingdom: it was a search for anti-nature. Among them, surprisingly, the Polish doctor included incest. That was when the first major disagreement arose between him and his former classmate in Vienna, the renowned Sigmund Freud.

  Something must be said here to bolster the reputation of our doctor. Zmuda, on this particular topic, did not have a lot of data at his disposal. The Austrian’s data, on the other hand, although more abundant, were not the result of direct observations, not to mention that they took as their point of departure the false assumption that the Greeks had concentrated in their texts all universal mythological knowledge.

  Freud was one of many thinkers to believe the fable of the Greek miracle: that they in fact had been the smartest people in history, the creators of Western civilization. It was for this reason alone that he elevated the myth of Oedipus to the level of fact, considering the crime of incest to be one of the effective pillars of the human condition.

  Our luminary Polish doctor, on the other hand, after observing dogs for long periods, did not admit that incest was natural even among animals (because, for them, it only occurrs as an accident, and never as the result of intention).

  It is up to the reader to judge: Freud spent his life in Vienna and conceived his theory by studying hysterical women. In all likelihood, he did not even take a hundred women to bed. Miroslav had a very different experience in Rio de Janeiro.

  Incest, for Zmuda, was an attempt to break with nature. And such fantasies among women were very rare. This entire fifth category—the residual category—consisted of very rare phenomena involving female sexuality. One example would be pedophilia—not to be confused with a desire for beardless youths, it refers rather to sexual relations with prepubescent children—examples of which the Polish doctor could not register a single case.

  He was also not able to document in women any tendencies toward necrophilia, nor even among men at the House of Swaps. Only once was this morbid desire ever carried out, when Hermínio managed to steal a corpse from the police morgue, in one of the largest financial transactions they had ever undertaken.

  There was only one incident of bestiality or zoophilia: a woman applied gravy to her own genitals and trained her immense São Miguel Cattle Dog to practice cunnilingus on her, and one day this dog attacked her, jealous that her husband was outrageously nuzzling the woman’s private parts.

  Along those same lines, the popular folktale “The Woman and the Horse,” although widely retold around the city, has never been documented, and thus remains only a literary example of the Myth of the Large Penis.

  Zmuda was able to isolate a fourth category also comprised of symbolizations contrary to civilization and human nature, but these were not descending or falling movements—rather, they were ascending, or rising: these were homosexual fantasies.

  In the House of Swaps (and Zmuda suspected that it was a widespread phenomenon), it was the symbolization that generated the most fascination: many couples actually engaged in swaps only as a pretext for female homosexuality, where the men became mere spectators.

  Whenever there was any contact between women in the open environments in the House, almost everyone present, of both sexes, moved in to observe. The show put on by Aniceto, Palhares, and the tall woman had been one example.

  Among the nurses, and among prostitutes in general, this was the most frequent fantasy; it was almost universal. Maybe because, subjected to constant degradation, forced most of the time to go against their own nature, they sought a pure eroticism among themselves, without the taint of virility.

  The Polish doctor had cataloged a case that he considered extremely important from a theoretical standpoint, which proved his thesis and therefore could be inserted into this fourth category: that of a woman who had asked Madame Brigitte for an encounter with a homosexual boy.

  This would not have been a job for Hermínio, who was very manly; the client wanted a delicate man, with effeminate mannerisms. She had no intention of humiliating him, and she had no intention of playing the role of the male with him. On the contrary, the woman’s anxiety was to find—from her perspective—a perfect being: a man who was not masculine.

  It must be remembered that Zmuda was Aryan, Slavic, Polish, and, therefore, Catholic. Even great scientists have trouble freeing themselves from the metaphorical pressures suffered in childhood. And nothing exerts so great a pressure on the intellect as the literary and poetic foundational legacies of indivi
dual mythologies. In the Polish doctor’s case, of course, it was the biblical mythology. It was thus through biblical myths that (even if subconsciously) Dr. Zmuda delineated his thinking.

  Although there are very masculine, very patriarchal attitudes in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, the biblical God is still necessarily an asexual spirit. Or, more correctly, a hermaphrodite God, which created man in its own image and likeness and then subdivided into two.

  These two creatures—man and woman—although sexually complementary, did not have sexual contact until their expulsion from paradise. And the expulsion is especially significant: it was in exile, on Earth, that man and woman propagated. She with labor pains, and he with pain, too, because he had to sweat to extract sustenance from the land for his family.

  So, in the biblical myth, the multiplication of the species (only possible with heterosexuality) is associated with pain, punishment, the fall, and the vengeance of God.

  There is a bold exegesis that I believe is in the subconscious of all Christians: that this divine wrath against the primal couple was actually the inaugural manifestation of jealousy. This God, asexual and hermaphroditic, had a necessary homosexual love for both man and woman.

  Therefore, due to such symbols, Zmuda considered homosexual fantasies the most perfect symbolization: transgressive of civilization and the human condition in being most similar to the memory of paradise.

  There may be those who object to the following: being a hermaphrodite, God’s love for human beings would also be heterosexual, logically speaking, of course. It is just not true symbolically. Because the attraction between different sexes—so banal that is hardly, in and of itself, a fantasy—is not born of divine work, but of the treachery woven by the snake.

  This animal—a phallic symbol, related to the Earth in every way, especially because it slithers over her—combines the metaphors of evil and virility. Let us not forget that it is the male who penetrates, who fertilizes by ravaging, be it the ground or the woman.

  And, thus, the cycle closes: with the fall of paradise, the divine creatures lose the gift of eternal youth. Virility is one more of death’s metaphors.

  If he had only known the specific details concerning the cases of the dead women, Miroslav Zmuda would have noticed another complicated slant to his “Aniceto Problem.”

