(...) The truth is that I don’t know how much of my life was a dream and how much was reality. Does it matter in the end?

– Pedro Zephyr, interview with “Jornal do Brasil” in September 1998, two weeks before his death.

(...) He always told me, “I’ve already seen what my tombstone will be like. I know how the game ends. D’you think I will be afraid of a mere nightmare?” He called cancer like that, a ‘nightmare,’ always in that joking manner of his. He always said, “Rosa, pay attention, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been there before. I’ve written my whole life, I’ve lived it all. I’m not afraid of dying, the script is already written. It’s going to happen, and that’s okay.” And so he lived until his last day, without a hint of fear.

– Rosa Moncrieff in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against The Stopwatch”, published in 2009.

(...) They told him: we are going to make you sleep, my dear, and you will have to tell us what you saw while you were dreaming. Just that: tell us what you saw. Getting paid to sleep was probably the easiest money he would make in his life: done deal, all signed up. How could he know he would pay with tears for everything he dreamed of? No-one tells men that decisions made in their twenties are to be paid for in blood at forty. Otherwise, why would anyone want to live to be forty? Why would people bother to take risks and choose, if the future had already been prepared in advance?

– excerpt from “The Name in the Marble”, a short story by Pedro Zephyr published in 1978 in the book “Come See What Happened to Him”.

(...) How do I explain my existence? I am a mixed race Brazilian national, bearing that odd skin colour that goes by the name of “pardo”. I’m a traditional model for the Southeast region: the result of a clandestine relationship between a teenage laundress and the equally teenage son of the housemaster. I’ve been left to my own devices, so to speak, since I left Mrs Constância’s womb. And, you see, I’m lucky because I can dream. Poor people don’t dream: they don’t have time, they don’t have the energy. People like my mother spend their time surviving; dreams are for rich people. But I always dreamed. I dreamed my life backwards, even when I didn’t have a penny, perhaps precisely because I didn’t have a penny. I dreamed my life and then I lived it. Everything I dreamed of, or almost everything, became real. I had no choice. I tried to do it differently, but it had already been experienced: I could only move forward and find all the faces and scenes again. So I’m walking. That’s it.

– Interview with Pedro Zephyr for “Circo” magazine, in 1980.

Pedro said he had dreamed of his pseudonym. He said to me like this: “Dirceu, this is how it happened. When I was twenty years old, I had a very lucid dream in which I saw my grave. There it was written: PEDRO SILVEIRA, the date of birth and death, and beneath that the name HE WAS LOVED AS PEDRO ZEPHYR.” And he always laughed about it. “Now see that, Dirceu! I’m the son of a semi-literate washerwoman, why the hell would I invent such a stupid name for myself?” But when push came to shove, so to say, he adopted the ‘stupid name’ as a pseudonym... And that’s how it went down in History.

– Dirceu Rodrigues, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against The Stopwatch”.

Pedro Silveira is the physical body, see? It’s the person who supports the fantasy that is Pedro Zephyr. Pedro Silveira works at the Post Office five days a week, from nine to six, to support Pedro Zephyr’s dreams. Being a writer is not a profession, not for me, and nor do I want it to be. I don’t think I’m particularly talented or intelligent. I’m just putting the dreams I had on paper. If someone liked it, great! If you didn’t like it, well, I heard that Jorge Amado’s new book is very interesting, go read it and leave me here with my daydreams. How about that?

– Interview withby Pedro Zephyr with the newspaper “O Estado de S. Paulo” in 1979.

(...) The first six volunteers went crazy. What other term to use? He only found out about it after three sessions. The doctor wanted a man who wasn’t afraid of the future, and the previous volunteers came back from sedation screaming, narrating hells that Dante wouldn’t dare put on paper. They spoke of torture, gunshots, fires and bodies falling from the sky bound and gagged. But the seventh volunteer? He had seen a marble tomb with his name on it, and the peace of duty fulfilled in his dream. And that’s why he was chosen for the mission.

– excerpt from “The Name in the Marble”.

He was there from the day I was born. He and my mother had a very funny relationship: he was old enough to be her father, but when they spoke to each other, it was as if they were the same age. They never had a romantic relationship, despite what people often said. My mother said that Pedro loved invented women; there was no way a real woman could compete with that. And, in any case, my birth traumatised my mother, she never wanted to have a relationship with any man again. In this way, the two of them remained each in their own world, but also sharing this planet where no one else could enter.

– Rosa Moncrieff, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

When he woke up, it was her perfume that he remembered

Against the nature of her name, it wasn’t Flora or Primavera

What colour were his eyes? Her hair? Her skin?

What did it matter?

