The Mystery of Rio (21 page)

And there were plenty of women who wanted to be with two men at once, or more than two: these were the so-called sluts, the powerful ones, the nymphomaniacs, the cannibals, the man-eaters, who embodied the primitive myth of the
vagina dentata
.

In one variant of this symbolization, there were those women who wanted to be in the middle of one or more couples. This would extend all the way to what the Polish doctor called a full-on orgy: a free-for-all, with the uninterrupted exchange of partners.

What Miroslav Zmuda found interesting concerning group fantasies (besides the fact that they intermingled various categories—for example, one woman and two men, violence and infidelity) was that they did not represent a nostalgia for barbarism.

Even though primitive men behaved in ways that are hard for us to comprehend nowadays—for example, lending, kidnapping, or raping women—human sexuality was usually private in those societies. There was always a sense of shame, and orgies, when they occured, were linked to very specific and special rituals.

Dr. Zmuda could find only one parallel to such orgiastic fantasies: the behavior of animals—indeed, they are totally devoid of the concept of shame. And this was the third of the categories recognized by the physician: the symbolizations of indiscretion, or publicity.

Orgies, swapping, threesomes—these were composite fantasies, symbolizing at the very least indiscretion and infidelity, but sometimes even violence. But there was the pure form of this category: women who liked to be observed during sexual contact.

One scenario was classic: a woman in the bedroom, with her husband, who notices or sees a maid passing by, or a male cousin, who, in turn, watches through a door left ajar. Or something more daring: a young girl, for example, who lets herself be seen while she undresses, pretending to ignore the observer. The fantasy of indiscretion also includes an active component: as, for example, the maid.

The first three categories of symbolizations established by Miroslav Zmuda said much about the nature of female sexuality. These fantasies constituted downward movements, they were movements of “falling.” They consisted, in fact, of de-evolutionary impulses, contrary to civilization. They were either a return to savagery or a reaffirmation of the animal kingdom.

 

Castelo Hill, in Rio de Janeiro—where the first seat of government, the first school, the first jail, and the first storage house were built—was also the place to which the city's founding landmark was transferred in 1567.

As you know, Rio de Janeiro was founded in 1565, with the stature of city from the start, practically in the middle of a swamp between the Cara de Cão Hill and Sugar Loaf Moun­tain.

After the war, when the Temiminós defeated the Tamoios and Estácio, the city's founder, was mortally wounded, Mem de Sá ordered the citizens to migrate to Castelo Hill.

This move, because of the symbolic nature of the landmark being moved, meant much more than a mere change of location: it meant a new beginning, the founding of a new city—homonymous and homotopic.

And Castelo Hill met with an unusual fate. Partly demolished in 1905, during the construction of Central Avenue, it was finally razed in 1921 during the administration of Mayor Carlos Sampaio, and part of the rubble was used as landfill to cover the wetlands of the primitive city between Sugar Loaf Mountain and Cara de Cão.

Thus, Rio de Janeiro is perhaps the only city in the world founded twice, whose founder's tomb was twice desecrated, and that with one sweeping gesture twice destroyed the original landscape of its two foundation sites.

Many people, therefore, accuse Carlos Sampaio of being a traitor to his country, because, under the pretext of building a large esplanade for the Independence Centennial, what he really wanted to do was open the city up to the sea breezes and remove the poor, who, at the time, were the majority of the inhabitants of Castelo Hill.

For me, however, Carlos Sampaio was a mystic. First of all, by destroying the city's foundational landmarks he affirmed Rio de Janeiro's timelessness, its condition as a city that has always existed, not only since 1565. Second of all, by razing Castelo Hill he proved that he believed in and was searching for the more than legendary treasure of the Jesuits.

It is curious how the legend of one treasure always overshadows that of its predecessors. Although there was a fever surrounding this search (Lima Barreto wrote a lot about this), Rufino's treasure, and the growing fascination with it, helped the old Jesuit legend die.

Maybe that is the mystery, the strategy of the guardian spirits of treasures: the imminence of finding a treasure helps the story of a new treasure reverberate. And Rufino's had precisely this function.

For that reason, officers, lieutenants, and the First District police chief himself were obsessed with the sorcerer, and ever since that meeting at the old corner tavern (at what was once known as Cachorros Alley), they decided to mount a full-out treasure hunt.

Since they suspected that the treasure was hidden in the English Cemetery, the first victim was, of course, the head gravedigger. The man was roughed up and threatened, and, for almost the entire month of July, he desecrated graves and turned over almost every inch of soil in that cemetery.

It was strenuous work, because every opened tomb, every hole dug in the middle of the night, had to be restored, to cover up any signs of tampering, by morning. The gravedigger would die the moment the slightest suspicion arose.

Meanwhile, the old man seemed to have guessed that soon their attentions would turn to him. So, he stopped going to the English Cemetery; in fact, he stopped going to all the city cemeteries, as had been his custom. He merely kept to his usual routines, only going to the known points: Misericórdia Hill, Lapa Square, Rosario Church, Pedra do Sal. There he would sell his prayers and his medicinal brews, or perform minor services. And that was it.

The Brotherhood kept a tight surveillance. And some officers—who were as anxious as they were fascinated—committed the folly of assaulting the sorcerer at his home and torturing him, as Rufino himself would later inform Baeta.

It was not, however, the physical abuse—which only seemed to get worse—that most bothered the old man, but rather the constant and permanent surveillance that seemed to follow him wherever he turned.

But that was the police's strategy: sooner or later (they believed), Rufino would take them to the hiding place. And the plan might have worked, if only Baeta had not shown up in Santa Teresa and, two days later, the rower Hermínio had not inquired about the sorcerer.

These two incidents—which occurred nearly back-to-back—rekindled the Brotherhood's fury. It may seem like an inexplicable reaction, but those who hunt treasures think of nothing else; those who hunt treasures cannot imagine that others might actually think of anything else.

That is when the lieutenant and two of his officers decided to hurry things along: knowing that Rufino was making fewer and fewer trips down into the city, and that he had begun to make more frequent trips into the wilderness, they had the urge to follow him in, believing that what they were after was in the dense rainforest.

Less informed readers might not truly have a notion of what a rainforest is. Especially at night, they are real labyrinths—much more confusing, much more treacherous than any of the mazes of antiquity, such as the Minotaur's, built by Daedalus, or the circles of Hell, discovered by Dante.

The same can be said of deserts, oceans, and glaciers. It has even been said of these that they constitute the perfect labyrinth, for they symbolize nothing. The rainforest inverts this: it is the sign of the absolute—both chaotic and finite.

If in a desert the traveler, or the prisoner, eternally sees the same scenery, and thus experiences a void, in the rainforest he never sees the same landscape twice. The rainforest—particularly a planted one like Tijuca—is a quantum maze: whoever loses his way inside of it interferes with its paths, assuring that its exit is farther and farther away.

We can say that Rufino planned that chase, that he had drawn his enemies into the depths of the rainforest: it was a territory where he ruled, where he knew where to find each
peroba
(for knife wounds), each
maçaranduba
(for diseases of the eye), each
pau-brasil
(dental pain, lumps, and thick urine), each ironwood (for strokes, fatigue, and shortness of breath), each
jequitibá
(for burns, also used to make pipes, and a source of resin and honey), each
ipê
(scabies, ulcers, and gonorrhea), each
embaúba
(to make
fundanga
and protect you from bullet wounds), and each
congonha
(for insomnia).

He also knew where the spirits of birds were in the habit of landing, controlled by the sorceresses of the night—the primordial mistresses of the universe that were never fully appeased and therefore might still interfere in the course of destiny, unable to tell good from evil.

Thus, in the rainforest, in the thick of the night, the police lost track of Rufino. Then they lost track of each other. Finally, they lost themselves, succumbing forever. The old man never expected any other outcome. And he stayed there, too, in the wilderness, in a kind of exile, hoping that another legend of another treasure might spread.

However, an incident that occurred on October 14th—soon to be narrated in more detail—changed the sorcerer's plans: a man who had made certain vow at the foot of a certain fig tree, a man who was fleeing the police, sought refuge in the rainforest, at the very place where he had made the vow, and he unwittingly dragged with him the officer known as Mixila. And Mixila disappeared, too.

The next day, the arrogance, the megalomania, of the First District Brotherhood was no longer tenable. The captain had to acknowledge his impotence before the rainforest, and had to yield. He confessed to the chief that his men had gone into, that they might have gone into, that he had heard rumors they had gone into, the dense Tijuca jungle. And a great expedition was organized during the day, with over one hundred police officers, to cover every corner of the rainforest.

Rufino was captured near Laranjeiras. In one of the hills leading to Corcovado, they found the lieutenant's body lying in a ditch and pierced by caltrops. The last body they came upon (because no bodies were found subsequently) was that of Officer Mixila: he had stumbled aimlessly and lost his life near the top of Sumaré. He was all swollen and purple, held up by a
sumaúma
tree, the bite marks of the
jararacuçu
snake still visible.

 

Naturally, there was a third dead woman. The narrative once again goes back in time, this time to October 10th, and the focus shifts to the distant lands where Captain Richard would later tear up the streets of bucolic Grajaú. So, it was there, in that great wilderness, at the foot of Elefante Hill, in one of the beautiful farms that bordered the old Cabuçu trail, that the woman died.

To say
woman
is an exaggeration, because she was only a girl of fourteen. She had the same obscene expression on her face, the same lascivious grin, which gave rise to venomous comments. She had not been choked, she had not been poisoned, there was not a single bruise on her body, and no sign of injuries that could have led to her death.

The mother wept and said she would only allow a closed-casket funeral, due to the shame that exposing her face would bring. The father raged, demanding punishment for the murderer. Of course, the coroner replied that there had been no murder. However, as this was the third episode of its kind, they gave the case special treatment.

Baeta went out to the old Cabuçu trail. I spoke of the mother's shame; I spoke of the father's rage. But I have not mentioned the sister of the deceased. It was a sad scene. She was the youngest and only thirteen. However, rumors were starting to spread around the neighborhood that she had seen everything, and that she was next to her sister when it all happened. That night, a loud shriek was heard, which suddenly ceased. Dogs began to bark and the lights in the mansion came on. The youngest came running in all the way from the rear of the garden, and then she locked herself in her bedroom.

Only when her sister was found dead, with her dress up, with signs of having lost her virginity, did she begin convulsively and desperately weeping until she fainted. Neither the father nor the mother, afraid of the truth, wanted to hear what she had to say.

Pressed, however, by the kitchen help, and by Baeta's persistent questioning, she finally gave in, with the promise that nothing would be said to her parents. She gave the following terrifying statement: that the two of them were with a man in the backyard, under a tamarind tree; that they had met him in the city after a day of sightseeing and shopping; that they had strayed a bit from their mother to try some candy a street vendor had to offer; that this was when he approached them; that they laughed and talked; that he seemed to guess their thoughts; that he knew both of them had a secret game they played, that one pretended to be the other's boyfriend, that they pretended how it would be like when they had a real boyfriend; that he said he would be their boyfriend; that they were delighted by him and gave him their address on the farm, and they settled on the day when he would visit them; that on that day they locked the dogs up; that they were scared but did not have the courage to back down; that he arrived, when everyone was asleep; that they led him to the tamarind tree; that he then placed her sister on her side, recumbent, and lay behind her, lifted her dress and showed them how it was done, asking that she, the youngest, kiss her sister on the mouth, close her eyes, and that she hold in her hand what was moving down below; that her sister felt no pain, but suddenly she gave out a cry and appeared to have fainted; that the man became very nervous and told her to run home; that she obeyed without understanding what was happening; and that only later did she learn that her sister had died.