Bairro Alto is not what it used to be. Mário Zambujal used to remember the last echoes of this world of newspapers, with morning and afternoon newspapers and the awakening of news and the cult of information in its pure state, mixed with rumor and bad language.
A famous caricature by Jorge Colaço represented the course of popular creativity. A fly entered the ear of a first babble. The astonishment grew on the characters’ faces, until a monstrous elephant emerged from the final ear, which no longer had anything to do with the harmless initial insect.
It was up to the journalist to give the necessary allowance to the free imagination of events. Everything had changed when Eduardo Coelho founded Diário de Notícias in 1864, inventing tricks and making newspapers available to everyone on the street, by prioritizing news and not opinions. Before there was The September Revolutionbased in Bica Duarte Belo, in Calhariz, with a smaller circulation, but with the political brand of Regeneração and directed by Rodrigues Sampaio.
That time will never come back. Mário Zambujal left us recently. He was passionate about the presses, the smell of ink, the thick tobacco smoke in the newsrooms and the hustle and bustle of the nights and mornings, at a time when there were newspapers throughout the day, often with multiple circulations.
As a journalist, he was a great writer, while his brother Francisco was a great caricaturist.
The color of his writing came from the intensity of city life – and The Chronicle of Good Tricksters is a faithful portrait of the people of Lisbon, as seen by Almada Negreiros in Rocha do Conde d’Óbidos: varinas, mummers, futricas, people with bad lives, all of them… The good scoundrels star in a comic-police novel, hilarious, realistic and tragic, where the brave Portuguese is portrayed in a thousand wonders. Who are they? Renato, the Pacificand his gang of racing mackerel, Marlene, Flávio, the DoctorArnaldo Figurante, Pedro Justiceiro, Adelaide Magrinha and Silvino Bitoque.
At every step, we have a thousand surprises, but Mário Zambujal brought together all the necessary ingredients for the good news of an experienced journalist in the capital’s police stations and in everyday events. The ideal place to launch this spicy episode, in the best sense of the word, was the Gulbenkian Museum. “’It’s a crazy thing…’, said Pedro, but recognized that at Gulbenkian no one should be expecting something like that, and so, finally, maybe it would work.” We had to take advantage of the circumstances. “THE chance it was about inventing a completely new plan, a process that had never crossed the mind of any gang and for which, as a result, security had no prepared response.” Here’s the trick. A wheelchair for the disabled, and a rectangular aluminum box, closed, with the lid dotted with fine holes. “And you know, what’s in that box? Bees. Exactly: bees. (…) When Silvino pulls the handle the box opens and the bees come out.”
Result? Pandemonium in the Museum, adventures and general excitement. However, the epilogue is logical and moral. Everything fades away. Renato’s gang, the Pacificdies, but doubts remain as to the fate of some of its members. The “art of working the entire lock well” is not demonstrated and the “good rogues” are figures of the imagination (built with the raw material of vertigo).
Mário Zambujal at his best!
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