Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters

by Maria José Silveira

  As far as the Ambrósio family goes, they certainly knew of Diana’s ideas and considered them part of her rebellious spirit, but they were far from imagining that these ideas had resulted in some sort of practical application. They mocked and ridiculed women’s clubs in general, the abolitionists in particular, as futile gatherings around imported tea, where women poorly controlled by their husbands spent their afternoons. Little did they know that these clubs—especially the club to which Diana belonged, whose most important sources of information were the very salons the Ambrósio family attended—had already, among other things, managed to limit the success of many of the plans to pursue runaway slaves that had been articulated at their gatherings, between puffs of cigars and jokes and sips of the best Port wine.

  The one person who knew the details of her participation in these clubs was her mother, Açucena, who was also part of the network that aided runaway slaves. If someone were to search her lands at the edge of the emerald mountains, what they would find, in all likelihood, were runaway slaves living in the tiny farmhouses and working the land.

  Diana’s brother, Socrates, from whom she periodically received letters with news, was a militant abolitionist lawyer in Pernambuco. He had the custom of sending his brother-in-law, Acioli, boxes of cigars stamped with the likeness of the abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco.

  But the moment would always arrive when these thrilling periods of Diana’s life in Rio, the house full of people, the whimsical sound of the piano revived, her trips to the cafés on the Rua do Ouvidor, the coming and going from club meetings, would be interrupted by lengthy periods of silence at the clinic in the mountains of Teresópolis. Periods that began to make themselves known when, suddenly, she took longer to emerge from the bedroom for breakfast or stayed sitting for hours on the veranda with her blank eyes circling the garden, where she no longer strolled to pick camellias, the symbol of abolition, with which she liked to decorate the living room. Or when she would sit at the piano and play her favorite pieces, each movement played at piano and pianissimo cast a pall over the house. Or when she called to little Diva to sit on her lap, and, taking her face between her hands, fixed her gaze with its incurable despondence on her daughter’s green eyes, the same gleam in her eyes as Hans G., until the girl, growing frightened, began to cry or kick her legs, running away in tears from the stranger who had begun to take over her mother’s body.

  Caetano Acioli’s wife had always been an enigma to him that he felt incapable of deciphering. He had and continued to love her, but throughout the years of their unstable matrimony his love grew into something closer to compassion than anything else. At first, he’d tried everything to make her happy, and there were moments in which he believed he’d succeeded in bringing her a bit of serenity. When, however, she began to suffer from increasingly grave attacks of neurasthenia, an illness that at the time physicians felt powerless to combat—today, perhaps, her case would be diagnosed as a masked form of depression—he found himself forced to accept the situation. He understood then that his happiness, were such a thing still possible, would come merely from his adopted daughter, whom he loved as he’d never loved anyone before.

  The summer her daughter turned twelve, Diana was in a tranquil phase of her life. The weather in the city that year was terrible, with torrential rains, mosquitos, unbearable heat, and an epidemic of yellow fever that had begun to spread. As he did every summer when Rio became a boiling cauldron of epidemics and disease, Acioli had made plans to take his family to their mansion in the mountainside town of Petrópolis so as not to expose them to the risks brought on by Rio’s climate. But that year Diana said she preferred to stay in Rio, where there was much to be done. She had been hired to help with an important plan to aide a group of slaves who had fled Bahia. She also planned to visit her mother and son, Dionísio Augusto, whom she hadn’t seen in quite some time; she missed her mother’s house, Açucena’s caring manner, and her sweets. When she went, she also wanted to bring Diva, who loved spending time at her grandmother’s.

  The plan to help runaway slaves for which she was supposed to provide cover was, in reality, very simple, like many others that were taking place at the same time. The idea was to divide up a large convoy of many slaves along several different routes as they fled, dispersing their pursuers and weakening efforts at recapture. Her role was the same as always: to be on the lookout for some important piece of information during any conversations at the Ambrósio home to which she might be privy.

  Since it was summer, however, her uncle’s family was not in Rio, and her only chance to learn something was by visiting the enormous Ambrósio & Ambrósio commercial offices in the city center. The offices were also half-empty, but, as with any office worthy of the name, if there were any movement being planned, it would be the ideal venue for conversations, offhand remarks, and other useful information. Besides, it was also an opportunity for her to get out during those languid, rainy summer days.

  And so, on her way to the offices in the city center, she passed without giving it much thought through streets with open sewage, swarms of mosquitos, and the acrid stench of filth. Even though she considered herself well-protected by closing the little window of her coach, the disease-carrying mosquitos did all they could to find their way to her sweet-tasting blood.

  Diana América did not make it back to visit Açucena and her son as she had intended.

  She died of yellow fever before she could reach the end of that abrasive summer in Rio.

  Ah, so you want to know if the information Diana uncovered in the offices of Ambrósio & Ambrósio was useful in planning the escape of slaves? I suppose I could say it was, couldn’t I, and give a beau final romantique to the turbulent tale of Diana’s life. But no—while I may leave some things out, to lie in order to soften this tale or smooth things over, that I won’t do. And so, unfortunately, the answer is no. On that occasion, with nearly all of her contacts far from the city, she was unable to gather any information of real use, and the worst is that a good number of the slaves who fled were recaptured.

