A Warrior's Life Part 3

Abandoned by his Great Loveas he described Marcia in his diaryhe once again fell into depression. His parents were concerned about his state of mind and, taking pity on him, they decided to make an exception. Although holidays in Araruama had been forbidden because of his failure at Andrews College, he would be allowed to spend Carnival there with his cousins. Paulo arrived by bus on the Friday night and spent the weekend feeling miserable, not even wanting to go and see the girls at the dances in the city. On the following Monday evening, he accepted an invitation from three friends to have a beer in a bar near his Uncle Jose's house.

When the table was covered in beer mats, showing how many drinks had been consumed, one of the boys, Carlinhos, had an idea: 'My parents are away and the car is in the garage just waiting to be taken out. If any of you knows how to drive we can go for a spin round the town.'

Although he had never driven a car, Paulo announced: 'I can drive.'

They paid the bill, went to Carlinhos's house and took the car. While the four of them were driving up the main street, where there were crowds of people and carnival parades, there was a general power failure. Although it was pitch dark, Paulo drove on through the melee of pedestrians and carnival-goers. Suddenly he saw a group of revellers in carnival costumes making their way towards the car.

Not knowing how to react, he swerved and accelerated. Then one of his friends yelled: 'Watch out for the boy!'

It was too late. They all felt something hit the car's front b.u.mper, but Paulo went on accelerating while his friends looked back, terrified, shouting: 'Put your foot down, Paulo! Put your foot down! Get out of here! You've killed the boy!'

CHAPTER 5.

First encounter with Dr Benjamim.

THE BOY WAS LUiS CLaUDIO, or Claudinho, the son of a tailor, Lauro Vieira de Azevedo. He was seven years old and lived in Rua Oscar Clark, near the house where Paulo was staying. The violence of the collision was such that the boy was thrown some distance, with his stomach ripped open and his intestines exposed. He was taken unconscious to the Casa de Caridade, the only hospital in Araruama, where it was found that the blow had ruptured his spleen. To control the haemorrhaging the doctor in A&E gave him a blood transfusion, but Claudinho experienced a sudden drop in blood pressure and nearly died. or Claudinho, the son of a tailor, Lauro Vieira de Azevedo. He was seven years old and lived in Rua Oscar Clark, near the house where Paulo was staying. The violence of the collision was such that the boy was thrown some distance, with his stomach ripped open and his intestines exposed. He was taken unconscious to the Casa de Caridade, the only hospital in Araruama, where it was found that the blow had ruptured his spleen. To control the haemorrhaging the doctor in A&E gave him a blood transfusion, but Claudinho experienced a sudden drop in blood pressure and nearly died.

After the collision, Paulo and his friends had not only failed to go to Claudinho's aid but also fled the scene of the accident. They took the car back to Carlinhos's house and, with the city still in darkness, went to the home of another of the boys who had been in the car, Mauricio. On their way there, they realized that news of the accident was spreading. Terrified by rumours that the boy had died, they made a pact of silence: no one would ever utter a word about the incident. They all went their separate ways. In order not to arouse suspicion, when Paulo arrived at his uncle's home, he 'cynically' (his own word) acted as though nothing had happened. However, half an hour later came the moment of truth: Mauricio and Aurelio, the fourth member of the group, had been named by a witness and arrested, and while in police custody they revealed the ident.i.ty of the driver.

Paulo's uncle took him to a room and told him of the gravity of the situation: 'The boy's life is hanging by a thread. We must just hope that he survives, because if he dies, things will get very ugly for you. Your parents have been told everything and they're on their way from Rio to talk to the police and the magistrate. Meanwhile, you're not leaving the house. You're safe here.'

His uncle knew what the tailor was like and was concerned that he might do something crazy. His fears were confirmed that night. After visiting his dying son in hospital, Lauro appeared at the gates of the house where Paulo was hiding, along with two unpleasant-looking men. A revolver stuck in his belt, Lauro wagged a finger at Jose and said: 'Dr Araripe, we don't know yet whether Claudinho will live or die. As long as that's the case, your nephew is not to leave Araruama. And if my son dies, Paulo will die too, because I'll come here personally and kill him.'

Late that night, Lygia and Pedro arrived in Araruama and, even before going to see their son, they went to the magistrate's house, who told them that the 'perpetrator' could only leave the city with his permission. His parents' arrival did nothing to alleviate Paulo's despair and he spent a sleepless night. Lying in bed, he wrote in a tremulous hand: This is the longest day of my life. I feel terrible, not knowing how the child is. But the worst thing was when we arrived at Mauricio's house, after the accident, and everyone was saying that the boy was dead. I wanted to run away, to disappear. I can't think of anything but you, Marcia. I'm going to be charged with driving without a licence. And if the child's condition worsens, I'll be tried and might be sent to prison.

This was h.e.l.l on earth. On Shrove Tuesday news of the two incidentsthe accident and the tailor's threathad spread rapidly, drawing inquisitive crowds to Rua Oscar Clark, eager to witness the climax to the drama. Early on, Lygia and Pedro decided to visit Claudinho's parents to offer their apologies and to get news of the boy's condition, for Claudinho was still unconscious. Lygia put together a large basket of fruit for the boy's mother to take to him. As she and her husband were approaching the house, which was on the same side of the road as Jose's, Lauro ordered them to turn back, because he was not prepared to talk. He repeated his threat'Your son will only leave this town if my son survives'and he said that Lygia could take the fruit back: 'No one here is dying of hunger. I don't want charity, I want my son back.'

Paulo left his room only to ask for news of the boy. He recorded each piece of information in his notebook: They went to the hospital this morning. The boy's temperature is going down, let's hope that his father withdraws his complaint to the police.[...] The whole town knows everything and I can't leave the house because they're out looking for me. I heard that yesterday, at the dance, there was a detective waiting for me at the door.[...] The boy's temperature has gone up again.[...] It looks as though I might be arrested at any moment, because someone told the police I'm over eighteen. Everything depends on the boy.

Claudinho's temperature rose and fell several times. He regained consciousness on the Wednesday morning, two days after the accident, but it wasn't until late that night that the agony ended, when the doctors reported that he was out of danger and would be discharged in a few days.

Early on the Thursday, Pedro Coelho took his son to make a statement to the magistrate, who had him sign an agreement to pay all the medical and hospital expenses. The boy survived and suffered no long-term consequences, apart from an enormous scar on his abdomen that would remain with him for life. Destiny, however, appears to have decided that his meeting with death was to be on Carnival Monday, for thirty-four years later, on 15 February 1999another Carnival MondayLuis Claudio, by this time a businessman, and married with two daughters, was dragged from his house in Araruama by two masked men with guns, who were apparently in the pay of a group of hijackers of transport lorries. He was viciously tortured, then tied up, soaked in petrol, set alight and burned to death.

