I'm beginning to make my way through a stack of novels by a new generation of authors around the globe. First up is Elza: The Girl by Brazil’s Sérgio Rodrigues, a tale that's combination historical account and crime thriller.
We're in Rio de Janeiro in the early years of the 21st century with 43-year-old Molina who has a new job that actually pays money: serving as interviewer/memoir transcriber for 95-year-old Xerxes as the old man relates his life as a member of the Brazilian Communist Party back in and around 1936.
Sérgio Rodrigues mixes together a number of intertwining plots. Here's a batch along with my own personal observations and color commentary:
The Elza Case
The hub of the novel revolves around Elza Fernandes. Is Elza 16 or is she 21? The answer depends on who you believe. Elza was a member of the Communist Party, a young lady who apparently was murdered in 1936, the orders coming down from Communist Party leaders. The leaders suspected Elza of being a traitor to the cause and thus contributing to the party's failed coup against Brazilian President Getulio Vargas. Elza the beauty; Elza the mysterious - such provocative intrigue as part of the history of Brazil.
Xerxes, the Communist
The old man provides all the details of his firsthand experience relating to the battle in a city park in October 1934 where the communists stopped a fascist rally in São Paulo. Back in the 1930s, so Xerxes asserts, people in the party had a clear and powerful sense of what it would mean to create a classless society. And at no time was that power more present than at that park in October.
"Suddenly, very clearly as if from heaven, there was a piercing and unmistakable sound that until then I had only heard in war movies: a spray of machine-gun fire." Xerxes is adamant: a commitment to Communism is serious business and might even require the sacrifice of one's own life.
Xerxes encourages Molina to read the Communist literature, to immerse himself in the historic record, to know the theory and philosophy of Communism in all its various facets.
Xerxes, the Lover
Here's a snatch of the old man telling Molina about his relationship with Elza: "At that moment, in the middle of the most unforgettable kisses of my life, I promised her everything. To teach her to read, to love her, and never, never let anything bad happen to her, ever." For an added helping of pathos, Xerxes the dedicated Communist, a man eking out a living as a proofreader, falls deeply in love with the girlfriend/partner/lover of none other than the head of Brazil's Communist party.
Current Day Brazil
"It was a ten-minute trip between tree-lined flowerbeds in the shade of the Nossa Senhora de Glória do Outeiro church on one side, and the Museum of Modern Art on the other. It would make for a pleasant stroll if it didn't involve crossing high-speed lanes choked by huge vehicles driven by those with no respect whatsoever for traffic lights, not to mention the nooks occupied by packs of homeless people with watery eyes - minefields of human, canine, feline, and pigeon excrement, deep trenches, overflowing manholes, trash everywhere. Around the Passeio Público, the landscape changed thanks to bevies of street vendors, with their tarps and stalls dripping with products from Abibas, Sonya, Raph Luren, Panafonic, Tosheeba, Niake, Eve San Loran, Shanel, S'Puma, ReyBon, Padra, Gutchi - merchandise from another world, a parallel capitalist dimension inside the mirror."
The above is a description of what Molina sees as he walks through early 21st century Rio, a world fragmented by modern world capitalism, a world where any Communist idea of a "classless society" is long dead.
This section of the novel reminded me of that caustic quote by philosopher Fredric Jameson: “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world.”
Molina the Writer
"Molina thought about adding that he was one of the world's foremost experts on history's greatest television series, The Twilight Zone. He backed down in time, realizing it was unlikely that would earn him any points with Xerxes." Molina spent a number of years as a newspaper journalist but then decided to try his hand at creative writing. Molina wasn't having much luck. Hey, Molina, you say your expertise is The Twilight Zone? Good thing Xerxes came along.
Molina the Lover
Lucky man! Molina's girlfriend is Camila, an absolute knockout twenty years Molina's junior. As all the men's heads turn when Camila walks down the street, Molina thinks: mine! mine! mine! Camila is also a bright scholar doing her academic thesis on Ercília Nogueira Cobra, a leading Brazilian feminist living at the same time as Elza. Hey, did Xerxes know Ercília? The thick plottens.
More and More
Xerxes tells Molina about his episode in that park in October when he confronted his twin brother. Also, there's an evening and long night when Xerxes lost his virginity to two luscious young ladies from Italy, two gals he likes to think of as Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren.
Many more are the surprises in store for Molina as he continues his exploration of Xerxes' past and current day Rio.
For me, Sérgio Rodrigues' Elza: The Girl provided a intriguing journey through a colorful swath of Brazilian social and political history. I look forward to reading more Sérgio Rodrigues.
Brazilian author Sérgio Rodrigues, born 1962
Comments
Post a Comment