His Own Man (28 page)

A long silence ensued. It was, in fact, quite a story for someone who had been brought up at the traditional Jacobina School and been a member of Rio de Janeiro’s elite country club set ever since childhood. Now there was a gaunt woman pushing sixty beside me, looking as if the scenes she’d just shared had taken their toll in years.

“Be that as it may, I decided to wait awhile. Besides giving up the coke, I cut down on booze and drank only socially. I started to do yoga. Marcílio, with this whole business of working in the commercial area, had also changed, no longer prone to the bouts of melancholy he suffered from in Montevideo. He kept dealing with the same old scumbags, of course, but they were better dressed, some liked opera, had table manners; in a few cases, they spoke other languages. So overall, our life wasn’t that bad.

“Marcílio had an entertaining side, which you knew well. He was funny, sophisticated, pleasant to be around. Socially, he treated everyone as equals, with an intimacy that fascinated people. In the meantime, there had been a change of ambassadors. The new boss was a good guy and had nothing whatsoever to do with Pinochet’s gang, the way the last one did. Anyway, things were finally improving — not for the country but for us, in our little world. And the next thing I knew, I was pregnant. Our sweet Maria Isabel was born a few months before we were transferred to Washington.”

We continued to walk slowly and steadily, as befits older people concerned with avoiding potholes and other perils in their path. Until Marina gathered the courage to ask, “Did you ever manage to find out anything … anything
more concrete
about him?”

I’d been bracing myself for the question for years. I knew it was bound to come sooner or later. Just as I knew that, when the moment arrived, I’d try to handle the subject with the precision of a surgeon opening Max’s belly in search of a tumor. I didn’t intend to mislead her about the patient’s condition, but I tried not to say anything to depress her further. I had to give her
something
, however. Especially since Marina knew that I hadn’t stopped seeking the key to the puzzle that, for better or worse, connected us. Although she had left the diplomatic scene following her divorce, I had remained.

“I’ve come to some conclusions,” I finally ventured. “Nothing that enables me to put together a full picture. At any rate, I prefer not to poison you with the details. Particularly because, for the time being, they’re incomplete.”

Given her disappointed look, I took her in my arms and said, “Marina, Max’s story is like a curse: it follows me. His secrets hound me, but in fragments. That’s how I feel: hounded by fragments of
his
past. It’s as if someone, from heaven or hell, won’t leave me in peace. Every six months, I get wind of something new about him, or a door opens onto some madness relating to him, or to the world he was caught up in.”

“It’s a devilish world, isn’t it?” she said.

I decided to get ahead of her. “I can tell you about something that happened last year, under the current government. A sad incident, more than anything.” I paused. I was offering her something personal. Personal and recent. In lieu of the unvarnished answers she was craving.

She said nothing, so I went ahead. “I was in Brazil when my youngest daughter graduated from the Rio Branco Institute.”

“I forgot to congratulate you!” she interjected happily. “A daughter in the foreign service … third generation … quite impressive.”

“It sure is. That was in April of 2003. The Workers’ Party had won the elections a few months earlier and was finally in power.” I hesitated briefly to decide the best way to revisit the moment. “Graduation month at Rio Branco varies slightly from year to year,” I continued, “but it always coincides with a date known in Brasilia as Diplomats’ Day, usually celebrated in April or May at the Itamaraty Palace. Once the formal part of the ceremony in the lower level’s auditorium was over, all of us — the president, officials, diplomats, graduates, and guests — headed to the second level.”

“Where Burle Marx’s hanging gardens are!”

“Exactly. We walked in a slow procession, taking the stairs up toward the large terrace where the reception preceding the president’s luncheon for the newly graduated diplomats and their families was to be held. At that gathering, small circles of people cluster in conversation and then wander, alone or in pairs, from one group to another.”

My lens had covered the middle ground. Time to zoom in. “And it was in one of these groups that I found myself face-to-face with Max.”

“Our big con artist,” Marina joked nervously.

“Our con artist,” I agreed, “who greeted me as warmly as ever and …”

“
And …?
” she pressed, seeing me stop as if faltering.

