My German Brother

by Chico Buarque

  I look for a more discreet position when I begin to suspect that they’re spying on me through the slats in their shutters, which they keep closed with a light on inside. And, now, sitting on the neighbour’s wall, I rub my eyes when I see a man crossing the street with mismatched footsteps. A drunk, I think, a German steeped in Steinhäger, or maybe just a tramp kicking a rat, but up close it’s a boy with a limp and one built-up shoe holding a slender folder; a set of scores is my guess. He rings the bell, then pushes open the gate after Anne greets him from the door with a good afternoon which sounds, from a distance, almost accentless. A piano piece begins shortly thereafter and from a distance it, too, sounds pretty good, until it gets stuck in a particular spot and is restarted da capo several times. Then, after a longer pause, the music is reborn, flowing more smoothly than ever before, doubtless the artistry of Henri Beauregard and his Gaveau grand. To my untrained ears it is almost music in a liquid state, unmarked by fingers. I think it is a berceuse, and lulled by an assortment of melodies I take light naps over the course of the afternoon. More than blundering novices, I am woken by silences, just as I become agitated when I hear distant footsteps on the pavement, almost always pupils who trade places on the hour. Night has fallen by the time the coming and going ceases, and the music that now emanates from the Beauregards’ house seems to lull the street, the neighbourhood of Pinheiros, the whole city. I am the only one who remains alert, perched on the stool of the Érard piano in front of the Gaveau played by the teacher, who looks at me and raises his eyebrows. I understand that he is inviting me to accompany him in one of Schubert’s waltzes for four hands, but when I run my eyes over the keyboard I don’t even know where C is. Just as well that Anne wraps her arms around me from behind and, slipping her hands over mine like gloves, leads me in copying her husband’s finger work. And like a mother teaching her child to swim, she lets go without warning, keeping her hands nearby just to give me confidence. And off I go, after a hesitant beginning, when I elicit two or three testy looks from the maestro for touching adjacent keys. But soon I am performing delicate counterpoints for Henri Beauregard and am astounded to see how my fingers skitter from one end of the piano to the other. I weave my hands around one another, throw my left into the air, sweep the keyboard with the back of my right; with the pedals I prolong and dull the sounds as I please, as if playing with the accelerator and brakes of a newly stolen car. I no longer need to look at the instrument, I only have eyes for Anne, who points at the music rack, where there is a book of scores with a picture of Schubert on the cover. Anne now wants to teach me to read what I already know how to play, which in theory might be useful, as it might be for a writer to learn to read his book as he writes it. Or she’ll demand I follow the score to the letter, because by now I am improvising with abandon, creating new directions for the waltz which I believe would make Franz Schubert himself proud. Once open, however, the book of scores turns out to be a photo album, on the first page of which are sepia images of my father arm in arm with Anne, who grows more and more pregnant picture by picture in the streets of Berlin, against a backdrop of the National Library, the Pergamon Museum, the Brandenburg Gate. The next page, however, shows current photographs in Kodacolor that only Mother could have taken, of my father in his study smiling at the camera beside my Brazilian brother. There is also a black-and-white picture that Anne may have inserted at the last moment to please me, in which I appear as a child squatting with a football, while my brother sprawls across the arm of the chair where Father is sitting. The evidence that Anne and my father have never stopped corresponding leaves me so perplexed that I almost lose my place in the waltz. And Anne holds nothing back; she confesses that in secret she pays Sergio after-hours visits at the Museu do Ipiranga, where he is the director and so has all the keys. I become alarmed because she blurts it all out in German and in a tone sharper than the highest sharp of the pianos, but her husband continues playing with his eyes closed, enraptured by his own music, or delighting in my flourishes as if they were his. And there follow pages and pages of the lovers posing in the auditorium of the museum, or holding hands in a Tilbury carriage, or embracing on a canopy bed. I think I might even have glimpsed Anne’s whiter-than-white buttocks, during an unusual transition from E to D minor, when a rude voice interrupts my performance: What are you doing here? It’s him, finally, my German brother, still young, very tall, very blond and charming with a vast scar on his left cheek brought to life by its keloid appearance, which looks like a crab in relief: What are you doing here? He shakes my shoulders with inordinate strength, which almost knocks me off the stool, which is actually the neighbour’s wall, from which I promptly get up. And the person harassing me is a swarthy man with a red tie and a set of brass knuckles: What are you doing here? I instinctively take off my glasses, sensing the imminent blow, but what jingles in his hands is actually a keyring, because he’s the owner of the house on whose wall I have dared perch my arse. The only reason he doesn’t hit me is because he is startled by a pedestrian who doesn’t even look all that imposing, a man of my stature who’s just walked by, whose neck is the only thing I can see when I put my glasses back on. I catch another glimpse of him in poorly lit profile when he opens the Beauregards’ gate without ringing the bell. I think he has a big nose, a high forehead, glasses; he’s carrying books, has the key to the house and it can only be him. It has to be my German brother.

