The Issenheim Code

The ISSenheim Code Henrique Moura Costa

The ISSenheim Code Henrique Moura Costa

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To Clarice My Partner, my friend, my lover, my love

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my friend Carlos Rodolfo da Mota Rezende writer and engineer, whose words: “Books are split into two categories, those which are good and those which are not. Yours is, no doubt, in the former category. As for writers, the same goes: either they know or they don’t know how to write. And you do.” encouraged me to write this book.

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Author’s Foreword In 1941 I went to work at the Gazeta Carioca in Lapa, a newspaper founded at the beginning of the century and which no longer exists. Arriving from a studentship in Europe, my promising musical career was interrupted by one simple factor: money. Not being from a family of means, at 25 years of age I had to pay my own way.

At the Gazeta, which at the time was in serious financial difficulties, I covered international news. But in reality I did a bit of everything, in order to earn a little more money. And so I met Honório Ramos, when I interviewed him at the hospital where he was recovering from two gunshot wounds suffered in an incident never investigated by the police. From that interview a friendship was born and I came to meet Honório every so often. Honório was an active communist and possibly because of my left-wing sympathies, but more likely because of not having anyone with whom to confide, he gave me his version of events on the night of 19th June 1941. Although I obviously could not publish it at the time, the story greatly affected me. Almost 30 years later I came to know Mário Soares Junior. I told him about Honório’s story, which was closely linked to the death of his own father. I did not hide my interest in learning from the son whatever else I could with respect to the story. Those were again difficult times in Brazil for those who did not conform to the existing totalitarian regime.

It was at that time that I came to know about the details of a shocking incident.

Over several weeks I carefully noted Mário’s statements (how I hate this word).

I also interviewed his aunt Celeste, who despite being quite elderly offered me precious information. Honório’s story, Mário’s narrative and Celeste’s information allowed me to reconstruct the incidents I describe below.

As an ex-musician, ex-journalist and ex-communist, I felt that, in my old age, I had the obligation to make this story public, less because of its ‘Mystery Romance’ angle and more because it contained actual facts about some dark periods of our times. Thus, I have introduced some footnotes regarding the Brazilian and European contexts, with brief explanations of facts and individuals mentioned to enlighten younger readers who did not live through that turbulent time. In these, nevertheless, I have not been able to avoid leaving my emotional imprint.

Furthermore, some front covers from the newspaper ‘O Estado de São Paulo’, which refused to accept self-censorship during a particularly unpleasant period of Brazilian history, have been reproduced here.

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For obvious reasons I have had to change the names of people who, in one way or another, might otherwise be harmed by this publication. Those names, however, which are in the public domain, as well as historical facts, have been, to the best of my knowledge and memory, rigorously accurate.

Rio de Janeiro, autumn 1999

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First Part

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1 Rio de Janeiro, 19th July 1941 8.30 pm A taxi stopped at the front door of the house in Álvaro Ramos Street, a twostorey house typical of the neighbourhood of Laranjeiras.

A stout woman stepped out and asked the driver to wait. She made her way hurriedly to the entrance, carrying a packet under her right arm and pressed repeatedly on the doorbell. The sound of a cello, slightly muffled by a closed window, spread through the deserted street along with the smell of steak being cooked.

After a few seconds, a young woman seemingly in her early thirties came out of the kitchen looking slightly dishevelled and with a pinched face. Still drying her hands on the apron and moaning bad temperedly ‘who can it be at this time of night’, opened the door and said caustically.

“Good evening.”

“I’ve come to deliver a package for Mr Mário. The taxi is waiting outside.”

The unmistakable accent showed the German origins of the recent arrival.

“Come in...”

Mário was putting away the score of Dvorak’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in D minor and getting ready to have a shower before dinner. He had been practicing just twelve bars of the first movement for the entire afternoon. Not because he had any pretensions to play with an orchestra, but because he had heard that in the United States they already have minus one recordings, in which the orchestra plays concerts without soloists. That would be great, although it was difficult to understand how he would change the records without interrupting the performance.

At thirty-seven years of age, Mário Soares split his time between reading, practicing the cello in his study and having music lessons in the house of his music teacher Annelise in Candido Mendes Street, on the road going up to Santa Teresa. He lived comfortably enough, albeit without any luxuries, from

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Bank of Brazil share dividends (his grandfather’s inheritance), rental income from four apartments in Méier (also inherited from his grandfather) and mainly a pension for life which his sister Celeste received from the Army, inherited from their father.

He had never worked. Apart from brief moments of his life of poorly remunerated activity (doing the library inventory of the Deaf Mute Institute, for example) and other such ‘jobettes’, Mário lived for his books, his records and his occasional meetings with Honório, the only person he could call a friend. He had various acquaintances, but he didn’t share intimacies with them.

His son Mário Junior, at that moment in his bedroom next door, also spent his time reading, in his case the cartoons of the Globo Youngster’s Almanac for the thirtieth time, and making vain attempts to ‘furtively’ draw the ‘probable’ form of a naked woman.

On hearing the bell, Mário looked out from upstairs. He saw Ms Clara and ran down the stairs. Her presence for him was self-explanatory. It dispensed with questions and introductions. Silently she gave him the package which she had brought – a white music notebook with a treble clef in gilt on the cover.

Automatically, as if everything had been rehearsed, Mário went upstairs and locked himself in the study.

While Ms Clara waited downstairs, Celeste offered her some coffee, which they drank together in the kitchen silently. Soon after, Mário came downstairs and returned the notebook to Ms Clara, who left immediately without a single question. The mute scene did not last more than a few minutes. Not a single word passed between them.

In the kitchen Celeste finished getting dinner ready. Single and somewhat apathetic, she had gone to live in her brother’s house after her sister-in-law, a sour Trotskyite, left alleging that her husband was a useless layabout. The presence of his sister was timely for Mário. With her reserved behaviour and with no desire for a life of her own, Celeste dedicated herself totally to running the house and, above all, to her nephew Mário Junior. When her sister-in-law abandoned the family, he was only a baby. Celeste was utterly devoted to him.

Spurning dinner, to Celeste’s indignation, Mário returned to the study, closed the door and telephoned Honório.

Honório Ramos, forty-eight years old and single, was a Communist Party activist and lived clandestinely. Mário, visibly nervous, left the classic message

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for him to call back. Luckily he didn’t have to wait long: Honório returned his call almost immediately.

“What is it, comr...” Honório stopped himself just in time.

“What is it man? Are you nervous?”

“Honório, it’s urgent. I have to speak with Hugo. Now.” “Relax, leave it to me and I’ll sort it. I’ve never let you down.”

“No, this time I actually have to speak to him myself. It won’t take long.”

He hung up. Honório called back a few seconds later. “ I’ll pick you up at half past nine.”

2 (Extracts from a reporter’s notes) Europe, summer of 1941 During those June days, the annexed, the accomplices, the conquered, the neutral, the pusillanimous and the co-opted were in some way or other under the dominion of the Teutonic eagle. These exploits had been meticulously planned and effectively executed, based on the four pillars of Germanic wisdom: 1) The military partnership with terror idealised by Von Clausewitz, who promoted in 1818 in his essay ‘On War’ terror against a civilian population as an effective and rapid method for ending war.

2) The rude and primitive diplomacy pursued by the arrogant and truculent former champagne merchant called Joaquim extra-dry Ribbentropp, but discreetly of course. Very discreetly.

3) Propaganda taken to limits never before thought possible, orchestrated with scientific precision by Dr Goebbels. This weapon, up to now unknown, did not know any kind of limits, reaching countries and continents with a combination of political, technological and cultural tools.

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In industry, Krupps, Siemens and I.G.Farben represented, among other things, a model of know-how and efficiency. Graff Zeppelin kept a regular service of his flying wonders to the United States (interrupted by the Hindemburg disaster) and to Brazil.

In philosophy, Martin Heiddeger, an existentialist thinker and eminent professor, did not hide his enthusiasm for the New Order.

Even music, the most abstract of the arts, was widely used. Walter Gieseking, an excellent pianist by the way, did his world tour as cultural ambassador of the Third Reich. His famous French colleague, Alfred Cortot, also did what he could. Wilhelm Fürtwangler, perhaps the bestknown and appreciated conductor in the West, did not refuse to conduct for Corporal Schicklgruber1 in the Wagnerian temple of Bayreuth. In Saltzburg, the charming city where Mozart and ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ were born, a young and talented conductor, Herbert Von Karajan, entered the ranks of the SS, swapping ‘Exultate Jubilate’ for the ‘Horst Wessel Lied’2. Even the genial creator of ‘Electra’ and ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, Richard Strauss, offered his collaboration for the universal diffusion of the Master Race, Herrenvolk.

People pre-eminent in their respective countries were invited to verify in loco the feats of the order and to spread the good word throughout the world, as did Charles Lindburgh, the heroic American pioneer of Transatlantic crossing in his Spirit of St. Louis and Lady Astor, the petulant and active feminist, who, on provoking Winston Churchill at a party by threatening to poison his drink, received the immediate reply: “ If I were your husband, I would drink it”.

Even the abdicated King, Edward VIII, frequented with his wife, the American Wallis Simpson, the functions at the Chancellery at Unter der Linden, charmed by the Thousand Year Reich, and which led to his virtual banishment from British soil by a tough Churchill, who ended up extending to him the humiliating post of Governor of Bahamas.

4) And last but not least, the hidden force, the Fifth Column, a term already coined in neighbouring Spain during the siege of Madrid four years earlier, this being those who conspired towards a Nazi hegemony in their 1

Alois Schicklgruber, Adolf Hitler’s original family name.

Horst Wessel Lied. The Horst Wessel Song, a Nazi ‘hero’ who had died refusing a transfusion of Jewish blood. The music was the hymn of the Party.

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own countries, such as Seyss Inquart in Austria, Heilen in Czechoslovakia, Quisling in Norway, and Leon Degrelle in Belgium.

France was undermined by Laval, Dorior, Deat, Marquet and by the defeatism of the First World War veteran, Marshall Henri Phillipe Pétain, now presiding in Vichy over his country which had been amputated in Compiègne, whereas in London exile De Gaulle broadcast via the BBC the Grandeur de la France, the OBF, Ouef, Beurre, Fromage (Eggs, Butter and Cheese) got rich in the black market and Jean Moulin organised the maquis Resistance.

In the neutral countries Sweden and Switzerland, the twisted cross did not perturb. Wisely, these countries confirmed that neutrality was more lucrative than the ideological option.

Sweden cashing in on steel.

Switzerland cashing in on gold.

Spain, strongly fascist but impoverished by the civil war and prudently ambiguous, whose shrewd leader Franco, after having being supported by the Condor Legion1, finally met his benefactor – Hitler – on the border...

Portugal, still recovering from the Napoleonic invasion of the nineteenth century, whose hero of Santa Comba Dão2 flirted with SS gold extracted from deceased Jews, but preferred to keep his country as a comfortable nest of spies who would listen to the melancholic and depressing fado in the Espírito Santo mansion, in Cascais. It was understandable: the intervention of the English was necessary to expel the Napoleonic troops of Juneau. One never knows what the next day may bring...

Nevertheless, despite a splendid collection of failures, retreats and all kinds of embarrassments, England still kept its territory and its stubbornness. Operation Sealion, for the invasion of the island by sea and air, so enthusiastically undertaken by Goering, had been aborted less than a year before, due to the obstinacy of the RAF in the Battle of Britain. There, Oswald Mosley didn’t have a chance, contrary to the experience of his continental colleagues.

Being pusillanimous, the Vatican didn’t count.

That left Russia. Stalin’s bloody paranoia had eliminated intellectuals such as Zinoviev, Kamenev, Kirov and many others, as well as depriving the army of the 1 2

A Luftwaffe division, sent to Spain in 1936, responsible for the bombing of Guernica.

Antônio de Oliveira Salazar, economics professor and dictator.

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greater part of its most experienced generals, in the brutal purge of 1938. The pact of the 24th of August 1939, the ‘Ribbentrop Pact’, served for Russia as a protection against any Germanic pretensions to invade its frontiers. With a bad memory, its signatory Molotov forgot that his German colleague Bethmann Hollweg had, in 1914, classified the neutrality treaty in Belgium, which he had just broken, as ‘a simple piece of paper’.

Barbarossa1 was about to begin.

3 19th July 1941 9.25 pm Honório honked the horn of the 1936 Chevrolet, which was the worse for wear, a ‘tool’ of the party. Mário, who was waiting anxiously by the window, left the house and hurriedly got into the car. They made their way to the Hotel Novo Mundo, on Flamengo Beach. Honório parked in the side street. They crossed a gloomy lobby with a floor of pink marble and dark wood panelling. They made their way to the reception and spoke to the receptionist: “We would like to speak to Mr Hugo, he’s waiting for us.”

The concierge, who had already been informed from the time of Honório’s telephone call, simply said: “Room 505, the elevator on the left.”

They took the elevator up to the third floor and continued the rest of the way via the stairs. (Honório’s professional trick of the trade). They knocked on the door.

It was opened by a short, dark, strongly built man, whose deep blue eyes advertised Germanic or Saxon extraction. Honório did the introductions: “This is Mário, who you already know by name. We’ve come here because he urgently needs to speak with you.”

The man used his head to usher in Mário. Mário entered. Without a word he closed the door, leaving an irritated Honório waiting in the corridor. After all, it 1

Operation Barbarossa: the Invasion of Russia.

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was always him who spoke with Hugo, he didn’t understand the reason for this discrimination, which in his opinion was without reason. Ten minutes later the door opened and the two left. Hugo murmured something to Honório along the lines of “until next time, comrade”. Honório merely nodded, without hiding his anger and frustration on having been excluded from the conversation, the subject of which he was perfectly familiar with, as he had been given a detailed account by Mário during the car journey there.

4 19th July 1941 9.30 pm Otto went upstairs again from the room of the old woman. He was still smiling at the look of surprise on her face when he gave her the envelope. But it wasn’t time for smiles. He went into his study, poured himself a sherry and sat down.

He had just turned the last page of his life.

A genuine Junker, a typical Prussian soldier, Otto with his height and stiff posture was an impressive figure despite the limp, souvenir of a French bullet at the Marne in August 1917. At about 50 years of age, he was what could be described as a successful man. His decision to immigrate to Brazil had been absolutely the right one.

After the Armistice of November 1918, the Weimar Republic tried to govern a Germany completely impoverished by the war and its consequences. An ignominious Versailles Treaty drained all of its economy to the Victorious powers, as part of war reparations. Social dissatisfaction was immense.

Germany was virtually a powder keg.

Brazil gave him the fertile soil of opportunity. His textile factory had grown enough for him to build a substantial fortune and for him to take his place together with the German elite. His house was frequented by politicians, business people and Brazilian and German diplomats, including the German ambassador.

He had had the luck to meet Annelise, who had accepted his marriage proposal when he already considered himself a confirmed bachelor. The daughter of radical German immigrants in Santa Catarina, Annelise had just returned from Berlin, where she had qualified in the cello. They had met at a reception in the Embassy. Otto had taken her home in his Packard. They got married at the

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Consulate. Since then she had come to be a very important component on his social life, contributing her talent in receiving his guests. Local politics were very confusing. Currently there was a dictatorship sympathetic to the Germans but the situation was much better than that which was happening in her country...

But things had changed.

5 (Extracts from a reporter’s notes) Brazil, winter of 1941 The national political scene was a tropical mimic of the Old World.

