Standing in a crowded bus, I clutch the plate tightly after watching Caramel disappear into the night with my Fernando Pessoa. But I have that old feeling of having forgotten something; my hands are missing something but I don’t know what. Perhaps I should have insisted on shaking Christian’s hand; after all we have, or had, a half-brother in common. Through him it wouldn’t be difficult to find out what happened to Sergio, if he ran away from home, if he changed his name, if he brought shame on the family, if he is doing time, or if, as I fear, he is no longer alive. In this extreme case, I can imagine Christian telling me about his older brother with his heart in his mouth, not so much out of brotherly love, but startled at having come so close to death; a bolt of lightning that struck beside him. But it may also be that he has never heard of Sergio, who might have died when he was still a child, leaving his parents with a hazy remorse of sorts. An inexpiable sense of guilt that led the Beauregards to cloak the boy in a silence as thick as the one back at home, that no one dares break. But I have other silences up my sleeve, silences to negotiate with Anne during my next visits. She clearly wants me to return, otherwise she’d have given me the dessert on a paper plate, not on Limoges porcelain. Now that she has met me, she will surely want to know what has become of my father, but I won’t satisfy her curiosity so easily. I’ll just mention en passant his world travels, his marriage in Tehran, his silk business, his purebred horses, his amputated leg. I’ll describe my mother’s shot-silk garments, her enigmatic smile and one or other racier episode that I’ll have to interrupt when I remember I have to be somewhere. The next day Anne will be at the gate waiting for me, pretending to comb the cat, but by that time I’ll have forgotten the subject of Mother’s lovers and will spend hours in the kitchen talking about my brother the plumber, his dark complexion, his almond eyes, his Muslim temperament. Until late one afternoon, with her back to me, Anne will confide that she was in love with another man before Henri. Slicing onions, to the sound of a lugubrious piano, she will tell me about the best nights of her life in Berlin, in the company of a foreigner who took her to dance the Charleston, a scoundrel who left her with a child in her belly and a bad taste in her mouth when he returned to South America. My father, however, for all intents and purposes, will be no more than a stranger to whom she sends pudding, as naturally as she serves pork to her Jewish husband. There are apostate Jews like Heinz Borgart everywhere, and it’s not hard to understand their reasons. During the Inquisition, it is well known that converted Jews went as far as to accuse legitimate Christian families of being Jewish in an attempt to deflect attention from their own origins. But if Anne maintains that the Hollanders are Jews, I won’t play tit for tat, nor will I go chasing down my family tree to prove her wrong. Not least because she could claim to have seen proof, first-hand, when she was intimate with Father, and I for one am not going to go and check if the old man is circumcised. It could also be that Father confided the secret to her as justification, or subterfuge, for refusing the child his surname. And it isn’t his fault if Anne was reckless and quickly replaced him with another Jew. Perhaps she even has a predilection for Semites, so long as they’re unorthodox, like Henri, or disingenuous, like Father, who devours Calabrese sausages with polenta on Sunday afternoons. And if I’m late for dinner on spaghetti alla carbonara nights, like tonight, I find no more than a few strings of pasta asciutta soaked in egg in the bowl, because he has already polished off the bits of bacon. At least there’s enough bread to wipe the bowl with. I have barely taken a seat and the glutton is already sniffing the plate that I was going to give him later, for dessert: So what’s that there? I push the plate toward him carelessly, and when he removes the paper covering it, Father practically drools: Apfelstrudel! I ran into an old friend of yours, she sent it, I say, not noticing Mother coming in with a pineapple pie: Che amica? Who sent it? Father takes a forkful of the apfelstrudel, closes his eyes as he chews and begins to mutter something like a prayer, oblivious to Mother fussing around him: There’s pineapple pie for dessert, Sergio. The pastry is really thin. Father’s eyes well up, and it is in German that he now recites: Dawning in the bookshelves / are volumes in gold and brown; / and you think of lands traversed, / of images, of the garments of / women lost again. Speak Portuguese, Sergio, speak Portuguese! begs Mother. Looking at her as if she were a new maid, Father orders her to go to the fridge and fetch a bottle of Liebfraumilch, a wine from the Rhine that he likes only because of its name. And he drinks the whole bottle, and recites all of Rilke’s sonnets, and sings the waltz from the film The Blue Angel, and late at night I can still hear his baritone in the bedroom, crooning that lullaby that goes Guten Abend, gute Nacht: Good evening, good night.
