by Frei Betto
Cândido appreciated the gesture and stretched out a hand to touch the merchandise.
“Ora,” said Seu Marçal, snapping the box shut, “if you want anything, you know where to find me.”
CHIMERAS
Insomniac lodgers roamed the hotel during the small hours. Cândido was no exception. He preferred to stay in at night, unless he had something on at the Casa do Menor or was called out to deal with some emergency. He liked to prop himself up in bed and entertain himself by reading books or listening to classical music, enraptured by Albinoni’s sonatas and Bach’s suites. Having grown up in the country’s interior, where the roofs were low and the mountains high, he found the metropolis and its giant buildings oppressive. He feared being sucked up by the urban maelstrom, like a blind man stranded at the crossroads of two great boulevards.
By day, Cândido travelled around the city on his motorbike. Alert to danger and careful on bends, he punched into gaps with self-assurance, treating body and bike as one, a machine with eyes. But at night he trusted the eyes in his head and not the machine of his body. He didn’t think his legs agile enough to walk easily among hurrying passers-by. And he was scared of being mugged.
His room was a haven. Feeling relaxed after a shower, he gave himself over to daydreaming. If the pages of his book turned faster than his head could keep up with, he retired to the TV lounge to watch the hotel’s comings and goings.
Madame Larência, hair splashed with dye, passed by restless, out of the door and onto the street, diligently working the nightclubs, the boates and cabarés, meeting clients and taking orders. Like that of the Paraná rancher who wanted a “fine young filly with a firm rump and bright blue eyes, and a tub of pistachio ice cream”. Once she had the order, she went back to the hotel and searched among her mess of papers for the phone number of a girl to suit the client’s tastes. The accessories were always the hardest part, like the ice cream. Few sorveterias stayed open late at night, and general stores often didn’t stock pistachio.
She’d once had to wake up the owner of a sorveteria in Jardim Botânico in the middle of the night, as it was the only place that stocked the particular flavour. The shopkeeper’s fury was soon relieved by the rancher’s generosity.
Make-up retouched, Madame Larência headed out again, a constant back and forth that typically ended only when the Convento das Carmelitas bell announced morning matins.
Marcelo got back late, his jacket pockets stuffed with cans of beer, and plonked himself down in front of the TV. Eyes glued to the late-night film, he exchanged words with sleepy guests as he supped beer and smoked cigarettes. It gave him singular pleasure to tell his select audience things that wouldn’t be in the newspapers until the following morning. As if he lived a day ahead of mere mortals.
Almost all the guests consulted him at times of financial crisis, believing that journalism gave him privileged access to secret information, insider knowledge of spikes in interest rates and the strength of the dollar. Pacheco, the political aide, was the only one who wouldn’t listen to him. As he muttered to Diamante Negro, “Marcelo scavenges for news: I make it.”
Pacheco came in with his tie loose around the neck and headed hastily towards his room, as if there were not enough hours in the day for a man of his importance. He bustled out again a few minutes later, making for one of the phone booths on the corner of Mosqueira and Avenida Mem de Sá. On finding all the telephones broken, he returned indignant.
“We live in a country full of hooligans! Damned mestiços and vagabundos!”
No one reacted. This was what made the hotel a kind of Areopagus, a self-contained democracy where words bore no correspondence to actions and emotions clashed without shattering the bell jars in which guests guarded their individual selves, their frustrations and sufferings.
Pacheco sat himself down in the TV lounge, his eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and the clock on the wall. Then he got up, left the room and went out into the street again, only to reappear a few minutes later, absolutely outraged:
“It’s a jungle out there! There’s no sign of a populace, just flora and fauna!”
Pacheco considered it degrading and unjust that he had to queue for the phone booth with transvestites and prostitutes. If it weren’t for the urgent nature of his phone calls, which he considered essential to the well-being of the nation, he would never mix with “that riff-raff, who, for want of a brain, show off their behinds”. The other guests listened to him without passing comment, for they all occasionally burst forth with pointless rants.
