On the threshold E-Book

Milton Guapo

• Herausgeber: Conceito Atual
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 541

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

On the Threshold is a postmodern and futuristic novel. The story is based in the hinterland of Brazil, specifically in the Araguaia and Xingu region in the state of Mato Grosso, involving indigenous ethnicities in conflict with agribusiness and glimpsing the mysteries of the Roncador mountain range. It envisions how this reality will be transformed by the transoceanic railroad, the manned drones that will appear in the near future, altering the new agroecological and anthropological trends in the region, as well as different ways of life that will appear by 2028. The main characters are the indians Obajara and Kunhahendy, undercover federal intelligence agents who clash with the organized crime that migrated to the region at the beginning of the 21st century. They also show a new form of relationship, both erotically and socially, proposing a new pact of pleasure and conviviality, breaking with the decadence of traditional monogamy.

Leseprobe

Pseudonym Guapo, is a musician, researcher and writer, born in Cáceres, Mato Grosso state, Brazil. He descends from the old Pantanal strain that formed the state. He inherited from his father, a physicist and mathema-tician, analytical observation, and from his mother, a laundress and story-teller, empirical curiosity, which makes him prolific and meticulous in his art. He has been a musician for over 40 years and has sung, composed and recorded CDs, tracks for cinema, plays, and nativist themes for the Mato Grosso State Orchestra. In 2010, he published his first book, Remedeia co que tem[Get by with what you’ve got], a historical mapping of the formation of the music of Mato Grosso, which today it is a major reference for anthropo-logical knowledge of the music of the state. In 2017 he was recognized by the Ministry of Culture with the Leandro Gomes de Barros Award, as a Master of Popular Culture. In 2018 he published Um pé de verso... outro de cantiga[A foot of verse... another of songs], his second book of memoirs and chronicles based on Pantanal sayings, written in the native vernacular dialect of the Pantanal and Baixada Cuiabana regions. In 2019 he released his first novel, entitled No Limiar [On the Threshold].

Birmingham UK, 1956, is Titular Professor in Translation Studies at the Uni-versidade de São Paulo, Brazil, and also helped establish the Postgraduate Programme in Translation Studies. Among his publications are Agents of Translation (2009) (ed. with Paul Bandia), and Um País de Faz com Tradutores e Traduções: a Importância da tradução e da Adaptação na obra de Monteiro Lobato[A Country is Made by Translators and Translations: the Importance of Trans-lation and Adaptation in the Work of Monteiro Lobato] (2019). He has also translated poetry from Portuguese into English.

A new threshold is the rising up in the midst of the storm at sea,

an unlit lighthouse, beckoning both the boats and those

who are shipwrecked, but the latter only discover its

brightness when they hit the rocks.

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The meeting with the enigmatic messenger and the indian girl. . . . . . . . 10

The blue, black, and gold vortex opens. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

A sunny Sunday and a dismal fateful twilight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

The Macro-jêdecision and the butterfly of annunciation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

The last great gathering of the forest peoples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

When uncertainty haunts the inevitable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Fire, assassination, kidnapping, strange lights, and an unexpected flight. . .89

Maternity, the archetypical journey, and a precocious birth. . . . . . . . . . 101

Kunhahendy’s ambiguity surprises Obajara. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

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Conflicts and Sonia Otahime’s new affair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Revelations and clarifications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

A new pact of pleasure, sobs, tears and momentary crucial goodbyes. . .145

A promising inventory and the feedback of Obajara’s initiation. . . . . . 159

Returning to surprises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

The new social appearance of the Xingu and news from the 21st century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

An unexpected guest. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

Ambush, deaths, the abduction of Kami and the great commemoration of the century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

George’s redemption after the “visit” of the men in black suits. . . . . . . 215

Confrontation with the men in the black suits and the strange object. . .232

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The prelude to a “drastic symphony” begins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

Old formula for a new impetus, and the return of Kunhahendy. . . . . . 260

Hidden threats return and the watchman’s panic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272

Attacks and kidnappings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Attack on the Xingu farm front, and the disappearance of Larissa. . . . . 292

Meeting with the alien and a new categorical pact. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Rural Skirmishes, Mysterious Fade Out, and a Glimpse of the “Dragon’s Head” on Obajara’s journey to Porto Velho. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

On the threshold, beyond the third wave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

Kami returns and announces Kunhahendy’s pregnancy. . . . . . . . . . . . . 339

A cycle closes, and the New Brigade Pact is born. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359

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After the 2014 World Cup the Marechal Rondon airport in the town of Várzea Grande in the state of Mato Grosso became very well-known for being part of the unfinished public works of previous governments and was also considered one of the worst airports in all Brazil.

Marx saw every airport, bus station, bus stop and train station as a vortex where destinies and all kinds of behaviour and attitudes increased his anguish and also celebrated the end of an anatomy of pretence, whose beginning he could not perceive. Seeing things this way, he preferred the “railway and road vortexes” to the airport.

After checking in, he sat in the airport lounge and opened the page of the novel he was just finishing, The Festival of Insignif-icance, the latest work by Czech writer Milan Kundera. He soon finished the last chapter of the novel and began, as is the custom of all who love literature, to move from appreciation to an anal-ysis of the work. As he had already read almost all of Kundera’s other works, he thought that this one was very synthetic and, above all, “shadowed” by catchphrases of the great novelists and

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philosophers, which added nothing to the core of the theme, an exaggeration of an unnecessary surrealism or perhaps abruptly placed to “sediment” something loose or unresolved, like “Sta-lin’s punch on the table” and the “shot in the park at the end of the work”. Here Kundera, who had shaken the foundation of poetry with his prose and extracted events from the fissures of a lapse of emotion of his characters, was numb and monosyllabic, bordering on a custom-made contemporary visual art painting. In other words, it was a novel critical of the insignificance and mediocrity of current life; however, the conducting object, that is, the novel, was also corrupt in its production, as if the unblem-ished denouncer were part of the fact that had taken place.