  Henri Beauregard ended his recital as soon as Sergio went inside, and now the two of them will be sharing a beer as they wait for the delicacies Anne is preparing. I imagine sliced potato, onions, I imagine roast lamb; I’m famished but I refuse to leave as long as there is still a chance that my brother might go out tonight. I see no harm in approaching him on one pretext or another: Excuse me, do you know where Rua Teodoro Sampaio is? Thanks, are you heading that way? Do you mind if I walk with you? This is a nice neighbourhood, have you always lived here? You don’t say, German? I couldn’t tell, your Portuguese is better than mine, but if you prefer we can speak in your language, Wie geht es dir? Danke, me? Never, but my father used to live in Berlin, his name’s Sergio, you don’t say, yours too? Sergio is such an uncommon name in Germany, are you going into the city centre? Then we can catch the same bus, I’m not bothering you, am I? On the way I’ll tell you a family secret, can you keep a secret? Let me pay, one day I’ll even show you the letter I have in my other pocket, promise not to tell anyone? Berlin, 21 December 1931 … A blue light flickers through the shutters now, and instead of Schubert I hear the sorrowful voice of a young man singing: Olá, como vai? Eu vou indo, e você, tudo bem? The Beauregards are no exception on that street, they too are watching the popular music festival on TV. But not for long, because soon the only light to be seen is the yellow light that filters through the shutters of the master bedroom on the second floor. In the bedroom at the back my brother might be getting ready for a party, although it is already past eleven. If he takes after our father, he won’t be interested in flings any more now that he’s nearing forty, but will be looking for a serious woman he can marry and start a family with. Father was around this age when he moved to São Paulo, about the same time that some relatives of Mother’s arrived, fleeing Mussolini, with her in tow. It’s curious that the war brought my father’s two women to the same city from so far away, although with very different prospects. My mother’s communist relatives had family ties to a certain Count Matarazzo, whose heirs wouldn’t have denied them jobs in their factories. Even my mother would have had work, in a storeroom, let’s say, where she would have demonstrated the same diligence with which she now arranges Father’s books; Father, for whom she works overtime to bake pies and, for better or for worse, has borne two sons. But the Beauregards, in addition to the murky future that lay before them, wouldn’t have been so eager to bring more children into the world after all they’d seen and lived through. They’d have devoted their attention to Sergio exclusively, who with time may even have tired of being a beloved child without a
rival, the favourite in a void, my brother without me. In this, in a way, he’d have been like Father, whose childhood was like a period of quarantine after his older brother died of yellow fever. But at least Father enjoyed a little independence in his late youth, and I doubt I’ll ever know if it was homesickness for his country, for his language, his parents, his home, his books, or a strong premonition that brought himback from Germany sooner than planned. Or per-haps he received a telegram from his mother in more or less the following terms: SHOCKED TO HEAR AFFAIR GERMAN GOLD-DIGGER STOP RETURN IMMEDIATELY STOP MONTHLY DEPOSIT DEUTSCHE BANK ACCOUNT SUSPENDED STOP. Here’s hoping the Beauregards have enjoyed good health and continue to do so, because in Father’s case, nothing short of the death of both of my grandparents, from meningitis, in one fell swoop, would have led him to quit the family home for good. A lifelong hypochondriac, he moved from Rio that same week, landing himself a public-sector job in São Paulo through influential members of the literati who, under the illusion that they would be repaid with generous reviews, also put in a good word for him at the cultural supplement of A Gazeta. Or who’s to say Father didn’t come here unconsciously attracted by Mother’s ample breasts, inherited from my maternal grandmother, the exuberant Donatella, who paid for her sins on the end of her Neapolitan husband’s blade? This honour killing comes to mind the moment the light in the Beauregards’ room goes off, and I am gripped by an absurd jealousy. I don’t know why, but it torments me to imagine Heinz touching and playing with Anne under the sheets, after they have undressed in the dark. And straining my ears here beneath the window is pointless, if it is true that in bed the Germans are far more discreet than us Latinos. I wonder if in times gone by Anne discovered with a silent Heinz pleasures that Sergio had never given her with a commotion. And because jealousy is a tunnel that leads to a tunnel within a tunnel, I now ask myself if Anne didn’t meet the pianist back in the days when she was going out with Father. And should my father have doubted Anne’s fidelity, let alone the child’s paternity, his abrupt departure from Berlin would be explained at last. When she gave birth, Anne would have at her bedsidea more complacent, or optimistic, Heinz Borgart, ready to adopt the child that he already considered his own. Ijust don’t get why Heinz would allow a child of his tobe named Sergio, unless paying homage to the alleged father, following an examination of the baby’s face and wiener, is an authentically German form of mockery. But on my way home on the bus, calmer now, I admit that it was excessive of me to suspect Anne of being so deceitful, Anne who in her letter to my father stresses how much the boy takes after him, and even promises to send a photograph soon. And now I am amused by my jealousy of Heinz, that is, Henri, who, pushing seventy like my weary old father, in bed with Anne, must kiss her on the forehead, if that.