The farce of the Reichstag fire was aped by the Cohen Plan, pretext for the coup of 1937.

The annihilation of the SA, the ‘brown shirts’, had its Brazilian equivalent in the form of the repression and dismantling of the ‘green shirts’, Plínio Salgado’s fascists.

The Gestapo had its presence in the Rua da Relação, where Filinto Muller, assisted by a group of ‘consultants’ originating from the sinister laboratories of Alexander Platz, applied the best of his talents.

The official public relations, the DIP (Department of Press and Public Relations) admired the abilities of Dr Goebbels, through his boss Doctor Lourival Fontes, a proud Nazi but nevertheless a honourable man.

In the Armed Forces, Generals Gois Monteiro and Eurico Dutra led a pro-Axis tendency which included some important officials. In contrast to neighbouring Argentina, the influence in the creation of a modern Brazilian Army had not been German. The military attachment led by Gamelin at the invitation of Pandiá Calogeras and the then Minister of War Epitácio Pessoa - the only Minister for civil war in the entire history of the country – had consolidated in the Brazilian Army the foundations of French military organization. The political deterioration in France after the First World War, coupled with the (true) propaganda of the magnificent organization of the Wehrmacht and the SS were responsible for the phenomenon.

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The New Estate imposed by Doctor Getúlio Vargas in 1937 thus guaranteed the Third Reich solid representation.

Getúlio Vargas assumed power with the Liberal Alliance revolution in 1930. A shrewd and discreet ‘gaúcho’ politician, when invited to the Finance Ministry, said to the then president Washington Luís: “But Mr President, I don’t understand anything about finance!” receiving the reply: “We don’t have to, I understand...”

Later, Washington Luís was deposed and exiled by Getúlio himself.

Due to a lapse of memory, he neglected to promulgate the promised new Constitution, which resulted in the Constitutional Revolution of São Paulo in 1932, resulting in more than four hundred fatalities.

He violently repressed the attempted Communist coup in 1935. In November 1937, under the pretext of a fictitious plan to seize power by the communists, denounced in a forged document (the Cohen plan), he closed the Congress and came to govern by decree. In 1938 he annihilated the fascist putsch of Plínio Salgado.

The communists for their part, whose party had been founded in 1932 by Astrogildo Pereira, had been repressed since the unsuccessful revolt of 1935 and were hidden, hunted or in the cellars of Rua da Relação.

Luis Carlos Prestes led a revolutionary column created by Miguel Costa in 1924, known as the Prestes Column, in protest against the reactionary and oligarchical government of Artur Bernardes, and circulated for four years through thirteen Brazilian estates. Co-opted by the Komintern, he went to the Soviet Union for indoctrination and training. There, he married Olga Benário, and returned to Brazil clandestinely via Buenos Aires. He assumed total responsibility for the failed revolt of 1935, being arrested with Olga in a house in Rua Honório, in Méier (Rio de Janeiro), after a long police hunt by the police chief Bellens Porto. Tried by the Justice Ministry created in 1936, he was sentenced to sixteen years and eight months in prison. He was sentenced for two crimes: for the attempted coup and responsibility for the assassination of Elza Fernandes, who was accused unjustly of having betrayed the Party.

Olga Benário, a German Jew, though pregnant was handed over by Getúlio via Filinto Muller to the Nazis. She was sent in 1936 on an Italian ship, the La Coruña, to Hamburg. In the Nazi prisons, after the birth of her daughter, Anita Leocádia, who was handed over to her grandmother, Mrs Leocádia, Olga was 12

transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp, and afterwards to Bernburg where she was killed in the Easter of 1942.

To complete the scene, Urca’s Casino, in Rio de Janeiro, housed a melange of spies, sympathizers, turncoats and collaborators.

6 19th July 1941 10.30 pm Mário felt relieved at having accomplished the task. The tension of the last two hours had left him exhausted and starving. He asked the still irritated Honório to stop at Restaurante Lamas, where the laid back atmosphere was welcome, given the latest developments. Although in a bad mood, having been excluded from the conversation and having remained in the corridor like a subordinate, Honório cheered up at the prospect of dinner, as he knew Mário would pay. He himself could not afford any type of luxury with the miserly monthly income he received from the Party.

Lamas stayed open 24 hours a day and was a rendezvous for journalists who liked to meet up in the early hours after editing, to share tables with artists and bohemians in general, who drank all night long, sometimes until dawn... When the bohemians had gone home, it was the turn of those from the neighbourhood, who came in the morning to buy fruit at the enormous counter at the entrance.

7 10.35 pm Still with the cup in his hand, Otto made his way to the desk, opened the lower drawer and took out of its case his magnificent Luger, memento of the First War. The pistol shone blackly like a sinister invite. Next he put Haydn’s Keiser Quartet on the turntable. His second movement had been used for the German national anthem, the ‘Deustchland Uber Alles’, where the soft four-beat time had been substituted for a martial and unsophisticated two-beat time.

He sat down again, now with the Luger in his hand, playing the record repeatedly.

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He remembered Langsdorff. Otto knew him well and admired him as a good officer of the old guard. They even kept up a certain correspondence until he blew his brains out in a hotel room in Buenos Aires after his ship, the Graf Spee, had been scuttled in Uruguayan waters.

8 10.45 pm Honório started the car and drove along Flamengo beach without noticing a black 1937 Ford V8 which followed him. He turned right on Machado de Assis Street, afterwards again to the right coming in to Largo do Machado square. He parked on the left, on the pavement of the square. The two of them got out and made their way towards Lamas, which was on the far side, next to the tram station and to Confeitaria Francesa, closed at that time of day. They crossed the road conversing, trying to relax from the tension before.

The Ford stopped behind noiselessly.

9 10.45 pm Annelise was already in bed when they knocked on the door. Ever since they were married she had had her own room. Aware of the difference in ages, Otto did not feel comfortable sharing his intimate habits with a youngster. He would say that his Liebchen needed her Freiheit, her liberty. In reality, she knew it was him who wanted the privacy.

“Come in.”

Instead, she saw an envelope emerge from under the door. She wasn’t surprised.

It was typical of old Clara to try to be unnoticed. But when she opened the envelope, she had to sit down to avoid collapsing.

With her thirty-something years, Annelise had become used to not crying. She closed her eyes and pondered. Coming from a comfortable middle-class existence in Blumenau, South Brasil, she had opted for the less-thancomfortable, although exciting, life of an artist in Berlin. She was encouraged to look for healthy alternatives to the Heil Hitler so much in fashion, as much as by the musical environment which she frequented, as by the growing political 14

malaise. Thus she learnt about the history of Spartacus, the movement of Karl Liebneck and Rosa Luxembourg, and it was with little effort that she became involved in illegality.

She woke from her thoughts. What had started out so easily, almost like a game, had become that night something very, very serious. She had to act, and quickly.

Still in her nightdress, she opened the door and for the first time in her life ran to her husband’s bedroom.

10 11.02 pm Mário felt euphoric. For the first time in his life he had taken a decision and had carried it out with agility and efficacy. He had emerged from his shell and done something selfless. Something important. The moment had arrived to take other decisions and to change his bland existence. To give more attention to Mário Junior, including changing his ridiculous diminutive. To talk more to his sister and to help her with her chronic depression. But principally to declare to Annelise his hidden love and free her from that grotesque marriage. He would do all of this as soon as he woke from that sleep, that dream, that...

11 11.05 pm The Kaiser Quartet had finished and the needle was scratching. The sherry was also finished and the cup was empty...

Otto knew that the moment had arrived. He picked up the pistol that lay to one side.

Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum...

He sat up straight and closed his eyes. In the trance he sensed that a door was opening... ...expecto resurreectionem mortuorum...

Annelise entered her husband’s bedroom.

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... et vitam venturi seculi...

Otto returned the Luger to the drawer.

Next, they embraced.

At that moment Otto won his redemption. ...Amen.

12 11.15 pm The men concealed their weapons and once again got into the Ford which took off down Rua do Catete. Little by little waiters and restaurant dinners came closer. On the pavement, previously almost empty, a circle of surprised people coalesced. The journalists tried to understand what was happening in order to inform their editors. Someone, finally, decided to call the police and the paramedics.

Honório was taken to hospital.

Mário was taken to the morgue three hours later.

13 (Extracts from a reporter’s notes) (I) The European Nightmare ended on 8th May 1945 with devastation across the greater part of the continent.

The human toll was enormous. Russia alone lost 20 million souls, Poland four million, and Germany, Austria and Italy, four million. France and England contributed 535,000 and 400,000 victims respectively.

Independently of the war, the Aryan Master Race exterminated six million Jews, a third of the world population.

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On 9th December 1941, two days after the Japanese attack on the American fleet in Pearl Harbour, Germany declared war on the United States. On 14th February 1942, the merchant ship Cabedelo disappeared on the high seas, sunk

by German submarines. Between February and July 1942, thirteen more Brazilian merchant ships would be sunk. On 15th August the first attack was made in Brazilian territorial waters: on that day, the German submarine U-507 sank the Baependi, killing its crew of 270. Over the next four days, the same submarine would sink four more Brazilian ships: Araraquara, Aníbal Benévolo, Itagira and Arara, all off the coast between Sergipe and Bahia. In total thirtysix ships were sent to the bottom, killing nearly a thousand people.

The attacks caused a great national commotion and not even the Nazi sympathisers who were part of the Vargas government (specially Generals Dutra and Gois Monteiro) were able to stop dozens of marches by students and the people, all in favour of declaring war.

On 31st August 1942, a State of War was finally declared across the entire national territory.

Between July 1944 and February 1945 Brazil sent 25,344 soldiers to Italy.

There we lost four hundred and fifty Brazilians, the ‘Pracinhas’ of the FEB, Brazilian Expeditionary Force, led by Marshall Mascarenhas de Moraes.

Adolph Hitler committed suicide on 30th April 1945, in his bunker alongside his recently married wife, Eva Braun. He is seated at the right hand side of the almighty Joseph Stalin (deceased in 1953) in the Paradise of the Tyrants.

Joseph Goebbels, the head of Nazi propaganda, committed suicide alongside his five children and his wife during those same days.

The sinister Heinrich Himmler, the former primary school teacher and head of the SS, was also able to kill himself while trying to escape in a ridiculous Tyrolean outfit.

Von Ribbentropp, the criminal Chancellor, Seyss Inquart, the Austrian traitor and later ‘Butcher of Holland’, and Hermann Goering, the powerful head of the Luftwaffe, along with ten other war criminals, were sent to the gallows by the Nuremberg tribunal in 1946. Goering was able to commit suicide hours before his execution.

Werner von Braun, the young scientist of Peenemunde, creator of the famous V1 and V2, missiles responsible for the death of thousands of civilians in England,

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was warmly received by the United States before Russia, now the enemy, was able to, so that he would develop his space vehicles in the USA. Despite their hugely important contributions, one in philosophy and the other in music, Martin Heidegger and Richard Strauss had their remaining days limited by a well-deserved ostracism. They died in 1976 and 1949 respectively.

Herbert von Karajan became a very famous conductor, perhaps the best acclaimed of the period. He would never be able to conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

Charles Lindemberg was prevented from joining up to fight his old idols.

However, he was able to become, after much struggle, a flying instructor, and he fulfilled his role adequately and with dignity and was decorated for this reason.

Jean Moulin, the hero of the French Resistance, was killed by the ‘Butcher of Leon’, Klaus Barbie, who after the war served in the...CIA!!

Pierre Laval, the French Nazi, was not pardoned. Revived after a suicide attempt just a few hours before his execution, he was taken to the firing squad and shot.

Henri Phillipe Pétain, the ancient defeatist and head of the ‘free’ government of France in Vichy, despite being a hero of the First War, was sentenced to death.

The international outcry which followed the judgement was why the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.

Nevertheless, a large number of Nazi criminals were able to evade justice.

Subsequently, private organisations emerged, all open and legal, like that of Simon Wiesenthal, with its headquarters in Vienna, dedicated to tracking down the hiding places of escaped Nazis.

Despite this, many of them are alive and have escaped punishment. Some of them have used the escape route offered by the Odessa Organisation.

Thus, Argentina became the refuge for Eichmann, who had carried out the ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’ (later kidnapped and taken to Israel were he was tried and hanged), Paraguay became a refuge for Dr Mengele, the sinister doctor responsible for experimenting with human guinea pigs, and Brazil for the number three of the Reich, Martin Bormann.

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Other lesser figures found in their adoptive homes opportunities to offer their talents to the repressive systems of dictatorial countries.

O ESTADO DE S. PAULO MANAGING DIRECTOR FRANCISCO RAMOS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PELAGIO LOBO EDITOR IN CHIEF ABNER MOURﾃグ YEAR S.PAULO, --------------------------------------------- NUMBER LXXI TUESDAY, --------------------------------------------- 23197 TH 8 MAY 1945

GERMAN ARMIES SURRENDER UNCONDITIONALLY.

O ESTADO DE S. PAULO MANAGING DIRECTOR FRANCISCO RAMOS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR PELAGIO LOBO EDITOR IN CHIEF ABNER MOURﾃグ YEAR S.PAULO, --------------------------------------------- NUMBER LXXI WEDNESDAY, --------------------------------------------- 23198 9TH MAY 1945

ANNOUNCED BY THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITES STATES, ENGLAND AND RUSSIA THE SURRENDER OF GERMANY AND THE END OF THE WAR IN EUROPE.

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(Extracts from a reporter’s notes) (II) Getúlio Vargas was deposed by the Army in 1945. With the war over, political space for the ‘victorious dictatorships’ was eliminated. Shortly before his removal, Getúlio welcomed the then American Secretary of State Stettinius who offered him a Hallicrafters radio and invited him to leave the government. In exile in São Borja, Getúlio was elected Senate of the Republic without ever having been to the Senate. He was elected president by a vast majority in 1950, and finished up committing suicide in 1954.

Then the Vice President Café Filho took over, and having suffered a heart attack in November of 1955 handed power over to the President of the Senate, Carlos Luz. On 11th November 1955, Carlos Luz was deposed by the then Minister of War, Henrique Teixeira Lott, who in January 1956 placed the government in the hands of the elected president Juscelino Kubischeck de Oliveira.

Brazil owes Juscelino, apart from four years of perfect democracy and tolerance, a fantastic period of development, with the creation of the automobile and shipbuilding industries, roads and hydroelectric plants and the controversial creation of the new capital Brasília.

And the dramatic surge in inflation.

In 1960, the elected president Jânio da Silva Quadros would be in government for only seven months, renouncing his post in August the same year.

Despite the enormous resistance of the Armed Forces, the Vice President, João – Jango – Goulart, the ex- Minister for Labour under Getúlio, from whom he inherited the legendary populism, came to power. The political incompetence of Jango caused his government to be denigrated by the conservative political classes, culminating in his removal on the 31st March 1964 by a movement led by the Governor of Minas Gerais, the banker Magalhães Pinto, by the Governor of the Estate of Guanabara, Carlos Lacerda, and by the Commander of the Second Army based in São Paulo, Amauri Kruel.

With the Army in power, they placed General Castelo Branco in government.

He was succeeded (badly) by General Costa e Silva.

20

The year of 1968 was full of contradictions. In France Cohn Bendit’s student movement exploded onto the scene with some success and much disarray. In the United States, Lindon Johnson signed a peace accord to end the war in Vietnam. On the other hand, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.