“What will become of poetry and poets? It seems that life is becoming too predictable, static and insipid to the point of invading and trivializing the magma of inspiration!”, he thought on his way to the departure lounge, listening to the voice of the female airport announcer. Already settled in his seat on the aircraft and contemplating the nuances of the nov-el while the seat beside him was still empty, he was a little distracted by looking and listening in the aisle of the aircraft to the conversations of the passengers who were settling down, some focused on their WhatsApp, younger ones smiling, talking loudly and spreading cheerfulness. Suddenly, he heard a young female voice asking permission to sit beside him; he straightened in his seat without looking sideways. The voice was that of a dark-skinned girl looking 17 years-old, with a huge head of black hair, smiling and showing her beautiful shiny teeth. He replied without looking aside:

– Of course, young lady! Well, I’m travelling with young people.

– Don’t you like old people? – asked the young woman, put-ting her backpack in the storage compartment above the seat.

– I do, but not to talk to on a plane trip; they complain a lot.

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– That’s the first time I’ve heard this from a Tuyá – said the girl. Marx frowned a little in surprise, looked straight at her and realized that he was facing a young Guarani indian wom-an, who smiled again, amused at his astonishment. – Mbae plate where rera?Marx asked the indian girl what her name was in her language. Now she was surprised.

– Che rera i Kunhahendy[My name is Kunhahendy], – she replied, already sitting beside him and still smiling.

Marx, curious, insisted on the fact that she had the name which means “woman of light, fire, flame, and splendour”.

– Mba’ere Kunhahendy?[Why Kunhahendy?] At that mo-ment, she noticed that they were both enlivened and talking loudly, attracting the attention of the people beside her, so she winked at Marx; both lowered their voices and began to speak in Portuguese.

– My mother says that, a few days before I was born, she was on the banks of the Paraguay River. The sun was setting when she heard a noise in the cabin beside her, and, look-ing into the foliage, she saw the Pombero AchanhendyPombe-ro Firehead Goblin, a Guarani mythical character], who told her that the child to be born would be her protégé. Hence my name, – concluded the girl.

– When the Pomberoappears to the pregnant woman and doesn’t harass her sexually, it’s is a sign that the soul that is about to be born is going to be a great person, – stated Marx, looking into Kunhahendy’s eyes.

– You have great knowledge of our culture… Are you going to São Paulo? – asked the young woman, changing the subject.

– Yes, I’m going to work and meet friends I haven’t seen for a long time. And you?

– I’m also going there for the Indigenous Culture and Envi-

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ronment Congress that will take place at Ibirapuera this week-end. I’m on the organizing committee.

– You are so young and already taking part in politics... I’m curious and also pleased to see a mita [teenager] taking part in such an important thing, – said Marx.

– I was born for it, sir. Since I was little, I’ve felt like the wind, which is always taking part in everything that moves, – she said, adjusting the red tiara on her head.

Then came the usual instructions from the flight crew for the flight, the pilot’s welcome, and the aircraft took off, heading for São Paulo. Kunahendy then broke the silence by making an invitation to Marx, who was looking out the window.

– You could go there and take part with our people, after all, you know our culture well.

– We’re going to arrive in São Paulo at the end of this af-ternoon, aren’t we? Tomorrow is Saturday, I have an appoint-ment with a friend of mine, who has already bought tickets to see a Latin American music show by a great group I had a lot of contact with when I lived there, over 30 years ago. I can only go on Sunday.

– Iporã che tea mi![Fine, old man!] You’ll meet the great Ailton Krenak, it will be the day of his speech. It’s going to be good, I’ll be happy if you can go, – she said.

– Will Ailton Krenak be there? That’s good, I like him a lot. For me, he is an arandu-ête-yma[one who knows the secrets of nature]. You’ve already cheered me up, young lady, – Marx said. – I’d like to ask him one thing, a very important thing for all of us who also have Indian blood, – he said and looked at the Indian girl, who was curious and stopped smiling.

At that moment, the voice of the flight attendant announced the in-flight services, and they both relaxed the conversation

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and were silent for a few moments as the snacks were handed to the passengers. Then Kunhahendy asked Marx to find out about the question that would be directed to Ailton Krenak.

– From the way you said it, I realized that this subject is im-portant, and there may even be a certain urgency to take action, am I right? – she asked.

– You are a very smart girl, and you can sniff out things; this shows great responsibility.

– Since I was a child, I’ve been used to memorizing infor-mation during the oral activities of our tribe, and this has al-ways made me pay attention when I hear someone speaking, whether white or indian, and you show wisdom and serious-ness when you speak.

– Well, I can even summarize this subject for you, because, in fact, there are two situations that come together as one and point to a third, which is as complicated as the proposal to change habits in our technocratic society in order to save the planet, – Marx said.

– I understand! It would be a vain attempt, like what is happening with certain indigenous groups that are becoming corrupted by the money from multinationals, across the conti-nent, due to the exploration, appropriation and devastation of still virgin areas. Would that be more or less it, sir? – guessed Kunhahendy from the events she knew about.

– Let’s say that this event that you have just mentioned comes from a certain focus, which no one questions because they think it’s a true statement that is not questioned because, as the world is the world, things have always been like that.

