The Mystery of Rio (6 page)

Fortunata had promised to help him secure some type of job through influential clients of hers. At this point in the interview, in a very suggestive tone—but a veiled threat, nonetheless—the capoeira revealed that his sister's other life was no secret to him.

“I knew where she worked, boss. I know very well what she did there.”

Finally, on the 13th, at around 7
a.m.
, Fortunata entered the room, desperate to get money and other objects, saying she needed to disappear immediately. Without any explanation, she gave him some of her jewelry and wrote a letter to be delivered to Madame Brigitte—a desire he was still reluctant to comply with, because the hastily written missive contained a confession.

“I didn't tear the letter up. It's probably with the stuff she gave me.”

Aniceto left the second-floor apartment shortly after his sister, and—since he had long harbored the desire to submit himself to one of old Rufino's spells—he immediately sought him out, giving him the earrings as payment.

The old landlady, who ran the sewing school and owned the apartment, was subpoenaed to testify. She was categorical:

“I've never seen this scoundrel before.”

Aniceto could prove otherwise. First, he described the house in detail: the rocking chair, the mahogany table, the statue of Saint George, facing the door, the niche in the bedroom with Saint Anthony; and the hallway niche with Saint Francis of Assisi. He also spoke of the flowerpot with its horrible yellow ribbon and of the rusty carving knife. What is more, he showed an extensive knowledge of the landlady's habits: that she went to bed early and woke up at sunrise. He knew the names of two or three of her students, and that Sunday lunch was chicken with okra.

The sewing teacher—who was not in the habit of prying into Fortunata's life and did not have a copy of the key to her room—was speechless. Aniceto took the opportunity to return her keys to her. She exited, pale, trembling, cursing her former tenant's treachery and lack of morals.

The capoeira had recently moved into a rooming house near Harmonia Square. Officers escorted him there in order to examine the evidence. And, sure enough, there was the letter, which said the following: “I made a silly mistake. It wasn't on purpose. Please forgive me. And thank you for all you've taught me.” It was signed, very visibly: “Fortunata.” Below, in a postscript of sorts, the prostitute prayed for the secretary's soul, citing the deceased by name.

Later on, witnesses from the House of Swaps recognized the jewels found in Aniceto's possession as having belonged to the prostitute. Baeta was also able to attest that the signature on the letter was authentic by comparing it to the forged reports that Dr. Zmuda regularly asked the nurses to sign, as a precaution.

The expert also asked if the capoeira could give the names of any of his acquaintances who were also friendly with Fortunata.

“I never mentioned her, boss. Who mentions a sister who's a whore?”

 

In one of those old taverns in Santa Rita Square—or, more precisely, on the corner of old Cachorros Alley, in a dark and smoky room, where voices were never elevated above a whisper—the Brotherhood of the First District, sucking on their cigarettes and drinking cachaça after a strenuous day on the job, discussed the case of the English Cemetery.

The first lieutenant, who had been present at the forensic analysis of the allegedly violated grave, was lamenting a fatal error, which, according to him, could definitely have compromised the investigation.

“The first time around, we didn't count the bodies. We just checked to see if they were male.”

This was his thesis: the police had started from a false premise—i.e., that Rufino had killed the prostitute and hidden the body in the mass grave. After forensics had done their job, since no female cadaver had been exhumed, the conclusion was that no crime had been committed. However, the lieutenant had a different theory: the old man had opened the grave and robbed a corpse to carry out some abominable spell, and for this he received the pair of gold earrings. And then, before the 23rd, he returned the body to the grave. Therefore, during the second inspection, the number of dead matched the records.

“And why didn't you ask for a count?”

It simply had not occurred to him. Perhaps the sinister environment, the fear of contracting the plague, the disgust of seeing those bodies piled up, explained the urgency with which everyone had dealt with the situation.

“And where does Fortunata fit in?”

