“One day,” said Berthe, “my brother simply disappeared.”
* * *
I arrived at the Aquarius discotheque on Rui Barbosa, and asked the gay bouncer if Fats was around.
“Fats, at this hour?” I noted the sarcastic smile on his face. “Too early.”
I checked my watch. Past midnight. I thought of Berthe and Jean Claude’s father dying of cancer in Araraquara.
“Maybe it’s too late, “ I said.
December 11
Darkness camouflages a wall
By a hair
Real estate lands a punch
On the nose
To kill time at the Speranza, I read a few of Jean Claude Clemente’s poetry. They struck me as quite idiotic and devoid of literary merit, but Berthe assured me her brother took poetry seriously: “He had this fantasy of being the Rimbaud of Araraquara, possibly because of our mother’s French ancestry. He went around bars in Bixiga selling his photocopied poems. He was a dreamer.”
At one thirty, I put the small book of Jean Claude’s poems called Inside Me in my jacket pocket, killed my third glass of beer, and asked for the check. The escarole pizza had provoked Proustian remembrances in me, but reality took charge and redirected me to more Dante-esque venues: I went back to the Aquarius.
On the dark dance floor, a few skeletons were jerking to the sound of the Bee Gees. I missed Hell. Suspicious eyes followed me as I tried to make my way through the blackness. I ventured down a corridor and opened a door, certain I would enter Fats’s office. I was mistaken; it was the bathroom. In order to avoid extended peripheral descriptions, I note merely that the bathroom was much more lively than the dance floor. At least it was lit. Even so, I refrained from urinating there, believing strongly that urination should be, in principle, a private act. I turned around and went in another door. Fats, who currently manages the joint, was snorting a line of coke. Nothing unusual about that, except for the fact that the drug was lined up on the semierect penis of a naked young mulatto.
“Sorry,” I said, and closed the door.
* * *
“I don’t know any Jean Claude Clemente,” Fats affirmed a few minutes later, recomposed and seated calmly at his desk, after waving away the carnal tray of cocaine and hearing my story. “This is a place of refined and Dionysian gay people, not some bar full of phony poets from the countryside,” he concluded, smoothing out his stiff mustache.
“I didn’t imagine it was,” I said. “But your knowledge of the gay universe extends far beyond the confines of Avenida Conselheiro Carrão.”
He looked at me for an instant, unsure whether to interpret my statement as praise or insult. “You don’t seem like the type who frequents the sophisticated saunas of Vila Mariana. You got a photo of Jean Claude?”
I shook my head.
“You’ve been better at this in the past, detective.”
“He’s a handsome man of twenty-five, redheaded, with light skin and a delicate nose like Jack Nicholson’s.”
“How do you know?”
“I met his twin sister, Berthe.”
“A redheaded fairy with a delicate nose isn’t much to go on.”
“Poet and from Araraquara. A dreamer. His sister has incredible breasts, but that’s probably not going to help you much.”
“Not at all.”
“Well?”
“What’ll you give me in exchange for the information?” he asked with a provocative smile.
“A limp dick can’t support a line of coke,” I answered.
December 12
I sleep late. At the August Moon, Antônio insists on serving me beer before the salami-and-provolone sandwich. I imagine that while the commotion over Lennon’s death lasts, hops and barley will continue to initiate my breakfast.
* * *
After firing at the former Beatle, Mark Chapman went into a kind of trance. He stood there immobile, clutching the revolver, until José, the Dakota’s doorman, grabbed his arm and shook it, forcing him to release the weapon, which José kicked away. Then Chapman took off his coat and sweater, opened The Catcher in the Rye, and began reading with intense concentration.
“The maniac said he was obeying voices inside his head,” said Antônio, reading the newspaper over my shoulder.
“It’s the excuse they always give. The voices should instruct him to fire at themselves, which would’ve resulted in a providential bullet in Chapman’s own head.”
“In that case he wouldn’t be crazy,” Antônio concluded.