– I’ll get to the heart of the matter: I know you’re the right person to deal with this with your leaders and especially with Krenak. I remember reading an interview with him, in which he said: “The indian spends his life on earth like the flight of a bird crossing from one cliff to another, without leaving a trace, unlike

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the white person who marks his presence on Earth by building tremendous works, fearing oblivion”. For me, it was the most memorable explanation of the true reason for the indigenous existence, which is opposed to that of the whites. It is the same concept as other mammals, which are also a reference for life on the planet as they seek only food and procreation according to their needs and live in function of nature and the universe, hav-ing a cycle in which mutations only take place gradually because of changes in the environment and the natural obviousness of things, – said Marx, looking at the young indian woman.

– This is exactly what we have been trying to clarify for centuries to whites, or rather, to all men because today it is no longer just whites who diverge from the true meaning of life; it seems that there has been, all over the planet, a kind of col-lective tendency towards nhurrah[betrayal] of the meaning of existence, – added the girl.

– This collective nhurrahhas taken place at other times throughout the historical development of the human being on Earth; it even appears in the chronicles of various cultures, and the best known was that of the Old Testament book of Exodus, where the patriarch Moses returns from Mount Sinai with the Tablets of the Ten Commandments and finds his people wor-shiping the golden calf. If you look, you will find this nhurrahboth in the official history and the mythologies of every civili-zation. It unfortunately seems to suddenly dominate the uncon-scious of a community. The nhurrahturns things around when there is a new situation, and if you look closely, you’ll see one thing in common that motivates the nhurrah.

Marx stopped talking for a moment, turned, looked the young Indian woman in the eye, and said: – Itayu!

– Gold! – exclaimed Kunhahendy, startled,.

– Yes! Now, I can tell you one of the questions, which would be for Krenak. I’ll pass it on to you because I might not be there

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for the Sunday meeting at Ibirapuera. So, let’s use the old way of speaking to get my question to your leaders: throughout the history of civilization, throughout the world, the formation of empires has been based on the accumulation of gold as a sym-bol of wealth and power. When I say throughout the world it’s because this fact is scientifically proven in the history of Asia with the Mongols, Chinese, Indians, and Japanese; in Europe, with the Greeks, Hittites, Aryans, Latins, and Slavs; in the Mid-dle East, with the Semites, Turks, and Sumerians; and in Amer-ica, with the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs.

Marx paused and then continued:

– Now think and answer me: why did the Indians who lived in the forests of the Americas, the blacks in the forests of Africa, and the the aborigines of Australia never bother to create em-pires or huge cities, and why did they never give importance to gold and other minerals that they always had in abundance on their land? Why were they primitive, not evolved? He paused again and went on: – So! Who are these peoples who made their way of being so different from that of the forest peoples of the planet? Why were their gods different? And why did these gods support them in their destruction? Would the minority peoples of the forest then be the true earthlings because they always lived in function of the universe and with the same way of life as other animals on the planet? – concluded Marx, looking into the eyes of the Indian girl.

– Really, it has everything to do with the quote from the Krenak interview, – she said.

– So who were these gods who, at the beginning of time, spurred these other cultures on to embark on this way of oper-ating, based on the triad of sovereignty, defence and prosperity and aiming at obtaining the opulence of gold and empires?– Marx insinuated, looking again at Kunhahendy.

– Honestly, I don’t know. I was not brought up on Christian

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principles, and I have no idea about it. Our origin, taught by our Aracuaá[sage or one who penetrates time and space], is that we came from Areguá[the bottom of time] and that Canendiyú[that yellow macaw] taught us to speak. We didn’t have what they call the “myth of creation”.

She thought for a few seconds, looking sideways, and wondered: – It is really necessary to think about this histori-cal anthropological dichotomy of the human phenomenon and also about the future of this thesis and antithesis, from which a balanced synthesis must emerge, isn’t it?

– I would be very naive to believe this, knowing that 67% of human beings think men are at the centre of the universe, such as those who supported the idea of the biblical “golden calf” – considered Marx, who then apologized for referring to a biblical passage as the indian girl had just told him that she didn’t know anything about these things. – So, – he emphasized and went directly to the heart of the matter: – Why do these people believe that the universe and nature were made by their God for the delight of their children and take this as an absolute truth? Why is the difficulty of changing habits to save the envi-ronment a vain attempt? This is where I want to go, which was the beginning of our conversation, remember?

– And this estimate of 67% of humans following this definite position? Who gave you such statistics? asked Kunhahendy.

– Well! I confess it’s not mine, it was a military kabbalist named Plínio Rolim de Moura, who told me about this percent-age, when I lived in São Paulo, more than thirty years ago. He showed me other aspects of his work on numerology and the characters of people, future events, etc. replied Marx, looking out of the window and announcing – Look, we’re arriving!

His alert coincided with the speech of the pilot, who gave the weather report.

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When they came out in the lobby of Cumbica airport, they were still talking until a person with the name Kunhahendy on a piece of cardboard appeared, and the Indian woman told Marx that she was the person who came to pick her up.

– Ya pitá o peicha jha che aha’arônde ruvaiti[We stay like that, and I hope you go to the meeting] – the beautiful Indian girl said, smiling at him, who also smiled at her.

Kunhahendy took a few steps, turned to Marx and said aloud in Portuguese:

– You didn’t tell me your name, Karaí Guaçu[Great Sir]...

– Nde rera... [Your name…], – she repeated eloquently.

– My name is Marx, but I liked it better when you called me Tuyami[old man], Marx replied smiling at her, as he saw her youthful silhouette already blending in with the airport crowd.

