Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series)

by Rubem Fonseca

  At that instant, Alzira came from the back of the room and stood beside the president’s chair.

  “What about you, General Caiado? I want your opinion,” said Vargas.

  “Mr. President. Don’t accept any imposition. I favor armed resistance. The army, even divided, as the secretary claims, will prevent any subversion.”

  “If you give me the name of the regiment that’s going to resist, I, with due authorization from the president, will issue the command,” said Zenóbio.

  “So be it,” said Caiado.

  “General Zenóbio,” shouted Deputy Danton Coelho from the back of the room, “it’s your fault if the army is divided.”

  “I reject your false and rude assertion. I will not permit anyone to address me like that,” Zenóbio responded.

  “General,” Alzira said, “I was surprised and disappointed when you suggested that the president resign. I ask you: why can’t we resist? I think the only thing missing is the will to fight.”

  “Resistance will lead to bloodshed. We will be defeated,” said Zenóbio.

  “Then let us be defeated, but fighting,” said Alzira.

  There were two alternatives on the table: armed resistance or resignation. Amaral Peixoto added a third: a furlough. The president would take a leave of absence until the PMI investigating the Tonelero crime was concluded.

  Several of those present, both the cabinet members and those who had intruded into the meeting, began to talk at once. Lourival Fontes, head of the Civilian Cabinet, seated beside Mascarenhas, turned to him and said, “This is becoming a circus.”

  In the middle of the tumult, Vargas looked at the J.B. Deletrezz grandfather’s clock standing between the gray-and-scarlet curtains of the large doors opening onto the garden, totally dark. The hands on the white porcelain dial showed 4:15 a.m. Vargas felt spent. From the beginning he had not expected solid support for a fight; he knew human nature. He had participated, in his political career, in intrigues, revolts, conspiracies, coups, revolutions. Thus the cautious faces of the majority of the cabinet members, and their evasive words, cloaked in abdicative metaphors—José Américo had suggested a “grand gesture” on his part, almost an echo of the “elegant gesture of the vanquished” proposed by José Bonifácio of the UDN—had not come as a surprise but merely added to his weariness.

  With one final effort he spoke, silencing the voices, bringing an end to the uproar. “If the military members of the cabinet guarantee that the institutions will be maintained, I will take a leave of absence.”

  After saying this, accompanied by his daughter, Vargas withdrew from the room, to applause. On the third floor, before entering the bedroom where he slept alone—his wife, Dona Darcy, slept in another room in the palace—his daughter embraced and kissed him.

  Tancredo Neves, the secretary of justice, was charged with drafting the note expressing the presidential decision to take a leave of absence and hand over the reins of government to his lawful replacement. Seeking to preserve the president’s dignity, it would state that this was a spontaneous decision that had received the full support of his cabinet. Tancredo would further say that the president had demanded that order and respect for the Constitution be maintained and the commitments solemnly assumed before the nation by the generals of the armed forces be honored. The note would end by saying that if such were not the case, the president would persevere in his unshakable objective to defend his constitutional prerogatives by the sacrifice of his very life. Tancredo, Oswaldo Aranha, Mascarenhas, and the other friends of the president believed that this compromise solution, in the declaration to be promulgated immediately, would avoid resignation, civil war, the humiliation of the president.

  CAFÉ FILHO received the first compliments as new president of the Republic while still in pajamas, at 4:30 that morning in his residence. Radio stations, defying police censorship, had just broadcast that president Vargas had resigned. The president of the Lantern Club, the journalist Amaral Neto, was the first to congratulate Café Filho. Surrounded by opposition leaders, Café Filho declared that he planned to calm spirits and preside over a government of national unity. “My personal guard will be my wife,” he affirmed.

  When, at 5:20, the chief of police stated on the radio that it was not actually a case of a resignation and that President Vargas had merely left the position temporarily, the enthusiasm of those present at Café Filho’s home was replaced by an atmosphere of tense expectation.

