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The Vampiric and the Urban Space
in Dalton Trevisan's O vampiro de Curitiba
Andrew M. Gordus
Arizona State University
Within contemporary Brazilian literature Dalton Trevisan is considered
one of the preeminent modern short story writers. Although his
first works appeared in the review Joaquim (1946-48), he
first gained national attention with his collection of short stories
entitled Novelas nada exemplares (1959). As many critics
have noted, his collection and those works that followed share
a common preoccupation with revealing to the reader the grotesque,
horrific underside of daily existence within modern Brazilian
society. O vampiro de Curitiba (1965), representative
of this dominant preoccupation, has come to be considered the
classic work of Dalton Trevisan.
At the time of its publication, Trevisan's work marks a significant
departure from the better-known regional literatures of the time.
Beginning in the '20s and '30s the rural or regional had begun
to predominate Brazilian literary and cultural production. There
was increased emphasis on the rural/regional space and the depiction
of the people and society that existed there. Building on the
Modernists, many authors began to explore the folklore, customs,
and popular culture of Brazil's rural/regional societies. Predominantly
dealing with the cultures of the Northeast, they tried to capture
the distinctive oral language-brasileirismos-and the customs
and heritage of the Northeast in their writings.
This increased interest in the rural/regional space suggests
several motivating factors. First, for some the patriarchal rural
society represented a return to a nostalgic past, a golden age,
a simpler time. This was a reaction to the great changes that
Brazil was undergoing during the years that followed World War
I and, more importantly, with the Estado Novo of the '30s. With
the coming to power of the Vargas dictatorship there was an effort
to incorporate the cultural production and to use it for the government's
own purposes. The cultural project of the Estado Novo was to
appropriate the national as a vehicle of the popular.
This creation of a Brazilian identity and its subsequent celebration
became a means to negate difference and the plurality that existed
within an increasingly complex Brazilian society, thus encouraging
conformity and resignation to its inherent problems (Regina de
Mendoça 292). Such problems, deficiencies, and inequalities
could thus be typically dismissed as natural, part of the national
character, or in other words "o jeito brasileiro."
During the push towards modernization and in the midst of Brazil's
rapidly changing social landscape the rural represented a means
to return to the essence of the "real" Brazil. Brazil's
"true" identity and culture could be found in its rural
heritage. As Bosi points out, in the period after World War II
the rural, which has been a tool for the right, becomes the focus
of the left who begin to examine the rural/regional societies
from a critical stance (386). There continues the interest in
and celebration of the regional art and popular culture, but in
contrast with those on the right the realismo bruto of
many of the regional writers especially from the Northeast attempted
to lay bare and protest against the many social injustices that
they observed. They found endemic within the rural societies
that they wrote about the oppression, corruption and authoritarianism
that plagued Brazil as a whole. Echoing to some extent the project
of the right, the left was to examine Brazil's rural heritage,
but instead of seeking a nostalgic golden age it was there that
they could find the roots of Brazil's present social problems.
Social ills such as poverty, corruption, and authoritarianism
were holdovers from the coronelismo of the past. These
past/present ills were holding Brazil back and the literature
of such authors as Jorge Amado, José Lins do Rego, and
Érico Veríssimo called for a revolutionary transformation
of Brazilian society.
At the same time as Brazilian cultural production turned its
focus to the rural and regional space during the Post-War period,
Brazil was undergoing a dramatic shift from a rural to an urban
society. Brazil's further incorporation into the world economy
and the government's continued push for economic development and
modernization carried this process ever forward. As Lowe points
out, this economic vision of the city was one that extended back
to the modernists but which balanced that vision with a recognition
of the misery it often brought (27). Coupled with this development
was an ideology of nationalistic pride, optimism and hope in the
future of Brazil. Out of the great resources of Brazil was to
emerge a modern orderly nation. Brasília-the newly created
capital in the midst of the Brazilian wilderness-symbolized more
than anything the official ideology of ordem e progresso.
A strong centralized government and planned growth would overcome
the "backwardness" of the traditional rural societies
that were restraining the people of Brazil. As a result, the
growing cities of Brazil frequently came to be associated with
opportunity, hope and the future. In part this image of the city
combined with the decline in rural economies contributed to the
migration of large segments of the rural populace to the cities
in search of a better life and employment opportunities.