For a brief moment he was enchanted by the young indian, aware of her destiny in the struggle for the ideas of her people – in his 64 years of life he had never met anyone like her. He was smiling in the hall, and something came into his head that he hadn’t thought of for a long time, and he muttered to himself – I’ve always wanted a daughter like that.

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Marx boarded the almost empty bus to Avenida Paulista, where he would be rescued by his friend Sonia Otahime, a beau-tiful Japanese-Brazilian woman whom he had met at Cumbica airport nearly nine years ago and had contact with in Cuiabá during all this time. She was a sensitive person, well-travelled, happy, smiling, extremely connected to music and literature and, above all, fluent in three languages. Her air of an adven-turous and experimenting girl infected everyone, both at work and in the friendships developed during her stay in Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso state, working as a civil servant.

Marx was a self-taught musician and “free-thinker in his spare time”, as he called himself, but his poetic vein was some-what neglected due to his work of researching and registering textbooks for schools. When reading Sonia’s poetic writings, in a small volume she brought out while still in São Paulo, he be-gan to feel sparks of the poetry he had abandoned more than thirty years before, just when he had returned to Cuiabá.

Sonia’s poetry was provocative, sensual, startling, but above all inquisitive to a brutish and tired poetic soul like that of Marx. He had never read anything like it, and each poem was like a Koan

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of Zen poetry, which began to stir the dormant viscera of his sing-er/songwriter’s soul. This idea took some time to develop, and he recognized that those small words of the bubbly, laughing girl were moving him a lot more than he could have imagined. A few years before, he had begun to respond to Sonia’s Koanswith a kind of shadow of her own poem. This prompted him to reluc-tantly create a Facebook page to communicate with her.

Years went by, and Sonia’s work forced her to travel a lot within the state and abroad. She found herself in several com-plex situations that helped her to mature her youthful spirit, but she never stopped writing poems and always shared them with Marx, who, in turn, sent his songs to her, and the reciprocity of the two artistic souls was immediate. They seemed like two spontaneous shoots that had sprouted, driven by an ineffable need to celebrate together a hierogamy as if it were a meeting of a young hare seeking shelter and an old rabbit that didn’t know where it could shelter on a cold dark night.

When the bus entered the old central area of São Paulo, the afternoon was grey, and Marx began to feel the tenor of the words of the writer Mário Reis, who said: “São Paulo is a city that does not allow indifference”. It seems that he also meant that the city creates a “numinous experience” for everyone who lived there because Marx began to have insights into the time when he roamed those streets, which still had their old build-ings of the same colour, and soon he felt that he was entering a vortex of four decades of memories, as if he had rediscovered his old habit of buying books and drinking mate tea on the cor-ner of Ipiranga and São João avenues, then he would catch the bus home, right there in front of the same store, or sometimes he went into the Marabá or Ipiranga cinemas and watched the double session, waiting for the rush hour to end.

At that time Marx had smoked a cigar and a pipe, but when he was on the streets of São Paulo, he preferred a cigar and a

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good brandy to warm up and watch the afternoon dissolve into a chilly night drizzle, which bewitched him, seasoning him to go to the house of one of his girlfriends whom he never forgot; he had a consensual relationship with all of them without ever having any disagreement because they also acted in the same way. They were enlightened, sincere, engaging, studied, and, above all, conscientious women. He called these moments in his life the “plurality of feelings” as they no longer practiced the old “Via Crucis” of committed dating.

He was thinking to himself: “it was the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, I was a civil servant of the state during the week, and, at the weekend, I was a singer of Mato Grosso and Lat-in American music and, to top it off, I still found time to take part in the Solidarity Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean, an NGO made up of important sociologists such as Paulo Schilling, Paulo Canabrava, professors at the University of São Paulo; jour-nalists like Francisco Hardy, from the alternative weekly Pasquim; and Helena Quadros, niece of the late Jânio Quadros, former Gov-ernor of São Paulo and President of Brazil; the psychologist and composer Maria Thereza [Teka], a woman from whom I learned many things; Eduardo Suplicy, the Workers Party politician; and others whose faces I remember but not their names.

We sent letters of support to the new Sandinista govern-ment in Nicaragua, to the guerrillas of El Salvador, and helped promote concerts by Cubans Pablo Milanés and Silvio Ro-drigues, by the Argentine Mercedes Sousa, and so many others.It was the happiest time of my life, which was shaped in those streets, in vinyl record stores, in used book stores, in Chinese pastry shops, in bars where I started to enjoy drinking. I was there alive in my memories, even hearing the sounds of cars when the green light came on, my girlfriends’ screams of or-gasms, which always coincided with mine; the pages of books open on the bedside table, and, in between sex, we would start commenting on the novel or poetry; the glass with the leftover

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wine that sometimes spilled, staining the carpet and ending in laughter from both of us – it all resonated in my ears, and an endless gale throbbed in my skin, like sweat and the lovely smell of my girlfriends’ vaginas. It glowed like the embers of my cigar when I lit it while looking at the affectionate and sen-sual smile of my loves.

The drizzle began to fall on the window of the bus that reached Avenida Paulista, and Marx was still steeped in his memories. As soon as he got off, he looked at the corner of Aveni-da Consolação and Avenida Paulista and saw the building where one of his lovers, Angela Savazzi, lived. For a brief moment he remembered her green eyes, her lovely smile, and the times they had crossed Consolação to watch films at the Belas Artes Cinema.

Once off the bus, Marx started making a call to his friend Sonia Otahime but didn’t get through. When he was about to try again, his cell phone rang, and, on the other end of the line, her nasal voice, already well known to him, said:

– Marx, where are you, have you arrived? – it was she who, intuitively, anticipated his attempt, like so many times when their impulses were synchronized.

