My German Brother

by Chico Buarque

  I call Thelonious, wave my arms, whistle, then feel like an idiot trying to get a famous artist’s attention. Stopped constantly for greetings and hugs, he looks anxious to get away from the tumult after his beating, understandably wary of the military police lurking nearby. But among the kids who have just taken a drubbing in his defence, I hear some already expressing a certain disillusionment at seeing him set free: So he threw an egg, big deal, it was the American who had them cut him loose, what a wanker, hitting the brother with an egg, I’d like to see him throw a Molotov cocktail into the army barracks. And the minute someone announces that Bob Kennedy is leaving, they all turn to the centre of the demonstration and Thelonious looks a little lost, glancing over his shoulder. I’m sure he sees me now, but still he ignores me and sets off at a brisk pace towards Rua da Consolação. When I catch up with him, he is aloof in the face of my effusiveness and he asks me to please stop with this business of Thelonious; he wants to be called Ariosto. At first it sounds weird, Ariosto, then I begin to vaguely recall his mother calling him that: Into the house, Ariosto! Bath time, Ariosto! But he’s not in the mood for chit-chat today, and I practically have to drag it out of him that he’s back in São Paulo for good after falling out with his father and dropping out of a rural university. In an attempt to pick up some thread of our past, I ask after his friend Udo and am left without an answer. His reserve appears to confirm the talk I’ve heard at bars, that Udo’s father got him out of jail after an agreement with the chief of police, which caused some ill feeling among the rank-and-file officers. And that Thelonious, abandoned there among crooks and chicken thieves, paid for his crimes doubly: two sessions trussed up on the parrot’s perch, waterboarding twice and I even heard that two prison wardens had had him up the arse, but that’s just malicious gossip. I don’t know if the barbarity of prison life messes with a person’s head, or if it’s just the fact that we’ve been out of touch for so long that makes me feel so strange now standing next to Thelonious, I mean, Ariosto. I still need to refamiliarize myself with his face, which in the darkness I can only see briefly lit by passing car headlights, or every twenty metres under lampposts, in that deathly yellow light typical of cemetery footpaths. And by the time we pass the first bars with their TVs on, as we pass a pizza parlour with a queue trailing out of the door, and finally the roar of Avenida Paulista, I am beginning to enjoy our silence. Beneath the neon sign of the Riviera Bar I propose a toast, but Ariosto replies: I would prefer not to. And as we walk the final downhill stretch home he tells me through clenched teeth about his recent re-encounter with his former friend, there at the Riviera. He says he was having a beer quietly at the counter when Udo came up behind him and started to taunt him: You back, Che Guevara? You pissed off with me, Che Guevara? After the fifth Che Guevara, Ariosto says he turned and said: Why don’t you run off to Daddy the Nazi? To which Udo retorted: Better than your mother the whore, who my dad banged. He’d held it together up to that point. But then Udo puffed at his fringe, and that was when Ariosto snapped. He grabbed Udo by the hair, smashed his beer bottle on the edge of the counter and drew blood from that silken skin with a shard of glass, giving him a gash from his left eye down to his jaw.

  A creaking floorboard catches Father’s attention: Who’s there? He must have thought it was my brother, because he falls silent as soon as I say my name. But when I pass his study door, he tells me to come in. I won’t lie and say I’ve never set foot in here before; when he’s not home I don’t even think twice. It feels like breaking into a car, but this time it’s like the owner is sitting in it, waiting for me. I tiptoe into the smoke and find Father in pyjamas, as he will remain in my memory, reclining on the lounge chair with his glasses pushed up on his forehead, a book in his hands and the butt of a Gauloises about to burn his fingers. Now he repositions his glasses in order to see me properly and coughs twice, always twice, then asks if I’ve been getting into his Kafkas. Never, I reply spontaneously, relieved because of this crime at least I am innocent. Then he wrong-foots me: So what are you waiting for? Me? I don’t think I can read Kafka in the original yet. But even after three years of school you still haven’t learned German? He pushes his glasses back up his forehead and goes back to reading a book called Strahlungen, which if I am not mistaken means emanations, luminosities or something of the like. I go to bed still reeling from that short exchange, because as far as I knew Father wasn’t even aware that I was at university. And with my thoughts elsewhere I forget to turn off the light, but it’s nice here under the blanket, where I lie in the foetal position with my arms down between my bent legs, like a wake-up stretch in reverse. Then I stroke my face to see if sleep will come, and it’s a relief to feel my skin free of pimples, which have left only small bumps and notches here and there. After so much grief, I think I’m actually becoming better-looking, as happens to those who are brought to trial without knowing why, according to Kafka, according to my German teacher. I also think I must have had a late growth spurt of a good few centimetres, which encourages me to go and look for Maria Helena, who it seems has gone to live with her father in Rio de Janeiro. It’s the first time I’ve been in an aeroplane, which is actually a propeller plane that flies very low, chipping paint off the mausoleums in Cemitério da Consolação, which makes me complain about the pilot, who is Thelonious, rather, Ariosto, who loses his nerve and decides to crash-land his plane right on my street, in front of a bunker I’ve never seen before, in the basement of my garage, where he tips beer on the ground and teaches me how to make Molotov cocktails.

