by João Almino
In one corner of the dining room a painting by Stepladder flirted with the grotesque.
– Do you know the artist, I mean personally? I asked Ana.
– Of course. He’s the only one in Brasília who’s any good.
– I see you hold me in high esteem.
– I’m not talking about photographers, but painters. And you’re not from Brasília.
I almost protested that there was nothing of mine on her walls, not even a snapshot. That was the difference between her appreciation for my work and Stepladder’s.
The doorbell rang.
– The surprise has arrived, Ana said.
Joana appeared at the door in a dress that I’d never seen, more elegant than ever, as if she’d come for a ball. She’d come to spend just a few days in Brasília, she told me. I didn’t dare ask if it was to see me, but I trusted that my phone call had contributed to her decision.
At first she treated me distantly. But after two whiskeys she seemed to relax. I even held her hands as if we were two lovebirds.
– How’s your project with Eduardo going? she asked.
I told her about the ceremony in the Garden of Salvation.
– I invited Ana, but she doesn’t want to go.
– I have a certain level of curiosity. I’ll go with you, Joana said. Will Eduardo really be there?
– He’s coming just for this.
I moved closer to the flowers in the garden and started snapping the camera looking for a less common angle. My gaze attracted everyone’s attention. They surrounded me and looked where I looked as if they were seeing the blooms for the first time. Josafá also came closer as if it wanted to know what was attracting our attention and started wandering around the garden.
– I’m thinking of starting a flower business. I already have a large number of seedlings. If I can cultivate roses, I’m sure I can make money with flowers more suited to this climate. And I’m not talking about dried flowers, Carlos said.
– I don’t know a thing about plants, I said, but if you need photographs of flowers . . . They tell me I should be inspired by Step-ladder and take photographs of reality. But don’t you think flowers are part of reality?
– According to a Buddhist principle, reality is a void, the ultimate nature of things. Reality doesn’t exist, at least not permanent reality, Carlos said.
He spoke with a professorial air. Now retired, after spending years closed up in the Congressional Library, he didn’t miss a chance to show off his bookish knowledge. He was still a bookworm. He lived through his reading, through other people’s stories. He contented himself with Ana, flowers, and books.
– Maybe I can use one of your photographs in a publicity campaign, Joana said.
– No, I’m not interested. They’re very special. I’m thinking about mounting an exhibit, I answered categorically, without knowing whether she was referring to some commercial for her store or to a project for her publicity agency.
Two works occupied positions of prominence in the living room. One was signed by Ana Mariani and had been shown in one of the São Paulo biennials. There were photographs of houses and more houses in the interior of the Northeast, all in the same style, with variations in color and angle of light. Another was by Jac Leirner and showed business cards collected from all over the world in a series.
– I want to show a work similar to these, I said. Panels of triangles.
– Triangles? Ana asked.
– Oh, really? You never told me about this, Joana said.
– Love triangles? Ana teased.
– No, it’s more a physical thing.
– But are they urban photographs? Nature photos? Of people? Joana asked.
– People.
– I don’t authorize you to use any photographs of me, Joana said, as if she could guess my project.
– Your photographs don’t fit into my plan.
– I also don’t want to see any of those photographs exhibited, do you hear me? You know, Joana, he took some photographs of me last year. They’re great!
Finally Berenice appeared. She greeted me politely. It wasn’t rare at a party, particularly in Brasília, for me to count the women with whom I’d had an affair. My name wasn’t Don Juan and my reckoning hadn’t reached mile e tre, but at that moment it was enough to have gotten to three to provide for a unique situation: it included all of the women present.
I took a big swig of whiskey and summoned the courage to follow Berenice into the kitchen. I wanted to know about our son. Financial help I couldn’t provide. But maybe it was time to meet him.
My courage didn’t arrive in time. Halfway down the hall I detoured into the bathroom while Berenice continued into the house.
Later, when the whiskey had caused the predictable effects in my head and legs, I proceeded unsteadily into the utility area to talk to her.
– I didn’t ask you about your son. (I couldn’t bring myself to say “our son.”)