Claudinho's survival in 1965 did nothing to improve Pedro Coelho's mood. When Paulo returned to Rio, he heard that, as a punishment for having caused the accident and for having lied, he would not be allowed out at night for a month. Added to this, his allowance, which he had regained after leaving his job on the dredger in December, was once again to be stopped until he had repaid his father the 100,000 cruzeiros (some US$1,750 in today's terms) for the hospital fees.

Two months after the beginning of term, the first report from Andrews College revived the hopes of the Coelho family: although he had done badly in some subjects, their son had received such good marks in Portuguese, philosophy and chemistry that his average had risen to 6.1, which may have been only so-so, but was certainly an improvement for someone who hadn't even been able to manage a 5. Everyone was hopeful: but in his second report, his average dropped to 4.6 and in the third he managed only 2.5. The days when the reports arrived became days of retribution for Paulo. Pedro Coelho would rant and rave, take away more of Paulo's privileges and threaten even worse punishments. Paulo, however, appeared indifferent to all of this. 'I'm fed up with school,' he would tell his friends. 'I'll leave as soon as I can.'

He channelled all the energy and enthusiasm he failed to put into his schoolwork into the idea of becoming a writer. Unwilling to accept the fact that he was not yet a famous author, and convinced of his own talent, he had decided that his problem could be summed up in four words: a lack of publicity. At the beginning of 1965, he would take long walks with his friend Eduardo Jardim along Copacabana beach, during which he would ponder what he called 'the problem of establis.h.i.+ng myself as a recognized writer'.

His argument was a simple one: with the world becoming more and more materialistic (whether through communism or capitalism, it made no difference), the natural tendency was for the arts to disappear and, with them, literature. Only publicity could save them from a cultural Armageddon. His main preoccupation was with the written word, as he frequently explained to Jardim. Since it wasn't as widely disseminated as music, literature was failing to find fertile ground among the young. 'If someone doesn't enthuse this generation with a love of literature,' he would tell his friend, 'it won't be around much longer.' To conclude, he revealed the secret of success: 'That's why publicity is going to be the main element in my literary programme. And I'm going to control it. I'm going to use publicity to force the public to read and judge what I write. That way my books will sell more, but, more importantly, I'll arouse people's curiosity about my ideas and theories.' In spite of Jardim's look of astonishment when he heard this, Paulo continued with his plans for the final phase of his conquest of the reading public: 'Then, like Balzac, I shall write articles under a pseudonym both attacking and defending my work, but that's a different matter.'

Jardim did not appear to agree with anything he was hearing: 'You're thinking like a businessman, Paulo. Remember, publicity is an artificial thing that forces people to do what they don't want.'

Paulo was so convinced of the effectiveness of his ideas, though, that he had stuck to his desk at home a summary of the tasks he would have to carry out during that year in order to achieve fame: Literary programme for the Year 1965Buy all the Rio newspapers each day of the week.Check the book reviews, who writes them and the names of the editors of the papers.Send articles to the relevant people and a covering note to the editors. Telephone them, asking when the article will appear. Tell the editors what my ambitions are.Find contacts for publication.Repeat this process for magazines.Find out whether anyone who has received my texts would like to receive them on a regular basis.Repeat the same process with radio stations. Send my own proposal for a programme or send contributions to current programmes. Contact the relevant people by phone, asking when my contribution will be transmitted, if it is.Find out the addresses of famous writers and write to them sending my poetry and asking for their comments and for help in placing them in the papers they write for. Write again if there's no reply.Go to all book signings, lectures, first nights of plays, and try to get talking with the big names and get myself noticed.Organize productions of plays I've written and invite people belonging to the literary circle of the older generation, and get their 'patronage'.Try to get in touch with the new generation of writers, hold drinks parties, go to places where they go. Continue with my internal publicity campaign, keeping my colleagues informed of my triumphs.

The plan seemed infallible, but the truth is that Paulo continued to be humiliatingly, painfully unknown. He didn't manage to get anything published; he didn't get to know any critics, journalists or anyone who could open a door for him or reach out a hand to help him up the ladder of success. To make matters worse, he continued to do badly in his studies and was clearly miserable at having to go to college every daywhat was the point when his marks went from bad to worse? He spent the days in a state of abstraction, as if his mind were in another world.

It was during this state of lethargy that he got to know another boy at school, Joel Macedo, who was studying cla.s.sics. They were the same age, but Joel was the opposite of Paulo: he was extroverted and politically articulate, and one of the youngest members of the so-called Paissandu generationfilm-lovers and intellectuals who would meet at the old-fas.h.i.+oned Paissandu cinema in the Flamengo district. He was a cultural activist, led the Taca drama group and was responsible for Agora Agora, a small newspaper published by the pupils of the college, whose editorial team he invited Paulo to join. The newspaper was at loggerheads with the conservative directors of the college because it criticized the arrests and other arbitrary measures taken by the military government.

A new world opened up to Paulo. Joining the Paissandu set meant rubbing shoulders with Rio's intellectual elite and seeing close to the leading lights of the left-wing opposition. The cinema and the two nearby barsthe Oklahoma and the Cineramaattracted film directors, musicians, playwrights and influential journalists. The latest European films were shown at midnight sessions on a Friday, when the 700 available tickets sold out in minutes. Paulo wasn't much interested in political or social problems, but his deep existential anxieties fitted the profile of the typical denizen of Paissandu and he quickly made himself at home.

One day, he was forced to confess to Joel why he never went to the midnight film sessions, which were, after all, the most popular ones. 'Firstly because I'm not yet eighteen and the films shown there are usually banned for minors,' he explained, adding: 'And if I get home after eleven o'clock my father won't open the door to me.' Joel couldn't accept that someone of seventeen had a set time for getting home. 'The time has come for you to demand your freedom. The problem of your age is easy enough to solve: all you have to do is change your date of birth on your student card, as I did.' He also offered to solve the problem of the curfew: 'After the midnight sessions you can sleep in my parents' house in Ipanema.' From then on, with his card duly falsified and a guaranteed roof over his head, Paulo was free to enter the enchanted world of Jean-Luc G.o.dard, Glauber Rocha, Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman and Roberto Rossellini.