She did not. For the lieutenant, such speculation was not acceptable. Rufino had to be arrested for multiple counts of grave robbery. And he reminded them of the public commotion over the recent cases, never solved, of stolen cadavers, in which suspicions were raised about the presence of necrophiliacs inside the police morgue.

“It's time to put that thief behind bars!”

The officers, however, believed the old man. These were honest cops, almost all of them, but possessed of an excessive honesty, bordering on mysticism. The fact that they came, most of them, from the same environment, were raised amid those same criminal characters they arrested, still weighed on them. Many consulted
alufás
and
mães-de-santos
, cropped their hair close, attended
jira dos catiços
to call on spirits, lit votive candles on Mondays. They had associated with capoeiras, gone to the
batuque
and
pernada
circles. They had, naturally, acquired the vice of gambling, and they did not just bet on the
jogo do bicho
, they also played in illegal card games with heavy pots. Intellectually, they were
malandros
too.

“It wasn't him, lieutenant. The old man doesn't lie.”

Their argument was simple and very rational: in his interrogations, Rufino either gave compromising statements that put himself at risk—for example, revealing that the capoeira who had given him the earrings would be paying a visit to his home—or he would remain absolutely silent.

He kept quiet when it would have been natural, or at least less suspicious, to answer evasively. For example, questions like “Do you know Fortunata, the prostitute?” the sorcerer simply did not answer, when it would have been much easier just to answer, “No.” Thus, it became clear that the old man was tacitly admitting knowing Fortunata—a woman sought by the police, and whose acquaintance could only bring complications. Not answering, “I've never heard of her,” had, in a sense, been foolish.

The police, who had dealt with all sorts of street-smart criminals over the years, knew the customary procedure of those people. If Rufino had said nothing, it was because he did not—could not—tell lies.

The captain, for his part, disagreed with everybody. A truculent and idealistic type, he boasted of never having detained an innocent suspect, never having failed to substantiate a hunch. As far as he was concerned, Rufino
did
have ties to Fortunata and was being protected by the chief of police. And his main argument revolved around the gold earrings, which belonged to the woman and were found in the old man's possession.

“Think about it. Ponder the facts. In less than six hours, a woman, a fugitive from the law, gives a pair of gold earrings to a man, and a little while later those earrings end up in the hands of a sorcerer. It makes no sense, I'm sorry.”

The men, accustomed to police reason, could not refute his argument through logic. The captain felt he was close to prevailing. And he plowed ahead. For him, the nature of the crime committed by Fortunata mattered little. Whether or not Rufino practiced his magic at the English Cemetery did not matter. He wanted to know what interest the police had in that old man and that woman. He insisted on that point, and that something big was afoot—that the entire Mauá Square Brotherhood was being left in the dark on purpose.

The captain reminded them that on the 13th, Rufino was surprised at the English Cemetery with the gold earrings in his possession, and that between the 26th and 27th he had also been there (forensics had found the bare footprints, very likely his). If Rufino had been paid one pair of gold earrings for his first job for Aniceto, on this latest occassion he must have received something of equal value.

Obviously, the old man must enter and exit cemeteries at every time of day, and at least twice a month (an average they had just ascertained), because everyone knows cemeteries are not protected. So, if he really were over a hundred years old, as the officers themselves claimed, by now he must have accumulated a vast fortune in gold pieces—or gems, silver, or even cash—whose value must be immeasurable.

This gave a great deal of credence to one of the legends spread about him, the only story that, unfortunately, his own men seemed to deride: that Rufino owned a magnificent treasure, buried somewhere in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Then, suddenly, it happened. It all made sense to them. Because this is the effect, the virtue, of treasures, which for hundreds of centuries have driven human history.

What was at stake was not honor or integrity; it was not a dilemma concerning moral concepts. Nobody wanted to steal, or even thought of it. The First District police always refused any type of bribery. They would never commit a crime for money.

But they were men, too. And none of them—none of us—can resist the ancient fascination of a treasure hunt.