– Don’t worry. You don’t owe me a thing, or him.
– I heard he’s in jail.
– A great injustice.
– I’m going to visit him.
– No, don’t even think about it. He doesn’t know anything about you.
Later I asked Ana:
– Do you know Berenice’s son?
– He’s a complicated guy. He was involved in Berta’s murder, I don’t know if you knew. He should soon get out of jail. He identified everyone involved and he’ll benefit from a plea bargain. But he was straight with my nephew Termite. In fact the two of them didn’t participate in any of it. They were unlucky. They were with a bad crowd and were present when everything happened, that’s all.
Berta had been brutally murdered the year before. Decades earlier, when we were young, she’d been part of our group of “the Useless” together with Joana, Ana, me, and some other friends.
– Did he live with Berenice?
– No. He has a house in Vila Paulo Antonio.
That was the housing project both Eduardo Kaufman and Aida had mentioned and that according to Marcela had been built on lots with false deeds. For the first time it was making sense to equip myself with an anthropologist’s eye in order to take photos of that new satellite city as part of the project Eduardo Kaufman had devised.
When we left, Joana gave me a ride in her rental car. Her look was free of all animosity and had something maternal about it.
– There’s plenty of room in Eduardo’s apartment. Why don’t you . . .
– No, I’m well-situated in a hotel. I prefer it this way. I didn’t come here to stay with you, she answered, guessing at my plan, but, perhaps noticing my disappointment, she added:
– We can have a drink in the hotel bar.
The bar was at the back of an enormous hall where lonely women circulated on the lookout for politicians or civil servants who came to Brasília without their families, businessmen who travelled here to lobby, and other men passing through to attend meetings. It was a weekend, many of them had returned to their hometowns and there was an obvious imbalance between supply and demand.
The marble floor, as well as the glass and metal tables shone, reflecting the blue and yellow lights flanking the mirror on the wall behind the bar.
– Do you have an exhibition space? Joana asked.
– I’m looking for one.
– I want to see those photographs.
– I’ll show you. I really want your opinion.
We had a whiskey. I was carefully testing her interest in me as if I had to seduce her for the first time.
– You can come up with me if you promise you’ll behave, she said, after she drained her glass.
– I swear on the Bible. I opened my right hand over her whiskey glass.
– I don’t want to hear about sex, I want to make that very clear. It’s nothing against you.
– But don’t you miss . . .
– I need caresses . . . That’s what I miss.
I misin
terpreted her, because when she got to the room she refused my kisses, my massages, and my proposal for a bath together. We had some soup and then watched television holding hands, with her sitting close.
– If you want, you can spend the night. Just to sleep, she emphasized.
She didn’t desire me like before, that was obvious, but she allowed herself to be seen as she got ready for a bath. Seeing Joana undress was like taking a full shot of vitality that went all the way up my spine to my head. As if vitamins of youth and joy flowed between my legs. I wouldn’t trade Joana for any other woman as long as I could see her undress at that moment, a moment which I appreciated in each and every detail, gazing at her arched body, at her panties sliding down her long thighs, at the fullness of her derrière. I knew every millimeter of that body, from the shape of her hands to the black mole among her pubic hairs. It had been a long time since I’d asked her to show me her “beauty mark,” which was what I had nicknamed that black mole.
Then we slept together. Just slept, and I was happy.
[July 25]
Preparing for Eduardo Kaufman’s arrival, I spent the next few days sorting photographs of Paulo Antonio hugging the elderly, sitting alongside children, running in the park in shorts and a T-shirt or holding rallies.