11
A tattered book entitled Il Martirio di San Gennaro, a photograph of a woman with voluptuous breasts in an old-fashioned bathing suit, a photograph of the same woman dressed as a flapper with my mother in a tiny sailor suit and, inside a brown envelope, a letter to Father from the German Legation, dated 21 September 1932; a receipt addressed to Father from the same legation for 150 mil-réis, dated 3 April 1933; and a carbon copy of a typed letter, unsigned, whose text I translate from German as follows:
Rio de Janeiro, 31.8.32
Tiergarten Town Hall
Secretariat for Childhood and Youth, Child Welfare
Berlin
c/o German Legation
Dear Sirs
The German Legation in Rio brought to my attention your letter of 27.5.1932, which informs me that my son Sergio, child of Anne Ernst, born in Berlin on 21 December 1930, is being maintained at the expense of the State.
To resolve this situation, for which I am deeply sorry and wish to find a solution compatible with my means, please allow me to present, with the consent of the Legation, two proposals concerning my son’s future.
The first – the best, in my opinion – would be to have the child come to Rio, where he would live with my family. In the event that Miss Ernst should accept this proposal, it would, obviously, be at my own expense.
In the event that it is deemed unacceptable and the child remains in Germany, I will send a monthly contribution of 150 mil-réis, which is all I can afford at present.
In the hope that you will consider my proposals with benevolence, respectfully yours.
Whether Anne wished to rid herself of a shameful burden, was going along with a husband’s pettiness, or had prevented a one-and-a-half-year-old child from gaining a family in Brazil out of sheer spite, it all pales in comparison to the cheek of sending Father a pastry via me. It would be easier to forgive if, still bearing a grudge against her runaway lover, she had sent him a poisoned apfelstrudel as revenge served cold. But as I put the documents back in the brown envelope, I find at the bottom a photograph not much bigger than a playing card, with the names Sergio and Anne Ernst on the back in my mother’s handwriting. I stare at length at little Sergio, five or six months old, an age at which only a mother can say for sure who the child resembles. To me he is a baby like any other, except for his startled eyes, looking upwards. But the Anne smiling at the baby, even accounting for the distance of forty years, isn’t the Anne I know. With a square face, sharp nose and peasant-like demeanour, the woman in the photograph looks less like Madame Beauregard than she does my own mother, like a first draft of Mother that Father set aside. Speaking of Mother, I can hear her downstairs now, having just arrived home from Mass: Sergio, ti preparo un caffè. I busy myself putting the papers back into the order I found them in, more or less, so she won’t feel obliged to give me a scolding. But I leave the drawer open an inch more than it was, so she’ll have no doubt that I’ve been snooping, as I believe was her intention. And even if it wasn’t, she can hardly demand that I return the photograph of Sergio and Anne Ernst that I take with me: Photograph of who? I am convinced that during her sleepless night, while Father sang a lullaby at the top of his lungs, Mother added up the clues of my unflagging interest in the story of Sergio Ernst which I’ve been leaving h
ere and there. And no matter how uncomfortable the subject is for her, as far as she can see it’s the only way to bring me closer to Father. In her view, rather than listen to my misguided ideas about literature, Father will always prefer to hear my brother tell him the latest antics of Little Lulu or provide news of Brigitte Bardot. But I might be able to get his attention, win a few points, make him truly see me, if I succeed in locating a child of uncertain identity, who perhaps survived the years of horror in a city that was bombed and split in half. Because even if Father learns all languages and devours every library in the world, he might not be able to finish his magnum opus until he fills this little gap in his own knowledge. Ergo, this morning, Mother called me into her room under the pretext of asking me to get St Augustine’s Confessions down from the top shelf for her. She asked me to remove my shoes so I could climb on the nightstand, and that was when I saw her drawer of secrets ajar for the first time. Then she told me she was going to church, as if I didn’t know her Sunday routine, and off she went, leaving the St Augustine on the bed.
