Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters

by Maria José Silveira

  Her entire life, she had always been distracted. While she was out walking one day, an inexperienced young man driving an imported sports-car he’d just received from his father gave in to the desire to attain a speed completely unfit for the city streets. Diva didn’t realize how dangerous Rio had become with the increased movement of cars and trolleys. Automobile accidents had wreaked absolute havoc in the city, which lacked adequate roads, signage, or transit laws. A luxury item, cars were seen as sporting vehicles whose ability to reach unthinkable speeds was the pinnacle of modern life. Running over pedestrians, even in cases of death, was met merely with a fine, and a tiny one at that.

  The car sent her flying.

  She hit her head on the asphalt and died almost instantly.

  All that remained of her life was a brief moment, enough to see the incandescent glow that came over her to whisk her away forever in its phosphorescence, thus unexpectedly satisfying what, without her realizing it, had always been her greatest desire: More light!

  ANA EULÁLIA

  (1906-1930)

  In the boarding school chapel, the mammoth building with soaring walls where she had spent most of her life, Eulália prayed and wept and wailed in misery. She prayed to God, asking him to change her life; there were so many things she didn’t like! If her mother separated from her father, she would die of shame; she prayed for this not to happen. If her mother were to die, she would no longer have any problems; she would be sad, but she would have no need to feel ashamed. If her mother died, she would take care of her father and so many things would be better in her life! Dear Saint Rose, hear my prayer!

  Eulália was born during a period of rapid change. Brazil was urbanizing, its landscape changing, a surprising series of events swept everyone along on an assembly line of turbulent and never-ending transformations.

  When Diva told them—Eulália and her brothers—that she was traveling to Paris, she hadn’t revealed her true reasons for doing so. She wanted to make sure her children learned of the separation in the right way and at the right time, and she had told them only that she needed to travel for a few months. But Floriano did not share the same opinion. On the contrary. He took advantage of his wife’s absence to give them his version of events, telling them their mother was deteriorating, growing stranger with every day, and that she now had the immoral idea of separating. She wanted him, their father, to leave the house where they had lived as a family. He told the story in such a way that all of the children became disgusted with Diva’s decision, especially Eulália, whose fervently Catholic, adolescent mind resembled a tightly wound skein of disoriented thoughts and desires.

  She cried for days, feeling betrayed, rejected, scandalized, and she firmly took the side of her father, whom she also considered a victim of her mother’s madness and insensitivity.

  The news had, in fact, been the last straw in her troubled relationship with Diva. At home, she fawned over her father, whose elegant and pompous figure she had always fervently admired; at school, she strictly adhered to the rules and etiquette of the small, elite world in which the students lived. She began to form values that irrecoverably distanced her from her mother, whose behavior and attitudes, so different from those of her classmates’ mothers, she viewed as excesses and eccentricities that made her feel awkward and embarrassed. So great was her rejection of Diva’s peculiar lifestyle that she considered it an act of martyrdom to go with her mother on the days that she, and not her father, would pick her up to spend the weekend at home. She was overcome with an unspeakable and diffuse feeling of shame whenever she saw Diva dressed in a way she considered bizarre and reprehensible. The colors Diva wore, the styles, her gestures, attitude, and looks, everything about her clashed with the demure French elegance of the other mothers. Eulália would slink away, eyes on the ground, and, growing red, tug at her mother’s hand so they could leave the school as fast as possible.

  One afternoon, as the students were leaving for a trip to the beach in Botafogo Bay, Eulália recognized her mother atop an enormous rock out above the sea, completely absorbed as she photographed something. One of her classmates also recognized Diva and pointed her out: “Look, it’s your mother!” At that moment, meanwhile, Eulália had begun practically shoving her classmates forward to get them to the other end of the beach, and struggled to hide her shame: “Who? My mother? No, you must be mistaken, that’s not her. Let’s get out of here, quick, this end of the beach is dangerous. Come on!”

  But of course it was her mother, unmistakable in her thin dress with its luminous white glow—white was Diva’s favorite color, practically the only one she wore, in contrast to the darker, more discreet tones the other mothers wore—and her fluttering silk shawl, also white, pure like sea foam rolling down her back, her long hair let out in waves like the sea beneath her feet, hair that she allowed to fall naturally in yet another staggering difference from the other women, who wore theirs in tight, orderly buns beneath their hats. Of course it was her mother—she recognized her mother by the wild hair that Eulália thought made her look like a savage. Fortunately, Diva was so preoccupied looking through the magic eye of the camera, which she never let out of her sight, peering at some shape lost along the rocks, that she didn’t notice the group of students retreating to the other side of the beach at her daughter’s command: “Let’s go, let’s go, Sister Alfonsina warned us not to come over to this end of the beach.”

  Diva’s bold individuality was truly an unbearable burden for an insecure adolescent whose most intimate desire was to have a mother be as normal as the rest. She detested the photos Diva took. She thought them horrendous—Diva could at least take photos of something beautiful, but no, her photos only depicted things that were strange, spiteful, things that no one, only her mother, photographed! She hated her mother’s camera and didn’t understand its appeal, and she abhorred walking into her mother’s studio the same way she experienced a palpable fear of the darkroom where Diva developed her photos. Eulália was a deep well of shadowed and heavy thoughts, in great contrast to her mother’s easy and carefree radiance: Eulália was a font of confusion, jealousy, rejection, shame, hate, and an obscure desire for everything to be different.