It was hard to judge the value of many of the photographs without knowing who was standing alongside Paulo Antonio. In some cases the unknown individuals added a quality to the photo: beautiful, half-dressed women at Carnaval; those pretty grape festival queens; figures, uniformed, bedecked or identified by messages on caps and T-shirts, like priests, generals, and union or Landless Movement leaders. In some photographs, one could deduce from the protocol that Paulo Antonio was posing with other heads of state. In several, it didn’t matter who was at his side; they were meaningful only because of Paulo Antonio’s reaction: for his look of surprise, his laughter, grimaces, tears or his pensive, dreamy gaze. Over here is an enormous Brazilian flag inflaming nationalist instincts and offering a Paulo Antonio embraced with the nation. Over there a crucifix brought his good intentions into the foreground and gave the impression that God was beside the President. I felt all-powerful: it was no exaggeration to believe that my photography could help create the past, history itself. With the gamut of photographs at hand, I could invent Paulo Antonio after my own fashion.
At the Paulo Antonio Fernandes Memorial, I found the photograph taken on a Carnaval viewing stand minutes before his disappearance and also a copy of one of my photographs, the first one from my file number one. It’s the famous photograph of Paulo Antonio’s inauguration on which the novel Ideas for Where to Spend the End of the World is based and in which his sister Eva, with whom I lived, and the Prophetess Iris Quelemém, from the Garden of Salvation, among others, appear. The copy, which I still keep in an electronic version, has one advantage over the original. It has incorporated the patina of time. Its edges are torn, there’s a slightly yellow stain in the background where a Ceschiatti sculpture and the Burle Marx gardens are visible. It has acquired an air of nobility, sealing its historical relevance.
In May, Brasília’s perspectives were still spattered with the pink of the silk floss trees. A flock of parakeets flew away from one of them when I approached. They announced something mysterious, so that an unbeliever like me could take fuller advantage of his trip to the Garden of Salvation. Joana would come with me.
I would take photographs of the gullibility stamped on serious faces and the illusion that not only does a heaven exist but also a magic formula for getting there.
In the outdoor area of a bar I drank some awful cachaça, despite Joana’s protests. People looked at her elegance with deference as if she were a queen, a princess, a first lady, a soap opera actress, or, at the very least, the wife of some politician. There was an air of a political rally, people gathered at the entrance to the main temple, awaiting Eduardo and Iris Quelemém.
Finally, a path cleared so that the two of them could enter. Seated in her wheelchair, Iris blessed Eduardo who was standing next to her and to the other priests, facing the multitudes. Smiling, he shook everyone’s hands.
He looked surprised when he saw Joana. He hugged her, gave her kisses on the cheeks and made a point of placing her next to him for a photograph that I refused to take.
– I understand. You came here to see Eduardo.
– It’s crazy you’d think that of me, Cadu. And why would I have to come all this way to see Eduardo?
For him the photographs were more valuable than the tribute itself. They proved the existence of the event in which he, Eduardo, was the highlight. That’s why he wanted to have his picture taken at every moment. He was always focused on my camera and was transformed in front of it.
He went up on the viewing stand and gave his speech. According to the theory I’d been developing, politicians should be measured not by their ideology, but by decibels. The most convincing speeches were the most inflammatory, like Eduardo Kaufman’s was that afternoon. Iris was also taken to the viewing stand and placed beside him.
– This woman is really a saint, said a priestess in a fluttering dress, with several transparent capes in blue and pink.
– If it weren’t for the money, I wouldn’t take these pictures, I commented to Joana.
My role was to photograph the tribute and, as part of it, the session in which the spirit of Paulo Antonio himself would descend. And it did. It grunted and muttered with a drunkard’s voice:
– I bless thee. Thou shalt build an evangelical temple here. Give it my name.
– He of all people, who was a good orator and knew how to arouse an audience. Here’s the proof that the supernatural doesn’t need the brain, which rots with the body here on earth, eaten by worms.
Joana laughed at my comment.
– The company of the Catholic saints up there in heaven must have been a real bore. That’s why, after dying, Paulo Antonio became an evangelical, I added, whispering in her ear.
I noticed Eduardo Kaufman’s annoyed look in our direction.
