by João Almino
27. The dwarf and the prophetess
When Aida arrived to pick me up as we had arranged, Iris Quelemém was leaving. I saw her against the vegetation surrounding the National Theater. Some people came up to kiss her hands. I recalled that right there many years earlier a crowd had gathered around her. Aida got out of the car and came to meet me. She wanted to see Iris up close and asked me to introduce her to the famous prophet-ess. I don’t know whether Iris recognized me, but she was polite and mumbled something to Aida that we didn’t understand. Before the Brasília sky, wide open to the whole cosmos, Aida made me promise we’d go some weekend to the Garden of Salvation.
In the center of one of the photographs I took, Iris’s wrinkled brown hands squeezed the head of a child with nervous affection. In half shadow, the National Theater is a strange pyramid showing white stripes against black glass, cubes and more cubes of white on white. The prophetess, a serious face deformed by her almost ninety years, appeared in profile rickety and shrunken, being pushed in her wheelchair by a chubby dwarf wearing a brown uniform covered with ribbons and medals. I know it doesn’t look good to describe someone by weight and height. But I can’t find a clearer way to translate into words the image that was recorded in my brain and also in that photograph, # 27 (above).
August 17
Today the heat and dry air only became tolerable when, responding to my invitation, Mauricio and Carolina came over in the late afternoon.
Carolina arrived first. Marcela was pure joy. She began to bark as the car parked and, when my goddaughter entered the apartment, whined at length as if complaining about her long absence.
– So, how is your intern working out? Carolina asked.
– She didn’t come last week. That’s why I got behind on writing my book.
– She’s traveling.
– If you talk to her, tell her I miss her.
– You like Laura, don’t you?
I surrounded my intern with innocent adjectives and praised her qualities without indicating anything that went beyond a friendly, professional relationship, ending by explaining that I enjoyed her company.
– All the better that she plays the guitar well and reads to me.
I lied. She hadn’t read anything to me, although I intend to ask her to read me the story Carlos brought over a few days ago. I prefer her voice to a talking camera. The bigger lie is that it’s not Laura’s absence but instead writer’s block that’s slowing the writing of my book. It’s several times more difficult to write expecting a finished product on the first attempt, all the more so after the recent selection of photos I put together with Laura’s help.
When Mauricio arrived, I asked him to open the computer file with the first of those photos.
– It should be a purple ipê tree, right at the entrance to Aida’s block. Do you remember? I asked.
– I’ll never forget a story you told me when I was little, Carolina said. That after creating the rainbow, God arrived with his brushes and the first things he painted in the world were the flowers. The world’s colors come from them, you said. I always think about that story when I see photos of flowers.
I liked hearing her story. It reminded me that one day I had acted as a devoted, kind-hearted godfather.
We filled the rest of the afternoon with idle conversation about their activities and my inactivity. Together we solved the problems of the world, of Brazil and Brasília, I with everything I’ve lived through plus my skepticism, and they with their enthusiasm and critical spirit. The solutions were simple and took only a couple of hours. All around the world, we indicted egotistical countries and insane rulers. In Brazil, we changed the government. And then we ended Brasília’s chaos, and I even took the opportunity to create a huge sculptural space in the Ministries Esplanade and revert to Lúcio Costa’s plan to build cafés around the bus terminal.
Mauricio always gives me the impression that he still doesn’t know what he’ll be in life, and meanwhile music occupies all his time. If I were to call him irresponsible, I ought to apply the same adjective to myself.
He and my goddaughter left together, exactly as I’d planned. I recognize the sounds of their cars and I know that they drove away separately. Who knows, nothing prevents them from having made a date to meet later this evening. From the way they spoke they were happy to see each other.
[August 18]
28. The purple ipê tree
Mauricio was spending the weekend with his father. I made a drink with the vodka Aida kept in her freezer. She was there in front of me with an open book in her hands and her gestures were delicate and filled with affection. We whiled away the hours listening to music and talking, intensely interested in what each of us was saying. The night covered us with its dense, long blankets and carried us to the bottom of its black precipices. We decided to stretch it between silent stars and gusts of truth, and we heard the applause of the angels at the end of time. We were bathed more in certainty than in hope.
Aida got up to lower the blinds, wearing a thin white nightgown that revealed the outline of her body. Her undulating walk mirrored a heron’s flight. I hugged her with ardor and we kissed at length.
– We waited ten years for this, she said.
– Would you have slept with me back then?
– It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but I was always faithful to my husband even though he didn’t deserve it.
She solemnly gave me a little gift box, with a silver heart engraved with our names inside.
Later I felt a rare sweet pleasure of lying beside her in bed. Everything happened so fast, I entered Aida with pleasure. She opened to me with the flexibility of a ballerina in a 180-degree split. The pleasure was such that when I expelled semen, saliva fell from my mouth onto her delicate skin. I ran famished eyes over her pale body, the body of someone who didn’t get any sun. On her abdomen was the scar from an incision and her breasts had perhaps undergone plastic surgery.
Tears ran from Aida’s eyes. They were tears of joy, she said, from thinking that that moment would never be repeated. Why not? I asked. Of course it would be repeated many, many times.