In Brazil, however, there was some hope of political liberalisation. The ‘spring of 1968’ was sometimes alluded to, although with much caution, as was the one in Prague in 1967, which had a tragic outcome less than a year later.

Furthermore, those were crazy times, where libertarian rhetoric enveloped everything, including sex and Cannabis sativa.

However, the noose tightened. Weak and inept and now ill, the military president Costa e Silva was led by General Jaime Portela, who represented a substantial faction of the Armed Forces discontented and irritated with the weakening of the so-called hard line. The liberal-left demonstrations were tolerated, Vandré’s “LET’S GET GOING”1 echoed through the streets, enemies of the system walked free, marches multiplied; in short, a climate of provocation dominated the country. Furthermore, although totally hidden from the press and from the population, there was a worrying guerrilla movement in Araguaia, S. Brasil. All that was needed was a pretext for a return to the hard line.

The pretext came on 3rd September.

Denouncing the military occupation of the University of Brasília, Deputy Márcio Moreira Alves gave a speech in which he encouraged the young not to take part in the September 7th parade and the girls not to go out with cadets. The Attorney General replied to this unwise and somewhat tasteless speech with a request to the Assembly to prosecute the eminent parliamentarian. On 12th December 1968 the request was refused.

The next day, on Friday 13th, Institutional Act No 5 (AI5) was decreed by the Government. Congress was shut, and the civil and constitutional rights of Brazilians were suspended. With the exception of O Estado de São Paulo and Pasquim, which did not accept self-censorship, the entire press was silenced.

In the space of a few hours, the prisons and barracks filled with political prisoners. The communists, the leftists, the liberals, the journalists, the artists, in short everybody who even obliquely neglected to applaud the olive green coup was summarily imprisoned or simply disappeared without trace. The technique of Nacht und Nagel – night and fog – invented by Himmler to 1

A protest song of the time

21

terrorise occupied people had its mestizo equivalent in the police and the Armed Forces. Paramilitary organizations like the CCC (the Communist Hunting Commando) began to act freely.

The Brazilian Night had begun, which for many would be long and dark.

O ESTADO DE S. PAULO JULIO DE MESQUITA FILHO YEAR S.PAULO, --------------------------------------------- NUMBER LXXI SUNDAY, --------------------------------------------- 23197 TH 14 DECEMBER 1968

Costa e Silva imposes Institutional Act No 5.

The Congress is already in recess.

“Habeas Corpus” “Article 10 – the guarantee of “Habeas Corpus” is suspended in instances of political crimes committed against national security, the economic and social order and the national economy.”

22

Second Part

23

14 Rio de Janeiro, Saturday 4th January 1969 10.30 am The heat at that early hour was already unbearable. Mário thought about going to the beach, and his friend Jorge had arranged to pick him up in his Vemaguete to go to Barra beach to catch some sun and, who knows, maybe some cute girls, but he had not telephoned. He felt anguish. Since the previous month, everybody had been on edge.

At work, left-leaning colleagues had disappeared. Were they in prison? Were they on the run? Just yesterday two guys had shown up. Young, polite, wearing casual shirts and that indelible mark of the thug which made them stick out a mile – white loafers.

They asked a few questions and left.

Mário Soares Junior’s story since the death of his father on 19th June 1941 was the same as that of the majority of young middle-class people in Rio de Janeiro.

He had finished his studies at Pedro II, which although not a college of the rich, being a state school, was reputed to be one of the best in the city. He had finished his studies and had passed his University entrance exams without too much difficulty, graduating in Law at the University of Rio de Janeiro. He never practiced law. After eight years at a notary public office on Rua do Rosário, he joined Petrobrás, thanks to strings pulled by Luiz Rosenbaum.

Now, at the age of thirty-seven, Mário was no different to anybody else. He was easily satisfied. He didn’t stand out. He was already a little bit heavy and a bit paunchy, not exactly what you might call a male model.

He had in the past had a few girlfriends, some brief liaisons, but he continued single and had no enthusiasm to settle down. His life alternated between work and evening beers in the bars of Ipanema. At the Bar Lagoa, he drank with concerned couples introduced by the church and he discussed superficially but passionately Teilhard de Chardin. He occasionally also drank with some liberal architects, who with their superior smiles and their casual but well-studied attire discussed the salvation of humanity through the organization of space. At Jangadeiros, he drank with the artistic left and he discussed Régis Debray, Norman Mailler and Herbert Marcusse. At the Alpino, he drank with mere mortals and talked about nothing.

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He wasn’t particularly interested in football, although he went to the Fluminense games, because he could go on foot to the social evenings. As he had learned swimming as a boy, still at the time when Caximbau was a coach, he vaguely supported the club, through force of habit and convenience.

However, despite his apparent mediocrity, Mário was sensitive, reasonably well informed and, without being exactly erudite, knew that culture existed, did not despise it and even tried to acquire it at several levels, which placed him on a plane slightly higher than the majority of his generation. He read a lot, including romantic novels and poetry, mainly Brazilian and French. He liked music. He wasn’t an expert but he was above all an attentive and curious listener. On his portable turntable, acquired on hire purchase in Cassio Muniz, he would listen to the few LPs that he had. But he listened to the Ministry of Education on the car radio. He attended concerts in the Municipal Theatre, where he gained access, and in the Cecília Meirelles Hall, where he bought tickets. He started to learn piano as an adult. He gave up after two years of trying in vain to have sex with the teacher.

Without any commitments, he considered himself of the left, less for reasons of ideology, and more because of repugnance towards the militarist enthusiasm which permeated the country. In 1964 he had inadvertently sheltered a friend who was on the run. He only stayed one night, sleeping in his room, despite the objections of his aunt. Two days later, two men in plain clothes knocked on his front door. Very politely they asked Mário to accompany them to DOPS, the Office of Political and Social Order. Struggling to give off an air of calm and serenity that was far from reality, Mário was taken to Rua Frei Caneca. He waited two interminable hours in the corridor, during which he saw somebody pass by who looked like Cecil Borer, Secretary of State Security and a notorious communist hunter, which worsened his apprehension. Afterwards, he was taken to a small room on the second floor, where he answered some questions, signed a statement and left. Nothing else. But for several months Mário was paranoid.

For a long time, Mário already had known that his father had been assassinated for political motives. Celeste slowly, bit by bit, shared with him the information.

To begin with, it was “criminals”, when they were shocked to receive a visit from the police notifying them of the murder. Mário Junior, who was only ten years old, couldn’t understand how anybody could kill a man like his father, who did not bother anybody and lived to play music. Later, it was the version that he had been murdered by those who wanted to get rid of him because he was against Getúlio’s dictatorship. Finally, when he had passed the University entrance exams, it was because he had been a friend of communists. Nobody

25

told him that his father was communist, but it wasn’t necessary. Considering Celeste’s economy of words, these explanations were already extremely wordy.

Mário had repressed as much the abandonment by his mother, of which he remembered nothing, as the death of his father. Of his father, he remembered much, but his relationship with him had been extremely superficial. His father was gentle but totally absent, living only for his music and his books, nearly always locked in his office. His only source of tenderness was his aunt.

Almost.

There was somebody else.

15 At 62, tall, slim, elegant, with a vast head of white hair, Luiz Rosenbaum was what you might call a good-looking man of years. Whether he was married or widowed nobody knew. He never spoke on the subject. But, with his charm and enjoying a large fortune he must have had - and would continue to have - many liaisons.

He was quite cultured, a lover of music and literature, a polyglot, as well as being a reasonable pianist, and he showed evidence of a classical European education.

Although he never spoke about his previous life, he already existed as a legend in certain quarters, Son of a German immigrant and a Brazilian mother, in 1919 Luiz went to live in Switzerland with his paternal grandparents, who decided to adopt him following the death of his father and the madness of his mother. In Zurich, he finished his studies and graduated in Law. In 1930 his grandfather decided to return to his native land, Germany, to resume his business affairs. In Berlin, Luiz joined a law firm. However, after 1933 his family name progressively became an obstacle to practising his profession. This was when an uncle on his mother’s side invited him to return to Brazil, where there were no major problems in revalidating his degree and in 1934 he was already practising. Without any money or status he came to dedicate himself to the sometimes hopeless defence of political prisoners.

In November 1941, Luiz received the news that his grandparents were, like all the Jews in Germany, in great danger. As a Brazilian citizen he was able to 26

return to Berlin where, using his experience and know-how, he was able to smuggle the elderly couple to Switzerland. However, Brazil’s declaration of war in August 1942 surprised him in Marseille while waiting for a ship to South America. It is known that Luiz Rosenbaum was in the French Resistance until 1945, when he finally returned to Brazil.

These events gave him certain fame, above all among Jewish communities and anti-Nazi groups in Europe, and as a result, given that the Getulian dictatorship was already finished by 1946, he was sought by various German companies whose assets had previously been confiscated and were now returned to their original owners. They wished to establish subsidiaries or branches in Brazil, something which afforded him well-deserved prosperity.

At that time, Luiz heard about the “Mário Soares Case” and looked for Celeste, taking it upon himself, generously, to look after the well-being of both of them, including, according to Celeste, helping them practically with the legal problems of probate and day-to-day issues which the aunt and her nephew had to face, leading to regular telephone contact and a relationship which lasted up to the present. Mário came to call him uncle and asked him periodically for advice.

At that time, in 1969, although representing foreign interests in Brazil, he continued to be liberal and a defender of the politically persecute, who still went to him for help. Despite his age, he took part in the ‘hundred thousand march’ in June, together with all the intellectuals, artists and students (and their respective mothers) who were protesting against police violence. He was well supported by international human rights liberal groups, including Jewish groups acting against fascism. He often travelled to congresses, and had prestige overseas which granted him certain immunity from the State, despite his “pink” tendencies.

16 11.30 am He thought about phoning ‘uncle’ to talk about the visit of the two policemen at his place of work. At that time, those conversations were the refuge he needed.

Luiz’s calm and experienced manner was always comforting.

But he was not there. Mário decided to buy some newspapers to see if he could find any clues regarding the events. Some of them, although heavily censored,

27

let a few things slip through between the lines. The ‘Correio da Manhã’ for example, which had been invaded and its directors imprisoned, including Osvaldo Peralva and Niomar Muniz Sodré, let some clues through, either deliberately, or through negligence of the censor.

His aunt gave him a quick coffee. She had been in the same house since the death of her brother, twenty-seven years previously. Celeste had not changed.

She continued to be apathetic and even more unkempt and reticent, if this was possible. However, it was she who had raised Mário, who zealously and competently looked after his nourishment, health and education. Mário knew that he owed her a lot and even liked her, but she was always so irritating that he could not take anymore.

Confused, and thinking about the events of the previous Friday, Mário crossed Rua das Laranjeiras to the newspaper stand in front of the Deaf and Dumb Institute. Behind a bus. He didn’t see the bicycle...

17 11th January 1969 Mário got frustrated at home. Following a short time at the Souza Aguiar Hospital, where he got his cast after interminable hours of waiting on a trolley in the corridor, he went on the Monday to work in the Ultramarino Building in Praça Pio X to sort out his medical leave. From there he was sent to the medical service of the company. In the appalling heat, he went on rented crutches and supported by Horácio from Accounts up to Detran on Presidente Vargas Street where a medical centre was operating temporarily. Naturally he had to wait nearly an hour to be seen by Doctor Freitas. But Freitas was alright. He gave him thirty days off with a promise of another thirty. At the time he thought it was great that he could be away from work for such a long time. But now, barely a week in, he was bored.

He went down the stairs with difficulty (to begin with he went down the stairs sitting, but eventually he was able to go on foot). He heated up a coffee, avoiding calling his aunt who was forever moaning about something, went upstairs and got ready for a very complicated bath, essential in that heat. First, he took off his pyjamas, afterwards he covered the cast with an enormous piece of plastic holding it with tape. Next, he shouted at his aunt to not go up as he was naked. Finally, he went into the bathroom, climbed into the bathtub and into the blessed shower. He went over the whole process in reverse. He went downstairs for lunch, ate too much, replied in monosyllables to the attempts of 28

conversation or rather curt complaints by Celeste, returned upstairs and tried to sleep to the sound of a fan. He woke up in a foul mood, went downstairs for breakfast and continued in this routine, which had already gone on for a week, and was even worse than the bureaucracy at Petrobras.

That day, to slightly change the daily routine, he decided to go into his father’s study. Curiously, in all his comings and goings, Mário had avoided the door of the study and had never gone in. Through an association of thoughts, he remembered Buñuel’s ‘Exterminating Angel’, where people remained paralysed for several days without any apparent reason before a doorway, trying to leave a party. The bedroom was in darkness and the blinds were down, and for this reason it was cooler than the rest of the house. There was a smell peculiar to old things, even though the office was immaculately cleaned every week by Celeste.

That room had been ignored for twenty-seven years through his and his aunt’s tacit acquiescence. He opened the windows and the room was filled with light and heat. Mário realised that everything was as his father had seen it for the last time, when he had left to go to his death. By way of exorcising the atmosphere, he spoke aloud: “I’m aware that everything here is exactly how my father left it, twenty-seven years ago.”

The furniture was old, heavy and in the ‘Manuelino’ style. Taking up an entire wall was an enormous bookcase. On the upper shelves there were many novels and books on poetry and philosophy, as well as a good number of music scores, as many for the cello as for various concerts and operas, principally German.

His father, quite obviously, was not a lover of Italian opera. The shelves below held an enormous collection of 78s, in surprisingly good condition.

In front, there was a somewhat decrepit black leather sofa. There was also an upright Pleyel piano, out of tune and with yellowing keys. An awful cabinet, which clashed with the rest of the furniture, held the radio gramophone. The lid covered a Thorenz 78 gramophone and many small metallic boxes with the needles. At the front stood the radio with a large dial for the stations and the ‘magic eye’ with its little green light for fine-tuning. Against the window, by the table, there was a bucket filled with rolls of reproductions of famous works of art, which his father used to try to copy when he was studying drawing.

29

18 13th January 1969 Having exorcised the room, Mário began to take refuge in the study where he passed many hours reading and going through the records and books. Only now, many years later, did he become interested in his father’s personality, which revealed itself bit by bit through his literary and musical tastes.

The solid table was covered in papers, some photographs of unknown people (not one of his mother) and one of somebody he knew: it was in colour, it was large and it was of his father next to his cello tutor, whom he had seen at that time when with his father they had met by coincidence in the Confeitaria Colombo in Rua Gonçalves Dias. While eating some chicken rissoles, which were the speciality of the house, he amused himself in observing, from various angles, the figure of the young woman in the enormous mirrors which covered the wall. It was the only time Mário saw her, but he recognised her in the photograph. She was quite good-looking, with blue eyes and blonde hair, albeit with a ridiculous hairstyle, with two large buns above the ears and another bigger one above her forehead. She looked like Mickey Mouse...

He didn’t remember anything else from that meeting, but he was left with a sense of antipathy, perhaps because she (and his father) had not given him any attention, being occupied in talking about things which he did not understand.

In the photograph, his father in a white suit and two-tone shoes posed next to the young lady, who was dressed in a somewhat masculine cut, with the padded shoulders used at the time. The tutor was holding a music notebook. In the background you could see an upright piano with a picture hanging above. It must have been in her house, where his father had had his music lessons.

