Chapter One: Protest the Sexuality of the Brazilians
Call me Oscar Progresso. Or, for that matter, call me anything you want, as Oscar Progresso is not my name. Nor are Baby Supine, Euclid Cherry, Franklyn Nuts, or any of the other aliases that, now and then over the years, I have been forced to adopt. No one knows my real name anymore: it's been too long. And all the things that I myself once knew are like a ship glittering in the dark, moving away from me as I am left in homely silence. My time is drawing to a close, so I thought I would take one last shot.
And here you have it, the chronicle of my failure and my isolation, which are told through victory, and of my victories, which are told through failure and isolation: loneliness, really. My life has not been simple, but I am sure of my story.
Though you may not be half as peculiar as I am, if you separate out your vanities and illusions, the petty titles to which you hold fast and by which you are defined, the abstract and "She's pregnant."
"Your kid?"
"Someone else's."
"That's too bad," he says, "I'm sorry."
I shrug my unwounded shoulder. Then they hear a police siren, and though it is very far away they run like hell.
Professional killers favor tiny pistols that shoot .12-calibre slugs, the kind used in hamster hunting. But who knows? They might be equipped with locking-barrel .44-magnum automatics. I saw one like this in the gun store in Sao Paulo when I bought MY pistol, a Walther P-88. It's very heavy. Carrying it actually throws my back out, as my muscles make just enough damaging adjustment to keep me balanced as I walk. I had to bribe half a dozen people to get it, and, with ordinary crimerising explosively, I carry it. I'm too old to be wounded yet again, even with a hamster gun, and when they appear, if I haven't died already, I'll kill them.
Part of the reason I moved to Niteroi is that if they don't find me, they won't shoot me, and if they don't shoot me, I won't have to shoot them. I've paid twenty people-the newspaper boy, my former barber, the landlord, even the policeto say that I died. The only problem is the naval academy, where I go three times a week. Though now I cross the bay and come from an unexpected direction, some risk remains. I've been there so long that anyone who wants to find me will.
I might have moved into the interior, or up or down the coast. By bribes and solitude I could have lost myself in one of the quiet cities of Uruguay, but then I would have been separated from many of the things that keep me alive. They are, in ascending order, the city itself, the naval academy, Marlise, bittersweet recollections, and Funio.
The naval academy sits on a peninsula that used to be an island and was at one time the capital of La France Antarctique. That the French thought Rio de Janeiro antarctique is because the whole world here is upside-down. If you are not born under the equator you can never quite get your bearings.
The naval academy is filled with young cadets in the ill-fitting naval costume of northern civilizations. Torn from their upsidedown roots, they have been made to study tactics, ballistics, naval history, electronics, and, of course, English, which is what I teach them.
Unless you are the daughter of a Brazilian admiral, and perhaps not even then, you may not have realized that Brazil has a navy. And, after beinginformed that it does, you may wonder why it does.
Picture a map. Consider Brazil's immensely long coastline, upon which its cities, some great even in the eyes of the uncaring and faraway world, are strung like light bulbs over the terrace of a seaside restaurant. Then look at Brazil's connection with the rest of the continent. It is cut off from the major cities of South America-Buenos Aires, Santiago, Caracas-by rivers, jungles, the Andes, and vast distances over lands that lead nowhere. Brazil is, in effect, an island, and an island needs a navy.
Why? To reduce a complicated answer to its blurry X ray, it is because the economy of an island can quickly be ruined by a naval blockade. Thus, you might expect the Brazilian navy to be devoted to antisubmarine warfare, and it is. Its single aircraft carrier (Brazil is one of only a few countries that have aircraft carriers), the Minas Gerais, is configured mainly for hunting submarines. Its seven submarines are, similarly, hunter-killer types assigned primarily to the tracking and destruction of other submarines. Don't tell anybody, but the navy is planning to build three nuclear submarines to give it greater range and endurance in the South Atlantic, and has started on a test reactor in Sao Paulo. This is a military secret I overheard in the cafeteria, and the truth of it is supported by other evidence, such as the fact that many of my former students are now physicists and power plant engineers who send me occasional postcards from decidedly non-oceanic locations.
I might have sold this secret to Argentina, but I feel grateful to Brazil and loyal to the navy, and, besides, 1 have in my life more assassins than anyone mightneed, and I don't fancy the Brazilian secret service hunting me down in Niteroi, because Niteroi is one of the few places in the world where they might find me.
The rest of the navy consists of fifteen antisubmarine frigates and various amphibious and patrol craft. The patrol craft are for use against submarine and other incursions, the amphibious arm, I think, for counter-attacking enemy bases established on Brazilian territory, and for putting down rebellion. There are lots of survey craft, for mapping the horrendously complex undersea environment, which, because of thermal strata and currents, must be represented not as a clear crystal but as a constantly mutating three-dimensional relief. And submarine tenders, tankers, barges, etc.