Quintessence

QUINTESSENCE

By Jorge Desgranges

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Jorge Desgranges

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Chapter 1

Thirty minutes had passed since the flight from New York had arrived. Carolina took her small bag – the standard kind used by flight crew – and looked out dejectedly as she passed along the slipstream. The passengers were jostling against each other, waiting for their luggage, which always reminded her of a scene from her childhood when she spit out a candy on the ground and watched it soon be surrounded by dozens of ants. In the passengers’ faces she could see a mix of weariness and anxiety that was either due to the ten-hour flight or to gnawing doubts about whether or not the luggage would come out of the tunnel, or maybe a bit of both. At that moment the traveler’s gaze looks a lot like that of a distressed child who still doesn’t know whether that coveted gift will be under the Christmas tree.

Carolina was tired, it was already past seven AM in Rio de Janeiro, and she had spent all night awake, either waiting on the passengers or reviewing her life. She knew she had come to a great turning point. The magic moment when one passes from costar to protagonist of the greater stage, life.

‘Each person’s life must be like a movie; whether the movie is good or bad depends wholly on oneself. Good movies, in general, are full of strong emotions, daring moves and passionate kissing. Art or adventure. You are the movie’s main character, and director too. If the movie is boring, change the story line.’ Carolina had heard it somewhere; perhaps in the Buddhist temple she used to visit in Vargem Grande, or maybe in some pub at night’s end, from some anonymous drunk with cheap philosophical pretensions. It didn’t matter. It was her truth.

Truth had come upon her, truth of the kind that suddenly, violently, overwhelms each of your senses and makes you realize the essence of what you sought, but didn’t know. It’s an odd feeling. As if you knew the teaching but couldn’t translate it into words. As if it were encrypted and then all of a sudden the key word appeared that would allow you to decipher everything. Map and compass at last. That insight was more useful than years of Freudian psychoanalysis, although this was the very same thing her analyst tried to make her understand, albeit unsuccessfully. It was like a watershed. Carolina began to seek that leading role, and from then on her life was set in a motion that often benumbed her. The more she drank from the chalice, the more she craved it.

She got her car from the airport parking lot and drove to her small apartment in Leblon. At home she felt she needed to unwind before going to sleep. She didn’t like sedatives. It was too early for alcohol. She changed clothes and left for a workout at the gym. It was there that, some months before, she had met Santiago, her boyfriend, who just went crazy when he saw that beautiful, tall girl with dark, curly hair, shapely legs, fine waist, light movements, who seemed to defy gravity and obeyed a kind of silent music, and who above all had a smile straight from a toothpaste commercial.

After her workout she took a long soothing shower and left a message at Santiago’s office. As usual, he was in one of his seemingly endless daily meetings or court hearings. Carolina didn’t even pay attention to what the secretary said, she knew it would hardly be possible to talk to Santiago at that time of the day, and just said she’d call later. He’ll understand the message; she was going to sleep, for he already knew her routine after long, tiresome night flights.

That’s what she tried to do. A cold shower to fight the sweltering air of a soon-to-be Rio summer. She turned on the air conditioner, took her clothes off and threw herself on the bed. In vain.

Santiago was considered more than promising in the legal circles, despite being no more than thirty, just a year older than Carolina. He was respected in the office of the renowned Freitas Neto, a tax law specialist who represented some of the largest multinationals in Brazil.

Occupying two floors in a sumptuous building near the Hall of Justice, with a panoramic view of Guanabara Bay, the office conveyed the prestige and influence held by its head over both the local and national legal community. Finely decorated, its high point was the large library connected to the main meeting room, whose furnishing had been done by a carpenter summoned all the way from Portugal to give the heavy tables and chairs their indispensable air of austerity.

Freitas Neto was a retired appellate court judge, the dean of the Rio de Janeiro State University Law School, grown rich after his first few years as a lawyer. He saved companies huge amounts on their taxes, by suing to cancel unjust assessments and planning ahead to avoid paying the taxman anything more than the letter of the law demanded. This was not something difficult for a man of his legal stature, even though it demanded a certain amount of work, for if all taxation was remarkably heavy and notoriously misspent. He had rare talent for steering between exceptions and details, always finding the right time to push his own slant into every loophole.

And he had a trump card he had nurtured as carefully as an orchid grower in a hothouse: his young assistants. Recent graduates all, whose ascensions would inevitably cross the threshold of many a courtroom, opening doors and smoothing out the arduous path of due legal process.

Santiago was an exception to the rule. The son of a career diplomat, he decided to study law in order to fulfill one of the entrance requirements for the Rio Branco Institute, the national diplomacy school, wanting to follow his mother’s footsteps. He dreamt of living like a nomad, never putting down roots, knowing other cultures, new ways of thinking and being. His training was atypical for a young Brazilian of his age, for he had traveled around the globe more than once, living and studying in such cities as London, Barcelona and Florence, always enrolled in schools known for their emphasis on artistic formation. He believed art to be the only escape from the mediocrity of a common life. Later on he would realize the terrible mix of truth and lie contained in this concept. He would learn the hard way that the best raw material to be made into art was within reach of any mortal but was also the hardest one to work with: life itself.