And the discussion continued, and the policemen remained there, drinking and smoking, completely infatuated with that mirage, with that concrete possibility, with the material existence of that legendary treasure—which they had only vaguely heard about, which they maybe even believed in, but which they never imagined they could be so close to.

There is no faith, there is no truth, that has so much power to move people. Especially in Rio de Janeiro. And so, just past midnight, Mixila himself slammed his fist on the table's grimy marble:

“Damn geezer!”

 

The first treasure to disappear in Rio de Janeiro was probably not buried in the earth but rather was lost at sea, near the mouth of Guanabara Bay, in a Spanish galleon weighing over three hundred tons. Reportedly, the ship was returning from an expedition to the Rio de la Plata, laden with Inca gold, and was dragged adrift by a formidable storm, bursting its hull against giant rocks, possibly Cagarras Islands.

A few of the survivors—who had escaped in rowboats or floating on planks—were picked up days later by another vessel from the same flotilla, which had temporarily gone off route, thereby escaping the fatal storm.

These are all sailor stories, backed by very little documentation. But if the shipwreck did in fact occur, and if we take the Inca gold as fact, it makes no sense to imagine that one of those survivors would have been able to battle the breakers on a piece of wood while clinging to a chest filled with dozens of kilos of precious metals, only to bury it ashore.

So, these legends of lost treasures summarize the essence of humanity. It was this legend, the treasure of the Spanish galleon, that brought the first pirates to Guanabara Bay, and, years later, in 1531, led Martim Afonso de Souza to drop anchor at the western rim of the bay, opposite the mouth of the Carioca River, and to erect a fort and organize futile expeditions in search of that gold.

This circumstance—the galleon's treasure that has never been found; the fact that treasures in general are never found—is, for these hunters, the greatest proof of its existence. The fame of perhaps the greatest treasure in Carioca history—the one belonging to the Jesuits, which has been missing ever since they were expelled in 1759—is based on similar foundations.

There is little doubt that the treasure exists. What is not certain is whether it was hidden beneath the college at Castelo Hill. After a lengthy resistance put up by priests, the building was finally evacuated, and then slaves, students, bands of soldiers, and a throng of people from all walks of life searched the building, probing all of its entrails, never finding a thing.

That was when talk began about a secret passageway connecting the college to Calabouço Point. Society informants would have alerted the priests in Brazil in time, who would have preemptively loaded this immense fortune onto clandestine brigantines, whose whereabouts today are impossible to ascertain. Let's face it, this story borders on fantasy literature: no ship at the time would have been able to cross the entrance to the impregnable bay—which only once in its entire history had been overtaken—without being detected.

Therefore, I do not think the thesis that the treasure was smuggled out has any merit. The Jesuits' treasure stayed in Rio de Janeiro. Another indication of this is that it continued to be actively sought during all major construction projects requiring excavation in the city, particularly during the razing of Castelo Hill in the 20th century.

It should come as no surprise that a second (totally fictional) version of this legend links the Jesuits' treasure to alleged Phoenician inscriptions on Sugar Loaf Mountain, which (fraudulently, in my opinion) make mention of a Prince of Tyre. That great treasure, so the story goes, initially belonged to the Templars, and before that to King Solomon, discoverer of the mines of Ophir.

The Jesuits, by virtue of their erudition, would have been the first to identify the Carioca tomb of the Asiatic prince, discoverer of the Atlantic route to Guanabara, later hiding the treasure found next to the sarcophagus in a location that remains hidden.

One detail of the story is particularly noteworthy: even after they were arrested, deported, and tortured, which indeed the priests of the Society were, none of them ever revealed the hiding place of the treasure. This is another feature of those who bury vast riches: their code of silence.

Such was the case of a treasure of emeralds brought to Rio de Janeiro before Garcia Rodrigues Paes had opened his trail—proof that the Cariocas joined the fray for the mines around the same time that the fierce São Paulo prospectors did.