However, one problem remained: tickets, beer, cigarettes and travel all cost money. Not a fortune, obviously, but with his allowance suspended he didn't have a penny to his name, nor any idea as to how to get some money. To his surprise, a partial solution came from his father. Pedro was a friend of Luis Eduardo Guimares, the editor of the Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias, which, at the time, was an influential newspaper in Rio. Guimares was also the son-in-law of its owner, Ondina Dantas. Pedro fixed up a meeting between his son and the journalist, and a few days later Paulo began to work as a cub reporter. The work, alas, would be unpaid until he was given a proper contract. The problem of money remained, therefore, but there was one compensation: the job was a step towards liberating himself from parental control. He was almost never at home. He would go out in the morning to college, return home briefly for lunch, then spend the afternoon at the newspaper office and the evening at the Paissandu. He spent so many nights at Joel's parents' apartment that it became his second home.

As is the case with all publications, the least exciting tasks fell to the juniors, such as reporting on any potholes that were holding up the flow of traffic or any domestic arguments that ended up at the police station, or compiling lists of the dead in the public hospitals for the deaths section in the next day's edition. It was not unusual for the new boy to arrive at the office and be told by Silvio Ferraz, the chief reporter at the Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias: 'Go and talk to shopkeepers to see whether business is suffering from the downturn.' He may have been earning nothing and dealing only with unimportant matters, but Paulo felt he was an intellectual, someone who wrote every day, no matter about what. There was also another great advantage. When his colleagues at college or someone from the Paissandu set asked what he was doing, he would say: 'I'm a journalist. I write for the Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias.'

He was so busy with the newspaper, the cinema and amateur dramatics that he had less and less time left for Andrews College. His father was in despair when he discovered that, at the end of April, his son had an average of 2.5 (contributed to by a zero in Portuguese, English and chemistry), but Paulo seemed to be living in another world. He did exactly what he wanted to and came home at night when he wanted. If he found the door unlocked, he would go in. If his father had, as he usually did, carefully locked everything up at eleven, he would simply take the LeblonLapa bus and, minutes later, be sleeping in Joel's house. His parents didn't know what else they could do.

In May, a friend asked him for a favour: he wanted a job in the Credito Real de Minas Gerais bank and needed two references. As this was the bank where Paulo's father had an account, perhaps he could be persuaded to write one of the necessary letters? Paulo promised to see to it, but when he brought up the subject with his father he received a blunt refusal: 'Absolutely not! Only you could possibly think that I would support your vagrant friends.'

Upset and too ashamed to tell his friend the truth, Paulo made a decision: he locked himself in his room and typed up a letter full of praise for the applicant, adding at the bottom 'Engenheiro Pedro Queima Coelho de Souza'. He signed it and put the letter in an envelopeproblem solved. Everything went so well that the subject of the letter felt obliged to thank its writer for his kindness with a telephone call. Dr Pedro couldn't understand what the boy was talking about: 'Letter? What letter?' On hearing the words 'bank manager', he said: 'I wrote no letter! Bring that letter here. Bring it here immediately! This is Paulo's doing! Paulo must have forged my signature!' He rang off and rushed to the bank, looking for evidence of the crimethe letter, the proof that his son had become a forger, a fraudster. Paulo arrived home that evening, unaware of what had happened. He found his father in a fury, but that was nothing new. Before going to sleep, he wrote a short note in his diary: 'In a month and a half I've written nine articles for Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias. I've got a trip to Furnas set up for 12th June, when I'm going to meet the most important people in the political world, such as the president, the most important governors and ministers of state.'

The following morning, he woke in a particularly good mood, since a rumour had been going round at the newspaper that he was going to be taken on officially, which would mean he would be a real journalist, with a press card and a guaranteed salary. When he went downstairs, he was surprised to find his parents already up and waiting for him. Pedro was beside himself with rage, but he said nothing.

It was Lygia who spoke: 'Paulo, we're worried about your asthma and so we've made an appointment with the doctor for a check-up. Eat your breakfast because we've got to leave soon.'

A few minutes later, his father took the Vanguard out of the garagea rare occurrenceand the three drove along the coast road towards the city centre. Seated in the back, absorbed in thought, Paulo gazed out at the fog over the sea, which made Guanabara bay look simultaneously melancholy and poetic. When they were halfway along Botafogo beach the car took a left turn into Rua Marques de Olinda, drove another three blocks and drew up alongside a wall more than 3 metres high. The three got out and went over to a wrought-iron gate. Paulo heard his father say something to the gatekeeper and, moments later, saw a nun arrive to take them to a consulting room. They were in the Casa de Saude Dr Eiras, a large hospital occupying various buildings and large mansions in the woods at the bottom of a hill.

The nun went ahead, showing his parents the way, with Paulo behind, not understanding what was going on. The four of them took a lift to the ninth floor and, as they walked down a long corridor towards the consulting room, the nun opened a door and showed Pedro and Lygia a bedroom with two beds and a window with an iron grille. She smiled, saying: 'This is where the boy will sleep. As you can see, it's a nice bright, s.p.a.cious room.'

Paulo couldn't understand what he was hearing and had no time to ask, since, by then, they were all in the doctor's consulting room. Seated behind a desk was the psychiatrist Dr Benjamim Gaspar Gomes, a fifty-two-year-old man, bald, with small eyes and a pleasant face.

Astonished, Paulo turned to his parents: 'If I've just come here for asthma tests, why have you booked a room for me?'

Pedro said nothing and Lygia gently tried to explain to her son that he was being admitted to an asylum. 'You're not going to school any more, and you're not going to sleep at home. You left St Ignatius so that you wouldn't be expelled and you've ended up failing at Andrews. On top of that you ran over the boy in Araruama...'

Then his father spoke for the first time: 'This time, you've really overstepped the mark. Forging a signature, as you did mine, isn't just a prankit's a crime.'

Things moved rapidly from then on. His mother said that she and his father had had a long talk with Dr Benjamima colleague of Pedro's and a person whom the family trusted implicitlyand that they were all agreed that he was too excitable and needed medication, so it would be a good idea for him to spend a few days in this 'rest home'. Before he could recover from the shock, his parents stood up, said goodbye and disappeared down the tiled corridor.

Suddenly he found himself alone, locked up in an asylum with his school file under his arm and a jacket over his shoulders, not knowing what to do. As though he thought it might still be possible to escape from this nightmare, he said to the doctor: 'You mean you're going to lock me up like a madman without examining meno interview, nothing?'

Dr Benjamim smiled: 'You're not being admitted as a madman. This is a rest home. You're just going to take some medicine and rest. Besides, I don't need to interview you, I have all the information I need.'