He was awake and everything else is mere fog

– Annotation for the book “Flora, Or The Testimony”, finalist for the Jabuti Book Prize in 1991.

(...) In order to make bank, I did everything. I’ve even been a guinea pig for some medical researcher. This was in 1948, I think? 1947 or 1948. My mother had just died, and I was starving. A guy offered me a lot of money to take some injections, dunno what was in there, some silly water or what have you... Of course, it was all under the table, without the slightest scientific credit. I was so low on money that I agreed. If I died, then I died, d’you dig it? That was always my thought, even more so at that time. I had just survived my military service, not a brass in the pocket, no mother and no home? Fuck it: inject it, man! (extending his arm) That thing lasted a year. The money was good enough; I opened a savings account. Then I got the job at the Post Office, the medicine guy was arrested, or disappeared. The damage was already done, anyway.

– Unpublished interview with Pedro Zephyr, dated 1990, and published in “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

(...) Flora was twenty years old when I was twenty years old. The problem is that she would be twenty years old in twenty years’ time. I knew that; she didn’t. How do you tell the woman you love that an invisible wall separated us? In my twenties, Flora’s parents have not yet met. In her twenties, who am I? An old dude. She does well to ignore me, a forty-year-old guy she meets when she goes to the bank branch with the store’s daily earnings in her bag. Flora loves me because I’m twenty. My problem is that I’m twenty and forty at the same time. Tell her that without laughing or looking like you’ve escaped from the asylum!

– Excerpt from “Flora, Or The Testimony”, published in 1990.

When I read Pedro’s stories, I didn’t know what to think. It was all wonderful, very advanced for the time, very honest. I think the word is this: no matter how absurd the topic, how bizarre the narrative, he always wrote in the most honest way possible, as if he had actually lived through it all. I thought I was dealing with a stoned hippie, and suddenly a fifty-year-old man in a suit and tie appeared. He reached out his hand and said, “Can you do anything with this? I can no longer carry this much stuff inside my head.” He always treated his fiction as if it were real. Each of his stories, each of his books, he wrote as if he were writing his autobiography. And yet, he lived a regimented, even grey existence: from home to work, from work to home. And to Patrícia’s house on the weekend, to help take care of Rosa.

– Dirceu Rodrigues, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against The Stopwatch”.

My mother got pregnant by a boy she was dating when she was twenty. I’ve never even seen a photo of the guy, I don’t know what his name is, whether he’s alive or dead. My grandparents were disappointed, but then they got used to it. They were war refugees, so births were blessings not tragedies. While my mother was in college, my grandmother took care of me. Then, Pedro appeared in our life. He was in his forties, our neighbour. It was my mother who told him to look for a publisher for his stories. My mother was always Pedro’s number one fan, she had the first edition of all his books. I think she chose his pseudonym; I don’t know for sure. It was something really crazy, their relationship. A union of souls, I could say. They thought alike about almost everything.

– Rosa Moncrieff, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

Flora and the Zephyr. It’s because of a painting by Botticelli. That was Patrícia’s idea, of course. The underlying story, from what I understand, is that she was supposed to be called Flora, like her maternal grandmother, but then her father put Patrícia in the birth certificate. It was she who called Pedro a ‘zephyr’. Because he didn’t stop anywhere, he stayed here, then disappeared, then came back. He’d lock himself in his room, and he’d come out with a book ready. (...) Patrícia was not his lover, that is a fact. They adored each other, but he was very averse to the idea of romance, you know? He never married, never had children... I mean, he had no biological children. He had Rosa!

– Dirceu Rodrigues, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Contra o Tempo”.

(...) When that bloke injected me with that weird stuff, I had the most lucid dreams in the world. I didn’t know I was dreaming, for me that was real life. It wasn’t about unicorns in the clouds, you know? It was an actual car, real people, everything like where I lived. But it was in future times. Mobile phones, ethanol-powered cars, colour television, the Beatles, Caetano Veloso, I saw all of this in my dreams before seeing it for real. And that’s when I met the woman who, in the book, I call Flora. This relationship between us was all metaphorical. The crazy doctor gave me the injection, I made a hell of an effort to get back to her. She was my world. At the time, I was dating a girl from my street... Well, “dating” is quite the stretch. That was 1948, I think if I tried to put her hand two inches above her knee, she would call the justice of the peace and the police, you get me? Those were the times. Not Flora. She let me place my hand way above her knee. She was the love of my life. That’s why I tell you that dreams and reality, for me, are the same thing. What “real” woman gave me what Flora gave me? This love I had for her happened only once and never bloomed again.