  I have no idea what associations readers possibly made when the discovery of the silver-handled whip amid Aniceto’s belongings was revealed. But I do know what Baeta thought: if the capoeira touched the whip, his fingerprints were still on it. Soon, the expert’s revenge could be colossal; it would go far beyond using a jacket and a button to frame him for 267, which carried a maximum sentence of only four years.

  Professing to have reviewed the evidence anew, he could declare that Aniceto had been at the secretary’s crime scene. The capoeira could thus easily be charged under 294 and get his thirty years in jail; or, more likely, because of the strict secrecy surrounding the case, he would be summarily executed, by order of the chief, without a trial.

  But it was Saturday. The expert would have to wait until Monday to return to Relação Street to lend the story an essential element of verisimilitude. So there was plenty of time: Baeta messed up the room, broke the lock on the window, and pocketed a wad of cash to give the entry the appearance of a burglary. The Portuguese landlady, of course, would say nothing; and Aniceto would suspect a common break-in.

  Then, grabbing hold of the leather strap—and not the silver handle—and hiding the object under his coat, he slipped away and headed to Harmonia Square, where he got into a carriage that would take him home.

  I might not resist the temptation, were this a psychological or existential novel, to consider at length the constitution of human minds whose first impulse is evil.

  If this were a weekday, Baeta would have gone directly to his laboratory to consummate his dark scheme. However, as I said, it was a Saturday. And during the trip, after the first evil impulse had cooled, the expert had a second thought.

  If the men of the First District were patrolling his house to intimidate him—and he saw no other motive for the robbery—the fact that the whip ended up in the hands of the capoeira pointed to a hitherto inconceivable link between his rival and officers from Mauá Square. Worst of all, Baeta could not accuse them of this, because to do so he would need to confess that he had brought the whip back home.

  Baeta, in fact, had no idea what to make of this. Were these independent actions? Could Aniceto have broken into his home on his own? But if he had, why would he avoid leaving fingerprints?

  This last question led the expert to a third, terrifying hypothesis. Aniceto certainly would have never heard of the science of dactyloscopy. In Rio de Janeiro, in 1913, only police officers (and a few government or court employees) were familiar with this crime-fighting novelty. There was, however, at least one layperson, unknown within police circles, who, through special circumstances, knew exactly what this art represented: this person was none other than the wife of the fingerprint identification expert, the faithful and coveted Guiomar.

  Individuals imbued with a true scientific spirit are usually well equipped to resist great personal upheavals. Baeta went home, hid the whip, and woke up early on Monday. Just the thought that Aniceto had used this on his wife (even though he had not detected any marks on her body) produced spasms of hatred in him, the desire to randomly shoot people, which his intelligence soon brought under control. But he had arrived at a conclusion: he could not inhabit the same city as such a man, a man capable of seducing children, capable of seducing—and this perhaps he would have the chance to prove in a few hours—Guiomar herself.

  The quality of the prints on the silver handle—as the expert was able to ascertain by a superficial exam by the naked eye—was excellent. One of them—a right thumb mark—was especially sharp, and this was where Baeta began, gently sprinkling the black contrastive powder he had helped develop with his fellow forensic experts in Los Angeles.

  It was an extremely rare arch formation present in only about ten percent of the population. And the comparison, after photographing the dusted fingerprint, was easier than he had imagined: it was identical to those contained on Aniceto’s fingerprint cards, prepared by Baeta himself.

  For the purposes of revenge, this would suffice. But the expert still had a question to settle: he needed to know, he needed to be certain, whether Guiomar had delivered the whip to the capoeira of her own free will. Therefore, it was necessary to analyze the other surviving prints on the silver handle—not so well preserved, true, but quite acceptable.

  To the expert’s relief, a summary examination ruled out Guiomar: his wife had whorls in the corresponding fingers, while those on the handle were shaped like loops. These did not match Aniceto’s prints either.

  Perhaps they belonged to an officer of the First District, in league with the capoeira in the break-in of his house, a case he could make only if he admitted to having taken the whip to Catete.

  Baeta could have stopped there. The scientific spirit, despite offering great comfort in times of inner turmoil, can also sometimes leads us to discover more than is strictly necessary. Baeta conjectured that those could still be the old prints he had examined at the time of the crime at the House of Swaps.

  And the expert, who was thinking about writing an article on the controversial issue of the durability of fingerprints on smooth surfaces when exposed to air, decided to investigate further. He pulled the secretary’s prints (taken from the corpse) and photographs containing Fortunata’s prints (or those he assumed were hers because they were the only ones different from the victim’s on the bottle of wine, the wine glasses, and the whip’s silver handle).

  And, on staring at the prints attributed to the prostitute, in a meticulous comparative analysis, his mental acuity could not help but take over, and soon he noticed an interesting detail: Fortunata’s r
ight thumb also had an arch formation, like her brother’s. And that was not all. He noticed (it was not for nothing that his visual memory was so renowned) two minutiae, two very characteristic traits, near the center, or nucleus, of the fingerprint, which made those prints more similar than normal: a line interrupted by the so-called “lake” formation, immediately above another line, with an intervening “spur” shape.

  Baeta had the strange feeling that he had already noticed those details before, that he had already seen that design. He placed Fortunata and Aniceto’s fingerprints side by side.

  At first glance, they were the same. The expert, with some anxiety, undertook a thorough, careful analysis to exclude any possibility of error. After comparing twenty-one minutiae of the two thumbprints—a number that would be considered excessive by any other expert (who would have been satisfied with twelve or sixteen)—Baeta concluded that they were the same prints, that, absurdly, they were identical.