Hotel Brasil

by Frei Betto

  “Might he have contracted one of these boys to bump Seu Marçal off?” said the detective, more interested in compromising Diamante Negro than in uncovering clues.

  “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” replied Diamante Negro, eager to remove himself from the list of suspects. “When I think about how he portrays himself as some kind of guardian angel for those poor moleques, I remember what my grandma used to say: ‘The devil’s an angel too.’”

  “And you can confirm that Madame Larência was friends with Seu Marçal?”

  “Sim, she was. She also sold gemstones for him. But to suspect her would be a sin. Larência has a heart of gold. She’s endured so much in life, she’d never make anyone else suffer.”

  “And Rosaura?”

  “Cinderella?! She’ll die waiting for her Prince Charming – she hasn’t even got a slipper. She’s so pathetic she’d have jumped out of her skin if Seu Marçal had said boo to her goose.”

  “Does Marcelo Braga figure among your suspects?”

  “Marcelo is full of himself, senhor. A real Queen of Sheba, he loves attention. If he were a killer, he’d have challenged the victim to a pistol fight. Oh, I’d have loved to see that! But, as reality so often trumps fiction, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if that big closet queer had played futebol with Seu Marçal’s head.”

  “Does the hotel caretaker strike you as suspicious?”

  Diamante Negro rolled his light-brown eyes, uncrossed his legs, kicked out his feet and then crossed his legs again, swapping knees.

  “Suspeitíssimo. I pity him, I really do. He works like a slave. I never did trust that dromedário. But… oh, shut your mouth!” he exclaimed, covering his lips with his long, thin fingers. “I wouldn’t like to point the finger at anybody, delegado. I’ve no proof against Jorge. All I’ll say is this, in confidence: he’s always seemed very odd to me. He loves spending the whole day cleaning. The only time he stops is when Botafogo are playing.”

  On realizing the detective was writing down what he was saying, the transformista reconsidered:

  “But really, senhor, if that useless plasta can’t even kill time, I doubt he’d manage a person.”

  5Under the Skin

  “Profession?”

  “Profession?” repeated Madame Larência, buying time to think of a plausible answer. “Ora, I work with quality merchandise for gentlemen of good taste, delegado,” she said. She was trying to come across as likeable to the detective, who was hunched over the table, taking notes. “Or would senhor prefer me to say a cafetina, a bawd, a pimp – a specialist in loose women, perhaps?” she then added with a good deal of emphasis, for she made no secret of her business activities. She saw herself as a purveyor of white meat just as others sold cakes, clothes or perfume.

  THE OFFER

  “Don’t you want a better future for your daughter?” she asked Doralice’s father, in the outback of the Paraíba sertão.

  “I do want, dona. But times be hard and I can’t even pay for her schooling. At the last election, a rapaz showed up promising studies for the girl in exchange for my vote. I did like he said, but to this day the poor thing’s got no more learning than what Grandma taught her. Maybe at the next election…”

  “Que nada, the next election! Leave the girl with me. I’ve already raised half a dozen. One more mouth to feed won’t make any difference.”

  “Meu Santo Padim Ciço, praise be! Go on, menina, and you listen to the senhora now, do what she says like she were your own mamãe.”

  When they got to Recife, Madame Larência took the girl shopping.

  “Ask the rapaz to engrave senhora’s name on the back of this here swell bracelet!” said Doralice.

  “I’ll ask him to, provided you stop talking like a caipira,” warned Madame Larência. “The bracelet is not swell, it’s beautiful.”

  “And what’s my job to be down south?” asked Doralice.

  “Public relations,” said Madame Larência. “Wealthy and important clients only. All you have to do, my dear, is keep them happy and never say não.”

  REALIZATION

  Once in Rio, teeth brushed, hair combed, clothes arranged suggestively, the girl was sent out on her first engagement. She came back complaining:

  “He wanted to abuse me.”

  Madame Larência rolled her eyes, sighed and stroked Osíris’s furry back, the cat purring deep in its bowels with appreciation.