In the shower I soaped Aida’s body, caressed her breasts with suds, and we slid our bodies over each other. I carefully dried each millimeter of her skin. I placed droplets of perfume behind her ears. We continued interlaced in bed not saying a word. While I was smelling her perfume, she had a sad, serene look, of a serenity and a sadness that she said were happy, the same way her tears had been happy.
– Why don’t you come live with me? she suddenly asked.
I didn’t answer, but the idea wasn’t unappealing.
[August 19]
I started seeing Aida more often. We spoke of everything. I shared my plans and my concerns with her. On the day that I saw a list published, similar to the one I had found in one of Eduardo’s computers and with the signature of the director of a state corporation, I mentioned my suspicions to her.
– If you really discovered something, give the information to the press, she suggested.
– Guga thinks so too.
The congressman I’d contacted had switched alliances, and his new party had made a deal with Eduardo’s party in São Paulo. The former enemies had become campaign allies. The press, in fact, seemed a better path for my revenge.
Through Guga’s contacts I got in to see a reporter from the Correio Braziliense and I explained to him what needed to be investigated: the slush fund from Eduardo’s companies based in Amazonia, his bank accounts or those of his fronts on the Jersey or Cayman islands, the list of politicians who benefited, and the corporations participating in the scheme. My supposition, I told him, was that Eduardo Kaufman had set up a financing scheme for the mayoral election campaigns, calculating he’d receive political support when he ran for congress. He channeled his own resources and those of third parties through dummy agents. No donation was declared. I also told him about the parties Eduardo threw in Brasília financed through the same sc
heme.
– Illegal financing of election campaigns is quite common, he answered. But what do you have for proof? If I could at least follow some leads . . .
I showed him the two lists.
– It’s a start, but it’s not much, he said. Where are the bank receipts for the transfer of funds, deposits, withdrawals? Don’t you have anything else? Perhaps together with these documents there’s an accounting of the slush fund. If you get anything else, contact me.
I regretted not having made a complete sweep of all of Eduardo’s computers. There must have been concrete proof or at least other documents that would incriminate him. At the very least there would have been dates for when the files were created.
[August 19, night]
It was June of 2001 when I was specializing in social catastrophes in Aida’s company. At the movies she wanted to see portrayals of injustice, cruel bosses, fat cats, the wretched displaced by hunger, corrupt politicians, the drama of prostitution, and violence caused by drug trafficking. Against my will I gave in to her pleas, reality was reality. At the Academy we saw several films, two of them about the tragedies of the Northeast. Television actors spoke with Northeastern accents, characters sold their organs and ate lizards and cavies to survive the drought, and then emigrated to São Paulo, where they were killed in the streets or in jail . . .
One of the films was based on the autobiography of a landless peasant. Another, also autobiographical, narrated the story of a duped teenager who was taken to Spain as a prostitute.
Aida was amazed that these were true stories, that these people really existed, that the fiction wasn’t fiction, that the newspaper stories could be extended in detail for two hundred, three hundred, or six hundred pages, enriched with slang, and could then be made into films.
Unlike Aida, I didn’t feel the euphoria of revolt. Besides, I didn’t need to show a goodness I didn’t believe in. Our differences over film and religion weren’t enough to keep us from being a couple in love. I wanted to be with Aida and I preferred films to attending Mass.
– Look at that purple ipê, I said.
Brasília had a thousand planters and four thousand native trees that would be covered with blooms in mid-June. One of the trees stood out, the one in the photograph above (# 28): a purple ipê, against a uniform blue of a cloudless sky. It’s Aida’s tree at the entrance to her block, 216 North. Together with the yellow of the sibipiruna trees, it adorned the sunsets, signaling winter.
– I read that the roots are so deep they reach down to the water table. That’s why it’s covered with blossoms even in the dry season, said Aida.
I looked to that purple ipê as a symbol of what I should do: stay deeply rooted in one place. With Aida, even if we didn’t agree on everything, there was the promise of a stable relationship.
29. The ideal model or the photographer’s metamorphosis
At last, after the rejections by museums and cultural centers, the gallery recommended by Tânia and which was installed in a spacious, abandoned garage in Guará finally agreed to give an exhibition of my work. Aida then tried in vain to convince me to exchange my triangles for photos that I was supposed to take in Vila Paulo Antonio. She would go with me, help me. But what was a virtue to her seemed like a flaw to me. The photos wouldn’t show anything new and would be repetitive, unlike my triangles.
– Photography has to surprise, I told her.
– And you think you’re surprising with this pornography?
– No one has ever made a composition of six hundred of these triangles, arranged with variations of color, tonality, and shape.
Guga, among those who didn’t come to the opening reception, called to make his apologies.
– You’re right to value the complicity between the photographer and his subjects. And there’s no shortage of complicity in my triangle panels—I made it clear.
Ana’s nephew, Termite, dropped by briefly and gave me generous praise:
– I’ve never seen anything like it. It was Aunt Ana who told me about the exhibition.