  At seven a.m., Café Filho isolated himself from the others in his home to confer with Afonso Arinos and Bilac Pinto, who had just arrived.

  twenty-four

  ALONE IN HIS BEDROOM, Vargas slowly removed his clothes and put on the striped pajamas lying on the pillow.

  Fresh in Vargas’s memory was the humiliated face of his daughter when they left the meeting, arm in arm. Alzira had gone with him to his bedroom to tell him that the cowards had left; those loyal to him were ready to do battle.

  He had refused to fight. He had asked his daughter to let him go to sleep. Would Alzira one day forgive him for the cowardice of that moment?

  He finished putting on the pajamas. He deliberately avoided looking at his image reflected in the two large mirrors on the room’s antique armoires. The picture of Christ in one corner, a Sacred Heart by the painter Décio Villares, brought back the fleeting memory of a conversation he had had about the painting with Cardinal Pacelli when he spent two days in the palace, in 1934, a few years before he became Pope Pius XII.

  He turned out the light and lay down.

  Morning was slow to arrive. Benjamim came to his room to tell him he had been summoned to testify at Galeão and that Zenóbio had met with the other generals at the War Department to affirm that in reality the president had not taken a leave of absence but had been deposed. This, too, he had expected.

  He remembered once again the suffering he had seen on his daughter’s face, thought about his own refusal to fight. Thought about death. He began to cry. Benjamim, who had never seen him weep, not even when they were children, was moved. His hand on his brother’s shoulder, he asked him not to give his enemies that satisfaction. “You’ve gotten out of worse situations.” Benjamim withdrew, and Getúlio lay back down. He thought about Capanema’s speech in the Chamber defending him against the unjust attacks directed at him. He remembered what he had told his parliamentary leader: he, Getúlio Vargas, president of the Republic, could not abandon his post, could not leave, whether from fear, vanity, or self-interest. He had to stay, in face of the exigencies of the political majority that supported him. But he had, further, a duty to his name. The name of the president was a sacred name. The president was like a king, like a prince. He governed in the name of the monarch of the world, as Bossuet said. And that monarch of the world established that the name of the president had something of the sacred to it. Whoever exercised the presidency of the Republic had the duty, and not merely the right, to defend his name, because that name was not only that of Getúlio Vargas, it was the name of the president of the Republic. The president of the Republic had to honor the dignity inherent in his function, in his office, in his power. He had the duty to defend his name and, in defense of his name, could not resign, because resignation would be to confirm the suspicions.

  VERY EARLY, Inspector Mattos went to the Dr. Eiras Clinic to find out about Alice.

  “She can’t have visitors,” said an employee at the reception area.

  “But is she all right?”

  “Dona Alice is sleeping. Dr. Arnoldo was here today, and she was medicated. Maybe she’ll be able to have visitors soon.”

  “Is Dr. Arnoldo in the clinic?”

  “No, he left. He must be seeing other patients.”

  LYING IN BED, his eyes open but not seeing, Vargas imagined how his death would be received by his enemies. His letter, which had been written as a farewell to government and not to life, a rough draft done days before at the request of Maciel Filho, his friend and assistant since the 1
930s, could also serve, even better, as a definitive goodbye. The letter, poorly typed, was on the marble top of the bedroom’s small chest of drawers, beside the bathroom door.

  When the steward Barbosa entered the room to shave him, Vargas was standing, immobile, in the middle of the room, wearing his striped pajamas. The steward asked him to put on a robe, as it was cold. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. He added that he didn’t want to shave.

  Barbosa left, and Vargas was once again alone.

  He would do what must be done. Requital and redemption. A euphoric sense of pride and dignity engulfed him. Yes, his daughter would now forgive him.

  He took the revolver from the dresser drawer and lay down in the bed. He rested the barrel of the gun against the left side of his chest and pulled the trigger.

  MAJOR DORNELLES was speaking with Barbosa, in the hallway.

  “Did the president say anything?”

  “He said it didn’t matter.”

