His Own Man

by Edgard Telles Ribeiro

  Copyright © 2010, 2014 by Edgard Telles Ribeiro

  Originally published in Portuguese as O punho e a renda by Editora Record Ltda,

  Rio de Janeiro, first edition, 2010; second edition (revised by the author), 2014.

  Translation copyright © 2014 by Kim M. Hastings

  Verse on this page from “Burnt Norton,” the first of the Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © 1936 by Harcourt Brace & Company.

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  Text Designer: Julie Fry

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Ribeiro, Edgard Telles.

  [Punho e a renda. English]

  His own man / by Edgard Telles Ribeiro; translated from the Portuguese by Kim M. Hastings.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-59051-698-0 — ISBN 978-1-59051-699-7 (e-book)

  I. Brazil — Politics and government — 20th century — Fiction.

  2. Dictatorship — Brazil — History — 20th century — Fiction.

  I. Hastings, Kim M., translator. II. Title.

  PQ9698.28.11547P8613 2014

  869.3′42Z — dc23

  2013047561

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  For Angelica

  For Ivan Junqueira and Luiz Augusto de Araujo Castro

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Three

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Four

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Part Five

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Part Six

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Part Seven

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  I don’t claim to paint things in themselves, but only their effect on me.

  —Stendhal

  In the presence of certain realities, art is trivial or impertinent.

  —George Steiner

  PART ONE

  1

  Writing a country’s history may be difficult, but tracing a man’s story presents its own challenges. For a country, there is a vast array of information in the form of books and treaties, maps and images, leaders, legends, and archives. But a man? What kind of history does he have? Where would his secret maps be found? Or his boundaries? What might be hidden beneath his façade or detected in his gaze should he give in to temptation and study himself in the mirror one night?

  My first memory of Max dates back to 1968 in Rio de Janeiro and was to some extent foreboding: his shadow cast over my desk at the ministry. Without my hearing his footsteps or picking up on his presence in some way, he had appeared behind my high-backed wooden chair and casually leaned over the document I was working on. I was writing by hand, as was customary at the time, on loose sheets of paper that would later be typed up by my secretary. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which I had joined slightly less than a year earlier), such familiarity — appearing out of nowhere and peering at what a colleague was drafting — was a privilege reserved for senior personnel.

  The shadow hadn’t set off any alarms for one prosaic reason: right then, my eyes were staring off into the distance, searching for the word that would best complete the sentence I was struggling with. Although the text, on the whole, was decidedly bland, that particular line wasn’t. Given how dear symmetry is to the young, the irrelevance of the whole demanded a term that would glint like a blade in the sun. “Fortuitous,” the shadow murmured.

  As I turned toward the voice, the stranger cocked his head and smiled, repeating as if in encouragement: “Fortuitous. That’s the word you need there. From the Latin.”

  By then I was standing. I knew him only by sight; he worked at the secretary-general’s office. Extending a hand, he introduced himself. “Marcílio Andrade Xavier. You can call me Max.”

  “Max?”

  “My initials. My ex-wife came up with it.” Leaning against the desk, he crossed his arms, giving the conversation just the right touch of informality. “She couldn’t pronounce my full name. She was American.” He corrected himself: “She is American. She’s alive. Very much so, in fact.” He laughed somewhat bitterly, then added, “The name caught on here at Itamaraty because of the initials we use on our memos. So I became Max for good. With any luck, for posterity.”

  I smiled at the joke but still wondered what he was doing in my office.

  “I came to invite you to lunch,” my visitor explained. “At the suggestion of a mutual friend, whose name I won’t reveal just yet. He asked that we join him in his office and wait while he finishes up a report. He assured me that your dynamic personality puts you high on the list of lunchable colleagues.”

  “Lunchable colleagues?”

  “According to him, you’re among the few people one can share a meal with and not suffer the after effects of indigestione acuta brought on by the rampant tedium of our environment.”

  “Taediu,” I ventured.

  And so, laughing and exchanging half a dozen phrases in Latin, we went out in search of our mutual friend. I remember feeling quite pleased with this new colleague, and more than a little gratified to be receiving the attention of someone higher up — adviser to the second-in-command at the ministry, no less. The conversation flowed easily. When we’re young, with our whole life ahead of us and a vague sense of immortality hanging over our heads, we crave virtuosity of every kind. Shining the spotlight on ourselves, we make outrageous statements and conjure affinities that will root us in familiar ground.

