I was surprised Laval hadn’t asked me to take part in the poetry reading. Later, in March, he missed the first classes and only appeared in the third week of the month. He came into the room looking more depressed than when I’d seen him at home, his white jacket all stained, his teeth and the fingers of his left hand yellowed with smoking. “Forgive me, I’m very indisposed,” he said in French. “What’s more, a lot of people are pretty indisposed,” he murmured, in Portuguese this time. He could hardly stand upright. His right hand, shaking, held a piece of chalk, the other a cigarette. We were expecting the usual “lecture,” some fifty minutes he dedicated to the world surrounding the poet. He had always been that way: first the historical context, he said, then a conversation, and finally the work. It was the moment when he spoke in French, and needled and stimulated us, asking questions, wanting all of us to say something. Nobody, not even the shiest, was allowed to stay silent; passivity was taboo. He wanted argument, different, clashing opinions; he would follow all the voices, and speak at the end, arguing enthusiastically, remembering everything, every absurdity, insight, or doubt that had been expressed. But that morning he did nothing of the kind, he couldn’t speak, he was choking, what a pain, he looked as if he was suffocating. We were openmouthed, not even the cheekiest and most rebellious among us managed to provoke him by making faces at the smell of his breath. “Let’s see … let’s … read something … translate …” His trembling hand began to write a poem on the blackboard; the chalk made scratches like arabesques, and all that could be read was the last line, which I copied: “Je dis: Que cherchent-ils au Ciel, tous ces aveugles?” The rest was illegible, he’d forgotten the title, and for a moment glanced at us strangely. Then he put the chalk down and left without saying a word. The French teacher never returned to the lyceum; one April morning we witnessed his arrest.

He had just come out of the Café Mocambo, and was slowly crossing the Praça das Acacias in the direction of the Vandals’ Cockpit. He was carrying the battered briefcase where he kept his books and papers. The same briefcase, the same books—the papers might have been different, because they had his scrawls on them. Laval would write a poem and hand it out to the pupils. He himself never kept what he wrote. He said: “A line by a great symbolist or Romantic is better than a cartload of rhetoric—my useless, miserable rhetoric,” he insisted.