Carioca Fletch

Twenty-three

“I will speak English so good as I can,” the middle-aged Janio Barreto Filho said. “Mother says to me you want me to bring to life for you the facts of what happened.”

“Yes,” Fletch said. “Please.”

“If this will help you tell us who murdered you …”

Barreto Filho sat in a cushioned chair along the back wall of the house. Stately as a duchess, Idalina Barreto sat in her tall chair along the side wall. Fletch and Marilia sat along the other side wall.

Adult relatives sat in the other chairs. Four stood near the door. Children sat on the dirt floor. The windows were filled with people listening.

The area in front of the house was crowded with people.

From somewhere in the neighborhood the distinct sound of a television ceased.

But, of course, practicing drums could still be heard.

As Janio Barreto Filho spoke, he was interrupted, questioned, reminded, and corrected by his mother and other adults inside and outside the house. Marilia helped to translate the difficult parts.

Listening intently, as the room under the tin roof in the sun became hotter, the air thicker, Fletch put together a continuous narrative to take away with him, to dissect and analyse later.

This may be a story, Janio Barreto Filho said, of a father who may have been right.

After all these years, my mother would like to know.

My father, Janio Barreto, was a handsome man, fair of hair and skin, well built, very lively, believed to be the best dancer in all the favela, maybe all of Rio de Janeiro. At least people say they enjoyed watching him the most. Sometimes, serving young people from North America, one or two from Chile or Argentina, in the hotels of Copacabana, I have thought of him, as this was always as he was described to me, light in color and as unconcerned with the sad little things in life as a rich person.

It is said he came from near Sao Paulo, perhaps the descendant of one of the North Americans from the South of the United States who came to that area at the end of your Civil War, to try to continue their plantation, slave-owning lives there. Many such came, and, of course, such is the beauty and seductiveness of our women, it was not long before they too became a part of the Brazilian population, their children having black and Indian blood and therefore unable to keep their brothers and sisters in bondage.

But you were truly fair, and came to the favela Santos Lima like a welcome thunder-storm in midwinter heat, casting your bolts of lightning everywhere. Why you came here, perhaps you could tell us now.

You were fourteen or fifteen when you arrived, full of your juices, full of laughs and smiles, being here, there, everywhere at once. As soon as you came to the favela, everyone could not have enough news of you: Where is Janio? What has Janio done now? Did you hear what Janio did last night? When the pantaloons of the corrupt policeman were pasted on the statue of Saint Francis, when the new bicycle of the storekeeper was found in a bedroom of the brothel, when the shit-dam suddenly appeared around the big house a few of the faithful had built for the strict North American missionary, everyone knew you did it, and laughed with you, and stroked your fair hair.

The prestige of any girl you lay with rose in the favela. I suppose some of the girls lied about this, as it seems impossible to me—a man who enjoys life as much as any other—that one boy could have granted such prestige to so very many girls. In my own youth, being your acknowledged son, too much was expected of me. Going down the street I had to protect myself, not only from girls, but from their mothers as well. It is true that the favela Santos Lima is known to have many more fair people than any other favela in Rio de Janeiro.

Of course you took on friends, a gang of three or four boys, two of whom were Idalina’s brothers. Together you spent the days on the beaches, wrestling, swimming, playing soccer, the nights drinking and dancing and gambling, increasing the prestige of girls individually and raising mischief.

Now, Idalina’s father was a man of great dignity. Although he worked as a conductor on a trolley car, he spent his life studying to be a bookkeeper. He never succeeded in finding work as a bookkeeper, but he prepared himself. It was his fervent wish at least to hand on to his sons the idea of being a bookkeeper.

He did not share in the favela’s general idolatry of Janio Barreto. He felt you were leading his sons astray, giving them a liveliness that was not natural to them or in keeping with the idea of keeping books.

Through people he knew at the samba school, finally he succeeded in getting his sons jobs on a fishing boat. But the old men who owned the fishing boat made the condition highly irksome to old Fernando that they would only hire his sons to work on the fishing boat if they could hire Janio Barreto as well. Whether the idea was that they believed my uncles needed your leadership and brains, even though at first you knew nothing about the sea, being from the interior of Brazil, or whether it was the idea of the elders to get you to sea and therefore away from the favela some hours of the week and therefore cut down on the mischief and population growth, or whether they wanted, by being your employers, to be the first to know and tell of your pranks is unknown to me. To get his sons employed, Fernando had no choice but to agree.

