There's No Point in Dying, page 11
The curtain fell and now they could see reality. Guile Xangô saw the mist dissipate and reveal a world of silence by the sea, an immense cemetery, a dead city, a metropolis turned into a necropolis. It wasn’t the first time he’d stood there, he remembered an old dream, not that old of a dream, but now a real dream, as vivid as it’d been at first. And what everyone feared had happened. The city had fallen apart, destroyed itself. The green people had expected the cataclysm to come from nature. For years, they’d prophesied that temperatures would change, that the poles would melt, that the sea would rise and take over everything, that the city would turn into a huge artificial reef, fish swimming between buildings, sharks roaming the avenues, whales stranded on rooftops. But none of that had happened, and neither had the cyclones and hurricanes come to sweep everything away. Disaster came from where we all expected, from the great fury of men, but without the nuclear spectacle Vovô do Crime had imagined. It was not the end of world history, but a return to prehistory, and without any remorse. In the first moments, explosions and fires, looting and massacres. Then, among the ruins, groups struggling to survive or simply to protect their territories founded new and precarious quilombos, following in the footsteps of their enslaved antecedents. The average man, obsessed with crowds, began to attack, joining the horde.
Beleco got up and stood next to Guile Xangô, waiting for a miracle, the city back to normal, crowds filling the buildings and streets, traffic noises, the rumble of voices, but none of that happened. The fog started to rise and the first thing Beleco saw was a cemetery.
The sun started to pierce through the fog and vultures started to circle around and around, going up and down like acrobats. Pardal Wenchell pulled out his pistol, shot at a vulture but missed. Beleco laughed, fired his Uzi and took down two vultures. “You have to do it one by one,” Pardal Wenchell said. Beleco pulled out a pistol and saw Guile Xangô coming down the stairs, the others following in a line behind him: Mirtes, Olívia, Rafa, Marcelo Cachaça, Meu Bem, Lourinho, João Amorim, all of them, the Comadres, the Mandelas, the K-9s. I signaled for Beleco to come with us, but he’d rather stay shoulder to shoulder with Pardal Wenchell waiting for the vultures to go back to their circular flight, elegant in their black gowns, their cassocks and togas, their wings curved in mourning and hunger, their beaks like tombs, curved, hooked, their nostrils already smelling the world’s rot, and Beleco stretched out his arm, aimed at me, again, and pulled the trigger.
My wife woke me up in a panic with a slap, I was drenched in sweat, my girls were screaming and crying. I tried to get up, I tried to find myself again, but they threw themselves on top of me, hugging me as if they were shielding me from stray bullets, or from visions of the future, or from madness, and so I cried, I cried because I needed all the love in this world to get up and face reality, I cried and quietly swore that I needed to protect my women before the final disaster, before I lost control of the car on the curve of this world with no brakes.
I fell asleep again and dreamed that Vovô do Crime, Guile Xangô, Vavau, Beleco, and Pardal Wenchell had died on their way to a Mangueira rehearsal. They were (tightly packed and happy) in a jeep driven by a woman. That vehicle was cut off by an ambulance (the siren howled in pain like a run-over dog), zigzagged, flew over the railing and fell from the Rio-Niterói bridge, onto the deck of a ship loaded with chemicals, explosives, and the explosion hovered in the air like a white flower, very white, pale and poisonous. Half asleep, I thought, “This nightmare should have come before the other one.” And who was the woman? Death? I need to tell Vavau about this, warn everyone, wake them up one by one, except Beleco, protect them one by one from all the danger.
* * *
1 Lines from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The City in the Sea.”
2 Guile Xangô’s words come from St. Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions.
3 French excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The City in the Sea,” in Mallarmé’s translation.
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
Guile Xangô says the TV crew burst into the lobby of the Fonte Nova country inn with their lights, cameras, microphones, and arrogance in tow, and the reporter didn’t even say good morning good afternoon how are you, she just fired questions at them—are you the Baron, was it the Baron who found the slaughtered bodies in the chalet, did his employees do it, were your security guys a part of it, did you give the orders?
