Authors: Edgard Telles Ribeiro
Despite the good news, Max was worried about the repercussions of this unexpected distinction. What luck that the senator happened to be a friend of the minister. But what would his colleagues say? Wouldn’t his move run the risk of being misinterpreted? And how would he concoct an apology to the head of the Middle East division, who was awaiting him with open arms and to whom he’d made a commitment just two weeks earlier?
On Max’s first day at the ministry, he had all the forced seriousness of a young man who wished desperately to appear older than he was. The effort wasn’t entirely successful, however, for it was contradicted by his natural exuberance. In his right hand, he carried a briefcase of worn but fine leather, which for the moment held only the day’s newspaper. To offset the sobriety of his dark suit, he allowed himself two concessions: his hair, without being long, extended beyond his jacket collar, and his shirt was of a relatively striking color. Max sailed past the reception area staff, who regarded him in silence. Ignoring the swans in the pond, he made a right upon reaching the stately row of palm trees on the Itamaraty Palace grounds and headed toward the Personnel Department.
The head of Personnel, informed of the transfer by a phone call from the minister’s office, was waiting for him. An unhurried older fellow, short and stout, with a thin mustache, he had witnessed similar — and even swifter — maneuvers in his time, but rarely involving someone so young, who hadn’t yet officially joined the ministry. This point, in particular, intrigued him: that the first act of a play could occur before the curtain
went up, in a kind of secret prologue to which the public hadn’t had access.
Max hesitated in front of the man. Should he settle into one of the two armchairs? His superior, who was seated, had asked for the official transfer papers, which he was rereading now in silence, as though looking for some error or inaccuracy. Like a new recruit, Max waited, standing between two empty seats. He had put his briefcase down but was unsure what to do with his arms; not wanting to cross them, he simply let them hang at his sides. He wanted to smoke but didn’t dare, despite noticing the used ashtray on the desk.
In less than an hour he would be ensconced at the minister’s office, but right now he found himself paralyzed before this simple public servant. Three whole minutes had already elapsed, an inordinate amount of time for Max on that chilly winter morning. The hand on the wall clock kept marching forward. Max was undergoing the defining moment of his career. Like many a colleague before him, however, he was unaware of the fact. In that modest setting, a far cry from the more sumptuous ones that awaited him, he was relinquishing a substantive job that could have brought him great professional satisfaction in favor of the choreographed roles he’d surely be offered in the minister’s office, where he’d probably do nothing but open doors and receive files destined for more capable hands.
The head of Personnel, who kept Max waiting, was well aware of this. His experience told him just what kind of path Max would follow from then on, and where it generally ended up.
“Good luck,” he mumbled as they parted ways. But his farewell went unheard, since Max was already disappearing down the hall, his heels echoing on the marble floor.
The career Max had just embarked on was extremely competitive, with strict criteria for advancement, contingent on a sequence of promotions. It took thirty years, on average, to move from bottom to top. The faster the ascent, however, the
brighter the panoramic view from above, not to mention the associated perks, among which was the most coveted one of all: the exercise of power. Very few ever made it to the highest offices, let alone gained access to the major posts abroad. Thus the frantic competition. For contacts, invitations, and prestigious positions, as well as for smiles and pats on the back from those in power.
This was the environment in which Max was to navigate. Difficult under normal circumstances and unpredictable in a context of randomness and ambiguity, as would become clear over the subsequent twenty years. But it was still a few months before this more disturbing scenario began to take hold. For the moment, the military was still champing at the bit in their barracks, while Max did the same in the solitude of his room in Humaitá, the neighborhood where he lived with his mother. It would be two years before he relocated to the more upscale Urca. In the meantime, he earned his place in the minister’s office — but not in the man’s heart.