  When Diva was so stupidly run over and killed, Eulália reached the peak of her religiosity and dark thoughts, adding to her explosive cauldron of turbulence a painful feeling of guilt, remorse, and loss. Of course, it was all her fault!

  She spent longer hours in the tiny chapel, mired in unrest—sobbing, blaming herself, asking forgiveness, doing penance.

  What a combination! Oh, how she felt disturbed to the core!

  I want to be able to say that this confusion of Eulália’s was merely a passing phase, a case of adolescent troubles, but no. This plethora of disturbing and directionless thoughts accompanied her, in one form or another, for the rest of her life.

  The famous boarding school for rich girls housed students who came from several states.

  Among them was Adriana, daughter to coffee barons from São Paulo, who became Eulália’s best friend. Adriana had returned from vacation that year completely taken with a gorgeous Italian she had met at her cousin’s house in São Paulo, and with whom she had traded a few words and two or three smiles—sufficient, in the meantime, for him to become the constant topic of conversation, where he was described as a direct descendant of Apollo, except better, since, in addition to everything else, he had a dimple on his chin and two more that appeared in his cheeks whenever he smiled. As soon as she’d arrived back from vacation, Adriana had begun to write him formal and polite letters, as a friend, trying to muster the courage to declare her feelings.

  The world of those young girls, regimented by the soaring walls of their strict boarding school, was leagues away from any real world. The identity of the young Italian, what he did or didn’t do, had no part in their conversation, not by a long shot. Those privileged girls didn’t have a single clue about how privileged they truly were, and it was as if the world outsi
de was merely an extension of their own. In their eyes, the young man whom Adriana had fallen for was as well off as they were.

  Except that he wasn’t.

  Umberto Rancieri, on the day Adriana first saw him, was walking along with his father, a tailor. They were on their way to deliver a suit ordered by the man of the house, Adriana’s uncle, for a final fitting and to make any last adjustments. Umberto had learned his father’s trade, served as his assistant, and was, in some sense, also his model and walking advertisement, for each time he donned one of his father’s fine suits with an air of refinement, he became the physical manifestation of what it meant to dress well. This refinement, coupled with his natural beauty and dimpled cheeks, made all the society girls, little flowers full of illusions and naiveté, melt around him.

  Adriana immediately fell for the figure he cut, that of a young god, and she needed nothing more.

  In Eulália’s mind then, given that she only knew the young man through the reports of her rapt friend, Umberto Rancieri was a young prince who soon inhabited her own dreams and who deserved a woman who would fight and even die for him.

  During the long hours she spent in the chapel pouring out the feelings that disturbed her heart and mind, she began to pray that her closest friend’s boyfriend would fall for her instead. Her sensuality exacerbated by a flurry of strong emotions, she implored Saint Rose to dissuade Umberto from responding to Adriana’s letters.

  Yet, despite her troubled mind and deep religiosity, the young girl was no fool and sensed that she couldn’t leave real life matters up to the saints. And so, without her friend’s knowledge, she discovered the address of the dimpled Paulista and began to write him letters of her own that were much more explicit and considerably less formal than her friend’s. In addition, Eulália was able to steal some of Adriana’s letters from the mailbox and, imitating her friend’s handwriting, which she did all too well, added a postscript that dispensed with any ambiguity about how she, Adriana, was ecstatic and overjoyed with her impending engagement to a suitor from Rio, a good catch, a very handsome man with an inarguably promising career!

  After this little ploy, Eulália’s amorous playing field was wide open. All that was left was to meet the young man in person. Ana Eulália was so wrapped up in her romantic preoccupations that she found it neither strange nor worrying when her father told her he was removing her from school, bringing her formal education to an end. On the contrary, it seemed a natural and appropriate decision; yes, he truly could consider her education complete, which was just another way of saying she was now ready to marry.

  In reality, though, things were headed in a direction the young girl could never have imagined.

  The motive for her father’s decision to take her out of school was entirely different from what she supposed. Two years after the death of his wife, Floriano Botelho had come to the realization—there could be no doubt—that he was one step away from bankruptcy, ruined, without anywhere to turn for help.

  An entire lifetime of lavish spending, plus the fact that his two oldest children, Eudoro and Gaspar, dedicated themselves above all else to spending too much and earning too little, gradually chipped away at old Acioli’s fortune. As an engineer, Floriano brought in a good salary, no doubt, but not sufficient to bank the lifestyle to which he’d become accustomed. What’s more, while he may have been a competent engineer, he was terrible with finances: he had made two or three attempts to launch businesses with his children and some arriviste friends, which only served to whittle away at the paltry inheritance left him by his father-in-law. After the last of these failed ventures and mounting gambling debts, he’d arrived at his present predicament, one step from the street.