After ten minutes she arrived, they hugged and got into the car. Sonia, still perplexed to see Marx beside her, remem-bered almost nine years ago at the airport, when she asked him and someone else they were talking to: “Are you going to Cuiabá?”. Then she said:

– I’m hungry! Have you eaten?

He said no, looked at her, had a rush of tenderness, hugged her and kissed her on the forehead, like two children meeting.

– There are several restaurants close to home, let’s eat there, let’s go!

Marx was so happy to be in São Paulo and with the friend he most admired that he wasn’t even hungry, but even so they sat in

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Benedito Calixto square, which he knew very well, and his mem-ory went to the Lira Paulistana theatre and the Rua do Chorinho street, near his house in the nearby Butantan district, where he would join musicians every Sunday afternoon in jam sessions.

After eating, they went to Sonia’s apartment, which was very close. As soon as he arrived, Marx took a guitar of hers, which he liked a lot, started to play and sing some songs; re-laxed a little before going to a show in the evening at a bar called Jazz B, located in the former “Boca do Luxo”, a prostitution area from the 1970s and 1980s in the city centre. Sonia said she had discovered the bar because she had taken the wrong bus.

*********

Kunhahendy moved among the other ethnic groups that were arriving at the accommodation near Ibirapuera; it was al-ready 7:00 pm. Her cell phone rang and, on the other end of the line, it was the teacher and writer Daniel Munduruku, an important figure in Brazilian indigenous culture.

– Kunahendy… How are you?

– Hi Daniel! Where are you?

– I’m in Brasília, and I’ll only be there tomorrow morn-ing. I had to go through here, because my flight has a transfer through here. As the flight continues at 10:15 pm, I’d get there late at night, so I decided to change my ticket for tomorrow at 5:30 am. I’ll be there at Ibirapuera at 8:00 am, don’t worry...

– OK, I’ve been looking for you because I want to talk to you about something very important for the congress, and, as it’s important and will take time, I’d prefer to wait for you to arrive.

– The talks will start at 10:00 am; we’ll have time to talk about this subject, which seems to be very important, coming from you.

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– When you arrive, call me then. Yá pitá opeicha che cape.[We are thus arranged, my friend].

–Nei neipá![Okay!], – Daniel replied, hanging up.

After turning off the cell phone, Kunhahedy went to the canteen to eat and was delighted as there was all kinds of in-digenous food. She exclaimed aloud, like any starving teenager:

– Tuichá rembi-ú! Yaha yakaru! Che vare-á![Lots of food! Let’s eat! I’m starving!]

*********

Sonia took a shower, and Marx played the guitar, recalling the old Latin American songs of the 1960s and 1970s, from the time when armed struggle was exported by the Cuban revolu-tion, and politically engaged songs were the hits of the moment, both in Brazil and in other countries.

Marx sang “Los hermanos” [The brothers], “Lo único que tengo” [The only one I have], “Zamba del Che”, “Te recuerdo Amanda” [I remember you Amanda], “Le tengo rábia al si-lencio”’ [I’m angry about the silence] and “O plantador” [The planter], by the Brazilian composer Geraldo Vandré, among others. His voice, still full of nostalgia and feeling, seemed to be making a psychological empathy with the time when these songs were called “subversive”, a word no longer used.

For a moment, he remembered a show at the São Paulo Catholic University, organized by the Committee in 1980, in which, before entering the stage, he was stopped by DOICOD secret police agents, who asked him:

– Are you the singer and songwriter Marx?

– Yes, that’s me!

– You won’t be able to sing the song “For the Guerillas of Araguaia” or “The Planter” by Vandré, do you understand?

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– I do, sir.

– When their turn was announced, their entry onto the stage caught the attention of the entire audience. Guitar in hand, Peruvian poncho, high-heeled boots, jeans, and an olive beret with a red star. Everyone shouted at him to sing the songs of Vandré and the Araguaia guerillas.

Marx sang for forty, minutes and at the end he said that there was another very important song for everyone to know about; he dedicated it to all the exiles in the audience.

The song was his; a simple tune, but with the lyrics implying a typical Portunhol mixture of Portuguese and Spanish of a po-litical exile, entitled ‘San Pablo... San Pablo’, and the lyrics went:

San Pablo... San Pablo...

I come from afar and

I’m tired.

I’ve been around for a long time,

I’ve wanted to exist for a long time.

I want to be here,

Walk down São João Avenue,

sugarcane juice, cinema

and prostitution.

What does it matter if I’m a remnant of Allende,

Tupamaro or Perón?

I want to live,

“What I want is just to live”.

Even if the whistle of my quenaflute

gets mixed up with the car horns,

and may the lethargy of my tired dream enhance

the stigma of Neruda or Cortázar;

even if one day my body and my poncho lay

inert on the pavement,

a murmur in the drizzle “will say”:

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I just want to live...

But I confess I haven’t lived.

It was an extremely visceral song, and Marx gave it the vigour it required. After leaving the stage, the audience began to sing the final verses, which were a parody of the widely read book at the time, Confieso que he vivido [I confess that I have lived], by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

In the dressing room, the agent approached him again, saying: – I told you not to sing subversive songs!

– You told me not to sing two songs, from the Araguaia and by Vandré, wasn’t that what was agreed? That’s what I did!