He had the quick eyes of a bird of prey and strong, lithe muscles. He was tall and not classically handsome – at least, he didn’t have an ‘easy beauty’. His features were somewhat rough, and he was also going bald. His lips, naturally thick, were thinned by his attentive education and easy smile. He had some charm, and a great cat’s strangely elegant manner of moving, a paternal inheritance, and the only legacy left by his father too, since he was raised by his mother at a safe enough distance to allow for an undisturbed upbringing. All he knew was that his parents had met at college, where his mother got pregnant. His father never actually practiced law, but very early got into reselling used auto parts, which meant close contact with car-theft rings. He was murdered some years later, in broad daylight, in a crowded restaurant in a working class suburb in the city’s Baixada Fluminense region while having lunch with two friends. The hit man shot him several times point-blank in the back, and calmly left without anybody raising more than an eyebrow.

Santiago learned of his father’s death shortly afterward, and felt little pain. He had always kept at a distance, only paying his father sporadic visits, and was not much interested in learning more, for he believed his father to be a mere biological accident. And that was it. But who knows where his story ends?

It was at university that Santiago met Flávia, the youngest daughter of Freitas Neto. It was a relationship that would have been inconsequential had not Flávia insisted Santiago be taken on as an intern in her father’s office just as they were finishing their studies. Soon Santiago allowed himself to be seduced by the money that was pouring into the office and by the feeling of power that he had. He also relished answering the innumerous requests from bigwigs from all the office’s client companies. They deprived themselves of all pomp, climbed down from on high and, anxious like so many children, craved magical solutions for all their tax problems, which often involved saving millions for their companies and saving their jobs or, even better, getting them promoted to the boardroom, besides earning a fat bonus for their competence.

Santiago was intelligent, and he fastidiously applied himself to the cases assigned to him. When he finished law school, life began to change course and show its face more clearly. His mother was killed in a car crash in near Lisbon, and although by then he’d broker up with Flávia, he was invited to join Freitas Netos’ office as a junior partner, which included a share of the profits. Although the percentage wasn’t too big, the amount was huge by his present standards. Besides, he was now alone in the world, deprived of maternal security. He had to think about his survival – there was no passing up such a tempting proposal in his current circumstances. His plan for a diplomatic career was laid to rest.

He soon acquired a shiny new Audi and a small but well-appointed penthouse apartment, with a view south to the Barra da Tijuca beaches and a northwest panorama of Gávea Rock. Rio de Janeiro is wonderfully squeezed between sea and mountains. This headache for the city’s road engineers is more than offset by the balm to the eyes of those who love this city of paradoxes, with its gorgeous beaches, chaotic traffic, wonderful women, ugly slums, fake rogues and the world’s largest urban forest.

After a few years, Santiago was an ascending star, respected by all, admired by some and envied by many – the stigma of success. Everything seemed right in his life. Young, healthy, professionally well-off and in love with a beautiful woman. Life was like an eternal trip to Disney World.

Chapter 2

Arriving home just after dusk, he saw the answering machine’s blinking light. It was Carolina saying she would arrive soon, bringing sushi ingredients with her for dinner.

He took a long, warm shower, letting water drizzle over his head and run down him as if it was able to wash more than his body, taking away every misfortune that had happened during the day. It was a habit he had. It was like washing his soul with soap and water.

On their meeting, the embrace was tight and deliciously sincere. They laughed and kidded while preparing rice and sweetened ginger. Handling the Japanese knife with surgical precision, she sliced the salmon paper-thin. They were listening to Tasmin Archer and Maria Betânia. ‘I go deep into existence / And if we are to live together / You’ll have to know how to invent yourself’, sang the Bahian in her powerful voice and faultless diction.

Perhaps it would be possible to educate somebody just with music and poetry, said Santiago. Carolina smiled with her eyes.

The talk during dinner, however, was a bit restrained, especially when Santiago mentioned plans for the future. In such moments, he was unable to meet Carolina’s eyes, which seemed uncomfortable with all that talk. She looked, smiled and lowered her eyes. She spoke but little, almost in monosyllables. He, on the contrary, was very loquacious, linking each topic to the next. He felt extremely happy, as if his happiness were pure calling and the rest of the world was unhappy from mere incompetence. And then they made love as if it were the last time.

It was.

In the next day, Santiago woke up very early and noticed that Carolina wasn’t by his side. Through the window he saw her on the terrace, naked, pensively watching the rising sun trying to climb Joá hill, still too weak to dissipate the early morning mist. The offshore breeze stretched her hair toward the sea. Santiago hugged her from behind, wrapping the bed sheet around her and whispering ‘good morning’ close to her ear, receiving a sweet smile in return.

The day began with its relentless routine: gym, bath, necktie, coat, office, hearings, phone calls, voluminous briefs, distressed clients, pedantic judges, bored clerks and a box of chocolate truffles sent by Carolina to the office. During the day he tried to reach her at home and her cell phone, to no avail. But he looked tenderly at the heart-shaped box, full of chocolates, his second passion, and began to think that she was either shopping or at the beach. He lost himself in his work so the hours would fly quicker and he would be able to hold her again. They had agreed to drop by the art gallery of their Catalonian friend Vasquez, a good-natured man who was hard to anger unless accused of being born in Spain. His gallery was in a new shopping center in Barra, where the young artist was going to show his works for the first time.

When Santiago left work, he decided to