His Own Man Read Free Page A

— particularly following the AI-5 decree — I see Max as one of the most pitiful symbols of our country at that time. All the same, the decision to tell his story was difficult, requiring four decades. The urge to do so, initially daunting, ended up becoming inescapable. Not so much in order to reveal what we always knew within our group: namely, that the devil was in our midst. Not even because of the alternately perverse and tragic circumstances of the players involved and the sad situations they lived through. But out of my own need, as a witness to the adverse effects the period had on people I cared for.
    The statements bordering on confessions that Max made to me over the years, often thanks to too much whiskey, or in response to remarks of mine — which weren’t always kind or conciliatory — I have included here in order to give a fuller sense of other complex aspects of his character. The rest — no small amount, as will become evident — I gathered, often unexpectedly, from reliable sources close to Max (his ex-wife, former superiors, subordinates, acquaintances, friends, enemies), people who admired or abhorred him, as well as those whose careers may well have been jeopardized by his actions — but who nonetheless fell under his spell.

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    Max had been appointed to the first position of his diplomatic career more than five years earlier, in August 1963, after finishing his studies at the Rio Branco Institute.
    The military coup of April 1964 was only months away and the country was seething with prerevolutionary Marxist ardor. The leftists, to use the language of the old-timers, were rolling up their sleeves, while the right held back and got organized. There were so many leftist groups that one had the impression the right didn’t even exist. Or if it did, it lacked teeth. At the universities, Socialists and Communists voiced greater misgivings about the right-wing students than about the military, for those stocky young men were going around armed and preying on intellectuals — who were almost always frail by comparison. They wore their repression with pride — outwardly and aggressively, in contrast with the more conservative Tradition, Family, and Property movement.
    Besides Brecht, Mayakovsky, and Sartre, Max read selected works by Mao and Che Guevara — among others attuned to the moment. Thanks to his journalist friends, he enjoyed direct access to Rio’s intelligentsia. He would go to hear jazz musicians at the Beco das Garrafas and circulate among the boxes at the Municipal Theater. In bohemian circles, he expounded on Godard’s films, which he said he preferred to those of Resnais. And he regarded those of Truffaut with a condescending smile.
    Max had originally been assigned by the ministry to serve in the Middle East division. However, before he assumed his duties there, he received another offer. Through the intervention of a senator — for whom Max, as an intern in the ministry’s consular sector, had secured a diplomatic passport in less than an hour — he was invited to switch divisions and serve in the minister’s office.
    Despite the good news, Max was worried about the repercussions of this unexpected distinction. What luck that the senator happened to be a friend of the minister. But what would his colleagues say? Wouldn’t his move run the risk of being misinterpreted? And how would he concoct an apology to the head of the Middle East division, who was awaiting him with open arms and to whom he’d made a commitment just two weeks earlier?
    On Max’s first day at the ministry, he had all the forced seriousness of a young man who wished desperately to appear older than he was. The effort wasn’t entirely successful, however, for it was contradicted by his natural exuberance. In his right hand, he carried a briefcase of worn but fine leather, which for the moment held only the day’s newspaper. To offset the sobriety of his dark suit, he allowed himself two concessions: his