by Frei Betto
“We’re all set,” breathed the boy.
“Is it really gonna work?” she asked.
“Garantido,” he assured her.
“Who’s gonna take care of the men?”
“Taco’s got the box-cutter and me and Soslaio have got knives.”
The girl squeezed her mouth closer into the wall and whispered:
“If you need reinforcements, my thirty-eight comes into play.”
THE MEETING
Cândido left the area of police operations and drove past a patch of wasteland used as a parking lot by a garage. A high-pitched voice called out to him from behind the crooked metal gate:
“Tio, get me outta here!”
He did a quick U-turn and looked in to where the voice had come from. A pair of frightened little eyes poked out of the shadows, like jabuticaba berries floating in milk.
“What’s the matter?”
“They’re gonna get me,” said the girl, panicked.
“Were you part of the escape?”
“Sim. They treat you bad in there, tio.”
“But… Where am I supposed to take you at this time of night?” said Cândido, talking to himself.
“Pelo amor de Deus, don’t leave me here, tio, the cops’ll kill me.”
“Do you know the Casa do Menor?”
“Não, not there, tio, the police’ll be watching it.”
“Come on,” said Cândido, suddenly making up his mind.
The girl slipped through the gate and jumped on the back of the bike. She wrapped her arms tightly around Cândido’s waist.
“What’s your name?” he asked, as he accelerated away.
“Bia!” she cried. “It’s Beatriz, but everyone calls me Bia.”
They stopped off at a padaria in Humaitá. The warm smell of fresh bread roused their hunger and they ordered mortadela sandwiches. At first, Beatriz made Cândido think of a chocolate doll. Her frizzy hair fell unevenly over her thin shoulders and her expression was full of vivacity. But when he looked closer he saw aggression mixed in with the beauty of her face, lines hardened by premature suffering.
There was no way Cândido could take her back to the hotel: it would violate one of Dona Dinó’s sacred rules and, besides, the police were still monitoring the place. Instead, he headed for the publisher’s.
2Estrangements
When Bramante got home, laden down with Cândido’s notes, Paloma was in the garden watering the bougainvillea.
“Did you finish work early?” It wasn’t yet eight o’clock and she rarely got home before nine.
Whenever she did finish work early, Paloma met friends for tea, went to the cinema or wandered around the shops. This way she always got home just as Bramante was going out. The doutor was a night owl: he was reborn when the sun set; his body bounced with increased energy, his voice gained vibrancy, his mind became more agile.
Paloma turned off the jet that was spraying the mango tree. She looked pale, drained, torpid.
“I’ve a bit of a fever,” she said. “I think I’m coming down with a cold.”
Bramante paused at the veranda gate, suddenly feeling sorry for her.
“I’ll make you a lemongrass tea,” he said.
Ten minutes later, Paloma was sitting at the table with one hand pressed to her forehead, the other holding a steaming cup of tea.
She inhaled the warmth of the infusion. Her face was sad, her eyes floated in tears that wouldn’t flow. Bramante looked at his wife, a husband in search of feelings that had extinguished over time.
“What are you working on?” she asked in a miserable voice.
“I accepted a publisher’s offer to work on some periodicals.”
“About what?”
“Sexuality, spirituality and the crisis of modern living.”
To cheer her up, and to assuage his own sense of guilt at feeling so indifferent towards her, he opened the file and spread its contents out on the table before her.
“It’s the first chance I’ve ever had to present my unitarian theories to the general public.”
“You still believe in all that?” said Paloma, as she dabbed her thin lips with a paper napkin.
Bramante felt his compassion slipping away.
“My theory now has the backing of a leading anthropologist, Doutora Mônica Kundali. She’s working with us on the project. We’re going to explain, in layman’s terms, the existence and significance of trilobites, crustaceans, reptiles and mammals in human evolution.”
Paloma leaned back in her chair and looked at him as if deep in thought, as if able to see through him, through the wall, through the house and out into the backyard.
“And where does spirituality come into all this?” she asked, a little hoarsely.
“Bem,” Bramante said, straining himself, “Cândido believes that every sexual impulse is an expression of a spiritual force.”
“Which you totally disagree with,” Paloma cut in.
“That’s right, I prefer biochemical explanations. But I think readers will like the idea of sex being a ‘liturgy’ of the bodies, as Cândido calls it.” He underscored the word “liturgy” with sarcasm.
Paloma played with her napkin, folding it up with her little fingers then scrunching it into a ball and dropping it on the saucer.
“And you don’t have the courage to stand by your own ideas?” she said.
Bramante put his head in his big hands and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Paloma, I have to earn money somehow. If I was a prisoner of my own thoughts, I’d die of starvation.”
She smiled with a mixture of benevolence and disappointment.
“Roberval, you need to start looking after yourself. This ridiculous running around all night like a twenty-year-old has already cost you your classes at the faculty. Your name is mud at the lab – I’ve had to lie on your behalf! And as for those poor souls who still believe in the great scientist who studied in Europe – the heroic knight errant who renounced a coveted government post on moral grounds – if they only knew you spent your nights researching the anatomies of putas and meninas!”
