Veronique
16.
“Hey,” says a guy who came up behind me without me noticing. I must have dozed off. There are two of them, actually. They’re wearing street clothes and they’re armed, which is strange on a beach, even if the beach is in Uruguay.
The Cannibal of Ipanema
by Alexandre Fraga dos Santos
Ipanema
The cannibal had been inactive since the end of the seventies. He had sold the old family home in Santa Clara, inhabited by memories and the spirits that haunted his mind. The voice of his grandmother, always calling him a cowardly little lieutenant, a weakling, unmanly . . . By getting rid of the mansion he had blotted out all those ghosts. With the money from the sale he had bought a two-story house with a terrace on Rua Canning, along with a Siberian husky. He named the dog Dollar. He wanted the animal to be strong, like the American currency.
Retired from the army with the rank of colonel, Leopoldo passed for a peaceful citizen of Ipanema, dividing his time between walking the dog as far as the Arpoador rocks and painting, along with sporadic visits to the establishment near his building, the Centaurus, the neighborhood’s traditional bordello.
Although he considered himself more a reserve officer than a professional artist, from time to time he made a little money from the sale of his canvases in exhibitions around the city. He would spend the extra income at the Centaurus, but not in a more orthodox manner. He would always make his incursions in late afternoon and take a leisurely sauna, followed by a cold shower. He would shave, powder his armpits, and slip into the white robe provided by the bordello. He would take the elevator to the third floor, to the nightclub going full blast, with the perfume of lust in the air. He would sit down next to the bar and have the waiter bring his favorite scotch. And then the pilgrimage of the whores would begin, as it did that Friday . . .
“Can I sit here, baby?”
“Do I look like a baby?”
The whore sat down and put her forefinger on Leopoldo’s lips. “You look like a naughty baby.”
“You can’t imagine how naughty . . .”
“Maybe what I need is some fooling around.” She ran her fingers through the colonel’s hair. “I can’t see a gray-haired man without wanting to put out.”
“I can imagine.”
“You don’t have to imagine. Just look.”
The whore took Leopoldo’s hand and stuck it under her bikini bottom. The colonel allowed his finger to probe her vulva for a few moments, evaluating the wetness.
“Now take it out. If you don’t, the madam gets on my case. You see how I get?”
“Yes, you’re very damp.”
“Wet, drenched.”
“Yes. Can you tell me your name?”
“Roberta. Can I have some of your whiskey?”
“Yes.”
“Can I get your key, so we can get a little friendly?”
“Yes.”
“Anything you’d like.”
The hooker left Leopoldo by himself at the table. The colonel took advantage of her absence to observe his surroundings. There were better-looking whores than Roberta in the place, but the young woman had been efficient in her approach. Besides, the club was infested with gringos who, judging by the tattoos of anchors and women on their arms, and the whiteness of their skin, were from some Scandinavian ship.
Roberta came back twenty minutes later, panting. She must have blown one of those Vikings en route. She tried to kiss the colonel, but he refused. As if by reflex, she downed a shot of whiskey in a single gulp. Then she apologized: “The house is packed, that’s why I took so long.”
She took Leopoldo by the hand and led him to the suite, where Roberta got naked. She told the colonel to take off his robe.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I want to stay this way. Dressed.”
“Hey, I wanna get off.”
“And I want to talk.”
“Are you gay?”
“I’m a colonel in the Brazilian army. I expect a modicum of respect.”
“Okay then. What does the colonel want to talk about?”
Leopoldo wanted to know everything about Roberta’s life: how she got started in prostitution; whether she had children; her relationship with her parents; if she dreamed of having a family.
The whore let out a sob: “I don’t have anybody . . . I feel so lonely . . .”
Leopoldo paid the girl extra. In dollars . . . With the colonel, everything was in dollars. She thanked him and asked if she could kiss him.
“On the cheek, please.”
Roberta kissed the colonel on his right cheek and concluded the encounter.
* * *
As Roberta was leaving the nightclub, a Passat pulled up alongside her and the driver lowered the window.
“Shall we finish what we started?”
Roberta glanced around to make sure the security guys from the club weren’t watching them. She couldn’t have outside dates; if she were found out, she’d be sent packing. There was no one, and she was horny and needy. Besides which, she would make some dough. Making dough was good.
“Let’s go.” She jumped in the car. “Which motel, colonel?”
The colonel drove a short distance and clicked the remote control for his garage. The Siberian husky had its nose against the gate. Roberta took a deep breath; whenever the door to a man’s house opened, she nurtured the hope of a serious relationship, of building something for herself. And this could be her lucky night.
“I love a man in uniform.”
They got out of the car. Dollar jumped onto Roberta and sniffed her from head to toe. The hooker became a bit tense.
“Does he bite?”
“Not him.”
“Cute,” said the whore, patting the dog.
Leopoldo opened the door and let Dollar in as well.
“Is he gonna participate?” asked Roberta.
“No. Just watch.”
“Do you enjoy that?”
“You talk too much.”
“You’re rude.”
“Go wash up.”
“How much are you gonna pay?”