  9

  ‘Alu?’

  ‘Mrs Beauregard?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, this is Caramel’s boyfriend.’

  ‘Caramel? Who’s Caramel?’

  I’m not surprised Anne is prickly with strangers; looking after her husband’s schedule must be a pain. Even if it isn’t very busy, she has to give the impression that it is, claim that an opening this year is unlikely, demand payment in cash, ask how advanced the candidate is, and make it clear that Monsieur Beauregard does not waste his time teaching the basics. Nevertheless, I insist that he will remember his former pupil and, to soften Anne’s heart, I explain that my girlfriend only quit her studies because of meningitis. Caramel is better now, thank God, and the doctors have recommended that she resume her normal life, her degree in philosophy, piano, swimming, as soon as possible. The most painful part of the illness is the stigma. You should see the way her less enlightened neighbours and even her classmates at university turn their backs when they see her. Until just the other day, at the Club Athletico Paulistano’s swimming pool, members scattered the minute she appeared in a bathing suit. How horrible, says Anne, how horrible, and in the word horrible, perhaps because its roots run so deep, her foreign accent is strong. Now Anne says there’s a chance of a slot next week, but the wait will be agonizing for me. I ask if there really isn’t any way she could squeeze us in today, as I’d like to surprise my girlfriend on her birthday, but Anne is adamant, today is out of the question. I sigh and confess that I thought it unlikely, so unlikely that I have already arranged an interview for Caramel with a new teacher. Anne bristles; she wants to know who it is and runs off a list of seven or eight Brazilian pianists whom she names with contempt. Then it occurs to me to invent a musician who has just arrived from Leningrad, and out of nowhere the name Nastasya Filippovna comes to me. In the ensuing silence, I fear I may have overdone it, as Anne appears to be consulting her husband through the toilet door, given that immediately afterwards I hear a flush. But when she comes back she agrees to make room for Caramel later tonight, at eight o’clock. I have the cheek to ask if at that hour the old maestro won’t be tired. I also explain that some patience will be required with Caramel, as the meningitis has left some after-effects.