– Unpublished interview with Pedro Zephyr, dated 1990, and published in “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

(...) Flora is a metaphor for love, she is not a real person. I wish I had been lucky enough to have a love like that, but unfortunately it never happened. I got engaged in 1960. But the girl gave up, for reasons that are beside the point. I had other relationships, but nothing that inspired me to write. I didn’t have a Muse. Love is one of the hardest dreams to capture in words, and that’s what I wanted to put on paper when I wrote this story. A song I heard here said this: no one can and no one should live without love. We can relate this to my book. I would love to meet the author of this song to tell him I agree with what he said, and it’s precisely because I agree that it hurts me so much.

-- Interview with Pedro Zephyr for the Argentine newspaper “El Clarín” in 1992, when “Flora, Or the Testimony” was published in the country.

(...) When my mother was in the hospital, Pedro came to visit her every day. He brought his notebook and wrote while my mother slept. The day before she died, he took me out for ice cream and said, “Rosa, listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. She won’t make it through the night. If there’s something you want to say, say it now. Give back the love she bestowed on you, she needs to know she’s leaving you safe here.” And he was right, she passed away the next day. He was there with her. The following year, when he published “Flora”, the book, he told me, “this story here, I wrote in the hospital for your mother. It won’t make any sense to anyone but her.” When he was nominated for Jabuti Book Award, he told Dirceu that, if he won, he would return the prize. “I didn’t write to them, I wrote to Patrícia, no award will fill that hole.” It was the only time I saw him fight with his editor in all these years.

– Rosa Moncrieff, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

He said, “Dirceu, this book belongs to Patrícia. What the fuck is this thing about a prize? What insanity is this? I wrote five books and they want to give me a prize for the thing I never wanted to write?” It was very difficult, you know? That couple of years, 1989 and 1990, were very difficult. With Patrícia’s illness and death, the general election and the confiscation of our savings. (1) It was all a nightmare. Ironically, Pedro warned me a week before that the confiscation was going to happen. He was having lunch with Rosa and me and he said this, I swear to you: “I always talk and you never listen to me, but this time you need to believe. Take the money out of your savings account. Put it under your mattress, in a fleet of piggy banks, but take the money out of the account.” Rosa obeyed, because Rosa always obeyed Pedro, no matter what crazy things he said. And, well, I didn’t listen, and I lost almost all my savings in the 1990 confiscation. Pedro almost choked me when he found out. He repeated, “What’s the point of knowing everything beforehand if I can’t help anyone?” But he helped Rosa, and I think that’s why, and only because of that, he didn’t throw himself out of a window or something.

(1, In 1990, Brazil's president confiscated the savings accounts of all its citizens as part of a plan to revive the country’s economy. The measures came with no previous warning, wreaking havoc on the economy, and causing a great number of bankruptcies and a wave of heart attacks and suicides.)

– Dirceu Rodrigues, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against The Stopwatch”.

(...) When Flora appeared in my dreams crying, saying she was pregnant, I asked the doctor to stop using me as a guinea pig. The dreams were getting heavier and heavier, I couldn’t handle living like that. I saw Flora dying; I saw this daughter she had with me go through many hardships; I saw people being arrested and tortured and killed... Dream or nightmare, man? What do you want? Why do you want me to dream about these things so much? Where do you want to go? That’s what I told the bloke. He told me ‘You’re the only one who hasn’t freaked out so far, I need you to keep going. I need to know where this goes. I’ll pay you whatever you want,’ but no, man, not for all the money in the world. My girlfriend was already threatening me with a loony bin stay. In my head, Flora existed, and I was going to be a father at twenty... And I wanted so much to be that child’s father, that woman’s husband, are you following me? It was everything I wanted in life. But they didn’t exist. They were dreams and I couldn’t stay in the world of dreams. I tried, I swear I tried, but it didn’t work at all. I always opened my eyes at the end of the session and there I was: that green leather seat, that ceiling with dry mould, that shitty life in 1948… And that was driving me crazy. I left the clinic and never came back. There was no way I could continue living like that. But it was like I told you, the damage was already done. From then on, I didn’t live anymore. Do you understand? Everything that happened to me after that was a rerun. A shitty rerun that I couldn’t change no matter how much effort I made. I threw myself off a bridge, I threw myself out of a window, and I still survived. Why? Because I wouldn’t die young. I saw my grave. I would die as an old man. When I put two and two together, I panicked: does Flora exist, then? Her last name was very unusual, unlike mine. But I decided not to go after it. If she existed, then at some point we would meet again. I had to live until then, and that’s how I ended up at the Post Office. It was the stupidest job in the world, but at least it was a safe and sound thing. That was it, man. I was saving myself for when I met Flora again.