  “Being abused, my dear, is going hungry in the sertão. If you want to go back there then tudo bem, I’ll buy your bus ticket today. But if you’re staying, then learn a valuable lesson: he who pays the piper calls the tune. He’s not asking for your soul, just to kiss your face and caress your body. You don’t have to like it, just pretend to.”

  The yellow of Osíris’s eyes shone like gold. Occasionally he showed his teeth or licked his paws.

  Doralice realized her new life was not all that she’d hoped for:

  “Tia Larência, ain’t I becoming a lady of the night?”

  “We’re all of us ladies of the night, my dear. Do you mean a puta?”

  “I guess so.”

  “A puta offers herself on the street. You’re a courtesan: a courted thespian; a desirable woman with a talent for acting.”

  “I suppose that’s all right, then,” said Doralice, relieved.

  Madame Larência taught the girl table manners: how to sit up straight, browse a menu, open and fold a napkin, use glasses and cutlery. She taught the girl about make-up: how to apply face creams and powders, paint eyelashes, put lipstick on. She taught her how to manage her appearance: the art of choosing the right outfit, wearing perfume and combing hair according to mood and purpose: tied up if you wanted to go about the streets unnoticed; brushed down if you wanted to attract clients at night.

  She showed her how to use her eyes to seduce or fend off, express interest or indifference, display tenderness or dislike. She instructed her on how to deceive the gullible, how to get them drunk, induce premature ejaculation, writhe about in fake pleasure, moan in such a way that the onomatopoeia of orgasm resonated as an outpouring of satiated lust.

  She described to her the different types of men: the studs, hungry to eat dessert before the main course; the wise guys, wanting to become lifelong friends in the first five minutes and reap the rewards later; the shy ones, who wait for the woman to take the initiative, but subtly, so that they still feel like the subject and the girl the object; the guilty, with special interest in one particular area of the female anatomy – the ears – where they deposit confidences in the hope of compassion; and the exhibitionists, whose sole desire is to parade the girl around bars and restaurants, clubs and theatres, so that everyone notices, and envies, the beautiful nymph adorning their gentlemanly arms.

  AUCTION

  Once her apprenticeship was complete, Madame Larência put her “north-eastern treasure” up for auction. Doralice was bought by a racketeer who’d made his fortune as a jogo do bicho banker. He kept a harem on a fazenda out by Cabo Frio, his own private kingdom, where the girls lived for his pleasure and under his protection. The fazenda was guarded by a gang of eunuchs, former bookkeepers who’d been caught with their hands in the till and offered a choice of death or castration.

  FATALITY

  Three years later, Madame Larência was summoned to the morgue. The sheet was pulled back to reveal a corpse with a bullet in the left breast.

  “Does senhora recognize the body?”

  Madame Larência felt her stomach churn. Her face went so pale it showed through her make-up.

  “It’s Doralice,” she babbled. “But how did you know I knew her?”

  “She was wearing a bracelet,” the coroner said, “with an inscription: De Madame Larência para Doralice.”

  FURROWS

  Consumed by years and men, Madame Larência’s face bore the wrinkles of an age she’d yet to reach. She tried to hide them behind cosmetics and wigs, distract from them with jangling jewellery and high heels t
hat clattered down the hotel corridors, but in vain.

  The outside of her heart had become encrusted, a shell of furrows circling her soul. But the inside remained intact. It was there that she kept her true self, hidden away like a photo she could take out from time to time to contemplate and remember the real her.

  She was raised the youngest child of a typical suburban family. They lived in a yardless semi with poky rooms, a rag rug in the lounge, an upside-down china penguin on the fridge and a glossy colour photo of her parents’ wedding day on top of the TV. The front door opened straight onto the pavement of a road cut in two by the rattle of the tram tracks. Bushy amendoeiras provided shade, under which people scattered straw chairs on Sundays, sitting back to watch the world go by and look for gossip.

