His Own Man (10 page)

That crystal sphere and the accompanying fear I had felt at the time were hardly subjects I wanted to talk about during a reception. But it was inevitable that they would come up in a conversation that, sooner or later, we had to have. So let it be now, I thought.

I remained quiet at first. Max’s utter stillness intrigued me. Unlike mine, his was the silence of
one who waits
. It reminded me of an animal between the attack and the retreat. What he was waiting for, neither he nor I knew exactly. Our conversation evoked a similar one that had taken place twelve or thirteen years earlier in Santa Teresa, when I had said little — and he had done more probing than talking. Only now the roles were reversed. Except that probing wasn’t part of my plans.

“You had a theory about fear, remember?” I asked when he finally lit his cigar. “You spoke of constancy, of instruments of a system that would last beyond our generation. You spoke of intimidation as though reciting a recipe or the steps of a weight-loss program. But for me …” I paused. I knew that he was eyeing me from his corner, yet the feeling was far from unsettling, as I found myself retrieving something that I hadn’t been able to articulate during that long-ago discussion.

“But for me,” I repeated, “
fear had a shape
, which at times seemed so dense as to be almost tangible. Like a thick fog, the kind that leaves us feeling clammy and makes our clothes cling to our bodies.”

A waiter approached with a tray of liqueurs. We both chose cognac.

I continued. “It wasn’t a fear that we in Brasilia could associate with violence, insubordination, or arbitrariness, because none of us had ever seen anyone jailed or tortured. Horror lived next door.”

“That’s a good line, excellent,” he cut in with a laugh. “It’d make a great movie title.”

After a puff of his cigar and a brief moment of reflection, he added, “It’s better in the present, though.
Horror lives next door
. Don’t you agree? It has more of an edge to it.
Horror lives next door
. The story is still to come.…”

“Lived next door,” I repeated deafly, as if his comments were mere background noise. “It lived in the police stations in Rio, in the cellars of military barracks in São Paulo and the rest of the country. Just as, years later, it would live in the lost villages of the interior, the backlands of Bahia, and dozens of places we’d never heard of, which were always far removed from Brasilia.”

Max kept smoking, but his eyes avoided mine. It didn’t matter much to me, that starry night, what direction his thoughts might have taken. Today I could speculate about a few likely possibilities. A stop at the Sorocabana Café in Montevideo, to make initial contact with a British agent named Raymond Thurston? Or a round of poker with the military attachés, from whom he extracted information for his own use (and at times neglected to pass on to his superiors)? An additional visit to the feared National Stadium of Santiago, where he had witnessed scenes that still haunted him? Or could he be thinking about the informers he had planted at the request of the SNI among the community of Brazilian exiles in Uruguay?

“That’s what gave Brasilia its surreal quality,” I went on in the same tone. “The fact that decisions were handed down from the silence of the highlands. And that their outcomes, in the form of rumors, whispered hearsay, or guarded conversations, got
back there, giving rise to further, identical operations. But the screams, the despair, and the horror
never reached us
, the first wave of young diplomats transferred to Brasilia. We had been living cloistered in one of the nation’s architectural masterpieces, amid reflecting pools and baroque Brazilian artwork, and felt utterly lost in a city that looked more like a stage set for a play featuring cold and sterile beauty along with tension, silence, and —”

Fortunately, Max interrupted my rambling monologue. But in a casual tone, not at all unpleasant or aggressive. “You know I missed that first phase of the move to Brasilia. I was transferred to Montevideo months earlier. I didn’t live in Brasilia until 1981. They say the city had improved a lot compared to the initial period you’re referring to.”

With that, he had concentrated on the objective part of what I’d said and remained on the outskirts of the real conversation. So what would be the point of pressing? I asked myself. Deep down, maybe he was even right. What were my motives in bringing up the twelve- and thirteen-year-old shadows of Brasilia on a peaceful Rio night in 1983? Me of all people, a bureaucrat who, as Max was aware, had never experienced real danger — nor taken a stance that would warrant retaliation by those in power?