&
nbsp; Max and I shared at least one affinity. A meaningful one, we would soon find out as we strolled between stairways and corridors: a passion for reading. We had devoured the same authors: Joyce, Proust, Flaubert, Chekhov, Fitzgerald, Machado, Borges, but also (and with equal appetite) Debray, Gramsci, Chomsky, Lukács.… As such, we spoke by way of metaphors. We could, whenever necessary, place unbridgeable barriers between us and our colleagues. This was largely because many of them seemed incapable of voicing a single thought unless it was first strained through the filter of reason and simmered over a low flame. But not so between the two of us — as became clear in fifteen minutes of conversation. In an environment where discretion prevailed, our behavior bordered on the irreverent. Without taking chances, of course — we avoided criticizing our leaders too pointedly, or exposing those in power to their own vulnerabilities.

  Affinities of this nature pave the way for greater expectations — and for probing questions. Max showed curiosity regarding my background. He knew I was the son of a diplomat, but this alone wasn’t enough for him. He was interested in verifying the legends that circulated about my father at the ministry. Had he really come from such humble beginnings? Gone through the public school system? Toiled as a geography teacher at suburban schools? How had he managed to work his way into Itamaraty?

  “He studied theology as a young man,” I explained. “He read a lot.…”

  “Even so,” Max persisted. “Quite an accomplishment.”

  And it was. My father’s obituary the previous year had made a point of saying so. The paper had emphasized his origins. Only a rare few of his social class spoke other languages or had the wherewithal to devote themselves to studies that would grant them access to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Max’s persistence made me realize that the subject was of great importance to him. As for myself, I don’t recall being curious about his family roots just then. The urge to dig deeper would come as the years went by, spurred by a succession of events that gradually provoked the need for some explanation.

  Deciphering Max’s inner workings thus evolved from initial feelings of affection to an atmosphere verging on unease and, later, duress. During this slow process, I would find out that Max descended from the more modest branch of the Andrade Xavier family, who hailed from the interior of Minas Gerais (and not Rio de Janeiro). This made him “doubly unlucky,” as he put it — given how near and yet removed he was from the wealthier, more aristocratic branch of the family. Max had lost his father while still a young boy. Following that loss, his mother had seen all the doors of her husband’s family close for reasons never explained. At the ministry, where Max felt he rightfully belonged, he had found the opportunity to reclaim the social status of his childhood.

  This made me understand why the subject of ancestry, which didn’t matter much to me, was a concern for him, tied up as it was to his distant past. Why else would he have dedicated himself to painstakingly tracing the genealogies of his colleagues and superiors? And why would he feel compelled to refer to the good marriages some had made as being merely alliances that would advance their careers? I surmised that his marriage to the American, which had lasted just two years (“a youthful mishap,” he liked to call it), must have failed since it didn’t serve this purpose.

  Be that as it may, and concerning this social topic, I came away from our lunch with the clear impression that in my new friend’s mind, the simple fact of my father’s acceptance into Itamaraty had made him an aristocrat and, by extension, made me a second-generation member of a stately family. Those were probably the real roots of my “lunchable” status.

  I remember trying my best that day to live up to expectations created about me. I spoke of films and literature. I praised Eros and Civilization. Having read Marcuse earned me points. I cited verses by Pound. I talked about politics, sports, and samba. Lowering our voices, we criticized the military and the coup of 1964 with a frankness unusual even among the younger set. I also knew to laugh at Max’s stories (which were quite good) and those of our mutual friend (which weren’t bad). We swapped secrets about women over dessert.

  At twenty-eight, Max was older and more experienced than us — not to mention divorced. He dazzled us as the man of the world we took him to be, full of wisdom that he seemed ready to impart in the form of advice or suggestions. He spoke of the birth control pill as the only significant invention of the twentieth century. And he considered the budding feminist movement the greatest opportunity ever offered to men, whose appetites would now be sated as never before. Over coffee, Max flattered me with an invitation to join him and a few friends getting together to listen to some new Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk albums he had received from New York. He gave me the address of his small waterfront apartment in Urca and revealed that he hosted a weekly jazz show on Radio MEC. He alluded to his gifts as an announcer and the stories he would make up to fill airtime when, out of laziness, he neglected to prepare material.

  As though struck by sudden inspiration, I asked if he could recommend a tailor. He then made me the beneficiary of advice received from a veteran ambassador: “Make few suits.” Long pause. “In London.”