  But remind yourselves of at least two things to ease your frustration: at that moment, slaves were very expensive and, therefore, not punished for their attempts to flee as they would have been some years earlier; what’s more, abolition was just around the corner. Five more years and that was it—everyone would be celebrating in the streets.

  DIVA FELÍCIA

  (1876-1925)

  All right. Now let’s talk a bit about Diva and just how beautiful she was. Though nothing’s indisputable when it comes to beauty—personal preference will always result in a “but” or a “not so much” to just about anything—Diva was worthy of standing among the most beautiful women ever seen. Ah—this she most certainly was! She had green eyes, with the same gleam in them as her father’s had, ever so slanted and crowned by a pair of eyebrows like perfectly drawn black velvet, and her lashes were so long and thick that, were they any longer, they would have likely impaired her vision; her high cheekbones and perfect nose could easily be used as a model for any plastic surgeon today; her full lips and slender neck may well have been what Audrey Hepburn sought to imitate years later. All this, and a body with the most harmonious proportions and golden skin, a color alone that ensured its owner eternal beauty.

  Fortunately, she had a happier fate than her equally-beautiful ancestor, Maria Cafuza, and unlike Cafuza, Diva was fully aware of her uncommon beauty; she simply didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing. When her mother, in all her sorrow, would sit her on her lap, holding her face between her hands, peering at her in such a way she seemed to want to disappear inside her daughter’s eyes, the young girl felt a sharp pain and a confusing mixture of guilt and anguish for making her mother wish to fall into a deep, dark abyss. She would cry, kick her legs, and close her eyes in an attempt to stop her mother from disappearing. However, when it was the slave women or her father looking upon her, their faces reflecting the happy harmony gained from contemplating so
me beautiful object or scene, she felt at peace with herself, capable of transferring this happiness to those she loved.

  It was her grandmother, Açucena Brasília, who one day explained the reason for this internal struggle and how to deal with it: “You, my dear, like everyone, in fact, just to a greater degree, hold the power to inflict pain or bring joy. This often doesn’t depend on us. It depends on the eyes of the beholder, and in such cases little can be done. But there is one thing that you can do, and that depends on you alone, which is to choose what you wish to cause more of: pain or joy. And after you choose, you should dedicate yourself to this choice. That way, you’ll be able to better control these two feelings that, wanting to or not, everyone causes.”

  Diva, actually, chose more of everything. She chose to also call attention to the beauty of the things around her, things that were so mundane, so common, so within reach, things we see with such frequency that we take them for granted. Revealing the beauty in everyday things: that was why she began to take her camera into her grandmother’s yard and photograph the corncobs half-removed from their husks, the bunches of bananas, the jatoba berries, the numerous and undervalued dried flowers of the central plains. She photographed vegetables, took close-ups of flowers and fruits, and saw to developing and enlarging the prints in the darkroom she had built in her house, emphasizing the characteristics of each subject and revealing surprising forms no one had ever noticed before, despite or perhaps because they’d been seen over and over.

  If today photography is an expensive art, just imagine back then, when it was rare to boot. But being the sole heiress to a millionaire father has to be good for something, and Diva’s passion began when her father gave her a camera for her twelfth birthday, the same year Diana América died.

  Diva Felícia’s life, like the turn of the century in which she lived, was full of novelty and excitement.

  To begin with, she was the first woman in her family to regularly study in a school. She had her tutor—who only spoke French with her—but she also attended a girls’ school for some years. She was also the first to travel abroad.

  After her mother’s death, her father took her on a long trip to Europe. They traveled by boat, passing through Italy, England, and France, where Diva remained for four years, studying art and, especially, photography and lab techniques. At one point her father asked whether she didn’t wish to live in Europe, but she responded that no, she wanted to return to her land, the country where she had been born.

  She found everything in Brazil to be more striking, more vibrant. She loved the landscape, the breeze, the smells, and above all the light, which was a bit excessive for some, but for her it was an intense source of pleasure. She loved the light, whose different shapes and intensities she knew how to appreciate and admire. She would say that, like Goethe on his deathbed, her final words would likely be: mehr Licht, more light!

  Why yes, she did also speak German, having learned from reading Goethe and other German poets in the original. She had been captivated during her travels through the Rhine Valley and the romantic roads winding through Bavaria. She never learned of her biological father’s German heritage, but it was as though some ancestral element had filled her with admiration for the German language and culture, and she had the great ability to soak up the sounds of the language like a sponge, and effortlessly assume the characteristics of that people so distant and different from her own. Caetano Acioli never revealed the identity of her biological father, because the reality was he didn’t know either, and even if he had, he would never had said so. He considered himself the true father of the girl he loved so much, whom he had watched being born and raised as his own, without hesitation and without question. The only person who could have revealed the identity of Hans G. was Açucena, but Diana had never told her mother where he was from. She told her, of course, that he was a poet—“a sublime poet, mother, absolutely sublime!”—and enthusiastically compared him to Goethe and Schiller, but she must not have thought it important to mention his nationality. At any rate, even had Açucena known, she also would never have said anything, for she wholeheartedly respected Acioli’s choice, and she also considered him her granddaughter’s true father. In the case of Diva, the most interested of all parties, it never occurred to her that Caetano Acioli might not be her real father.