I knew full well that I’d been no hero. I hadn’t criticized my superiors out loud, I hadn’t resigned, following the example of two colleagues who quit as discreetly and anonymously as possible, I hadn’t taken up arms. On the contrary, I’d become part of an orchestra — in which Max was the soloist. But he would hardly have stood out if all of us weren’t, to some measure, playing around him. And if I had pounded a few bar tables in the way of protest, I’d done so in the company of friends whose indignation matched mine, in keeping with the number of beers consumed. Heroism had thus eluded me by a long shot. I just wasn’t convinced that I hadn’t cowered in certain circumstances. Not that this represented a serious character flaw. It was,
rather, something bordering on unease, a kind of incorrectness. I could, for instance, have ceased to shake hands with people I knew to be involved in criminal activity. During my year and a half in Central America, I hadn’t hesitated to dutifully socialize with known tyrants of the region, to whom I was introduced at dinners and receptions. I had even played Ping-Pong with one of them at the dismal end of a party. (“If you beat me, I’ll kill you,” he had joked, revealing the gun tucked into his waistband while gnashing his teeth.) More than once — and this sometimes kept me awake at night — I could have disagreed with a superior on a matter of principle instead of keeping my mouth shut. Or even worse, agreeing — with a smile that would have me brushing my teeth back at home until my gums bled. But my irritation with myself was limited to the bloody stream of spittle, which quickly went down the drain.

Since I said nothing just then, facing the unequal struggle I’d had for years with my own ghosts, Max correctly inferred that he could go in for the kill. He propped an elbow on the table and rested his cheek against his palm, shrinking the distance between us. Moving aside the centerpiece while holding my gaze, he prepared his attack.

“Enough of this dull chitchat about Brasilia in the early days. It’s tiresome. Let’s talk about something more interesting — about this new Brazil that’s being heralded, willing to reexamine the injustices of the past. Take Itamaraty, for instance: what specific cases do you know of injustice committed in our realm? Aside from the people expelled from public service by the commission convened by the military?”

“Of whom there were many,” I interjected. “Forty-four civil servants.”

His voice, amiable until now, hardened. “Of whom
only thirteen were diplomats
. And I’ll tell you more: compared to the other public sectors, that wasn’t many. In most cases, the oustings and forced retirements were more than deserved.”

“How can we know that? If the accused didn’t even have the right to defend themselves?”

He relit his cigar, then tried to pursue the tenuous thread he thought he’d picked up on in our conversation. “Maybe so. But one thing is certain: for better or worse, we implemented a foreign policy that sparked general interest — and has inspired respect for its independence.”

“A foreign policy that presented an interesting paradox,” I remarked in the same steady tone. “Considering the regime it came from.” I hesitated a moment, annoyed with myself more than with Max. I didn’t want him to be the one to praise the small group of visionaries who, at considerable personal risk, had safeguarded the ministry’s ideals and upheld our dignity abroad. But this remained a moot point because Max took it upon himself to redirect the conversation.

“Countries thrive on such paradoxes. Mutatis mutandis, the same thing happens in the United States. Consider recent examples: Nixon, a Republican, established relations with China, the same way Reagan is the one who negotiates best with the Soviets today. The Democratic Party, with whom we share affinities of another sort, only holds us back. They’re essentially protectionists.”

“Besides their inconvenient obsession with the issue of human rights — so aggravating!”

“You can kid all you want.” He laughed. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about your more personal grievances. From that difficult time. At the ministry.”

“My
grievances
, Max?”

“The ones you didn’t share with me. All you did was grumble. At most. I always asked myself why. Considering our longstanding friendship …”

The sweet-sounding cicadas that had greeted us earlier were in for a treat.

“What did you feel was unfair? Or absurd?”

“
Everything
was absurd, Max. Starting with the stifling conditions we were living under. And still are.”

“Okay. Tell me about the dictatorship, then.”