“And John Lennon would be alive.”
“Have you read that book? The Catcher in whatever it is?”
“It doesn’t strike me as a good manual for homicide. I’ve never managed to kill the people I’d like to.”
“Yeah. If someday you’re told by internal voices to kill somebody, that somebody will probably be you yourself.”
“Bring me another beer,” I said.
The Persona bar is on 13 de Maio. It’s a dark tavern with psychoanalytic pretensions: in the center of each table there’s a small mirror that merges the features of the two diners sitting face to face. It must have something to do with the fragmentation of personalities, quite in fashion these days. I went by there last night. Because I was sitting by myself, I could see in the mirror only my out-of-focus face, which was surprisingly revelatory of my personality’s lack of definition. The Persona isn’t exactly a gay bar, although homosexual and heterosexual couples are easily confused because they’re all equally long-haired. According to the information from Fats, Jean Claude used to frequent the place. After a few beers and two or three questions directed to the waitress—also the bearer of a face very out of focus, framed by uncommonly short hair—I discovered that the redheaded poet had been seen there several times in the company of Danilo, a hippie renowned for supplying pot and acid to the customers from that traditional district of Italian immigrants. Although Jean Claude hadn’t appeared lately, the hippie is still in the habit of showing up now and then.
I tried locating Danilo in the vicinity of the Gigetto, Il Cacciatore, and other Italian eateries favored by artists and show-business people, potential consumers of the substances he sold.
“Thursday isn’t a good day to find dealers around here,” predicted Pajé, a car watcher who works in front of the bar in which a guy with the voice of Djavan was trying to sing “Imagine.” “Come back tomorrow.”
December 13
Stephen Spiro and Peter Cullen were making their night rounds when they saw the doorman of the Dakota point to the marquee of the building and shout, “That’s the guy doing the shooting!” Spiro jumped out of the patrol car, his gun drawn, and approached the man—whose hands were raised—and threw him against the wall. “He shot John Lennon!” shouted José. “He shot John Lennon!”
“What did you do?” Spiro asked the man immobilized against the wall.
“I acted alone,” he replied.
Stephen Spiro thought this the strangest statement he’d ever heard.
* * *
It was past midnight when I walked under the Bixiga viaduct, switching from Brigadeiro to Rui Barbosa. I’ve never had any problem walking under ladders, but walking under viaducts has always made me uneasy. Recollection of the collapse of the Paulo Frontin expressway in Rio de Janeiro has haunted me for almost ten years. The viaduct didn’t cave in on me, but I was accosted by a strange man, an anachronistic Mohican Indian. The scene would be humorous if the Mohican wasn’t poking my jugular with the point of a jackknife.
“You lookin’ for me, pig?”
“Don’t underestimate me,” I said.
“The fuck? What’re you gonna say? You a yuppie deciding to try some coke? Or maybe a nickel bag?”
“I’m not very yuppie. Definitely not a cop. No illusions about pot. And I’m taking a break from coke. Would you be the hippie called Danilo?”
“There ain’t no more hippies,” he said, relieving the pressure of the knife against my throat. “All th
e hippies died Monday along with John Lennon. The dream is over.”
“I understand. And when you woke up on Tuesday you all became Mohicans.”
“I am the walrus!” he suddenly shouted, his eyes bulging.
“It must be sad.”
“What?”
“To be the walrus.”
“Aw, you don’t understand shit,” he said, putting the knife away in his pocket. “Lennon was murdered. Fuck!”
Before he started to cry, I invited him for a beer.
“I don’t drink. What is you want?”
“To find out Jean Claude’s whereabouts.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Yes you do.”
“Stop busting my balls! I am the walrus!”
At that moment, Danilo really did begin to cry, whether from the ridiculousness of his declaration, the death of John Lennon, the mention of Jean Claude, or because of a hefty dose of LSD, I don’t know. Maybe all of it together.
“Let’s do it this way: you tell me where Jean Claude is and I swear I won’t tell anyone that Mohican Danilo sometimes likes to indulge in a bit of cornholing.”
“You bastard,” he said.
* * *
The building is on Rua Dr. Vila Nova. The address cost me some saliva. I revealed to Danilo that Jean Claude’s father is dying in Araraquara and that the old man’s final wish is to see his poet son.
“Who said so?”
“Berthe told me.”
“Who?”
“Berthe, Jean Claude’s twin sister.”
“I didn’t know Jean Claude had a twin sister.”
“It’s better for you to focus on what you do know.”
Walrus finally confessed to a relationship with Jean Claude, “a relationship of friendship, nonsexual,” as he made a point of clarifying. He said he hadn’t seen him in over six months. “He vanished.”
“People don’t just vanish,” I said.
“I think he went on a trip,” he stated vaguely. “Jean Claude was always saying he wanted to travel. I told him to trip out without leaving where he was, like me. But he wanted to go to Africa, like Rimbaud. He said he needed to experience a grand transformation.” Danilo smiled. “He was a weird dude.”
“Where’d he travel to?”
“How should I know?”
“Not even a hunch?”
“Somewhere far away, believe me.”
* * *
The Menotti Del Picchia Building.
Behind the security bars, I saw the doorman sleeping beside a TV tuned to a constellation of black-and-white static. It was almost two a.m., but time flies against everyone, including those who sleep without being aware of this fact.
December 14
“We ran to the trauma ward,” said the doctor on duty. “We took off his clothes. There were three wounds in the upper left side of his chest and one in his left arm. No blood pressure, no pulse, no vital signs, no reaction. We knew exactly what to do: intravenous blood transfer, emergency surgical intervention. We opened the chest to look for the source of the hemorrhage. In the process, the nurses took the wallet from the patient’s pocket. They said: This can’t be the John Lennon. We realized it was really him when Yoko Ono arrived at the emergency room.”
* * *
The doorman at the Menotti Del Picchia Building is named José. Even though the doorman at the Dakota has the same name, the coincidence explains absolutely nothing. I woke him up with the sharp sound of the entrance bell. With the catatonic expression of the recently awakened, he asked via the intercom what I wanted.
“To speak with Jean Claude Clemente,” I said.
“He doesn’t live here anymore. He moved more than six months ago.”
“Moved where?”
“Your name, please.”
“Bellini. Remo Bellini. Attorney. And yours?”
“José. José da Silva. Doorman.”
For a guy who just woke up, José da Silva demonstrated an admirable sense of humor.
“Excuse me for waking you up at this hour, José, but it’s an emergency. Jean Claude’s father is very sick. Do you know where he moved to?”
He stared at me in silence.
“Africa?” I ventured, thinking of Rimbaud.
“São Francisco, I think.”
“The São Francisco River? São Francisco do Sul?”
“São Francisco with all the queers.”
From good-humored, José had transformed into a smartass.
“Did he leave an address?”
“No. But I have something here for you.”
* * *
I returned home and waited for the day to dawn. I called Berthe. Before she answered the phone, I noticed the heralds of Sunday melancholy through the window: birds singing in the sooty crowns of the trees in Trianon Park. I explained to the Clemente twin that Jean Claude must be living in San Francisco, California, and that the doorman of the building where he used to live had given me a copious amount of mail accumulated in the more than six months since his departure. Confirmation of his whereabouts and the discovery of his current address would require a few more days, or maybe weeks.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “Unfortunately, there’s no time, my father is dying. Can you bring me the correspondence? Then we can settle up.”
I wrote down her address.
“Be here in an hour,” she said before hanging up.
* * *
When I arrived at Berthe’s apartment—a small studio in Itaim—images of Yoko Ono leaving the hospital emergency room hovered in my brain. I rang the bell and tried to concentrate on my work. It’s still an honest way to cross the Sunday desert.
“Come in,” Berthe called from inside. “The door’s open.”
Her living room was small, decorated with Afghan rugs, photos of Tibetan monasteries, and a poster of Farah Fawcett. The place smelled of Indian incense and patchouli. She came down the corridor, smiling.
“Sorry, I was changing . . .”
She was wearing only a blue silk robe with an Oriental design, which revealed much of her electrifying pair of breasts. On second thought, reducing those two round monuments to a “pair” wouldn’t do justice to objects so unique and appetizing.
“Don’t worry, I can wait,” I said, as we exchanged friendly pecks on the cheek.
“I’m anxious,” she said, despite not having given the slightest attention to the wad of letters I had deposited on the table in the middle of the room. “Come.” She turned her back on me so I could follow. “I need to show you something.”
I trailed her down the corridor toward the apartment’s only bedroom. My heart was racing when she slipped out of the robe, revealing a sculpted back that ended in a hypnotic ass.
“Berthe . . .” I said, anticipating the shortness of breath that assailed me as soon as she turned around and I saw the majestic penis oscillating between thighs worthy of a Miss Araraquara.
I had just found Jean Claude Clemente.
December 15
A week after the assassination of John Lennon there began to emerge interpretations about the fact of The Catcher in the Rye having been found in the hands of the killer. One writer analyzed:
If the person reads the book through an especially distorted lens, he feels sharply Holden’s impotence and says, “Yes, I also feel impotent,” and fails to make the crucial leap that Holden finally makes, which Salinger always makes at the end of every book and which the imaginative reader is invited to make.
“I just wanted to see your face,” Jean Claude/Berthe said to justify himself. “To analyze your expression when you perceived my transformation.”
I finally understood his poetry. “You used me as a guinea pig,” I said.
“Right,” he agreed with a smile, before leaving for Araraquara to take his dying father to his extreme unction.
* * *
“You got me runnin’, you got me hidin’ . . .” The sound of Jimmy Reed’s voice and guitar dissipat
es with Antônio’s approach.
I turn off the Walkman.
After depositing the salami-and-provolone sandwich on the table, he points inquiringly at the notebook open before me.
“Nothing,” I say, closing it. “Just a useless diary.”
My Name Is Nicky Nicola
by Jô Soares
Mooca
Chapter I
Detective Nicky Nicola’s Strange Client
São Paulo, 1960
In the Mooca district, in his beautiful penthouse, actually an extension of the slab on top of Vitorio’s bar, Nicky Nicola awoke to the sound of insistent knocking at the door. It was the telephone. Or rather, it was Vitorio advising of a call for Nicola down in the bar. The establishment doubled as the detective’s office, jotting down the occasional message. Vitorio owed Nicola a debt of gratitude since the detective had solved the intricate case of the “Stolen Mortadella.” Nicky, as the private investigator was known to his friends, leaped from the aged bed and fell headlong onto the floor. He was still unaccustomed to sleeping in the upper bunk. Zé Ferreira, his roommate, had already left for work. Bank employees didn’t enjoy the same luxurious schedules as private investigators.
Nicola opened his fine plastic cigarette case with the emblem of the Palmeiras soccer team and lit his first Beverly of the day. He took a long puff, observing the rays of light streaming in through cracks in the window. He was in no hurry to answer the phone call downstairs in the bar. One reason was because he was wearing nothing.
His beautiful blue-and-brown outfit hadn’t come yet from Dona Marlene’s laundry across the street: striped blue pants that had once been part of a suit, and a brown coat left over from another, both acquired in the same secondhand clothing store. He went into the bathroom and opened the small mirrored cabinet that functioned as his bar. Using the glass where he kept his toothbrush, he poured himself a stiff dose of Dreher cognac. Nicky kept a bottle in the bathroom cabinet and always carried a flask with him. It was his favorite drink. He wouldn’t trade it even for Peterlongo, the delicate domestic champagne. He downed the yellow liquid in a single gulp and shaved using the same blade for the twenty-fifth time. One of these days I’m gonna have to steal another one of Zé’s used razor blades, he thought.
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