In one of these visits, he decided to organise the desk which Celeste had left exactly as it was since the death of her brother, like some kind of posthumous respect. He found underneath a pile of papers a music notebook or album, with a white cover adorned with a gilt treble clef.

Despite the emotional barrier which he had erected with the passage of time with respect to that day, Mário had a shock. It was the music notebook which was in the photograph and it was the same as (or very similar to) the one which old Ms Clara had taken to his house on the night his father had died. He had seen everything from upstairs, but he had blocked out the scene in his memory, as was his habit with respect to everything which meant a problem or emotional pain, ever since his mother had left the house.

30

19 16th January 1969 After several days without the courage to enter the study, Mário decided to face up to his memories.

He was sleeping when the police arrived, with the news that his father was dead.

Celeste did not wake him. After the news, his aunt left to identify the body in the Legal Medical Institute. On the day of the funeral, Celeste was all dressed in black, together with a few neighbours. There was the journey back home, now without the presence of his father, to the silence in the study, from which the sounds of his father playing the cello, and of the music he would listen to, no longer emanated.

He entered the study, opened the windows, picked up the notebook from the table where he had left it several days before, sat down on the sofa and began to leaf through the notebook. At each page there were handwritten harmonic exercises. These were exercises in which the tutor would write the melodic line (the given melody) or the harmonic base (the given base). It was for the student to complete the rest, within the strict rules of traditional harmony.

The pages were dated, the first was 4th April 1941, and the others were more or less seven days apart. It must have been the exercise book for homework. At each footnote he could see her observations: “very good” or “OK, repeat”, etc.

He got to the page dated 21st June. It was a lined page, like the others, with handwritten notes, but in the footnote, in uppercase and lowercase letters, almost hidden, were some letters which did not make sense. To begin with, he did not pay much attention, but the more he looked at them, the more he began to feel that there was something wrong. He closed the notebook and went to have a coffee.

20 17th January 1969 He had a better day, forcing himself to get out in the afternoon, when it was cooler, to go to the Fluminense Club. Despite the effort with the crutches, it was worth it. He stayed at the bar drinking beer, which, together with a light breeze

31

which blew at that time of day, refreshed him physically and mentally, while Simon and Garfunkel, over the speaker at the bar, requested a blessing for Mrs Robinson.

He met some acquaintances at the club. The conversation was a mixture of jokes, news and rumours.

There was Siqueira: “Listen to this: there’s this guy standing up in a crowded bus. He says the guy next to him:” “Excuse me, are you in the military?”

“No.” “Is your father in the military?”

“No.” “Your brother perhaps? Someone in your family?”

“No, why?”

“Then get off my foot, now!”

Dull laughter.

“They’re arresting everybody...”

“They even arrested Carlos Lacerda, can you imagine it...”

“He’s already been released, he went on hunger strike.”

“Vandré has disappeared, I reckon they killed him...”

21 18th January 1969 That morning, while in the shower, he had his Eureka moment.

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His father had died on 19th June. That night old Ms Clara had gone to give him the music notebook. His father had gone out later. Somebody had picked him up from home. This he remembered. The police arrived in the early hours of the 20th. This he did not remember as he had been sleeping. His father was buried that same day. This he remembered.

Why then, was that page dated the 21st?

In the rush to solve this he almost fell out of the bathtub. Despite being naked, he went back to the study where he had not been for a week.

With paper and pencil, he began to take notes. He was used to writing down the details of whatever problem he had to solve. Afterwards, he would logically connect the facts and arrive at conclusions. He had acquired the habit at law school, where he had always done well during the moot trials.

The notes of 18/01: a) My father received the music notebook on the night of the 19th. b) He ran to the study and a short while afterwards left, never to return. c) He left because of something written in the notebook, either an urgent message or a directive. d) The last annotation in the notebook was dated the 21/06. e) The date, as in all the other pages, was written in the same ink, ostensibly in the top right hand corner, in the same style of the others. The letters without meaning were written very small in the footnote.

MĂĄrio stopped, trying to make out what could be the reason behind it. Suddenly he reached a conclusion: The inexplicable date and the letters were the actual message.

In code.

That night he didn’t go to the Fluminense.

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22 19th January 1969 A terrible night. He rose several times to look at his notes, returning to bed and unable to get back to sleep. During this coming and going, his morale changed.

He suddenly realised that by accident, he had the key to the mystery of the death of his father. Celeste’s versions of events about the criminals, the opposition to Getúlio Vargas’ dictatorship or the friendship with the communists were neither satisfactory nor sufficient. His assassination had to be connected to something much more serious at that time. Even if as a tribute to the memory of his father, Mário felt he was obliged to clear up the mystery.

He thus decided to talk with Celeste, something which he always tried to avoid.

After breakfast, he approached her in the kitchen, her favourite environment.

As he had never before spoken with any depth with his aunt about his father’s death, Mário practiced his opening gambit several times. However, when he opened his mouth, it came out curt and rude.

“Auntie, did my father go out with anyone on the day he died?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Who with?”

As if she was telling him the time, Celeste replied: “Probably with Honório. He was the only friend that I knew of, the only one who came here.”

“How would I find Honório?”

“I don’t know. What do you want with him?”

“I want to know exactly what happened to my father.”

“Look, I don’t know. In fact, I don’t think you should get mixed up in this.”

“I know, but I will anyway.”

“Well, he had a sister who passed on the messages. I had her telephone number in case of emergencies. I never used it. I no longer know where it is.”

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“Look for it, Auntie.”

Reluctantly, Celeste finally gave in: “OK, I’ll look for it.”

He suspected that his aunt was hiding something else, but it was impossible to know for sure.

Unconnected ideas went through his head. Why didn’t his aunt want him to meet this Honório? Could it be that the fatal shot was aimed at him and that his father had died by mistake? He remembered the assassination in Rua Toneleros, in which Major Rubens Vaz had died instead of Carlos Lacerda. Worse luck.

Could it be that the message was there to lure Honório into an ambush?

Whatever the reason, he had to find this Honório.

23 22nd January 1969 As his aunt continued to be reluctant, saying that she was not able find Honório’s telephone number, Mário decided to research old newspapers, in the hope of finding a revealing news item.

He went to the Correio da Manhã and studied the papers from the 20th and the 21st June 1941. He found a small news item in the crime section, about something which had taken place in front of Restaurante Lamas. One of the men, Mário Soares, had died there and the other, Honório Somebody-or-Other, had been taken away in a serious condition to Miguel Couto Hospital.

That night, Mário decided to go to Lamas, where he had never been, to try to visualise the events. Various things had changed in the Largo do Machado, but the old restaurant was still there. The same fruit counter at the entrance, alongside which people were queuing for tables. At the entrance of the main seating area was the cash register for coupons for what was sold at the counters.

As he considered the surroundings, he kept asking himself what had happened that night in 1941, when nobody saw anything, and nobody recognised the attackers.

By way of a strange collocation of ideas, he remembered the sole occasion when he had met Annelise and had felt that sense of unease, of having been 35

alienated by the strange energy between his father and her. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps it had been a crime of passion, that Celeste’s excuses were there to cover up a less than noble motive. Going by the article he had read in the newspaper, Honório had not lured his father into an ambush, as he himself had been seriously wounded. There could have been a political motive, and any of the two could have been the principal target. In the case of a crime of passion, Honório had been an innocent victim.

It was becoming increasingly imperative to meet Honório to unravel the mystery.

24 23rd January 1969 Throughout that afternoon, he sat in the living room preparing himself for the research he was going to carry out. The idea of phoning Honório, from the same extension his father had used that fatal night, somehow or other made him feel uncomfortable. At the first attempt he had his first set back – the number his aunt had given him after much nagging, written on a piece of bread bag, had changed. He asked for information, but without success. Obviously. Twentyseven years afterwards, even with an efficient telephone company, it would be very difficult to find. At the end of the afternoon, he went upstairs dejectedly for a shower. He did not have any energy to go to the Fluminense. He suspected that his aunt was hiding something, but it was impossible to know for sure.

At seven o’clock he went downstairs for dinner. In the darkness of the living room, the windows of which were shut to the sun, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Sitting in an armchair, calmly, was a Visitor.

How he had entered he did not know.

Mário was startled.

“Who are you? How did you come in? What do you want?”

To each of the questions the Visitor limited himself to a smile and a shrug. He must have been about thirty years old, tanned, long haired, dressed in grubby jeans, a grubby t-shirt, dirty sandals, with a bag or something slung over his shoulder, with a relaxed smile and a vaguely absent air. Essentially, he was one of those typical pseudo-intellectual individuals who cluttered up the Paissandú Cinema during art house film showings.

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Although intrigued and by now slightly irritated, against all reason, Mário was unrestrained.

“Answer, fuck it!”

The Visitor got up slowly. He extended to Mário a small piece of folded paper.

As he came closer Mário saw that underneath his t-shirt he had a chain with the Star of David. Before Mário was able to unfold the paper, the Visitor left by the door, as silently as he had come in.

On the paper was written: Honório (and a number in Rua Bela in São Cristóvão).

Who was this guy? How did he know? Who had sent him? Was it a trap?

Was he a terrorist? Who knows, maybe even an architect?

Still bewildered, Mário remembered Shakespeare: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. Curiously Mário was not worried. Despite the disdainful manner with which he had treated him, the Visitor had something which inspired confidence in Mário. Besides which, the important thing was that he had got the address.

25 24th January 1969 9.00 am Nobody answered the phone at the taxi rank. It would have been too difficult to go on crutches as far as Rua Pinheiro Machado or Rua das Laranjeiras. Mário was already getting inpatient, cursing the telephone company, the taxi drivers, the city and the world. At 10.20am he finally got something. The taxi took the Catumbi-Laranjeiras tunnel and arrived at Rua Bela.

A disappointment: what would have been a house was now a post-war building, modest in dimensions, three storeys, and which operated as a paint shop. There was a lobby with a sales counter on the ground floor. On the upper floors were offices. He asked the taxi to wait. Nobody knew the original owner of the house

37

which had become a building. With difficulty, Mário made his way to the bar on the corner. A young man was at the counter.

“I don’t know, but maybe my father knows...”

The father, a stout genial mulatto, came in a t-shirt with a glass of beer in his hand.

“Are you looking for Lucinda?”

“Yes, do you know her?”

“Sure. Sometimes she comes here to shoot the breeze. Just yesterday she was here. Give us your phone number so when she comes I can tell her.”

He raised the glass.

“Would you like some?” And without waiting for a reply, “Hey Airto, bring a glass here for the gentleman.”

Mário returned home slightly disappointed with the evolution of his research, which was not moving with the speed he desired, but he was still hopeful.

26 25th January 1969 That morning, Mário woke up in much pain. Maybe because of the physical effort of the evening before, the leg had swollen up. At an orthopaedic clinic quite close to home the doctor changed the cast. The clinic was covered by his medical insurance and Mário just had to sign. Next he phoned Dr Freitas. ‘At least’ another thirty days of rest. God bless Freitas...

Now, much relieved, he returned to the notebook.

38

21st June 1941 DC,BB,BC,DEbFEb,D (Eb,EbDbGbFbEb,DbCbDbEb-Eb) A,AH,A,A,HC,D,DA,CHA,HCD,A There it was, the key to everything. But it was useless. He didn’t have the knack for guessing or cryptology. He remembered Justino, his pal at school, who loved anagrams and who had various books on Egyptian hieroglyphics and his hero, Jean François Champolion, who had deciphered them. Of course, Justino! But how would he find him?

He remembered the last class reunion. They had had lunch at the Gaúcha, the grill where they always celebrated most of these get-togethers. He looked for the photo album and there was Justino. He was always serious, with thick glasses and a delicate physique, the classic example of a boy raised by his grandmother. In the photograph there was also the person who organised such events, Meireles. This guy, for sure, would have Justino’s number and would have everyone else’s number, as his biggest interest was knowing how everybody else was doing, who was married, separated, who was successful and who was a failed professional.

That same night, after listening to a really boring account about the marital and professional status of each of his former colleagues, Mário finally got from Meireles Justino’s telephone number, which he dialled immediately.

Justino was not at home. He would only arrive at 10 o’clock after doing a course, a feminine voice told him. It was probably his grandmother. He hung up.

On receiving the call and after passing on news on everybody’s marital and professional status, which he had heard from Meireles, Mário was able to explain to Justino that he had come across old letters from his grandmother to her fiancé, in which had appeared amorous codes which he was interested in decoding as he was putting together a book on the family. As Justino also had a grandmother and liked codes, Mário decided to consult him. This time, he heard an endless discourse about the beauty of initiative and how honoured Justino felt to be a participant and confidante in his grandmother’s secret affairs etc.

Mário was finally able to dictate the letters, describing their configuration.

39

“Very well, my good friend, I’ll think about it, I’ll take a look and call you as soon as I’ve arrived at a concrete result. God willing, we’ll be able to.”

God willing... Only Justino could do it... With his ear aching, Mário finally hung up.

Minutes later Justino phoned.

“It’s strange as it only has eight letters. It should have been an easy one, but it isn’t. It has to be connected to some kind of context independent of cryptology, like a book or a poem. Here it’s almost impossible to decipher.”

Which context?

27 3rd February 1969 At 6.45 am he woke up with a start with the ringing of the phone: “Mário, sorry to bother you at this hour, but as they say, I think I’ve had my Eureka moment.”

“Go on then” “With respect to the cultural context of your grandmother, did she by any chance understand music?”

“Yes...”

“In which case, they are musical notes.”

“But there are seven notes, you have eight letters.”

“Bollocks! Sorry...”

Mário went back to bed, pissed off.

Later on...

No news of Lucinda. Despite not having cracked the code, Mário decided to begin to look at his father’s records. There had to be hundreds, in albums, each 40

one with four, five or six 78s. Colombia, Decca, RCA Victor, Odeon. Some had been bought in Palermo, in the Largo da Carioca. Others in European shops.

Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Mahler, Prokofiev, Schumann, Schubert...

He remembered Bach’s Mass. It was one of his father’s favourites. And he remembered the parts, which even at the age of ten, impressed him greatly. The tranquillity which emanated from Christie, sung by a female duet. The grandiosity of the end of the Credo, expecto... venturi secula amen.

He looked for the Mass. In came in six big albums, making a total of thirty records. On the spine of each, one could read: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH HOHE MESSE IN H MOLL BWV 232 BRUNO WALTER He opened the album and took out the first record. It was covered in a sticky layer, a mixture of dust and humidity, but seemingly in good condition. He remembered that his father had been extremely careful with his records, always taking care to change the needles after each playing. He read the label again, where he could see: Johann Sebastian Bach Messe in H Moll (Mass in B Minor) He looked blankly at the label. Messe in H Moll (Mass in B Minor).

It was actually seven notes, but eight letters.

In German H Moll must mean B minor.

Justino was an idiot...

41

The code had been cracked. It was child’s play. Neither his father, nor the teacher could have been experts in cryptology. The two had probably improvised a language sufficiently common to both of them but which nevertheless required a certain amount of time to be deciphered.

He picked up a pencil, looked for some graph paper, only finding it in the kitchen (Ah, Celeste...)

