When I was with Tom, I was more the spectator than the interlocutor. I wanted to learn all those beautiful harmonies and chords, and I couldn't exactly understand why he would always prefer to talk of other things.

I used to think of Tom as having the Sphinx, Marilyn Monroe, and the Corcovado Christ dwelling in him all at the same time. This profane, telluric trinity swept away my spontaneity, and, like smoked glass, did not let me see Tom himself clearly.

There was a time when I quit trying to meet him so much. In part, busy as I was with my work as a musical producer in Sao Paulo, I had little opportunity to see him. And also, there would often come to my mind the image of a little insect flying around a light that attracts it and where it finally ends up being consumed.

One day, during one of those long conversations that he knew how to start much better than I, he talked about Stravinsky.

"Do you know, Luiz, there was a period when I spent some time working in New York. On the same street of the hotel I was in, on the opposite side, almost in front, lived Stravinsky. That's right, Stravinsky, there on the other side, across the street. Some times I was around there, on Lexington Avenue, and I would see Stravinsky walking along the street. I even knew which building he lived in."

"Wow, Tom! And then, did you always see him on the street?"

"Yeah, every now and then, I was going in or out of the hotel, or into a bar nearby, and there would be Stravinsky walking along the opposite sidewalk. Stravinsky wearing that famous hat and glasses and coat, you know. But I never talked to him."

"But you only had to cross the street... Didn't you ever want to talk with him?"

"Yes, I did. But he, Stravinsky, right on the other side of the street... And what if he was thinking about some music, composing something? I thought I shouldn't interrupt the maestro, to divert his thoughts. And there he would go."

"But Tom, it happens that he was Stravinsky, you should have talked with him!"

For a while, Tom was quiet, looking into space, maybe thinking of the master, of the puppets of Russia, of the rites of spring in Ipanema, of the firebirds of the Brazilian forest, of the hat and glasses and coat, of the profane trinity across the street.

And, slowly, as if waking from a dream, he said:
"That's how it was, Luiz, but look, what would I have said to him?"

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