ABSTRACT
213Five years later, in the middle of that extraordinary concert at the Teatro Castro Alves in Bahía, just as Caetano Veloso was finishing Vocé Nâo Entende de Nada and Chico Buarque de Hollanda started on Cotidiano, during the prolonged instant when one song became the next and the rhythm imposed by the guitar and the drums was driving the audience crazy and people danced and shouted and then remained in silence, not knowing which way the musicians were going, where they were transporting them, and people danced more and shouted and celebrated, Caetano repeating “eu quero’, and Chico “todo o dia’, yes, right there and then, Daniel saw him over the multitude of heads jumping up and down. It was Andrés Steinberg, running towards him out of nowhere, shouting “Daniel! Daniel! Shit! Me cago en dios! Daniel! I’ve been looking for you everywhere, in Buenos Aires, in Rio, in Sâo Paulo, man, where were you?”And as he approached, he exclaimed, “I come to find you here! Can you feel the energy in this place? Man, the vibes are so positive, this music, this madness, look at everybody’s faces, hermano, peace, bro’, peace and love.”And Daniel didn’t really know whether he was that pleased to see Andrés but, anyway, his 214old friend from the early days in Buenos Aires went on, “I’ve been to New York, man, fuck! That is big like, really big, with Big Capital Letters, BIG!”Daniel continued. “It just blew my mind, oh man, everybody is just going crazy over there, dropping acid and everything’s really cool, man, far out.”And he went on like that while Caetano and Chico started on Os Argonautas, and Daniel wanted Andrés to disappear but he had to ask, “What did you want to see me for?”And Andrés said, “You’ve done well in leaving the country, man, Lanusse and the new Junta don’t know their heads from their asses, it’s a complete mess, and, yes, I’ve been looking for you all over the place.”“You told me that already.”“Yes, right, right, I wanted to let you know that I saw Allen Ginsberg in New York.”“And so?”“He read the poem for your dead father in the corner of a room in this apartment where I met him.”And now the music stopped, the concert was over but people were shouting for “more! More!”And Caetano and Chico reappeared on stage and people went wild. “I had to tell you,”Andrés continued, “Ginsberg read your poem from the copy of your book which Manuel had sent him!”“Did he really read it? In Spanish?”“Yes! In Spanish, man, I don’t know if he understood anything but he read it anyway.”And Daniel knew then, beyond any doubt, that that piece of news uttered on a tropical November night in the Teatro Castro Alves in Salvador, Bahía, that isolated event, irrelevant to the rest of his life and completely immaterial to the movement of the stars and the tides of the sea, probably made up by Andrés anyway to give himself importance, that single moment marked the end of his youth.
