The Mystery of Rio

Europa Editions
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.
Copyright © - by -
First publication 2013 by Europa Editions
Translation by Alex Ladd
Original Title:
O senhor do lado esquerdo
Translation copyright © 2013 by Europa Editions
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Cover Art by Emanuele Ragnisco
www.mekkanografici.com
ISBN 9781609451493

Alberto Mussa

THE MYSTERY OF RIO

Translated from the Portoguese
by Alex Ladd

This is the story of one
who kills, then dances.
Beware! A true hunter
first lures, then pounces.

 

 

 

 

I
t is not the geography, it is not the architecture, it is not the heroes, or battles, much less so the chronicles of customs, or the fantasies conjured up by poets. No, what defines a city is the history of its crimes.

I am not, of course, referring to run-of-the-mill crimes. Ordinary, predictable, and petty criminals exist everywhere in the world. I am speaking of foundational crimes, necessary crimes, those that would be inconceivable, that could never have existed, anywhere but in the cities to which they belong.

I arrived at this conclusion by way of the Unesco Standing Committee on the Theory and Art of the Police Novel, headquartered in London and financed by Scotland Yard.

I was on the Fourth Panel, whose task it was to study the criminal annals of the great world capitals and list examples of “perfect crimes” that occurred in real life but whose nature was on a par with their literary counterparts.

Although I was troubled by the inapt description, I accepted the Committee's rules and pulled up a large number of cases for Rio de Janeiro, the city I was assigned to investigate. I was about to conclude my report when I noticed that one crime stood out from the rest.

It, too, was a perfect crime. However, its “perfection” lay not in the infeasibility of uncovering evidence, but rather in the logical impossibility of accepting the solution. I was not content simply to include material such as this in a bureaucratic report.

My meetings in London did not go well. Not only is the city not in the tropics, I was not prepared for how exotic its natives were: they were incapable of grasping notions of chance or disorder; they were ponderous, restrained, punctual; they did not react well to spontaneous emotions. I left the Committee's headquarters without a job, but I did not hand in my notes.

This novel is based on those notes, following, of course, the template of a detective story. But it can also be read as an adventure story, a “treasure hunt” of sorts, filled with duels, ambition, and revenge. It is thus closer to Dumas than to Melville or Conrad—a similarity that betrays the city's French leanings.

Others will read it as a tour through Rio de Janeiro, in both time and space, because one cannot understand or interpret a crime outside of where it was committed.

And since crimes define cities, it is also the myth of Rio de Janeiro. The foundation myth, although not chronologically so. I now realize that the concept of city is independent of the concept of time.

Many will say that I have veered, once again, into the realm of fantasy. I reject this assertion. This is a real story, and an autobiography, although it may seem like fiction. For in order for literature to be interesting at all, it must differ from life.

The House of Swaps, formerly the residence
of the Marquise of Santos, São Cristovão, Rio de Janeiro

So then they asked Tiresias.
“If you divide pleasure into ten,”
the Seer said, “of that number,
surely, nine belong to women.”
They asked the Prophet too.
Mohammed spoke not of ten:
“Of a hundred parts,” he said,
“ninety-nine belong to women
.”

 

T
he crime, whose victim was the Secretary to the Presidency of the Republic during the Hermes da Fonseca administration, was committed in the old imperial neighborhood of São Cristovão, on the old Imperador Street (now Pedro
Segundo Avenue), where the legendary mansion known as the House of Swaps once stood.

The House of Swaps, once the residence of the Marquise of Santos, and later the property of the Baron of Maúa, had been awarded in a court of law, after all appeals had been exhausted, to the Polish doctor Miroslav Zmuda. The doctor, a controversial defender of abortion and female sterilization, took possession of the mansion in 1906.

This fabulous little palace at one point was also headquarters to the Ministry of Health, as well as the Fourth Centenary Museum. Today it houses the Museum of the First Empire. On the day our story begins—Friday, June 13, 1913—it seemed to house the Polish doctor's imposing clinic.

I say
seemed
to house. I overstate the point: Doctor Zmuda's clinic, along with a very rarely used delivery room, did in fact function in that house during morning hours, in the left wing of the ground floor. However, behind its façade, there also existed a magnificent brothel, whose mysteries were concealed on the second floor.

Doctor Zmuda's brothel was the most exceptional establishment of its kind in the city. For it was not merely an establishment where men rented the services of prostitutes; women could rent the services of men there, too. As a matter of fact, every imaginable arrangement, combination, and permutation was allowed there.