DC,BB,BC,DebFEb,D (Eb,EbDbGbFbEb,DbCbDbEb-Eb) A,AH,A,A,HC,D,DA,CHA,HCD,A The first phrase contained B and the third phrase contained H. Were both of them B? If H meant a B-natural in the German system, then B, which comes after A, had to be B something. As B sharp does not exist (it is C-natural), so B could only be B flat. Good. He supposed that the commas must have represented the separation of the bars. He then drew the notes on an improvised music staff and played them on the piano several times. Nothing. As there was no indication of the tempo or of the length of the notes it remained difficult to recognise the tune. He needed somebody well informed, somebody who would be able to listen to the music and identify it.

The only person who came to mind was Luiz Rosenbaum...

At eight o’clock, tired but full of adrenaline, he phoned him. He was on his way out to a meeting, but he arranged with Mário to meet on Saturday at 4.00pm.

28 Saturday, 8th February 1969 Four days later, punctually at 4.00pm, Mário, on crutches, rang the bell of the luxurious building on Rui Barbosa Avenue.

An attractive and impeccably turned out maid (his uncle did not waste time...) received him and invited him to sit.

“Doctor Luiz will be along in a minute...”

42

While he was waiting, Mário studied the enormous living room and the view of the sea, Urca and the Sugar Loaf Mountain in the background. On his left, apart from a baby Grand Steinway, there was a spectacular hi-fi system, a Garrad record player, enormous customised English speakers and a Fisher 300 W stereophonic amplifier (150 per channel), as well as a large bookshelf full of books and LPs. The furniture, the pictures, everything there transmitted an air of culture and refined good taste. The ambiance was modern and comfortable, with light coloured sofas and armchairs matching with a few antiques and objects of value – lamps and jars in decorative glass, some silverware, a few small sculptures – as well as pictures by some Brazilian painters – Guinard, Portinari and Volpi, among others.

Là, toute est paix et beauté, et luxe et calme et volupté Mário remembered of Baudelaire. It is good to be rich. Still entranced with the view, he didn’t see L. R. come behind and place a hand on his shoulder, saying: “This is beautiful.”

Jovial as always, Luiz was dressed in white trousers and a blue blazer, looking more like a commodore of the Yacht Club.

“What will you have, Scotch? Vodka?”

They chose coffee, which came served by the same pretty maid, in a silver pot and with Japanese porcelain coffee cups which were horrible, but certainly very expensive. Mário spoke of the accident, of Souza Aguiar Hospital, and of the inconvenience in washing.

After the coffee Mário, weighing his words, spoke only of the discovery which he had made in his father’s music notebook. He was interested in finding out more about his musical tastes, but he had come across the musical annotations which he could not identify. He knew that Luiz would try to dissuade him in case he connected the discovery to the death of his father.

“I’ve arrived at an impasse, ‘uncle’. The notes are here, but I don’t know what the music is.”

Luiz sat down at the piano and played the three bars several times. He told Mário that given that there was neither indication of the beat nor of the tempo, it would be really difficult to find out. He would try, but he needed time. He would call him later.

43

Afterwards, he attacked with a certain brilliance the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathetic’, under the envious eyes and ears of Mário.

“Wow, how do you manage it ‘uncle’? In addition to all the other stuff you do?”

“Don’t be dazzled, my boy, Heinrich Heindrich was excellent violinist.”

“Who?” “Heindrich. He was the number three of the Nazi regime. He was the Gauleiter, a type of governor, in Czechoslovakia, an absolute monster. He was assassinated by Resistance fighters who had come from England. As a reprisal, the Germans completely destroyed a small town called Lidice, its male inhabitants having been shot, the women having been transported to concentration camps, and the children taken away. Now go home as I have to leave: duty calls!!!”

He cheekily winked, rose and went to do his ‘duty’.

29 Back home, Mário felt the time had come to speak again with his aunt.

Seriously, this time. After dinner, he went to the kitchen on the pretext of helping with the washing up.

“Auntie, I need your help. Now.” “What is it?”

“I want to know everything about my father’s death.”

Silence. Celeste continued drying the plates, putting them away and tidying up the kitchen with an irritating slowness. Mário had almost given up when she took off her apron and finally sat down. Monotone and expressionless, as if she were reciting a history lesson, Celeste began to speak: “Your father was a communist. It was me who introduced him to the Party, but he never joined. He preferred to stay on the sidelines. I was in the Party from 1935, where I met a comrade whom I ended up living with. I met Berger and Elisa through him. Over in Paul Redfern Street in Leblon. Ewert was his name.

Arthur Ewert. But he was known as Harry Berger. He and she were both 44

imprisoned after the coup attempt of 1945. Elisa was very badly tortured and afterwards sent to Germany, as was Olga, the wife of Prestes. Harry was so badly tortured that he went mad. At that time we were prosecuted but never imprisoned. One day, already in 1937, my partner disappeared. A little afterwards, I noticed that other comrades were avoiding me. For several months I did not know why, until they told me that he was in the police, or he helped the police, and had betrayed many of us. He had suspected that the Party knew and he disappeared. I was preg...”

“You were what, auntie?”

“Nothing. I became de-motivated. When in 1939 Russia made that Pact with Hitler I decided to drop everything.”

“What about my father?”

“Your father operated as a liaison between his music teacher, Annelise, and Russian special agents, by way of Honório.”

Out of the blue, Celeste sprang to life: “I don’t like Honório because he was with your father and didn’t defend him. It is true that he was also shot. Apart from that, he had come on to me several times.”

Mário smiled inwardly. Come on to his aunt!

“Hang about – Annelise - was she a spy?”

“She was. She went early to Germany were she studied music and became a cello teacher. It seems she joined the German Communist Party in 1934. And afterwards she was sent to Brazil to infiltrate the German community and transmit intelligence to the Comintern.

At that time, she must have been about thirty-something, good looking, from Santa Catarina. She met Otto and married him.

Otto was a rich German, the owner of a textile firm in Friburgo, where he also had a summer house. He was German, but he was not a Nazi. He was a hero of the First War, and had received the Iron Cross. He would receive in his house a large part of the German colony, including the ambassador and closet Nazis. It seems he adored Annelise.

45

Annelise would listen to all the conversations in the house, during the gettogethers which Otto, her husband, had with the elite of the German community.

And probably with many spies.”

“And my father?”

“Wait.”

“She began to give music lessons in her house, over in Santa Teresa, where your father would go. Knowing that your father was also a communist, an ideal situation arose. She would pass, during the lessons, information to him which he would then pass on to the foreign agents.”

Celeste went quiet for a long period. Just when Mário was about to give up, she spoke again.

“A short time before his death (I don’t remember how long), your father arrived very worried. He sat down and told me that he wouldn’t be going back to her house. It was the only time he spoke on the subject. He said there was danger.

Afterwards, as you well know...”

She didn’t say anymore and he didn’t ask.

Mário had listened to his aunt’s tale feeling fairly relaxed, even with a certain indifference.

But on going to bed, all that calm fell to pieces. His father, that peaceful daydreamer, his aunt, that irritating individual resigned to her depression and her futile tasks, both had actually been part of something big, had risked their lives and had paid for it.

While he, Mário, along with many others, believed himself to be superior, practising their revolutionary activities in heroic deeds in the Carioca bars.

An enormous feeling of blame, of shame, and of frustration took over. Suddenly he was crying. Something which he hadn’t done since Brazil lost to Uruguay in 1950.

In the morning, his act of contrition was finished. He was, like it or not, under an obligation, despite the discomfort which this could mean.

46

30 14th February 1969 Luiz Rosenbaum telephoned to say that he was very busy and for this he had delayed so much in giving a response, but he thought he had cracked it. He would send a note with his comments the next day with his driver. Thus it would avoid Mário the inconvenience of going there on crutches.

At midday, a driver in a distinctive uniform exited a no less distinctive Willis Itamaraty and gave Celeste a white envelope. Inside, a note handwritten on headed paper.

Mário It was hard work to find out and then write down the actual scores, but here they are:

There are three tunes. The first two refer to two movements of the same piece, ‘Alexander Nevsky’, written by Prokofiev for the film of the same name produced by Eisenstein. This piece deals with the defence of Russia against the Hunnish invasion around the year 1042 and the hero Alexander Nevsky. The first tune is from the choral, the words of which speak of Russia’s Great War campaign.

The second is the principal tune of The Battle of the Ice, which is another part of the same piece. This tune is better known than the first, which must be why it was put in brackets to help identify it.

47

The third is the first three bars of one of the five songs composed by Gustav Mahler about Ruckert poems. This was called Um Mitternacht – At Midnight.

Good luck and kind regards.

31 Prokofiev, Mário knew. And well. He respected and liked the composer of the ‘Classical Symphony’, of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘The Love for Three Oranges’ and the delectable ‘Overture on Hebrew Themes’. He was surprised at how a composer who was so obedient to the Party (not because of subservience, but by conviction) could enjoy such creative latitude.

There was a time when Mahler excited him. ‘The Song of the Earth’ and the symphonies, above all the Second – ‘Resurrection’, had been enthusiastically listened to within the ‘Mahler Circle’, a group of pseudo-intellectual friends.

Now, however, listening to him was a chore. Mahler exuded in his work a dark, morbid and rather sickly ambience, fruit of his ambiguous identity. It was so to such an extent that, in a letter to Freud (who was his analyst for just one session), he confessed to not knowing whether he was an erudite composer or a dance hall composer.

As far as Eisenstein, he had only seen ‘The Battleship Potemkin’ at the Paissandú Cinema, and which he thought a bore. In fact, those films at the Paissandú, especially those French ones known as Nouvelle Vogue were pedantic and unbearable, with those endless silences between the characters who were permanently moody. He was all for culture, but cinema was entertainment. A really good film was ‘Where Eagles Dare’ which he had seen at the premier.

At that time on a Saturday it would be difficult to find a record store open. But he had to listen to the music. He easily found the two albums on his father’s shelf. He methodically pulled the records from the sleeves, took them to the bathroom and washed them one by one with coconut soap, which was the procedure he knew for old records. He patiently dried them and only at three o’clock were they ready to be listened to.

The record player would be a problem. Not having been used for nearly thirty years, it offered little hope of success. But it obeyed beautifully. The loudspeaker, despite the static, faithfully reproduced thirty minutes of Prokofiev’s piece, conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Mário vaguely 48

remembered ‘The Battle of the Ice’, a powerful tune. As for the chorus, translated as In a great campaign Russia went to war, he didn’t remember it.

He made a mental note to buy a recording on a civilised LP. The next album was entitled ‘Five Ruckert Songs’, sung by a tenor. The ‘Um Mitternacht’ (At Midnight) had the same Mahler feel with a tacky ending...

At around 6 o’clock, Mário wrote up the inventory of all the information: Notes of 14/2 1) The erratic date of 21st June 1941, written at the top of the page.

2) At midnight 3) The invasion of Russia by the Huns.

1+2+3= the invasion by the Huns (Germans) would begin at midnight on 21st June 1941.

It just remained to confirm the date. The newspapers of the time would have the information. But Newton, who was at the Correio, had disappeared and as for Teresinha from Jornal do Brasil, he didn’t have her telephone number. He remembered Eugenio, who had been transferred to São Paulo, and whose wife, Ana Lúcia, worked at ‘O Estado de São Paulo’. He risked an interurban phone call and caught them arriving from work.

After that, he went to bed.

32 18th February 1969 Mário woke up late, had breakfast and went to the Fluminense. He had given himself several days of rest while he researched the archives of ‘O Estadão’ in São Paulo. However, on returning from lunch, Celeste told him that a certain Ana Lúcia had called from São Paulo and would telephone again later.

At two o’clock sharp he got the expected phone call: “I found the microfilms of the material you requested. Eugenio is going to Rio tomorrow and can hand over the copies.”

49

O ESTADO DE S. PAULO ABNER MOURÃO DESIGNATED DIRECTOR BY THE NATIONAL PRESS COUNCIL YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS S.PAULO, EDITING AND NUMBER LXXVIII YEAR 85S SUNDAY, ADMINISTRATION 23197 SEMESTER 50S 22ND RUA BOA VISTA, JUNE 180 TEL 23151 1941

CHANCELLER HITLER DECLARES WAR ON SOVIET RUSSIA. GERMAN AND RUMANIAN TROOPS CROSS THE RUSSIAN BORDER AND BATTLE WITH SOVIET FORCES FROM THE BALTIC COAST TO THE BLACK SEA. WINSTON CHURCHILL DEFINES BRITAIN’S POSITION. The British Prime Minister gave last Sunday night a speech on radio in which he affirmed, “I had already warned Mr Stalin clearly and precisely what was going to happen” and that “We will give Russia and its people all the help that we can”. The first Russian communiqué admits the penetration of 50 kilometres on Soviet territory – Hundreds of aircraft and artillery pieces take part in battle – Rebellions in the Baltic countries – The independence of Lithuania.

THE USA CONDEMNS THE ATTACK OF GERMANY ON THE SOVIET UNION. Moscow, 23rd (UP) – The first Soviet war communiqué on the hostilities with Germany states the following: “On the morning of 22nd June, regular enemy troops attacked our frontier from the Baltic to the Black Sea. During the initial twelve hours after the initial attack our frontier troops contained the enemy offensive. During the second twelve hours the enemy was sucked into battle with the units of our regular army, having been repulsed after violent combat with heavy casualties.”

50

33 10th March 1969 9.00 am At seven-thirty in the morning the telephone rang.

“Doctor Mário, this is Lucinda. Mailson here at the bar said that you were looking for me and gave me your telephone number.”

“At last you’ve called. I’m trying to find out about Honório, who was a very close friend of my father.”

“Honório lives with me now. Would you like to come and visit? He would like that...”

She gave him an address in Méier, a road off Carolina Méier.

It was a block of low cost apartments, built by the Council in past times, four storeys high, with numerous apartments per floor, no elevator, fairly modest but nonetheless clean. Lucinda lived on the second floor, to Mário’s relief, who had gone up the stairs with difficulty.

The apartment had a small living room and a bedroom, separate from the small kitchen and bathroom, which Mário didn’t enter. There was a black and white TV in the living room, a refrigerator with a ceramic penguin on top, a sofa bed, a table with cheap chairs and a cabinet. Discarded on the floor was the ‘Jornal dos Esportes’, presumably read that morning.

Honório, seated on the sofa bed, greeted him in shorts and flip-flops, happy with the visit. Although Honório was aged, scruffy and unshaven, Mário discovered he was someone who was still lucid and with a significant recollection of what had happened that night.

34 “Those were hard times. Those days it was tough to get by.

Things haven’t changed. At the time of Castelo1, he said there was no torture.

1

Brazilian President Castelo Branco, 1964 to 1967.

51

No torture my ass! He would send Orlando Geisel1 to investigate. The General would go to each barracks and ask: “Do you have torture?”

“No, we don’t General. Not torture.”

The soldier boy would write it down in a notebook and leave.

Looking back on it, we can see that Getúlio2 openly flirted with Hitler. We had our own domestic version of Nazism, the Integralism, but it seems that he preferred the imported Swastika over Plinio Salgado’s native Sigma. Getúlio’s son, Lutero, even had a photograph of himself in a Nazi uniform. He was next to Ribbentrop, can you believe that? There were loads in the army. Dutra3 and Góis Monteiro for example...

Prestes4 was in prison. Incommunicado. Only Dr Sobral Pinto could speak to him. And to do this he had to invoke the animal protection law. We suffered a lot.

After Getúlio left the picture, the Party became legal again. We even had a presidential candidate, Yedo Fiúza, who was called the Rat. He was neither a rat nor a victim, but an engineer from Petrópolis. He was a bit thick, but a serious guy.

