The End

by Fernanda Torres

  The girl was licking Sílvio’s ear, while he tried to keep the car moving in a straight line. Near the airport, Ribeiro blurted out, “Sílvio, did you fuck Suzana?”

  Sadist that he was, Sílvio sneered.

  “Is the gaúcha Suzana? I know it is! Tell me to my face!”

  Sílvio’s face twisted into a grimace, his mouth opened and his teeth protruded forward as he guffawed. Ribeiro wanted to grab the steering wheel, crash the car into the first lamppost, die, and kill the monster at the wheel and the ho in the back seat. He decided to hurt himself instead. He opened the door of the moving car, jumped out, grazed his knee on the asphalt, and went home to torture himself. He and Suzana hadn’t been together for six months.

  His jealousy from that lunch with the joint had never abated. Everything about Suzana had begun to annoy him. Her habit of kissing him without brushing her teeth, the funk of her hairy armpits, the panties scattered about the floor, the Fagner records, and the roach cemetery that made the place stink so badly of patchouli and cannabis that the building manager had come to complain. The apartment had become a meeting place for dubious sorts, a coming and going of weirdos that made him envy Lana Ley’s eviction. He followed Lana’s example and kicked her out. Later he regretted it.

  Ribeiro didn’t know there was such a thing as subjectivity. He had no sense of humor. He was dumb, and a faithful friend. He died an eternal adolescent, survived by no children or wife, more of a cousin than uncle to his sister’s son. His mother had died young of heart problems, and Celeste had stepped into her shoes. He had only a few memories of his mother, of her big eyes, of being bowled over by the surf and being saved by her hands, nothing more. His father was a taciturn military man from the state of Sergipe, who longed to see his son graduate from Agulhas Negras Military Academy, rising to ranks well above his own. He never hid his frustration at his son’s performance at school, and spoke of his disillusionment to friends and relatives. Ribeiro didn’t rely on him; he only trusted his sister, just her—she was support, solace, home.

  The beach was his reason for being. With every pink sunset, with every storm or full-moon night, he confirmed that he had made the right choice. Ribeiro didn’t go to university and finished his studies at a bad public high school, but he managed to make a living from the geography that he worshiped. The minute he graduated from high school, he worked hard to obtain a lifeguard certificate and got a job as a swimming instructor at Lifeguard Post Six. He didn’t make much, but it was enough to get his father off his back. Apart from that, he seduced the virgins who passed the bikini test. Unlike Sílvio, he didn’t do it out of perversion, he was sincere. Ribeiro never saw his fetish as a sin, much less a fetish—it was true love. He grew old without realizing it. His age was a trump card for a good while, until his shelf life expired.

  When he had just turned fifty, he got a job at Impact, a gym on the way up to the favela Ladeira dos Tabajaras. Impact prepared thighs and triceps for Carnival, that was its forte. The muses Marinara, Monique, and Marininha had all trained there. The instructors sold steroids and the brawn shot up in the bathroom. Ribeiro hated being in that environment, but he had no choice. He could only make a living teaching Schwarzenegger disciples. He existed in a state of bewilderment. The girls no longer wanted to be like the bombshells Leila, Danuza, Florinda, and Norma—not Sílvio’s Norma, but Norma Bengell.

  Ribeiro had discovered Norma Bengell as a teenager. A bohemian uncle had had a fling with a cabaret dancer and smuggled his nephew into the wings of a Carlos Machado production. Ribeiro watched, live, as Norma parodied Bardot. He was sixteen. He jerked off to the end of his days to that image. He memorized it down to the last detail. Memories of his mother mingled with those of the muse.

  Women had lost their appeal, they had ceased to be women, he used to say. Why so much muscle? Few of them turned Ribeiro on, the conversation didn’t flow, it was all very boring. Worse, they all treated him as if he were harmless. Then Lucíola came along. He gave her the first set of exercises, but she was new and couldn’t keep up with everyone else during Jair’s squats. “Row, row!” yelled Ribeiro in encouragement, but it was no use. He gave her some water and suggested private lessons. Lucíola might injure herself if she tried to keep up with the group. He offered his services outside of the gym, the beach being the most appropriate place. She took him up on his offer. She really wouldn’t have survived at Impact for very long.