Diamante Negro came back at daybreak. The TV lay silent and cold, replaced by the sound of roosters and other birds from outside. He sat down in the dark room, unbuttoned his shirt to inspect his chest, and plucked out any hairs he found. He nestled Osíris in his arms, kissing the cat on the nose. He closed his eyes to say a prayer to his orixás, waiting for a little peace to descend and clear the way to bed. The hotel’s silence gave him a deep and comforting sense of freedom.
TRAJECTORY
Cândido and Seu Marçal waited for the last TV news bulletin of the evening. The old guy rearranged himself uncomfortably in an armchair, feeling pinched on all sides. In his right hand, veins protruding like roots from the soil, his fingers fiddled with a toothpick, occasionally lifting it to his mouth to let it dance among the gaps in his teeth.
“I worked in the tax office back home, in a town called Governador Valadares,” Seu Marçal was saying, “up until I retired and entered the gemstone trade. I’d buy them up in Teófilo Otoni and sell them down here in Rio, where jewellers and tourists paid a good price. Back then, there was no competition from the forgers and people weren’t into costume jewellery. Business boomed just as my wife fell suddenly ill. In a matter of weeks, she’d left this world for a better one. Her death hastened my decision to move here.”
Cândido’s eyes drifted from Seu Marçal to the telly. The contraption beamed out adverts with no sound. The old guy’s attention had been caught by a model who was running semi-naked along a beach in a soft-drink commercial. An advert for a bank appeared. Two Eskimos came out of the bank covered in snow. Seu Marçal was still lustfully chewing over the thighs of the girl by the sea. Cândido thought about Seu Marçal’s misfortune, obliged to go on working after retirement. Images washed over his retina without penetrating his mind. Old age… destitution… precious gemstones…
Cândido turned suddenly to the man squeezed into the armchair. Seu Marçal’s head was tipped back, his neck stretched, his mouth open in sleep. Cândido yawned, producing a gruff sound of rising vowels. Seu Marçal opened his eyes. To hide his embarrassment he said to Cândido:
“Why don’t you take yourself off to bed?”
“I would if I weren’t so tired…” replied Cândido. “I won’t be able to get to sleep until my head’s calmed down. I spent the whole afternoon at a delegacia in Copacabana, trying to get two minors released who’d stolen a Nikon off an Italian photographer.”
Cândido was recounting the details of the case when Rosaura came in. She sat on the end of the sofa nearest the TV and put her feet up. Her fingers poked through her flip-flops like Andean pan pipes. Her young face told of fatigue. Her eyebrows formed a delicate arc above her nose. Bending at the waist, she leaned forward to pick up the remote, excused herself and turned the volume on. Cândido stopped his story. The news bulletin was beginning with typical fanfare.
Seu Marçal was the sort of person who thought everything he had to say was interesting. It didn’t occur to him that others might find his interjections inopportune. Marcelo would mock him and whisper that Seu Marçal had killed his wife “through deafness and auditory exhaustion”. As he recalled the journalist’s barb, Cândido yawned again and brought a clenched fist up to his mouth. Seu Marçal was becoming animated.
“I always dreamed of living by the sea, watching the garotas go by in skimpy bathing suits all day long,” he said, his eyes showing a touch of malice as he waited for Rosaura�
�s reaction.
She pretended she was so absorbed in the news that she hadn’t heard him.
He went on:
“I like to appreciate the sort of beleza that makes your eyes pop out, makes your heart salivate for the bittersweet taste of sin,” he said and sighed, as if the effort to fashion metaphors required periodic pauses and deep breaths.
Her legs now tucked under her, Rosaura’s body ached from having been on her feet all day, working as a cleaner. She tried to avoid being cooped up in her room at night before sleep had fully taken hold of her. She wasn’t good at dealing with her inner phantoms. She carried around a vague sense of fear and toured the hotel in search of company, though without ever striking up conversation. The mere presence of a living soul was enough to soothe her, even if it was only Dona Dinó’s cat.