No one with any common sense would think that the information given by Paulo's father could justify this treatment: his parents' complaintsthat he was irritable, hostile, a bad student and 'even politically opposed to his father'were not very different from the complaints that nine out of ten parents make about their adolescent children. His mother had more precise concerns and thought that her son 'had problems of a s.e.xual nature'. The three reasons for this suspicion are surprising, coming as they do from an intelligent and sophisticated woman like Lygia: her son had no girlfriends, he had refused circ.u.mcision to correct an overtight foreskinphimosisand, finally, it seemed, lately, that his b.r.e.a.s.t.s were developing like those of a girl. There was, in fact, an explanation for all of these 'symptoms', including the change in his b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which was nothing more than the side effect of a growth hormone prescribed by a doctor to whom she herself had taken him.

The only problem of a psychiatric nature that might have concerned his parents was one of which they were in fact unaware. Some months earlier, during one of his many sleepless, anxiety-filled nights, he had decided to kill himself. He went into the kitchen and began to block all the air vents with sticky tape and dusters. However, when it came to turning on the gas inlet from the street to the oven, his courage failed him. He saw with sudden clarity that he didn't want to die: he only wanted his parents to notice his despair. He describes how, as he removed the last strip of tape from behind the door and started to go back to his room, he realized, terrified, that he had company: it was the Angel of Death. There was good reason for his panic, since he had read somewhere that, once summoned to Earth, the Angel never left empty-handed. He recorded the conclusion to this macabre encounter in his diary: I could sense the smell of the Angel all around me, the Angel's breath, the Angel's desire to take someone away. I remained silent and silently asked what he wanted. He told me that he had been summoned and that he needed to take someone, to give an account of his work. Then I picked up a kitchen knife, jumped over the wall and landed in an empty plot of land where the people in the shanty towns kept their goats running free. I grabbed hold of one of them and slit its throat. The blood spurted up and went right over the wall, splattering the walls of my house. But the Angel left satisfied. From then on, I knew that I would never try to kill myself again.

Unless his parents had been so indiscreet as to read his diaryas he suspected some time laterthe sacrifice of the goat, which at the time was attributed to some perverse evil-doer, could not have been one of their reasons for having him admitted to the asylum.

Still absorbing the shock of this new situation, Paulo was led to his room by a male nurse. As he leaned against the iron bars at the window, he was surprised by the beauty to be found in such a wretched place. From the ninth floor he had an unbroken view of the white sands of Botafogo beach, the Flamengo gardens and, in the background, the spectacular outline of Morro da Urca and Po de Acucar. The bed beside his was empty, which meant that he would have to suffer his torment alone. In the afternoon, someone arrived from his house and handed over at the gate a suitcase with clothes, books and personal possessions. The day pa.s.sed without incident.

Lying on his bed, Paulo thought of the options open to him: the first, of course, was to continue with his plan to be a writer. If this didn't work out, the best thing would be to go mad as a convenient means to an end. He would be supported by the state, he wouldn't have to work any more nor take on any responsibilities. This would mean spending a lot of time in psychiatric inst.i.tutions, but, after a day wandering the corridors, he realized that the patients at the clinic didn't behave 'like the mad people you see in Hollywood films': 'Except for some pathological cases of a catatonic or schizophrenic nature, all the other patients are perfectly capable of talking about life and having their own ideas on the subject. Sometimes they have panic attacks, crises of depression or aggression, but they don't last for long.'

Paulo spent the following days trying to get to know the place to which he had been confined. Talking to the nurses and employees, he discovered that 800 mentally ill people were interned at the clinic, and divided up according to the degree of their insanity and social cla.s.s. The floor he was on was for the so-called 'docile mad' and those referred by private doctors, while the remainder, the 'dangerously mad' and those dependent on public health services, were in another building. The former slept in rooms with a maximum of two beds and a private bathroom and during the day they could move freely around the entire floor. However, you could only take the lift, the doors of which were locked, when accompanied by a nurse and a guide nominated by a doctor. All the windows, balconies and verandahs were protected by iron grilles or walls made of decorative air bricks through which one could still see. Those being paid for by social services slept in dormitories of ten, twenty and even thirty beds, while those considered to be violent were kept in solitary confinement.

The Dr Eiras clinic was not only an asylum, as Paulo had originally thought, but a group of neurological, cardiological and detox clinics for alcoholics and drug addicts. Two of its directors, the doctors Abrao Ackerman and Paulo Niemeyer, were among the most respected neurosurgeons in Brazil. While hundreds of workers dependent on social security lined up at their doors waiting for a consultation, famous people with health problems also went there. During his time in the clinic as a patient, Paulo received weekly visits from his mother. On one of these visits, Lygia arrived accompanied by Sonia Maria, who was fifteen at the time and had insisted on going to see her brother in hospital. She left in a state of shock. 'The atmosphere was horrendous, people talking to themselves in the corridors,' she was to recall angrily some years later. 'And lost in that h.e.l.l was Paulo, a mere boy, someone who should never have been there.' She left determined to speak to her parents, to beg them to open their hearts and remove her brother from the asylum, but she lacked the courage to do so. If she was unable to argue in defence of her own rights, what could she do for him? Unlike Paulo, Sonia spent her life in submission to her parentsto such a point that, even when married and a mother, she would never smoke in front of her father and concealed from him the fact that she wore a bikini.

As for Paulo's suffering, this, according to Dr Benjamim, who visited him each morning, was not as bad as it might have been, thanks to 'a special way he had of getting himself out of difficult situations, even when he was protesting against being interned!' According to the psychiatrist, 'the fact that Paulo did not suffer more is because he had a way with words'. And it was thanks to that 'way with words' that he avoided being subjected to a brutal treatment frequently inflicted on the mentally ill at the clinic: electroshock treatment. Although he was well informed about mental illnesses and had translated books on psychiatry, Dr Benjamim was a staunch defender of electroconvulsive therapy, which had already been condemned in a large part of the world. 'In certain cases, such as incurable depression, there is no alternative,' he would say confidently. 'Any other therapy is a cheat, an illusion, a palliative and a dangerous procrastination.' However, while he was a patient, Paulo was subjected to such heavy doses of psychotropic substances that he would spend the whole day in a daze, slouching along the corridor in his slippers. Although he had never experimented with drugs, not even cannabis, he spent four weeks consuming packs and packs of medication that was supposedly detoxifying, but only left him more confused.