“Two hundred dollars.”
Chic, this colonel . . . Always in dollars.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
“End of the hall. Last door on the left.”
The working girl went down the corridor, observing the row of paintings illuminated by bluish light. The man must really be a pervert, and Roberta found the thought encouraging: there were two buffalo cornering a blond woman with a thick dark tuft around her vagina; a horse corralling a black woman with a vast blond tuft around her pussy, while another horse reared on its hind legs, offering his rigid member to the woman; the mad colonel had even painted bats attacking a nun. There were also rifles and antique weapons hanging on the walls, along with family photos.
Roberta laughed to herself. The game was going to be a good one.
Leopoldo waited anxiously. As did Dollar. Together they were a devilish pair. But there was never anything left for Dollar. He was only a voyeur. The colonel was aware of the insanity of his habits, but this was better than eating neighbors for lunch or dinner. The cannibal was retired, thanks to Our Lady, his devotional saint.
Roberta came out of the bathroom naked. She encountered the colonel in dress uniform complete with a short ceremonial sword. She sat on a sofa, spread her legs, and beckoned to Leopoldo.
The colonel couldn’t control himself and buried his head between Roberta’s legs. The whore removed his cap and put it on. A pro, she began saying dirty words and striking the colonel in the face; he obediently accepted and continued with the cunnilingus. Dollar merely watched, his ears pricked up.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” the whore announced.
And she came.
Then the colonel’s face assumed the look of a wolf that has just attacked its prey: flushed, colored by raging blood. His formal uniform, his medals—everything was
smeared with blood.
“I’m sorry, colonel. I think I got my period.”
Leopoldo shook his head from side to side, unresigned. Dollar, frightened, climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“You had no right to do that.”
“Colonel, forgive me. I didn’t mean to—”
“I was cured!”
“A woman has no control over these things . . .”
“Get off my sofa!”
“I’m so ashamed . . .”
“Get out! Get out of my house!”
“I’m sorry, colonel . . .”
“I don’t want to do it! I don’t want to do it! Get out!”
“You’re humiliating me . . .”
“Get out of here! Out!!”
“Don’t talk to me like that . . . you coward!!”
It was his grandmother’s voice returning: Coward! Leopoldo, you’re not a man and never were . . .
From the terrace, Dollar was howling.
“Coward! You don’t talk like that to a lady!” The whore was offended by the grossness . . .
Bringing home a whore, Leopoldo?
“I don’t want to do that, Grandma!”
The dog howled.
Taking insults from a tramp, Leopoldo? You sissy.
“I don’t want to, I don’t want to, Grandma . . .”
“Grandma my ass, you calling me old? You shitty two-bit colonel, coward, faggot . . .”
The dog howled . . .
You wimp, you were never a man . . . you weakling . . .
“You flaming fag!”
“I’m a colonel in the Brazilian army—”
Faggot, she’s right, Leopoldo. Ever since you were a child . . . I always knew . . .
The dog howled.
“You queer! I want my two hundred dollars!”
Then the cannibal hurled himself onto the woman, burying his sharpened teeth in the neck of his prey while his hand covered her mouth. The victim tried to escape by striking the executioner, but the man’s trained jaw had tremendous strength and soon the woman surrendered, her blows losing power and her eyes closing as she yielded to death. She emitted a few moans that could have been mistaken for pleasure. And succumbed. The cannibal alternated between the vagina and the neck, leaving the remaining parts for another time. Using the sword, he cut the body into uniform pieces and stored them in the old freezer.
He was a methodical cannibal. Military.
On the terrace, Dollar let loose another howl, sharp; then in falsetto, sounding like a chant of anguish and submission. The animal recognized the smell of blood by instinct inherited from his ancestors and knew one thing: there was a predator in the house, and it wasn’t him.
The cannibal was back.
PART II
Divided City
The Booty
by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza
Lapa
He was known as Rat. Short, skinny, with a head shaped like a rodent’s. People found him repulsive. Not because of the clothes he wore or his personal hygiene. He always wore a suit and tie, both secondhand and rather used, but of good quality. His shoes and clothes had gone through various repairs, some by his own hand, and he kept them clean and intended to go on wearing them as long as possible. Until recently he had worn a wide-brimmed felt hat, a gift from a habitué of Cinelândia. It was a lovely hat, but Rat finally convinced himself that it made him look even smaller than he was, though it had the advantage of hiding his face, which was indeed repulsive thanks to his tiny, pointed, widely spaced teeth. This general appearance made him seek out from an early age somber and poorly lit places, not always easy in a sunny city like Rio, unless one becomes the solitary, nocturnal sort. Which is in fact what happened, not because of his repulsive appearance but because of the police.