THE APPARITION
As a girl growing up in the country, Rosaura looked after her younger siblings when her parents left for market in the early hours to get their stall set up by morning. She lay on a mattress of dry straw, ears alive to every sound as she tried to get back to sleep. Outside, a harsh wind blew; a bucket fell in the cement laundry basin; a branch broke off from the amendoeira tree; cats wailed like newborn babies abandoned in the forest.
Her body would shake and she’d put her head under the sheet and pray: “Santa Mãe de Deus, grant me your protection!”
One night, after her parents had left with the wagon laden with vegetables, she was warming up the youngest brother’s bottle when she heard a strange noise in the yard. She took the boy his milk, blew out the oil lamp and picked up a machete. Heart racing, she crouched down by the window and peeked out, her eyes fighting the darkness that surrounded the house. A cold sweat broke out on her skin. “Santíssima Trindade,” she begged, “show me mercy.”
She heard the sound of hooves scraping across the ground. She was torn between curiosity and fear. She dragged the plastic table and chairs over to the door. The youngest brother started to cry. The other two slept soundly. She comforted the little one, then stooped back down by the window. She saw the shape of a stallion cut out against the starry sky. Or was it a mare, lost in the night? From the outline alone, she couldn’t make out its snout. Then suddenly she could see it better. Judging by its size, it was more like an ass. It trotted around near the orchard and went back behind the house, stumbling into empty bottles. Still clutching the machete, Rosaura guessed the animal’s movements by the sounds it made. A hoe fell next to the chicken pen. Once in a while the animal passed by in front of the window, without ever showing Rosaura its face.
Then she got a glimpse of it close up. It was suddenly right there in front of her, its back to the house, the silhouette of its hindquarters to the window. Slowly, the mule turned round, as if it knew it was being watched. Rosaura squinted hard; she could see the animal’s body but still couldn’t overcome the darkness hiding its head. Then it whinnied and reared up, its front hooves kicking out at the emptiness, steam coming out of its nostrils at the height of a snout that was still hidden in the night. It ran away at a gallop. Once the animal was back in the moonlight, Rosaura finally unravelled the mystery: the mule had no head!
Rosaura was struck down with tertian fever and was delirious for eight days. Not believing her story, her father attributed the illness to panic. But her mother never doubted her. She said that Dona Maia das Mercês, head of the Filhas da Santíssima Virgem, the sisterhood of the local church, had poisoned herself to death when people found out she’d been offering more than just a hearty meal, clean sheets and a few cups of catuaba to the priest when he stayed with her to give Mass the last Sunday of every month,
“The punishment for being a priest’s woman,” Rosaura’s mother whispered into her ear, “is being turned into a headless mule.”
SLEEPINESS
On hearing Seu Marçal tell of his erotic fantasies, Rosaura lazily opened her eyes, fixed him with a scornful stare, turned back to the image on the screen, shut her eyes, folded her arms, rearranged her feet under her thighs, rolled over to one side and rested her head on the cushion.
Cândido yawned again. He was too tired to pay attention to the pedlar’s flourishing prose. Something about diamonds. Cândido stood up, excused himself, bid everyone boa noite and went off to bed.
LABYRINTHS
“Anyone seen Marçal?” asked Madame Larência over Sunday lunch.
Her shrill voice made Pacheco wince. Cândido went on chewing, eyes glued to the newspaper held up in front of his face. Diamante Negro pretended not to have heard, occupied as he was with pouring oil on the salad leaves before him. Rosaura stood up and went over to the stove to serve herself another slice of beef. Jorge, the hotel caretaker, busily washed plates. Dona Dinó, the landlady, broke the silence.
“I think he’s gone on his travels.”
Madame Larência was wearing an enormous blonde wig and multicoloured bangles that dangled from her arms into her food. Her wrinkles were saturated in cosmetics, her eyebrows thick with liner. She had the habit of ignoring everyone present and asking after those absent. She never spoke to the other diners, never even looked at them. If someone said something to her on her right, she responded monosyllabically and turned to her left, cutting the conversation dead. She preferred talking to herself, mixing up subjects, naming people who perhaps only existed in her imagination.