Maximiliano Álvares de Albuquerque, the Baron, told the reporter she was just a rude asshole and she and her crew should leave the hotel premises right then and there, the door was open, and she could see herself out. He told her he didn’t get it, all that noise because of half a dozen bums, where he was from, back in his town, you were supposed to nip the evil in the bud; the last thief walked away on his own two feet, but without his hands, and they all lived peacefully in God’s grace for more than fifty years.
The reporter insisted it looked like rain, and they hadn’t gotten any rain there in a long time, how did it happen, when did it happen, why did it happen and if Mr. Baron wasn’t the one who gave the orders, then why did he let it happen, as the owner and boss of the place? The Baron said he’d never get his hands dirty for so little, and the reporter once again pushed it, who killed the boys, and the Baron bristled at that, they weren’t boys, they were thugs, and they had certainly killed themselves, criminals are capable of anything, better them than me. “And the law?” the reporter asked; “I am the law,” the Baron answered; then the reporter: “And justice?”; and the Baron: “I am justice”; and the reporter: “So you would agree you took the law into your own hands”; and the Baron: “Justice is blind, it always has been, and I saw nothing, I know nothing, I saw nothing”; and the reporter: “But it’s not mute, and I know it makes no difference to you, it’s all the same, that’s fine, you already said what I wanted to hear.” And the Baron, trying not to jump on the woman’s neck: “I didn’t say anything, you’re the one talking, and talking nonsense, am I being interviewed or on trial here?” And the reporter: “It’s just an interview, and a very revealing one”; and the Baron: “You’re making a tempest in a teapot”; and the reporter: “If we’re talking water, a jug fills one drop at a time”; and the Baron, cocky: “And you’re here to draw the water to propel your own mill”; and the reporter, shouting: “This interview is over, you dumb shark, we’ll see you in court.”
The Baron banged his cane on the tabletop, to the rhythm of the crew’s stomping away. A trembling boy came in carrying a bottle of mineral water and a bunch of pills. The Baron: “Who asked for this? I want cognac, cognac, and tell them to get Zelão ready.” And the boy: “But the doctor said you can’t.”
“And do I look like I give a fuck what the doctor says I can or can’t do?” the Baron asked, throwing the cane at the boy, who luckily dodged it, caught it mid-air, then placed it on the table, out of reach. “You’re a man now, Tavinho,” the Baron said, angry and surprised. “Do as I say, it’s best for both of us.”
The Baron was already on his second glass of cognac when Pedro Paladino came in with Gypsy. “You got in trouble with those TV people,” Pedro Paladino said. “I gave you explicit orders to keep your mouth shut, to only speak in my presence.”
“And who are you to give me orders, kid?” the Baron said. “You should be making sure no reporter comes snooping around here, but you didn’t even do that, and look, I pay you very well to take care of this stuff.”
“The boys dying certainly doesn’t help, quite the opposite, it only complicates matters,” Pedro Paladino said. “Those thugs have nothing to do with my land,” the Baron said. “You may even think so, but listen to what I’m telling you, they’re going to cut your head right off, they’re going to end you,” Pedro Paladino said. “That’s not going to happen,” the Baron said, getting up to pick up his cane. “And are you going to just sit there, Gypsy?”
“Times have changed,” Gypsy answered. “Times have changed and all you do is fuck up, Gypsy,” the Baron said. “Get out of here, get yourself cleaned up, take some time off.”
“Dinosaurs,” Pedro Paladino grumbled. “Speak up so we can hear you,” the Baron said. “I was just thinking the current extinction of living species on our planet is a natural phenomenon, part of the evolutionary process, but still, though, because of human activity, species and ecosystems are now under more serious threat than ever before in history,” Pedro Paladino said, taking a generous swig of his brandy. “Zelão is ready,” Tavinho said. “You come with me,” said the Baron to Pedro Paladino. “You are way too fat, with that beer belly, take this time to get some exercise and keep me up to date.” “You do the paying, you give the orders, and I follow,” Pedro Paladino said. “But careful there not to fall off your high horse.”
