by Paulo Scott
The next thing he knows, the club employee is standing outside the Sheraton Hotel in the middle of a crowd of teenagers and curious bystanders, watching the guy wearing a carved wooden board that looks like nothing else on earth. Two cameramen, and two others who appear to be assisting them, are filming as though there were something important happening. The club employee can’t see very well (the young people are all too tall). The man in the mask is talking into the microphone attached to the stand in front of him; his voice is not being amplified, it’s only there to capture audio for what is being filmed. The club employee feels comfortable in the midst of all that pandemonium, he isn’t alone. He wants to touch the guy somehow, to listen to him. He approaches. ‘I’m not trying to make enemies, I’m not trying to destabilise anyone but, for all the reasons I’ve explained, I’m not going to leave the government alone, still less the president of FUNAI, this gentleman who spends more time travelling around Europe than signing papers in his office or visiting the indigenous lands occupied by farmers, by employees of the mining firms and all sorts of modern-day prospectors.’ He stops for a moment. ‘I’m not going to leave this gentleman alone, just as I’m not going to leave the National Health Foundation alone, nor the section of the police and the judiciary that are in hock to the colonels of the North, the Northeast, the Centre-West, dangerous people who at this very moment are with absolute impunity designing a plan to criminalise indigenous leaders using falsified evidence … accusations with no legal basis … protecting the slaughter of whole tribes … ’ A very beautiful girl approaches the masked man to tell him that the FUNAI president’s girlfriend is arriving in a taxi. The masked man speaks (the club employee is close and can hear): ‘I challenge the Ministry of Justice and the President of the Republic to launch a complete review of the processes in which the leaders of the indigenous communities in these three regions have been condemned … As of today, I will give the government thirty days to dismiss the president of FUNAI … I … ’, and he pauses. He walks the short distance to where the club employee is standing. ‘You ok?’ … The club employee is startled. ‘What?’ The masked man goes on. ‘You helped me in the pool the other night. I could have drowned … ’ The club employee is confused. ‘You’re that kid? Why’re you doing this?’ he asks. One of the cameramen positions himself beside the club employee so as to better frame his face. The surrounding crowd begins to shout (they cannot know why exactly). ‘Isn’t it dangerous for you, to be talking about the government like that?’ he says, bewildered. ‘The people who occupy indigenous lands, they’re the dangerous ones.’ The club employee tries to speak but cannot. ‘All ok with you?’ asks Donato. ‘Me? I, um … I found out … ’ – he feels worn out – ‘that my youngest daughter is deaf.’ The masked man tries to comfort him. ‘I’m so very sorry for you.’ It seems to be an effort for the club employee to speak. ‘I’m sorry, but there isn’t anything you can do for her, is there?’ Donato stammers (when Donato is wearing the mask he never stammers), ‘M-m-me? Bu-but what could I do?’ The club employee closes his eyes. ‘I know you can’t … I just thought … I had to ask … because once you’ve missed your chance … I, I … don’t know … We could do a swap … I … I can’t seem to … ’ The club employee leans on the mask, and even Donato letting go of the handles to try and hold him is not enough to prevent him from fainting and his body hitting the ground.
Lucinho Constante, president of FUNAI, needs another two years to finish creating the plan that he has been presenting at government seminars as ‘the brand new, rationalised synthesis of the most successful programmes for the inclusion of indigenous peoples in the western world’. From Canada to New Zealand, he is testing the results (and he is sure he is headed in the right direction). He hates bureaucracy, he hates civil servants, those who have passed the public examinations and those with tenure, he hates the idiocy of the sertanistas who claim to be protectors of the forest and are really nothing but loudmouths with no ability to listen to, and support, their own families, who make endless claims about their love for the tribes that continue to hold out against the white man, but who lack the serenity to remain alert to the more fundamental demands of the day-to-day. He hates the alienation of academics, that breed that should be helping to discuss solutions, those fat peacocks; he hates those who don’t mind killing and those who don’t mind when others kill. He can’t bear to hear any more about the Raposa Serra do Sol reserve; he can’t bear to hear yet again that in nineteen such-and-such governor so-and-so liberated whatever lands in order to plant rice, soya, to extract timber; he can’t bear to hear any more about the Federation of Indigenous Organisations of the Brazilian Amazon, about the Central Coordinating Organisation of Isolated Indians. His trips to Porto Alegre are his way of hanging on to what sanity he has left. Dealing with Indians, defending them while encouraging some willingness to compromise, is a fool’s errand. A waste of time, sometimes it’s just a waste of time. He didn’t want to stop outside the hotel, he thought all the commotion looked unusual. He spotted the man, he was higher up than the others, wearing a kind of wooden armour. He asked the taxi driver to keep going. He called Antônia. They agree to meet in a more discreet restaurant in Menino Deus.