“… and took me by the arm with his usual familiarity, steering us to the long railing overlooking the esplanade, all the while congratulating me effusively on my daughter’s graduation. Not quite sure how to react, I just let him lead me along.”

“The vantage point that overlooks the Congress and Senate buildings,” Marina echoed. “And directly faces the Ministry of Justice. A fine setting for a conversation between the two of you.
Power
,
justice …
”

Things would progress more smoothly if Marina didn’t interrupt me. The frequency with which she did so, however, conveyed just how tense she was. As if she wanted to know — yet was afraid to hear — what I was about to reveal.

“Max professed to regret that we hadn’t seen each other in so long. I didn’t say anything. Then he cut to the chase. He wanted to know if I held a grudge for the two hours we’d spent together at a wedding reception in Alto da Boa Vista twenty years earlier. I thought it best to say no, so as not to rehash bygones with him, especially on that particular day. In order to placate him, I actually said that, on the contrary, I had good memories of the get-together.” I closed my eyes for a moment, then proceeded. “We stood in silence, watching the cars pass along the esplanade. He knew I was lying. And in his company I experienced the paralysis one feels in certain nightmares. I wanted to get back to my daughter’s side as quickly as possible. I was afraid that Max’s insistence on staying with me would ruin the beauty of the day and what it meant to my family.”

Marina nodded.

“It was that feeling of powerlessness,” I continued after a moment, “that led me to have a change of heart. I took a sharp turn in our conversation, even running the risk of being impertinent. I told your ex-husband what I really thought of him. And I told him just how much it bothered me that, despite his
political maneuvering, or because of it, he’d ended up having such a successful career.”

“Marcílio must have been less than amused.”

“As usual, he refused to be strong-armed and stood his ground. Then I ended up saying that under normal circumstances, if we lived in a serious country, he would have been exiled. Or forced into retirement. The way Carlos Câmara was —”

“Oh, boy,” Marina interrupted. “You really —”

I cut her off. The last thing I wanted now was to get off track.

“As I continued, Max bristled with each line. My harangue was much longer than I’m recounting to you here. Definitely harsher and more detailed. His spine stiffened completely when I brought up Carlos Câmara. Max seemed to be made of stone. Leaning on the railing, I held firm, maintaining the tone of one keen to wrap up the subject. I said that, for me, he had been at least partly responsible for what had happened in the countries he’d been in back then with his poker buddies, whom I got around to calling ‘pathetic allies.’ He and other colleagues, whose names remained unknown until recently. Then I went back to criticizing the fact that Câmara had been the only one to shoulder the blame and be repudiated by the ministry — by the whole institution of the ministry — and by his colleagues as Judas. Because that was all too easy. A known crook was made a scapegoat and the rest of the herd moved along in peace. It was easy and, above all, practical. Not to mention convenient. And you know what his reaction to these affronts was?”

“No,” she answered in a neutral tone, “but I can well imagine.”

“No, Marina, that’s just it.
You can’t imagine
. That’s why Max continues to be the great con artist he is, the greatest of them all: he’s always pulling another rabbit out of his hat.”

She kept quiet, waiting.

“With the self-confidence he exudes like few others, he told me, ‘Carlos Câmara went to the well once too often.’

“And, like an idiot, I fell into his trap. Fortified by carefully crafted words, I laughed and said, ‘Forgive me, Max, and I’m actually sorry to have to tell you this, considering our old friendship and the good times we had together — some of the best of my younger days — but I’ve never seen anyone go to the well as often as you.’ I looked at him smugly. ‘So come off it!’ ”

Marina closed her eyes. She’d witnessed such scenes countless times. She just hadn’t imagined that in this instance I would be the victim.

“At that point, Max baited me with a common line. ‘Carlos was thirsty for power,’ he said matter-of-factly.”

Not a peep from Marina. The stage was all mine.

“ ‘You don’t say,’ I scoffed, savoring my victory. ‘And how about you, Max? What were you thirsty for?’ ”

Marina was now staring at the ground. She kept her arms crossed, as if the wind were picking up around her.