From the top of his horse, the Baron listened to Pedro Paladino’s chatter: the mortgages, lawsuits, injunctions, wills, land tenure regularization projects on government-owned land, titles, records, temporary constitutional permits, justifications for freezes or suspensions, ascendants and descendants, guardianship and curatorship, the new civil code, senility. “Translate this Greek for me,” the Baron asked. “The federal government wants to give away your lands to the peasants,” Pedro Paladino said, drinking cognac straight from the bottle. “The state wants to build a country club for public servants, the city wants it to build public housing, businessmen want to open a soccer school, and your biological children are trying as hard as they can to put you in a nursing home under claims of senility, among other less dignified claims, and then get as much as they can from the federal government or the state or the city or from the businessmen, if possible from all of them at once, not to mention your nephews and grandchildren who also want a piece of the pie, I mean, you’re still quite the catch, my advice for you is to marry a twenty-year-old beauty, thirty at the most, a nice young woman, have some kids with her, if possible with my help, I’m ready to do that, I’m a man of good will, a fair man, and I believe you deserve a better family in what little future you got left in this cruel world.”
“Are you done yet?” the Baron asked. “I’m done,” Pedro Paladino said.
“So you got no news,” the Baron said. “Now leave me alone and go find something better to do, cognac of this quality shouldn’t be drunk straight from the bottle.”
“Have a good trip, boss,” Pedro Paladino said. “You should go see Machu Picchu, the ruins there are much better, I know, I know, there’s no need to shout, you don’t want to keep up with reality, I understand, go for it.”
The Baron trotted across his imaginary domain. Nothing there was real now. There had been a farm with a big house, chandeliers, silverware, a harpsichord, three pianos, settees, vases, wicker love seats, portraits on the walls, memories of a grand past through the ages, a visit from Emperor Pedro II turning into a visit from the dictator Getúlio Vargas though probably neither of the two visits were real, just lies of prestige. A typical coffee farm, with a vegetable patch, orchards of jaboticaba, mango, guava, avocado, papaya, rose apple, tamarind, star fruit, jamelão, blackberry, and grumixama, a huge jataí tree, a splendid sapucaia tree. Pigs, horses, oxen, cows, goats, lots of goats, it was a large goat farm. The land spread out in orangey hills, plowable only at a high cost, yielding little, and only through animal traction.
The farm was a natural resting place for travelers. Once the hard times hit, expenses were high, the family began to charge a nightly fee, and the quiet resting place became more of an inn, then a boarding house, a bed and breakfast, a country lodge. They took advantage of the springs, the waterfalls, the abundant water, and the business grew. Swimming pools, saunas, tennis courts, soccer fields, fishing lakes, reservoirs, horses, game rooms, an airstrip.
None of that wealth was the result of his labor, his business acumen, or his entrepreneurial vision. The Baron enjoyed showing off his athletic prowess in the pools, giving tennis and horseback riding lessons to the most attractive guests, livening up parties, and sponsoring gambling adventures and gambling rooms. That was his glorious and reckless phase as a youthful shark. As time went by, he took on the role of cultural impresario and public relations officer. The arrivals were joyful and the departures melancholic, the shows unforgettable, life good. All his siblings, five brothers and four sisters, ended up marrying guests. The weddings were held in the main hall with much pomp and circumstance, wealthy best men, and powerful guests. His own wedding was by the main pool.
