The Rediscovery of Eden (chapter 3)
This is the third chapter of "The Rediscovery of Eden". To go back to the first chapter, please click here.
Day 8:
Today Nanico came home again. This time, he brought a photo album under his arm with several pictures of Arthur with Gracinda, a young and very beautiful mulatto, dressed very seductively. He also brought Arthur's death certificate, who died very young, at the age of twenty-seven. He was murdered in a bar fight, defending the honor of Gracinda, who had been offended by a drunken customer.
Nanico said that after the death of his grandfather Arthur, Josefa decided to leave her job as a maid to go and help Gracinda raise her daughter. They lived in Morro dos Prazeres, in a community that was formed when the mayor decided to implement an Urban Remodeling Plan in Rio de Janeiro, to remove the favelas from the center of Rio. It is in this house that Nanico lives to this day. Mom, we have a relative who is King Momo and lives in the favela!
Day 9
Today, rummaging through some boxes of books and teaching materials, I found a diary from Ana Clara,grandma's older sister. When her mother quit Rio, Ana Clara was already 22 years old. She decided to continue living in this house with her uncle and Josefa. She was an unconventional and intelligent girl. Traumatized by her father's violence, she preferred the exclusive company of women and ended up being single all her life. Shortly after her mother's departure, she began working as an elementary school teacher.
Shortly after her father's last visit in 1940, when she finally gained her freedom, Ana Clara recounts in her diary that she was disappointed in love when her girlfriend Aurora left her for another young woman from the bohemian, literary and dynamic milieu of Montmartre Carioca, as Lapa was called at the time. As a result, she fell into a period of depression, which worried her uncle. Her "deviant sexual behavior, her affective and volitional abnormalities", as well as her "excessive" education, led the doctor to diagnose her with symptoms of mental illness and suggest that her uncle put her in an asylum. She, however, reports having recovered at Carnival that year, singing the marchinha Aurora to exhaustion:
If you were sincere
Ô ô ô ô ô Aurora
Look how good it was
Ô ô ô ô ô Aurora
Shortly afterwards, she returned with redoubled energy to participate in the samba circles, also frequented by Aracy de Almeida and Mario Lago, and to visit Portinari in his townhouse in Rua Joaquim Silva. She says in her diary that she was part of a group of daring girls known as "the modernists".
Day 10
Ana Clara died in 1995, aged 77. Shortly after her death, she transferred the water and electricity bills for her house into the name of her younger sister. All the property she had acquired through her work as a teacher, she left as an inheritance to Mr. João Batista, a bricklayer who had become her friend over the years and whose children she had seen grow up to become parents. In exchange for the goods, he agreed to keep the house well maintained, hoping that one day some relative from the south would come along and take possession of the house and the furniture inside.
On the dining room table, I found a wooden box containing a photo with a dedication and a letter addressed to grandma Bruna. In the photo, she appears very smiling, wearing long white helanca pants and a tight sleeveless blouse. She must have been about 45 at the time. She's in the same room I'm in now, but the windows are all open. The sun floods into the room, forming a pool of light on the rosewood table. Josefa, not much younger, stands next to her with a feather duster in her hand, looking at the photographer. Ana Clara holds the arm of a huge polisher machine placed over the rosewood table to polish the wood, laughing at the unusual situation. The machine is one of those used in the old days to polish the floor, in the days when it was waxed. The photo's dedication reads "We're leaving the house all clean and shiny, waiting for our dear little Bruna to visit. With affection, from your sister Ana Clara. May 1963."
Jesus, Mom, the letter was never read! The envelope is still sealed. I'm coming home tomorrow and I'm taking this letter with me so you can see what's in it. See you tomorrow!
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