With this new information in hand, I was going to consider my next moves, but Mother expedited matters when she saddled me with the Beauregards’ little porcelain plate with a slice of pineapple pie on it. She insisted I deliver it before lunch and thank my German friend for her. She was afraid it would lose its sheen, but the thing stuck to the plate in my hands is a discoloured blob with a half-circle of rust-coloured pineapple on top. I take a detour to the neighbourhood of Santa Cecília, where there’s a Portuguese cake shop open on Sundays, and replace the pie with half a dozen custard tarts. It’s a sultry day, with heavy clouds, and from the Beauregards’ gate I believe I hear Henri having a temper tantrum behind the ever-shuttered windows. But when Madame Beauregard opens the door before I even ring the bell, I realize that her husband’s bellowing is just a long-distance phone call in German: I’ll send you the Ravel scores by express post, with my regards to Maestro Köllreuter! When she sees me, Madame just about locks herself in the house again, having noted, no doubt, the sorry impression she’s made on me, and not just because she is in a dressing gown with no make-up on her sleepy face. Doubtless, she now understands that she has just been demoted from the role of woman loved and possessed by Father; she who I secretly desired as one might a desirable mother. I think she knew all along that I’d taken her for someone else, and took a coquettish pleasure in passing herself off as another woman, if for no other reason than to practise the dramatic art she learned in her youth. Schooled in the Stanislavski method, she was beginning to feel at home in the character of Anne Ernst, whose husband she stole in real life. And now a cloud of hostility descends between us: Oh, no, here again, Monsieur? She retrieves the watering can from a corner of the patio, turns on a tap and takes out her irritation on the cat with a squirt of water. I only came to bring you some custard tarts, Madame, one of my mother’s specialities. Oh, merci, how kind of your mother, wanting me to become a whale with her Portuguese sweets. And, watering the geraniums: You can put them on the wall there. Henri has the stomach of a goat, he’ll eat anything. Incidentally, Madame Beauregard, I was intrigued to hear your husband just now. I was under the impression that you didn’t like Germans. Madame turns to me brandishing the watering can: Henri was born in Berlin but he isn’t German, Monsieur Hollander. He is as much a French citizen as I am and holds that country in contempt, even more so than I do. At this, annoyed by her tone of voice and exasperated with Henri’s interminable piano exercise, I blurt out: I want to speak to the maestro, it’s a matter that concerns him. Deaf to my demand, she squats to pick a sickly flower, but can’t resist taking a peek at the photograph I hold up: This is my brother Sergio with his mother Anne Ernst, a Berliner whom the prominent pianist Heinz Borgart knew very well. I was going to show her Anne’s letter, too, but Madame is truly intractable today: Henri may have had his way with I-don’t-care-how-many Annes when he was single, Monsieur, but not with that one there, who looks more like a chambermaid. Michelle! calls her husband, and she leaves the watering can capsized on the ground: Adieu, Monsieur, I wish you a safe journey. And when she sees the first few drops of rain plop onto the geraniums she has just watered, she mutters: Merde. It rains on the custard tarts, the cat meows on the doormat, and I am debating whether to leave or stay when the door opens again. It’s Christian in a suit and tie, holding an umbrella, to whom I promptly extend my hand: Good morning, Christian, do you know where Rua Teodoro Sampaio is? Not only does he allow me to accompany him but he also offers me half of his umbrella, an amiability I find touching: Danke, Sie sind zu liebenswürdig! What, you don’t speak German? Your father didn’t teach you? I am a great admirer of Heinz Borgart, his recordings of Schubert are always on my gramophone. What, you’re not familiar with them? You don’t like music? Ah, I appreciate French literature too. Russian literature? You don’t say, I’m reading The Brothers Karamazov for the seventh time. A French edition, of course, they’re the best translations. What, you read them in the original? In the Cyrillic alphabet? My, not even Father speaks Russian. Which bus are we waiting for? Taxi? You don’t say, me too.
