Читать книгу The beast of a thousand years - Ilmar Penna Marinho Junior - Страница 9

Chapter 3

LONG BEFORE HE MET LISA on the first consultation, Leonardo had already chosen to live in the shadows and duplicity. It wasn’t easy to maintain a seeming composure as an honest accountant. Those who knew him for his discreet looks, walking hurriedly on the streets, wouldn’t believe that, behind those steps, there was another man with secret things happening in his clandestine life. But this other identity, well hidden, hadn’t come up overnight, nor did it stem from the environment in which he had been raised, in the comfort of an upper-middle-class home, with a pampered childhood and good schools. He had always attributed to “circumstances” the fact that he did not follow his father’s politically correct example — a good man who died in ruin because he committed suicide.

As much as he liked Math and the magic of numbers, his father wanted him to be a lawyer. Not wanting to upset him, Leo got into Law School, but he also attended Accounting Sciences at night. At first, his father frowned upon this, but then accepted his adult son’s wish to fulfill his dream of registering the flow of money. At that time, he was unhappy, working as an intern at a law firm of a friend of the old man. He hated going to the forum.

After his father died and he graduated as an accountant, he decided to open an accounting office on the sixth floor of a shopping mall near Saens Peña Square. His clients were some condos managements and small shops in Tijuca. But, before that, Leonardo had already gotten involved in “petty crimes” and had things facilitated by chance, by the unavoidable, which made him interact with the worst kind of people. Through that scum, he embraced the unusual opportunities that made him powerful and respected for the simple fact that he made a lot of money, although he began to live on the razor’s edge.

He would give helpful aid on the accounting schemes, and then began to accept well-paid, unscrupulous “small tasks” from his close friend, the head of a drug-dealing group in the state of Rio de Janeiro. He had met him at a dive bar, which had a hidden room where people played truco. They soon got along when they won a hand in the game. When he realized it, he was up to his neck in the bookkeeping of the drug dealing ledger. That was not what he wanted from fate. He dreamt about being a corporate accountant who would give his father a lot of pride. The so-called “circumstances” and the bad influences gave life to the other Leo.

He walked on the street, wearing, as usual, a blue sweatshirt, white t-shirt, loose pants, and sneakers with six shock absorbers. No one suspected the quiet intern who had taken a leave of absence on the fourth year of Law School. After his father’s death, Leonardo would become known as “Big Head” on the sidelines of the gang run by the man also known as “Skull”.

In all those years, no one suspected the hard-working, skilled gang accountant. And, unlikely as it may seem, neither his family nor his girlfriend Ana, knew about his criminal activities and how he had become such close friends with one of the leaders of the drug dealing, whose longitudinal and cadaverous face did justice to the dreaded nickname, “Skull”.

The fact is that Leonard became the drug lord’s partner for the card game on Fridays. Throughout this gambling experience, he met his future mates: a killer called Runner, men who ran illegal gambling, drug dealers, gunmen, “friendly” policemen and military outsourced from the payroll, gigolos, prostitutes. The skinny Skull, who wore size 14 shoes, knew how to reward him for rendered services for the traffic bookkeeping and, even more royally, for perfectly executing the bribes to inspectors and authorities. Truth be told, it had been Leonardo, at a time when he was not yet taking huge amounts of aspirin, who organized the main “tip jars” for the bribes and “deals” that explained how Skull kept working without being arrested or exposed by law enforcement, coincidentally when the generalized impunity and urban violence in the city were widespread.

Leonardo never forgot how the definitive friendship between them was sealed. He kept the decisive dialogue in his memory.

“I’ve been wanting someone like you for a long time, man.”

“Hey, I’m not the only one around. There’s a shitload of guys.”

“It’s been hard to find an honest white dude. The dopeheads of the gang weren’t born rich, didn’t go to school and haven’t learned shit in life. They were born looking like trash. You have a good head on your shoulders, you’re cool. You command respect. You were already born different, prepared for thug life, you know?

“Different? What do you mean, different?”

“You know what you want from life, brother. You’re the only one I can trust”, said Skull, taking a drag from his cigarette.

He really could trust the helpful Leonardo, who hadn’t come from the streets, had always refused to distribute any kind of drug and considered it something that only “crazy” or “insane” people did. The tasks he agreed to do, a little reluctantly at first, but that he would later do with pleasure and talent, were being the gang’s accountant and the distributor of the “dough” in police stations, government departments, and “to the men on the top”, at a time when drug trafficking was taking over the slums in Rio, and Brazil became definitively a route for drugs as a distribution point to Europe.

Ana Magalhães Castro, whom Leonardo dated, came from a traditional family of Rio de Janeiro politicians. He won her over with the most childish of smiles, used to declare that only she existed in his solitary life. She believed so much in this that, after dating for a short period, she got married wearing white and a veil in the church where she would always go to pray. And on the walk down the aisle, her father whispered to her, saying he was sure that he was giving her to a “lucky man” to make her very happy, despite him being “a sad lad”. The girl was twenty-years-old when she dropped out of her Literature studies because she got pregnant. She never wrote her poems again; she traded them, during her pregnancy, for the embroidery on the baby’s layette.

Ana only learned about the office at Saens Peña Square on the day her son Lucca was born. She thought Leo was still a rookie lawyer. The accountant justified it saying that he hadn’t told her anything because it was a surprise. Nobody knew he had graduated in Accounting Sciences. At that time, Leonardo already had his underground secrets well-hidden. So much so that it was normal for him to become glum and vent with his wife during dinner, when his son Lucca was still a baby.

“I need money, a lot of money, to keep fighting.”

She never suspected this obsession, nor did she suspect the “circumstances”, the harmful friendships, let alone the demonic “hidden forces” that enthralled the greedy, vengeful Big Head.