Since almost no one knew he was in the asylum, he had little news of his friends. One day, he had an unexpected visit from the friend who was indirectly responsible for his presence there by asking for a reference, and who left the clinic with a mad ideanever carried out: that of rallying the members of the defunct Rota 15 group to kidnap him. However, Paulo's tortured soul only found true peace when his latest love appeared: Renata Sochaczewski, a pretty girl whom he had met at an amateur theatrical group, who was to become a great actress under the name Renata Sorrah, and whom Paulo affectionately called 'Rennie' or 'Pato'. When she failed to get in to visit him, Renata would furtively send him little love notes. These contained such messages as 'Stand at the window because I'm waiting to wave goodbye to you', or 'Write a list of what you want and give it to me on Friday. Yesterday I phoned but they didn't tell you.'

When he was allowed out, four weeks after being admitted, Paulo was in a very fragile state, but he nevertheless tried to take a positive lesson from his journey into h.e.l.l. It was only when he got home that he found the mental energy to make notes in his diary: In the meantime, I've been in Casa de Saude Dr Eiras, where I was admitted for being maladjusted. I spent twenty-eight days there, missed cla.s.ses, lost my job and was released as if I had been cured, even though there was no reason for my ever having been admitted in the first place. My parents have really done it this time! They ruin my chances at the newspaper, ruin my academic year and spend loads of money only to find that there was nothing wrong with me. What I have to do now is start all over again, accepting what's happened as a joke and a well-intentioned mistake. (The worst of it is that the day I was admitted, I was going to be given a job on the permanent staff at the newspaper.)All the same, it was OK. As a patient on my floor said, 'All experiences are good experiences, even the bad ones.' Yes, I've learned a lot. It gave me a chance to mature and gain in self-confidence, to make a more careful study of my friends and notice things I'd never really thought about before. Now I'm a man.

While Paulo may have left the clinic convinced that there was nothing wrong with him, this was not the opinion of the psychiatrist Dr Benjamim Gomes. The hospital file in the archives of the clinic held a dark prognosis that read more like a condemnation: 'A patient with schizoid tendencies, averse to social and loving contact. He prefers solitary activities. He is incapable of expressing his feelings or of experiencing pleasure.' Judging from this piece of paper, Paulo's suffering was only just beginning.

CHAPTER 6.

Batatinha's debut.

THE FEW FRIENDS WHO HAD WITNESSED Paulo's twenty-eight days of suffering in the clinic were surprised when he was let out. Although physically exhausted and looking more fragile, he made no attempt to hide the fact that he had been admitted to an asylum. On the contrary, when he reappeared in Rua Rodrigo Otavio, he boasted to a circle of friends that he had lived through an experience unknown to any of them: being treated as a madman. His descriptions of the people and events at the clinic, many of them invented, were so extraordinary that some of his friends even expressed envy at not having been in such an interesting place. Paulo's twenty-eight days of suffering in the clinic were surprised when he was let out. Although physically exhausted and looking more fragile, he made no attempt to hide the fact that he had been admitted to an asylum. On the contrary, when he reappeared in Rua Rodrigo Otavio, he boasted to a circle of friends that he had lived through an experience unknown to any of them: being treated as a madman. His descriptions of the people and events at the clinic, many of them invented, were so extraordinary that some of his friends even expressed envy at not having been in such an interesting place.

Lygia and Pedro were concerned about their son's behaviour. Fearing that his confinement might stigmatize him at school and at work, they treated the matter with total discretion. His father had decided to tell Andrews College and the Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias that Paulo's absence was due to his having to go away unexpectedly. When they learned that their son was telling everyone the truth, Pedro warned him: 'Don't do that. If people get to know that you've had mental problems, you'll never be able to stand as a candidate for President of the Republic.' that Paulo's absence was due to his having to go away unexpectedly. When they learned that their son was telling everyone the truth, Pedro warned him: 'Don't do that. If people get to know that you've had mental problems, you'll never be able to stand as a candidate for President of the Republic.'

Not having the least desire to be president of anything at all, Paulo appeared to have returned from the clinic with a renewed appet.i.te for what he called 'the intellectual life'. Now he had a new place where he could hang out, besides the amateur theatre at the college and the Cine Paissandu. The director of the Servico Nacional de Teatro (SNT), Barbara Heliodora, had got permission from the government to transform the old headquarters of the Students' Union (which had been ransacked and burned by extreme right-wing groups on the day of the military coup) into the new National Drama Conservatory. Without restoring the building or painting over the marks left by the damage caused by the vandals, the Centro Popular de Cultura, as it had been known, was turned into the Teatro Palco, a 150-seat theatre which, although it didn't enjoy the freedom it had previously enjoyed, would once again become a centre of cultural debate permanently filled by workshops, rehearsals and drama group productions. What would later become the Teatro Universitario Nacional (National University Theatre), an occasional drama group comprising only students, was also born there. Paulo's sole experience in this area was his play The Ugly Boy The Ugly Boy, which he had torn up soon after writing it, plus two or three other plays that had also gone no further than his own house. However, he was sure that he had some ability in the field and plunged into the newly formed Conservatory.

When he returned to the Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias, it became clear to Paulo that his absence of almost a month had put paid to or at least delayed his chances of being taken on as a reporter, but he stayed on, unpaid and uncomplaining. Working in a place that allowed him to write every day, even if only on the trivial topics that usually fell to him, was a good thing. At the end of July 1965, he was sent off to report on the history of the Marian Congregation in Brazil. He was beginning to gain experience as a reporter and had no difficulty in carrying out the task; at the organization's headquarters, he interviewed members of the community, noted down numbers and wrote a short article describing the history of the Marians from the time they had arrived in Brazil with the first Portuguese Jesuit missionaries. The following morning on his way to school, he bought a copy of the Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias at the newspaper stand and smiled proudly when he saw his article. The sub-editors had made some small changes, but they were still essentially his words being read by thousands of readers at that very moment. at the newspaper stand and smiled proudly when he saw his article. The sub-editors had made some small changes, but they were still essentially his words being read by thousands of readers at that very moment.

When he arrived at the newspaper office after lunch, he learned that his head was on the block. The Marians were furious about the article and had gone straight to the owner of the newspaper to complain. They accused him of having invented facts and attributing them to the organization's leaders. The cub reporter was indignant when he heard this, and although his colleagues told him to lie low until the whole thing had blown over, he decided that it would be best to clear up the matter straight away. He sat outside the owner's gla.s.s-walled office, the so-called fishbowl, and waited two hours for her to arrive.

On entering the fishbowl, he remained standing in front of her desk. 'Dona Ondina, I'm the person who wrote the article on the Marians and I've come to explain-'

She didn't even let him finish the sentence: 'You're sacked,' she said.

