Free City Read online

  On Sunday, in the confessional of the São João Bosco Church, I omitted, in a whispered voice to Father Roque, the most sinful details: “I saw Aunt Matilde . . . ” I was going to say “naked,” but the priest found my hesitation sufficient enough for me to pray a few Ave Marias, through which God forgave my various sins, that of sight, of touch, of taste, and, most of all, the sin of the imagination.

  One day Aunt Matilde came into the bathroom while I was finishing up my bath, You like to look at other people, don’t you?, let me see if it’s true what they say, that really is a big cock for your age, you’re going to be happy, João. I know I’d be eliminating some suspense if I were to say that I think that this was the reason that, years later, when both she and I were on the run from the police, I had the courage to remind Aunt Matilde about that episode and invite her to experience some of my happiness, but it’s still too early in the story for me to go on about her reaction or defend myself, which I’ll leave for another chapter.

  Second Night: With Body and Soul

  On the second night, when I sought out Dad to complete my story about the Free City, he reminded me, between four dingy white walls, that a few days before the inauguration of Brasília—and therefore a few days before the supposed murder of Valdivino—he had gathered all that he’d written since we arrived in 1956, including statements he had collected from famous people about the city under construction, and wrote an article, his first, with which he intended to commemorate the occasion.

  He figured that, with Brasília, his moment of glory had arrived, especially because, since April of the previous year, and after many frustrated attempts, he had finally managed to get some recognition from the president’s entourage for his idea to accompany illustrious visitors, receiving authorization to do it on two occasions, during the visits of the Cuban Prime Minister, Fidel Castro Ruz, and the French writer and Minister of Culture André Malraux. He prepared the article—which, years later, I found on yellowed paper among the documents I’d unearthed—and sent it to a newspaper in Rio, as well as The Tribune, a newsweekly that had been founded in the Free City in 1958.

  Dad hadn’t been able to get a single phrase out of the conversation between JK and Fidel Castro in the library of the Palace of the Dawn on April 13, 1959, and the basis of his article ended up being JK’s account of it, which he had heard from a third party and meticulously transcribed in one of the “Onward” notebooks that I leafed through. And right he was, said Aunt Matilde assertively, in regard to Fidel, upon reading that JK hadn’t been able to discuss Operation Pan America with him, because Castro, in JK’s own words, “doesn’t understand dialogue,” “he’s a man of monologues,” and had spoken for two hours straight without stopping, and when the Brazilian president tried to interrupt him for lunch at one in the afternoon or attempted to get up out of his chair, Fidel grabbed him by the arm and spoke with even greater vehemence, which made it so that they didn’t finish lunch until three hours later. The president should have taken advantage of the opportunity to learn at least the basics of communism and the Cuban Revolution, said Aunt Matilde provokingly, to which Dad objected, But I heard on the radio that, a week after Fidel left here, he went to the United States and cleared up the misunderstanding, telling Vice President Nixon: “I know that the world thinks we’re communists, and I have stated clearly—very clearly—that we are not communists”—Dad changed his tone of voice to emphasize the words “we are not” and “very clearly,” But that’s all ancient history now, retorted Aunt Matilde.

  I think that it was around this time that Aunt Matilde started to take a liking to the idea of revolution, due to Roberto’s influence, and to the news about the Peasant Leagues in the Northeast, and although back in those days I didn’t understand her points of view, they would one day solidify my ever-closer relationship with her. Aunt Francisca sought to change Aunt Matilde’s mind on the subject, They want to destroy everything, to take from some people and give it to others, And you, who are so religious, should be in agreement, since that’s what religion teaches, Not through destruction or violence, not by taking things from people by force, I’d like to see a revolution, I said, to which Dad retorted, Don’t talk nonsense, João, that’s just one of your aunt’s crazy ideas, the law should be respected, no one is going to take what’s mine from me, that’s why we have a right to private property, But you’re not a landowner, you have nothing to worry about, Aunt Matilde asserted, In a revolution not even Roberto would be spared, he’d be guillotined, the way they did in France, Aunt Francisca predicted, This is a different era, said Aunt Matilde, Ok, he’d be shot, amended Aunt Francisca, This is all just lip service, just theories, she can’t really be serious about it, she’s just doing it to tease us, she has a comfortable life and would never want to lose all her comforts, said Dad, provocatively, Roberto’s family owns land, so this position is just for show, he wouldn’t want to lose his inheritance, he just wants to amuse himself and us with his ideas, added Aunt Francisca.

