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councilor gave his final plea on behalf of
the hero, which stirred nearly all present. Then the military lawyer spoke, so
rapidly one had to strain to hear him. Arguments ended, the panel ruled. Londônia
had grounds, there was the necessity of following his orders and the insult, so he
would keep his commission, but he would be assigned, at least for a while, in a
training capacity to a garrison near the city of Rio de Janeiro. Until such time, he
should relax and reacquaint himself with civilization. All shook hands, the Colonel
was released. Several slaves carried his numerous effects to his sister and
brother-in-law’s home, in the upper city above the Church of the Bonfim, where he
would lodge until he set sail for Rio. Friends of the family paid visits; in his
honor Mrs. Figueiras Henriques threw a sought-after farewell dinner, which concluded
in dawn revels.
    The journey to Rio was an unpleasant one, though Londônia had his
comforts. From the ship, he could see that this second city, on the Guanabara Bay,
was, despite its mythical mountains and bristling flora, markedly more rustic than
the capital. But he had grown up on a sugar estate, far from the poles of
civilization, and could adapt. As Londônia walked through the port area to hire a
horse to reach the garrison, he found himself in the midst of a public scene. There
was shouting, shrieks; a shoeless mulatto, his face and shirt and breeches clad in
blood, scampered past him, followed by a large slave woman sporting a bell of
petticoats, screaming. What on earth was this? Then another man, short, emaciated,
with the sun-burnt face of a recently arrived Portuguese, emerged from the wall of
bodies, his right hand thrusting forward a long dagger. Londônia tried to slip out
of the way and brandish his sword in defense, but his reflexes, dulled after the
protracted incarceration, failed him.
    As soon as word reached the military officials in Bahia, he received
several raises in rank; his body was brought back to Sergipe d’El Rei for a proper
funeral. An auxiliary bishop officiated at the burial. It was only several months
later that his wife, who had given birth and returned to her parents’ home, learned
of her husband’s misfortune. She was now a wealthy woman. Th eir son, whom she originally named Augusto, was henceforth known as
Augusto Inocêncio. She soon remarried, producing several more sons and daughters,
and resettled with her new husband, a soldier who was related on his maternal side
to the Figueiras family, near the distant and isolated village of São Paulo.
    On Dénouement
    I n 1966, the
model Francesca Josefina Schweisser Figueiras, daughter of army chief General Adolfo
Schweisser and the socialite Mariana Augusta “Gugu” Figueiras Figueiras, married
Albertino Maluuf, the playboy son of the industrialist Hakim Alberto Maluuf, in a
lavish ceremony in the resort town of Campos do Jordão. The event, conducted by His
Eminence, the cardinal, in the Igreja Matriz de Santa Terezinha, with a reception on
the grounds of the newly inaugurated Tudor-style Palácio Boa Vista, was covered in
society pages across the Americas and Europe. They were divorced shortly after the
country’s return to democracy two decades later, in 1987.

    Their youngest son, Sergio Albertino, was known as “Inocêncio,” a family
nickname given, for as far back as anyone could recall, to at least one of the
Figueiras boys in each generation. Sergio Albertino’s marked simplicity of
expression and introverted manner confirmed the aptness of this name, by which he
quickly and widely became known. Yet from childhood this same Inocêncio—“emerald
eyes, skin white as moonstone, a swan’s neck”—also periodically exhibited willful,
sometimes reckless behavior, engaging in fights with other children, committing acts
of vandalism, setting fire to a coach house on the family’s estate that housed