My German Brother by Chico Buarque

Author:Chico Buarque
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

12

I’ve known Eleonora Fortunato since I was a child, although she rarely came down from her studio in the attic. Sometimes, when I saw her going past, I thought she was Captain Marvel’s father, as no one else in the house wore trousers. Later the fashion caught on among other women, but to me, trousers made their legs look short, compared to Eleonora Fortunato’s. She also had a long neck, as spindly legged birds do, and her triangular face, even when made up to go out, had a somewhat masculine beauty about it. I can barely remember her voice, much less a smile, as she had no time for children, and even as an adult I don’t think she ever looked in my direction. Hence my surprise when I find her waiting for me early one morning, with dark circles under her bloodshot eyes and her long grey hair in disarray, as if a few locks were missing. When I enter the sitting room, Mother is pouring her a straight whisky and shaking her head emphatically, because Eleonora Fortunato has just asked in a deep voice if, by any chance, she looks like a cow. Unable to hold it in, she asks if it isn’t rich when the father of your child, busy with his herds in Mato Grosso, doesn’t deign to reply to a desperate telegram. And when she sees me she adds in the same tone: And you, can you believe that not even my lawyer will talk to me? They’re a bunch of wimps, she says, they’re a bunch of fucking wimps, and her voice grows louder and louder, perhaps with the intention of being heard upstairs in Father’s study. Getting to her feet, she declares that she won a silver medal in the Belas Artes Exhibition, was featured in the last São Paulo Biennial, used to give interviews about abstract art on a weekly basis, and now she can’t even get the newspapers to print a few lines. You’re a fucking wimp too, she spits at me, citing, however, what she spat at the Military Police commander, who doesn’t have the balls to confront the agents who made her son disappear. The lying prick showed her some files with terrifying pictures of burglars, drug dealers and murderers, when everyone knew Ariosto wasn’t a dangerous felon but a kid from a good family with shit for brains. After a week without any news, Eleonora Fortunato says the only thing left for her to do was to go to Reichel, an industrialist who, according to gossip in high circles, has friends in the military. She already knew him from vernissages and had sold him a painting years earlier, so she was furious when she was barred entry to his mansion. She cursed the guard, quarrelled with the dogs, and kicked up such a stink that Reichel’s wife came to see her in the garden, but as she walked out of the door she was already calling Eleonora a cow, and worse.

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