  “What didn’t matter?”

  “I asked him to put on his robe because it’s cold, and he said it didn’t matter.”

  They heard a shot. Dornelles ran to the bedroom, followed by Barbosa. They opened the door and saw the president, in bed, his eyes shut, and a large bloodstain on the left side of his chest.

  “Mr. President!” Dornelles shouted.

  Barbosa looked in astonishment at the short white hairs appearing on Vargas’s pallid face. I should have shaved the president, thought the steward.

  Dornelles touched Vargas’s arm. “Mr. President! Mr. President!”

  “I should’ve shaved him,” Barbosa murmured.

  Dornelles ran from the room and returned with Sarmanho, Vargas’s brother-in-law.

  “My God!” exclaimed Sarmanho. “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dornelles. “We have to telephone Medical Emergency.”

  The telephone in the bedroom, a black device on the night table, wasn’t working.

  “Call General Caiado!” shouted Sarmanho from the door to the room. His yell was so loud that it was heard by those on the ground floor, causing them to peer upward through the great open space of the stairs.

  The chief of the military cabinet entered the room accompanied by Arísio Viana, president of the Diários Associados of São Paulo. Viana had heard on the radio news of Vargas’s leave of absence and gone to the palace to obtain further information.

  Seeing the president wounded, his chest covered in blood, General Caiado fainted and was taken from the room.

  Zaratini, the butler, ran to inform the president’s wife and children.

  THE INSPECTOR ARRIVED at the precinct, and Pádua told him:

  “Getúlio killed himself. Vilanova, of the GEP, just left for Catete Palace to do the forensic tests. Jessé de Paiva and Nilton Salles are going to perform the autopsy. Direct orders from the superintendent of police.”

  “I’m going to the Catete,” Mattos said.

  He had to see Getúlio’s dead body.

  “Turn the shift over to Rosalvo,” Mattos said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Then I’ll take over ahead of time. Regulations allow that.”

  “Only if you promise me something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Not to let the bums I arrested go.”

  “I promise.”

  As soon as he received the blotter and Pádua left, Mattos called Rosalvo’s house and ordered him to come immediately to the precinct.

  Rosalvo arrived quickly.

  “I’m going out on an assignment. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Take care of things here.”

  ALZIRA VARGAS, in the suicide’s room, was searching through the pockets of the navy-blue suit her father had worn at the cabinet meeting the night before, when she was told the forensic experts had arrived.

  “Let them wait,” said Alzira, now nervously searching the pajama pockets of the body lying on the bed.

  What she was looking for was finally discovered under the president’s cadaver: a key to the Fichet safe in the bedroom.

  Alzira opened the safe and rapidly placed the contents from its drawers into a briefcase she had brought from the governmental palace of the State of Rio, in Niterói, and which till then contained only a revolver.

  THE CONFUSION at the Catete Palace was so great that Inspector Mattos had no difficulty in entering; he didn’t even have to show his police ID. The reception area was deserted. Behind the doorman’s counter was only the bronze statue of the Indian Ubirajara grimacing in rage.

  The furniture was being removed from the office of General Caiado de Castro, on the ground floor. Someone told the inspector that this was where the body of Vargas would lie in state. The inspector climbed the twenty red-carpeted steps of the first flight of stairs, flanked by the handrails of decorative wrought iron and gilded cherubs. He stopped on the first landing. Where would the president’s body be? His stomach ached. He put three antacid tablets in his mouth. He needed to see Getúlio’s body.

  People were hurriedly going up and down the stairs. The inspector climbed another seventeen steps and arrived on the second floor. He had the habit of counting the steps of stairs he ascended.

  In the large formal salon, whose windows opened onto Rua Catete, he encountered an attendant wearing a navy-blue suit.

  Mattos displayed his police ID.

  “Police. Where’s the president’s body?”

  “You should’ve taken the elevator,” the attendant said.

  “Where is it?”

  “From here it’s better to take the stairs, in the rear, to the right.”