The minister hardly knew him, given the complex internal system that, like everything around them, followed protocol. Even when Max first shook the minister’s hand, the conversation he’d been rehearsing all week was cut off by a phone call from the president’s office. Max created a mental montage based on that first meeting, splicing together a half-truth and a half-lie. He would tell his colleagues that his meeting with the minister “was interrupted by a call from the President of the Republic” — which had the benefit of being true. From there, however, he would go on to fabricate an imaginary conversation with his superior, embellishing it with a wealth of details that would vary depending on his audience but that always revolved around the minister’s interest in what
he
had to say.
His colleagues would listen in silence, without betraying their feelings, hiding as best they could the envy eating away at them. And Max in his somber suit would remain undaunted,
as he continued to spin his tale, attempting to disguise the bulk of his impudence. If he handled the challenge gallantly, it was because he sensed that the burden would be only temporary. To his dismay, however, he didn’t feel welcome in the minister’s office. His name had been suggested to the minister by an outside source, meaning the idea hadn’t come from within the institution itself. Max reasoned that someone else must have been under consideration for the position, which increased his insecurity: he didn’t know whom he might have been competing against.
He wasn’t treated poorly. Far from it. But he was assigned menial tasks that he considered beneath him, such as reading the newspapers each day and cutting out anything that might warrant his superiors’ attention during their morning coffee. This obliged him to arrive before eight o’clock. And since no one left work before eight in the evening, his daily routine ended up being exhausting. Most of the time he was dying of boredom, but he made it a point to appear busy whenever coworkers or visitors stopped by, constantly opening drawers in search of some nonexistent document, or making an unnecessary request of someone nearby, in a voice that often sounded too loud even to his own ears.
The furniture, rugs, paintings, and decorative objects were all museum-worthy. His first day on the job, he discovered there was a Corot painting on the wall behind his desk. Astonished, he mentioned the fact to a colleague, who not only deemed this completely normal but added in a blasé tone, “That’s nothing compared to what’s in the minister’s office.” The remark stung, not only for belittling his discovery but also for making his lack of access to the big boss all too obvious.
The small painting depicted a pastoral landscape in grayish tones, with a few cypresses swaying in the wind. In the foreground, two stooped peasants were carrying hoes as they made their way toward a shack. Although the work measured
only sixty by eighty centimeters, excluding the ornate, almost baroque frame, the artist’s signature was quite visible in the bottom right corner. Max realized that the painting was worth a fortune. Still, its presence soothed him. It enabled him to go home again — to the idealized family home he’d dreamt about throughout his childhood.
Max’s desk was imposing and well proportioned. Seated, he could barely stretch out his hands to the far corners, and it took some effort just to reach his pens and ink. On the far right corner of the glass top protecting the varnished surface, Max set out a portrait of his mother. It remained there less than an hour — just long enough for him to realize that his coworkers’ desks held nothing but file folders and papers. Lacking the courage to take the picture back home, fearing that his mother would notice, he ended up hiding it in the back of a drawer.
To his pleasant surprise, however, he soon found out that simply by occupying a seat in that particular area, he had become a key player in the eyes of those who came to meet with the minister or his chief of staff. It was an illusion — of which he himself was the first victim.
It didn’t matter. Max was delighted by his position’s inherent magic. Gradually, like a plant warming to the sunlight, he garnered strength by nourishing himself on the respect of others, proudly noting how the secretaries and typists, all young women from good families, appreciated his suits and ties. It was the first of many mirrors he’d face throughout his career — that of vanity. Mirrors that would lead him farther and farther from himself.
After his first two weeks, once the weight of his shamelessness had lessened and his somber suits felt lighter, he was able to have a few relatively spontaneous exchanges with his coworkers. For the first time, he discovered that he was being listened to and, before long, that he was being seen. Whereupon he realized that he had finally
arrived
at the minister’s office. That
same night, he paid for dinner among a circle of friends. The novelty didn’t go unnoticed. His peers were as fascinated as they were flushed — the latter for having drunk three bottles of Château Duvalier, the label of which hardly hid the wine’s true provenance.
