Brazzil
September 2001
Book Review
Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist, by Jô Soares, trans. by Clifford Landers (Pantheon, 303 pp., $23)
The second novel by Brazilian author Jô Soares follows the basic formula that paid off in A Samba for Sherlock, a formula in the tradition of Forest Gump, Zelig, and even Ragtime, that blends real people, real events, with fictive characters and situations.
We can say this of Jô Soares: He casts a wide net—across three continents and half a century. His protagonist, twelve-fingered Dimitri Borja Korojec, is born in 1897 in Banja Luca, Bosnia, his mother a Brazilian contortionist of mixed blood and his father a Serbian linotypist. The latter has ties to a somewhat peculiar anarchist group. For example, after birth, his son’s right testicle is removed and eaten by the father so that the boy will have leftist leanings.
While still a teenager, Dimitri is taken by his old man to a clandestine meeting of the Union of Death, or the Black Hand, and favorably impresses Dragutin Dimitrijevic, the founder of this terrorist sect. Their goal is the unification of the Serbian people, by whatever means necessary, i.e., by murder and/or intimidation. Dimitrijevic takes the lad under his wing, and places him in the group’s Assassins’ School.
However, despite the extra digits (two index fingers on each hand) and his mother’s flexibility, Dimitri has a clumsiness that will surface at inopportune times, leading to several pratfalls, both intellectual and physical, that are reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes in Soares’ first novel.
The original Portuguese title of Twelve Fingers is a little different, roughly translating to The Man Who Killed Getúlio Vargas. Presumably most North Americans have little idea of the complex role Getúlio Vargas played in Brazilian politics, and that he was first a dictator and later a democratically-elected president. Also, they probably do not know that he committed suicide in 1954, when things were looking bleak for his government. Since all Brazilians know that Vargas shot himself, the title becomes quizzical, as if someone here were to write a book about the guy who knocked off Ernest Hemingway.
On the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand is gunned down in Sarajevo, an event that precipitates the first World War, Dimitri is lurking along the parade route, and in fact has a brush with Gavrilo Princip, whose bullets will change history. Had it not been for his trademark clumsiness, however, the dubious honor would have fallen to Dimitri. Instead, and this book hops around considerably, the young man is sent by Dimitrijevic to Paris via the Orient Express. While on board the legendary train he’ll have a serious flirtation with double-agent and knockout babe Mata Hari, and at the same time incur the wrath of her dwarf assistant, who will pursue Dimitri for years to come.
The Mata Hari escapade is intermittently amusing, and sets the pace (smatterings of both humor and silliness) for the rest of the book. In Paris, Dimitri arouses the suspicion of the grandson of Inspector Javert (remember Jean Valjean?), who has been assigned to protect the journalist and pacifist Jean Jaurés. Inadvertently, Dimitri distracts Javert from Jaurés’ real killer. The incident will put Dimitri in the hospital (where he’s aided by Marie Curie) and it’ll put Javert in the doldrums—which leads to an ending you’re already familiar with if you’ve ever read Les Misérables or seen the musical.
The episodes that follow are both zany and surreal. In Paris, Dimitri finds work as a taxi driver, and is later requisitioned to drive six soldiers to the front. Trusting his faulty instincts, he makes a wrong turn, and the ensemble ends up in the opposite direction. That night they stay up late arguing about the best Brie in France. Subsequent vignettes find Dimitri surviving a U-boat attack off the coast of Portugal and striking up a friendship with budding actor George Raft.
The two get bit parts in the silent version of Ben-Hur, and nearly cause a Roman-sized debacle of their own. Raft will later pawn off Dimitri on Chicago mobster Al Capone, who accepts him into his gang. Much later still, after being thrown into a prison on Ilha Grande, off the coast of Angra dos Reis, not far from Rio, Dimitri even becomes pals with writer Graciliano Ramos. The latter says he'll include Dimitri in the book he'll write if he ever gets free (the one we know as Memórias do Cárcere/Prison Memoirs), but Dimitri begs him not to. And so it goes.