  A door concealed the stairs leading to the residential area of the palace. The inspector climbed three flights of stairs, each with nine narrow marble steps, and came to the residential floor. In front of the president’s bedroom was a group of people, among them an army captain with the gilded braid loop worn by aides-de-camp. The inspector showed the captain his police ID.

  “I’m from the office of the superintendent of police. Have the forensic people arrived yet?”

  “They’re inside. Is there anything?” The captain held the doorknob. “You want to go in?”

  “I’ll talk with them when they come out.”

  The inspector descended the stairs to the ground floor, where the confusion had increased. The number of people moving to and fro, yelling incomprehensible orders, was greater. In the gardens could be seen hurriedly placed light machine gun nests. There were no soldiers behind the few haphazardly piled sandbags, which imparted a melancholy and fragile appearance to that improvised war apparatus.

  The inspector noticed at the third-floor windows a woman wearing dark glasses, who seemed to be crying. It was the wife of the president, Darcy Vargas. She had married Vargas when she was fifteen years old.

  Mattos contemplated the pair of bronze birds on the platbands of the rear of the palace roof, leaning forward as if about to take flight. In the shade of the enormous trees in the garden, the silence was broken only by the soft gush of water from a small fountain of white marble.

  A man whom Mattos recognized as Lourival Fontes, head of the civilian cabinet, was placing a pile of papers in the trunk of a car. Fontes closed the trunk and looked around stealthily to see if he was being observed. When he saw the inspector, he walked quickly back into the palace. Mattos followed him.

  In the midst of the confusion on the ground floor, the inspector lost sight of Fontes. He ran up the stairs, counting the thirty-seven steps to the third floor. He approached the president’s bedroom. Through the half-open door, Mattos saw what he was looking for. There he was, Getúlio Vargas. Dead, sitting on the bed, held up by his wife and others who were trying to removed the bloodstained pajama jacket. Beside them, someone was holding a dark suit on a hanger. The movement of the people prevented Mattos from seeing the president’s face.

  A visibly uncomfortable man who was taking notes put away in his pocket the pad on which he was writing. Seeing the in
spector’s inquisitive gaze, he said: “My name is Arlindo Silva. I’m a journalist. This scene will never vanish from my mind.”

  The reporter, obviously ill at ease, moved away from the door and disappeared.

  The forensics team finished its work and stored instruments and papers in small black cases. The first to come out was Vilanova.

  Normally good-humored, Vilanova was frowning and worried. He knew the inspector and considered his presence at the scene natural.

  “I confirmed a large blackened area around the orifice made by the projectile in the pajama, and also nitrite on the hand. There can be no doubt that the president killed himself. Jessé and Nilton agree with me,” said Vilanova.

  The medical examiners Jessé and Nilton had undertaken only a superficial examination of the corpse. The superintendent of police had given orders to the experts of the GEP and the morgue to hand over the body; there was no way, in that location, to perform an autopsy as the law required. The two medical examiners had merely removed the bullet lodged in the thorax and injected formaldehyde into the veins of the cadaver. This was related to Mattos by Nilton Salles.

  The inspector descended to the ground floor, where countless persons had gathered, lamenting and clamoring. In a corner, under the large statue of Perseus, a colonel in uniform was saying that General Zenóbio had expressed the desire to go to the palace, but Vargas’s family had forbidden him to enter. “They didn’t take into account the fact that in 1950 Zenóbio had opposed another coup attempt by the UDN when Eduardo Gomes was defeated by Vargas in the presidential elections,” the colonel kept repeating.

  Genolino Amado and Lourival Fontes distributed to the journalists arriving at the Catete an official note about the death of Vargas. Along with the note, they handed over two documents “found in the president’s bedroom”: the text of the letter, badly typed, which they called Vargas’s testament, and the text of a note that Major Fitipaldi said was found in the president’s bedroom, despite Lourival Fontes having verified that it was not in Vargas’s handwriting.