It is within the context of these great social changes and the
growth of the city within Brazil that the work of Dalton Trevisan
first appears. However considerable the attention that has been
given to the body of Dalton Trevisan's work, there exists a noticeable
oversight in its analysis: the representation in and influence
on Trevisan's work of the urban space has received little or no
attention. Its choice of urban settings stands apart from the
abundant rural and regional literatures being produced during
the 1950s and the years preceding and markedly differs from the
official vision of the city as the modern, optimistic, future
of Brazil.
It should become apparent that the urban space is an important
influence on the characters that populate his fiction, and yet
attempts to make sense of what connects the various protagonists
and their shared experiences remained trapped in shallow descriptions
such as the "everyday" or the "common." Such
descriptions fall short of adequately analyzing what shapes these
protagonists and what we might be able to identify as this common
or everyday experience or force. What is it "out there"
that is common to us all, that creates this everyday modern urban
experience that Trevisan details? What are the forces that shape
and characterize the urban vampires that populate his writings?
There is no clearer marker of the importance of the urban space
than the title of Trevisan's collection, O vampiro de Curitiba,
his defining work and the starting point for so much of the criticism
of his work. Berta Waldman, Nelson Vieira, Eva Paulino Bueno
and others have written extensively about the vampire and the
representations of the vampire within his various works, but the
urban space, Curitiba, remains sorely neglected. This is all
the more remarkable because the title signals a vital link between
the urban space and the figure of the vampire. The title which
connects vampiro with the urban space, Curitiba, and the
preposition "de" allows for several possible understandings
of this relationship. The vampire can been seen as having its
origins in the urban space or coming from the urban space. It
could also be a reference to the way in which the vampire in these
texts belongs or relates to the urban space, differentiating it
from other possible forms of vampires. An additional reading
could interpret the title as emphasizing the material composition
of the vampire. Such an interpretation implies that the vampire
is a composite of the city. The vampire is in essence the city
itself. These questions are especially important if we consider
the fact that the vampire has its origins in the rural cultures
of Europe. Any one of these multiple meanings reveals the paramount
importance of the urban space in relation to the vampire and text
as a whole. What is it, then, that is unique about the vampire
originating in the urban space, what is important about the connection,
vampire and city, and how do they interrelate?
In any attempt to understand the figure of the vampire in relation
to the city in Trevisan's work it becomes helpful to examine
the vampire's possible uses and meanings in literature and its
reception by the reader. What is it about the vampire that makes
it appropriate to use in the description of the contemporary urban
dweller or what might it show about such urban existence? How
do the vampires of Trevisan's work differ from those that have
come before? The vampire is an ancient and almost universal figure
appearing in some form or another in most cultures but how we
come to understand the vampire today in literature and popular
culture has been principally shaped by those vampires that populated
the European literature of the nineteenth century. Such literature
can trace its vampire's origins back to the folkloric traditions
of Eastern Europe.
Within those traditions the vampire normally took the form of
a loved one or family member who, cursed in one manner or another,
comes back from the grave to feed off one of his family, friends,
or neighbors. Apart from her or his undead state, the vampire
showed few extraordinary powers. This portrait of the vampire
varies greatly from the literary vampire and how the vampire is
typically conceived of today in several important aspects. Whereas
in the folkloric traditions the vampire was known by his or her
victims, as of the nineteenth century the vampire became a foreigner,
a loner, an outsider, and hunted for victims outside of her or
his own ethnic group (Senf 25). Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897),
perhaps the most popular and best-known vampire novel, synthesizes
many of the characteristics of past and present vampires. In
his work the mysterious Count Dracula who has come to London is
described as "the stranger in a strange land." He stands
apart from those around from those around him in that he wields
enormous economic, physical and erotic power.
This shift in the characterization of the folkloric vampire to
the literary vampire and the surge of interest in vampires in
the nineteenth century coincided with and has been linked to the
changes that overcame Western societies as they moved from being
predominantly feudal, rural and agricultural to increasingly democratic,
industrial and urban. In John Flynn's interpretation of popular
models,
Dracula is a constant reminder of the many Old World traditions
that never quite made the transition to contemporary society.