– You communists should leave Brazil and go soon to Cuba, Russia, instead of giving us work! – he said, and stormed off down the hall, straightening his tie and dark glasses as peo-ple entered the dressing room to greet Marx, who was putting his guitar in its case. He had seen his fans in the audience, the model Suzilane and her cousin, Selenita, an old friend who had lived in his town in Mato Grosso and who had been a classmate at the school where Marx had studied. Her father, Mr. Edgar, was a guerrilla trained in Cuba. After living underground, he was arrested and tortured. Released, he still lived and took care of the family until the end of the 1990s. They were friends from the São Paulo nights.

After the compliments and conversation with people on the politically engaged left, Marx lit his pipe. After a few puffs, he left, hugging Suzilane and Selenita, already trying to figure out which bar in the neighbourhood he would go to have a good cognac and enjoy the cold and the drizzle because the night was inviting.

His sweet “Proustian” memories were interrupted when Sonia’s bedroom door creaked, and she came out smiling as al-ways, with her air of a girl already dressed in her simple way as she captivated everyone with her natural grace and exotic

27

beauty. They closed the apartment and went out, talking about the schedule for the show at Jazz B. She said that the Madeira Brasil group was going to play that night. Marx was pleased as he had never seen their show. He commented:

– It will be great, eh! I’ve wanted to see this group for a long time. Just you, eh! Sonia, to surprise me like that! – said Marx happily, embracing her.

– Marx, I’ve never seen a Madeira concert either, but I know they’re good, I’ve already heard some of their songs, – replied Sonia, opening the elevator door.

Though the location was close, it was somewhat difficult to park, but they finally found a spot on a corner and walked away like two teenagers, chatting and laughing up to the entrance to the bar. At the reception, they were told that there were no more tables. Even so, they decided to fit in as they could. They didn’t understand why there were so many people as it was 20 No-vember, Black Consciousness Day, a public holiday in São Paulo. Then they learned that the well-known pianist Nelson Ayres and the guitarist Paulo Bellinati were going to take part in the concert.

The concert was ecstatic. They played only songs they hadn’t heard for a long time and, better still, seasoned by the greats of Brazilian music. One of the highlights was the sym-phony “Saudades do Brasil” [Nostalgia for Brazil], by the cel-ebrated Tom Jobim. It was so marvellous that they didn’t feel like leaving even though they were uncomfortable. Sonia took a picture of Marx in silhouette, which came out well.

As soon as the concert ended, they went straight home as they would have to wake up early to go to the Serra da Cantareira hills, where the Tarancón concert would take place. Tarancón were group that played anthologies of Latin Ameri-can music that had been part of Marx’s history during his ten-year stay in São Paulo.

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– I’m still excited, Sonia, let’s have a beer to relax! – said Marx, already opening the fridge and taking out two cans. So-nia laughed because he seldom drank beer, but she joined him, taking another can.

After drinking and commenting on the wonderful show that still resonated in their ears, they decided to go to bed. Sonia made a request to Marx, which was that she always made:

– Wake me up at 7:20 am, ok? With music! – she told him, smiling and already entering her room. Marx smiled and thought to himself: “What a fantastic woman!”

In the morning, he got up an hour before the time agreed with Sonia and took a cold shower on the apartment’s balco-ny. The weather was grey and drizzling, and he was preparing the mate tea when he began to remember when he had lived in the Butantan district and spent the weekends at km 15.5 of the Raposo Tavares highway, in the Vila Cláudia district, drinking mate with his friends from São Paulo: his girlfriend Rose and her family, Beto Moskovich, Jaburu, Zé Arruda, his childhood friend Tonico, and Leonardo Halseman, an Argentinian friend of Dutch descent, who lived near his house. They liked to barbecue togeth-er for fun on the weekends, with their respective girlfriends.

The mate tea was ready when it was time to sing to wake up Sonia. He tuned the guitar quietly, slowly opened her bed-room door and sang an old Paraguayan serenade:

My beauty listen to my serenade

Simple lines I’ve come to sing

To tell you of all my life

With all my soul

Roraijhura[My beloved]

Sonia woke up smiling, and they greeted each other, and soon they were sitting outside on the terrace to have “mate tea in the wind”, as they liked to say. The chilly weather and the breeze inspired them both, and they seemed to be on an

29

unknown South American pampa. At that moment, Sonia’s natural voice, her broad smile, and the warm mate gave Marx an insight, he had a kind of déjà vu, and, for a brief moment, her beautiful lips, her hair loose in the wind, transfigured her into an Indian woman in a red coat looking at him on top of a mountain. He appeared to be facing the eighteenth-century Bolivian revolutionary Juana Azurduy.

He returned to earth and took the guampa drinking horn from the Pantanal region from Sonia’s hands to pour water again and help himself, thus dissolving the mists of déjà vu.

After finishing the mate, Marx said: – Let’s go! This place is on the other side of the city.

– Yes, come on, I’m going to get dressed, – Sonia said, walk-ing to the bedroom. When she came back, he, a little awkward-ly, said: – Sonia! I think it will take us a long time to get there. I know there’s going to be that breakfast, but I’m hungry now, my dear, I wanted to eat something, ok?

– I’ll make some tapioca with cheese, okay? Sonia laughed at his unexpected wish.

– OK! Of course, I love tapioca! Marx cheered up. Sonia made it, he ate it rather quickly, and they left.

Everything was fine, the GPS was turned on, and off the two of them went, talking and laughing, to a show that, for Sonia, was a continuation of the wonderful music after discov-ering the Tarancón group. For Marx, it was going back in time and feeding back into the vortex of a glittering past, which had become a corrosive absence. He had not expected that, over time, this historical retroactive pleasure would be as necessary to his soul as food to his body. He remembered that, in 1984, he resigned from his job to go back to Mato Grosso, breaking with everything that was tied up in his life and in his day-to-day in São Paulo. “A time when my thinking ego decided for

30

me”, he remembered, something it doesn’t do anymore. Over these years, he found that following his body and letting cir-cumstances help was better, as long as he was symmetrically okay with his things, with his friends, his loves (whom in the past he had abruptly left) and especially with the mysterious longings of his soul. Realizing this, there was no longer any need to let my thinking ego take the decisions.