  BUD RIGHTS

  Olegário left his job as a clerk at the Central do Brasil railway station early that Friday and hopped on a tram. He hung off the sideboard to get some fresh air, just as he always did, but his eyes didn’t lust over women in the street like usual, nor did they run over bulges and curves, imagining the flesh beneath blouses and dresses. He was blinded by excitement, an excitement that ate away at his insides. He carried a present wrapped in tissue paper in his jacket pocket, and eagerness wrapped in his heart. Over the course of the week, the image of his daughter had grown to dominate his thoughts. Flesh of his flesh and now in the full flush of spring, the girl would become a woman by his own hand, before some spotty-faced moleque got any macho ideas.

  It was Larência’s fifteenth birthday. Their house was too small to host a party and so they’d hired the church hall for a small sum. Neighbours and relatives brought snacks and sweets, and a renowned confectioner supplied the cake, chocolate icing on top and nuts in the middle. Boys from the school formed a band to bring a little musical cheer to proceedings.

  The girl was full of joy in her white dress, a lacy polka-dot number, pink ribbon tied in her hair. She was showered with kisses and presents, though she was surprised to get a gift from her father. It was a bottle of French perfume, bought off a contrabandista in Praça Mauá, and Larência couldn’t recall an equivalent gesture in her previous fourteen years. She was touched, threw her arms around his neck and gave him a big kiss.

  “I’d like you to wear it tonight,” Olegário said. “Put some on before going to bed.”

  At midnight, Olegário waltzed The Blue Danube with his daughter, drawing great applause from all the guests. A dozen other couples joined the dance floor and Larência felt her father’s hand reach around her back and squeeze her body close. She put the excess of paternal affection down to drink and it being an emotional day.

  Morning was breaking by the time the family returned home. Larência was laden down with presents and overflowing with happiness. She gave her parents a grateful kiss and went to the bathroom to perform her ablutions. She splashed a little perfume on her neck, nipples and navel and wrapped herself in her new white silk nightie, a present from her mother. She went to bed.

  She was just drifting off when she felt a heavy body press up against her on the mattress. Não, she wasn’t having a nightmare: it was a man. Her scream stuck in the arch of her throat when she realized it was only her father, but the heat of his hairy skin made her freeze. Olegário held his hand over her mouth.

  “Sweet daughter, I’m going to lay my marker before some young safado gets his hands on you,” he whispered into the confused girl’s ear, as he pulled his trousers down to perform what he considered his paternal right.

  IMPLOSION

  Alice’s looking glass smashed into a thousand pieces, none of them big enough for Larência to recover the image she’d lost. Why wait for a prince if they were all such pigs?

  She started to wash five times a day and never looked her father in the eye again. A little later, on the pretext of wanting to live closer to school, she moved in with a cousin who had a house in São Cristóvão.

  Deep resentment came first: the anorexia of her insides being eaten out; the pain of having the sticky silk of a broken spider’s web replace her spirit; the promise that no man would lay hands on her body ever again. She would live alone, be consumed by time and die celibate.

  Months later, her father abandoned the family home to go and live with a girl from the rail network, a typist some twenty years his junior. This did nothing to placate Larência’s rage.

  Her brother embarked on a military career while their mother fell into deep depression, wallowing in bitterness, shutting herself off from life and waiting for the comfort of death. She stopped seeing friends and never left the house, sitting at home on her own, talking to herself, letting grief pour out from the cracks in her soul and drown her in dejection. She lost her faith in God and in humanity. Every night, once her domestic chores were done, she sat in front of the TV and surrendered to the magical world of the telenovelas.

  OUTPOURING

  At the Clube Monte Líbano carnival ball, Larência showed off her pink and tender body for the first time, a body with a musky freshness that bit women with envy and made men fear their own fantasies.

  Hidden behind a Venetian mask, drunk on the music and the beat, and above all the lança-perfume poppers, she allowed firm and hairy hands to wander over her flesh and squeeze her breasts, panting mouths to kiss her lips.