He is the romantic hero, like many of us, lost in an unfamiliar
world. He also represents the symbol of eternal life. Like Peter
Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, Dracula remains unchanged
in a changing society with no conscience of remorse for his actions.
He knows only what he wants and satisfies those desires without
any consideration for the consequences. He is the embodiment
of evil without guilt, power without restraint, and sexuality
without conscience. (Flynn 4-5)
The emerging literary vampire is a melding of the folkloric traditions
to a real historical figure, Vlad the Impaler. This 15th-century
Romanian tyrant was renowned for his particular cruelty in dealing
with enemies both foreign and domestic. He routinely impaled
his enemies on wooden stakes as a means of torture and execution.
This image of militarized sadism coupled with a feudal aristocracy
clearly represented a challenge to the emerging capitalist democracy
of Britain which based itself on reason and the rule of law.
Eastern Europe had become important for Britain at this time due
to its strategic location between the Orient and the West. Britain's
empire, which was at its height at the end of the nineteenth century,
included important and vast territories in the Orient that required
that they insure secure connections between the West and the Orient.
Eastern Europe as a historical point of contact between the West
and the Orient becomes the embodiment of the fears that this contact
produces in Britain. Dracula becomes the realization of what
this contact will produce. From a European point of view, a modern,
industrial, and democratic Europe is in danger of being contaminated
by the backward, dictatorial and savage cultures of the Orient.
As we noted, the appearance of Trevisan's work coincides with
social/cultural upheaval not unlike that of the Victorian age,
and as such we can see the vampire as representing some of those
same fears. But also as we would expect there are key differences.
One of those key differences comes when we ask what is the vampire,
where does he come from or where does he trace his origins? For
the Victorians he was the stranger in a strange land, a foreigner,
someone who didn't belong, a contaminant in an otherwise healthy
body, a corrupting influence; he was the "other," culturally,
politically and sexually. The vampire was feared, but there seems
to be an optimism that it would be overcome and held at bay.
In Trevisan's work it becomes evident that that is not the case.
His vampires are very much at home in the urban environment that
they inhabit. It is an acknowledgment that the monstrous "other"
that exists has its origins not outside of society but more dangerously
lies within. What is interesting is that the vampire of Trevisan's
work seems to mesh qualities of both the folkloric and Victorian
traditions mentioned earlier. Like the Victorian, the vampire
operates within the urban context, the city, but like the folkloric
he is a part of the community that he feeds on. In an approximation
to the folkloric the vampire's victims are often family members,
friends, lovers, wives, but just as readily strangers. Although
the vampire shows no extraordinary or supernatural powers, the
threat of the vampire is magnified by its massification and its
ability to manifest itself in any of its inhabitants. This ability
makes it much more elusive and dangerous. This hybridity seems
to be reflective of the nature of Brazilian society. As I mentioned
previously, Brazil found itself in the midst of a move from rural,
agricultural and feudal society to one that promised to be urban,
industrial and democratic. Hence the commonality with the literary
vampire as it was created during the nineteenth century. The
vampire of Trevisan's work reflected the fear of Brazil's inability
to escape the oppressions of its rural past. The push towards
industrialization and modernization was leaving incomplete or
untouched many of the social problems that had been pointed out
by the regionalist writers. Such fears were fueled by the perception
that the economic gains that were being made were benefiting the
elite at the expense of the poor and that the state was becoming
more authoritarian in the face of such inequities. Rather than
relegating the abuses of the coronelismo and the feudalist
tendencies of the rural societies to a distant past, the modernization
of Brazil seemed to be aggravating them. An increase in Brazil's
urban population and the massification of its communities required
ever increasing measures of oppression to keep them under control.
These fears finally manifested themselves in the military coup
of 1964.
