I repeat: Baeta concluded that the siblings Fortunata and Aniceto Conceição were the first known case of individuals who had exactly the same fingerprints.
Although dactyloscopy had already convinced most scientists as to its powers of unequivocal identification, and was officially accepted in countries like Argentina (which had the pioneering case solved by fingerprint analysis in 1892) and the United States (with several celebrated cases, such as the Crispi trial, solved in spectacular fashion by Joseph Faurot in 1911), it was still a developing science in 1913. And the main postulate of dactyloscopy—that no two people have the same fingerprints, even if they are twins—was not yet a consensus.
The main opponents to the technique had, I must admit, a good argument: no one had proved, in strictly theoretical terms, the aforementioned axiom; there was merely a lack of any evidence to the contrary. There were no reported cases of two individuals who had rolled the same fingerprint, but that did not necessarily prove the impossibility of such a coincidence in the world, even if it were only one sole example. The discovery of such prints was, perhaps, just a matter of time.
For Baeta, however, the question had to be treated as a statistical problem. He himself, in 1910, had arrived at very similar results to the Frenchman Balthazard in calculating the probability of two individuals exhibiting fifteen minutiae, or fifteen identical digital features, in the same position. This number was so small, so infinitesimal, that between the decimal point and the first significant digit, there would have been forty-four zeros.
Practical evidence of this was revealed at the Crispi trial, when twin brothers exhibited distinct fingerprints before a jury.
Therefore, Baeta—one of the luminaries in the field, who had placed Rio de Janeiro among the pioneering cities in the recognition and employment of this technique—was incapable of believing such a coincidence was possible.
The first thing that came to his mind, a fact that he noticed during the initial investigation, was that the strangulation of the secretary by force applied to the neck would have been more consistent with the actions of a man. The second thing was that legend, still in vogue, that the House of Swaps, which had been home to the Marquise of Santos, had a secret passageway that connected to it to the Quinta da Boa Vista.
Baeta now had a much stronger case, with much more conclusive evidence. Putting Aniceto at the crime scene—with fingerprints on various objects—was no longer simply fraud motivated by revenge: it was laying bare the true facts.
Perhaps, with the complicity of Madame Brigitte and Dr. Zmuda (or perhaps even one of the nurses), the capoeira had entered the House through the legendary passageway, directly under the stairs, where the Polish doctor had improvised his wine cellar.
After all, witnesses agreed that Fortunata had retrieved a bottle of red wine from there. The fingerprints, however, were those of Aniceto. Aniceto and Fortunata were very similar in appearance—they were siblings, they were twins. It had probably been Aniceto who had returned to the room with the bottle, disguised in Fortunata’s clothing.
When they announced Baeta’s presence at the House of Swaps, Madame Brigitte’s reaction was one of utter fear. And the doctor’s reaction was not very different—he immediately stored his famous black notebooks, which he never ceased to peruse, under lock and key. Baeta was the last person they both wanted to see, or should have. And the reason, which the reader will know in due time, was unspeakable.
Zmuda and Brigitte were already somewhat apprehensive in those days because of problems Aniceto had introduced at the House. First, collective Thursdays were seeing fewer and fewer participants. The husbands and male partners (Baeta included) were discouraged because the women were all focusing their attention on the capoeira. Only those who were content to watch the infidelity of their wives—and they were not in the majority—were still attending the parties.
More worrisome still was the hypothesis, suggested by one of the nurses, and which soon had everyone convinced, that Aniceto must be related to Fortunata, that perhaps they were siblings, because their resemblance was so striking.
Madame Brigitte decided, at the time, to confess to Miroslav Zmuda the full story of the letter, whose secret she had concealed so as not to upset him: Fortunata had not, in fact, been a friend of Cassia’s. She had been placed at the House by Cassia, but at the request of a certain old mandingueiro, a character who was said to be well known in the city, a man by the name of Rufino.