“ ‘The same, of course,’ he replied, smiling even more broadly. ‘Only poor Carlos … poor Carlos went to the wrong well.’ ”

“Ever the magician.” Marina sighed. “Unrivaled, as always.”

“I was so stunned that I automatically repeated his line. Even worse, Marina, I managed to turn my echo into a question, which ended up dousing the indignation I was feeling: ‘Carlos went to the
wrong well
?
’
 ”

I had the impression that Marina wasn’t even listening to me. Like someone who looks away from heavy or upsetting images on a movie screen or the nightly news.

“After giving me a good-natured glance, Max repeated, ‘That’s right, he drank from the wrong well.’ And he concluded, ‘He only saw what was directly in front of him. Whereas …’ ”

I finished describing the scene to Marina. Turning his back on the ministry esplanade, Max had slowly rotated, a motion I had to follow, given how close to him I was standing. And he’d
gestured broadly with his arm from right to left through the space in front of us. His fingers glided past Burle Marx’s suspended gardens, descended to the people on the marble terrace —lost in their hopes and longings — and, without lingering, moved over the circle formed by the president and his entourage, all lively and elated. With the elegance of an orchestra conductor, his hand then swept past various groups of men in tailored suits, hovered over well-coiffed made-up women, reaching the new graduates and their relatives, until finally landing on the works of art, which ranged from Aleijadinho to Portinari, from colonial furniture to Persian rugs. Once his panorama was complete, he leaned toward me and whispered, “… Whereas
this
is what I pursued.”

There you have it
, he seemed to be saying as he saluted me with a slight bow of the head, instantly transporting us both back to the age when aristocrats and diplomats had mingled in the sumptuous palaces of the past, all dressed up in lace-trimmed outfits, hiding their fists behind smiles and music — the same fists that, in our time, would have to answer for the violence that had engulfed us for twenty years.

Unlike his peers, he had been among the privileged few to live in the present without, at any moment, losing sight of his future. Whereas we … we had remained suspended in time, tied to the past, facing realities that had nothing to do with our values. How could we envision the future if the present reflected fear, torture, and resentment?

“My poor friend,” Marina said at last, hugging me, as if wanting to give closure to the pitiful sequence I’d just described. Soon enough, though, she raised her voice and protested, “In the meantime, you did a complete about-face and responded just as any diplomat up against a wall would: you simply avoided my question. I asked —”

“I know,” I replied somewhat flustered. “You asked if I’d found out anything more concrete about Max. You still want an answer?”

Marina decided not to press. If she wanted to reopen old wounds, she no longer had a way of doing so that morning. We got up from the bench where we had sat for a moment.

“Did you read his speech?” She’d changed the subject while staying on topic. Given my silence, she specified. “Have you read it? The most recent speech?”

“On disarmament?” I asked in a distant tone.

“No.” And she paused awhile. “On human rights,” she said finally.

“In Geneva?” I inquired, my interest piqued. “No, I haven’t read it. Why?”

“The kids showed me the transcript, all excited. The two of them are so proud of their dad.… You have to see how he lambastes the military regimes of the past and the atrocities committed” — here she made air quotes with her fingers — “
in those terrible times
.”

“You don’t say,” I answered, warming up to what Marina was implying. Much as I tried to deny it, Max continued to fascinate me. For the quality and variety of his flaws, whether these were rooted in pure cynicism, as was the case here, or stemmed from more subterranean sources. “Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

Marina agreed.

“Good thing the generals and the cardinal, to whom he owes everything, have already met their maker,” I added in a cheerier tone.

“They were the ones who commanded and countermanded the country,” Marina recalled in a voice that almost sounded admiring. “Not to mention the corrosive effect of the greed they awakened around them.”

“I read a line about Eichmann in the
Economist
the other day that applies to almost all of them: ‘Like most of his fellow Nazis, he was monstrous only when fate gave him power.’ ” Marina still had Max on her mind. As for me, I proceeded in my futile and solitary effort to settle my score with the past. “And to think that the only one of the five president-generals who could have aspired to be a statesman would be the same to declare that ‘torture was necessary.’ ”