The Last Twist of the Knife

By João Almino

After a quarrel, an ageing lawyer leaves his wife and travels from Brasília to the dry, lawless backlands of Brazil’s northeastern plateau, where he grew up. He has vague plans to start a new life, to buy a ranch and farm cotton, but unresolved childhood obsessions, fantasies, traumas resurface, threatening to overwhelm his very sense of identity. Consumed with thoughts of revenge against the man who murdered his father when he was only two, he discovers that he may in fact have been the lovechild of his rich godfather—the man who ordered the hit—and may therefore be the half-brother of the girl for whom he harbored an adolescent sexual fixation. In this masterful novel rich in local color, João Almino creates a complex, damaged narrator inexorably dragged down into the vortex of his own treacherous memories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781628973785

João Almino

Brazilian novelist, critic, and diplomat João Almino is the author of three volumes of essays and five of philosophy, in addition to the five novels of his Brasilia Quintet, of which Dalkey has published the last two, The Book of Emotions and Free City. He has taught at Berkeley, Stanford, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of Brasilia, and the University of Chicago. Among other awards, Almino won the 2003 Casa de las Américas Award for The Five Seasons of Love and the 2011 Prêmio Passo Fundo Zaffari and Bourbon de Literatura for Free City. In 2017, he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. The Last Twist of the Knife is his seventh novel.

Book preview

1. Taguaatinga, Sector A North, QNA 32

March 31

CLARICE HAD SENT a message on Facebook.

What does she want from you? Patrícia asked me, more bitterly than ever. We were sitting on a sofa in the living room.

Rain was coming down in torrents.

You read it. You know as much as I do.

I had forgotten to log out of Facebook. Patrícia had used this as an opportunity to scroll through my messages. Unacceptable.

No, no I didn’t read it. I just saw she had messaged you.

Right. You must have seen she doesn’t want anything from me. She just gave me a tip.

About what?

What a pain! Patrícia wants to control me. I could have told her the truth, if she didn’t already know it. It didn’t matter to me. Clarice’s message wasn’t personal. There was nothing to indicate there was any affection between us. Absolutely nothing! It was almost business-like. She had learned from my friend Arnaldo about my interest in buying land in that area and she let me know about a property for sale. She also gave me her e-mail address and cell number. Just that.

It’s not important, I answered.

It is too. Do you think I’ve forgotten your history with that bitch?

Gratuitous aggression. How I regretted having told her everything about my past. Giving her details about Clarice, of all people. I really am an idiot, an imbecile!

Or rather, I was. That was in the very beginning, when we thought that since we were in love and the world wouldn’t make sense if we weren’t together, we had to open our hearts and tell each other everything, absolutely everything. Total sincerity. Respect for the truth. It couldn’t be hidden. Patrícia never forgot the slightest detail about Clarice.

It was still raining. Lightning lit up the windows. The thunder rumbled without stopping, adding drama to our discussion.

It doesn’t mean shit. The place is for sale, yes. It’s what I want. What I want, understand? It’s the place where I spent my childhood.

In her message Clarice says that my house was destroyed. But the lot for sale still has the old big house from her father’s ranch, Black Creek. What memories Black Creek brings back to me! If she didn’t read it, Patrícia guessed what the message said, because she asked:

And why doesn’t she buy it?

Irritated, I answered, because she wants me to buy it.

Oh, so that’s it! The bitch wants you to live next door to her.

How did she know that Clarice lived near the property? Her message didn’t say that. The truth is, if I buy the land, I’ll practically be Clarice’s neighbor.

No. I want to live near her. I want to, understand? I answered sarcastically, raising my voice.

May I ask why? You don’t need to answer, I get it, she said, without acknowledging my sarcasm.

In fact, I wasn’t being sarcastic. It would give me enormous pleasure to be Clarice’s neighbor.

Just because, I answered.

So buy that crappy piece of land and bury yourself on it, Patrícia yelled. Get out, you piece of shit. I knew I couldn’t trust you!

My marriage to Patrícia had survived infidelities and such a stupid matter shouldn’t have made her so mad.

Fine, that’s what I’ll do, I said impulsively, because one provocation leads to another and then another.

Asshole! Get out of this house, she shouted even more loudly. The harangue went on for hours, with insane screaming. It further eroded our ever-weakening marriage. Suffice it to say that without heed to the rain, Patrícia started throwing my clothes out the window. A shoe landed on the sidewalk on the other side of the street and filled up with rainwater.