Madame Brigitte, who had asked Hermínio to investigate this man and what interests he might have in all of this this, did not have good news to report: Hermínio had failed to meet with the old man, and he discovered that he had gone into hiding in the forest, a fugitive from the police.
This really upset Zmuda. It was very unpleasant that, so soon after the crime had been committed, a likely brother of the killer had begun attending the House. And it was very unfortunate that it had to be Aniceto, his “problem” Aniceto, Aniceto the phenomenon, who was giving Miroslav Zmuda unthinkable opportunities to refine his theories.
The Polish doctor and Brigitte received Baeta expecting the worst.
“I’ll be blunt: did you know that Aniceto, who is Fortunata’s brother, was in this house on the day of the secretary’s murder, inside the victim’s room?”
That was not the subject that Brigitte and Zmuda feared most. Still, they were none the more comfortable for it. They admitted that the suspicion had come up—i.e., that the two were siblings, given their resemblance. But never that they had acted together. Nevertheless, they thought it impossible for him to have entered the House on the day of the crime.
The expert recalled the legend of the secret passageway. Zmuda opened his arms:
“Really, Baeta!”
Baeta was not convinced, and they had to take him down to the cellar, under the stairs. The passageway, of course, was not found. But the expert did not give up on his theory, and he went back upstairs to question the nurses. He wanted to ascertain whether they had really seen Fortunata pick up the bottle of red wine, whether it could have been a man disguised as a woman.
People’s memories, in general, especially after a certain amount of time has elapsed, and under some form of emotional suggestion, can easily be confused. And some of the nurses, faced with an attractive man who always treated them well, and an important person, the head of a police forensics department, who stated so categorically that the initial version of their story was impossible, began to reconsider and admit that the person who had passed by them with the bottle in hand might not, in fact, have been, certainly had not been, Fortunata.
Baeta seemed satisfied. And turned his attention to the owners of the house once again.
“I have no interest in doing you any harm. Later we’ll figure out how he got in. The important thing is that we arrange for the girls to provide new statements.”
Madame Brigitte and Dr. Zmuda could no longer cancel certain previously scheduled programming, certain services the House had committed to provide. Thus, they maintained the usual discretion concerning the matter. However, seeing that Baeta’s intentions were actually friendly, they decided to return the favor. And they revealed something else, which they figured might be relevant: the contents of Cássia’s letter.
The expert, however, did not seem to give the slightest importance to this information.
This novel will end shortly and so far I have reflected little on my favorite character—the beautiful, the true, the coveted Guiomar. Few women have been able to integrate a city so well, so perfectly into their being. Thus, being so much in agreement with the character of the city she epitomizes, it is only natural that Guiomar, too, was founded twice.
The first Guiomar we know well: Baeta’s Guiomar, the accommodating wife, who even at the House of Swaps, paradoxically, derived pleasure from not swapping. The second Guiomar began on a specific date—August 21st, 1913—at that same
House of Swaps, when she felt the irresistible urge to be slapped by her husband, stimulated by the virility of a stranger, who, only a few steps away, was slapping another woman.
This Guiomar, the second one, the definitive Guiomar, is the one that is going to precipitate the final action—an action that was predicted, or even provoked, by the palm reader on Marrecas Street.
“Over the life line, there’s a cross; next to it, five lines: Two up, three down. You’re about to cheat on your husband.”
Guiomar’s indignation said it all. Something had entered her psyche; something new was operating within her. And she realized—even though she did not want it to happen, even though she could not admit it to herself—that Baeta would not be at her side at her moment of great transition.
This did not mean that the expert had not been important in the process. It had been his idea to take home the silver-handled whip—even if he had not used it in the best way, in the precise way she yearned for it to be used.
Baeta, however, had always been a great lover. In the House of Swaps, she watched, enraptured, as her husband slapped and spit on a woman. The problem was not Baeta; the problem was not Guiomar. The problem was being Baeta and Guiomar, in those respective roles.