He reported directly to the chief of staff, who over time began to exchange a few words with him. Nevertheless, Max would still be interrupted by other diplomats just as he was about to wrap up something he was saying. He would keep his composure despite feeling indignant, and even managed to smile at his colleagues — as they completed, in a rather mundane way, a thought that had been his own. Thus he learned, at great personal cost, to control himself, thereby initiating a circuitous process that would lead him to laugh at bad jokes at the right time, rounding them out, whenever possible, with a phrase that made them more amusing.
All in all, he remained unhappy. Matters always went sweeping past him without his being able to examine and elucidate them so as to produce a trace of a more substantive idea that would call attention to him in that environment, where each and every toehold was ferociously fought over. After a few weeks, despite all the business cards he collected while zealously distributing his own (with the title “Assistant to the Minister”), he began to grow impatient. He didn’t allow himself to become completely discouraged, however, convinced that he simply needed to stand his ground and persist. And so he contemplated his Corot — and daydreamed.
Where he felt most at ease was with his inner circle of colleagues, who continued to be impressed by his appointment. When they got together for lunch or went out at night, his friends couldn’t resist the temptation to ask questions about what went on in that august sphere. Max would give terse replies or pretend not to know. Which only increased his standing within the group, causing them to conclude that he was the
keeper of state secrets. His silences were given more weight than his answers.
Max gradually absorbed into his personality the illusion he projected, creating a formidable image based in part on a priestly model suitable to the grandeur of his office. Moreover, he availed himself of penetrating looks when reading memos and telegrams, letting half words slip out here and there, fragments that would reflect the secrets he was believed to keep.
During this stage, Max lacked only substance. That would soon come, thanks to divine intervention. For, oddly enough, the gods are as attentive to dishonorable men as to the rest.
The months leading up to the military coup of 1964 spawned all kinds of naïve and contradictory rumors. Despite the intellectual climate of the time, with its myriad speeches, articles, conjectures, provocations, and challenges, an almost childlike innocence prevailed. Everything was taken into account except the obvious: that the military, convinced that values were disintegrating around them, were going to move their old tanks into the streets and intervene in the political arena.
No one, aside from the small circle of conspirators, was seriously considering this possibility — even though many in the middle class expressed fear regarding the populist direction the government was headed in, and participated in large demonstrations, organized by the most traditional sectors of society, with the open support of members of the clergy. Reflecting rifts occurring all over the country, the clergy too had splintered, into both a progressive wing, sympathetic to the peasants, students, and union leaders, and a conservative wing, whose most outspoken leader was the solemn Cardinal Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro.
It was in this capacity that the cardinal had asked to meet with the minister. Max had been enlisted as note taker for the session, the first time he’d been entrusted with such an important task. He didn’t know to what he owed the honor — and would have been surprised to learn that the assignment had first been offered to his other colleagues, all of whom had declined,
on one pretext or another, under the assumption that the cardinal was merely paying a courtesy visit, possibly seeking support for some charity event.
This was not the case, as Max would realize on transcribing his notes. Only as he reread them — he’d been quite nervous throughout the session — did he uncover the real reason for the flowery conversation he’d witnessed: the cardinal’s deep concern regarding changes in foreign policy, which seemed to reflect an incomprehensible desire to move the country away from its traditional Christian-based mission and place it dangerously close to certain atheist regimes, with their appalling executions by firing squads — from which not even priests had been spared.
The foreign minister, a career ambassador professionally respected within the ministry for his intellectual strengths and personal integrity, was an affable man. The Brazilian left, lost in its own aspirations — and contradictions — couldn’t have found a better face to present to the world. The right, pressed between the greedy elite, which considered nothing but its own interests, and a military machine seduced by the large-scale potential for power, had their own legitimate representative in the cardinal — for one simple reason: his hierarchical superior lived in Rome and counted on direct access to heaven.