So you went on the fishing boat with the Gomes brothers, and soon there were stories of a dead cold fish five feet long being put in the bed of the most precise bachelor in the favela while he slept (it was sad he never slept in his bed or ate fish again), of a fishing-boat race which caused an older captain, whom you had taunted unmercifully, to become so determined to win at any cost that he rammed his own dock under full sail at such high speed he smashed his boat to slivers.

Fernando put up with all this with resignation. At least his sons had jobs, and there was hope that after a while working hard at sea, they would come to the idea of bookkeeping.

But when you began to call upon his daughter Idalina, coo to her through the window, spread flowers you stole from the cemetery all over the roof of the house, Fernando went into a rage.

Nor did he consider it funny when, on the night of his Saint’s Day and perhaps he had had a bit too much to drink and lay in a stupor, you came along and shaved off only half of his mustache.

Then, at the age of eighteen, when most young men consider it wise and appropriate to be humble, apparently goaded by Fernando’s open disapproval of you, you announced to the whole favela your intention of making Idalina your wife.

The favela was delighted. They knew marriage would do you no harm, not slow you down or make you less entertaining.

Idalina was delighted. It did not disturb her to be marrying the liveliest boy in the favela, or that her bond to you in marriage would have to be made of elastic.

Fernando fell into a mood so black for weeks he could not think of bookkeeping. He spent his time keeping his eye on Idalina. He argued with the air.

“Am I the only sane man in the world to see that Janio Barreto is a bad boy and no match for my Idalina? He has done enough to me, in keeping my sons from thinking in assets and debits! Why does he want a wife when he has every girl in the favela spitting at each other over him? He will never stop! Does he want to marry my daughter and continue his wild life just to torment me? It is as natural for him to be a husband as it is for a tomcat to pull a wagon!

“Idalina, he is no good! At the first difficulties of life, he will wander away! Already he has wandered from his home once! I want to know why! Once a man has wandered from his home, he is never to be trusted! He will wander again!

“Believe me, he will end up beaten in a gutter! That will not be a husband to be proud of!

“Probably dead! Some day someone will put a knife to him, and that will be the end of your husband, Janio Barreto, and of your marriage!”

The weight of the favela was on the side of the young lovers, of course, as people who are not directly involved in a situation always prefer romance to reason, and while Fernando stewed in his deep gloom, you and Idalina were married.

Now, as you must remember, not only were you known to be able to dance better and for a longer time than anyone, with more admiring eyes upon you, also you brought to the favela many new things about kick-dancing, capoeira, it being a skill which really developed in the interior. You taught the young men in Santos Lima more about capoeira than people knew in all the other favelas in Rio.

At that time, the Carnival Parade was beginning to become more organized from just a street competition among the favelas to the more formal presentation and attraction it is today.

Immediately, the samba school of Santos Lima became most famous for its troupe of capoeiristas you had trained. Santos Lima still has the reputation as having the best capoeira group in Rio de Janeiro.

But the first prophecy of Fernando came true.

You did not return immediately from Carnival that year. For days afterwards you were missing.

Finally you returned to Santos Lima from somewhere in the city. It was clear you had been physically beaten, and very badly. Your body was black with bruises. There were knife cuts on your upper arms and shoulders. Your face was as lumpy and welted as the bed of a couple married fifty years. You dragged yourself home like a beaten dog. Obviously, you had ended up beaten in a gutter.

People remarked, in hushed voices, the change in you. Silently you sat in your little house, licking your wounds. You never said what happened. You spoke to no one. Your laughter was not heard anywhere in the favela. You never went out and embarrassed Idalina by being with other women, to such an extent Idalina was beginning to lose her pride in you.

This is as I have the story from my mother and my uncles. Is your life beginning to come alive for you?

Then the second prophecy of Fernando came true.

After sitting quietly at home, not working, not playing, for almost all of Lent, you rose up and, carrying nothing, taking nothing with you except the working shorts you wore roped around your waist, you walked down the favela without a salutation to anyone, and disappeared. You wandered away.

Everyone was sure you were gone for good. Fun had gone from the favela.

Everyone commiserated with Fernando for having an abandoned daughter and two small grandchildren living out of his pocket, and congratulated him on the accuracy of his prophecies.

