Free His Own Man by Edgard Telles Ribeiro Page A

about. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”
    I remained silent.
    “More than dread or fright, it’s an insidious sensation, the strength and
utility
of which come from its constancy.” His voice had taken on a professorial tone. It was his boss talking through him.
    “And that constancy, do you know what it feeds off? Hundreds of sources at once, from censorship of the press to rumors that someone’s disappeared, from doubts about a neighbor’s real identity to the possibility of tapped phone lines, from statements by certain colonels who threaten to tighten the screws even further to the decision that political crimes will now be judged by military courts. Year in, year out, nothing changes. And nothing will change. Except for minor details. Because what we’re dealing with here, my friend, is a huge and mysterious
oyster
, a self-contained bureaucratic corporation, which depends on absolute cohesion to survive. Its members will fight among themselves and no one will know a thing out here. The head honchos will indeed change. But not their profiles, or their uniforms. Even if these are replaced by suits, there will always be uniforms. The generals will always prevail. And everything will remain that way beyond our generation. Even the fear.
The fear
,
above all
.”
    He briefly smiled at me and concluded in a soft, almost gentle voice, “Because it spreads by contamination.”
    “Like Camus’s plague,” I added.
    “Exactly.”
    He got up and found an ashtray, which he set between us on the coffee table. It was high time, since our ashes, which had remained precariously perched, now threatened to fall onto the rug.
    Marina came in just then. The carpeted hallway had prevented us from hearing her footsteps. I was taken aback when I saw her, as if I had come face-to-face with a ghost, welcome though the encounter may have been. Only then did I become aware of the angst that had taken hold of me.
    Marina seemed overwhelmed. Despite her lovely pregnant form, it was her weary expression that struck me. And the sadness I detected in her eyes.
    “Marcílio,” she protested, “our guests are looking lost without you.”

PART TWO

13
    It would be thirteen years before I saw Marina again. After the birth of their son, the couple rarely came to Rio. My trips to Geneva, on the other hand, became more frequent. This wasn’t altogether a bad thing, since I’d been shaken by my last conversation with Max in Santa Teresa. I would cross paths with him only in Brasilia, when he periodically returned to Brazil for work. Always alone, never with his wife. So we ended up growing apart, Marina and I. Later, when I was transferred to Los Angeles, our contacts became fewer and farther between. Max, I still saw occasionally. But not her.
    As the years went by, there came more news, some good, some less so. Marina had another child with Max, a daughter born in Chile. Four years later, when the couple was living in Washington, she left him. In 1983, however, while on vacation in Rio, I heard of her father’s death and went to the wake. I imagined I’d find Marina there with her children. To my surprise, however, the person who kept an arm protectively around her, and remained at her side the entire afternoon — as if a spouse or partner — was Nilo Montenegro, an actor I quickly recognized, who had performed in several Teatro de Arena plays and Joaquim Pedro de Andrade films, and helped produce the first
Opinião
shows. Marina’s father’s bank had financed several of his plays in the 1960s, when the openings would invariably be celebrated at the house in Santa Teresa, with parties that would go on all night — and be faithfully reported in the next day’s papers.
    Smiling tearfully, Marina hugged me and said affectionately, “You two know each other, don’t you?” Before we could answer, she added in a tender voice, “Nilo Montenegro …”
    From down on his small satin pillow, surrounded by flowers, Marina’s father seemed to