Births and deaths came and went, and life went on. Until the springs dried up, the waterfalls turned into ravines, and the demise of the country inn announced the end of the family. Fonte Nova fell into his lap, what was once the center of the world now barely on the outskirts. Weeds consumed the tennis courts, the soccer fields, the pools turned into sewage, and mold, decay, shadows, ghosts, silence, ruins took over everything else. No planes descended anymore from the empty skies. Now they wanted to sweep away his memories, but only over his dead body. He would die without leaving a trace. His name wouldn’t linger on an avenue, a square, a school, a club, a housing complex, a poor neighborhood. He would fight until the end, until total oblivion.
He came trotting back to the hotel, wind blowing through the grass, flocks of nunbirds, vultures in the dead sky. He came across four workers still trying to salvage something from the termites of time, a futile task. The old Gypsy, a jack of all trades, was cleaning the only swimming pool still in working order. The water came in tank trucks so he could swim his daily laps; he was still proud of his physique; he would not give up without a fight. Gypsy raised his hand to wave, his body in a military posture, the gun at his waist, a loyal bodyguard. He should have been very far away by now, but he was still visible, as if nothing had happened, stubborn. He waved back and continued his trotting. He would talk to Gypsy later, when everything calmed down, but he already knew the answer to the question he’d ask, Gypsy was a man of his word and was basically all he had left for family. He shouldn’t have shouted, “Get yourself cleaned up.” At the end of the day, nothing had happened.
He handed Zelão over to Tavinho and went up to his room. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep. He had always been a good sleeper and couldn’t remember how long it’d taken him to get used to being the only guest at his own hotel. “I need to get the Gypsy to clean the chalet,” the Baron thought, “throw gasoline on it, set it on fire, fire cleans better than water.” Sleep came as a form of redemption, set everything ablaze, from the city people would see the great fire.
He pushed it off for a week. “I won’t go. He who owes nothing fears nothing.” But the inconvenient police car parked by the hotel entrance, for days on end, pressured him to give in. “I’ll ride my horse out of here,” the Baron said. And off he went, riding Zelão, followed by Pedro Paladino’s car. He dismounted outside the police station to be greeted by a small crowd shouting, “Murderer, murderer.” He went on his way with his cane and his whip, declining police protection. “You don’t need to protect me. I know how to defend myself from the plebs, you should protect them instead, these dirty bums.”
The police chief welcomed Maximiliano Álvares de Albuquerque into her office with the curious look of someone studying a relic. “Sit down,” she said, and he sat down with a schoolboy’s awkwardness.
“Do you know Rogério Rodrigues dos Santos, former marine?”
“No, I don’t know him.”
“He’s worked for you for thirty years.”
“I don’t have any employees by that name.”
“And does the name Gypsy mean anything to you?”
“That’s one of my employees.”
“You didn’t know that Rogério Rodrigues dos Santos and Gypsy are the same person?”
“I didn’t.”
“Are there any other details you don’t know?”
“I don’t pay much attention to the details, do you?”
“I ask the questions here.”
“Gypsy’s in jail?”
“I already told you I ask the questions here.”
The police chief showed images of the young men’s bodies, presenting the photos like they were playing cards, a game of poker. “I have nothing to do with these criminals,” the Baron said. “They weren’t criminals, Mr. Maximiliano, they were all honest workers, all four of them were working and studying, and they just made the mistake of thinking your property was vacant and spending the night in one of your chalets one long weekend.”
“The world isn’t going to end because of half a dozen Black boys,” the Baron said. “How long has it been, Mr. Baron, if I may call you by your nickname, how long’s it been since you’ve left your property?” “I’ve never left, I’ve always lived there,” he said. “It’s the whole world, my world, I don’t need anything else.” “Yes, you do, Mr. Baron,” the police chief said. “You are not the law, you are not justice, you don’t own the world, you need to answer for your actions.”
After four hours of interrogation, the Baron wanted nothing to do with his horse anymore. He returned in Pedro Paladino’s car and didn’t react when the crowd met his dejected figure with more cries of murderer, murderer.