Iris was invited to speak. She looked at the sky with her visionary eyes. She raised her folded hands toward something invisible, not simply the building’s ridge beam or the mermaid suspended from the ceiling or the Yemanjá drawn on one of the walls, or even one of the macumba saints lined up at the top of the temple. No one understood what she was saying, but everyone agreed with her emphases and with the determination deduced from her strong gesturing. People were carried away by her anger about what had been done and what hadn’t been done and by her courage to confront everything and everyone. No one could remember a single word she’d said, but they’d never forget her enthusiasm and indignation. Photograph # 18 is one of many that I took of her gestures or expressions. Three fingers in her right hand were upraised, while her wrinkled face lit up when enunciating two or three incomprehensible things. Three fingers of Joana’s left hand appeared on the left side of the photograph conversing with Iris’s. They ended up in the photo by accident but harmonized the scene like a perfect translation of what was unintelligible. Joana wanted to whisper something in my ear at the exact moment I’d snapped the shutter, and her wind-blown hair brushed my face. I wanted to hug her, to kiss her, but I didn’t feel sure yet of her reaction.
[July 26]
19. Traces of desire
– Adam means man, humanity; it comes from Adamah, from the Hebrew earth; from adom, red, and dam, blood. The beginning of the world and of humanity is here, in this red soil—so taught a medium with short, hairy arms and plump, disproportionately large hands for that body. He wore a brown T-shirt accentuating a pronounced belly, over which hung a gold chain with a crucifix, a figa talisman and a Star of David.
– Chance doesn’t exist, he continued. Everything is foreseen and everything will happen. It’s a matter of time; what isn’t revealed today will be revealed later. The book already exists in its entirety in eternity and the word that hasn’t been spoken yet will be spoken one day. Evi
l can turn into good and good into evil.
– It doesn’t matter whether worms eat this imbecile today or a century from now. It doesn’t matter whether I document this tribute or not, I whispered again in Joana’s ear.
– May I take a picture? I asked the medium aloud, moving in closer. Joana accompanied me.
He posed for me, happy. Then, to gather more natural expressions, I pretended to be interested in his philosophy, which led him to invite me to his theology classes every Sunday in the Garden of Salvation itself. I promised I’d be his student.
– You’re no good, Joana told me, when we moved away.
– From this medium’s words one could conclude that the truth has no more merit than a lie. If we don’t live today, we’ll live some day. It doesn’t matter whether I do good or evil. But, no, not everything is indifferent, I said to Joana. For example, whether Eduardo pays me or not isn’t indifferent.
I went to find him and demanded my money. In exchange, he reminded me that I owed him work. He counted up the photographs I had produced per day and arrived, as a result of his division, at a mere fraction of a photo. Joana watched us from a distance.
– Why should I have to worry about the number of photographs per day? I answered. Your life, not mine, is ruled by time.
The next day, Eduardo said:
– You managed to exhaust my patience. I no longer need your services. It’s not just that you haven’t done enough work . . .
– You didn’t like the photos?
– I feel you’re not interested in the work. Stay in the apartment a few more days, if you have to, while you decide what to do.
Making a living only from my photography wouldn’t be easy, but I was filled with joy. I felt like a free man, and I would use my freedom to dedicate myself to personal projects.
I poured the rest of the whiskey from the last bottle in the cabinet into a glass, and rummaging again through one of Eduardo’s computers I discovered above all that I was free to denounce him. An Excel file contained the same list of that “Operation A,” only this time the names were associated with amounts of money. I didn’t know if it was contraband, favors, tax evasion, influence peddling, drug trafficking, or illegal campaign financing . . . But there was something there. I heard rumors about spurious investments by pension funds, overbilling state corporations for publicity . . . Laws were disgraced. I wanted to contribute to the moral enobling of the nation, which was in my personal interest as well. After all, Eduardo had robbed the country and stolen my wife. I was free, and my freedom would be expensive for Eduardo Kaufman. I remembered the kapok tree and the picture of him alongside the Indians. Natural and indigenous products must be a front for some illegal dealings. It occurred to me that the crime passed through the Central Plateau, but the letter “A” meant “Amazonia.” I would send an anonymous letter to the Revenue Service with the lists from “Operation Amazonia” and I made plans to return to Rio with Joana.