Sounds like there's a gag a minute, doesn't it? Sure, there are one-liners that work, but Soares is no Woody Allen or Groucho Marx. Also, strange as it seems, one may be put off from time to time by the slightly crass, indelicate humor. Early on, in what is a comic chain of events, the wrong patient gets his kidney removed. Not the sort of thing you'd slap your knee while reading, in any imaginable context. It reminds this reader of Jack the Ripper's unusual 'signature' in Soares' A Samba for Sherlock (Vintage), in which the killer would cut a flap of skin from his victim's inner thigh while leaving a violin string curled up in her pubic hair.
Still, there are snappy exchanges, to wit
"I rolled on the floor with her, like a madman, possessing her again. What an insatiable woman! It was seven, eight times a night."
"All of them with you?"
To lend some verisimilitude to this purported biography, the author has added a smattering of photos and drawings, most of them contemporaneous with the events described, reminiscent of what we find in the 'novels' of W.G. Sebald (The Emigrants, Vertigo), but here decidedly more tongue-in-cheek.
It takes Dimitri close to two-thirds of the book to arrive in Brazil (his goal from the start, actually), and the reader who knows a thing or two about, for instance, Luís Carlos Prestes or Carlos Lacerda, will get more from these pages than those who don't. Nonetheless, throughout Twelve Fingers Dimitri never forgets—in his words—that "my life is dedicated to the overthrow of tyranny, whatever the cost." Of course, one botched assassination attempt after another does undermine his self-confidence: "An intense depression descends upon Dimitri. Fate insists on putting him in the right place at the wrong time."
What may undermine the reader's confidence are the handful of proofreading errors, none of which mar the usual superb translation by Clifford Landers, but which may elicit a frown where a smile is in order. For example, “a immense” (p. 105); “Union or Death” should be “Union of Death” (p. 113); “review” would be better off as “revue” (p. 139); there are missing words or letters on pages 139 and 180-181; “in the Big Sur” should be “in Big Sur” (p. 237); and "at the corner of Flamengo beach and Rua Silveira Martins" could be more consistent, i.e., "at the corner of Praia do Flamengo and Rua Silveira Martins" (p. 287). Picky, picky, I know, but such things do stop the flow of traffic.
Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist doesn't run out of steam and manages to touch more corners of twentieth century history than any novel in recent memory. For my palate, however, there are too many shenanigans, and nothing to engage the passions or inflame the intellect. Still, Jô Soares has written a clever, comic roller coaster ride of a book, and I can imagine that there are many readers who'd like to line up and take a front seat.
ExcerptThe following day, as they leave the dining hall, Dimitri approaches Mathurin. “I got the money for the escape. I’m just afraid they’ll decide to search me.”
“Don’t worry about it. On Devil’s Island I learned a way to hide things that will get by any search,” Mathurin assures him.
“How?”
“I’ll show you. Come with me.”
Henri takes Dimitri to the bathroom and asks him to watch the entrance. Lowering his pants and squatting next to the wall, he begins contorting himself as if he were about to evacuate. Suddenly, a polished bamboo tube approximately six inches long and two inches in diameter emerges from his anus. It is divided into two parts that screw into each other. Twisting both ends, Mathurin opens the unusual cache. From inside the tube he takes out a delicate gold chain and four rolled-up pictures of his mother.
“It’s my little safe.”
Dimitri contemplates the menacing cylinder. Henri explains, “I’ve made one just like it for you. You have to stick it in really far, up to the colon in the large intestine. All you do is take a deep breath and it goes right in. Even if they strip you and spread your legs, there’s no way to discover it.”
After a long pause, Dimitri says to his companion, “On second thought, I think I’ll stay here. The Colony isn’t really so bad. The food’s tolerable at best, but the place has a lovely view, the air’s clean, and I need to look after my roaches.”
Henri is amused at the terror the bamboo inspires in Dimitri. “Don’t be silly. If you’re that scared of the tube, I’ll carry yours too.”
“Is there room?” Dimo asks, amazed.
“Of course!” Mathurin answers, slapping his buttocks good-humoredly. “Where there’s room for one, there’s room for two.”
Bondo Wyszpolski also heads up the arts and entertainment section of the Easy Reader, a weekly newspaper based in the South Bay of southern California. He can be reached at bwyszpolski@earthlink.net