He settled into the old rocking chair and, from the hotel balcony, let his gaze wander off to the empty fields and shadows. “I don’t want to get arrested,” the Baron said. “It’s Gypsy’s turn, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” Pedro Paladino said. “If I get arrested, I want you to make sure it’s a house arrest,” the Baron said. “You’ve always liked your comfort, Baron, that’s fine,” Pedro Paladino said. “But if they throw you out of here the whole world will fall apart, then it won’t matter whether you rot in a nursing home or in jail.”
Tavinho came in with a bottle of cognac and two glasses.
“I don’t know if you noticed, Baron, but the dead boys were Black, the reporter who interviewed you is Black, the police chief is Black, I’m not one bit white either,” Pedro Paladino said.
Beleco got up and stood next to Guile Xangô, waiting for a miracle, the city back to normal, crowds filling the buildings and streets, traffic noises, the rumble of voices, but none of that happened. The fog started to rise and the first thing Beleco saw was a cemetery.
The sun started to pierce through the fog and vultures started to circle around and around, going up and down like acrobats. Pardal Wenchell pulled out his pistol, shot at a vulture but missed. Beleco laughed, fired his Uzi and took down two vultures. “You have to do it one by one,” Pardal Wenchell said. Beleco pulled out a pistol and saw Guile Xangô coming down the stairs, the others following in a line behind him: Mirtes, Olívia, Rafa, Marcelo Cachaça, Meu Bem, Lourinho, João Amorim, all of them, the Comadres, the Mandelas, the K-9s. I signaled for Beleco to come with us, but he’d rather stay shoulder to shoulder with Pardal Wenchell waiting for the vultures to go back to their circular flight, elegant in their black gowns, their cassocks and togas, their wings curved in mourning and hunger, their beaks like tombs, curved, hooked, their nostrils already smelling the world’s rot, and Beleco stretched out his arm, aimed at me, again, and pulled the trigger.
My wife woke me up in a panic with a slap, I was drenched in sweat, my girls were screaming and crying. I tried to get up, I tried to find myself again, but they threw themselves on top of me, hugging me as if they were shielding me from stray bullets, or from visions of the future, or from madness, and so I cried, I cried because I needed all the love in this world to get up and face reality, I cried and quietly swore that I needed to protect my women before the final disaster, before I lost control of the car on the curve of this world with no brakes.
I fell asleep again and dreamed that Vovô do Crime, Guile Xangô, Vavau, Beleco, and Pardal Wenchell had died on their way to a Mangueira rehearsal. They were (tightly packed and happy) in a jeep driven by a woman. That vehicle was cut off by an ambulance (the siren howled in pain like a run-over dog), zigzagged, flew over the railing and fell from the Rio-Niterói bridge, onto the deck of a ship loaded with chemicals, explosives, and the explosion hovered in the air like a white flower, very white, pale and poisonous. Half asleep, I thought, “This nightmare should have come before the other one.” And who was the woman? Death? I need to tell Vavau about this, warn everyone, wake them up one by one, except Beleco, protect them one by one from all the danger.
* * *
1 Lines from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The City in the Sea.”
2 Guile Xangô’s words come from St. Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions.
3 French excerpt from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The City in the Sea,” in Mallarmé’s translation.
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE
Guile Xangô says the TV crew burst into the lobby of the Fonte Nova country inn with their lights, cameras, microphones, and arrogance in tow, and the reporter didn’t even say good morning good afternoon how are you, she just fired questions at them—are you the Baron, was it the Baron who found the slaughtered bodies in the chalet, did his employees do it, were your security guys a part of it, did you give the orders?
Maximiliano Álvares de Albuquerque, the Baron, told the reporter she was just a rude asshole and she and her crew should leave the hotel premises right then and there, the door was open, and she could see herself out. He told her he didn’t get it, all that noise because of half a dozen bums, where he was from, back in his town, you were supposed to nip the evil in the bud; the last thief walked away on his own two feet, but without his hands, and they all lived peacefully in God’s grace for more than fifty years.
