A General Theory of Oblivion

IN WHICH IT IS REVEALED HOW NASSER EVANGELISTA HELPED LITTLE CHIEF TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON

We always die of dejection. That is, when our souls fail us, then we die. That was Little Chief’s theory. In support of this, the businessman described what had happened to him the second time he was arrested. He’d faced the terrible prison conditions, the ill treatment, the torture, with a courage that surprised not only his companions in misfortune but also the prison guards and the agents of the political police.

It wasn’t courage, he admitted:

‘I was experiencing serious rebelliousness. My soul was rebelling against the injustices. Fear, yes, the fear came to hurt me more than the blows, but the rebellion was outgrowing the fear, and that was when I confronted the police. I was never quiet. When they shouted at me, I shouted louder. At a certain point, I realised those guys were more scared of me than I was of them.’

One time when they were punishing him, and they put him in a tiny cell, which they called Kifangondo after the site of the great battle, Little Chief found a rat and adopted it. He called it Splendour, a name that was perhaps a little optimistic for a common rat, brown and shifty, with a gnawed-on ear and fur in pretty poor shape. When Little Chief reappeared in the regular cell, with Splendour nestled on his right shoulder, some of his companions teased him. Most ignored him. At that time, at the end of the seventies, the São Paulo prison brought together an extraordinary collection of personalities. American and English mercenaries, taken in combat, lived alongside dissident exiles from the ANC who had fallen into misfortune. Young intellectuals from the far left exchanged ideas with old Portuguese Salazarists. There were guys locked up for diamond trafficking, and others for not having stood to attention during the raising of the flag. Some of the prisoners had been important leaders in the party. They took pride in their friendship with the president.

‘Only yesterday, the old man and I went fishing together,’ one of them boasted to Little Chief. ‘When he finds out what’s happened he’ll get me out of here and have the morons who did this to me arrested.’

He was shot the following week.

Many didn’t even know what they’d been accused of. Some went crazy. The interrogations often seemed erratic, preposterous, as though the aim were not to extract information from the detainees, but merely to torture and confuse them.

In this context, a man with a trained rat wasn’t enough to surprise anyone. Little Chief took care of Splendour. He taught him tricks. He’d say ‘Sit!’, and the animal sat. ‘Around!’, he’d order, and the rat started walking in circles. Monte heard about this and went to the cell to visit the prisoner.

‘They tell me you’ve made a new friend.’

Little Chief didn’t answer. He’d created a rule for himself never to reply to an agent from the political police, unless the agent was shouting. In such cases he would scream an attack at him in return, accusing him of being in the service of the socio-fascist dictatorship, etc. Monte found the prisoner’s behaviour exasperating:

‘I’m talking to you, for fuck’s sake! Don’t act like I’m invisible.’

Little Chief turned his back on him. Monte lost it, and tugged on his shirt. That was the moment he saw Splendour. He grabbed hold of the animal, threw it onto the floor and stamped on it. In the midst of all those crimes, the vast crimes that were being committed in those days, right there, within the prison walls, the tiny death of Splendour affected nobody, apart from Little Chief. The young man fell into deep dejection. He spent his days lying on a mat, unspeaking, unmoving, indifferent to his cellmates. He became so thin that his ribs stuck out beneath his skin like the keys of a kisanji. Finally, they took him to the infirmary.

When he was arrested, Nasser Evangelista had been working at the Maria Pia hospital as an orderly. He took no interest in politics. All his attention was trained on a young nurse called Sueli Mirela, well known for the length of her legs, which she displayed generously in daring miniskirts, and for her round hairdo in the style of Angela Davis. The girl, who was going out with a state security agent, allowed herself to be seduced by the orderly’s sweet words. Her boyfriend, in a rage, accused his rival of being linked to the fractionists. When he was locked up, Nasser started to work in the prison infirmary. He was moved when he saw Little Chief’s condition. He conceived and organised the plan himself, a plan that was brave and yet happy, which made it possible to return the frail young man to freedom. Well, to relative freedom since, as Little Chief himself liked to repeat, no man is free as long as one other man is in prison.

Nasser Evangelista registered the death of Little Chief, alias Arnaldo Cruz, aged nineteen, student of law, and he himself put the body in the coffin. A distant cousin, who was in reality a comrade from the same small party in which he was himself an activist, received the casket. He buried it, in a discreet ceremony at the Alto das Cruzes cemetery. He did this after removing the passenger in question. Little Chief got into the habit of visiting the grave on the anniversary of his supposed death, taking flowers to himself. ‘To me, it’s a reflection on the fragility of life and a small exercise in otherness,’ he explained to his friends. ‘I go out there, and I try and think of myself as a close relative. I am, really, my own closest relative. I think about his defects, about his qualities, and whether or not he deserves my tears. I almost always cry a little.’

It was months before the police discovered the fraud. Then they arrested him again.