As a symbol of the project of the government for a modern Brazil,
the city becomes especially important in its characterization,
one that is at least as, if not more important than, the individual
characters. As we surmised from the title of the work, the vampire
can viewed actually to be the city. In one way it is the environment
in which the inhabitants live that spawns the vampires. The vampiric
city lives below the surface in the underside of Curitiba in the
neighborhoods of the newly arrived working class and lies hidden
beneath the façade of the middle and upper class. In Trevisan's
world the vampiric "other" comes not from some distant
source but is part of an integrated whole that surfaces from time
to time to rear its ugly head only to submerge itself once again.
It is this idea that he tries to communicate when he writes:
Curitiba que não tem pinheiros, esta Curitiba eu viajo.
Curitiba, onde o céu azul não é azul, Curitiba
que viajo. Não a Curitiba para inglês ver . . .
Curitiba das ruas de barro com mil e uma janeleiras e seus gatinhos
brancos de fita encarnada no pescoço; da zona da Estação
em que à noite um povo ergue a pedra do túmulo,
bebe amor no prostíbulo e se envenena com dor-de-cotovelo.
(Misterios de Curitiba 85)
In his short story "Mister Curitiba" the city assumes
the form of one of its flesh-and-blood inhabitants (A trompeta
do anjo vingador 9). It embodies the contradictory "undead"
qualities of the vampire, it shows itself to be constant, living
but dead, growing but not alive, static but at the same time incredibly
dynamic. The city feeds off the constant influx of new arrivals;
it seduces them with the promise of a better future, only to entrap
them in the numbing existence of its daily horror. The choice
of Curitiba-perhaps in large part due to the accident the author
lives there-has special significance for the reader. Curitiba
is the capital of the Southeastern state of Paraná. The
city's growth and character were determined in large part by the
large waves of European immigrants (Polish, Italian, German, Ukrainian)
that settled in the city and in the surrounding areas. The city's
varied architecture and relatively cosmopolitan attitude are held
out as a testament to the varied groups that have settled there.
Curitiba has typically been held out as a community that has
most easily made the transition to a modern workable city. It
reveals the duality of Brazilian society of this time: that although
promoted nationally and internationally alike as quickly moving
towards becoming a modern urban industrialized society, yet the
country holds on to its rural feudal past. Such changes that
have taken place in Brazilian society have yet to address many
of the problems of the past such as those that were expounded
by the regionalists. Trevisan is a clear challenge to the official
ideology of the government and ruling elite.
Examination of the various protagonists of Trevisan's work further
reinforce this idea of the city as vampire and how the novel represents
the massification of the vampire. The structuring of O vampiro
de Curitiba reflects this urban identity and those that make
up a part of it. All of these short stories are really a collection
of episodes, moments in time revealing the lived experience of
the urban space. This experience is characterized as one in which
the urban dweller moves about on a daily basis through the various
micro-spaces of the larger urban arena engaging and disengaging
others in superficial transitory social encounters. Paulino Bueno
echoes this point when she comments that Trevisan's works in general
are repetitive, often building on, continuing, and reiterating
those works that have come before (14). Similarly, Waldman states:
"lo que define a la narrativa de Dalton Trevisan es justamente
la ausencia de cambios, y el movimiento que ella traza es el de
la repetición de lo siempre igual" (366). Deonisio
Da Silva stresses the way in which Trevisan's various characters
receive little if any description (40). This means that the attention
of the reader is directed to the repetitive actions of the characters,
giving an overall sense of anonymity and a melding of all of their
identities into one.
This connection into an anomic mass finds its manifestation in
the figure of Nelsinho, himself a protagonist who has no fixed
identity. He represents not one person, but a multiplicity of
identities that can be found in the urban space. His ages range
from that of a young adolescent, a young university student, to
that of an older professional lawyer. As Vieira has commented,
Trevisan's characters display such a consistency in their characteristics
that they become archetypes. In such a way he loses a specific
identity and comes to be no more than a conglomeration of identities
like the anonymous masses that populate the city (45).