The reporter insisted it looked like rain, and they hadn’t gotten any rain there in a long time, how did it happen, when did it happen, why did it happen and if Mr. Baron wasn’t the one who gave the orders, then why did he let it happen, as the owner and boss of the place? The Baron said he’d never get his hands dirty for so little, and the reporter once again pushed it, who killed the boys, and the Baron bristled at that, they weren’t boys, they were thugs, and they had certainly killed themselves, criminals are capable of anything, better them than me. “And the law?” the reporter asked; “I am the law,” the Baron answered; then the reporter: “And justice?”; and the Baron: “I am justice”; and the reporter: “So you would agree you took the law into your own hands”; and the Baron: “Justice is blind, it always has been, and I saw nothing, I know nothing, I saw nothing”; and the reporter: “But it’s not mute, and I know it makes no difference to you, it’s all the same, that’s fine, you already said what I wanted to hear.” And the Baron, trying not to jump on the woman’s neck: “I didn’t say anything, you’re the one talking, and talking nonsense, am I being interviewed or on trial here?” And the reporter: “It’s just an interview, and a very revealing one”; and the Baron: “You’re making a tempest in a teapot”; and the reporter: “If we’re talking water, a jug fills one drop at a time”; and the Baron, cocky: “And you’re here to draw the water to propel your own mill”; and the reporter, shouting: “This interview is over, you dumb shark, we’ll see you in court.”
The Baron banged his cane on the tabletop, to the rhythm of the crew’s stomping away. A trembling boy came in carrying a bottle of mineral water and a bunch of pills. The Baron: “Who asked for this? I want cognac, cognac, and tell them to get Zelão ready.” And the boy: “But the doctor said you can’t.”
“And do I look like I give a fuck what the doctor says I can or can’t do?” the Baron asked, throwing the cane at the boy, who luckily dodged it, caught it mid-air, then placed it on the table, out of reach. “You’re a man now, Tavinho,” the Baron said, angry and surprised. “Do as I say, it’s best for both of us.”
The Baron was already on his second glass of cognac when Pedro Paladino came in with Gypsy. “You got in trouble with those TV people,” Pedro Paladino said. “I gave you explicit orders to keep your mouth shut, to only speak in my presence.”
“And who are you to give me orders, kid?” the Baron said. “You should be making sure no reporter comes snooping around here, but you didn’t even do that, and look, I pay you very well to take care of this stuff.”
“The boys dying certainly doesn’t help, quite the opposite, it only complicates matters,” Pedro Paladino said. “Those thugs have nothing to do with my land,” the Baron said. “You may even think so, but listen to what I’m telling you, they’re going to cut your head right off, they’re going to end you,” Pedro Paladino said. “That’s not going to happen,” the Baron said, getting up to pick up his cane. “And are you going to just sit there, Gypsy?”
“Times have changed,” Gypsy answered. “Times have changed and all you do is fuck up, Gypsy,” the Baron said. “Get out of here, get yourself cleaned up, take some time off.”
“Dinosaurs,” Pedro Paladino grumbled. “Speak up so we can hear you,” the Baron said. “I was just thinking the current extinction of living species on our planet is a natural phenomenon, part of the evolutionary process, but still, though, because of human activity, species and ecosystems are now under more serious threat than ever before in history,” Pedro Paladino said, taking a generous swig of his brandy. “Zelão is ready,” Tavinho said. “You come with me,” said the Baron to Pedro Paladino. “You are way too fat, with that beer belly, take this time to get some exercise and keep me up to date.” “You do the paying, you give the orders, and I follow,” Pedro Paladino said. “But careful there not to fall off your high horse.”