  Before she beat me with a clog, I could have sworn that Mother left her bag open with her wallet on display on purpose so that every now and then I could help myself to five or ten cruzeiros. I never bothered to hide the theft; if I felt any guilt I wouldn’t have left her wallet lying there, half open, sometimes outside her bag. And at the same ice-cream parlour counter where my brother drank his milkshakes, I ploughed into sundaes and banana splits unafraid of being found out at home. I thought it natural that Mother should slip me under the table, as a form of compensation, the perks that Father openly gave his firstborn. So I felt betrayed when she told me off. A trap set by one’s mother is a terrible thing. The bruises from the clog blows weren’t too bad, but her words stung for some time: Thief! Rat! Rattone! I took a dislike to women’s handbags, even more so after Maria Helena dumped hers on my lap and asked me for a mint, her eyes glued to the screen. But the film was dark, and groping around I found pens, keys, a pencil case, lipstick, sanitary pads: everything but the mint. I did find some wads of paper, however, and I remain convinced that Maria Helena wanted me to open them from the very start. When the screen brightened during a close-up of Monica Vitti, I finally read the collection of torpedoes on the backs of illegal betting slips: Lose that dipshit babe! I’m gonna fuck you your hot! Nice snatch! And as if his poor language skills weren’t enough, the scrappy handwriting was unmistakably my brother’s. Years have passed and I am finally over these traumas, but now a leather bag comes along to set me off. It belongs to a student of mine, a girl from the south, who after class disappears into the toilets with a friend. I make my phone call to Anne Beauregard from the front office, smoke half a cigarette, glance around and slip into the ladies’ room. I find what I expected: whispers and snickering from the cubicles and the air thick with marijuana. My intentions were honest, I was going to open them and tell, I was willing to spend half my salary on the material. But my student’s handbag, agape on the counter, has left on display a roll of newspaper the size of an orange, the contents of which are no mystery. Pot couldn’t have offered itself to me more explicitly, for on the crumpled page of A Gazeta, I can see the title of a column, ‘Good News from Macondo’, and the name of its author, Sergio de Hollander. I am about to grab it when my attention is drawn to a wallet beside it, half open, just like Mother’s. Except that instead of banknotes with their usual dull colours, I see a scintillating sheet of cardboard with a red, blue and yellow clown on it, which at first I mistake for a joker from a deck of children’s playing cards. But on closer examination, the clown is a mosaic of stamps, tiny squares that I’ve only seen individually. Once again I have serendipitously stumbled upon a prize even greater than the one I was after, not to mention more portable. I count some twenty-four hits of acid before tucking the sheet inside my Fernando Pessoa anthology, which has never been as useful in the classroom. I leave the toilets just in time to avoid tripping over a cleaner coming in, wrap the book in my jumper to protect it from the
rain and arrive out of breath at Caramel’s boarding house. I ring the doorbell several times before a sister opens the door a crack and sternly blocks my entry, as the house is for respectable young ladies only. Sitting on the doorstep, under the doorway that barely protects me from the rain, which is growing heavier, I wait one, two, three hours; to be honest, I didn’t think Caramel woke up before midday. She wouldn’t be able to leave the house now at any rate, because the storm has flooded the street; it even hails later in the morning. The asphalt is still wet, but the sun is out by the time Caramel appears in a pair of jeans as old as mine, except loose and lifeless for want of her former curves. She passes without noticing me and pauses a moment on the pavement with her wooden recorder pointed at a rainbow. She decides to go right, always keeping her eyes on the sky, as if using the rainbow as her guide, and I stop her just a footstep away from the corner. The cross street is blocked by two police vans and a bunch of officers with heavy weapons who are questioning passers-by and forcing drivers to reverse up the street. I tug on her arm, but Caramel shrugs me off and insists on continuing down that exact street. She seems determined to be detained at the