  When he talked about revolution, Roberto disagreed with Aunt Matilde, for him the economy wasn’t crashing and the State wasn’t completely bankrupt, we weren’t living through the final crisis of capitalism, nor was the corruption as bad as all that, he had sympathy for the government, You can’t go believing in every rumor that gets floated around here, Matilde, tell me, who are the corrupt ones, specifically? We’re in a leaking canoe, Roberto, insisted Aunt Matilde.

  It’s certain that, sooner or later, we’re going to have a revolution here as well, concluded Aunt Matilde. It would be a disaster, asserted Aunt Francisca. Capital would disappear entirely, industry would come to an end, then the economy would really go to hell, what’s the point of spreading poverty?, argued Dad, for whom what really mattered were his own accounts: if he was making money, then the economy and the country were doing well. That might be true at the beginning, but progress would follow, as happened in the Soviet Union, responded Aunt Matilde. Communism would never prosper in Brazil, our temperament isn’t suited for it, countered Aunt Francisca. At the time I felt closer to Aunt Francisca than to Aunt Matilde and I thought that Aunt Francisca, not Aunt Matilde, was right about this, the exact opposite of what took place years later when, as an adult, I ran into Aunt Matilde in circumstances that the child could not yet have imagined.

  Dad’s article, which didn’t reflect all the richness of that discussion, reproduced the phrase that Fidel, according to what JK recounted, had spoken with some emotion in the helicopter on the way to the airport, upon seeing the city under construction from above: “It’s a very happy thing to be young in this country, President.” As for the speeches delivered by André Malraux, on August 25 of the same year, 1959, Dad was able to transcribe them almost in their entirety, citing from them that Brasília was “the most audacious city ever conceived by the West” and “the first capital of the new civilization.” In the same article, Dad insinuated that he had accompanied Georges Mathieu on the visit this French painter made to Brasília on November 17, 1959, when he referred to the construction of Brasília as “the birth of a miracle” and “one of the greatest epics in the history of mankind, maybe the greatest . . . If Valéry had seen Brasília, perhaps he would have doubted the mortality of civilizations. After seven centuries, during the course of which the search for evidence hid the truth from us, the West has rediscovered the path of its true calling, by way of Brasília. The world has never had so many reasons to be hopeful as it has today with you, Brazilians!” Lastly, Dad closed his article by quoting the words that art critic José Guidol had delivered in September of 1959: “Brasília isn’t merely the greatest endeavor undertaken in our world, it’s a laudable attempt to find the path to the international freedom of the human race.” That was the larger objective, Dad would repeat to Aunt Matilde, whenever she provoked him with her criticism: the international freedom of the human race. Oh I believe it!, she’d reply ironically.

  The article didn’t make much of a splash, but it explains wh
y Dad managed to get invited as a journalist to the inauguration of Brasília’s first major newspaper, as well as the party that was going to be held at the Planalto Palace on the night of April 21.

  A day before the inauguration, on the morning that I woke up dreaming of Aunt Matilde’s breasts, Dad made me read his article and told me, João, one day you’ll understand, you have to attend the celebration of the inauguration of Brasília, history is being made here. And then he gave me a present, a white linen shirt and a watch, my first watch—a Swiss Bulova with a second-hand—so that I could remember the exact time at which each ceremony took place. This is never going to happen again, pay attention to everything that’s going to take place over the next two days, you’ll understand it someday, this present is better than a bicycle—with this I immediately imagined myself showing it off to the girl with braids on one of the streets in Oldcap.