Sonia got a little distracted and drove straight past the turn-off, instead of leaving the expressway according to the GPS. Con-clusion: she had to take a long detour. Result: a lot of laughter for two. When they were going up the hills, Marx began to talk and reveal things about his secret eroticism to Sonia. They didn’t know why the conversation went in that direction, and she, in turn, showed no embarrassment; she answered and asked too. He was very excited; Sonia noticed but didn’t worry, and, once again, missed the turning. Marx spoke again and said:

– I don’t know why I’m telling you these things. I see that it’s giving you problems to drive!

She didn’t answer and tried to find her way around the GPS again. After a few minutes, they got precise information from someone and arrived at the show.

*********

– Anaiauê! Anaiauê! –announced Chief Raoni, using a very common expression already known by the ethnic groups, which means: “Hail! I join the equals, we are all gathered”, and the large auditorium at Ibirapuera was filled with various peoples. At the lecture table, the leaders Kaká Werá, from the Txucarramãe; Davi Kopenawa, of the Yanomami; Kanue Ka-lapalo, Kojo, Aritana and, finally, smiling Daniel Munduruku. Only Ailton Krenak was not there, and he, according to reports, would arrive after midday, because the tragedy near the town of Mariana in the state of Minas Gerais had meant he had to go

31

to an emergency meeting the previous day with shamans from some ethnic groups. They needed a message from the land and the unseen world about what had happened to the town, which had suffered with the collapse of the dam and which destroyed the entire valley, and the Rio Doce, the Sweet River, was now threatening other regions in the valley.

Chief Raoni opened his speech attacking the government for the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric plant. His remarks were wise, and there was no way to dispute him. The In-dians respected him and also supported him. He spoke for only ten minutes, and the great leader ended by saying that the con-struction of Belo Monte would be a worse genocide than what was happening in Mariana because as soon as the hydroelectric plant was ready the waters would be angry and would not obey men, bringing floods, destruction and also drought, putting the entire region in a tragic situation which had never been seen be-fore in Brazil. He said he was now too old to fight whites; he needed new people with the skill and wisdom to convince the government of the absurdity of its own ideas.

Kunahendy watched from the audience. She was part of the organization and committee of the meeting. She was a girl whom everyone liked and respected for her intelligence and maturity, always willing to help the indigenous cause because she was aware that the people of the forest needed to live so that everyone else would also be able to live. Hearing such a fateful statement from Raoni, she muttered to herself in Gua-rani with her eyes beaming: Tuichá hara![This evil is very big!]

*********

After parking the car, Sonia and Marx walked to the en-trance of the farm. They were supposed to be there at 10:00 am, and it was already 11:00 am. According to information from the guy who was at the entrance, the show hadn’t started yet be-

32

cause a lot of people were late.

As soon as they entered, the leader, of the Tarancón group, Emílio de Angelis, recognized Marx from far off and shouted:

– Where’s the beret? Now you’ve switched to a Panama hat?

Marx laughed, and he hugged and kissed him because they hadn’t seen each other for about 25 years. They were all sixty-year-olds, with white beards and grey hair. Marx was very hap-py, and a phrase from a Gaucho poet, Glênio Fagundes, whom he admired a lot, came to him to celebrate their meeting: “There is no distance greater than transformation”.

Emílio and Marx continued to hug and soon sought out the singer Miriam, who had been married to Emílio since the group started up in the 1970s. As always, she was charismatic, friendly, and, above all, a great communicator. Now she was wearing glasses but soon recognized Marx, gave a smile, and they both hugged. It was as if a field of tenderness and memory was overwhelming the meeting.

Miriam told Marx that she had kept the lyrics to a song he had given her in a wooden box. She didn’t remember the title, but she knew it was his and said that she had done so because she could never remember things and people. Her box was a kind of “concrete link”, like activating a key to open an imagi-nary door, which allowed her to bring something back from the past and shape it into her current existence. Marx was intrigued because he couldn’t remember this thing which was so import-ant and so connected to his compositions although his memory had always been crystal clear. He felt he was getting older.

Miriam said that when she went to play for the first time in Campo Grande in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul she met the sing-er-songwriter Almir Sater, who was still very young. He saw her at the show playing the charango, a small Bolivian guitar, which he wasn’t familiar with and asked her to see the instrument. Picking

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it up, he gave a show in front of her and started to laugh.

An hour after Sonia and Marx arrived, the anthological concert began. At that moment, it seemed that the place had been taken over by a mist of miasma and transcendence as Tarancón started the show with the song “Promessa do Sol” [Promise of the Sun], by singer and composer Milton Nasci-mento and songwriter Fernando Blant.

It seemed that a kind of synchronicity was taking place between the Tarancón concert and the speech of Chief Raoni, who was on the other side of the city, at Ibirapuera. The force of instruments from the Andean highlands, such as the quena, thezampoña, bombo leguero,and charango, along with the guitar, double bass and the group’s impeccable voices put the audi-ence into ecstasy, singing along with the vocalists. It was as if it were a deep prayer performed by instruments of the indians of the Andes Mountains and the theme of the song was a dra-ma of the indians of the Brazilian forest.

You want me strong,

and I’m no longer strong.

I am the end of the race, the old man who is gone.

I call for the silver moon to save me; I pray

for the forest gods to kill me.