I didn’t give in. In the rain, I gathered my things, not caring how ridiculous I looked to the neighbors, and went back into the house. Patrícia tried to attack me physically. I just defended myself; I didn’t want to be arrested. Then I locked myself in a bedroom. I decided I would leave, but I wouldn’t let myself be evicted. Patrícia didn’t push it any further. She stopped speaking to me, and I followed suit. If she didn’t kick me out, then I’d land on my feet.

April 1

I’m not kidding, despite it being April Fools’ Day. If I take a good look, my marriage with Patrícia isn’t among the worst. We have a lot in common. We used to talk, which not every couple can say. We kissed each other, a noteworthy feat after decades of marriage. And Patrícia’s jealousy is proof that she still loves me.

I don’t feel the same jealousy as she does, because she stopped singing in bars a long time ago, and today I don’t see a worthy rival in any of her colleagues at the Post Office. I didn’t have the least intention of separating from her. But the fight swelled like a soufflé and got out of my control. We’ve gone beyond the point of repairing our relationship. It makes me think it’s really best for me to return to the Northeast.

I’m going to answer Clarice. I’ll ask for details about the person selling the land. If I can negotiate a good price, I’ll ask if she will agree to my giving her a power of attorney so she can act as my proxy at the closing in the registry in Várzea Pacífica.

April, Easter

Clarice gave me the seller’s number. After negotiating the terms of the purchase, I called her cellphone. I thought it best to talk. She agreed to the power of attorney. We didn’t touch on the more personal matter. I asked about Miguel, her brother. He’s fine, except for his business difficulties. He spends most of his time on the road.

I thought of so many things before calling her … I wanted to ask if she remembered this or that moment, how she feels living alone on a ranch, if she ever thought about me … I stifled the impulse. But it was possible to sense the emotion in her voice. I paid special attention to what she said:

It’s so good that you’re coming back.

If I dig deep, I find many memories of her. Dreams have a memory. The Clarice of the future—I think she exists, despite everything—has much of the Clarice of the past.

If I’m not mistaken it was in fifty-eight, during the worst of the drought, when for the first time I felt something like love for her. I don’t want to say too much because I’m not sure and I can’t remember it very well. I was very young. It might have been that year or some other year that the litany of sounds was the same, bats flying at dawn, trees stripped of their leaves, green only in the juazeiro tree, in the xique-xique and mandacarú cactus, animal carcasses along the dusty roads that exhaled their hot breath, the sun burning and drying up the world, and drying me up inside. In short, the same desolation, now traveled by some tanker truck and waiting for the Francisco River transposition.

Or maybe it had been winter, because I remember water in the reservoir, the shiny light green of the thorny squat trees, the green field behind the reservoir, and I woke up early to go to the barn to milk the cows. I’m not sure, and I apologize to anyone reading this. Or, forget that, I won’t apologize, because I shouldn’t have to ask to be forgiven for my contradictions if they are the very contradictions of the backlands, dry or wet, contradictions that still exist today. When it’s dry, the landscape is gray, marked with boulders and skulls; I’m not exaggerating. When it’s wet, too wet, it frightens people and causes disasters.

April 21

It’s a holiday and I stayed at home. I thought that Patrícia would want to upset me. She has ignored me, at least until now. I’m free to continue these notes about my times in Black Creek, Várzea Pacífica, back when Clarice was so important to me. One day, who knows, I’ll show these pages to her.

It may be that I don’t even remember correctly. It may be that the reality of that past exists only in my imagination. I must be mixing up several droughts and several floods. So, yes, I must apologize for this confusion to anyone who happens to read these notes, written quickly and without regard for style or vocabulary.

I look at my past not with pride, but with resignation. Much of the turbulence that tormented me has subsided. What aroused passion in me is now filed in my memory like photographs in an album with pages yellowed by time. Some of the photos are covered in mold. Others are so stuck together that when you try to peel them apart, they tear, leaving white gashes.

Clarice is the exception. My memory of her is as clear as a photograph kept with care in the bottom of one of my drawers. In it she looks at me with an expression that I feel is one of love, and which even today sends quivers through my body.

I recover pieces of myself to create this contradictory and true story that torments me. That’s why I have to share it. It is as contradictory and true as the backlands; my mother punished me and protected me, and my godfather, Clarice’s father, was severe and affectionate. I accepted their mood changes the same way I accepted the mood changes of nature. I thought my joys and sorrows were normal.

In winter, rain covered the green land, our boots trampled mud over the floor, the conversation and laughter lingered on the porch of the big house of my godparents, the songs of the