And so, on that fateful September 11th, Guiomar, unknowingly, for all intents and purposes, met the character, and for the briefest of moments she fixed her gaze on him. The man, the chosen character, stared back at her. If not for Aniceto, perhaps the affair would have had a different ending together.
When Guiomar found out, on Thursday, October 2nd, that they would not be going to the House of Swaps—the only place she could hope to meet the stranger again—she lost it. There is no better example of the devastating power of the Aniceto “phenomenon.”
I return here to the story that was interrupted a few pages back. I am referring to the woman who, on a dark street leading to Flamengo Beach, by Catete, was pushed into a horse-drawn coupe and was driven to Alfandega Street (in the stretch formerly known as the Quitanda do Marisco), where she was delivered to a man who was waiting in a townhouse to have his way with her.
Before, I told you that Hermínio was our kidnapper. Now, I tell you that Guiomar was the woman. It is not difficult to deduce who the man was.
If some readers marvel at her audacity, perhaps it is because they do not know what she had been capable of a few days before: Guiomar had written to Madame Brigitte, describing a certain man who had done such and such things with two women at the last party she had attended on September 11th. She asked to meet with this man. And she suggested a whip. And Madame Brigitte, as we saw, outdid herself in directing this particular scene.
It was to pay the price demanded by Madame Brigitte, and also to explain the disappearance of the whip, that Guiomar simulated the theft of her own home. The neighbors, of course, would not find it strange to see her force open her own window (which could have just been stuck). Inside, it was easy to turn over the drawers and give verisimilitude to the lie.
One thing is funny: while Guiomar knew the basic postulates of dactyloscopy, it never occurred to her to take any measures to plant the fingerprints that would typically be found in a crime scene of this type.
This error, thus, directed all of the expert’s suspicions against the officers of the First District, who loomed over their house in Catete, without her noticing. Unfortunately for Guiomar, they were drawn into the story as well.
I said the neighbors would not think it odd to see Guiomar force open her own window, but Mixila was not a neighbor; he was police. He perceived her agitation, her strange behavior, and he followed the expert’s wife when she went off to Machado Square to deliver the whip and pay the fee. The intermediary waiting for her was none other than Hermínio.
The Brotherhood of the First District did not hold women in high regard. The police chief himself was in the habit of saying that a faithful woman in Rio de Janeiro was the one who died before having had the chance to cheat. But adultery never occurred to them in this case. It was perfectly clear to them that this had something to do with Rufino’s treasure—so much so that the rower Hermínio had been asking around about the old man, and Guiomar was the wife of a man who, it was well known, was mixed up in this business.
Mauá Square, however, especially after the disappearance of three of its members in Tijuca Forest, could not assign its entire force to monitor around the clock the gang made up of Rufino, Baeta, Guiomar, Hermínio, and perhaps others.
If they had surprised Hermínio the moment when he delivered the whip to Aniceto, the story might have had a different outcome. Instead, the one they followed, the one Mixila followed, was Madame Brigitte’s go-between when he rented the mansion on Alfandega Street on Friday the 10th.
The certainty that there was something big there increased when, by Monday evening, neither Hermínio nor anyone else had entered the townhouse. The expectation, however, ended on the 14th, when first the capoeira entered (without the whip), and half an hour later the expert’s wife was being pushed and shoved as if it she were a slut by the former São Cristovão rower.
Uncomfortable with three revolvers pointing at him, Hermínio was forced to do an about-face as soon as he exited the building. The three walked back upstairs, Hermínio in front, followed by Mixila and two other policemen, who did not have a clue what was happening. They would have seen much more if they had only arrived a little later.
Instead, they kicked open the door with the immense urgency that only treasures justify, and took in the scene: Guiomar, with her dress lowered, her breasts exposed, her hair pulled back by Aniceto as he wandered with his tongue over her exposed nape.