Trevisan's novel seems to show the fruition of the worst fears
of the Victorians. In Brazil, the modern nation that the government
is promoting is contaminated by the sins of the autocratic and
savage rural past. The vampiric masses show themselves to have
infiltrated all sectors of society living undetected:
Los vampiros de Dalton Trevisan se constituyan en una multitud
de funcionarios públicos, tenderos, prostitutas, amas de
casa, domésticas, profesionales liberales, trabajadores
del campo, que en la convivencia entre dos se contentan en chupar
al otro transformándolo a su imagen y semejanza. (Waldman
368)
The vampiric other can no longer be held at bay because it is
a part of society hiding in wait, ready to be released within
the confines of the urban space: "No fondo de cada filho
de família dorme um vampiro-não deixe que êle
sinta gôsto de sangue" (4).
The city and its representation of the modern Brazil, rather
than having reformed or grown out of the past and the oppression
of the feudalist society, in many ways has continued or enabled
their existence. Contrasting with Bram Stoker's novel, modernization
fails to defeat the oppressions of the past; on the contrary,
they thrive in their new urban environment. In the city there
exist increased outlets for and more efficient means of exploitation
and oppression.
One essential mitigating factor in the actions of the participants
is anonymity. The characteristic of anonymity is an apparent
extension of the traditional association of the vampire with the
night, darkness and shadows. The vampire traditionally could
operate only at night in the absence of light, and such associations
conferred feelings of fear, evil and chaos. In Trevisan's world
it is in the shadowy margins formed by the chaos of the city in
which the vampires operate. The obscure concealed space shields
their activities from others and provides the conditions necessary
to enable them to release their repressed desires. These dark
secluded spaces abound throughout Trevisan's stories. The vampires
that populate the city move about attacking their victims in stores,
under an eave, or in a movie theater. They and their victims
inhabit decrepit rundown apartment buildings or old wooden houses
characteristic of the European immigrants that came to the city.
They are cold, lonely, and indifferent to the suffering of their
inhabitants. Trevisan expresses this sentiment when he writes
in "O rio":
Se é de boa paz, ai de quem na lua cheia o enfureça:
com as primeiras chuvas eis que sua força, o rio, inunda
a cidade, arrasa a Ponte Preta, são tantos afogados que,
debaixo de cada um, outro espera a vez de boiar.
Um rio não guarda rancor, de novo o rio manso, o rio sem
nome, e Curitiba será a cidade dos muitos rios. (Mistérios
de Curitiba 18)
It is at the very same Ponte Preta that Trevisan gives us an example
of this characteristic. As the girl who suffers a gang rape states
at the beginning of the story, she had never seen any of the men
before, and they insure their anonymity by placing a tunic over
her head. Their lack of connection with their victim or any prior
knowledge of the victim's personal history makes it possible to
objectify the victim and facilitate their dehumanization of her.
Whatever traditional moral restraints that may have existed before
in Brazil's rural societies break down and disappear in the anonymity
of the city, enabling one to liberate her or his violent desires
with impunity. This anonymity represents not only the ability
to move about unrecognized but, perhaps more important, the manner
in which repeated exploitation at all levels has brought about
an inability to recognize the suffering of others and an indifference
towards them. The repressed "other" within each one
of us is allowed back to the surface and comes out all too often.
Without the restraining effect of any moral code, the vampire
emerges naturally within the urban setting as formed by its daily
struggle. The authoritarian past has infected and permeated all
levels of society to the core and thus has become self-perpetuating.
Of the various characteristics of the vampire the one that is
generally universal and among the most salient, especially in
the case of Trevisan, is the vampire's overt eroticism. The inclusion
of the erotic in the vampire has typically been analyzed in terms
of several factors which are not exclusive in and of themselves,
but perhaps more than not linked intimately. On one level, the
vampire's powerful eroticism can be viewed as a natural extension
of his/her power as a whole connected to its other manifestations
such as the economic and the physical. As an embodiment of a
given individual's or society's fears, the vampire embodies those
sexual urges, practices that are considered dangerous or threatening
and so naturally find their expression in a monstrous figure.
Those behaviors and desires the vampire demonstrates or fulfills
are those which are repressed and/or secretly desired. Lastly,
the vampire's erotic power over others and the vampire's resultant
relationship can be read as a metaphor for other types of relationships
that exist within the societies that the vampire inhabits.