– Unpublished interview with Pedro Zephyr, dated 1990, and published in “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

(...) Some people said that I have divinatory powers, that I was blessed with the gift of prophecy. I never know what to say to these people, especially since I’m not what you’d expect a prophet to look like (for starters, I’ve never had a beard and I look ugly in a robe; nor do I have a particular religion or appreciation for a specific god.) However, I have one thing in common with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel: I was not heard in my land, or was only heard after the misfortune had happened. A useless power, that of prophecy. Therefore, I would not say that I am a prophet. I just wrote what I experienced in my dreams. Whoever wants to believe is welcome to do so.

–  Introduction by Pedro Zephyr for the special edition celebrating the 25th anniversary of “Come See What Happened To Him”, in 1998. Zephyr passed away one month after the release of this book.

When he got sick, he said he didn’t want treatment. Yes, he came up with that old chestnut about how his destiny was already written, that he had already seen his tombstone. He wanted to travel, to spend the money he had so carefully saved all those years. And I went with him. We spent six months travelling the world. It looked like something out of a soap opera. Of course, without great luxuries, sleeping in hostels and guesthouses, eating wherever it was cheaper, all across Europe and North Africa. We had happy moments, of course, but it was a farewell tour. One night, when we were in Florence, he told me that my mother dreamed of seeing Botticelli’s paintings in person, and that it was a shame that she couldn’t fulfil that dream. I cried – at that moment, my life was not at all like a dream, despite the scenario. I was thirty years old; I had no one else in my life. I had no husband or children. I had already lost my mother, and now I was losing Pedro. And he took my hands and said “your life is going to start now, darling, it’s not written. I envy you for that. You don’t know what’s going to happen to you and that’s great.”

– Rosa Moncrieff, in an interview for the biography “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

(...) When I saw her again, it was 1968. She had Rosa on her lap, in line at the Post Office. It wasn’t a dream: it was her, Patrícia Moncrieff. The surname was the same. And even if the surname were different, I would recognise my Flora anywhere in the world, now, wouldn’t I? She was my life for an entire year, I dreamed about her even after I ran away from the crazy doc. It was her, carrying a six months old baby on her lap. Patrícia was sort of blonde and the girl had black, curly hair like mine. I did the maths and panicked. Could I have jumped off the bridge again? Aye, I could. What would be the point, though? I got home and started writing like crazy. Seriously, I spent about six hours writing straight, I only stopped because I ran out of ink. I put on paper everything that had happened to me - I don’t know why. If it hadn’t been a dream, then I had been manipulated and needed to face the consequences. But I also knew I couldn’t just knock on a twenty-year-old girl’s door and say “I’m your lover.” A forty-year-old man in 1968 was the same as an ancient mummy. So I had to settle for being an older friend. As I knew it would be tough from that moment on, I helped her friends escape the country, I hid things, I kept her family out of trouble. I became their support person, you know? Could this have already happened? Was this part of the story? I swear to you, man, I don’t know. I loved no other woman but her, but I couldn’t reveal the secret. How would she believe it? I didn’t believe it myself! That’s why I wrote all that. It was all true, Dirceu just tweaked it to make it more “literary”. Fuck all the awards, I didn’t write any of that to win an award. I wrote it because I needed to find a way to tell Patrícia that I was the guy who disappeared, I was Flora’s father. Me: the guy from the Post Office, suit and tie, forty years old, who one day was a guinea pig because he was poor and aimless... And he dreamed so much that the dream became real in the worst possible way. I didn’t write to tell a story. I wrote all those books to serve as a testimony. Screw the awards. I lived that, man! How I wish I had dreamed and forgotten, but that wasn’t what happened.

– Unpublished interview with Pedro Zephyr, dated 1990, and published in “Pedro Zephyr Against the Stopwatch”.

(...) At the end of the path, Flora and I held hands. If there was ever a moment when I wanted to tell her the whole truth, it was in those last seconds, before her breathing stopped. But telling the truth would be a death on top of the death that was already announced; She didn’t love the man who was holding her hands at that moment, with his wrinkles and age spots on his face, with his greying hair and his insomnia. She loved the twenty-year-old man who had come like a gust of wind, taking with him all the certainties of childhood and, in a way, all the irresponsible joy of youth; that man wanted to find her again, but the same wind that brought him dragged him back to the beginning. It took me twenty years to cross this storm, and when I arrived I was no longer who I was. In that moment when we held hands, however, I believe she finally recognised me. That’s why I wrote this testimony. Because Flora had existed. And I had loved her.

–  Excerpt from “Flora, Or The Testimony”