  On other occasions Dad had suggested that I remember the dates that he considered milestones in the construction of the city, or else he’d say to me, João, remember this story, and then he’d narrate some facts that had come to his attention, like when Sayão told him that the United States had asked Newcap for an exception to be made so that their parcel of land, lot number 1, could be bigger than the others, and that, to avoid any resentment, it was decided that not only would all the lots be the same size, but also that lot 1 would go to the Holy See, since Brazil is a Catholic country, lot 2 would be allotted to Portugal, which discovered and colonized Brazil, and lot 3 would go to the United States, the first country to officially recognize Brazil as an independent country.

  This time, Dad wanted me to make note of the time of the parade of events over the course of the day. Can I take Typhoon? No, there was going to be a large crowd, and Typhoon would get lost, it was best to leave him at home, where we’d leave out food and water for him, I shouldn’t worry, he wouldn’t run away.

  My memory may be imperfect, but on that day, April 20, I can recall Valdivino down to the smallest details, down to his gentle voice and his delicate, courteous manner of being. At five in the afternoon I went with him, Dad, Aunt Matilde, and Roberto to attend the ceremony in which the president of Newcap, Israel Pinheiro, would hand over the keys to the city to President JK. Valdivino was restless, awaiting the arrival of the love of his life, surrounding whom he always created an air of mystery and about whom he wouldn’t stop talking, a woman who was more important than the Pope, and the only person able to consecrate the birth of this new civilization. If his girlfriend didn’t come it would be a disaster, for the future of the city depended on her. I figured that Aunt Francisca had stayed at home so she wouldn’t have to meet that woman, since at the time I suspected that Aunt Francisca had fallen in love with Valdivino.

  While we waited for the president to arrive, we remained in the Three Powers Plaza, amid hundreds of migrant workers, listening to Valdivino’s stories, which entertained us with their details about the construction of the Palace of the Dawn, in which he’d had a hand, after the church beside it was completed. Talkative and happy as always, in spite of his weary eyes and almost sickly skinny figure, he recounted, in his gentle voice, The president’s bathroom in the Palace is black and the First Lady’s is pink, Mr. Moacyr, one of the laborers slipped and fell and broke the pink toilet he was carrying, and the president and Dona Sarah were set to arrive two days later and it was absolute chaos, then the new toilet came in from Goiânia by plane, fastened into a seat with a seatbelt, as if it had bought a ticket.

  We all laughed, except for Aunt Matilde, who had little patience for Valdivino’s stories. More people arrived. The authorities took their seats. The president must be arriving soon, said Roberto, who was holding hands with Aunt Matilde. The president is a courageous man, Mr. Roberto, as you know, one night, the pilot of his plane said that they wouldn’t be able to land in Brasília on account of bad weather, recounted Valdivino, the radar at the airport was even on the fritz, but the president had never been afraid of flying and told the pilot to circle around until they could land—that’s what they told me, anyway—and later the Willys jeep that he was riding in got stuck in the mud, and you know how the president is, Mr. Roberto, he’s a simple man, so wouldn’t you know it? he popped his hat on his head, put on a rain slicker and galoshes, and got out to push the jeep. His driver is the one who told me. And one time he suddenly arrived during a rainstorm, noticed me hammering away, wearing my plastic poncho like everyone else, then caught my eye and asked me, How late are you working tonight? I’m working through the whole night, President, it’ll be twenty-four hours straight, and it was true, it had been like that for a month, I worked twenty-four hours then rested twenty-four hours, and it would be that way until the Palace was inaugurated.