  6

  With the gate broken, our garage is like a public library whose doors are always open, a standing invitation to book thieves. But the individuals who seek shelter there from the rain or the scorching summer sun aren’t literature buffs. These idlers kill time playing spoof, or reading the old newspapers piled up in a corner, sitting on the rungs of the stepladder that Mother uses to reach the highest shelves. But when they do me the favour of vacating the premises, I occasionally go in to browse the bookcases, where there’s a little of everything, mostly gifts from foreign publishers who hold my father in high esteem. In a place of such an assortment of literature, as habitués of second-hand bookshops well know, the appeal is the possibility of happening upon a good book purely by chance. Or serendipity, like how, when hunting for treasure, one has the good fortune to stumble upon something even more precious. Today I see the usual suspects on the same shelves: a few dozen Turkish, or Bulgarian, or Hungarian, books which Father may want to decipher one day. Also still in evidence is a book by the Romanian poet Eminescu, which Father has at least tried to read, as can easily be discerned from the pages cut with a paperknife. There’s an Arabic edition of One Thousand and One Nights, which he hasn’t read, but whose illustrations he has admired at length, as evidenced by the lines of ash between its colourful pages. I’m now able to tell how many times my father has read the same book, as well as calculate how many minutes he has spent on each page. I don’t waste my time with books he hasn’t even opened, including a select few that Mother has gone to the trouble of stacking at one end of a shelf, believing that they might yet redeem themselves. Many a time I have seen her at dawn taking pity on the books scattered across the floor of the study. She has a soft spot for ones with their authors’ pictures on the front cover, which Father despises; he says they look like they’re posing for cheesy album covers. This may be the case with the bespectacled writer I am holding in my hands without knowing why, an American by the name of Varian Fry. Surrender on Demand is the title of the book that Father rejected, despite the praise from New York newspapers on the back cover. The edition and the praise both date from 1945, and under them is an introduction to the work, whose author risked his life to rescue some of the most prominent politicians, artists, writers, scientists and musicians from Nazi-occupied France. Biographies and reportage aren’t among Father’s preferred literary genres; besides, he left Germany before the Nazis took over. But on closer examination I se
e that the cut of the book’s pages is slightly less uniform than that of a virgin volume and realize that it has indeed been browsed, but quickly, as one flicks through a newspaper to find the horoscope or lottery results. More towards the end I make out a subtle fissure in the sheaf of pages, and it was here that Father apparently found what he was looking for. Indeed, on page 236 I see that he has underlined in pencil a name at the beginning of the second paragraph: Among the refugees to cross the Atlantic were the harpsichordist, Wanda Landowska, the psychiatrist, Bruno Strauss, the pianist, Heinz Borgart, the sculptor … I don’t immediately understand why one of so many refugees has been picked out, refugees who, in 1942, according to the author, set sail from Marseilles for the United States, Mexico, Cuba and Brazil. But then I dash up the ladder to double-check Anne’s letter and verify that the pianist to whom I had paid no attention is none other than the prominent musician Heinz Borgart, mentioned in this book. Back in my bedroom, I run my eyes over the encyclopaedias occupying two shelves; scanning the spines of the German Brockhaus: A–Arnheim, Arnika–Blavatnik, Blavatsky–Camelot, I open the third volume with shaky hands: Borgard, Albert, engineer with the Danish army; Borganzo, village in Italy; Borgarnes, town in Iceland; and I can hardly believe it but here he is in a decent-sized entry: Borgart, Heinz-Frederik … With no patience for dictionaries just now, even if I don’t know the occasional word, I can still get the gist: Borgart, Heinz-Frederik (Berlin, 28 November 1902), pianist and composer […] son of Dr Oscar Borgart and his wife Gertrude, maiden name Gorenstein […] the father a well-known editor from a prosperous family […] Jewish mother […] Borgart showed a precocious talent at the […] studying piano and composition under Professor Artur Schnabel and Professor Kurt Weill […] won the admiration of a select […] and a successful career in the 1920s with […] in 1929 he gave a series of recitals of Franz Schubert’s complete works for the piano at Heidelberg University […] in 1932 he taught at the prestigious Cologne conservatoire […] the Nazis’ rise to power was […] he was fired from the conservatoire in 1933 […] he managed, however, to move to Paris in 1934 […] His mother and sister, who remained in Germany, perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 […] Heinz Borgart resumed his career in France, however […] but meanwhile he applied for French citizenship […] directed the La Sonata Music Society from 1935 to 1939 […] in 1940 the fall of France brought great […] again found his life at […] in 1942 aboard a freighter in Marseilles […] Casablanca […] he disembarked in the port of Santos, Brazil, where […] residence in the city of São Paulo. I hurry into the kitchen, where Mother is fixing a garlicky lunch, and in the pantry there is a shelf with recipe books, almanacs, guides to São Paulo and the phone book: Borges, Borges, Borges, Borges, directly above it is a Borganti, there is no Borgart, but farther along I find the address of the German consulate. Public enquiries take place in a smallish room at the consulate, where some twenty people are queuing in front of a blonde employee’s desk. Most are German citizens