The more hair, the more hair. Pale cheeks. Pale lips. Black eyes like sinks. And this almost transparent forehead, on which read anxiety, fear and so many other mixed feelings … The face of Sao Paulo, at the time of the coronavirus, is a mask of death: that of its mayor, Bruno Covas , 40 years old only, but suffering from a serious cancer of the digestive tract, which leads the battle for his city and that for his own life.
Here too, the "war" against the virus is declared. The mayor, like a general in the countryside, turned his town hall into a bunker and moved his bed to the office, on the fifth floor of the imposing edificio Matarazzo, built in 1939 in the Mussolin style. Bottles of water, hydroalcoholic gel, files, leather armchairs, a coat rack … the camp is austere, in this vast room paved with gray. On the wall, the very academic Sao Paulo Foundation, a canvas painted in 1913 by Antônio Parreiras, representing Jesuits praying in the open air, struggles to brighten up the end-of-the-world atmosphere that prevails at the town hall.
The city councilor must avoid contact. His health is fragile. Many said he was sentenced just a few months ago. "I first wanted to be around the clock at work, at the town hall", warns Mr. Covas by phone.
The mayor celebrated his 40th birthday in his office on April 7. There, too, he mourned his beloved grandmother, Lila, who died on March 21, aged 87. All that alone, or almost, with the company of a few religious objects placed on a coffee table. Rosaries, portraits of Jesus, tonsured monks and black saints from Brazil… " These are gifts, he confides. They watch over me in the two struggles I lead, private and public. "
Tested negative at Covid-19, Bruno Covas only leaves town hall for press conferences or quick, targeted field visits. Once every fortnight, he also goes to the hospital for an immunotherapy session, in order to put an end to these dangerous metastases which continue their undermining work near the stomach. "Immunotherapy strengthens my natural defenses and I don't feel tired at all, he assures. According to the doctors, I am not part of the risk group. "
How to confine a monster city?
The mayor has a predestined name for the drama. Covas, in Portuguese, means "graves" or "graves". In Sao Paulo, epicenter of the epidemic in Brazil, we fill and dig dozens of them in cemeteries: officially, the Covid-19 killed 919 people in the city on April 22, or a third of the total victims of the country. Figures largely undervalued: as elsewhere in Brazil, the local authorities, overwhelmed, struggle to count all the deaths linked to the coronavirus (more than 1,400 suspicious deaths have yet to be authenticated in the city). The peak of the epidemic is expected in May. How many victims to predict in Sao Paulo? 10,000? 20,000? 30,000? Nobody knows. No one dares to know too much.
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