It didn’t last long. After Dutra was elected, he swore he would finish with us.

He didn’t rest until he had. Towards the end of 1946 they alleged that the Brazilian Communist Party was unconstitutional because it had two statutes. A false one and a secret one which allied us to the Communist International. In May 1947, the Supreme Court was going to rule on it. May 7th I remember well.

I was in the firing line. There were five judges, two, Sá Filho and Ribeiro da Costa, we thought would vote fairly, against the witch-hunt. The other three we didn’t know about. On the eve of the judgment, Prestes was advised that Rocha Lagoa would vote against if we paid him ten thousand ‘cruzeiros’. Rocha still lives in Rio. He’s a perverted sadist, corrupt, a son of a bitch. But do you believe that Prestes refused? The result was three to two against us. In January 1948 we were returned to illegality.

1

General Orlando Geisel Getulio Vargas, Brazilian president from 1930-1945 and 1951-1954.

3 Dutra, Brazilian president from 1946 to 1951.

4 Luis Carlos Prestes, left wing politician.

2

52

I was pissed off. Prestes could have given the money and we’d have continued the struggle within the Parliament and the Senate. After all, we had at the time a Senator, Prestes himself, and fourteen Deputies, including Marighela, João Amazonas, Grabois, Gregorio Bezerra and even Jorge Amado1! But no. He wanted to be a martyr yet again. It was all right for him, but we were really under the cosh for quite a while and we’d had enough.

I left the Party less than a year afterwards. I found a job, then I retired and here I am. I live with my sister – would you like a beer?”

Coming at him all at one go, Mário did not understand.

“Huh?” “Do you want a beer, my boy?”

“Oh, yes please.”

The beer was somewhat warm because the refrigerator had a fault.

“This business of your father was upsetting. Really upsetting. The girl would tell your father what she’d heard from the krauts. She’d call me and I’d pass it on to Hugo. Just information. No names.

Hugo was with the Komintern, responsible for passing information to the Soviet Union. That night, however, your father insisted on speaking directly to him. It was this which did for him. When I left the hospital, a month afterwards, I went looking for Hugo but I never found him. Today I’m convinced that he belonged to some kind of paramilitary group collaborating with the police. There were a lot of those. I’ve heard that these still exist...”

“Hadn’t anything like this happened to you before?”

“No. I think the information in itself was not relevant, it was more important to keep the informers active. But the saddest thing is that it would have all been useless, even if the warning had been sent to the Russians, which I doubt. Russia had been warned a month before, by various sources, and didn’t believe it. The Russian ambassador to the United States was personally warned by Summer Wells. Ambassador Cripps, from England, personally warned Stalin. Stalin 1

Famous Brazilian novelist.

53

thought it was a trap set by the English. There was even a German Communist agent, Richard Sorge, who got his information from the German Embassy in Tokyo, where he’d passed himself off as a Nazi. Sorge informed Moscow but nobody took it seriously.

You know, at the end of the day, your father was passing on the right information to the wrong people...”

Honório remained silent for a long time. Afterwards he spoke: “You know, I feel responsible for their deaths.”

“Responsible?! Why responsible?”

“I should never have let them get involved. They were amateurs, they’d never been trained, we were very irresponsible, look what it led to...”

“You said they?”

“Your father and the girl...”

“Annelise?”

“Yes, who else? She was killed the same night. In her own home. Nobody knows who by, but it is not difficult to figure out.”

54

Third Part

55

35 From the broken leg to meeting Honório, Mário had experienced something unique in his life. But it was over. It was now about returning to his day-to-day existence.

But although he had a sense of having fulfilled an obligation, Mário felt sad and frustrated.

He decided to return to his therapy group, which he had regularly frequented twice a week for two years now, but which he had interrupted because of the accident, using the excuse of lost mobility.

Doctor Daniel’s surgery was on the sixth floor of an old building on Rua Santa Clara, the ground floor of which was occupied by an enormous shop selling women’s clothing. Mário entered at 6.30 pm but Glória was already talking.

Glória was fat, 45, and married to an industrialist who ignored her. She made little use of her grey matter, monopolising nearly all the sessions with interminable existential angst concerning her relationship with her husband, with her children, and principally with her maid.

Mário was bursting to say something, and there was only 40 minutes left for Daniel to check the merciless clock.

Mário politely intervened: “Everybody, please, I need to say something!”

Glória, however, continued regardless.

Mário could not contain himself: “For fuck sake! I’ve never spoken here and I’ve said I’ve something urgent and important to say and this woman goes on boring us with this crap!”

Glória, with tears in her eyes, murmured: “Go ahead, speak.”

So Mário told them everything, all at one go. The group listened in silence and even the Doctor himself delayed for seven minutes the “OK, we’re done”.

56

10th April 1969 The plaster came off, but Mário continued on sick leave, thanks to Dr Freitas.

He decided to go back to work. At least he would not be bored. He thought the therapy session had worked out well. He had released his catharsis and he felt the better for it. At six o’clock on the dot, there he was again at Dr Daniel’s surgery.

They were all there, probably with questions about what Mário had told them at the previous session.

Glória, ineffable Glória, was the first to speak. However, she surprised everybody.

“Mário, I thought a lot about what you said. There is something I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“You said that on the night of June 19th 1941, your father received from Ms Clara a music notebook, where he found, encoded, a warning about the invasion of Russia by Germany.”

“That’s right.”

“You also said that you saw the notebook being handed over, your father hurriedly go upstairs and lock himself away in his study, probably to decipher the message and to phone the guy.”

“Yeah, Honório, I also said that. No, wait! He phoned only after returning the notebook to the old lady.”

Glória smiled, victoriously: “Well then, sweetheart, if it was given back, how did you come to find it?”

Mário leapt up. Under the bewildered gaze of the group, he went towards Glória and kissed her on the mouth. In the same movement, he kissed Dr. Daniel’s bald head and swept out of the room.

At that session, nobody said anything else.

57

36 He would not go back to work. There were many more things to see to. He was deeply enraged. On arriving home he saw that Celeste had gone to the supermarket.

“Bitch!!” He said this out loud, afterwards noting that the ‘Bitch’ was family.

He waited for his aunt by the front door, trying to calm down. Celeste appeared, breathing heavily, with two shopping bags. Mário didn’t even wait for her to come in: “Fuck it, auntie...”

“For God’s sake, what is it?”

“You were not honest with me, you... you... Explain how this fucking notebook is here, if Ms Clara took it away.”

“For God’s sake...”

“C’mon, let’s have it.”

“How? I thought you knew. The same night your father died, Annelise was also killed. Ms Clara was here a few days afterwards and gave me the notebook and a few other things that your father had left there, rolls of music scores, I don’t know what else, and I put it in the study where you found it. I told you this.”

“You told me nothing of the sort, you...”

Celeste was on the verge of tears. Mário took pity and clumsily hugged her.

Oh auntie...

Mário returned to the music notebook and leafed through it one more time. He had stopped on the page dated 21st June. He had not gone further. But there was something further: the final page.

Disappointment: it was blank!

He was about to close it when he noticed by touch that it was thicker than the others. It was two pages stuck together! Being very careful, Mário pulled them apart.

58

There was no date.

(0, 0, 0)(0, 1, 1/2) (-1/2, -1, -1/2) 1/2 (0, 11/2) (2, 11/2) (-41/2, 4) (-1/2, -1/2) (-1/2, -1/2) (0, -1/2, -1/2, -1/2) (-1, -1, -1, -1) (2.5) 0 (0, 1/2, 0, 2.5) (-1/2, 0, 1,) (0, 1/2, 0, +2.5, -1/2) Panic!

It seemed to be a mathematical equation. They had altered the code!!

What now?

He calmed down. As his father did not have any mathematical expertise, the code had to be somehow related to music. He tried hard to remember all of the musical theories he had learned. It was not difficult. After all, he had been able, after several years, to play ‘Fur Elise’ in its entirety, the memory of which still triggered nausea.

The basis had to be the same, that of musical notes. So the numbers had to represent the intervals between the notes. The numbers without the minus sign had to be the chromatic intervals, the half step, to be added to a previous note, and the (–) sign showed the ones to be removed.

But what about the initial note?? It did not matter. Whatever it was, the melodic sequence would be the same, just that it would be in another tone. As if it were a modulation.

Why had they modified the code? Logically, because if the first message were deciphered, the second would take longer. It would introduce another element of confusion.

He returned to the graph paper: on the first line he wrote the seven notes, starting with C and its five flats. He chose C as the initial note. It was more familiar to him. On the second line he wrote the semi-tonal intervals which separated them. On the third, he wrote the intervals in relation to C. 59

C Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab A Bb B C 0 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 1/2 0 1/2 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 Next he concluded: First phrase (0, 0, 0) (0, 1, 1/2) (-1/2, -1, -1/2) 1/2 (C C C) (C D Eb) (D C B) B Second phrase (0, 11/2) (2, 11/2) (-41/2, 4) (-1/2, 1/2) (-1/2, -1/2) (C Eb) (G Ab) (B G) (Gb F) (E Eb) (0, -1/2 -1/2, -1/2) (-1/2 -1, -1, 21/2) (Eb D Db C) (B A G C) Third phrase 0 (0, 1/2, 0, 21/2) (-1/2, 0, 1) (0, 1/2, 0, 21/2, -1/2) C (C Db Db Gb) (F F G) (G Ab Ab Db C) This time, Mário hesitated to ask ‘uncle’. That would be rather suspicious. He sat down at the piano and began the first phrase. To start it he assumed the three-beat pattern. It meant nothing to him. Then he changed to a four-beat pattern.

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On playing this pattern a sketchy memory began to take shape. It was not completely strange but he could not remember it.

He decided to move on to the second phrase. Afterwards, he would return to the first. Now he began to understand how much work Luiz must had done the first time.

Even before he had finished playing, Mário felt a sudden euphoria. Of course! It was one of the few records which he had in LP. He knew everything about this piece, which he considered one of Bach’s masterpieces.

37 In the spring of 1747, while visiting Potsdam, Bach met Frederick the Great of Prussia, who proposed to him an improvised tune on the keyboard of a ‘piano al forte’ for the master to develop.

‘Piano al Forte do Fraco al Forte’: as the harpsichord is an instrument which plucks the chords, it is impossible to control the intensity of the sound. The technology of the time developed an instrument which struck the notes, allowing them to be struck with greater or lesser intensity. Thus was born the ‘piano al forte’, precursor to the piano.

The result was a majestic set of Fugues, Canons, Ricercares, and a prodigious sonata in three movements, which Bach entitled ‘Musical Offering’ – Musikalishes Opfer – and dedicated to the king.

Pumped with adrenaline, Mário placed the LP on his portable hi-fi.

The ‘Royal Tune’ appeared in its true grandiosity:

In the blurb on the record sleeve the various parts of the composition were indicated and in one Cannon there was an annotation: ‘Quærendo invenietes’ and the translation: ‘Seek and you will find’.

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Mário did not need to think too much. It was an instruction to seek, probably already having been used among the two, which matched that romantic pairing of amateur spies, those marvellous impulsive idiots who paid with their lives for their amateurism.

Feeling rather depressed, Mário returned to the first phrase...

After tickling the ivories, he began to whistle it.

The music evoked a familiar ambience which was deeply buried in his memory.

He sensed the atmosphere, the sounds and even the smells.

But it was only after a turbulent night, full of false memories and blurred images, that Mário remembered: his father practising irritatingly and obsessively those notes on the cello, alternating between practising and listening to the record, ad nauseum. It was obviously a piece of chamber music, a sonata, a trio or a quartet.

It was not difficult. Apart from the pieces for piano solo, choral music, orchestras and vocals, came the ‘Sonata Kreutzer’ by Beethoven, (which was for violin and piano and thus of no use) and a quartet by Schubert...

He chose the first record of this album, because he intuited that the phrase had to belong to the beginning of the piece. He placed the record on the ancestral record player without bothering to clean the record.

Shortly after the beginning, he stopped it. He played the record again and listened to it once, twice, three times. That was it. The scratching of the record did not hide the main theme of the first movement of Schubert’s Quartet ‘Der Tod und das Madchen’, or Death and the Maiden!!!

Mário allowed himself to listen to the whole piece. The plangent second movement vividly impressed him. And also depressed him.

Afterwards, he made his usual annotations: Notes of 10/04 1st Theme – Death and the Maiden 62

2nd Theme – Seek and you will Find - What? The name of the assassin?

The message was nearly complete. The first theme related to the announcement of Annelise’s death. The second was an instruction to seek something. The object of the search was certainly in the third piece of music.

But April 10th finished without Mário, exhausted, being able to identify it.

The next day Mário woke up early, at around 6am, determined to see Honório again. He could not continue his ‘academic’ research without the help of more concrete data.

38 11th April 1969 Without thinking about the time, he left home without even having breakfast, arriving at Méier at 7.30am. From the tone of voice of the “Who is it?” Honório must have been sleeping. When he opened the door, he was already dressed.

He smiled: “We’ve acquired the habit so as not to be arrested in our underwear...”

Mário explained that Annelise had sent a message with information of who would be (and in fact was) her assassin. A name existed somewhere. Hugo’s whereabouts had to be located urgently.

Honório thought for a while.

“I can look into it...”

“Look, Honório, don’t raise suspicions...”

“My boy, if you had anything in your head apart from shit you’d know that I’m a professional, fuck it! ...or at least I was...”

“Ok, let’s go, let’s have breakfast at the café, I’m buying...”

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“Mário, listen carefully, this could be dangerous, very dangerous. These people must be mixed up with the cops...”

Once back home, Mário went back to the study after slowly drinking another coffee. He decided that he could solve it, but he needed method and calm. In a primitive association of ideas, he remembered Emmanuel Kant.

About two years previously, motivated less by philosophical interest and more by the attractions of Fernanda, Mário had attended as a listener a seminar about criticism of pure reason, at the PUC Catholic University.

Fernanda was his affair of the moment, whose magnificent legs were improved a hundred times over by miniskirts, a providential invention of Mary Quant. The beautiful forest of Marquês de São Vicente would acquire at night certain characteristics less than academic - and certainly not catholic - a poetic refuge for carnal pursuits. However, Mário would become interested in the genial professor from Koenigsberg (today’s Kaliningrad), and in particular by his essays. Although he might not remember the categorical imperatives and the a priori categories, he still remembered that the subject searched in the object for the attributes that it had previously placed there. Thus the object would be unrecognisable by the subject in case it had not placed the attributes there. Or something along those lines.

Thus he set out on the principle that his father must have had the records. It would have been improbable that, being a part of an urgent message, his father would have needed to identify and find the recording outside his study, in case he urgently needed to do so. Maybe the tune was too obvious for his father. It was not for him. The intervals of the music were strange, difficult to remember, suggesting a more modern style.

Easier.

Mário scratched all the classic, baroque and romantic music from the list he had made. There remained Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Richard Strauss (to Mário’s surprise, how could his father have had compositions by a Nazi?!), Schönberg, Hindemith and Darius Milhaud. He started with Schönberg. The ‘Verklaete Nacht’, ‘Transfigured Night’. Although the notes from the first movement did not coincide at all with the ones he had, Mário was impressed by the music and listened to it in its entirety. After an hour, he was blown away by the sumptuous tragedy of the ‘last howl of romanticism’, where the author bid a magnificent goodbye to the known harmonic forms and left for an ambitious atonal adventure.