  On the third day, Lili, the Rua Alice cafetina, approached her in the toilets.

  “I hold the key that will unlock your dreams,” Lili whispered into the girl’s ear. “What do you want? A flat? A car? Financial independence?”

  Larência thought about her mother, her cousin, her problems. She took hold of her soul and placed it in a secret box, an inviolable safe, and accepted the cafetina’s offer. From that day forth, in a stately home up in Laranjeiras, she gave her body to men – not the body she lived, cried and moved about in, but the one which had been raped by her father.

  PROFILES

  “I was interested in his precious stones,” Madame Larência admitted to the detective. “Every time Marçal got back from one of his trips, Diamante Negro and I would huddle round to check out the latest offerings. In a roundabout way, we were Marçal’s sales reps. But I haven’t the faintest idea who killed him.”

  “Where was senhora at the time of the murder?” said Del Bosco.

  “I wasn’t at the hotel, graças a Deus. I was visiting a friend, the owner of a cabaret in Lapa. I do so hate the sight of blood.”

  “Would senhora say Seu Marçal had any enemies?”

  “If he did, they were in Minas. Everyone liked him here. He was a darling.”

  “What sort of gemstones did senhora buy from him?”

  “Tourmalines, topaz, amethyst,” she said. “Presents for my meninas.”

  The detective sat up straight in his chair. His eyes shone bright and his face seemed stuck rigid.

  “Madame Larência, who killed Seu Marçal?” he said with vehemence, clearly frustrated with the lack of leads the statements were yielding.

  “How should I know?! Senhor is the policeman,” she exclaimed, indignation hiding her fear. “It can’t have been anyone from the hotel,” she added with some conviction.

  “What makes senhora so sure?”

  “Because, my dear, I know them all so well,” she said. “Dona Dinó barely has the strength to lift her broom. Jorge, pobrediabo, would be lost without his apron. Rosaura is a rose scared of its own perfume. Marcelo is a bit of a rapaz and quite full of himself, but a coward. Professor Cândido is a zonzo, too busy burying his head in books and thinking about street kids to notice what goes on around him – I doubt he even knew Marçal existed. Diamante Negro is a soppy-hearted donzela who got on well with Marçal. The only one whose beehive I wouldn’t take the honey from is Doutor Pacheco.”

  “Why not?” said Del Bosco, suddenly interested, hoping for a thread to clutch on to.

  “He’s arrogant and fake. As he has so little self-worth of his own, he tries to borrow it from others. The worst kind of beggars, delegado
, are the ones who scrounge admiration.”

  6Exiled

  “Name?”

  “Rui Pacheco.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Political aide at the Assembléia Legislativa.”

  With his short curly hair, tortoiseshell glasses, clipped moustache and hooked nose, Pacheco looked like a man without a sense of humour. He was always in a rush and nothing was ever as important as politics. He went to bed only after he’d seen the last television news bulletin of the night and showered and dressed listening to the radio news in the morning. He read the newspaper meticulously, like a palaeontologist studying symbols on a fragment of ceramics, in search of a lost language.

  He got involved in student politics at college, joining the resistance against the dictatorship. He could cite standard tracts of Marxism from memory, and did so with great vehemence and authority.

  A strict believer in orthodoxy, he was quick to denounce any exegeses that dared challenge the teachings of his gurus. He believed he had been somehow granted the difficult but glorious task of protecting the ideas of Marx and Engels from false hermeneutics.

  Yet deep down he knew the magnitude of his own cowardice. Every time a demo was declared – a guaranteed police confrontation – he tried to duck out of it, alleging some kind of health problem, a pressing rendezvous with a leader of the underground movement, or an urgent appointment “to analyse the bigger picture”.

  THE DISTANT AUNT

  When the students started turning themselves into guerrilheiros, swapping slogans for guns, pamphlets for bombs, street protests for bank expropriations and philosophy books for manuals on the armed struggle, the young Pacheco shaved off his moustache, changed the design of his glasses and only ever left the house dressed in a shirt and tie.