When Antônia leaves the Sheraton she realises at once that someone there knew, probably all of them knew, that she and her boyfriend had arranged to meet in that restaurant. The one in charge (she knows who it is: that brainless Catarina) approaches and tells her it’s no use changing restaurant, they’ll find out, they’ll follow them. At the restaurant in Menino Deus, Antônia describes what happened. The president of FUNAI wants to know whether they were really filming, if it was one of those demonstrations with slogans, because when he’d gone past and been suspicious he hadn’t seen anything like that. She tells him it was a group of people standing around a guy wearing a kind of armour made of straw and wood, and that he tried to approach her but hotel security came and she quickly got into a cab.
Lucinho Constante means well, but he is cornered (he can’t quite articulate his research and networking strategy to the global authorities making advances in the field of solving indigenous problems). From that day on, he has tried to be more cautious. It is all going well, yet tomorrow, at this same late hour, a foreign journalist will track him down and, right at the beginning of the interview, will ask him why it was that about six months back he’d stated that the Indians in Brazil own too much land.
ready to destroy
‘You know something, man? I liked that rumour about you working miracles,’ said Spectre. ‘The club employee having that fainting fit was perfect, and him reviving like that, telling everyone you’re special – oh go fuck yourself it was pure Hollywood.’ The Guy has already started closing all the windows in the very large house. ‘He was just really tired, worried about his family. I don’t know what more there is to it,’ he replied. ‘We need to use that guy again, that guy is awesome.’ It had been a while since Spectre had got this excited. ‘We’re keeping him out of it,’ the Guy replied firmly. ‘We’ve got everything lined up and ready to go, my friend,’ said Spectre. ‘What for?’ The Guy was having trouble closing one of the latches. ‘Don’t you get it? We’ve got everything we need to establish our own church.’ The Guy finally managed to turn it and shut the window. ‘I’ll give you a few days to think about it, we don’t have to decide anything now. We’re doing fine. We’re not in any hurry,’ said Spectre. ‘I don’t need to think about it,’ retorted the Guy. ‘If it’s up to me, the most you’re going to get is a martyr,’ the Guy replied impatiently. Spectre laughed. ‘A martyr? Really? Well, a martyr works for me … You see? We work like a Swiss clock.’ A long silence followed. ‘You know this isn’t going to last,’ insisted Spectre. ‘But the point is that I’m not going to need much more time,’ said the Guy, taking him by surprise. The Guy finished closing the windows. ‘Can you tell me what you’re planning?’ Spectre wanted to know. ‘No. You do your part, I’ll do mine.’
until
Before dawn. The phone rings just once. ‘Hello … ’ says Donato. ‘Were you asleep?’ Luisa asks. ‘I slept a bit, but I’d woken up.’ ‘Are you the guy in the costume?’ ‘I am.’ ‘I don’t know what to say … What’s going on?’ She hears him yawning down the line. ‘I’ll start with the latest news. I’ve received a summons to attend a Minor Offences Court.’ ‘What do they want from you?’ ‘I’m not really sure. There are a few articles from the Penal Code they refer to in the summons, but I don’t know what they mean.’ ‘I’m going to have to stay another month here in Goiânia. Which is why I want you to come here. I’ll buy your ticket as soon as I get off the phone, and after this hearing we’ll stay here together until the day I go back to Porto Alegre.’ ‘If you buy a ticket you’ll just be wasting your time, Luisa, your time and your money, because I’m not leaving Porto Alegre.’ ‘You’re going mad,’ Luisa lets slip. ‘Maybe I am. Let’s just check, on the fingers of my hand. One, the only woman I’ve ever had in my life is my stepmother; two, to prove the thesis of free will of the father who raised me I became the most un-Indian Indian you’ve ever seen; three, I grew up satisfied with the false story that my biological mother abandoned me; four, I have a biological father out there somewhere, someone I’m absolutely terrified of meeting; five, I can’t stop thinking about Maína, about the road where she lived … I don’t even know what right I have to have survived this long … ’ Luisa will hear the rest of this without saying a word (she will just listen). Tomorrow she has to wake up early because she is on a thesis defence panel and she hasn’t even finished reading the thesis, which, by the by, is not very good. Things really are turned upside down. Time is running out, but she’s happy in Goiânia and she has absolutely no desire to see him again (she feels free), she has absolutely no desire to come back.