And it was not always a matter of prostitution: the House was also frequented by lovers, there of their own free and spontaneous accord (in fact, the price charged to give them cover was among the highest). And there were those who went there seeking random liaisons with strangers, which would give them access to the orgy nights—collective lovemaking sessions for couples only. And that is how the mansion became known, to this last group, as the House of Swaps.

If not for the fact that Dr. Zmuda's clinic was frequented by people of prominence, run with the utmost discretion, protected by the authorities, and above all loved by its clientele, it would not have withstood the tremendous shock of the death of the president's Secretary to the Presidency of the Republic.

Witnesses were unwavering and pointed to only one suspect: the prostitute known as Fortunata.

Fortunata had been in the room with the secretary. She was one of the “nurses,” as they were called in the House—full-time prostitutes who had their own private clients. Her activities on that day were routine—she saw two gentlemen before the victim and, when she received the secretary at 4
p.m.
, she quickly began tending to him in one of the rooms. Moments later, she came down for glasses and a bottle of red wine.

No one thought it odd when Fortunata, at around the time of the Ave Maria, rushed into the oval parlor on the top floor, where the nurses normally went to relax. She said she was very late, and rather rudely refused a glass of cashew liqueur, before exiting through the front door.

It was only two hours later, after it occurred to them that the secretary's nap seemed unusually long, that they knocked on the door. Fortunately, the nurse who discovered the crime did not scream.

The victim's wrists and ankles were tightly bound to the iron bedposts in such a manner that, according to the forensic expert, he could not possibly have untied himself. The neck still exhibited the murderer's deep thumb marks. The coroner's report (marked “Confidential”) confirmed that the
causa mortis
was strangulation, even though the force applied exceeded that normally exerted by a woman.

Apparently, no objects of value were missing—the gold ring with its flashy ruby was still there, as were the pocket watch and its long chain, made of the same metal, the tie clip with its inlaid ivory cameo, plus eleven
mil-reis
in cash—which early on ruled out the possibility of a robbery.

One circumstance was cause for embarrassment: the president's secretary lay gagged and blindfolded with a thick strip of black cloth and a whip with a silver handle was found on the floor near the bed, which explained the deep lacerations on his legs and pubic region.

 

According to an old legend, underneath the House of Swaps, which had been especially remodeled to become the residence of the Marquise of Santos, there were several tunnels connecting it to the palace at Quinta da Boa Vista, as well as to other nearby houses, so that Emperor Pedro I could come and go without arousing suspicion.

This is one of the ironies of the city: in a building endowed with secret passages, criminals could exit through the front doors, as Fortunata had done. This would never have happened in London, Baghdad, or Buenos Aires, to name only a few examples.

While authorities tried to quash the scandal, an enormous contingent of police officers scoured the streets of São Cristovão and the neighboring bars to arrest a woman named Fortunata, of whom they had only a cursory description, taking care not to link her to a murder.

The police were hoping that the fugitive had not made it far, and that she had sought refuge in the home of a lover or a friend. Just the same, civil guards and public safety officers rushed to the ferry terminal and the railway stations to try to prevent the killer from slipping away.

Fortunata rented a room in a second-floor apartment on Conceição Hill. Her landlady, who ran a sewing school on the first floor, was horrified when the police came to search her tenant's quarters, and stated that she had not seen her that day, having assumed she was still on night duty at the Polish doctor's clinic. Her statement seemed consistent with the facts, since the probable killer's personal effects were still in her room.

The searches of the street and of the suspect's room were unfruitful. To police officials, who initially believed the fugitive would be arrested in a matter of hours, the failure of these efforts was becoming a source of consternation, and increased pressure was placed on the officers. That is, until a fortuitous turn of events a little past midnight in Gamboa changed the course of the investigation.

A police officer reported that, while going down one of the slopes of Favela Hill along the edge of the English Cemetery, he saw a moving shape, perhaps that of a man, a grave robber, trying to jump over a wall from inside the cemetery via a rope tied to a
camboatá
tree, whose branches extended over the wall onto the street.

He did not blow his whistle to summon his fellow officers because he was not entirely certain about the existence of ghosts. He had the distinct impression, however, that the man, or whatever it was, after noting his presence, retreated. It was enough for him to show his mettle. Grabbing hold of the same rope that the shape had intended to descend with, he climbed the wall and jumped into the cemetery.

In those gloomy surroundings, spiked with trees whose canopy of leaves cast shadows everywhere, the fearless policeman searched for the footprints of the desecrator. And, to his despair, he saw an apparition pass below where the chapel stood. Filled with panic and already regretting his decision, he managed to utter that he had a warrant, and he threatened to come closer. It was then that the being betrayed its true nature by fleeing once again, this time behind a headstone.