  They met one splendid morning at the fish market and began their walk toward Leme. She was pretty, very pretty, beautiful, in fact, Ribeiro only noticed there. Her red cheeks contrasted with her white skin and her delicate face was marked by thick, black eyebrows that gave her features a masculine touch. By the time they got to Lifeguard Post One, they were in love. Her father couldn’t find out, he was very strict, and Lucíola was still a virgin. Perhaps she was afraid that her first time might be with some brute, it’s hard to say, but Ribeiro was exactly what she wanted. Hypnotized by the possibility of taking her virginity, he played his cards skillfully and slowly until one day, after a lesson, Lucíola cut her foot on a shard of glass and he carried her to his apartment to bandage it up. It took less than a fraction of a second for his hand to forget the cut and slip between her legs. Lucíola was quiet and Ribeiro did what he had to. Afterwards, he left her on the corner near her apartment and went home to remember.

  Sometime around midnight, the deflowerer woke with a start to the sound of someone banging on the door. He ran to look through the peephole. An older man, accompanied by a well-built young man, stared at him through the hole. It was Lucíola’s father and he wanted to talk. He had barely turned the key in the lock when he was hit in the face by the door. The young man followed up with a sequence of punches and kicks, while calling him a dirty old man. It was Lucíola’s brother, he found out later. It was the first time Ribeiro had been called an old man. The whole thing lasted five minutes—not even that—but it felt endless. When they grew tired, the father told the shitty little gym instructor that he was dead if he ever went anywhere near his daughter again. And he disappeared, dragging his troglodyte son behind him. Ribeiro suffered a lot, a mixture of humiliation and missing her. You didn’t fuck a virgin only once. The first time didn’t even count; the secret was how the plot developed, the discoveries, the way they gradually loosened up. “Then it actually gets a bit boring,” he would say. Lucíola remained a dream, leaving him with an awareness of his age and a sense of the ridiculous, to boot.

  Bye-bye, young ladies, it was time to move on. He tried twenty-nine-year-olds, thirty-one-year-olds, thirty-two, thirty-three, all complex and demanding pains in the ass. Virgins were like him: simple. They dreamed of gentle sex and that was all. What could be better than that? And Ribeiro knew how to detect problems, abort missions, give up on the ones who didn’t relax after two weeks. By the time he was in his forties, he’d grown tired of the missionary position. That’s why Suzana had driven him wild, because she was the perfect combination of naivety and call girl. She got him all flustered with the obscenities she proposed, without losing her childish air. Lucíola was the end of the road, the last virgin to love him, his last attempt to go back to being himself. Suzana was the furthest he’d been from himself, the only one with whom he had shared a roof, the closest thing to a wife he’d had. Thirty-three years after the incident in the garden with the ferns, Ribeiro was still consumed with jealousy. Sílvio shouldn’t have done what he did.

  The coffin was lowered into the grave without tears or words of praise for the deceased. Inácio stood there, pallid and unfazed. Burn in hell, he muttered. The gravediggers slathered cement over the grave with shovels, giving the ceremony an odd aura reminiscent of a bathroom renovation. The group left, single file, with the transvestite in front, weaving her way around tombstones to the main path. Ribeiro pretended to follow the group, but turned left and found himself a remote vantage point, hidden among the headstones. He watched over the grave, certain she would come, alone, after ever
yone else, to mourn her lover. He imagined Suzana’s gaze; finally, he would know the truth. When he was kicked out by the guards, it was already late at night. Suzana hadn’t come. Maybe he’d been wrong after all. He had suffered for nothing. Outside the cemetery, with his back to the fence, admiring the lights in the favela of Dona Marta, he understood: he didn’t love Suzana, he never had. In his jealous delirium, she had cheated on him with Sílvio and would reappear there to put an end to his uncertainty. But she hadn’t held up her end of the bargain. She had nothing in common with him, or his friends. She was a stranger, an excuse not to think about Ruth.