important days
Catarina’s friend has incredibly good taste in interior design, a rare skill in making the best use of space. It isn’t by chance that Catarina feels so at ease in this apartment, in this kitchen, and always asks her friend if she can borrow it when she needs to be alone with someone without having to resort to the embarrassment of going to a motel or to risk running into her great-aunt (a situation still unresolved). She opens the fridge, takes out the glass bottle of water, goes back to the living room and stands face to face with him. (She doesn’t know that in the masked man’s pocket is a poem he wrote for her less than four hours ago.) ‘You all right?’ Donato asks. ‘I don’t know … I did something really stupid a while back … ’ Catarina says. ‘Welcome to the Circus Catarina,’ he tries to put her at ease. ‘I’m not kidding … I did something wrong … Or not something wrong, but something that went wrong … It was just before I met you, and … it’s ridiculous … because I swore to him, to this guy I like a lot or … it’s just I swore to him I wouldn’t tell anyone … but I can’t do it, I’m up to my neck in this … ’ He interrupts her. ‘What are we talking about, Catarina?’ She takes a few steps back and sits down. ‘About a guy … a guy I still love … ’ It was supposed to be the most important day. ‘Who you love? … And do I know him?’ he asks. ‘No. I’d rather you didn’t even know who he is.’ She starts to cry. ‘He hurt you.’ Donato tries to keep his cool. ‘Worse … He forced me to … ’ She falls silent. ‘Forced you to?’ he ventures. ‘An abortion … ’ she says, sobbing. ‘He was violent, is that it?’ Donato asks sympathetically. ‘He convinced me, he persuaded me, he blackmailed me … I thought I would get over it, but it wasn’t like that … I wanted the baby, I really wanted a child, because it was this guy’s child … you understand?’ He has to interrupt her. ‘And you’re telling me this because … ?’ She lies down on the sofa. ‘The chant from that day outside the DMAE water-tower … it … after I heard it, in some way I can’t explain … it helped me understand how much I regretted having got rid of the baby … When I closed my eyes and just tried listening to you … For those minutes I felt like the baby I got rid of was still with me … I mean, inside me … except it wasn’t going to grow, wasn’t going to come out, be born – oh, I don’t know … But at the same time, and this is the crazy thing, it was comforting to admit what I was feeling,’ she says, and dries her tears. ‘You know it isn’t really like that. It wasn’t a baby yet.’ She sits up again. She’s looking better. ‘I know that, I’m not a complete idiot.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘What matters is that … finding you, a faceless stranger, doing something I respected from the very first moment … in a way it made me stop and admit that I’d made a mistake … and it’s nothing to do with morality … it’s just that I wanted,’ she starts crying again, ‘I really wanted … ’ Donato tries to make her see reason. ‘A child isn’t a toy, Catarina … and at this point in your life, you know … You’re still so young … ’ She gives him a crazy smile. ‘I bother everyone so much already … a child wasn’t going to make a difference … know what I mean?’ Not letting him go on, ‘He made … the bastard made me swear that I’d keep it secret … It’s awful, it’s an awful feeling … And the son of a bitch … he won’t even speak to me any more … he just cut me off … I’ve been feeling so weird … a stranger when I’m around other people … ’ and she looks at him. ‘Except me … Am I right?’ She lowers her gaze. ‘Almost,’ she says, awkwardly. ‘That chant … ’ she starts speaking again. ‘If I were to choreograph it … and if I got into it … I thought it would help me face up to the situation … that we could be partners and we’d fall in love with a shared piece of work … and we’d fall in love … but you’re so different, you aren’t all jumbled up with the others … with the string of idiots I’ve known … the idiot I am … you’re not jumbled up with anything.’ He considers saying that she isn’t being clear, but he doesn’t. ‘I think you’re idealising me, Catarina,’ is what he says. ‘You idealise me, too,’ she murmurs. ‘I’m sorry. All along I’ve tried hard to understand you, not as an artist or … but for God’s sake, if you’d just take that mask off at least … You can’t even come out from inside this bizarre character you’ve created, this messiah figure I invented and you joined in … Know what I mean? I’ve tried to imagine what you must be running away from to get you to a point where you put on that mask and bury yourself so deeply in all this madness,’ she complains. ‘I have a purpose,’ he says. ‘A purpose,’ mimicking him, his serious tone of voice and São Paulo accent. ‘Catarina,’ and Donato’s voice comes out even more serious than usual. ‘What?’ she softens. And he says: ‘I don’t want to live any more.’
poem written not long ago
to drive out the mornings
to stand the past to attention
to cry in front of you
to have imaginary children
and put up with them
when they are more savage
and above all
when they sleep with no clothes on
during those fatal fights
in the damp chambers of the prison
built by your own hands
(at my wakes)
where there are no longer
any coincidences
nor the limestone shadows
from that dead day
on the dead pavement
outside that square
the day before the hearing
The president of FUNAI tendered his resignation, but the resignation has not yet been officially accepted. The number of the undersigned multiplies online, analysts are saying the masked man inspires people to pay attention, he is undoubtedly an unpredictable provocateur. At eleven in the morning he will speak at a small press conference called by Catarina (the first offline interview to have a wide reach) to talk about the meaning of his appearances and about the hearing at tomorrow’s Minor Offences Court.
‘What’s the mask for?’
‘The mask is an allegory, it has a personal purpose.’
‘What would that
be?’
‘To reclaim my identity, my dignity as an Indian.’
‘Reclaim your identity by hiding?’
‘ …’
‘You’ve threatened the government. Am I right in saying that?’
‘If talking about the dignity of indigenous people is threatening,’ he pauses deliberately, ‘then I’m delighted to be the cause of such a threat.’
‘Is there any way you could clarify a bit what you mean by dignity?’
‘It’s about returning the lands that have been usurped … When I was younger I thought the only solution was to take all the Indians and civilise them in the non-Indian way once and for all, but I was wrong.’