From the top of his horse, the Baron listened to Pedro Paladino’s chatter: the mortgages, lawsuits, injunctions, wills, land tenure regularization projects on government-owned land, titles, records, temporary constitutional permits, justifications for freezes or suspensions, ascendants and descendants, guardianship and curatorship, the new civil code, senility. “Translate this Greek for me,” the Baron asked. “The federal government wants to give away your lands to the peasants,” Pedro Paladino said, drinking cognac straight from the bottle. “The state wants to build a country club for public servants, the city wants it to build public housing, businessmen want to open a soccer school, and your biological children are trying as hard as they can to put you in a nursing home under claims of senility, among other less dignified claims, and then get as much as they can from the federal government or the state or the city or from the businessmen, if possible from all of them at once, not to mention your nephews and grandchildren who also want a piece of the pie, I mean, you’re still quite the catch, my advice for you is to marry a twenty-year-old beauty, thirty at the most, a nice young woman, have some kids with her, if possible with my help, I’m ready to do that, I’m a man of good will, a fair man, and I believe you deserve a better family in what little future you got left in this cruel world.”
“Are you done yet?” the Baron asked. “I’m done,” Pedro Paladino said.
“So you got no news,” the Baron said. “Now leave me alone and go find something better to do, cognac of this quality shouldn’t be drunk straight from the bottle.”
“Have a good trip, boss,” Pedro Paladino said. “You should go see Machu Picchu, the ruins there are much better, I know, I know, there’s no need to shout, you don’t want to keep up with reality, I understand, go for it.”
The Baron trotted across his imaginary domain. Nothing there was real now. There had been a farm with a big house, chandeliers, silverware, a harpsichord, three pianos, settees, vases, wicker love seats, portraits on the walls, memories of a grand past through the ages, a visit from Emperor Pedro II turning into a visit from the dictator Getúlio Vargas though probably neither of the two visits were real, just lies of prestige. A typical coffee farm, with a vegetable patch, orchards of jaboticaba, mango, guava, avocado, papaya, rose apple, tamarind, star fruit, jamelão, blackberry, and grumixama, a huge jataí tree, a splendid sapucaia tree. Pigs, horses, oxen, cows, goats, lots of goats, it was a large goat farm. The land spread out in orangey hills, plowable only at a high cost, yielding little, and only through animal traction.
The farm was a natural resting place for travelers. Once the hard times hit, expenses were high, the family began to charge a nightly fee, and the quiet resting place became more of an inn, then a boarding house, a bed and breakfast, a country lodge. They took advantage of the springs, the waterfalls, the abundant water, and the business grew. Swimming pools, saunas, tennis courts, soccer fields, fishing lakes, reservoirs, horses, game rooms, an airstrip.
None of that wealth was the result of his labor, his business acumen, or his entrepreneurial vision. The Baron enjoyed showing off his athletic prowess in the pools, giving tennis and horseback riding lessons to the most attractive guests, livening up parties, and sponsoring gambling adventures and gambling rooms. That was his glorious and reckless phase as a youthful shark. As time went by, he took on the role of cultural impresario and public relations officer. The arrivals were joyful and the departures melancholic, the shows unforgettable, life good. All his siblings, five brothers and four sisters, ended up marrying guests. The weddings were held in the main hall with much pomp and circumstance, wealthy best men, and powerful guests. His own wedding was by the main pool.
Births and deaths came and went, and life went on. Until the springs dried up, the waterfalls turned into ravines, and the demise of the country inn announced the end of the family. Fonte Nova fell into his lap, what was once the center of the world now barely on the outskirts. Weeds consumed the tennis courts, the soccer fields, the pools turned into sewage, and mold, decay, shadows, ghosts, silence, ruins took over everything else. No planes descended anymore from the empty skies. Now they wanted to sweep away his memories, but only over his dead body. He would die without leaving a trace. His name wouldn’t linger on an avenue, a square, a school, a club, a housing complex, a poor neighborhood. He would fight until the end, until total oblivion.