But the next winter, nine months later, you came back. You sailed into Guanabara Bay in a fishing boat you said was your own, a big boat ten meters long. You said you won it playing cards in Uruguay. The name painted on her side was in Spanish, La Muñeca. Surely you had sailed a long way. You were as thin as a street dog and very badly sunburned across your nose and shoulders. Some people said you went to Uruguay and stole the boat. Did you?

So now you had your own fishing boat.

In the inactivity caused by your absence, one of the Gomes brothers had become too fat to fish, the other too drunken. They both said they wanted to stay ashore now and think about bookkeeping.

You took on another young man, younger than you, named Tobias Novaes, to help you fish.

You worked hard. Shortly, you had a house near the top of the favela, higher even than Fernando’s house. And for every married year, you had a child from your wife, Idalina. And every one of those children had children to play with their own ages who were also partly fair and looked as much like them as cousins.

At about your present age, it happened that a girl younger than you, who was as fair of hair and skin as yourself, came to the favela. Immediately, the favela said, “Oh, poor Idalina! This one will be serious! If they love themselves, how can they not love each other?”

And it was noticed that you became more serious then, worked longer hours, seldom looked up from your work. It was if you were trying to ignore the inevitable: Ana Tavares, her name was.

But the inevitable is the inevitable, and as if your seed were transmitted by the wind, it was soon seen that Ana Tavares was glowing in her pregnancy.

This was especially noted as Ana Tavares was only waiting out the year to be old enough to join the convent of The Sacred Heart of Jesus. People marveled that a girl who spent so many hours of the day and the night kneeling before the statue of the Blessed Virgin could become pregnant. They attributed it to the wind.

Spending just as much time in prayer as always, Ana did not explain or complain.

Her father, however, whose life had not been as saintly as is recommended, was outraged. It had been his fondest wish to have a daughter a nun to pray for his soul before and after it departed.

You, having no father or brothers to attack, and being too young and strong, too expert a capoeirista, to attack, laughed for days after old Tavares attacked your father-in-law, Fernando, for his trouble-making son-in-law. Your father-in-law did not defend you. He too carried such rage at you that he yelled back at Tavares, and the two fathers of women became so enraged thinking about you that soon they were beating each other with their fists, then rolling on the ground, apparently fighting about which had the greater rage against you.

In truth, the son of Ana Tavares was entirely fair. She became the wife of a carpenter, and the boy—most likely another of your sons—became a Puxador de Samba, a singer of great repute in the samba school.

Yes, Oswaldinho there, in the window, is a son of that son of yours. You see how fair he is? Clearly, he has your blood, as have I.

Then the third prophecy of old Fernando came true—really came true.

One night you did not come home. You did not come home most nights. You were still young and perhaps by now considered it your obligation to entertain the favela with your tricks and to continue increasing your ever-growing audience by copulation.

But after this night in particular, after a heavy sea storm, you were found on the beach, face down, with your throat slit ear to ear. Your blood had drained from your neck into the sand. Your shorts and hair and skin were caked with salt water, as if you had swum a long way to shore.

People say that in that particular spot on the beach, it has been impossible to light a fire or even light a match, ever since.

Your boat, La Muñeca, was missing, and never seen again.

Never seen again also was the boy who had helped you on the boat, Tobias Novaes.

For many years it was believed you had been murdered by young Tobias, although that surprised people, as it was generally believed he was a good boy. People thought he had slit your throat and stolen your boat.

But years later, his father got a letter from him, saying he had become a monk in Recife. Instantly, they had a letter written to him, asking if he had murdered you and stolen your boat.

The answer came back, eventually, that he hadn’t known you were dead and that he felt himself greatly indebted to you as it was your example, and the example of your life, which had made the unworldly, serene, contemplative life of a monk seem so ideal to him.

For all these years your murder has been a mystery. There were so many people who could have killed you. Someone in the favela who did not like a trick you played on him? Did Tobias murder you for the boat? Did Uruguayans come and murder you and take back their boat? Or had the boat wrecked in the storm? How about old Tavares? He believed your preventing his daughter, Ana, from becoming a nun, surely condemned him to hell…?

My grandfather Fernando made three predictions about you. That you would end up beaten in the gutter. You were beaten up, but you survived it, became your old self again. That, sooner or later, you would wander away. You did, but you came back. That some day, someone would take a knife to you and kill you. That happened.

My mother, Idalina, who is very old now, as you see, wants to know the truth of these things. Who murdered you, and why?

How is it that her father was so right about you?