Surprised, he countered with: 'But Dona Ondina, I'm about to be taken on by the newspaper.'

Without even looking up, she said again: 'You're sacked. Please leave.'

Paulo left, regretting his naivety. If he had waited a few days, as he had been advised, she would probably have forgotten about the matter. Now there was no way of saving the situation. He returned home with his tail between his legs. Although shaken by the incident, his ability to fantasize seemed limitless. Recording in his diary his regret at having taken the initiative, he described his dismissal as if it were a case of political persecution: I could have done all kinds of things to avoid being fired! I could have given in and gone over to the right simply in order to keep my job on the newspaper. But no. I wanted to be a martyr, crucified for his ideas, and they put me on the cross before I could give any kind of message to humanity. I couldn't even say that I was innocent, that I was fighting for the good of all. But no! Die now, you filthy dog. I'm a worm. A C-O-W-A-R-D! I was sacked from the 'DN' for being a subversive. Now I've got nothing but night school and lots of time doing nothing.

The Diario de Noticias Diario de Noticias was not a right-wing newspaper; nor had he been dismissed for political reasons. was not a right-wing newspaper; nor had he been dismissed for political reasons.

Paulo appeared prepared to take advantage of his time in the clinic. He had been labelled 'a madman', and he intended to enjoy the impunity that protects the mentally ill and do whatever he wanted. To h.e.l.l with school and his parents: he wanted to follow his dream. In his own words, he had become a 'delinquent' who went around with gangs, but since he lacked the physical strength of other boys, he thought that he could become an 'intellectual delinquent'someone who read things that none of his friends had read and knew things that no one else knew. He belonged to three different groupsPaissandu, the Conservatory and what remained of Rota 15but whenever there was any sign of violence, he felt ashamed that he didn't have the courage even to break up a fistfight.

He knew, however, that displays of physical strength were not the way forward. Whereas before he had felt himself to be 'an existentialist on the road to communism', now he saw himself as 'a street communist'. He had read Henry Miller's famous trilogy s.e.xus, Plexus s.e.xus, Plexus and and Nexus Nexus, and glanced over the works of Marx and Engels, and he felt confident enough to talk on such topics as 'true socialism', 'the Cold War' and 'the exploitation of the worker'. In a text ent.i.tled 'Art in Brazil', he quotes Lenin as having spoken of the need to take two steps back when it was clear that this was the only way of taking one step forward. 'Art cannot flee from this premise. It must first adapt to man and then, having gained his confidence, respect and love, it can lead him along the road to reality.' His basis for taking a route he had earlier rejected was simple: 'I am an intellectual, and since all intellectuals are communists, I am a communist.' The mother of a girl he was friendly with accused him of 'putting ideas' in the heads of the poor people in the street. 'From Henry Miller to communism is only a step,' he wrote; 'therefore, I'm a communist.' What he would only confess to his diary was that he loathed Bergman and considered G.o.dard 'a bore' and Antonioni 'annoying'. In fact what he really liked was to listen to The Beatles, but it wasn't quite right for a communist to say this in public.

As he had predicted, his studies were relegated firmly to the background. In August, fearing that he would fail the year, the school summoned Lygia and Pedro to deal with three issues: low grades, too many absences and 'the student's personal problems'. Since the start of cla.s.ses after the July holidays he had not achieved marks above 2.5 in any subject and during that time he had not been to a single maths lesson, which explained why he had never got more than 3 in the subject since moving to the college. He would leave home every morning and go to school, but once there, involved as he was with the drama group, he would spend whole days without entering the cla.s.sroom. The verdict presented to his parents was worrying: either their son paid more attention to his studies or he would be expelled. Although the college did not adopt the same strategy as that used at St Ignatius, the director of studies subtly suggested to his parents that 'to avoid the worst', it might be best to move him before the end of the year to a 'less demanding' educational establishment. Put bluntly: if they didn't want to have the shame of seeing their son fail again, the best thing would be to enrol him in a college where the pupil only had to pay his monthly fees promptly in order to guarantee success. Lygia and Pedro were indignant at this suggestion. Neither of them had lost hope of Paulo returning to the straight and narrow, and to accept such an idea meant a humiliating surrender. There was no way they would let him end up in a fifth-rate school.

Paulo, meanwhile, seemed to be living on another planet. His life within the world of theatre, which was a hotbed of opposition to the military regime, brought him close to young people who were becoming politically militant. Now all the films and plays he watched were political, and he had incorporated into his vocabulary left-wing slogans such as 'More bread, fewer guns' and 'United, the people will never be defeated'.

One night, when he went with a group of his friends to see Liberdade, Liberdade Liberdade, Liberdade [ [Freedom, Freedom], which was being put on by Oduvaldo Viana Filho and Paulo Autran at the Teatro Opinio, the play was interrupted halfway through. A dishevelled young man got up on the stage and spoke out against the military dictators.h.i.+p. He was Vladimir Palmeira, the student leader who went on to become a Member of Parliament and who was urging the audience to join yet another student march against the regime. On the few occasions when Paulo decided to take part in such marches, his real objective was to be seen by his father, whose office was in the centre of the city, where all the protest marches ended up. In fact, the world of politics that he was being drawn into had never much mattered to him. Apart from one or two notes, such as the results of the presidential elections in 1960 won by Janio Quadros, his diary reflects his indifference to both politics and politicians. When the army had taken power in the April of the previous year, Paulo was speculating loftily in his diary on the existence of heaven and h.e.l.l. Two weeks before the coup, when the whole country was in uproar, he filled several pages in his diary describing the misfortunes of a 'sixteen-year-old girl' he had met in the street: 'To think that this girl ran away from home and that in order to survive, she has been subjected to the most humiliating of things, although she has still managed to keep her virginity. But now she'll have to lose that just so she can eat.' And he ended: 'It's at times like this that I doubt the existence of G.o.d.'