Bramante was offended, but he kept silent. He refused to let anger get the better of him like it had last time, a few months ago, when their arguing had culminated in his slapping her in the face. These quarrels were with the therapist, not with her. They were with the psychoanalyst who’d invaded their marriage and estranged him from his wife, his woman, his companion. He didn’t want to sleep with a brain, much less discuss and reason with one in bed. He wanted a woman who was hungry for fulfilment in every chamber of her body and soul.
Paloma saw things differently. Her husband had been unable to handle the fading of the sexual tension that had existed between them in their first years of marriage. Their bodies had filled out, their professional lives left little room for amorous leisure and the routine of married life had eaten away at the lust they’d once felt for each other. This didn’t trouble her. She’d made an effort to take hold of those threads when they’d loosened and weave them into a web of tenderness and understanding, a web that preserved the love that united them. She saw the life of a couple as a journey through deserts and cities, with moments of darkness and light, silences and raptures. Yet this required both travellers to have a virtue her husband lacked: patient faith in the mystery of love.
He stood up, fleeing the conversation.
“Are you going out?” asked Paloma.
“I’ve some work to do at Doutora Mônica’s house. I shouldn’t be back too late.”
Paloma picked up her cup and took it over to the sink. She turned the hot tap on and leaned forward, as if to do the dishes. She started sniffling. Bramante couldn’t tell if it was because of her cold or because she was crying. He didn’t stay to find out.
INEXORABLE
Bramante rolled over into the middle of the bed and stretched out a lazy arm in search of his companion. His hand met with an empty sheet. He was filled with sudden apprehension.
He opened his eyes and heard the sound of the shower. He checked his watch on the bedside table. The fluorescent hands showed 3.30 a.m.
He switched the light on. A shower at this time? Was she feeling unwell? An Ibsen quote came to mind: “Men and women are beings from different ages.”
“Mônica, is everything all right?” he asked through the bathroom door.
There was no answer. The shower stopped. He was thirsty, doubtless due to the champagne over dinner. He took a bottle of mineral water out of the frigobar, unscrewed the lid with his teeth and drank the bottle down in one.
Mônica came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. A loud silence surrounded her.
“Is everything OK?” he asked.
“Sort of,” she muttered. “I think it’s best if we go now.”
Bramante took out another bottle of water and gulped it down. He tried to think of a way to persuade her it was silly to leave at such a godforsaken hour.
“Can’t we at least wait until sunrise?” he said, in an almost imploring tone.
But Mônica was already getting dressed. She was in no mood for discussion and she took her time to reply, which made him feel ridiculous standing there naked, his hair dishevelled, his eyes bleary, his belly hanging out.
“I need time to think,” she said.
“Have I hurt you?” asked Bramante uncertainly, as if scared of tripping over his own words.
“Não, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s me who’s not quite right.”
What a whirlwind of emotions, she thought. Maybe I’d have been more relaxed with Cândido… Why do I feel I’ve been unfaithful to Cândido if there’s nothing going on between us? Oh, meu Deus, it’s all so confusing!
MEAT AND POTATOES
Mônica and Bramante had known each other a long time, their paths having crossed at numerous cocktail parties for the academic community, but they’d never become friends. Yet, as soon as Lassale invited them to work together, a game of seduction commenced.
Mônica was on the rebound from a relationship that had, fortunately, not reached the stage of nuptials. She was cautious by nature and especially careful to ignore the advances of scientists, considering it a matter of principle not to form emotional ties with anyone in her professional field. She repeated the old mantra to herself: don’t get your meat where you get your potatoes.
Bramante was married and the very idea of coming between a stable relationship repulsed her. Furthermore, she felt particularly disinclined to fall for anyone as intellectually vain as her ex-fiancé, a diplomat who behaved as if he’d been born to wear a top hat and tails. And Bramante was exactly that sort of man: in love with his own ideas and forever showing off the scope of his knowledge – a scope that was as broad as the range of his pipe collection, which only completed the image!
So why did she accept a lift home from him? Was she really that desperate? Her despondency was lessened by the knowledge that there was nothing emotional about it. It was simple physical attraction, that devil of a thing that could break down all resistance and turn expectations on their heads.
SEDUCTION
When she’d asked to look at the pipe he’d placed on the table, Bramante gave her a penetrating stare. There was nothing lecherous about it – he wasn’t one of those men who undressed women with their eyes – he merely looked at her in a way that made her feel beautiful. And, like any woman, Mônica enjoyed feeling beautiful in another person’s eyes.
As they left the restaurant, Bramante offered to give her a lift home.
Why didn’t I raise the barricades then, in the car, when he said I looked maravilhosa?
THE MISTAKE
His flattery made her vulnerable. She could see that now, as she pored mercilessly over the facts. If she’d just made an excuse or hailed a taxi she wouldn’t be in this situation now, staring at herself in the mirror, being tormented by ghosts of herself multiplied x-number of times down a never-ending corridor.
Your next mistake, Mônica, was agreeing to go for a beer!