It was when he still lived downtown, in the area stretching from Cinelândia to Lapa. During the day he circulated around Cinelândia and the narrow streets, almost alleyways, that go from the square toward Lapa. At night he frequented the bars in Lapa. In Cinelândia he managed and protected the minors who committed petty thefts on pedestrians; in Lapa he managed and protected the prostitutes, not all of them, of course, but a sufficient number to maintain his lifestyle. In both businesses he kept the accounts himself and was good at it. There was also Japa, an intelligent and crafty lawyer, despite being an incorrigible alcoholic, who resolved his run-ins with the law. Besides the two of them, there were three security men who took turns maintaining order and protection from the “Germans,” as the police were called. Finally, there was a network of underage lookouts who served quite efficiently as short-range radar. Rat had never dealt with drugs and traffickers, whom he considered very violent and likely to attract the police. He also neither possessed nor used guns. He was in the habit of saying his weapons were his short stature, his sharpened teeth, and the ability to disappear almost instantly when necessary. He always thought of himself as an entrepreneur. The boys he protected were required to attend school; otherwise they couldn’t be part of his team. The women had regular classes in basic English, which facilitated their contact with foreign tourists. And both the boys and the women were directed by him, when necessary, to an outpatient medical clinic that received a monthly contribution from Rat and Japa for services rendered to the underserved downtown population.
Things were going smoothly, without major internal conflict and without problems of law and order, until the day the police realized that everything was going too well with him and his lawyer partner and that they, the police, had so far not received any benefit from it.
“Procuring, inducement to commit a crime, and corruption of minors, forming a criminal band . . . Serious offenses, seeing as how the second is considered a heinous crime. Know what that means, you shitass Rat? It means you’re gonna spend the rest of your life behind bars just like your brothers that serve as guinea pigs in laboratories. The difference being that you won’t be treated nowhere near as good as them. The researchers that’re gonna take care of you will be your cellmates, and they won’t be as gentle as the scientists in research labs. Because of the nature of your crimes I can take you straight from here to jail. Forget about paying bail and going back to drinking beer. Your crime is unbailable. Rat is what they call you and what you call yourself. You’re gonna envy the rats that crawl over your body while you’re sleeping . . . if you ever do manage to sleep.”
That was the speech given by the policeman, who judging by his physique must belong to some shock troop. He accosted Rat at night on an abandoned street in Lapa, where no one was around for him to ask for help.
“What can we do for none of that to happen?” asked Rat in a small voice.
“No ‘we.’ Here you’re the rat and I’m the cat. I’ll expect you here tomorrow, at this same time, with 50 percent of what you made last month. Pay attention, I’m not demanding this or that amount, I’m demanding a percentage, 50 percent, half the money you took in last month—which will in fact be your last month if you try to screw me. If you got any doubts about the possibility of me making you into a lab rat, ask your partner and lawyer, who now that I think about it oughta be called Skunk.”
Rat had no intention of returning the following night to give the cop half his earnings from the month before. But neither did he plan to go on hanging around Cinelândia or Lapa. He never had the calling to be a laboratory rat. The only solution was to disappear. Taking with him half the money collected in the last month—the other half Rat put in a thick brown envelope, taped it shut, and gave it to his partner—Rat became a fugitive, at least to his way of thinking. He wasn’t wanted “dead or alive” by the police in the city, but the mere existence of that gorilla and his accomplices sufficed to make him vanish like smoke.
The next day, at dawn, it was still dark when he left his felt hat on the bench where he usually sat in Floriano Square in Cinelândia. A souvenir from Rat for those who remained.
The day had brightened by the time he left the Siqueira
Campos subway station in Copacabana, the only district he knew as well as the downtown area, though he had no acquaintances there. Like a rat, he knew the geography of the district, not exactly its surface and its daytime inhabitants but the underground geography and some of its nocturnal dwellers. As a precaution and from fear of the cop and his team, he started moving solely in the actual underworld of Copacabana. His small stature and his skinniness facilitated his rapid disappearance and displacement in the rainwater networks of the Copacabana subsoil. To do this he had to rid himself of the suit and shoes—all that he took in his flight—and arrange for some secondhand clothing of a municipal worker. The next step was to rent a room in a fifth-rate boardinghouse on the Tabajaras slope. In reality, not a room but half a room divided down the middle by a sheet of plywood. In each half there was space for only a single bed and, underneath it, a small chest with a padlock for storing the tenant’s clothes and belongings.
The plywood dividing the room didn’t reach the ceiling, only the top of the door, where it forked, allowing entrance to the two halves of the room. But for someone who spent the early part of the day at the rainwater networks, that half a room was at least a one-star hotel.
Two months went by without news of the cop and his team. Rat figured that they must not operate in the South Zone. Fortunately, he had yet to be noticed by any of them. True, during the day he wore the overalls of a city worker. And his current fear was being stopped by some municipal car and being asked for his ID. He of course had no work papers from the city. Before he could arrange an identity, which would cost some money, he needed to enlarge his crew. He had two women who took care of him and he took care of them, the same setup as Cinelândia, and he also had some boys who brought in a bit of change from objects boosted from foreign tourists, objects that he passed along to fences. Two months’ rent was paid in advance, and he didn’t go hungry. That’s how Rat is, he thought. The Chinese horoscope says that the rat always does well in the labyrinths of life. He didn’t know if this was exactly what it said, but it was something like that.
Rio Noir Page 4