Fernández signals the latter in his assessment of sexual/gender
relations. For him these relations as played out in the literary
are drawn in terms of the sexual as a metaphor or representation
of all exploitative subordinate/dominate relations within society:
"Sexual violence and socio-economic repression are metaphorically
linked to women's plight, underscoring a context where graphic
sex serves as an ironic and moral barometer for social criticism"
(368). Not only are they indicative of the exploitative nature
of sexual relations in Brazilian society but also wider experiences
of exploitation at the political, economic, social level. As
Jean Franco has observed, due to the particular socio-historical
formation of Latin America, the grid of gender/sexual relations
in terms of the dominant and subordinate has been transferred
to the larger society:
[T]he analogous position of the intelligentsia which was subordinated
to metropolitan discourse at the same time it was constituting
the discourse of nationalism is indivisible from the sexual division
of labor. Domination has traditionally been associated with masculinity.
Social, political and economic power are represented through
a lexicon that is drawn from sexual relations. Hence the social
and the sexual have become intimately connected. (506)
What this has meant for cultural discourse in particular for Brazil
is a tradition of representing the broader social relations in
terms of the sexual at either a conscious or unconscious level.
This is exactly the point Roberto Reis makes in his observations
about nineteenth-century Brazilian literature. As he sees it,
those works typically underscored, on the level of literary representation,
the hierarchical frontiers found in social reality. Amorous relationships
such as those of José de Alencar were typically redrawn
in terms of the broader socio-economic feudal relations "master"
and "slave" (103). Romantic relations and control exerted
within those relations paralleled racial and social hierarchies.
So then the question becomes: what does Trevisan's choice of
the vampire say about social relations as they exist in the Brazilian
urban context? Comparatively speaking, Trevisan's protagonists
lack the erotic power of their nineteenth-century predecessors.
Absent are the supernatural powers with which to render their
victims helpless; instead, they must rely on more mundane means.
Reducing the power of the vampire serves as an effective way
to make the vampire more tangible and closer to the reader. Rather
than empowered they seem to be at a disadvantage in their attempted
conquests. Their often ugly or repugnant (at times even comical)
appearance require that they use violent, coercive or deceptive
means in order to dominate/seduce their victims.
"Incidente na loja" recounts the protagonist Nelsinho's
pursuit of a store clerk back to the store where she works, where
he subsequently sexually assaults her. The transformation of
the store into what could be called a large bedroom is highly
suggestive. Filled with pillows, quilts, and mattresses it seems
to be drawing on the cliché attack of the vampire who steals
into a chaste young maiden's bedroom to feed upon her. What the
reader witnesses instead is a grotesque reproduction that strips
all vestiges of the romantic from the vampire. The removal of
the scene from the bedroom to a store is an important detail.
It removes such encounters from the intimate and isolated sphere
of the family as is the folkloric tradition and relocates it into
the public urban space indicating its wider economic, political,
and social significance which we have noted.
In terms of its relations to others, the figure of the vampire
is a paradoxical one. A predator, the vampire feeds on its victims
in order to sustain itself and in so doing, it creates another
vampire who in turn feeds upon others. What develops is a situation
in which the vampire is both victim and victimizer. Although
it is not always clear, this implies their actions are the result
of a previous or simultaneous victimization. The victim/victimizer
characteristic also points to connections with other forms of
exploitative relationships not just metaphorically, as was indicated
previously, but also directly. One is to understand that their
sexual behavior is a result of or reaction to numerous types of
oppression that exist within Brazilian society. Nelsinho expresses
this when he exclaims: "Culpa minha não é,
elas me fizeram o que sou-meu peito é ôco de pau
podre, onde só floresce aranha, cobra e escorpião"
(4). If Nelsinho is to be believed, the vampire then is not a
creature created by some force outside of the realm of the common
man but shaped by the society/community that she or he is part
of. This clearly is a demarcation from that of the traditional
vampire as the result of some aberration of nature or something
beyond the world in which it is a part.
As the collection of the stories and Trevisan's work in general
indicate, this process is played out repeatedly on a daily basis
throughout the urban space. When Nelsinho asks in "Incidente
na loja," "ai, Senhor, qual de nós dois é
a vítima?" we can view this question in two possible
ways. As Bueno has pointed out, we can interpret the comment
in reference to the specific situation where the question becomes
a self-serving justification of his actions which seeks to imply
that his victim really consented willingly to the rape (16).