The three barged in at once. Their mistake was pushing Hermínio onto the bed. It was a mistake because the capoeira needed only one stingray kick to carom one officer off the other and flee down the stairs. Hermínio, the former rower, reached for a fallen gun, which only facilitated Aniceto’s escape as the two officers were needed to take him down.
We know how this story ends: Mixila chased the capoeira, discovered he was headed toward Santa Teresa, and went there in pursuit. There he entered the forest never to come out again.
Although it is one of the most studied cities in the world, much of Rio de Janeiro’s history still remains obscure. This ignorance is severe for the 18th and 17th centuries. It is extremely severe for the second half of the 16th century. And it is alarming with relation to the entire period previous to that, which includes the city’s pre- and proto-histories.
The resulting damage is immense for the native mythology. For example, there is today, in Niterói, an imposing statue of Arariboia—resolutely looking out at Rio de Janeiro as if he were a foreign conqueror.
Although this hero, the first native to wear the vestment of Christ, had received land grants on the eastern rim of Guanabara Bay, he was in fact a Carioca Tuxuau, in the most legitimate sense of the word, because he was born and lived in Paranapuã, the former Cat Island (i.e, “maracajás”), currently Governor’s Island.
It is possible that, at the time, the Temiminós, or the Maracajás, already inhabited the city’s northern coast and the neighboring islands, such as Cobras, Melões, and Moças. So much so that the “Village of Martinho”—as it appears in an old Portuguese map made before 1580—is nothing less than the village ruled by Arariboia (who had been baptized Martim Afonso), erected under the invocation of Saint Lawrence, beyond São Bento Hill, between Prainha and Saco de Alferes. The famous morality play Auto de Anchieta, of 1587, was performed in this location, and not on the other side of the bay.
And what about other great forgotten characters, such as Cunhambebe, Guaixará, and Aimbirê? The latter—the mastermind behind the Franco-Tamoia coalition—if for no other reason, deserves to be remembered for the classic scene which so fully embodies the spirit of the city, when, mortally wounded, he chose the fairest among his twenty wives, the stunning Ig
uaçu, and plunged into the bay with her before dying, fought the tides and swam out to the high sea, and deposited her, safe from his enemies, on Ipanema Beach.
Another attack on the mythical city’s memory is making the Carioca River, after many detours and channels, run underground almost its entire length, reappearing as a tiny snippet in Cosme Velho, near the Largo do Botícario. The river’s waters were so clear, so pure, that (so the Indians said) it made men strong and women beautiful. This confirms that, at least in legend, there existed a fountain of youth here, the object of Lourenço Cão’s lost map.
It is also an unforgiveable crime that not one miserable plaque signals the approximate site of the famous Casa de Pedra—we do not know how, when, or by whom it was erected—a house that is so historically important that from it the citizens of Rio derive their own ethnonym.
By the way, no one knows exactly how Rio de Janeiro’s toponym originated, and there is much controversy surrounding it. Varnhagen’s thesis—which involves extremely complicated nautical calculations—is that a reconnaissance expedition to the coast, commanded by an anonymous captain, discovered what they thought was the estuary of a great river on January 1st, 1502.
However, as this is merely a logical deduction without supporting documents, conservative historians prefer the year 1504, when the fleet of Gonçalo Coelho would have dropped anchor in Guanabara. However, this is also subject to heated debate.
A strong historiographical strand argues that the name Rio de Janeiro does not appear on maps before 1520. They present as evidence the fact that Ferdinand Magellan, who passed through here on his famous voyage around the world, gave the location the name of Santa Luzia since he was unfamiliar with any other names.
On the other hand, there are those who invoke the 1513 map of Turkish navigator Piri Reis wherein the outline of Guanabara Bay appears very clearly, surrounding a mysterious Arabic name containing the word “Saneyro.” And there are those who remember the voyage of a ship named Bertoa, or the expedition of João Dias de Soliz.
The Mystery of Rio Page 18