The windows to her world were open only to men whose eyeballs popped out with lust for genitalia. She also allowed herself certain daily frivolities: skin cream; unhinged conversations with her few friends; a browse around the shops and perfumarias; a little tawdry television to lighten her sombre mood.
Emotionally senile, she was the sort of person who avoided conversation for fear of being asked impertinent questions. By day, she sought solace in silence and monologues, sitting in the corner stroking Osíris – she thought him such a beautiful cat with his golden eyes – and thinking of ways to perfect the art of seduction.
Marcelo would often get back late from the newspaper and find Seu Marçal slumped in front of the TV, hypnotized by the late night film. The journalist, cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, would loosen his tie, unfold his arms and bellow:
“Grande Marçal!”
Seu Marçal would jump up with fright, while Marcelo’s greeting reverberated down the corridor, waking the guests nearest the TV room and startling everyone else, provoking an outburst of swearing from Diamante Negro and causing Osíris to open his translucent eyes.
If the night passed without Marcelo’s cry breaking the peace, everyone noted Seu Marçal’s absence. The travelling salesman who looked like a funeral director made no secret of his frequent trips to Minas Gerais to “replenish stock”.
3The Cockroach
Cândido gave his name and flinched when asked his profession.
“I work for a publisher.”
He was uncomfortable with the fact that he didn’t have a proper job. He lived off sporadic commissions from Editora Hellas and it hurt his pride to admit that he was stuck in the quicksand, the no-man’s-land between the formally employed and the unemployed.
INTERLUDE
“Should I avoid mentioning my work with street children?”
“No way, man!” said Odidnac. “That would only lead them to think you were hiding something and young offenders were involved in Seu Marçal’s death.”
“You’re right, Odid.”
ALTER EGO
Cândido always talked to himself when faced with awkward situations. He consulted Odidnac, his alter ego, whom he called Odid.
THE BURDEN OF TRUTH
Cândido added:
“I also do volunteer work with street children.”
Delegado Olinto Del Bosco smiled sarcastically.
“With young hoodlums, senhor means.”
Del Bosco, head of the Delegacia da Lapa, was tempted to go further. He would have liked to explain that aiding young offenders actually kept them in a life of crime. Every time the police lo
cked up a boy guilty of petty theft or couriering for drug-traffickers, some NGO would leap into action and make sure the kid was back on the streets in no time.
But Del Bosco didn’t want to disrupt the investigation with an argument that had nothing to do with Seu Marçal’s murder, so he contained himself.
SEWER
For Cândido, entering a police station was like entering a minefield. Everything made him feel dirty, as if he hadn’t washed for months: scribbled notes on walls, photos of missing persons, pages of reports spread out on tables, warped cupboards, dirty corridors, filthy toilets, broken windows, all-powerful policemen. The whole place treated civilians with indifference, until obstinate persistence managed to triumph over the sluggishness of bureaucracy.
Cândido had to proceed with caution. He knew that police logic meant the detective sought to prove innocence rather than establish guilt. He felt his stomach churn. This time he wasn’t there to stop children being abused. He had a corpse in his wake and two eyes before him that saw him as a suspect. But Cândido had learned from his work with minors: speak only when required to; keep answers brief; avoid citing names; stay calm.
“Does senhor suspect anyone of having a motive to have committed such a crime?” asked Del Bosco.
There was something about the detective that Cândido didn’t like. It wasn’t just the tyranny, that sense of being above the law by virtue of administering it. The delegado was tall and clean-shaven, with grey hairs just beginning to sprout from his temples. He wore a black shirt buttoned up to the collar and a white silk tie. What made Cândido uncomfortable was the way Del Bosco appeared to be acting a role, a role that he occupied in real life.
In fact, Delegado Del Bosco was a great fan of police films. His mind was a whir of killer blows, audacious moves and perfect traps, a rather over-sophisticated archive for someone who dealt with offences that bore no comparison with the labyrinthine plots of cinema scripts.