  Staring at the lights on the hillside, Ribeiro bid his torment farewell. He lived the last four years of his life without passion, fervor, jealousy, or rancor. He was cured. It was good and bad, because in a way he was already dead. He had died there, outside the cemetery.

  ‌Ribeiro

  * September 4, 1933

  † November 13, 2013

  “Hey, Sampaio, you got the blues?”

  “I have indeed, Ribeiro, but there are only three packets in stock. I suggest you take them because I don’t know when the next lot will be delivered.”

  What would I be without my personal pharmacist?

  “I’ll take the lot.”

  Viagra is as revolutionary as the pill, but no one has the courage to say so. And with this business of having to use condoms, well, a man needs a little help. Then someone goes and invents this miracle, on sale in any decent drugstore, and without a prescription if you know Sampaio! It’s freedom! I can’t imagine life without it anymore.

  I didn’t see age creep up on me, that sly bastard. At thirty, you don’t look fifteen anymore; at forty, the last signs of your twenties disappear; at fifty, your thirties. It takes a decade or so to lose things. I didn’t notice, I felt the same, full of energy, mature, on top of my game. It was only when Suzana and I broke up that it hit me. I’d lived with her for over a year, convinced she was having an affair with Sílvio, and I let myself go to seed. I stopped weighing myself, measuring my waistline, biceps, I went off-diet, didn’t sleep much, drank more than usual, and tried some other shit. Suzana’s fault, it was all her fault.

  The morning I came home a wreck after the scene I’d made, playing the betrayed husband, I opened the door with a bleeding knee and Sílvio’s laughter still echoing in my head. I undressed, hurried to the bathroom, and accidentally caught sight of my reflection out of the corner of my eye. There I was, buck naked, in the mirror. I was an old man. Shocked, I went closer to investigate. Gray hair, bags under my eyes, sagging cheeks, flaccid neck, double chin. My nipples were bigger, my stomach was swelling, a gut beginning to form. My cock was average and my arms and legs still had muscles but were showing obvious signs of decline. My well-being was based on simple, routine things. Taking them away from me, as Suzana had done, had upset a delicate balance. My mother’s smile, being knocked over by the wave, her hands, Suzana’s mouth, her easy laughter, me being an orphan. I sat on the toilet and cried, then I phoned Celeste.

  Carlos helped a lot. He was taking volleyball seriously and my sister had me coach him. He cured me of my depression. Him and Frank Sinatra. I’ve never been to America. It was my dream to visit America. My Sinatra collection won me a lot of women back in the day. These days I hide it so it won’t scare them off.

  “Send it down the back, down the back!… Attaboy! What a comeback! Seventeen to fifteen! It’s the triumph of experience.”

  I arranged a game on the beach with Carlos, a best of three with his son and a pal from college. These kids haven’t even got hair on their bodies and they think they’re going to beat the lion here.

  “The bump, the precise set, the indefensible spike. Go on, kneel down, you don’t have the moves! Must be the crap you eat.”

  I’m tired.

  I woke up early to teach a lesson to seniors. Some old girls who roasted in the sun all their lives and now they’re like vampires, can’t even see light. Melanoma’s a bitch. I’ve had a few moles removed myself. I don’t like sunscreen.

  It’s hard to accept that those old women were fifteen once. Now they all have to get up before dawn, but it’s not like they’re missing any sleep. Better to have something to do. They complain of insomnia a lot. They complain a lot, period. And who’s the hero who gets up before dawn to meet a bunch of seventy-year-old zombies? Ribeiro here. But it’s good because by nine o’clock half my workday is over. I play a game of beach volleyball, nap until about four, then go meet the beach crowd again to see what life has in store.

  It hasn’t had much lately, but today looks promising.

  I was going to say no to the old ladies. I went to the building where they all live, on Rua República do Peru, to tell them I couldn’t do it. But the niece of the one in 401 came down to say her aunt wasn’t feeling well. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight-ish, nice figure, long hair, tight jeans. When I saw her I changed my mind. I said I’d come to find out what their objectives were, ad-libbed it for about a quarter of an hour, and suggested I pay them each a visit to get to know them better. I suffered through those eleven floors. Time is cruel to women. I left the one with the niece for last.