However, that was the past. Now he felt himself to be a member of the resistance, although his criticisms of the dictators.h.i.+p never went beyond the limits of his diary and even then were very timid. It was in his diary that he recorded his dissatisfaction with the existing situation, for example, in a satirical article ent.i.tled 'J'accuse', in which he placed The Beatles, Franco, Salazar and Lyndon Johnson on one side and on the other de Gaulle, Glauber Rocha and Luis Carlos Prestes: I accuse the rich, who have bought the consciences of the politicians. I accuse the military, who use guns to control the feelings of the people. I accuse the Beatles, Carnival and football of diverting the minds of a generation that had enough blood to drown the tyrants. I accuse Franco and Salazar, who live by oppressing their compatriots. I accuse Lyndon Johnson, who oppresses countries too poor to resist the flow of dollars. I accuse Pope Paul VI, who has defiled the words of Christ.But is there anything good in the world around me? Yes, it's not all disappointment. There's de Gaulle, who revived France and wants to spread freedom throughout the world. There's Yevtushenko, who raised his voice against a regime, knowing that he could be crushed without anyone knowing, but who saw that humanity was prepared to accept his thoughts, free as doves. There's Khrushchev, who allowed the poet to express himself as he wished. There's Francisco Julio and Miguel Arraes, two true leaders who knew how to fight to the end. There's Ruy Guerra and Glauber Rocha, who brought to popular art a message of revolt. There's Luis Carlos Prestes, who sacrificed everything for an ideal. There's the life beating inside me so that one day I can speak out too. There's the world in the hands of the young. Perhaps, before it's too late, they will realize what this means. And fight to the death.

The first job opportunity to arise, meanwhile, was light-years away from the battle against the military dictators.h.i.+p and the exploitation of underdeveloped countries by American imperialism. An actors' cooperative called Grupo Destaque was rehearsing a dramatized version of the children's cla.s.sic Pinocchio Pinocchio, which was to be performed at the end of 1965, and the directors had a problem. The show required seven scene-changes, and the directors were worried that each time the curtain fell, the audience, mostly children, would start wandering around the theatre and delay the start of the next scene. The producer, the Frenchman Jean Arlin, came up with a simple solution: they would get another actor to appear on the stage during each interval and distract the children until the curtain rose again. He recalled an ugly, awkward, but witty young man, Paulo Coelho, who had been introduced to him by Joel Macedo. He would be perfect for the role. This was hardly resistance theatre, and the role didn't even have a script, which meant he would simply have to improvise, and it was unlikely he would get paid very much. As a cooperative venture, after each show, the takings would be shared out, most of them going to pay first for the hire of the theatre, and then the technicians, lighting a.s.sistants and scene-s.h.i.+fters. If anything was left over, then it would be divided equally among the actors, each of whom would get only enough to pay for a snack. All the same, Paulo accepted the invitation on the spot.

During his first rehearsal, he chose to wear a ragged pair of dungarees and an old hat and waited in the wings to make his entrance. The only instruction he had received from the director, the Argentine Luis Maria Olmedo, who was known as Cachorro, was to improvise. When the curtain fell for the first scene-change, he went on stage, pulling funny faces, and said whatever came into his head: 'When Little Potato starts to grow, he spreads across the ground. When Little Mama falls to sleep she puts her hand upon her heart.'

From then on, to his friends in the theatre he was known as Batatinha, or Little Potato. Although he considered himself to be a useless actor, during the following weeks he worked so hard at his role that when Pinocchio Pinocchio was about to open, his appearances had become so much part of the show that his name appeared in the programme and on the posters. At each rehearsal, he elaborated a little more on his performancealthough always sticking to the time allowed for the scene-changeinventing strange names, making faces, jumping around and shouting. Deep down, he thought the whole thing ridiculous, but if that was the door that would allow him to enter the world of the theatre, he would go through it. In Grupo Destaque he worked with professionals who made their living from the theatre. After the rehearsals, the cheerful, lively group would leave the Miguel Lemos theatre, walk along the beach to Rua Sa Ferreira, four blocks away, and make an obligatory stop at the Gondola bar, where the actors, technicians and directors who packed the stages of Copacabana's twenty theatres would meet every night. was about to open, his appearances had become so much part of the show that his name appeared in the programme and on the posters. At each rehearsal, he elaborated a little more on his performancealthough always sticking to the time allowed for the scene-changeinventing strange names, making faces, jumping around and shouting. Deep down, he thought the whole thing ridiculous, but if that was the door that would allow him to enter the world of the theatre, he would go through it. In Grupo Destaque he worked with professionals who made their living from the theatre. After the rehearsals, the cheerful, lively group would leave the Miguel Lemos theatre, walk along the beach to Rua Sa Ferreira, four blocks away, and make an obligatory stop at the Gondola bar, where the actors, technicians and directors who packed the stages of Copacabana's twenty theatres would meet every night.

Paulo felt he was in heaven. He was eighteen now, which meant he could drink when he wanted, go to any film or play and stay out all night without having to answer to anyone. Except, of course, to his father, Pedro Coelho, who took a dim view of his son's burgeoning theatrical vocation. This was not only because he hardly ever went to school and was on the verge of being expelled again. For his parents, the world of the theatre was a 'den of h.o.m.os.e.xuals, communists, drug addicts and idlers' with whom they would prefer their son not to mix. At the end of December, though, they gave in and accepted his invitation to the preview of Pinocchio Pinocchio. After all, this was a children's cla.s.sic, not the indecent, subversive theatre that was enjoying such success in the country.

Paulo had reserved seats for his parents, his sister and his grandparents and, to his surprise, they all turned up. On the first night, the cultural section of the Jornal do Brasil Jornal do Brasil published an article and his name appeared in print for the first time. He was last on the list, but for someone who was just beginning it was the right place. He recorded the feeling of being on stage in a short but emotional note in his diary: 'Yesterday was my debut. Excitement. Real excitement. It was just unbelievable when I found myself there in front of the audience, with the spotlights blinding me, and with me making the audience laugh. Sublime, truly sublime. It was my first performance this year.' The family's attendance at the first night did not mean an armistice, however. When they learned that Paulo had failed at Andrews, his parents forced him to attend group therapy three times a week, still convinced that he had mental problems. published an article and his name appeared in print for the first time. He was last on the list, but for someone who was just beginning it was the right place. He recorded the feeling of being on stage in a short but emotional note in his diary: 'Yesterday was my debut. Excitement. Real excitement. It was just unbelievable when I found myself there in front of the audience, with the spotlights blinding me, and with me making the audience laugh. Sublime, truly sublime. It was my first performance this year.' The family's attendance at the first night did not mean an armistice, however. When they learned that Paulo had failed at Andrews, his parents forced him to attend group therapy three times a week, still convinced that he had mental problems.

Indifferent to the hostility on the domestic front, he was having a wonderful time. In a matter of weeks, he had practically created a new character in the play. When the curtain fell on one scene, he would sit on the edge of the stage, unwrap a delicious toffee or sweet and start to eat it.

The children would watch greedily and when he asked one of the children in the front row: 'Would you like one?' the whole audience would yell: 'I want one! I want one!'

To which he would reply heartlessly: 'Well, too bad. I'm not going to give you one!'