barrier, where a sergeant inspects her recorder, then pats her armpits, breasts and sides, leaving me breathless when he lingers around her private parts. When she is allowed to go, Caramel disappears beyond the police vans playing her recorder, and if I want to catch up with her I will have to go around the block with great haste, especially because the officers are coming up the street, where I am the last civilian in sight. I quicken my pace now on the equally deserted street of the boarding house and I have the feeling that the patrol is already turning the corner behind me, although I had no idea Fernando Pessoa was a dangerous author. But a new platoon is staked out on the next corner, and I wouldn’t be surprised if state-of-the-art sniffer dogs, hooked on lysergic substances, were to appear. My best option is to seek asylum in the boarding house, but, unmoved by my prayers, not only does the sister deny me entry, but she also threatens to call the Department of Public Order. They let me be for now, huddled in the shade of the doorway like a beggar asleep on the doorstep, and after a while I come to the conclusion that they wouldn’t mobilize the national guard to come after a piece of shit like me, with scraps of narcotics inside a book of poetry. But I stay put just in case, I won’t be taking my chances any time soon on a street that is so silent, way too calm. I can even hear the little birds at the nearby school, when a police van suddenly rounds the corner with squealing tyres and brakes. And it tears off, leaving a man crouching in the middle of the street, a black-haired kid of about my age. With his body tense and two hands on the ground like a sprinter at the start line, the kid looks from side to side, and at the sky with no rainbow. And with the first gunshot he bolts back towards the street he came from, perhaps to return to his friend’s place, his girlfriend’s, his mother’s. Before the corner he stops short, swivels around, races back, and this is when the gunfire intensifies. I don’t want to see his face, and I don’t, because it explodes, his head explodes before I can close my eyes. When I reopen them I see the kid, who is still fleeing, but without his head; his headless body runs some ten metres, blood spurting from the neck, stomach and arsehole, and falls a short distance from the boarding house. Along comes the second police van, which is merciful enough not to crush his body, at least, before collecting it through the back door and driving off. I pull on my jumper despite the heat, but my whole body shakes anyway as I stare at the bright-red blood, diluted only in the puddles of water. Sirens wail, church bells ring, and the street slowly comes back to life; cars, pedestrians with their shopping bags, nannies with prams, a boy wearing the Brazilian football team jersey with a ball under his arm. I’m the only one who can’t move, although I still need to talk to Caramel, who is God knows where by now. I ask a woman with a parasol what the time is, because my watch stopped at half past noon, but she looks at me in disgust. Instinctively, I raise my hands to my head and don’t find it, but it must be because my hands are numb. My bent legs on the ground look as though they have no bones, the book weighs no more than the flies on my chest and my whole body is numb from the neck down, as if I’ve been shot in the spine. But even if I am crippled for life, I consider myself fortunate to have eyes to see the blue sky, the shreds of cloud, the pleated skirts on the girls from Des Oiseaux swinging back and forth. Life renews itself in my ears with the rustling of skirts and the song of a kiskadee, which isn’t a kiskadee but a recorder, a recorder playing ‘Hello, Goodbye’. And I throw myself on Caramel as if I love her deeply, as I will never love another woman. I kiss her on a lip, on the recorder, on her teeth, on a cheek, on an ear, on her hair, I mutter a string of words that I don’t even understand. It’s better this way, because if I told her what was going through my mind, she’d say I was disturbed, that I was on a mega downer and fuck this, what a pain in the arse. Caramel would be right, and during our embrace I see how the bloodstains on the asphalt are being erased by the rubber of Volkswagen, Ford Galaxy and Simca Chambord tyres. And even when my euphoria begins to wane, Caramel remains hanging from my shoulders, her fingernails piercing the weave of my jumper, perhaps because right now she loves me too, above all things. Or perhaps it’s because she senses the gift I have for her.