“Max, what interests me, what ought to interest you, is something else altogether. It includes the ministry but goes beyond.
Well
beyond …”

“I’m all ears.”

“Okay. Compared to the acts of violence that took place throughout the country, the cases that occurred among us obviously don’t seem so grave. There was no physical aggression, no bloodshed, torture, or rape to speak of, no cases of young children seeing their parents in chains, or
parents watching their children being tortured
. There was nothing comparable to the electric shocks applied to nuns’ vaginas or adolescents’ rectums.”

“Exactly.”

“
Exactly?!
”

“I’m reacting to
your
words, my friend. I’m trying to figure out what
you’re
getting at, not evaluating the intensity of a shock to someone’s anus. I’m the first to regret that things like that happened.
If
they happened.”

“What I’m getting at is this: the bloodshed and violence aren’t enough to evaluate what happened in our midst. At the ministry, to begin with, there were individuals who remained indifferent or cynical. Some threw their career out the window,
reducing a worthy profession to a mere job. That kind of atmosphere, transposed to poorer or more radical social contexts, could have led hundreds of people all over the country to despair, possibly even to suicide.”

“Or worse, to armed conflict.”

“How is that
worse
?”

“From the point of view of the military, of course.”

“Of course.”

“
And
 …
?
”

“Max, how many people were baited, pressured, corrupted by the regime? People who under normal circumstances would never have gone off track, abandoned their values, whether ethical, moral, or religious? And who, later on, when confronted by relatives and friends regarding the consequences of their actions, were driven to depression or despair, if not more extreme measures, without ever being tallied among the horrors? Without even becoming so much as a footnote in the annals of the dictatorship?”

“You know what I think about all this?” he asked wearily.

“No, Max. What do you think about this? I’d love to know.”

He took a deep breath and said, “When the history of this period is written, impartially, without being manipulated by one side or the other, it will become clear that these weren’t acts planned by the military or political leaders, much less by bankers or businessmen, as rumor would have it.
They were works orchestrated in absolute secrecy
. As if the CIA had commissioned Merce Cunningham, who was at the peak of his career in the sixties and seventies, to choreograph the series of coups to happen in rapid succession, so that the entire region would fall like a house of cards.”

I couldn’t resist the temptation to add my two cents, albeit with a heavy heart: “In unison with the ballet dancers who collapsed onstage as soon as the lights faded, the curtains closed, and the middle class applauded.”

Without acknowledging the irony, Max digested my remark and went on. “Maybe so,” he said. “The difference is that there was no audience. Because the theater remained empty. Outside, the people were being roughed up as usual. Until, twenty years later, long after the spells cast by the Cuban threat and Allende’s rise to power, the theater would gradually fill up again. In a matter of months, the curtains would open to full halls. And the house of cards would go up again before everyone’s eyes, to the applause that would then celebrate the restoration of democracy.”

The student had clearly surpassed his master, as the ambassador in Montevideo faded into the shadows of the past. I listened in silence to Max’s conclusion: “Except that the people would remain abandoned in the streets. They were no longer beaten or tortured. But their conquests would amount to little more than that. Should you ever quote me on this, however, I’ll not only deny everything but say that I always sensed there was something off-kilter about you.”

I clapped my hands together six or seven times, in the slow, cadenced kind of applause that produces silences as expressive as the sounds. Applause that echoed mournfully in the middle of the night. It was moments like this that enabled me to see just how well Max understood his own tragedy — and the hell he had gotten himself into. Or so I thought.

“You know what’s even worse?” he asked, aware that he’d caught my attention. “That in twenty or thirty years, no one in Brazil will talk about this anymore. By the early twenty-first century, not even historians will be interested.
No one will broach the issue except in passing
. Bookstores will shelve works on the subject in the history section.
In alphabetical order
. Depending on the author’s name, an account of torture in Brazil in the 1970s might be located between a volume about gold mining in the colonial period and one on African influences in Brazilian folklore. If it’s there at all.”