  The afternoon drew on perfectly, and what remained of it would be no less perfect. The autumn rays no longer burned our heads, and our shadows began to stretch along the ground. There were still a couple of hours before the sun would disappear behind the National Congress building and the Ministry buildings, The worst thing about being isolated out there is that I never see the president anymore, Valdivino continued, but in return, Mr. Moacyr, I’m no longer paying off my debt, see if I’m not in the right here, Sir, after I stopped working construction on the Palace of the Dawn, I put together my savings and caught a twenty-eight passenger DC-3 plane on Real Airlines to Fortaleza—with stops in Bom Jesus da Lapa, Petrolina, and Crato— where my brother, who’d gone there from Bahia, was hiding from the rest of our family—this brother, who died, as you know, Sir, was the only one who accepted me, the whole rest of the family is on the outs with me—ok, well, I came back here to Brasília with my brother on a 16-day trip, because I didn’t have money for an airplane ticket and we weren’t able to hitch a ride on any of the NIIC trucks—he was referring to the acronym of the National Institute of Immigration and Colonization. A businessman had organized a caravan made up of two Fenemê trucks, Valdivino continued, and a wealthy landowner financed tickets for me and my brother. I had to sign promissory notes valued at twenty thousand cruzeiros, sixteen for the tickets and another four because the arrangement came with a guarantee of employment. Right in the middle of the trip, we discovered that, for anyone who wanted to be sold, prices went from five-hundred to two thousand cruzeiros, depending on the physical state of the individual. The truck driver then handed over the documents of the sale to the buyer: birth certificate, identity card, worker’s permit . . . That’s absurd, said Aunt Matilde, do you know about this, Roberto? Those who were buying didn’t even pay a salary, Dona Matilde, since the ticket had already been paid for, the workers had to work to pay off the debt first, but of course, that wasn’t the case with me, nor my brother, nor many of the people who came here in the trucks. An employment agent received us when we arrived at the Free City. He was supposed to know the necessities of the construction firms and arrange job placements for us, but the only thing he cared about was collecting money from those who owed it—which wasn’t the case with us either. So the truck dropped us off in front of the NIIC, and the rest of the story you already know, Mr. Moacyr, since that was when we met up and I was working as a waiter at the Brasília Palace, so I’ll ask you, Sir, do you think, given all that, that I still had the obligation to pay that debt, Mr. Moacyr? Those people don’t mess around, Valdivino, it could be dangerous . . . Dad was familiar with those abuses. They made business arrangements to finance the tickets of the migrants coming to the Free City, then employment agents sought them out wherever they were, even in the remotest corners of the backlands, and they, fleeing the drought-stricken region, allowed themselves to be seduced by the promise of work in Brasília, submitting to whatever the conditions might have been. It was a lucrative business, which Dad even considered at one point, but gave up on that notion in favor of more lucrative ones.

  Of all the dangers I face, this is the least of them, Mr. Moacyr, the landowner can search high and low, but he’ll never see me around in the commune, and in m
y case he can’t harass my family, the way he does with other people, because I didn’t leave any family behind, clarified Valdivino, and then quickly got back to his story, I don’t know why he did it, but when we got to NIIC, my brother asked: Do you need a carpenter? They said they did, and my brother had never worked as a carpenter, but he was a handy guy. Would you like to take the test? And my brother: Sure. He grabbed a crooked piece of cedar and made it nice and straight. Do you have a worker’s permit yet?, they asked. No? Well, find a place to live and then come back here.

  When the president took his place on stage at five-thirty in the afternoon with the first lady, Dona Sarah, his two daughters, Márcia and Maria Estela, the vice-president, João Goulart, and the president of Newcap, Israel Pinheiro, all I could think of were the scenes from the night before and was unable to look at Aunt Matilde, or her boyfriend. She seemed more elegant than ever to me in her white spaghetti-strap dress with black polka dots, full below the waist, descending halfway down her shin, her high-heeled sandals also white, with a braided front, which made her taller than Roberto, a black and white purse in her hands, with a gold snap and a thin black strap.