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
The day they signed their work contracts with the publisher, Bramante suggested they go for a quick chope in Ipanema to celebrate. When she accepted, it was no longer herself speaking. Beauty and the beast did battle inside her head, one dismantling the reasoned framework of the other, a framework that had always led her to avoid chance encounters. Principles, promises, precautions: everything went out the window that afternoon when she climbed into Bramante’s car.
“Instead of a chope, how about a glass of champagne in Barra?” he suggested.
And you, Mônica, should have insisted on the beer! You fool! You knew full well that, coming from his mouth, Barra meant a motel.
No sooner had they opened the door to their room than they were throwing themselves on the bed, drunk on sensual pleasure, as if the encounter had been predestined. Wild and unhinged, they undressed amid sloppy kisses, their hands running over each other’s bodies as they entered a symbiotic embrace that soon exploded into raptures.
TRAP
Why did I agree to sleep with him again? Hadn’t I promised myself never to wake up with a man unless I’d been the one who chose him? Imbecil!
She knew the second they got to the motel that it would be the last time. Her mind lost itself in riddles trying to justify what was happening.
Why hadn’t she called it off there and then? The worst thing was that she’d walked into a trap in the very field in which she was most qualified to avoid traps: the sexual! If she’d given up a diet and tucked into a feijoada – if she’d mugged someone at a cash point even, she’d feel less like she’d betrayed herself than she did now.
PERPLEXITY
Bramante stood under the shower, hoping the water and soap would wash away his confusion. How different reality was from theory! Women really were unpredictable beasts!
He was aware that women found him unusually fascinating. To this knowledge, he added his own rule of never approaching a woman who hadn’t first shown herself to be interested in him. It rather presumptuously made him feel that he was conceding them some kind of privilege. His area of scientific specialization doubtless stirred female curiosity, creating the impression that he knew secrets and tricks that only the intimacy of the boudoir could reveal.
Nevertheless, he was ashamed of his belly. On an almost daily basis, he made an unsuccessful renewal of his vow to rein in the gluttony and start exercising, recover the athletic build of his youth. And yet he was also aware that women, unlike most men, gravitated more towards brains than physical attributes.
To his mind, sex was a game as engaging as microbiology. Some days you won, some days you lost; it was like bending over a microscope looking for bacteria. He took comfort in what his conquests told him afterwards: because he was married – and happily so, according to the image he portrayed – women who were only interested in a fling didn’t find him threatening. While his scientist colleagues spent their free time playing chess or tennis, he was upfront about the fact that he preferred “the smooth and padded arenas of motel rooms”.
THE PIPE
When Lassale first pitched the idea to them over dinner in Leblon, Bramante thought the opportunity to work with Mônica Kundali was a gift from heaven. That’s not to say he harboured an immediate intention of getting her into bed. He merely appreciated working alongside attractive women, and her beauty had made an impression on him the few times they’d met.
What he hadn’t counted on was the winds of seduction blowing so heartily in his favour. Lassale got up to go to the toilet and Mônica asked if she could see his Billiard Square pipe, which he’d just taken out of its leather case.
She picked it up and examined it closely, as if she’d never held such an object before. He stared at her thoughtfully, enjoying her curiosity, and then his sixth sense kicked in. He realized the rest would be a simple matter of skill and patience.
ESCAPE
What made me feel so cheated after the second
encounter? Had the meal and the bubbly not been perfectly nice? Could it be that Cândido was casting a shadow? Come on, Mônica, keep a cool head!
She turned the car radio on as they made their way from Barra da Tijuca to Lido, the better to avoid conversation. She leaned back against the headrest, closed her eyes and feigned sleep. Her body travelled faster than the car and she felt herself drifting out of herself, anxious to get home.
Bramante would have liked to ask if they could pencil in another outing, but he kept quiet rather than risk hearing a não. The silence made him uncomfortable. It was so thick it would have required a pair of garden shears to cut through it.
“We’ll talk at some point,” she said as she kissed him goodbye at the door to her building.
3The House
“How old are you?” Cândido asked, while they waited for the nightwatchman to open the gate.
“I turned twelve last week.”
The answer sounded meaningless. Beatriz was an undefined age. If she’d said sixteen or seventeen, Cândido would have believed her. Her face and tired eyes were a mixture of woman and child.
“Wow!” she exclaimed when Cândido turned the lights on. She noticed the computer.
“Do they make films here?”
“I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” said Cândido. “Right now, let’s try and figure out a way to get some sleep.”
Cândido began fixing the sofa up for her to sleep on and improvizing a bed for himself on the floor out of the leftover polystyrene packaging. As he set about his task, he got Beatriz to tell him about herself.
She didn’t know who her parents were, or where she’d been born. She’d been raised in Itaguaí, in an orphanage run by nuns. She’d learned to read thanks to the dedication of Irmã Teresinha, whom she thought of as her real mother.
The nunnery ended up being moved to another city, and the congregation decided to abandon its social work and hand the running of the orphanage over to the State. After suffering abuse at the hands of the new functionaries, Beatriz chose to risk a life on the street.