João Batista Natali returned from gymnastics and felt “inside a huge playground, not knowing exactly which toy to start with.” It was November 3, 2008, and he was choosing what to do with the time since the Sheetholder of that routine for almost two thirds of his then 60 years, no longer occupied it.
“The real new life begins this Monday,” she said in an email to her friend on that first day of retirement.
“I think I’ll first read a little Stendhal, one of the books I brought from France. Then, sort out the junk I brought from my drawer. And then have lunch, sleep a little and later cuddle with the cello.”
This new routine mirrored a life. Natali, after all, was always as much about music and literature as he was, and the France where he lived from 1971 to 1982 made himself a permanent presence, from cultural preferences to precise geopolitical analyses.
He himself explained, in a long statement intended for a book, in 2001: “I have never felt like I was solely and exclusively a journalist. I am many things at the same time.”
It was. After the turning point in 2008, he would add many others to his list, which already had an international correspondent, mentoring the philosopher Ronald Barthes (1915-1980), Editorial Secretary of the Sheet, reporter, editor of “Mundo”, André’s father, Daniele’s husband and talented cook.
He would still be a commentator on TV Gazeta, a professor, editor-in-chief of the Diário do Comércio, a columnist for Sheet. The most important one came at the end of 2009, when Heitor was born: at 61, he was a father for the second time. His son’s accomplishments in sports and school were the subject of uncontainable pride that he shared with his friends.
João Batista Natali Jr —Natali to his friends and readers, Júnior to his family, João to his wife— died in the early hours of this Saturday (21), in São Paulo, the same city where he was born in April 1948. He had been hospitalized since the 11th of November at the Sírio-Libanês hospital to treat complications resulting from brain cancer.
The tumor, which briefly robbed him of his intimacy with words, was the first to weaken him.
Past illnesses, such as lung cancer at the beginning of the year, one and successive heart problems before that, were treated by the journalist with humor and pragmatism.
By his side was, as always, Daniele, companion and inspiration over the last two decades.
“João is an example of a husband, a father, a man who lavished love, companionship, respect for everyone who crossed his path”, she says.
“He lived great passions in this life, always intensely: journalism, classical music, delicious stories discovered in books or in long conversations. He loved André, his first son, 39 years old, and Heitor, who has just turned 15. years, fruit of our marriage.”
André and Heitor, like her, remained by his side, encouraging him until the last moments. “We built a happy family, a collection of beautiful memories and a love story that doesn’t end here.”
Son of João Batista Natali and Celina Antunes Natali, he was the oldest of three siblings.
He, Adalberto and Paulo Sérgio grew up in the house in the Butantã neighborhood, where Dona Celina freed up one of the walls for the three boys to draw. The complicity would remain throughout their lives, and the three were enthusiastic about full family gatherings at a pizzeria in Itaim.
From his father, he evoked the day when he led him by the hand, he was still six years old, to the center of São Paulo to observe the confusion in the streets after the news of Getúlio Vargas’ suicide, as he told his friend Lucia Boldrini countless times. From his mother, he kept the habit of cutting out reports from O Cruzeiro.
As a teenager, he went on exchange to the United States during high school, an experience that left a lasting impression on him. Back in 1967, he would be part of the first journalism class at the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo, where he graduated in 1971.
His journey in journalism, however, would begin well before graduation — perhaps on the day that João took him to watch politics take place in the square; but, officially, at the São Paulo branch of Última Hora, where he started the same year he entered college.
HAS Sheet he would arrive in 1969, on the day an emergency team was created to make a special notebook about man’s arrival on the Moon.
“The Apollo 11 mission had already been in space for days. I was told that I would need to take a test to get the job. There was no time. They needed people for that coverage.”
There would begin a 38-year relationship, briefly suspended during his master’s degree in Paris, which would take him to dozens of cities in Brazil and around the world and to solid and long-lasting friendships, like the one he built with former editorial director Claudio Abramo (1923 -1987), whom he considered a mentor.
Luiz Frias, today publisher of Sheetholds memories of the Parisian era. “As a teenager, I met Natali as a newspaper correspondent in the French capital. She stayed in Paris for many years”, he says.
“I knew everything about the city and France: history, politics, literature, music. I smoked Gauloises from the famous blue pack, without a filter, very popular at the time. And, sometimes, it gave me the impression that I spoke faster and more without mistakes than the French themselves.”
Frias considers him an extraordinary human being, “always attentive and helpful to everyone.” “THE Sheet lost a great and beloved collaborator.”
Patient, kind, cultured and deeply interested in his interlocutor, he won legions of admirers and friends in times when attention became a luxury. The conversations were never brief, and you didn’t leave them without having learned a thing or two, from politics to poetry, and especially about classical music.
Forged in different phases of journalism and different political eras, he was scathing towards anyone who was dazzled by the profession and its proximity to power. Even so, he rarely tired of teaching, showing and explaining, talents that later took him to the classroom as a professor at Cásper Líbero and PUC-SP.
This pragmatism with which he approached journalism never descended into cynicism or allowed him to lose interest.
He wrote until the end, in recent years, the Mundo Leu column, in Sheetwithout trying to fit into a specific place or minimizing your drives, nor failing to take into account the expectations of your audience. He was, above all, tireless. A passionate one.
