His Own Man (6 page)

The more she anxiously turned to her husband, childishly exposing herself by calling him persistently and giving him gifts of records he hardly listened to or books he barely read, the more Max seemed to retreat. The game had intrigued her at first but soon became frustrating, leading her to have recurring nightmares of quicksand and free falls in space.

Life hadn’t prepared her for major challenges, and surely hadn’t endowed her with defenses against situations of this kind. She couldn’t identify its origins or the reasons for her malaise. She had even fought with her older sister, who had simply tried to put the problem in perspective by saying, “Maybe he just doesn’t like women … these things happen all the time among diplomats.”

Marina didn’t know how to deal with a man who, after showing initial interest — and desire — in a thousand ways, gradually distanced himself from her, albeit almost imperceptibly. She didn’t know what to make of a husband who had shown so little passion on their wedding night, before falling immediately into a heavy sleep beside her, leaving her alone as if suspended in the dark.

That night, while the wedding guests slept peacefully, dreaming of overflowing seafood platters, a troubling seed had embedded itself in a forgotten corner of her being — the same one that, years later, would lead her to seek comfort in the arms of other men out of loneliness and spite.

Max, for his part, was deluded into believing that being with Marina made him immune to all types of threats and dangers. He thought that, with her at his side, no one would be able to touch him. In one respect, he was right, as she would remain his companion on a socially irreproachable path that enhanced his career during the twelve years they lived together. But if Max led a double life at work, in the private realm of his relationship with Marina he ended up committing far more painful kinds of duplicity, leaving in their wake countless wounds and scars.

He would be surprised, even angry, should someone reveal that, in spite of his formidable defense mechanisms, he loved his wife. To preclude the anxiety and fear of such a discovery, he had chosen to keep his feelings in check. Thus his tendency to respond almost indifferently to the affection directed at him. And to position himself as his wife’s tutor rather than her partner. After all, he thought, she was young and had much to learn. Such prosaic truths give rise to misunderstandings. And disappointments.

Of the saga I’ve taken up, I know only what was told to me piecemeal and diluted over time. But my impression of the couple’s failed relationship is clear: unlike his secret world, which he managed for better or worse, Max would pay a much higher price with the failure of his marriage.

Far beyond remaining the rich wife who brought him the social and financial support he deemed necessary, Marina ultimately became a painful counterpoint to his life — deep-rooted in abandonment. Would he ever have suspected that he used his wife like a mirror, to hide evils of another nature?

One thing is apparent, however: this state of affairs might have contributed to his withdrawal from himself — and from all of us. Socially adrift since childhood, simultaneously dazzled and intimidated at work by circles beyond his reach, Max would respond poorly when confronted with his wife’s increasing vulnerability. He had to believe that Marina was strong: he needed her. The way a warrior needs his shield.

Less than a year had gone by between the Rio–São Paulo train ride and the wedding reception at the Santa Teresa mansion where the Magalhães de Castros lived — a party I attended along with a significant portion of carioca society and most of Itamaraty.

Dressed in an understated silk gown and adorned with flowers, Marina had come down somewhat belatedly to the mansion’s ground floor. In the garden, where she was met with cheers from the guests as a flight of white doves was released, Max greeted her reverently with a chaste kiss on the forehead. A first sign of what would lie ahead.

The twelve years of Max and Marina’s marriage would largely coincide with the worst phase of the dictatorship in our country. And during the tense political situation that marked the end of this period (“slow and gradual easing up,” as the authorities liked to remind everyone), their personal ties would finally unravel.

It is hard to fathom how Max’s two worlds — his professional and private lives — coexisted. I don’t think they ever really came into contact. But Max had to remain constantly on the alert.

Although his in-laws’ clan was traditionally conservative, they never backed the military, from whom they distanced themselves to the greatest extent possible. And if their social class had benefited from the repression imposed on the country, particularly in regard to control of unions and the undermining of workers’ expectations, it’s also true that not all who belonged to this segment of our society stood by, or cooperated with, the regime. There were those who sought to remain discreetly neutral. A dignified stance, compared to the position of those who openly approved of the dictatorship — or financed it.

The Magalhães de Castros’ fortune, moreover, was solid enough that family members weren’t afraid of retaliations and could therefore act independently. For a few years, Marina’s father continued to fund plays and films produced by progressive intellectuals and refused to stop advertising in leftist newspapers that had initially managed to survive thanks to attitudes like his.
The
Correio da Manhã
, to cite just one example (and there were many political and literary magazines among them), wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did were it not for the clan’s support.

Their Santa Teresa mansion served as an oasis in Rio de Janeiro for many years. Despite the atmosphere in the city and the country, people could speak their minds freely within its walls. Every time we entered the gateway to the property’s sprawling grounds and drove past the pool from which friends and acquaintances would wave, drinks in hand, we felt we were entering paradise.

It was in this same privileged environment, at one of the Sunday luncheons Marina’s parents would periodically organize in order to see their now-married daughter, that I met a colonel friend of Max’s from the Brazilian Coffee Institute.

I was somewhat taken aback by the way he greeted me. He clicked his heels and bowed his head rather formally. Then he shook my hand firmly and whispered, “Colonel Cordeiro,” in a low voice as if “Colonel” were his first name, the equivalent of João, Marcelo, or Pedro. This was of course customary among the armed forces, giving rank and surname in a single breath. But the fact that I heard it in such a protected space, and that it sounded so irritatingly natural besides, made me feel the stench of oppression right under my nose.

Of average height and muscular build, the colonel was about fifty years old. He smiled a lot, but somewhat gratuitously, a trait that gave him an air of perpetual politeness, vague and undefined, which did little to ingratiate him with those present. Ironically, his surname, Cordeiro, the Portuguese word for
lamb
, also called to mind the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine, suggesting there was a wolf in sheep’s clothing in our midst — and not even the banality of the cliché comforted me. The colonel’s pointy white teeth contrasted sharply with his friendly appearance, as if at any sign of discord something unexpected might happen. Aside from his teeth, however, I didn’t
detect more overt suggestions of contained violence. On the contrary, his body language remained relaxed. Yet in five minutes of conversation with me, discussing various topics, he twice declared, “But this, you have to admit, is a matter of principle.” And with that, one of his many masks came off.

I don’t recall exactly what we were talking about, but hearing “you have to admit” followed by “a matter of principle” conjured for me a sinister world of innuendos in which compromise would prove impossible should differences of opinion arise.

If linguists one day undertake a more refined study of speech from this authoritarian period, they’ll find that numerous phrases during those dark times went from being innocuous to intimidating. We were to hear “But this, you have to admit, is a matter of principle” at Itamaraty countless times over the next few years. The interjection “my good man” would often be thrown in for emphasis, as if the term of endearment held an additional veiled threat.

But to return to Max’s friend, at one point, as we were speaking of the Coffee Institute, the colonel raised his eyes skyward and sighed. “The revolution hasn’t gotten there yet.” Right after that, in a theatrical gesture, he lowered his head and devoted himself to a moment of almost melancholic reflection. As if, in his view, the “revolution” hadn’t reached a number of places. Which would thus explain the corruption prevalent in them.

The idea of a Greater Brazil wasn’t yet being broached. It would take a few years before that entity bared its fangs in the economic and commercial sectors. And we hadn’t yet won the 1970 World Cup, which would boost our national pride considerably. Even so, the colonel turned out to be a harbinger of those times.

What intrigued me most that day, further illustrating my naïveté with respect to Max and his labyrinths, was the fascination this character held for my friend. Evidently Max hadn’t reached this stage through an admiration based on moral or
intellectual values. Or through more trivial motives, which sometimes lead a man to value in others talents he himself lacks. No. To my surprise, his fascination had darker origins, as he himself would hint to me one day, in a conversation about the colonel.

“It’s that he’s different from us,” he explained at the time, averting his eyes.

“Different how?” I asked innocently.

And Max murmured, “He’s killed a man.”

Certain revelations leave an indelible impression on those who hear them. Clearly that anonymous death had deeply affected Max. It was as if by taking a life, the colonel had made his own less insipid.

The armed forces never really worried about Itamaraty as a focal point of subversive activities. The ministry was held to be an elite group, given the rigorous admission process that had been in place for generations. The generals tended to regard leftist leanings that might exist within it as more intellectual than radical in nature. Besides, they were dealing with far more serious challenges on other fronts.

The military commanders nonetheless needed to find people to monitor us, people who would blend in, since the idea of having SNI agents infiltrate our environment was unthinkable. At first, as had been done in other government offices, a Division of Security and Information (DSI) was created at Itamaraty. This proved to be merely a smokescreen, a seemingly innocuous oversight agency. Behind it, however, lay the real agents, selected from among our own diplomats. Thanks to them, the regime had access to everything we wrote. Though few in number, these intermediaries wove an invisible, intimidating web around the rest of us. Their names would remain largely unknown, even after the regime was over.

Since none of this was common knowledge, we lived in a nebulous world, dealing with international issues that seemed strangely removed from our government’s stance. This often led to some bizarre situations: in a right-wing country, we were increasingly allowed to formulate a left-leaning foreign policy. As a result, we would be the first government to recognize the
independence of Socialist Angola and, to the astonishment of our own military, one of the first to reestablish diplomatic ties with Communist China.

It was a way for us to retaliate, thought the more naïve among us. Or to delude ourselves, concluded the more realistic. Because even if we could achieve an independent foreign policy, we would be dismissed and jailed, just as one of our colleagues had been, were we to go public regarding the torture and missing persons on the rise in Brazil.

Amid these contradictions, as young apprentices, we also kept a close watch on one another, not knowing if we were sharing an office with some enemy or were “lunchable” for dubious reasons.

Since Max was my friend and, at the time, I knew nothing of his covert dealings, I felt comfortable opening up to him about the widespread mediocrity overtaking the government, particularly in our more restricted environment. He would laugh heartily, agreeing with some of my venting but never failing to tactfully add a few favorable words about the military. Nothing that made me suspect he had an incestuous relationship with them, but his comments always seemed somehow to endorse the regime.

Although I continued to find conversation with him amusing, it pained me, as the intellectual I took myself to be, to imagine that a person I trusted and admired could have become so closely identified with such a system. When I called him to account, he claimed to have reached the conclusion that the populist republic needed to be dismantled so that other realities might now be examined. When I pressed further, condemning the increasing intensity of the military repression, he reminded me of the alternatives proposed by our small, now disbanded group from Urca: take up arms — or work within the system.

“
Within
the system?” I asked. “But
for
or
against
?”

“As if there were a difference …” He laughed in response.

One day, concerned about the activities of a colleague who was deeply entrenched with the right, I asked Max if he thought that
lives
might be at stake as a consequence of the man’s actions. He launched into one of his tirades: “But, my friend, if it were only lives we were dealing with …”

From then on, I felt Max’s integrity was being corrupted by indifference or cynicism. Paradoxically, these attitudes didn’t seem to prevent him from showing a certain aptitude for criticizing the regime. His detractors would later say that he was serving, in this capacity, as an agent provocateur, ferreting out colleagues he could inform on.

Today, I prefer to think that such displays were simply escape valves in which he indulged, so as to keep face among us. These forays in the Legions of Good, as Max called them, allowed him to revisit ideals that had been part of his upbringing, and in which, I want to believe, he still had faith. I’ve come to think that at some level he never stopped seeing himself as a Socialist at heart, although he had given in to the right (as he used to joke)
while it needed him
. This hidden conviction may even have been what enabled him to move toward the left when such shifts became expedient. Undoubtedly, others in our midst had behaved the same way.