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After lunch, Mário decided on Hindemith. There were only two pieces, one was the ‘Symphonic Metamorphoses of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber’ and ‘Mathis der Maler’. He chose Mathis. Bingo! Mário checked the nine bars several times, repeating them on the piano and comparing them with the record.

That was the music all right.

But what of it?

Who was Mathis der Maler?

There wasn’t, as far as he knew, any Matthias involved in this business. It could also be a code name. As there was no way of finding out, he decided to carry out some research on the piece.

The ‘Dicionaire’ was a 1935 edition. There was nothing on it. But the Encyclopaedia Britannica had everything.

Paul Hindemith was a German composer deceased in 1963. The piece in question was about the 16th century painter Matthias Grünewald. It was initially composed as an opera, and transcribed to the symphonic form at the request of Wilhelm Fürtwangler. A little after its premier in 1934 Hindemith, unpopular with the Nazis, had his work banned in Germany. Fürtwangler, in coming to his defence, lost his position as Director of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and of the Berlin Opera, positions which he would regain later, by way of an unpardonable concession. Hindemith fled to Switzerland and afterwards to the United States.

Matthias, the Painter. So Maler meant painter in German. Good. You live and learn. Now it had to be seen what Matthias had painted.

Mário decided to wind things up and exhausted he went to the Fluminense Club to have a Brahma beer.

39 In getting ready to go to bed, Mário went downstairs to drink a glass of water.

On entering the stuffy living room, he sensed again the silent presence of the 65

Visitor. He didn’t turn on the light. Without a word, the Visitor gave him a piece of paper.

This time, Mário thanked him. He already felt a certain empathy for that mysterious and irritating individual, even a certain complicity.

But before he knew it, he was alone again. The Visitor had slipped away as surreptitiously as he had arrived. Mário did not hurry. He drank his water and returned to his bedroom. In bed, he opened a greasy sheet of lined paper, written in a childish hand: Hugo was called Klaus, but he was only the triggerman. There were bigger people above him. These people are still around...

Honório was right. It was necessary to be careful with this research.

Mário changed his plans. He had planned to look into the painter the next day, but something told him he had to clarify more important things. The visit to Ms Clara, which he had planned, had priority.

40 12th April 1969 It was a strange night. In the suffocating heat, despite the fan, Mário spent the night in torpor, half awake. Once he woke up with a start, thinking he was not alone in the room. He switched on the light, went downstairs and checked the front door. It was locked. He decided to see Dr Freitas in the morning, to ask for sleeping pills. However, on waking up, he noticed a folded note on his bedside table. He hadn’t been dreaming...

In the note was a telephone number and underneath: Clara Vogel To Mário’s surprise, who had rehearsed a spiel in order to ask Ms Clara to see him, she did not show any surprise with the telephone call he made once he had finished breakfast. With a slight German accent she said that he could come at any time, and gave him the address.

At any time meant now. A providential taxi was virtually at the front door.

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Rua Aarão Reis comes off Almirante Alexandrino in Santa Teresa. For some obscure reason, the neighbourhood some time ago had become popular with a large number of Germans and Swiss. The house had been constructed in a Norman style, as was the preference of many of the Germans and Swiss who lived there. It had to be a good house, as it was big, solid and with that very sober German comfort. At present, however, it appeared haunted. All of the furniture was covered in white sheets, all immaculately clean. The entire upper floor was empty. What had been a small living room was now Otto’s bedroom, who alternated between the bed and the armchair, absolutely mute, out of the world. The old lady lived in the maid’s room, as she had always done.

At the age of seventy-something she was quite lucid and well informed.

41 “I’d never been to Mr Mário’s house. Up until two months before. Prior to that he’d come regularly to this house for his lessons with Annelise. Suddenly, he stopped coming. He disappeared. I would hand over the music notebook at the bread shop which used to be nearby, and two days later I’d pick it up again....

Every week.

So it was up until that night, when Annelise looked for me in a state of panic asking me to take the music notebook, to wait and to bring it back. Mr Mário would know what to do. Which is what I did... When I got back I gave her the notebook and she appeared relieved.

I went to bed. Later on, and I can’t remember the exact time, somebody knocked on my door. It was Mr Otto. He still hadn’t changed out of his clothes.

He was in a suit and tie. He gave me a small... let’s say, medium-sized sealed manila envelope, and asked me to take it to Annelise. As they slept in separate rooms, I told Mr Otto that she had to be asleep already. He seemed very distressed. He told me to wake her up and to give her the envelope. Afterwards, he turned to me to say something else, but changed his mind. He went to his bedroom. From inside, I heard music. It was the Deustchland Uber Alles, the German national anthem. He had a record player in his bedroom. I had goose dimples, no, goose pimples, but I went into Annelise’s bedroom and woke her up.

She opened the envelope with her back to me and took a long time reading the contents. I was going to leave, but she told me to stay. When she turned she was as white as a sheet, you know, really pale. She asked me to stay in my room, as she’d call me later. She went down to the basement and about an hour later 67

called me. She asked me to hide the music notebook somewhere safe, together with some other things: some rolled up papers and a jacket. She then said that if anything, absolutely anything happened to her, I should immediately take these in secret to Mr Mário, Immediately. So I had a feeling that something was going to happen, do you follow?

It was the last time I saw her alive. It took me a long time to go to sleep, but I finally managed it. At about 5am they came in here through the front door, can you believe it?

They didn’t break in. They went straight to the girl’s room. When I heard the shots I put on my dressing gown and ran there; Annelise lay on the bed in her nightdress, Mr Otto still fully dressed, lay on the floor with a bloody head.

Annelise was already dead. Mr Otto turned out how he is today. I think sometimes he understands things. But that’s all.

It was only on the next day that I was able to leave to give Ms Celeste the notebook and the other things.”

Mário asked some questions about the period.

“They did a lot of entertaining. Industrialists, company representatives, bankers, former employees of Zepellin, which had gone out of business. Diplomatic corps, attachés... People from around here, including Brazilian military officers.

I don’t remember the visitors anymore.

Except one. He always came with somebody else, a certain Klaus, who never stayed in the living room. Once I heard him call the other for them to leave. He stayed in the kitchen looking through the window. Maybe keeping an eye out...

“A certain Klaus! Hugo!”

Mário could barely conceal his shock. In order to control himself, he asked to see the music room, where his father would have his lessons. It was as he had imagined it, the piano, the shelves... everything was very dusty. On the wall at the back there was a colour poster advertising a 1960 festival in Cologne. Ms Clara explained that after Annelise’s death, a niece of Otto’s had used the music room several years ago, also to give music lessons. She stayed a few months...

Once back home, Mário returned to the notebook and by comparing with previous notes, he wrote: 1) My father had received from Annelise and had passed on to the Party a warning that Russia was going to be invaded.

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2) In the process he was found out and assassinated.

Who by?

By somebody infiltrated in the Party.

3) The second message showed that Annelise had predicted her murder (“Death and the Maiden”) and also led one to look for (Quærendo invenietis – ‘Seek and you will find’) something connected to a picture by Matthias Grünewald. Obviously, somebody infiltrated in the Party also knew her. It must have been one of the visitors to the house.

4) After sending the first message and after having received from Otto an envelope, she had prepared a second message, in another code, which would have to be handed over in case anything happened to her. And, in fact, something did happen.

5) The envelope must have contained the identity of the killer.

6) The envelope had to be connected to the painting by Matthias.

7) But why not just give the name?

8) Codenames, obviously.

9) As a name in itself meant nothing, it was important to offer proof, a document, that there was a Nazi infiltrated in the Party.

10)

Hugo was certainly one of the players.

11)

The others were ‘highly placed important people’.

42 16th April 1969 7.30 am “Mário, there’s a call for you, take it upstairs.”

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It was Celeste, who had answered the telephone downstairs. Mário heard the typical static of a public phone.

“It’s Lucinda, Dr Mário. Honório wants to speak to you urgently.”

Mário was shaken by the tone of voice. He got dressed and went out without even having breakfast. With difficulty, as he was not able to put too much weight on his leg, he walked as far as Pinheiro Machado Street. The traffic was heavy at that time of the day, with the cars making towards the Santa Barbara Tunnel to Tijuca. It was twenty minutes before a taxi stopped fifty meters away for somebody to get out. Without wasting time he waved his walking stick, which substituted for the crutches, to signal the car. He almost fell, but the driver recognised that he was the first to be served.

As the traffic was slow, he was only able to arrive at 10.30am. He took the stairs up to the second floor. He stopped breathlessly. He knocked on Honório’s door.

The door gave way. It was only pulled shut. Nothing in the living room. He went as far as the bedroom. Honório lay on the bed, Lucinda was face down on the floor.

They were dead.

43 Mário had never seen blood before. Although he had never seen corpses, he had no doubt they were dead. He felt faint and thought he was going to collapse. But his panic was stronger. If he passed out there he would be lost. At that moment he realised that there was nothing he could do, except flee. But who from? How had they known? Honório must have raised suspicions. As he went down the stairs he was perfectly lucid, with his mind at a hundred miles an hour. They were definitely waiting for him outside. But he couldn’t stay in the building.

From the porch he peered out onto the road. Everything was apparently normal, there were women with bags of shopping, children, and not a single suspicious car. Hobbling, he stopped at the bus stop. He got on the first one, heading for Praça Maúa. It was full, but a youth in a school uniform politely rose and gave him her seat. Nobody had followed him, but without doubt Honório had been watched, and it was Lucinda’s telephone call which had precipitated the assassinations. On arriving at Praça Maúa, he reached an obvious conclusion: His telephone had been bugged!

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Having stopped on the pavement, he thought long and hard about what he would do. Run away? Where to? He could go to Campos, where he had an old girlfriend. But should he involve other people? He finally decided to return home. He was on a one-way trip.

Once again, there was nothing in Soares Cabral Street which looked suspicious.

He paid the taxi and went inside.

He warmed up a coffee. In his entire life he had never before been in a dangerous situation. He was very suddenly involved, more than involved, with two deaths. He could have stopped before. If he had, Lucinda and Honório would be alive now. Mário felt a sudden and heavy exhaustion. He went up to his bedroom to lie down a bit. Almost immediately he fell asleep. He only woke up at 9pm. Celeste gave him a note, which had been left during the afternoon: Mário: I leave tomorrow for New York, where I’m going to be honoured. Afterwards I am going to Frankfurt to see clients.

Good luck and take care.

The final words indicated that ‘uncle’ suspected what he had been up to. As he had never bothered to tell him about his trips, the note was a subtle indication that Mário would be alone. It was fair enough. Luiz Rosenbaum already had various entanglements and could not nor should not get involved in a case like this, which would put at risk those of his activities less attractive to the regime.

Nevertheless, he felt let down. Even though he did not want to rely on him, ‘uncle’ represented psychological, as well as physical, security.

44 17th April 1969 He awoke lucid, with his head operating like clockwork.

They killed Honório to stop him revealing to Mário something relating to somebody still alive and well.

On the other hand they had not killed him, even though they knew he was searching for this certain somebody. There was only one answer: Honório had 71

discovered a shortcut for Mário’s research, however Mário himself was necessary for discovering whatever proof or document implicated the assassin or his organisation. If Honório had been able to provide the shortcut, Mário would have discovered the killer and would have abandoned the search.

So it was the document which was important! But, how did they know that there was a document?

It was clear that Honório’s ‘professionalism’ had not been that professional. In his keenness to discover Hugo, he had aroused suspicions. He had said more than he should have done to the wrong person.

But why would an old document have so much importance now?

Certainly, the people involved in it were still alive. This document would seriously compromise them. To the extent that it justified a killing.

In any event, as long as he was not found, Mário was safe. He now had two alternatives: to stop and forget everything and to hope that they forgot him.

Or to discover the document.

In human nature’s complex decision making process, there existed certain ‘black holes’ which invalidated logical thinking. Although common sense advised him to abandon the enterprise, Mário felt a compulsion which drove him forward. It was the result of his ‘act of contrition’, when he realised that his father and aunt had been heroic in their activities. It was an homage to Honório’s memory, who had paid with his life in trying to help him. But there was also a less noble and more human motive: It was curiosity.

The one that killed the cat.

45 Finding the telephone number of the National Library in the telephone directory proved in itself an arduous task. Less arduous, however, than calling it.

“No sir, this is the head office, let me transfer you... my apologies sir, you’ve been transferred to administration, stay on the line.”

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The line went dead. Once again... He was finally able to speak with Ms Silvia, who was going to look for a certain German painter. She asked him to call the next day.

Instead of phoning, Mário decided to go to the National Library in person, at Avenida Rio Branco.

The librarian was young and beautiful, with a soft and pleasant Northeast accent, much to Mário’s surprise, who had expected a stiff and dusty old lady.

“Hi.” “Hi. Are you Silvia?”

“Yes it is, can I help?”

“My name is Mário. Silvia, I’m looking for something about a painter, a certain Matthias Grünewald. Where can I find him?”

“That’s funny. Nobody has ever looked for this name. Yesterday I had a consultation. Today it is you...”

“It was me.”

“I didn’t have much time, but I found him in this book. Take the index card. It is down there at the back.”

History of European Art, Oxford Press. He leafed through the book. He found the text, which although in English, he was able to understand: Mathis Nithart or Gothart, known as Matthias. German painter deceased in Halle in 1528. Around the Peasant’s Revolt of 1524 in Germany, he gave up painting and joined those who were against the oppression by the nobility.

Disillusioned, however, by the experience of the atrocities of the revolutionaries, he returned to art and finished his masterpiece. It is a painting which combines three panels (a triptych) dedicated to the Church of Saint Anthony in Issenheim, in Alsace, and which today hangs in the Colmar Museum.

There was a small reproduction of the piece. There was nothing there which served as a clue.

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On arriving home he went straight to the study. Instinctively, he looked for the photograph which he had seen of his father and Annelise holding a music notebook.

The music notebook.

In the background a piano could be seen and on the wall a painting.

But it wasn’t the poster of the Festival of Cologne!

Although it was out of focus, it was perfectly possible to pick out a detail: the painting was topped by three points, one next to the other, like stained glass in a church. He tried to visualise what he had seen in the library.

Fool, he should have taken some paper and at least copied the profile.

The library would be closing soon. Only tomorrow morning...

46 19th April 1969 10.00 am He was back again at the library on Avenida Rio Branco. Even given the dramatic circumstances in which he found himself, Mário could not resist the temptation of a chat up line: “Hi darling, it’s me again...”

“My name is Silvia.”

“OK, Ms Silvia.”

She laughed.

“Your colleague has already been here. Are you doing research for college?”

Wham.

Mário tried to keep his cool.

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“What a pity, has he already gone?”

“He left about fifteen minutes ago...”

The book was in the same place.

The page had been torn out.

Horrified, Silvia went to tell the director.

Horrified, Mário took off.

Somebody was already on the scent. But how? In all his outings, Mário had checked with the care of the amateur, to see if he was being followed.

Idiot! The bugged phone!!

The torn out page confirmed that the painting at Annelise’s office was the Issenheim triptych.

The enemy knew.

He had to arrive first.

At that time of day it was easy to find a taxi. He went down the avenue, passed through Passeio Público, and turned right and went up Cândido Mendes. He went to Otto’s and Ms Clara’s house. He had to find the painting. He took Rua Almirante Alexandrino, and already on the corner with Aarão Reis, he noticed that something was wrong. Two patrol cars and a police van were pulled over.