  As I listened to Max, I realized how refined our ministry was in terms of language and hidden codes. Words, rhythms, and implied italics could imbue sentences with an entirely distinctive Proustian flair. Such minor details, I believe, were what made me like Max right away: his ability to play with the mind and to conjure ideas, sometimes important, sometimes childish, with the lightness of a bird. Nothing, in my opinion, better exemplified Itamaraty and the diplomat’s role back then better than my companion’s levity, which the imprudent called savoir-faire. They couldn’t imagine what strain lay behind my new friend’s personal efforts.

  On our cab ride back to the ministry after lunch, we heard on the radio that the Military Security Council was meeting with the President of the Republic at Laranjeiras Palace. That night we all saw in the shaky black-and-white images on our TV sets — and heard through our open windows, in successive layers of sounds that arose from streets, neighborhoods, towns, and cities across the country — that the generals had imposed Institutional Act Number 5 (AI-5), which severely curtailed civil liberties. It was December 1968 and there was clearly nothing fortuitous about the blades glinting in the sun around us. The nation was preparing to plunge into a period far darker than what had already come to pass — and far more suffocating.

  Years would elapse before I recognized the deeper significance of Max and my having met that day, a Friday the thirteenth, no less. Only then was I able to associate the shadow he cast over my desk with that which would gradually take over the country.

  2

  Those who admired Max would say he was a pro; to others, he was simply an opportunist. And, inevitably, there were some who saw him as a scoundrel. I personally think Max, like many before and after him, might simply have been a victim of his own inherent contradictions — and not just a gentleman with a sword for hire. A gentleman, it’s worth recalling, whose path would end up being defined by a singular set of accomplishments. There were few among us like him, so readily adapting to the ever-changing conditions of that time with such charm and competence, swiftly scaling the ranks of our hierarchy over the twenty years of military rule, and then going on to achieve further triumphs after the return to political normalcy — when everything indicated he should have been exiled or, with any luck, retired.

  I imagine there must have been cases similar to his in the countless hidden corners of our federal administration. But no other setting lent itself to the particular sleights of hand that Itamaraty afforded its actors. This fact might be attributed to the subtlety with which those transactions were negotiated, since the foreign offices are known for their discretion. On the other hand, the presidential palaces in Rio de Janeiro and, later, Brasilia, as well as the embassies abroad, served admirably for the elaborate charades staged by bureaucrats eager to ingratiate themselves with those in power. For while the horrors
took place in the military barracks and prisons, at formal state dinners the regime showed its finer skills, seating torturers and gentlemen side by side.

  As for Max, he always seemed to be involved in bigger projects and causes, which far surpassed the routine tasks entrusted to us. That these might shift imperceptibly over time in focus (or axis, as he liked to say) never seemed to disturb him. At most, they would prompt him to make a comment or two about the transitory nature of ideologies — comments that enabled him to drop moral considerations from his personal equation. Once, when I criticized an individual who had adapted with remarkable speed to the political realities of the new times, Max simply smiled, as though listening to the ranting of a child, as he spun a crystal paperweight on his desk. Changes, his gesture seemed to imply, are a part of life. And the corollary, also unspoken, was as vivid as the crystal spinning before my eyes: You had better learn how to deal with them accordingly.

  Anyone who sees Max today in official photos, decked out in his uniform, with white gloves, sword, and plumed hat, presenting his credentials in some foreign court, can’t help but be impressed by his majestic appearance. The self-confidence, dignity, and poise that emerge from these images convey a supreme composure — albeit born of illusion. Not that Max deceived everyone — that was never the case. But for someone like me, who met him when he was young and thrilled to have recouped his family’s former splendor, one fact stands out: he deceived himself above all. So how not to feel a special tenderness, even now, on receiving the photos he periodically sends us in the diplomatic pouch with a friendly postcard from some far-off land, images of himself in full dress, adorned with feathers, silk, and lace? How not to appreciate the idyllic scenes of Itamaraty banquets recorded with just as much enjoyment in Brasilia?

  Oh, the Itamaraty banquets … How many were there then, paying tribute to kings and queens, among other foreign dignitaries who honored our generals with their presence? Partygoing people, who indulged in everything — except suspicions?

  “How could they be willing to play along?” I would grumble to myself, wrestling with irritation that would turn to indignation as my friend lingered over the men’s dress coats and uniforms, as well as their numerous decorations, or let himself become entranced by the women’s gowns — and the jewelry they wore with calculated nonchalance.