  The aunt was asleep in her bedroom.

  I suggested she install grab bars in the bathroom and asked a few harmless questions: if she lived there, if she was just visiting. Alda had just split with her husband and didn’t want to live with her mother. She thanked me for my interest and praised me, saying I was a very considerate teacher. I asked her out on a date. She said she left the shop at six. Bingo!

  It feels good to swim in the cold water off Copacabana. That warm piss soup in the Northeast of the country is disgusting. But the water here is dirty, the current’s changed direction, no one’s brave enough to go for a dip. Oily brown foam. One of the advantages of age is that you stop caring about the distant future. Now I just sit on the sand with the pigeons and risk skin cancer—I ain’t about to slop on sunscreen. Check out the goddesses walking past—my God, they still exist. Not for me, not anymore, never again. I’ve had to come to terms with whores and good girls over fifty. Neurotic, all of them, like Alda in 401. I can tell she’s desperate.

  “Bye, Carlos, tell your mom I’ll stop by tomorrow. I’m meeting someone. Yep, the lion here ain’t dead! Don’t worry, I won’t ruin the family name, I’ve been to see Sampaio!”

  I never wanted to have children. My nephew was the closest I ever got, with the advantage of being able to give him back to my sister whenever we hit a glitch. All men become slaves to their kid’s moms, even after they’re divorced. I never found a mother, not for me or my kids. I thought about getting a vasectomy, but I was afraid it might affect my ability to get it up.

  The water in these beach showers is straight from the sewers. So what? It feels good to wash off the salt! Álvaro drinks water from the tap and he’s still alive.

  “Hey, where’s my coconut water? Could you pass me my fanny pack? It’s behind the counter there.”

  I’ve known this guy since he was a kid. Now he’s inherited his dad’s kiosk. Where’s my pill? Here! The Niagara-blue diamond.

  * * *

  After the beating I got from Lucíola’s father, and the phrase “dirty old man” her brother left as a memento, I decided to become a monk—I gave up smoking, became chaste. I was ashamed to approach girls, afraid of hearing a “no.” I felt like an idiot and stopped taking the risk. I’d wake up before dawn, run the beach end to end, coach Carlos, and swim in the afternoon when I was done teaching. I became a machine, an Adonis with no libido. I didn’t feel like it and had no idea what was going to become of me. All Álvaro could talk about was his inability to get it up, so I avoided him. Sílvio had ditched the gang to go live on the wild side, Neto was married, and Ciro had just died. I practically married my sister.

  Celeste was very practical. She had decided to try life on her own. She still liked her husband but wanted to leave him. She was pretty brave; at a time when most women are
scared witless of losing their partners, Celeste came out with this one. It was good, because I didn’t have to tiptoe around my sister’s apartment and I was a male presence there while she was between relationships. I slept at my place but spent the day at hers, and we were happy like that. It didn’t last. Celeste started seeing a production engineer who’d started at her firm. I asked what a production engineer did, but Celeste wasn’t sure. “Something to do with planning, I don’t know, one day you can ask him,” she said. I didn’t. I was insanely jealous of the guy. I hadn’t had sex for a year, I was tense, and I got it in my head that Carlos shouldn’t be left alone, so I started waiting for Celeste in the living room with a scowl on my face. The minute she turned the key in the lock I’d start in with the interrogation, wanting to know where she’d been, who she’d been with, if she’d eaten. At first she thought it was cute. She said I was bonkers and would shoo me out, but when I started getting aggressive, she was frank with me. With a straight face, she told me to go get laid. “The first one you see, Ribeiro, just do it; don’t think about it, then tell me how it was,” she said. And she banned me from her apartment after seven at night.

  As if it wasn’t enough, Neto passed away.

  Ciro used to try and help Álvaro by reassuring him that all men have their bad days, except me. Not anymore. When Celeste told me to get back in the game after a long sabbatical, I, frightened by how short life is, picked up where I’d left off. I didn’t want the ones who were interested in me even if they were the last women alive, and the ones I was interested in didn’t want me under any circumstance. Young women were now standoffish, and turned their noses up at me. Solange was the best of a bad lot.