  Floriano found this realization unacceptable. His mind for precise calculations considered it an inadmissible error, a shameful failure, a humiliating situation. His friends disappeared, one by one, like falling dominoes. Having become an individualist to the core, he was incapable of looking around and realizing the insignificance of his problems in comparison to the hardships that plagued the country.

  The First World War had ended, but it had ushered in other surprising changes, like the Bolshevik Revolution and a general strike among the working class that had begun in São Paulo and spread to Rio. The country was changing rapidly, though not everyone noticed, and no one seemed especially satisfied, not even military officials—namely, a group of young lieutenants in São Paulo growing increasingly outspoken in their threats of revolt.

  It was in the midst of all this agitation that Floriano decided to go to São Paulo to make a final play. It was 1924, hardly an ideal time for such travels, but Eulália saw in her father’s intention her big chance to finally meet Umberto, and she insisted that her father take her with him.

  She was about to turn eighteen, and carried in her heart the great secret of this long-distance passion.

  Floriano, lacking the energy to consider any decision at length, agreed to take her: no one in São Paulo knew much about his financial situation, and perhaps his daughter could still manage a good marriage into a family of wealthy coffee growers.

  It was June, and the sun danced in the sky as only it knew how on certain winter days in São Paulo. The unfamiliar chill in the air engendered a particular euphoria in the young woman who, as soon as she arrived, sent a letter to her elegant Italian with the name of the hotel where she was staying in the city center.

  He immediately set off to meet her. He also introduced himself to Floriano, who barely spoke three words to him before leaving in a hurry, lost in his own personal abyss. Umberto invited Eulália to accompany him along the Vale do Anhangabaú and then to take tea at the creamery in front of the Teatro Municipal.

  São Paulo was a peaceful, spacious city, with provincial airs. Much different from the nation’s restless capital.

  On that bright sunny day, Umberto held her parasol and admired her delicate figure and hungry eyes. Eulália quivered as she touched his arm and felt like the happiest girl alive, certain she was making every passerby jealous.

  What would Adriana say if she saw them now?

  The winter sun had warmed the afternoon, and a tiny drop of sweat slowly trickled down from behind Umberto’s left ear. A tiny, glassy little drop that gave Eulália such a strong desire to kiss him right on that spot that her breath caught, and she let out a gasp as she was overcome with dizziness and the total and absolute certainty that she would love him forever.

  Meanwhile, dissatisfaction was growing among São Paulo’s young lieutenants. They wanted President Artur Bernardes removed, limits placed on the executive power, an end to corruption. In the barracks, soldiers were readying the revolt. Floriano’s friends advised him to return to Rio, or to at least leave the hotel where they were staying. He accepted one friend’s invitation to stay at his mansion in Higienópolis, a safe distance from the streets of the city center, which was overrun with soldiers.

  But Floriano was unwell; nausea swept over him. Self-absorbed and shut off to all around him as he anxiously waited for the loan that he believed would save him, he wandered through the streets almost without noticing the frenetic activity, the warlike atmosphere that seemed to overtake the city, the pamphlets found wherever he went, the sidewalks barricaded. He appeared to see nothing, be interested in nothing. He walked along, Eulália at his side. The two of them had gone out, despite the tense atmosphere, because Floriano felt almost obligated to go out to the streets, as though he had something important to do, to flee the heavy weight of expectation regarding his loan and to make it appear in his host’s eyes that he still had important friends and business matters that required his attention. It was early June. The two of them, father and daughter, strolled through the streets of Higienópolis.

  Eulália, who hadn’t wished to go out, noted that Floriano seemed to be wandering aimlessly, and she asked her father where they were going. She had arranged to meet Umberto and didn’t have much time to waste.

  Her father di
d not respond. The thought struck him, though without much clarity, that Umberto must be the young man who was courting his daughter. What family did he come from? He did not know the young man, he would have to learn more, but even the simplest tasks now required great effort on his part. Umberto was an elegant, well-dressed young man, he must come from a family of some means; perhaps his plan to marry his daughter to a rich Paulista would work after all. But his queasiness would not pass, and he felt a pain in his arm; he turned to look at Eulália, he wished to say something to her, but suddenly his voice failed him.

  Floriano clutched his arm and stumbled, feeling the world buckle around him. He reached out to grab hold of something, turning a full circle before collapsing with his eyes bulging out of his head, in a desperate attempt to say something.

  It was a massive heart attack.

  When the people walking along the sidewalk stopped to help, Eulália refused to believe her father was already dead.

  The following days fell like a fog over the young orphan girl. The city was bombarded by federal troops who sought to quash the revolt of the Paulista regiments. Her brothers weren’t even able to make it to the funeral, since all lines of communication between Rio and São Paulo had been suspended.

  War had broken out.

  President Artur Bernardes’s cannons struck the Praça da República, the Viaduto Santa Ifigênia, the Largo São Bento, the Largo do Paissandu. The terrifying thunder of the cannons was as frightening as the fire consuming the city center, the peaceful city that Eulália had only recently come to know. Buildings and homes were razed to the ground. Thousands were forced to evacuate. Hundreds died, thousands were wounded.