Ana embroidered flowery pillowcases and tablecloths, delicate works of art, with patience and taste. She got used to seeing her husband, year in and year out, earning more and more money, thanks to his supposedly total dedication to Accounting Sciences. Their son Lucca grew up living in Andaraí, then in Grajaú, and, when he was already a teenager, he lived in Flamengo with a view to the park. Now they had just moved to a four-bedroom apartment in Barra. Oddly enough, Ana never had the curiosity to visit her husband in the old nor in the new office at Downtown Shopping Mall.

“I don’t want to be in your way now that you’re surrounded by important people”, she would apologize for her lack of curiosity regarding her husband’s business. She trusted him.

However, things began to become very muddy. Ana was the first to recognize that Leo had changed a lot. He was always tense. He had crossed the line of the conventional husband and became a man full of secrets and habits. He would give her increasingly evasive answers about his routine outside the house. In the ten years they’ve been married, that hadn’t bothered her. Lately, things had taken a contentious turn. This new, unknown Leonardo distressed her more and more. Rude words and attitudes in front of the neighbors or strangers became a usual thing. This would upset her and make her sad. She also didn’t accept the fact that her husband, despite having three cell phones, wouldn’t take her calls and called her less and less to tell her what was going on. The simple “hellos” were going up in smoke. He would justify himself, always saying he was busy with bloodsucker clients. It had never been like this before.

She didn’t like to question, as she had been doing lately, why had Leonardo changed so much, and why she put up with the man’s behavior without reacting.

On the long balcony, images of the waves crashing on the sand and the clouds tacked over the monolithic buildings of Barra were obscured by dark thoughts and painful reminiscences. She went back to the time when she nurtured the maternal and almost merciful feeling of comforting him from the absence of his parents, like the wet nurse who takes in her arms the fragile creature to feed her with the will to live. Since her marriage, she had created this kind of devotion with extreme compassion for this suffering, outraged man who, before the change of habits occurred, which included the torment of the cell phones at night, lovingly accepted her directions and advice. As time passed, he barely listened to her questions, let alone had the courtesy of answering them. This indifference was slowly killing her inside.

“How about leaving the cell phones off? Have dinner in peace at least today. Is it hard?” asked the woman sitting at the table, after serving the usual pea soup.

Leonardo was surprised by her tone of voice. It was the first time he heard his wife complaining at the table, in front of their son. For her to be irritable like this… it must be menstrual problems, he thought without much concern.

“Can we do that, darling?” reiterated the woman, with an even more nerve-wracking tone of voice that showed her annoyance for not being heard.

“I can’t. It’s the best moment to talk to people,” answered Leonardo, after the second quick dialogue on the phone, not audible at the table, except for a distinct “go ahead” at the end of the call. It was only possible to hear that because he answered the call standing in the dining room, without stepping on the marble floor of the balcony.

“Can you tell me why?” she insisted, not resigning.

“Just because people want to talk to me or they’ll do things wrong and I’ll have to work like a mule to fix the shit they did. Did you understand now?”

“Can’t you talk to me nicely at the table? Lucca is here. At least respect the boy.”

The son saw his father’s face tighten nervously, shutting up without replying. The cell phones kept ringing continuously throughout dinner. Leonard would stop eating and get up from the table. He would answer all the calls, without hesitation. His wife and son remained in an almost religious silence.

“How about a trip to Itaipava?” asked Ana, trying to compromise, even if she had to forget her annoyance with the cell phones. “It’s been so long since I’ve gone to my parents’ farm.”

“What for?” asked Leonardo, immediately showing his lack of interest in spending the weekend out of Rio with Ana’s family at the Magalhães Castro’s farm.

Ana knew that the “what for?” was his way of saying “no”. This made her think more seriously. The old Leonardo was predictable and trustworthy. He had a right time to leave and come back home. As soon as he arrived, he would kiss her lightly on the cheek and go buy bread. Now he lived like a nephelibata — she used the strange term after she checked its meaning on the dictionary and liked to use it to define her husband’s indifference toward his family world, full of sun and love. To her anguish, her husband was always on the clouds and, lately, would lock himself in the home den and ordered everything on the phone. After all, she didn’t want a lot from him: attention to his family, the tenderness from when they were dating, and silent cell phones during meals. She thought of the numerous times when she was concerned about his nervous cough. She wanted him to see a specialist. He never did. And Ana had to face, alone, the long silences of the words not spoken by a husband connected to some other place of the planet, oblivious to the earth cord connected to his home, which was always invaded by strange voices.

She decided to take action and expel the unknown enemies and clear things up, after so many repressed heartaches about to explode.

“Do you know that there’s a world waiting for us outside, Leo?” she suggested during dessert.

Leonardo was silent. Instead of looking at his wife’s face, he stared at the colorful kilim rug, very different from the soft red boukaras at his parents’ mansion in Botafogo. He kept his unapproachable silence for quite a while. He didn’t utter a word, just diverted his gaze to the dark night that framed the window and the outside world. In it, it wasn’t admissible to lose anything, much less time and money — thus thought Big Head, sitting at the head of the dining room table surrounded by his family.

Well, it was from this sovereign silence that Ana Magalhães — still young for her age, soft-spoken, musical in her long syllables, with faint wrinkles, enhanced by the fact that lately her countenance was always tense — decided to rebel and learn more about her husband’s life away from home. A shiver suddenly electrified her body; fear ran through her spinal cord when she thought about the bold gesture. She dreaded the fallout caused by female intuition. She reconsidered giving her husband more time to mend his ways. But she decided to go ahead with her fight; after all, there’s always a first time in life.