Rubem Fonseca: Crimes of August

Mattos put his wallet in his pocket and walked toward the door.

“What are going to do now? Something else crazy?”

“Outcome. I liked that word. Forgive me for giving you a double shift.”

As he was leaving he heard Pádua say, “Did you know today is St. Bartholomew’s Day?”

LATE THAT NIGHT, Mattos walked amid the crowd of people forming immense lines near the Catete Palace to see the dead president; he was looking for a bar open at that hour to drink a glass of milk. But they were all closed.

Many people were crying and shouting; one group was singing the national anthem off-key and with faulty lyrics.

Using his police ID, Mattos entered the palace. He wanted to see the dead Getúlio again.

The bier with Vargas’s body was placed in the room of the head of the military cabinet. Mattos stood beside the casket; from there he could see the tranquil face of the dead man. Across from the inspector, on the other side of the coffin, were the president’s children and brother. Alzira, her face puffy, held back tears.

Mattos’s stomach ached fiercely, but he didn’t want to leave there to see if some bar had opened its doors.

Since 5:30 of the previous afternoon — when the body had come down from the third floor to lie in state, and the people filling the salon had received him by singing the national anthem — the mourners filed endlessly past the casket; they placed small slips of paper bearing requests in the dead man’s hand, plucked the flowers to take away as remembrance, prayed. Many fainted and were carried outside. One man, his hand on the coffin, managed to make a short speech before he was escorted away: “The people will avenge Getúlio!” Apolonio Salles, the secretary of agriculture, placed a rosary between Vargas’s waxy fingers.

At 8:30 a.m., Lutero Vargas, João Goulart, and General Caiado de Castro closed the coffin.

Soon afterward, the bier was removed and placed on a cart, at the side entrance to the palace, on Rua Silveira Martins.

Mattos joined the multitude that, shouting Getúlio’s name and waving white handkerchiefs, pushed the cart along Flamengo beach. By the time it arrived at the Glória gardens, the cortege had increased to thousands of people.

Near the Calabouço, on Avenida Beira Mar, soldiers of the air force opened fire on the crowd. Hundreds fled in panic for the buildings along the avenue. Others resisted furiously, throwing whatever they could, shoes and clogs, at the soldiers who fired. Many were wounded.

The inspector tried to remain with the bulk of the crowd that held its ground around the coffin, without dispersing, obsessively pushing the car amid the sharp crack of machine-gun fire.

They finally arrived at Santos Dumont airport. A Cruzeiro do Sul plane was waiting on the runway. A man, lifted by two others, explained with clenched fists that the president’s family had refused the offer of a FAB plane to transport the body, and the crowd erupted with shouts of hatred, curses, roars, and howls of fury and despair.

The coffin, accompanied by Darcy Vargas and the president’s two children, Alzira and Lutero, was lifted onto the plane. A sudden, eerie silence fell over the crowd, broken abruptly by the sound of the plane’s propellers put in motion.

Amidst the waving of handkerchiefs, the plane slipped down the runway in the direction of the sea, took flight, and passed above the cruiser Barroso, so motionless in the water that it looked like a toy.

Mattos remained in the middle of the compact mass of people who continued on the tarmac and in the vicinity of the airport.

Getúlio died, he kept thinking at every moment.

Gradually, people began coming out of the short-lived stupor that had dominated them when the plane disappeared into the sky. Now, men and women were starting to become furious, to shout and mill about chaotically, spreading into neighborhoods near the airport.

Somebody pointed to a building on Avenida Marechal Câmara, saying it was a government office. Mosaic stones from the sidewalk were ripped up and the windows of the structure’s façade were destroyed in a matter of seconds, while another group invaded the building.

Two squads of soldiers, one from the army and one from the navy, with fixed bayonets, attacked the protesters from different positions, tossing stun grenades and teargas bombs.

Close to five hundred people gathered in front of the air force building on Avenida General Justo, shouting Getúlio’s name, but were quickly repulsed. Dozens of the protesters were injured.

Mattos walked toward Avenida Rio Branco.

A group attempting to invade the American embassy, on Avenida Presidente Wilson, was repelled by machine-gun fire from the soldiers protecting the embassy. The protesters then crossed the street, carrying their wounded, determined to ravage and burn the Standard Esso building. But they were again dispersed by a squad of army soldiers with fixed bayonets.

In the small square in front of the Standard Esso building, now empty, there remained only Mattos and a man lying on the ground. Mattos kneeled beside the wounded man, who tried to say something but died before he could speak. The inspector looked through the man’s pockets for something that could identify him but found nothing. A corpse in the streets is the responsibility of the police, and he had not yet been expelled from the force. He needed to find a telephone and request removal of the body to the morgue. He walked along the avenue, past the Senate, which was surrounded by army troops, and stopped at the door of the São Borja Building. He thought about going up and phoning from Laura’s rendezvous. But he preferred making the call from the reception area. When he left, he saw that further ahead, at the corner of Santa Luzia and Rio Branco, the same group that had attacked the American embassy and the Standard Esso building had reassembled.

A man had climbed a lamppost and was yelling: “We’re not going to run away, we’re not going to run away!”

The crowd, driven by the inflammatory language, advanced in a cohesive bloc down Santa Luzia toward the American embassy. Now, besides stones, many carried clubs and iron ripped from benches in the gardens. The man who had climbed the lamppost had a revolver in his hand.

This second assault was repelled violently by the soldiers. A machine gun opened fire on the attackers, wounding the majority of those in the forefront. The crowd pulled back, pursued by the soldiers, until they were in front of the Federal Supreme Court, on Rio Branco, where a lieutenant ordered his troops to return to the American embassy. The crowd quickly regrouped in Cinelândia and moved down Treze de Março toward Carioca Square. Those in front shouted that they were going to set fire to the O Globo newspaper.

The paper, housed in a two-story structure over the Freitas Bastos bookstore, had just closed its gate when the first protesters arrived, running ahead of the crowd. Two of the newspaper’s vans were set on fire. “Break it down! Break it down!” screamed the people amassed at the gate of the journal. At the building’s windows a few frightened faces appeared fleetingly.

The metal gate resisted efforts from its would-be invaders. Posters of UDN candidates, ripped from trees and lampposts, were used to build a fire at the newspaper’s door. Nearby newsstands were ravaged and the newspapers and magazines, with the exception of Última Hora , were thrown onto the blaze. The flames were beginning to ignite the building when the strident sirens of fire trucks were heard.

Along with the firemen, three police cars arrived, but the police made no effort to stop the riot. A policeman recognized the inspector and told him buildings on Avenida Presidente Vargas were being sacked. The Tribuna da Imprensa was being stoned by an infuriated mass that filled Rua do Lavradio.