Batatinha would take another bite or lick and turn to the audience again: 'Would you like one?'

More shouting, and again he would refuse. This would be repeated until the curtain rose for the next act.

A month and a half after the first night, Pinocchio Pinocchio moved to the Teatro Carioca, which was on the ground floor of an apartment block in Flamengo, a few metres from the Paissandu cinema. One afternoon when he was rehearsing, Paulo noticed that a very beautiful girl with blue eyes and very long hair had sat down in one of the rear stalls seats and seemed to be watching him closely. It was Fabiola Fracarolli, who lived on the eighth floor of the building, had noticed the open door and, out of curiosity, gone in to take a look. The following day, Fabiola returned and, on the third day, Paulo decided to approach her. She was sixteen and she lived in a small rented apartment with her widowed mother, who was a dressmaker, and her maternal grandmother, a nutty old woman who sat all day clutching a bag full of old papers, which she said were 'her fortune'. moved to the Teatro Carioca, which was on the ground floor of an apartment block in Flamengo, a few metres from the Paissandu cinema. One afternoon when he was rehearsing, Paulo noticed that a very beautiful girl with blue eyes and very long hair had sat down in one of the rear stalls seats and seemed to be watching him closely. It was Fabiola Fracarolli, who lived on the eighth floor of the building, had noticed the open door and, out of curiosity, gone in to take a look. The following day, Fabiola returned and, on the third day, Paulo decided to approach her. She was sixteen and she lived in a small rented apartment with her widowed mother, who was a dressmaker, and her maternal grandmother, a nutty old woman who sat all day clutching a bag full of old papers, which she said were 'her fortune'.

Up to the age of fifteen, Fabiola had been afflicted with an enormous, grotesque nose a la Cyrano de Bergerac. When she learned that the only boy she had managed to attract had been paid to take her out by her cousins, she didn't think twice. She climbed on to the window ledge and said to her mother: 'Either you pay for plastic surgery or I'll jump!' Weeks later, when she had recovered from the surgery, she was parading a neat, sculptured nose. It was this new Fabiola who fell madly in love with Paulo.

Things were going well for Paulo when it came to women. While continuing his relations.h.i.+p with Renata Sorrah, he had decided to forgive Marcia and take her back as a girlfriend. This didn't stop him beginning a steady relations.h.i.+p with Fabiola. Her mother seemed to take pity on the puny young man with breathing problems and welcomed him into the family. He would have lunch and dinner with them almost every day, which made his life as Batatinha all the more comfortable. As if such kindness were not enough, soon Fabiola's mother, Beth, moved her bed into her sick mother's bedroom, thus freeing up a small room, which Paulo began to use as a studio, office and meeting room. To make the place seem less domestic, he covered the walls, ceiling and even the floor with pages from newspapers. When Beth was not around, his works.p.a.ce became the bedroom where Fabiola had her first s.e.xual experience. However, Paulo still could not understand why such a beautiful girl like her would be attracted to the rather sickly person he thought himself to be.

Riddled with insecurity and driven by what was certainly a mad streak, he gave her an ultimatum: 'I can't believe that a woman as beautiful as you, with your charm, your beautiful clothes, can be in love with me. I need to know that you really love me.'

When Fabiola replied confidently 'I'll do whatever you want me to do', he said: 'If you really love me, let me stub this cigarette out on your thigh. And you're not to cry.'

The girl lifted the edge of her long Indian wrapover skirt, like someone waiting to have an injection. Then she smiled at him without saying a word. Paulo took a long drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out on her smooth, tanned leg. With her eyes closed, Fabiola heard the hiss and smelled the repellent stench of the hot ash burning her skinshe would bear the scar for the rest of her lifebut she didn't utter a sound or shed a tear. Paulo said nothing, but thought: She really does love me.

Although he made constant declarations of love, his feelings for Fabiola were ambiguous. While, on the one hand, he was proud to be seen in the fas.h.i.+onable places of Rio hand-in-hand with such a beautiful girl, on the other, he was embarra.s.sed by her silliness and her extraordinary ignorance about almost everything. Fabiola was what, in those days, was known as a cocota cocota or bimbo. When she announced over a few beers that Mao Tse Tung was 'the French couturier who created the Mao suits', Paulo wished the ground would open up and swallow him. But it was such a comfortable relations.h.i.+p, which made no demands on him, and she was so pretty that it was worth putting up with her stupid remarks with good grace. or bimbo. When she announced over a few beers that Mao Tse Tung was 'the French couturier who created the Mao suits', Paulo wished the ground would open up and swallow him. But it was such a comfortable relations.h.i.+p, which made no demands on him, and she was so pretty that it was worth putting up with her stupid remarks with good grace.

The day she was invited to his house, she was astonished. Judging by her boyfriend's ragged appearance and his lack of money (she often gave him some of her allowance so that he could buy cigarettes and take the bus), Fabiola had always imagined that he was poor and homeless. Imagine her surprise, then, when she was received by a butler wearing white gloves and a jacket with gold b.u.t.tons. For a moment, she a.s.sumed Paulo must be the son of one of the employees, but no, he was the son of the master of the house'an enormous pink house with a grand piano and vast courtyard gardens', she said later, recalling that day. 'Just thinkin the middle of the drawing room there was a staircase that was identical to the one in Gone With the Wind Gone With the Wind...'

Although he was eighteen and enjoying relative independence, Paulo still sometimes behaved like a child. One night, he stayed late at Marcia's house, listening to recordings of poetry (her family had given in and decided to accept him), and on returning home, which was only a few metres away, he came across what he called 'a group of nasty-looking individuals'. In fact, they were simply some boys with whom he'd had words a few days earlier when he complained about the noise they were making playing football. However, when he saw them armed with sticks and bottles, he was terrified, went back to Marcia's apartment and called home, waking his irascible father. Dramatic and theatrical as ever, he begged: 'Papa, come and collect me from Marcia's house. But come with a revolver because twelve criminals are threatening to kill me.' He would not leave until he looked out of the apartment window and saw his father in pyjamas, with a catapult in his hand, thus guaranteeing him a safe return home.

This paternal zeal did not mean that the situation at home had improved. Things were still as tense as ever, but his parents' control over his life had slackened. His performance during the second term at Andrews had been so dreadful that he wasn't actually allowed to take the end-of-year exams and was thrown out. The only solution was to take the route Pedro had sworn never to accept: to look for a college that was 'less demanding'. The choice was Guanabara, in Flamengo, where Paulo hoped to finish his schooling and then apply for a university course, a