who stoop to speak to her in low voices, and from what I gather they have problems with stolen, lost or expired passports. Walking up the side of the queue, I take advantage of a pause and ask after the consul in basic German, but the blonde replies in Portuguese that Dr Weis is on holiday in Bavaria. What about the vice consul? The cultural attaché? I insist that there must be someone there qualified to deal with exceptional matters, but she whispers that the consular secretary only sees people with appointments. She calls the next person in line and refuses to give me any further information, even when I tell her I am looking for Heinz Borgart. It isn’t possible that she hasn’t heard of Heinz Borgart; all Germans know Heinz Borgart; there must at least be an official register with his name and phone number. The employee dryly states that the consulate doesn’t give out its citizens’ personal details. A fellow at the back of the room, perhaps to support me, booms that his country’s diplomatic services knowingly cover for war criminals all over South America. But another German who was already sighing loudly behind me snaps that Nazi-hunters should report to Interpol, instead of obstructing the queue at the consulate. An argument spreads through the room, and it’s Nazi this, Zionist that, and the blonde tells me in a tearful voice that it’s not her fault, her name is Lieselotte but she is Brazilian and from Santa Catarina. Feeling sorry for her, I offer her the apple that Mother gave me when I left the house, then I ask if she happens to have the yellow pages to hand: piano, piano, piano, I look for a teacher but all I see are piano shops, and all of a sudden I remember the music school near my university. By skipping lunch I can afford to take a taxi, but the music school isn’t there any more, now it’s a Chinese pastry shop, so I decide to trot down to the Municipal Theatre. There are no staff at the back door, where I can already hear the echoes of the orchestra, a frenetic symphony that suddenly stops. It starts again after a minute of silence, and from the wings I observe the empty seats in the penumbra and the intense light on the stage, at the opposite end of which the piano’s open lid conceals the pianist’s head. I steal softly onto the stage, sidle along the backdrop towards the right, and, as I’m passing through the kettledrum player’s shadow, a mishap of some sort causes the conductor to bellow and throw his baton to the floor. I freeze, holding my breath, and for a while all that can be heard is the baton clattering at the violinists’ feet. At least the conductor’s fury isn’t aimed at me; he’s addressing the pianist, who fingers a few isolated notes, to which the conductor shakes his head, vehemently agitating his thick white hair. I think they are swear words in Russian that he bellows until a hunchbacked gentleman heeds his call, climbs onto the stage with a case and sticks his head into the piano’s guts. The pianist starts hitting the same key over and over, and by now the conductor has left the stage, where a few musicians light cigarettes and others stand to stretch or head for the toilet. I take the opportunity to pick my way through brass, woodwind and strings to the piano, where I find a petite woman sitting on the stool. As soon as she stands to allow the tuner to sit, I ask if she is Maestro Heinz Borgart’s disciple by any chance. Without even glancing at me, she heads for the wings and down a corridor where there are more doors than wall. Because she looks foreign, I repeat my question in French, in English, in Italian, as I follow her, and I am about to try my luck in German when she slams her dressing-room door. Back on the stage, I don’t find any better reception among the musicians, who are blowing smoke, napping or making banal sounds on their instruments which drown out my words. They’re probably ignoring me because I am only in shirtsleeves, although their ties are loose, their jackets grimy and their trousers as battered as my jeans. Only the last of the cellists is willing to help: ¿El pianista Enzo Borja? and he points with his bow at the piano tuner: Habla con Lázar, tuners all have big mouths. Indeed, over a coffee at a bar behind the theatre, Lázar reels off the pianos he has tuned, not only in São Paulo, but also in Minas Gerais and the South, even in the Municipal Theatre of Rio de Janeiro. From virtuosos to moneyed dilettantes, from spoiled young ladies to bohemians with cigarette burns on their keyboards, he gets called out to mansions, schools and honky-tonks, he fixes everything from Steinway grands to locally made uprights, he makes no distinction between classical and popular, he is chummy with jazz, bolero, tango, samba and bossa nova musicians; he reels off his clients’ names one by one, but he has never heard of the German pianist Heinz Borgart. Jewish? You’re out of luck, I know the whole community, I’ve been tuning the Hebraica’s piano ever since the club was founded. Lázar moved to São Paulo in 1950 and can assure me that since at least then the pianist has not lived in the city. He doesn’t believe that a famous European concert pianist could have adapted to a country with a tropical climate, where pianos need tuning every hour. Trust me, says Lázar, your guy got out of here as soon as he could; he’s probably playing waltzes in a kibbutz. I thank him, pay for the coffees, and on the footpath outside Lázar insists on giving me his card in the improbable event that I do run into the pianist in question, seeing as how the
market is full of untrustworthy Italian tuners. But by now I have already persuaded myself that Heinz Borgart really did leave Brazil at the end of the war to remake his life in France, or to resume his successful career in Germany. Successful career? I wish the man luck, says Lázar, because most of us more or less lost our touch after the war. Or do you think I was a piano tuner with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra?