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Brag, braggart, show-off; my classmates were unforgiving when I flaunted my father’s autographed books around the halls of Language and Literature. And even though I knew it would annoy them even more, I couldn’t help casually dropping into conversation the names of the writers who frequented our house: João, Jorge, Carlos, Manuel. Sartre? I crowed in a philosophy class. He made a point of dropping by our place with Simone, on his way through São Paulo. But above all my peers disapproved of my apparently blasé attitude in a time of great political upheaval. Still in my first year, in an effort to redeem myself, I started showing up at the student union whenever there was a meeting, whether it was to discuss university reform, demand toilet paper in the bathrooms or elect strike leaders. To ensure I didn’t go unnoticed I usually took with me a volume of Das Kapital from home and, leaning against the wall, pretended to read Karl Marx in German while the student leaders tore strips off one another at the front of the room. And I must say, I have fond memories of that union of ours, where there were also art exhibitions, poetry recitals, singing, cachaça and companionable young ladies. Parties went on well into the night until the days prior to 31 March 1964, when the military seized power. But that hardly came as a surprise, even for someone like me who wasn’t in the habit of reading the newspaper. Shortly before that date, on a street corner just a hundred metres from the university, I spotted groups walking down the hill from the elegant neighbourhoods towards the centre of town. I decided to accompany them to pass the time, since, after attending a talk at the union on the Cuba embargo, I’d sat through two hours of German and could skip French Lit as I was ahead in the subject. As we walked, I saw bigger and bigger groups streaming from other streets, I saw candle after candle flickering on sills, I saw the elderly waving to us from windows, and in Praça da República tiny pieces of paper rained down on the crowd from the buildings. Bells were pealing in Praça da Sé, women with veils over their heads were counting rosary beads, and I thought I’d best leave before anyone saw me there, captivated by the religious hymns, patriotic braying and apocalyptic speeches in front of the cathedral. I pushed my way back up Rua Direita against the current of people, who looked at me disapprovingly, as if I was trying to go against their procession of sorts. And at the Viaduto do Chá some kids with slicked-back hair started harassing me: Agitator! Scum! Communist! They blocked my way, cornered me against the railing of the viaduct, and it was only then that I remembered the book I was holding, the second volume of Das Kapital, which I immediately dropped and began to stomp on. At that moment I thought I heard a volley of gunshots, but it was fireworks going off over near the cathedral. The green and yellow lights in the black sky gave me goose pimples.
We didn’t discuss politics at home much, though as far as I know, Father had socialist leanings. He hadn’t expressed them in public lately presumably because, as supervisor general of CAMBESP, he reported to a governor who sympathized with the regime. But on the shelves of the master bedroom, then an almost foreign territory to me, alongside more conservative theoreticians and the already somewhat passé Marx, there were works by Engels, Trotsky, Gramsci, authors whose work I scanned so I could quote the odd passage here and there. When restrictions were placed on the student union, the Philosophy, Science and Language and Literature students started to meet in nearby bars, where word of mouth kept us up to date on the anti-dictatorship protests that were held around the city now and then, obviously without the publicity or impact of the previous Catholic marches. And I, who’d never been one to carry banners or chant, I, who’d never been the sort to hang out in groups, ended up acquiring a taste for such events. I mingled with university and high-school students, met activists from left-wing organizations, and went arm in arm with artists, journalists, informants, malingerers, oddballs and brash young women with bare legs who reminded me of Maria Helena. On this very day, as I leave the classroom, I’m excited to see Rua Maria Antônia closed to traffic. On the first cross street there’s unrest in front of a retailers’ association building, and I think they’ve gone a bit overboard by cordoning it off. But the arrival of a military police van with wailing sirens attracts new waves of young men and women, who occupy the entire city block in a matter of minutes. As a consequence, four trucks with police reinforcements roll up shortly afterwards, and before I know it I’m caught up in the middle of a big hoo-ha. People start pushing and shoving, and a guy in a red beret whom I’ve never seen before turns to me and says: What are you doing here? Without waiting for an answer the imbecile removes his beret, and as he leans back I hurry to save my glasses from a likely head butt. But before anyone can pull us away from each other, we all turn to look at some police escorts on motorcycles accompanying a black Cadillac. It’s Kennedy! someone says, but it can’t be because Kennedy is dead. It’s him! It’s the senator! others say, it’s Robert Kennedy! and beside me a girl shouts long live the Vietcong, her eyes full of tears. Photographers’ flashes pop when, to the sound of booing, the American climbs out of the car, and he strikes me as a little young to be a senator, too thin and white, with the face of a neglected son. I think his pallor might be fear, but he smiles faintly and waves at no one in particular. And that’s when an egg hits the head of a large man behind the senator, a black bodyguard who remains impassive, yolk dripping from his Afro. The officers lunge, batons swinging, at some kids at the top of the street and drag one towards the van, hunched over, arms over his head. In the meantime the American has gone into the building and the students have closed in on the van: Let ’im go! Let ’im go! Let ’im go! The driver starts the engine and some bolder youths start rocking the vehicle, undaunted by the blows to their backs. The driver now tries to back up, but stops in time to avoid running over the girls beating on the back door. Let ’im go! Let ’im go! Let ’im go! we all shout, and some officers pull the girls away forcefully, and it looks like they’re going to get a clobbering. But no, instead, the officers open the door and release the guy, who is all but carried away in triumph. The egg-sniper is none other than my friend Thelonious.