Looking at the larger urban context that the text provides, the
question raises the possibility that they are both victims of
the same system of exploitation. This is more the case in many
of the other stories of the collection O vampiro de Curitiba.
Many of the characters display facets of the lives that could
qualify them as victims or victimizers. This is certainly the
case in stories such as "A noite da paixão" or
"Visita à professora." Here Nelsinho has the
tables turned on him but his victimizer's position in a wider
social context can be viewed as that of a victim. Thus all in
turn are victimized and transformed into victimizers. Women's
positioning by the capitalist patriarchy on the bottom-most rung
of the socioeconomic ladder means they often suffer additional
forms of exploitation.
Lastly, we can observe the reaction of the girl, or rather her
apparent lack of a reaction, after the rape less as indicative
of her consent, but rather as a signal of the manner in which
she has been numbed to the violence she constantly lives through.
Survival depends upon the ability to detach oneself from what
is going on. Exploitation and victimization become routine, part
of daily life, much like the opening of the store that the girl
resumes after the assault and Nelsinho's return to work after
his lunch hour.
The power of the protagonists and the eroticism of the work
comes not through the individual protagonists but through the
multiplication or massification of the acts in which they engage.
It is not the supernatural nature of the protagonists and the
situations that make them so horrifying but rather the exact opposite:
it is the naturalness of their occurrence and the readiness by
which each of the protagonists preys on those around him. The
horrific is thus not what is repressed but what is shown to be
not repressed at all, or rather as a part of everyday existence.
The violence, coercion and deception are an integral part of
this multitude of urban vampires that populate the city.
The story "Debaixo de Ponte Preta" exemplifies this
aspect. Through the personal accounts of the people involved
it reconstructs the gang rape of a sixteen-year-old black servant
on her way home from work. It reports the actions of the various
characters mimicking the style of language one might find in that
of a police report (Da Silva 41). Its detached factual style
projects the attitude of the participants who apparently show
little if any emotion concerning what they have done. Their only
remorse comes with the realization that they have been caught.
After beginning with a general account of the event, the narration
goes about disentangling the events surrounding the brutal rape.
Through the personal statements made to police, it becomes apparent
that the rape took place as a chain reaction to an initial advance
made by one of a group of three soldiers to the girl. Her acceptance
of this initial advance immediately leads to her being raped by
all three. The three seen by other passers-by are then joined
by three other individuals, who also take part in the rape of
the girl. Rather than help, they become willing participants
who merely take advantage of what is offered at hand. The witnessing
by the others of the initial rape by the three soldiers, instead
of being used to restore the traditional order and bring the others
to justice, becomes a leverage to be used to force the soldiers
to assist them in holding the girl down while they also rape her.
It becomes a matter of one's ability to be constantly alert for
opportunities to gain an edge over one's fellow citizens. The
story demonstrates clearly that manner in which there exists a
domino effect in relation to the vampiric behavior witnessed.
One individual's act of victimization encourages others to do
the same. In other words, the smell of "blood" in the
sense of a weakness to be exploited on the part of someone sets
off a "feeding frenzy" in which all of those within
range cannot help but take part, stopping only after they have
satisfied their desires. These vampires reveal themselves to
be akin to the Amazonian piranha.
At the beginning of this essay we proposed a series of questions
as to the presence of the vampiric in Trevisan's work. It is
apparent that the vampire as conceived by the rural Eastern European
folkloric and that of the later Victorian literary tradition has
been transformed significantly. It has come to resemble the community
and environment that it now inhabits. Massified, it devours the
city, transforming that very city into one of its own. Rather
than be conquered it has thrived in the modern Brazilian city
and owing much of its survival to the city itself. But we should
note that the vampiric existences of the characters that Trevisan
details do not owe their formation solely to the conditions that
are common to all cities. These vampires signal a common link
to a shared past that each of these traditions shares. Each is
a representation of a fear returned, one based in a feudalist
authoritarian past. It is Brazil's inability to exorcise its
past and its marriage to a capitalist economic system that has
created the unique horrific world described by Trevisan.
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