  She returned from Europe at the age of seventeen with an ecstatic love for Brazil and its people. She enjoyed walking through Rio, stopping to appreciate the way the light cast down over the homes, the buildings, the monuments, the squares. She would walk along the beaches, soaking up the luminosity of the sand and sea. She would sit on a bench in one of the city squares for great lengths of time, marveling at her city and everything she intended to do there.

  She’d had the luck of arriving at a moment of fevered enthusiasm and great change, when Rio de Janeiro was a hotbed of passionate ideas. Princess Isabel had just signed the Lei Áurea, abolishing slavery, and celebrations spread throughout the city, an effusive commemoration of the arrival, even if belated, of a new era. The shoe stores on the Rua do Ouvidor, full of freed slaves giddily spending their meager savings on the footwear they’d dreamed so long of and could finally use, were a spectacle in themselves, swaddled in a euphoria that no one could hide.

  And why should they? The city was full of elation, the city was rejoicing, the city laughed out loud. From the balconies of their homes, residents would toss flower petals that coated the streets and sidewalks. People would parade through the streets, in carriages or on foot, in groups whose joy went round and round. Musicians gave impromptu concerts on the streets and in the squares, dancing left and right to the pulsing drumbeat of the newly freed.

  There was no better time to be in the country’s capital.

  Soon thereafter it came time for the protests and impassioned cries of the Republicans. At any given moment one could hear voices on the streets singing “La Marseillaise,” the anthem adopted by the radical Republicans, as enthusiastic young students marched through the streets.

  One afternoon, Diva was eagerly following one such group, when everyone stopped so that a handsome young man with coffee-colored skin, his mustache carefully groomed, could climb atop a crate to deliver a speech with passion and charisma:

  “We want a people’s republic,” he said, “a republic of popular protests, a republic with liberty, equality, and universal rights for all citizens. This is the republic we desire!

  “We don’t want a republic that seeks balance, where power acts as a moderator, a republic of compromise, a republic where the highest virtue is the exercise of power.

  “We want a republic that allows the collective exercise of freedom. Not merely a governable republic, but an ungovernable republic, should it be necessary, should this be necessary to make ours a republic of the people.”

  Roundly applauded by the captivated onlookers, the young man was hoisted on their shoulders as they continued their march, everyone singing with great emotion: “Allons enfants de la patrie . . .” Farther up ahead, the march came to another stop and the young man once again climbed atop the crate to offer another eloquent speech.

  “The perfect homeland is not a motherland, with its feminine traits of sentiment and love, and it is not a fatherland with the masculine traits of power and force. The perfect homeland is a brotherland, a nation of citizens with equal rights.

  “The good Comtean dictator, the one who leads the masses, where is this dictator? Such a dictator does not exist.”

  He ended his speech exhorting the public in French.

  “La Republique doit être un gouvernement?” he yelled while the crowd responded, “Nooooonnn . . .” He continued, his voice resounding: “La Republique doit être le peuple!” To which the group responded wildly, “Vive le peuple!”

  Diva Felícia, full of joy and enthusiasm, followed the group a little longer, singing along to the anthem that stirred her as few others had. She wanted to go on listening to the inspiring words of t
he young, visionary defender of the republic.

  It was not possible that day, but in the days to come she would indeed have other chances to listen and applaud him as enthusiastically as the others. Or perhaps more enthusiastically still, because her presence was soon noted, and it was not long before he approached her and introduced himself. His name was Floriano Botelho, he was an engineer, and believed that a republic was the only way to civilize Brazil, to make this land a country that lived up to humanity’s noblest ideals. He was twenty years old and had just arrived from Paris.

  Floriano was an idealist, a visionary, tireless. He was part of a republican club and described in great detail his dream to transform Rio and Brazil into a city and country that would provoke awe in all who visited.

  The republic that soon arrived, however, was a devastating disappointment for the passionate young man. He had placed such hope in a new, egalitarian, modern country of brotherly love that the republic that actually came to be, beginning with its very proclamation—uninspiring, vague, and disunifying as it was—left a bad taste in his mouth. How was it that the republic of his dreams had been proclaimed by a group of military officers? After chanting “Long live the Republic” a few times in the middle of the Campo de Santana, the officers had then abolished cabinet posts and set out on a military parade throughout the city. Where were the people? Where was everyone? Whose hands were it that held the fate of the country? It was said the parade made its way through the streets of Rio in complete silence, with the old and cantankerous Marshal Deodoro wearing a look of displeasure, his coloring a bit green—it was said, no doubt the result an attack of shortness of breath.