I haven’t seen Thelonious in years, not since that drinking binge at the Zillertal when things got all weird between us because of my German brother. At the time I was pretty annoyed, but after a few days I had gone looking for him and whistled at his gate in vain a few times. His mother was the only one who would answer the phone, and I would hang up because she kind of scared me. But there were rumours in the neighbourhood that Thelonious was doing a stint in detention after being arrested in a judge’s Studebaker with a tall, blond accomplice: Udo no doubt. I wished I’d been in Udo’s place when he was caught red-handed, that’s how tight we were back then. I wouldn’t have minded getting the shit beaten out of me with Thelonious down at the police station, having my head shaved like his at the juvenile court. We’d been thick since kindergarten, where he’d lent me marbles, eaten the guava pudding from my lunchbox and had gone by the name Bugs Bunny. Much later, by which time he was known as Fangio, sitting in his back yard at night, with an eye on the light in the attic where his mother was listening to opera, we’d have wanking competitions to see who could shoot his load the farthest. He was the one who arranged my debut in a brothel and then consoled me, saying the whore was a heifer and that everyone has days when they can’t get it up. On another occasion I showed him the pus on the end of my dick and he was categorical: gonorrhoea. He was already seeing a urologist in the red-light district and got me a consultation at a discount, then showed me how to unroll condoms on my stiff cock. In other words, there were no secrets between us. If I hadn’t mentioned my German brother to him earlier, it was because for me it wasn’t so much a secret as something that still belonged to the more tenuous realm of the imagination. But after that night, when Anne’s letter confirmed Sergio Ernst’s existence, my German brother would certainly have become the topic of our conversations; I could already see us planning a clandestine voyage to Germany aboard a freighter. But, from what I heard, at the age of eigh
teen Thelonious went straight from the detention centre to live with his father out in the boondocks. Without a friend, I had no one to share the subject with. It elicited nothing but yawns from the girls of my fleeting acquaintance, and at university even the classmates I got along OK with turned their backs the minute I brought up my father’s time in Berlin, thinking they were in for an earful of boasting. I could, for example, have told them in all honesty that in 1929 my father interviewed Thomas Mann in the sumptuous Hotel Adlon, on the boulevard Unter den Linden. But, not satisfied, it might have occurred to me to add that, in spite of his respect for Thomas, it was on that occasion that Father had stolen his girlfriend, with whom he came to have a son by the name of Sergio. And one night, in the middle of dinner, out of the blue, I blurted out: I wouldn’t be ashamed to have a German son. Father sat there with his fork suspended in front of his open mouth, while my brother continued flicking through the issue of Playboy he had on the table, to the left of his plate. Only Mother, after a moment of surprise, spoke up: Ma Ciccio, who’s ashamed of a Deutsche son? Dunno, I said, all I know is that Thomas Mann was ashamed of his Brazilian mother. It was a controversial statement, based on what I’d read, but I made it nonetheless in the hope that it might get a reaction from Father. He could respond that Mann himself recognized traces of his Latin ancestry in his style, or that his mother had inspired fine characters for his novels; in short, he could have said that I was talking nonsense. But voilà, a bridge would have been built between us, and perhaps from then on he’d listen to me from time to time, correct me, acknowledge me as his son in some way. Perhaps he’d even allow me in the sitting room like a visiting student on nights when his writer friends came over for an Old Parr and they’d stay up to all hours exchanging news, anecdotes, literary gossip. Mother would dotingly top up my whisky every twenty minutes, just like theirs, and late at night, when the guests had gone, Father might, in a gush of tipsy sentimentality, reminisce a little about Berlin. However, seeing as how he had gone back to eating his gnocchi as if I’d said nothing, I pressed further: It must have been because Dona Júlia da Silva Bruhns Mann, with her mixed indigenous and Portuguese blood, spoke loudly, laughed too much and flirted with all and sundry in the salons of Munich. At this point Father finally rested his fork on the plate and pushed his glasses up on his forehead, a gesture I imitated in the expectation that for the first time ever we would look each other in the eye. But no, it wasn’t to me that he turned, but to my brother, who was showing him a Playboy photograph under the table: Look at that backside! Formidable, said my father, an extraordinary backside! And Mother plucked at breadcrumbs on the tablecloth, as she always did when she played dumb during meals. I never once caught Mother staring into space; I think she even slept with her eyes darting this way and that. And the way she kept tabs on the family’s every move, I don’t doubt that she knew more about my German brother than the child’s own father did. But it was pointless trying to get her to open up to me, much as it had been pointless to try and force open the drawer of her nightstand, in which I assumed she kept painful relics. I believe that Mother, who’d insisted on a church wedding, would have backed out if she’d known that, in addition to being an atheist, he’d fathered a son in Germany. But once married, as soon as she began to put the house in order, she would have stumbled upon traces of Anne everywhere. Letters from Anne would have sprung from the pockets of an overcoat, she’d have found them lying about in the corners of the study, they’d have slipped out of the books she dusted. Letters in German that she would have sniffed from the first to the last line, some accompanied by photographs of a blonde woman holding a baby with a very large head. After cleaning up, Mother would have gathered together that woman’s effects, planning to set fire to them, but not before waving the papers in Father’s face. But she’d have realized just in time that in Sergio’s hazy memory, the ashes of Anne’s letters might come to acquire, little by little, poetic flourishes, while the cremated Anne of the photographs would become a sort of Marlene Dietrich. Instead, Mother preferred to organize a file of these mementos of the other woman and lock it in the drawer of her nightstand. If Father really wanted to look at something, he should not hesitate to ask her for the key.
My German Brother Page 3