He came trotting back to the hotel, wind blowing through the grass, flocks of nunbirds, vultures in the dead sky. He came across four workers still trying to salvage something from the termites of time, a futile task. The old Gypsy, a jack of all trades, was cleaning the only swimming pool still in working order. The water came in tank trucks so he could swim his daily laps; he was still proud of his physique; he would not give up without a fight. Gypsy raised his hand to wave, his body in a military posture, the gun at his waist, a loyal bodyguard. He should have been very far away by now, but he was still visible, as if nothing had happened, stubborn. He waved back and continued his trotting. He would talk to Gypsy later, when everything calmed down, but he already knew the answer to the question he’d ask, Gypsy was a man of his word and was basically all he had left for family. He shouldn’t have shouted, “Get yourself cleaned up.” At the end of the day, nothing had happened.
He handed Zelão over to Tavinho and went up to his room. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep. He had always been a good sleeper and couldn’t remember how long it’d taken him to get used to being the only guest at his own hotel. “I need to get the Gypsy to clean the chalet,” the Baron thought, “throw gasoline on it, set it on fire, fire cleans better than water.” Sleep came as a form of redemption, set everything ablaze, from the city people would see the great fire.
He pushed it off for a week. “I won’t go. He who owes nothing fears nothing.” But the inconvenient police car parked by the hotel entrance, for days on end, pressured him to give in. “I’ll ride my horse out of here,” the Baron said. And off he went, riding Zelão, followed by Pedro Paladino’s car. He dismounted outside the police station to be greeted by a small crowd shouting, “Murderer, murderer.” He went on his way with his cane and his whip, declining police protection. “You don’t need to protect me. I know how to defend myself from the plebs, you should protect them instead, these dirty bums.”
The police chief welcomed Maximiliano Álvares de Albuquerque into her office with the curious look of someone studying a relic. “Sit down,” she said, and he sat down with a schoolboy’s awkwardness.
“Do you know Rogério Rodrigues dos Santos, former marine?”
“No, I don’t know him.”
“He’s worked for you for thirty years.”
“I don’t have any employees by that name.”
“And does the name Gypsy mean anything to you?”
“That’s one of my employees.”
“You didn’t know that Rogério Rodrigues dos Santos and Gypsy are the same person?”
“I didn’t.”
“Are there any other details you don’t know?”
“I don’t pay much attention to the details, do you?”
“I ask the questions here.”
“Gypsy’s in jail?”
“I already told you I ask the questions here.”
The police chief showed images of the young men’s bodies, presenting the photos like they were playing cards, a game of poker. “I have nothing to do with these criminals,” the Baron said. “They weren’t criminals, Mr. Maximiliano, they were all honest workers, all four of them were working and studying, and they just made the mistake of thinking your property was vacant and spending the night in one of your chalets one long weekend.”
“The world isn’t going to end because of half a dozen Black boys,” the Baron said. “How long has it been, Mr. Baron, if I may call you by your nickname, how long’s it been since you’ve left your property?” “I’ve never left, I’ve always lived there,” he said. “It’s the whole world, my world, I don’t need anything else.” “Yes, you do, Mr. Baron,” the police chief said. “You are not the law, you are not justice, you don’t own the world, you need to answer for your actions.”
After four hours of interrogation, the Baron wanted nothing to do with his horse anymore. He returned in Pedro Paladino’s car and didn’t react when the crowd met his dejected figure with more cries of murderer, murderer.
He settled into the old rocking chair and, from the hotel balcony, let his gaze wander off to the empty fields and shadows. “I don’t want to get arrested,” the Baron said. “It’s Gypsy’s turn, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” Pedro Paladino said. “If I get arrested, I want you to make sure it’s a house arrest,” the Baron said. “You’ve always liked your comfort, Baron, that’s fine,” Pedro Paladino said. “But if they throw you out of here the whole world will fall apart, then it won’t matter whether you rot in a nursing home or in jail.”
Tavinho came in with a bottle of cognac and two glasses.
“I don’t know if you noticed, Baron, but the dead boys were Black, the reporter who interviewed you is Black, the police chief is Black, I’m not one bit white either,” Pedro Paladino said.