You want me beautiful,

and I’m not beautiful anymore.

They took everything a man could have;

they cut my body with a knife without finishing;

they left me alive, without blood, to rot.

You want me just,

and I’m no longer just.

Promises of sunshine no longer burn my heart.

What tragedy is this that befalls us all?

What tragedy is this that befalls us all?

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There is always a transcendental link by which the most tel-luric peoples communicate in a certain way without needing in-struments, especially when something ordinary is looming. For the indians, this is commonplace in their village and beyond, but the ordinary person in the city does not conceive of such a phe-nomenon and has learned to simply call it “coincidence”.

Tarancón played its anthological hits, such as “A mi palo-mita” [To my dove], “Chacarera de un triste” [Chacareradance of a sad person], “Canción y huayno”, [Song and huayno] “Pa-pel de plata” [Silver paper], “Zamba de las tolderías” [Zamba dance of the camps] and many other works of Latin American folklore that everyone knew by heart. Halfway through the show, Miriam was asked to make her cameo appearance as she had now been following her solo career for several years.

In his heart and mind, Marx could hardly conceive that she had left the group as he hadn’t been following what had been happening. He felt like a child who has been away from his par-ents for a long time and hasn’t seen the separation – it was as if everything was still as he had left it.

Miriam Miràh entered, picked up the guitar and began to sing with her voice that seemed to be the trademark of the group, and continued with “Jenecheru” from Bolivian folklore, “Señora chichera” [Mrs Chichadrink] and “Canción con todo” [Song with all], by the poet Armando Tejada Gomez and, of course, “Gracias a la vida’ [Thanks to life] by Chilean Violeta Parra. Reaching the end of the show, which seemed more like a session of religious praise, singer Maite Gonçalves, Miriam’s daughter, began to sing “Tinku”, from Bolivian folklore, in Quechua. Marx remembered that he had heard Miriam sing it before.

The group began to make a kind of cordon for the final num-ber, following the singer Maite, heading out of the area in a line, and there went Emílio playing the quenaflute, Farinha the zam-poñapan flute, Moreno Overá the guitar, Jorge the small charango

35

guitar, the youngest was playing the leguerobass drum, and a boy of about twelve years impressed everyone by playing the zampoñaaccompanied by all those who sang Andean songs in the chorus. It was an apotheosis that of all the other groups of its kind that played in the capital of São Paulo only Tarancón could perform.

Sonia, in her attractive crimson blouse, was overwhelmed by everything and was taking pictures with her beautiful smile, enchanting everyone. She circled spontaneously and went back to Marx, who was talking to Miriam, and it is not known what she said about the Guarani language. Miriam said: – Ah! I remember! The lyrics of the song you gave me were something in Guarani...

Marx thought and said: – I know, it’s part of an unpub-lished work of mine called Mbaeveraguaçu. To be more precise, an operetta written in Portuguese, Spanish and Guarani. I hadn’t finished it back then and I gave you the lyrics; the part I gave you is a kind of plegaria[invoking chant] entitled “Ave Maria Guarani”. – Miriam confirmed this.

The day will withdraw

into the dark veil of night.

Jacy[the moon] will be reborn,

Guaracy[the sun] will go into hiding.

After the sun and work,

my hands are tired,

returning my soul to God

through this sweet purajhei[song].

Tupã Yara tecovê, [God the Lord of Life]

Ru yepe michimi, [Father of the little ones]

aico seva nde rejhe[I want to be with you]

jha nde che rejhe[And you with me].

Awakes in my prayer

in dreams that light up my being

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in these moments begins

the lament of this cuiamba-ê[man].

After many hugs, Marx asked for information about the others who were no longer playing in the group. He asked about Halter Maia, Turcão, Juan Falú, and the percussionist Jica. Emílio told him what they were doing and said he would meet Jica later at another show, of which Jica was the producer. The conversation with Senhora Margot Quedas, a collector of the group’s LPs, was also very important.

Saying goodbye and leaving was complicated for Sonia and much more for Marx, who felt he was saying goodbye to them forever. His heart pounded; he was reluctant and tried not to look back as it seemed that part of his life was disappearing, precisely the happiest part which had been linked to everything he had experienced in the group’s heyday. He acted in the same way, with his singing and political struggle with the Solidarity Committee of Latin America and the Caribbean, with his loves in the polygamous web, to all of which the music of Tarancón was a sort of transcendental and timeless soundtrack.

The vortex of that sound portal was lagging behind.

He still couldn’t find the exit. Sonia showed him: – Marx, it’s this way, let’s go!

On his way back, the group’s sound still reverberated in Marx’s head and heart. He became quiet, and Sonia drove away guided by the GPS. As soon as she was on the express-way, he felt like the sorceress Morgana when she stepped out of the fairy world in American writer Marion Zimmer Brad-ley’s novel The Mists of Avalon.

*********

Ailton Krenak arrived and went straight to his accommo-dation. He was tired and disturbed by the things that were hap-

37

pening in Minas Gerais and also by the result of the meeting with the shamans; it was 3:00 pm and cold and drizzling. He sat down on a sofa, lit his pipe, began to analyze the situation and think about the instructions they had given him for his speech the next day. The theme proposed by the commission was “Har-mony and Construction of the Third Millennium with the Par-ticipation of the Indigenous Peoples”. He was almost dozing on the couch when a girl’s voice surprised him:

– CaraíAilton, my name is Kunhahendy; I’m from the congress committee, I’m Guarani, I’d like to speak with you. I know you’re tired, but what I have to tell you is very important for your speech and your topic for tomorrow. Can we talk?

– It’s always exciting to