Nevertheless, Ana didn’t come. Or Antonieta. Or even Marcela, who had agreed to be photographed for my project and for whom I had made a secret tribute, placing her triangle in the center of one of the panels. They didn’t show up or make their excuses.
Antonio, who had learned about the details of the exhibition from Guga, told me on the phone:
– You never learn. Your collections are of no use at all. Nothing will ever satisfy you.
– It’s like a meal, I argued. You’re not satisfied once and for all. The next day you want more. And the better it is the more you want.
Veronica exhibited charm, stilettos, and a red dress. I found her crossed eyes attractive behind retro frames; they examined details of the photographs as if trying to discover secrets or make scientific analyses. Aida stayed until the end and repeated in a joking tone to those still around that she hadn’t modeled for any of the photos.
When Stepladder arrived, the two photographers who were covering the opening at their own expense and at their own risk came over to take our picture. It was as if I were being recognized by an authority on photography. He didn’t stay long and made no statement about my work.
My loyal friends Paulo Marcos and Tânia came.
– You don’t waste any time, do you, Cadu? Tânia teased.
Unexpectedly, like a ghost that woke me from the middle of a long sleep, one of the women in the photographs appeared, with unkempt hair and beauty mistreated by time. I had met her at a moonlight party. We shared a mate gourd in a perfect blending of the Northeast—the girl was from Recife—and the pampas. It was a cold night on an open field of the Plateau and she was wearing a Peruvian poncho. She was twenty some years old and had soft, dark skin. I took her by moonlight to a deserted spot nearby and laid the poncho on the ground. While I was savoring every millimeter of my slow delicate penetration, she yelled “no” louder each time. By her sing-song crying tone I understood the third “no” to mean “yes, enter with all the passion you can manage.” I can’t say that I acted like a wild animal because they don’t all copulate with such energy and violence. There was a slight physical battle and, after dominating her by force, she relaxed. We made love only that one time. I’d recorded that meeting with a close-up of the triangle, the only photo in the display that was taken in the midst of such madness and with a minimum of technical resources.
I heard she’d been traumatized. If she ever saw me, she’d kill me. Now, standing in front of me, she might well be holding a grudge and a gun.
– I need to talk to you. I’ll look you up at the Ministry.
Thus, she knew where to find me.
After several glasses of a terrible white wine I was going to call the reception to an end, when I learned that golden rules have golden exceptions. The exception’s name was Livia and she was a colleague from work. She appeared with her green eyes and kinky hair. Her round, bulky body, plump all over and in just the right places, though unacceptable as a model, would fit right into a Renaissance painting.
– I like your nudes. Daring, sensual, creative, a bit lewd. I like them, she repeated.
I imagined her seated at her desk, naked, her hands on the computer keyboard, her derrière larger than the chair, her image forming a contrast with the frugality and sobriety of the setting.
Perhaps the sips of wine helped me say:
– The exhibition would be a thousand times better if you were covering one of my walls.
– You never asked me!
I took a photograph right there of Livia’s face with my digital camera.
Later I saw myself in the left panel of a Bosch triptych being carried through the air by horrible monsters. I felt like Saint Anthony himself, the saint of temptations, hovering over scenes of punishment. It wasn’t just that the golden exceptions had awakened vestiges of Christian morals in me. Those exceptions were for trivial, immature weak men. I didn’t need them. The proof was that Livia had been
relegated to a passing fantasy, a mere temptation confirming my transformation.
– I feel like a new man with you, I kissed Aida affectionately on the cheek. For the first time I feel satisfied with just one woman.
– You don’t need to lie, she answered. I won’t say that I’m not jealous. But I know how you are. I’m paying an extremely high price to be with you.
I deleted Livia’s image from my digital camera and asked Aida to smile for me. Instead of using logic and reason in a torrent of words to demonstrate my affection for her, I prefer to show photograph # 29 (above), which doesn’t invent or deceive, it says it all and is worth a million words. The artificial light casts a shadow of Aida on the table where a vase of flowers rests. The Venetian blinds stripe lines horizontally across the background of the picture. The emotional current that united us is visible in Aida’s eyes and lips. None of my photographs, excepting one of Joana when I met her, communicates a similar feeling. It’s possible to measure a woman’s passion in her eyes, and there’s no doubt that Aida’s eyes are in love, as in love as mine at that moment.
[August 20, morning]
30. Trash on a romantic afternoon
I moved into Aida’s apartment, and we created a routine for being together. We cooked. We walked around the block. We sometimes went to the interquadra bar for a beer. The bed also became a routine we never tired of. Unlike Joana, Aida wanted me. Only a few caresses were necessary to leave her wet and wild for me.
We watched television together, she, Mauricio, and I. On the news, Rio violence: the favelas of Vigário Geral, Rocinha . . . Crimes, hillside occupations by the police, their involvement in drug trafficking . . . I should dedicate my photography to crime and poverty, the only two realities, Aida insisted. Mauricio, frightened by the news, went around armed with a penknife, and if he could have, he’d have bought a gun.
– The Pilot Plan isn’t Rio, Mauricio, I tried to reassure him.
One afternoon, when Aida and I were sitting on the lawn of South Lake Point, I commented: