The Mystery of Rio (4 page)

This hypothesis, that the bones buried in the palace were those of a woman, ties the case to the tenebrous mystery of the witch buried alive behind a wall.

To make a list of the witches of Rio de Janeiro, both male and female, from the earliest of times would be an impossible task in a novel such as this. Lima Barreto, who had been an occultist, wrote many of his short stories based on cases he had studied: for example, the case of the French alchemist who arrived on du Clerc's fleet in 1710 and claimed he could transmute human bones into gold, which resulted in a slew of desecrated graves throughout Rio de Janeiro and was told as fiction in the classic
The New California
.

It was Barreto who uncovered the case of a local male witch whose life's work was to create an elementary library—that is, literally, a library composed of a single book—wherein it would be possible to read all the stories theoretically conceivable to the human imagination. These are the real facts that formed the basis for his short story
The Man Who Knew Javanese.

I could cite other examples:
The Cemetery
,
The Number of the Sepulcher
,
The Sorcerer and the Police Captain
. Lima Barreto's work was tremendously informed by witchcraft, but he forgot about the walled-in witch.

In fact, the legend of the witch has truly been forgotten in time. She disappeared suddenly, in 1699, leaving no trace after cursing the Jesuits, who had enslaved her, and the entire kingdom of Portugal, and prophesizing the Lisbon earthquake.

For the purposes of this book, the importance of the witch—or, to use a more dignified word, sorceress—is not merely due to the happenstance that she and old Rufino belonged to the same lineage of African
gangas
and
mulójis
, and thus were heirs to the same arts and knowledge, but rather because the walled-in sorceress was the first in the city's history to add the ancient heritage of the Indian
pajés
to that rich tradition, and to the persistent tradition of European witchcraft.

As a slave in Lisbon, she memorized the content of the books of Saint Cyprian, particularly the teachings of the infamous witch Evora, of whom this saint had been a disciple when he lived among the Chaldeans.

In Rio de Janeiro, as a slave of the Society, having served in the mills for years (thus explaining her extensive contact with indigenous people), she came to master all of the uses and applications of tobacco, the native techniques of dream interpretation, and the method of temporarily uncoupling the soul in order to have direct contact with dead spirits.

It was also on Carioca soil that she learned about the gypsy doctrine and made friends with the New Christian and the kabbalist Semeão de Arganil, having helped that wise man to make a short-lived golem—the only recorded one in the city's history.

Like Rufino, she was almost a century old; and also like him, she did not tell lies, was incapable of telling lies—proof being that she had never been wrong about a plague or a prophecy. Those who know magic now know in what branches of knowledge this sorceress dwelled.

And it was precisely for devoting herself to these less noble divisions of witchcraft that the walled-in witch sealed her fate: on Ash Wednesday of 1699—the first summer day after the dreary storms that lasted through carnival—the sorceress shook up the city, making a great scandal at the door of the City Hall, demanding punishment for some priests who had supposedly physically abused her during the previous three nights.

Her story was not given the consideration it deserved, however, perhaps because the matter was not deemed to involve the plague, or perhaps because they judged her to be too disfigured, even for a bunch of old priests. She was arrested the first time when she foresaw grave omens against the Jesuits at the Largo da Sé.

Punished, she returned to the streets shortly thereafter, spouting curses in which she described, in an animated and impressive manner, the seismic events that would blight the capital of the kingdom in little more than half a century.

She was detained this time right at the Terreiro da Polé, next to the pillory, while addressing a large crowd. She was brought before a judge and sentenced to a public lashing—disappearing shortly afterwards without witnesses.

The disappearance was notable for one sole reason: she was bound tightly to a thick pole at the pillory, and had just received fifty lashes. Word spread that she had died during the ordeal due to the negligence of the authorities, for a surgeon or doctor should have accompanied the enforcement of the sentence to avoid such accidents. The executioners themselves would have disposed of the body, thus absolving themselves of any responsibility.

To counter this version, the priests themselves spread the rumor that she had vanished into thin air, as real witches did, and that she had plunged straight into Hell.

Certain truths, however, leak—albeit partially. And the story that has remained since then is that the witch had been buried alive inside a wall at the college at Castelo Hill.

Coincidentally, that same year construction began on the Mint—the architectural nucleus of the future Palace. In the administration of Gomes Freire, later the Count of Bobadela, the building underwent significant renovations, including the addition of a second floor, meant to be the governors' mansion and later that of the viceroys. Soon after, they began tearing up walls to make way for stairways.

Here is my theory: the foul-mouthed witch was removed from the pillory still alive, but not by her executioners. Esteemed citizens, gentlemen who had witnessed the ordeal, realized that she would not resist long. And they seized the opportunity to enclose her behind the walls—not of the college, but of the building under construction, right next door, at the Terreiro da Polé.

The first ones to discover the corpse—four decades later, when the Mint was undergoing its renovation to become the Palace—decided, without fanfare, to clean the skeleton and put it in a decent coffin, and they reburied it in the same structure.

These were foremen, stonecutters, street pavers, carpenters, housepainters, and masons of all sorts, much utilized on that job. And among the ancient traditions of their professions is the one that says it is necessary when constructing large buildings to entomb a live person in the walls, preferably a woman, to assure the structure will not collapse. They would not run the risk of removing such a protection.

 

We have seen how the first contact between Sebastião Baeta and old Rufino transpired, and how, during that brief interview, Baeta could not resist one question about the relationship between the prostitute Fortunata and the individual, still conjectural, who had given the old man the earrings in the shape of a seahorse.

The expert's anxiety should come as no surprise to the reader: the investigations up until that day had not linked Fortunata to anyone outside her circle at the House of Swaps—except, of course, the woman who ran the sewing school, from whom she had rented a room.

According to all witnesses, she had no friends or relatives in the city. The landlady was particularly emphatic on this point: that for her (before the police search), her tenant's great virtue was precisely that. Be it on a Sunday or a public holiday, she hardly ever left the house. She would not go on day trips, or meet up with girlfriends, or go out on dates. She seemed exclusively devoted to her work, and despite being pretty and well dressed she was not in the habit of blowing her money on Ouvidor Street.

She came to Dr. Zmuda's clinic referred by one of the nurses who had been at the House longest, an extremely trustworthy girl. Madame Brigitte—who was from Espirito Santos, but pretended to be French, and who supervised the girls—was a very cautious person and confessed to Baeta that, at the time, she had found the referral odd, because normally the initiative to hire new girls was her own. Baeta wanted to know the name of the girl who had made the referral.

“You probably remember her—Cassia. She married a client, a judge, and then they ran off to Europe together.”

Baeta remembered the girl because he had been with her shortly before his final trip to the United States to study forensics. He persisted: had Cassia given references? Had she said something about Fortunata's previous life? Madame Brigitte was visibly uneasy.

“She was so persistent. She had so many positive things to say about her, she gave me so many assurances, that I ended up taking pity on her.”

Fortunata's initial interview was in the wing to the left of the lobby, occupied by Dr. Zmuda's clinic.

Madame Brigitte insisted that they follow the clinic's official protocol. She asked about her qualifications as a nurse, purposefully keeping her on her toes. In the end, not only was she obliged to recognize the beauty of the applicant, she took a liking to her too—her mischievous look, her smile which made it clear that she saw through the charade perfectly well.

They made arrangements to obtain papers from the Holy House of Mercy, as they had done on numerous other occasions. It was the only document containing any information on the prostitute, and it was minimal: “Fortunata Conceição, a native of Rio de Janeiro.” That was it.

“You must understand, the letter is a fake.”

The first client was an importer of agricultural supplies, a man of routine sexual appetites. Though not violent, he was rather vigorous and very well endowed. Madame Brigitte really wanted to impress Fortunata, so she would assimilate well to the vicissitudes of her new profession. What she had not counted on, when she entered the bedroom after the client had left, was the stain of blood on the sheets.

“It was my first time.”

Madame Brigitte was dismayed by this, and even moved. She never did discover the real motives that led that beautiful twenty-something woman to seek out such a life so freely.

Fortunata, however, did not make a big deal about it. She was there of her own accord. And she had a talent for this.

She was permissive, enjoyed her line of work, and did things with the demeanor of one who does good deeds. She disproved the biased and untrue theory—still held by many intellectuals—that prostitutes never feel pleasure in their line of work. Fortunata had intense and beautiful orgasms.

She was, however, very reserved: she did not share episodes from her personal life; she never spoke of her family or mentioned the reasons that had brought her to the House. Soon she became better known and respected, and it was not long before she was invited to the parties. Fortunata would work with other women, couples—nothing was out of bounds for her.

The expert was taken aback by Madame Brigitte's final words to him: “She liked to get some, that tramp.”

Baeta also heard from the nurses. They did not find the violent whipping strange at all; it was actually to be expected with the secretary. The only pertinent fact, which did not really say much, was their shared perception that Fortunata had been very agitated in recent days and had acted aggressively on more than one occasion—even unintentionally biting a client's lips.

The expert also spoke with Miroslav Zmuda himself, but he did not make much headway on that front. On the contrary, he almost had a run-in with the doctor because he insisted on a list of Fortunata's principal clients.

“Should I include your name, too?”

The expert laughed, easing the tension. He had met the prostitute under unusual circumstances. It was in the famous “darkroom,” one of Madame Brigitte's inventions. Once a month, always on a Monday, the Madame would gather all of the nurses on the right wing of the upper floor and block out all of the light. The clients would then be permitted to enter. The most fascinating perversions would ensue.

He was unaware that Fortunata was the name of the woman who had attracted him that night. Seated casually beside her on a cushioned rosewood settee, he sensed her presence by her perfume and the warmth of her skin, and moved in on the mystery woman.

He pulled back in disgust, though, when he noticed there was someone else there, a third person, a man seated on her other side, touching the same parts, disputing the same spaces. But she was irresistible, the texture of her skin, her flesh, and Baeta tried again, wanting her to choose him. But Fortunata did not, and the two men shared her.

Insecure, jealous, suspicious, the expert felt a sense of failure, because the mysterious partner had climaxed with the other man. When he left, he knew he would come back—as he in fact did—to find out who she was, to be with her again, because he could not accept a secondary role for himself.

He concluded that that woman—capable of taking a man like him to such extremes, so compliant and yet so perfectly in charge—did not need to kill to get what she wanted.

 

In the early morning hours of Friday, June 27th, the caretaker at the English Cemetery made his rounds with lime paint and a brush. He cleaned gravestones and pruned the trees, and was a kind of chief gravedigger. On his way to give a coat of lime to the wall of the memorial chapel, he was shocked when he saw a low-flying vulture preparing to land near the jambul tree to the rear of the cemetery.

Still attempting to grasp what was happening, he followed the bird. He could not believe his eyes: one of his shovels was resting on a mound of earth, near the sailors' mass grave.

The stench, the sound of beating wings, led him quickly to deduce what he would see moments later at the edge of the hole: partially exposed bodies in advanced stages of putrefaction serving as a meal for the throng of black butchers.

He immediately grabbed his shovel and began to refill the grave, which did not have the intended effect of scaring away the birds, which is when he realized that this might be a case for the police, and decided to alert the authorities.

It was a great embarrassment to the cemetery administrators, who had resisted the presence of the forensic experts so vehemently just two weeks earlier. Now there was no doubt: the cemetery had been violated in exactly the same location that had aroused suspicion the first time.