There were some people on the pavement. With his heart beating he paid and jumped out of the taxi. A policeman was at the door. He asked him what had happened.

“It was a murder, sir. The villains turned the house upside down. They done over the old folks. Poor them.”

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Forth Part

76

47 3rd May 1969 Mário went back to work on April 20th. Exhausted, depressed, frustrated, he was not able to concentrate on any of his tasks.

Although it was impossible for anyone there to have the vaguest notion of what had happened to him, everyone seemed to be sympathetic towards him, including his boss, Arruda, who was normally impatient and demanding.

There was not a single question or comment. They all appeared to respect his desire for solitude.

During that time he hardly spoke, he ate little and he felt he was becoming progressively enveloped by an attack of depression.

He decided to look up Dr Daniel outside the group. Although it ran against his habits, the doctor agreed to his request.

Dr Daniel received him in an unexpected way, far removed from his usual cool professionalism.

“Mário, you decided to confront somebody who was stronger than you. As a doctor I’d say that you felt yourself to be almighty. As a man I‘d say that you were brave. It’s said that it’s better to be a live coward than a dead hero. But you’re alive! Look at it this way. You’re alive, fuck it! You could quite easily have died! But you did what you thought you had to do.”

Now seated at his desk, he tried to distance himself from recent memories and to focus on what he had to do. But he was not able to.

He would never find the painting.

But if he had found it, what would he have done?

He would have found out who the killer was.

He would have telephoned the police, and he would have said: “This is the man who killed my father and Annelise in 1941. He also killed Honório last month, not to mention the ‘killing’ in Rua Aarão Reis.”

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“No, I don’t have his real name, nor do I have any proof.”

“Yes, the victims Mário Soares, Annelise and Honório were communists.”

What a joke. He even smiled at his naivety. He would be lucky if he weren’t sent to prison. In which case, why so much interest from Hugo and his associates in discovering and probably eliminating the proof that he had assassinated a communist couple forty years ago? Why had he needed to kill three more people to achieve this aim? Particularly now in this political climate, when killing communists was considered an act of glory?

Mário was beginning to learn to manage his thoughts. Simply saying this question out loud left him drained.

One thing at a time, he thought.

He grabbed his jacket and went home.

But this thing stayed in his head. He woke up at around four in the morning with the answer: Hugo did not fear being discovered by the police about killings carried out in 1941.

Hugo feared being discovered by an organisation in which he was infiltrated today.

Exhausted, Mário slept until ten.

48 4th May 1969 He arrived very late, had a coffee, sat at his desk and started to think.

Hugo was infiltrated in an organisation, betraying his comrades and killing people.

Which organisation? It was unlikely to be the Communist Party. Since the “execution” of Elza Fernandes in 1935 for alleged betrayal, the Party had abstained itself from this type of violence.

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But with other groups things could be different. Chandler, for example, had been killed by Mariguela’s group, having been accused of being a CIA agent.

There were others, but it did not matter. What was certain was that Hugo and his gang “operated” as double agents in some counter-revolutionary group which would not spare them if it came to know their real identities.

Fantasy? Not really. Many agents of the Vargas dictatorship had gone back into circulation, Filinto Muller was a Senator of the Republic...

His thoughts were interrupted.

“Mário, Silva’s back... He’s over there at his desk.”

It was Kurt, a decent ‘gaúcho’, mad about Grêmio Football Club.

“Uh?” “Silva, man...”

“What of it?”

“He’d disappeared, remember??”

Mário went to Silva Pinto’s desk, who had in fact disappeared in the beginning of January. Silva, a talkative and expansive native of Bahia, welcomed him with an absent smile. He had a distant look and said nothing. He suddenly rose and went out. He shuffled, like an old man.

49 5th May 1969 He did not go out for lunch. He could not stomach small talk with his colleagues in the canteen. He got a sandwich from the office boy and, by way of habit, returned to his chain of thought.

Hugo had got away with it.

The people who killed his father, Annelise, Honório, Lucinda, Clara and Otto Vogel, continued unpunished.

Unless the picture could be found.

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With pen and paper he wrote for the umpteenth time, as if through repetition he could solve something: A) Annelise had the picture.

B) Her last message had instructions to find it, as there was the proof that she had to send.

C) The message was only to be given to Mário senior ‘if something, anything happened to her’ according to Ms Clara.

D) That means: in case she died.

E) In that case she knew that my father wouldn’t be able to look in her house.

F) Where would it be then?

G) What more had been passed on by Ms Clara apart from the notebook?

He suddenly ripped the paper. His heart missed a beat and he almost had to call for help.

The ‘other things’, the ‘roll of musical scores’.

Musical scores are never rolled up!!!

50 At 5.20 he checked his watch: there were only ten minutes to go before he clocked off. Although anxious, he preferred to wait and avoid raising suspicion.

He went several times to the men’s room, only urinating a little, to the point that somebody asked if he was feeling ill.

He was. He was totally paranoid.

At 6.30 he arrived home and ran to the study. The rolled up drawings! There were about ten. They were all very dusty, several tied with elastic which fell apart as he tried to remove them, sending dust and his father’s drawings everywhere. Others were inside wrapping paper. Inside these, there were cheap 80

reproductions of paintings, some well known, which must have been models to be copied. In the third package, which was large and coloured, there was the reproduction which he had seen in the library and in the photograph.

To the left of the central panel, the Virgin Mary was fainting. To the right were the prophecies of Saint John. But in the centre, higher than the rest, was Christ on the cross, deformed, ugly, really repugnant, and totally different to the athletic figure generally represented. Only the political leanings of the painter could justify adorning any wall with that horror.

He suddenly felt that he wasn’t alone. Curiously he felt relieved. He turned around slowly. There was the Visitor. He had come in silently as was his habit.

He was looking past Mário’s shoulder.

Celeste was with him, her facial expression completely changed. At that moment, she was all authority and determination. Without any hesitation, she pushed Mário aside and examined the reproduction. She squeezed the corner between her fingers. It was thicker than the others. There was another sheet of paper glued behind. Without much difficulty she pulled the paper apart and retrieved a manila envelope. Still bending over, she opened the envelope and pulled out a letter and another piece of paper. She passed the letter, written on tracing paper, over her shoulder without reading it. Mário took it, opened it and read.

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Liebchen, The document enclosed proves that one of the people who comes here is an active member of the Gestapo. Only today have a learned that he has infiltrated the group of your friends.

Warn them.

No, don’t worry... I have always known about your activities. I’m a good German, but I’m not and never have been a communist. However, I’m convinced that my Vaterland will be annihilated by that insane Austrian and that odious regime.

Sometimes it is necessary to go against your own country to save it from a greater evil.

God bless you.

There was no signature, just an initial.

He looked around. Celeste had risen and, in the corner of the study, was speaking quietly with the Visitor. They were both looking at the other piece of paper, and nodding their heads in agreement, as if conspiring.

Mário could only see what seemed to be a reproduction of an official document, probably from an archive, yellowing, probably the result of microphotography.

But even at a glance, the sinister eagle carrying the swastika was perfectly visible.

Celeste returned the paper to the envelope and gave it to the Visitor, saying: “Go now, son.”

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The Visitor put the piece of paper in his shoulder bag. He went to the window.

There below, on the other side of the road, was parked a blue and white Rural Willys. Two men with sports shirts outside their trousers and white loafers got out...

The Visitor merely smiled. He briefly kissed his mother and left. He descended the stairs and went out. From the window, Mário saw his aunt’s son cross the front garden, quickly dip at the gate, and go out on to the street. The men crossed the street and barred his passage. His cousin then attempted a halfhearted escape. But he was grabbed and placed in the Rural which was driven off in the direction of Álvaro Ramos and then Pinheiro Machado Streets. Mário next saw a figure emerge from the shadows of the small patio, surreptitiously pick up the abandoned bag and walk calmly in the opposite direction.

Celeste held him by the arm.

“Come with me.”

It wasn’t a request, it wasn’t an invite, it was an order.

Celeste put the coffee on but just as quickly took it off. She went to the small larder and. to Mário’s amazement, took out a hidden bottle. It was a half-full Johnnie Walker Black Label. She poured two glasses.

“Now listen,” she said.

When I became single, I was pregnant, and Rose, a comrade, offered to keep the child. She was Jewish, married and had some means. After the war, she and her husband went to Israel, just after it became a country in 1948. They lived there fifteen years and returned when their son was 23. He always knew that he was adopted, but he didn’t know who his mother was. He’d never seen her, which was difficult for everybody. When you began this research, I felt I needed some protection. So I went to find Rosa, and was able to meet my son. Your cousin is a professional connected to a cause and to other people. He was trained in Israel. For this reason, you shouldn’t worry. The police here suspect he’s a communist agent, but once he’s identified himself, they’ll free him. It’s happened before. These days in the police there are still people of the Nazi old guard. They still exercise plenty of influence, to the point of being able to identify a ‘supposed’ subversive who might be upsetting the life of a friend, a former colleague from that period. Obviously, this is not official and the authorities ‘are not aware’ of these procedures, but the esprit des corps exists

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and you know how things are these days. Don’t forget that Filinto Muller is today a Senator of the Republic.”

“But that’s another story. You, although you didn’t know it, have always been watched and protected since the beginning of that madness. His father always thought that we had the proof that he was a Nazi agent. If this proof came to light now, it would destroy his life. For this reason, we’ve watched him closely for years. I put up with it because I was scared. I never told you about it for your own protection. But then you decided to dig it all up.”

Mário ignored the veiled criticism.

“That Hugo is a son of a bitch.”

Slowly, Celeste shook her head.

“No Mário, it wasn’t Hugo.”

51 That same night, a number was dialled to an Embassy in Brasília.

Following that, two international calls were made from the Embassy.

It was only a month afterwards that a zealous third secretary responsible for accounts came to know, by way of the telephone bill, that two international calls had been made without previous authorisation.

The first was easily identified. It was to a well-known and legitimate organisation based in Vienna, tasked with finding and prosecuting Nazi criminals.

The second he couldn’t identify, as it was to another organisation, less wellknown and not the least legal, of survivors of a mass killing of non-Aryan citizens in 1944, in the city of Eindoven, the Netherlands.

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Epilogue

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52 Rio de Janeiro, 1985 Mário was nearly finished. It was tiring that business of cleaning up his desk, his archives and his personal effects. He read through everything, documents, letters, magazines, essentially everything which had accumulated over the past twenty years.

Most of it went to the bin. The few things he wanted to keep he placed in a cardboard box, the same he had used during the move to the modern new headquarters in Avenida Chile. Only that time he had not done a clearout. He had packed everything without checking.

He looked through the wide window, which revealed a good part of the city and the BNDS (Brazilian National Development Bank) building in front. The next day he would not have that view anymore.

Thanks to a special arrangement with Petrobrás, Mário had been given early retirement at 54 due to a heart condition which Dr Freitas, (it was always him) had considered quite serious, although both of them knew that it was a huge exaggeration.

When he was nearly closing the box, he came across a large manila envelope. It was dusty, which suggested it had been a long time in the drawer. He considered throwing it away without checking it. He decided to open it, and pulled out a yellowing, but perfectly readable copy of the FRANKFURTER ZEITUNG, dated May 1969.

How it had got there, Mário had no idea. It had probably been placed there during that period of turmoil, when Mário was on sick leave due to nervous exhaustion, and it had remained unnoticed during all those years.

On the reverse side of the front page there was an article ringed in red pencil.

Not knowing any German, he went to Kurt, a decent ‘gaúcho’, already nearing retirement and no longer a Grêmio fan, ever since he had discovered that the exboss of the Ministry, Leitão de Abreu, was also a fan.

Being meticulous, Kurt sat down and typed the translation. Afterwards he gave it to Mário with a shrug.

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FRANKFURT, 5/5/69 The body of a man identified as Ludwig Rosenbaum was found this morning in a room at the Hotel Frankfurterhof. Police believe he was attacked during the night by unknown persons.

The Hotel does not accept any responsibility because a guest would needed to have requested a key at the reception, which did not happen. Police still have no clues regarding the killers.

According to information given this morning to this newspaper, the victim, whose real name is Ludwig Baum, was responsible for crimes committed between 1943 and 1945 against the civilian population of Holland. From 1938 until 1941 he was in Brazil as an agent of the Secret Police (GESTAPO).

He returned to Brazil in 1945 where he lived under the name Luiz Rosenbaum as a lawyer representing German interests.

An unidentified source informed that Rosenbaum, alias Baum, headed in Brazil the activities of the Nazi organisation Odessa, presumably collaborating informally with the organs of repression of that country. Etc... etc...

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Author’s Postscript The year 1975 marked the end of the last dictatorships of the old world.

The death of Francisco Franco, the generalíssimo, permitted the return to Spain, after thirty-seven years of exile in Paris and New York, of Picasso’s famous canvas, which evokes the massacre at Guernica.

The ‘Carnation Revolution’ in Portugal ended four decades of the stupidest and most mediocre totalitarian experience in Europe.

However, Latin America witnessed bloody and brutal episodes in the decade of the seventies. The Argentinean ‘Dirty War’, of the Masseras, the Videlas, and other obscenities, and the Chilean regime of Pinochet, which was supported by the CIA, are candidates for the gallery of the worst barbarities of Modern History.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian Night actually lasted another fifteen years. During the ‘Years of Lead’, an entire generation was educated under the authoritarian influence of an ignorant absolutism and above all a sad mediocrity.

The Armed Forces, previously an example of dignity, allowed themselves, actively or passively, to soil their reputation in the torture rooms and the brutality of the sadly notorious DOI-CODI. The victory of Brazil in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico and the ‘Brazilian Miracle’ in 1971-72 gave the regime the opportunity to fully exploit popular euphoria. But “Brazil - love it or leave it” became discredited when somebody less deluded wrote on the walls of Santos Dumont Airport “the last one to leave the airport, turn out the lights”.

It is not, however, the aim of these notes to develop Brazilian contemporary history. The interested reader will find in the books of the historian Hélio Silva and the journalist Carlos Castelo Branco definitive works on this subject.

During this period, the Brazilian people were governed by a Military Junta and by three generals in succession. On the cusp of change to democratic rule in 1985, one of them, whose most brilliant observation was that he preferred the smell of his horses to the smell of the people, gave his sad farewell to the Brazilians asking that they forget him.

We have done as He asked.

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The Blurb A murder is committed in 1941. In 1969, during the military dictatorship, the son of the deceased discovers amongst his personal effects a music notebook, with suspicious annotations. Upon investigation he discovers that his father had been assassinated by people connected to Nazism. The annotations were a code, based on musical scores and a painting. He also discovers that the killers are still around and that other people involved in his investigations are dead. In between the various sections, the ‘Notes of a reporter’ (fictional) create the political context of the various periods, also illustrated by articles published in the ‘Estado de São Paulo’.

Rodolfo Rezende Writer and Engineer “Books are split into two categories, those which are good and those which are not.

Yours is, no doubt, in the former category. As for writers, the same goes: either they know or they don’t know how to write. And you do.”

Clarice Moura Costa Music Therapist and Writer “This is the best book my husband has written. In fact, it is the only one he has written.”

The Author HENRIQUE MOURA COSTA, a seventy year-old native of Rio de Janeiro, is an engineer and works today in EcoSecurities.

He wrote this book in 1998.

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