Christian gives the driver the address of the Hotel Danúbio, where his girlfriend is staying, coincidentally located next to a German restaurant where it wouldn’t be a bad idea to grab some lunch shortly. He doesn’t know the Zillertal, unlike his father, who says he hates Germany but can’t live without his beer-braised pork knuckles. I invite him and his girlfriend to lunch; they serve feijoada at the weekend. But his girlfriend doesn’t want to leave her room. She arrived in São Paulo this morning and flies out early tomorrow. An air hostess’s life is complicated. It messes with her sleep, her bowels, her menstrual cycle. But for a boyfriend it’s not too bad. At the end of the year Christian will be entitled to an Air France ticket to Paris. He has already discovered that there will be an auction of André Gide’s manuscripts in January, and he is saving up to make a bid. A postcard from the Congo with a succinct message and Gide’s signature can be bought for under 800 francs, a steal. Born in São Paulo, Christian Beauregard is a teacher at the Alliance Française, knows almost as much as I do about French authors, and throughout our conversation we transition from French to Portuguese and back again without realizing it. I think it is in French that we say goodbye at the door of the Danúbio, and a hundred metres further along I get out of the taxi in the fine rain, with the feeling that today saw the beginning of a friendship. Let’s hope it is enduring, full of long conversations in which we switch seamlessly between languages at the slightest hint of a misunderstanding. Which reminds me, conversely, of Ariosto, who always talked shit and was pig-headed: he had fixed ideas in just one language. It is true that in his Cassius Clay phase he took to speaking a little English, and even learned some American slang I’d never heard before. To encourage him, I gave him a Jack Kerouac as a gift, thinking he might like him. But Ariosto had no patience for reading and got fed up after the first few pages. He thought the guy’s English was crap. And he went about talking to himself in an English of his own invention, an intricate language composed entirely of misconstructions. More recently we couldn’t even communicate in Portuguese; his cryptic vocabulary disturbed me. I no longer went out drinking with Ariosto, for fear that at some point he would let slip his new codenames, or push me to join the cause of God-knows-what acronym. I confess that these days, when entering or leaving the house, I always double around the block to avoid passing in front of his place. And I’ve stopped responding to the two-part whistle he taught me when we were children, the one Zorro used to call Tornado. The same whistle that seems to come out of nowhere from time to time, in the classroom, in a cafe, in the cinema, and which at this very instant finds me on the edge of a kerb, where, with barely contained impulses, I am staring at the wheels of cars tearing past at eighty kilometres an hour. The lights are unchanging, the cars unceasing, and to kill time I browse the newspapers on a newsstand. On a very inky first page with more pictures than text, I read that a gu
errilla was killed in a confrontation with police in São Paulo, in the neighbourhood of Consolação. Then my eyes flit to a picture of last night’s football match, to someone being arrested during a cocaine bust, to a close-up of a rapist, and then, without meaning to, I return to the story about the guerrilla killed in a confrontation with police in São Paulo, yesterday at 12.30 p.m., in the neighbourhood of Consolação. I close my eyes, so as not to see his remains, but when I reopen them the picture I’m looking at is of a racing-car driver decapitated in a collision in Indianapolis, then without meaning to I return to the story about the guerrilla killed after a bloody shoot-out with police in São Paulo, yesterday at 12.30 p.m., on Rua Gravataí, in the neighbourhood of Consolação. The two-part whistle I’ve just heard has come from a traffic cop, and when I see the flow of pedestrians over the zebra crossing I sprint to the other side of the road. With my heart pounding, I take a deep breath and glance around, except now I can’t remember why I wanted to cross the street so badly. This side is like a mirror of the first, with the same pedestrians anxious to cross back over, the same tiny watering holes with their patrons’ backsides facing the street, along with an identikit newsstand, where I spot a grisly front page with news of a bloody shoot-out, yesterday at 12.30p.m., in the vicinity of a day-care centre and a boarding house, on Rua Gravataí, Consolação. But the name of the dead guerrilla isn’t Ariosto Fortunato, as I thought for a split second; rather, it is Akihiko Matsumoto, aka ‘The Japanese’.
My German Brother Page 8