Fats went up to her. “Let me show you something,” he said, picking up a book and handing it to Marina.
“The Maltese Falcon.”
“Have you read it?”
“I don’t like crime stories. And Hammett is far from my favorite writer.”
“You know there’s a character in this novel, a woman, who’s very much like you?”
“Is she?”
“Her name is Brigid. Her real name, I mean. She uses other names as well.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t you want to know why she resembles you?”
“No,” she replied in a dry tone, and sat down again.
“Who’s the man you want to find?” I asked, making no effort to conceal my impatience.
“Actually, I don’t know him. I don’t know his name or what he does in life. I’ve never spoken with him. He must be five-eleven or a little less, short black hair. Dark skin, I think.”
“You think?”
“I’ve never seen him up close, only some distance away, and at night without much light.”
Fats looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
“It all started two weeks ago. One night as I was leaving work, I sensed someone was following me.”
“Where do you work?”
“At the National Library, in the rare books section.”
“And where do you live?”
“Right here in downtown. On Avenida Calógeras, on top of the Villarino. Are you familiar with it?”
“The Pan América Building. I had a client who lived there.”
“Quite a coincidence.”
“Yes, it is.”
She paused, her gaze a bit distant. I would have liked to know what she was thinking at that moment. It was a brief pause, just a few seconds, then she looked at me again and resumed her account.
“I always walk home and nothing had ever happened to me. You know, it’s nearby, a ten-minute walk. But that night I felt something odd, I was certain I was being followed. And I admit I was afraid to stop and look back.”
“What did you think might happen if you looked back?”
“I don’t know. Obviously nothing was going to happen, the street was full of people, but I was scared. I walked a bit farther, and when I was near my house, I had to stop at a traffic light. Then I looked, and there he was.” She took another sip of water. “He had a newspaper under his arm. He was wearing jeans and a white short-sleeve shirt. He stared at me.”
“Was he a hunk?” asked Fats.
“What?”
“Was he good-looking?”
“He wasn’t ugly.”
“Was he good-looking or just not ugly? They’re two different things.”
She didn’t answer.
“And what happened after that?” I asked.
“I kept on walking, fast, until I entered my building. I don’t even think I said hello to the doorman, I went straight upstairs with a flutter in my chest. I got into my apartment and lay on the sofa for a few minutes, without turning on the lights. Then I went to the window, opened it, looked down, and there he was, on the sidewalk.”
“Looking at you.”
“Exactly. He was leaning against a lamppost, the newspaper under his arm, looking at me. I noticed he was carrying a leather pouch on a strap. He didn’t seem scary and he wasn’t smiling, just looking at me. I closed the window. I took a shower and after dressing went back to look at the sidewalk. He wasn’t there anymore.”
“But he came back the next night,” Fats said.
“How do you know?”
He smiled.
“Yes, the next day he followed me again. I didn’t even need to look back to know he was following me, my intuition told me he was there. In the middle of the street I turned around and stared at him. He was still in jeans and a short-sleeve shirt, blue this time. The scene was almost the same as the first night, and I was impressed. The same neutral expression, the pouch, the newspaper under his arm, not moving a muscle, just standing there.”
“This time you took a long look at the guy, it wasn’t as rushed as the first time,” I said.
“I didn’t feel any fear, you understand? The first night I was a little frightened, but not this time. He had a serene expression, calm. He didn’t look like a criminal. He seemed to have something to tell me but he didn’t say anything.”
“Did it enter your mind that he might be interested in you?”
“Of course. But then why didn’t he come closer, speak to me? I turned my back and went home. And the same thing happened again.”
“You opened the window and he was on the sidewalk.”
“Yes. Leaning against the same lamppost, with the same demeanor, the same expression.”
“Did you see when he left?”
“No. As long as I stayed at the window he remained on the sidewalk, in that same spot.”
“With the newspaper under his arm.”
“Always with the newspaper under his arm. I closed the curtains and when I went back to the window, later, I didn’t see anyone on the sidewalk.”
“Let me see if I can guess,” Fats said, pouring a cup of coffee. “On the third night, everything happened again, the same script: he followed you, you stared at each other, afterward he stood on the sidewalk contemplating you.”
“I don’t know if contemplating is the right word. He was looking at me.”
“No, my dear, he didn’t look at you. There’s a big difference between looking and contemplating. That guy’s not one for looking at a beautiful woman. He contemplates. He’s the sophisticated type. Sick, maybe, but who isn’t?”
She laughed for the first time. She had a lovely smile. “You’re kind of crazy yourself, aren’t you?”
“Could be. But I’ve got that guy’s number. I know what he’s like.”
“I don’t think so,” she said with a touch of irony. “I haven’t told you everything yet. He continued to follow me for several nights. More than once I felt like going up to him and just asking what he wanted from me.”
“And why didn’t you?”
She took a deep breath. Then she said in a soft voice, almost a whisper: “Because I was enjoying it.”
Fats and I looked at the woman sitting before us. I should say, rather, not that we looked but that we contemplated the woman.
“I was afraid of what might happen if I went up to him. I don’t know, I thought he might get scared and run away.”
She looked like she was about to cry. Marina straightened her body, sat up erect in the chair, and held back the tears.
“One day, at the library, a girlfriend showed me a book. By a French writer, Roland Barthes. You surely don’t know him, he never wrote a crime novel,” she said with a small smile.
I chose not to respond.
“I took the book home. It was a book of fragments, notes about things relating to love. And there was a very lovely story in it, about a mandarin who falls in love with a courtesan. The mandarin declares his love and the courtesan tells him: I will be yours if you wait for me a hundred evenings in my garden, beneath my window. For ninety-eight evenings he waits for her, in the garden. On the ninety-ninth evening, when she is ready to give herself to him, he leaves and never returns.”
“Dirty trick,” says Fats.
“I think I will accept a beer.”
“Coming up,” I said, getting two. I gave one to Fats. I didn’t want to drink, not just yet.
“I copied the story of the mandarin from the book. I copied it on a sheet of paper, put it in an envelope, and one night when the man was following me, I dropped the envelope on purpose. And hoped he had seen it.”
“You dropped the envelope the way a woman in love drops a handkerchief,” Fats said, and it didn’t strike me as a provocation.
“I went on walking, following the nightly ritual. I went up, waited a bit inside, opened the window, and saw him on the sidewalk looking at me as always. Except that this time there was a small difference, a new
detail. He took the envelope from the pouch and held it up, as if to say: Here it is, I got it.” She drank the beer, slowly. Then she placed the glass on the table and said in a firm voice, “It was the last time I saw him.”
I got up and went to the window. There outside, people were moving hurriedly, car horns were blowing, a workman was trying to control a jackhammer. He was small and thin; they shouldn’t have given a guy like that a jackhammer, I thought.
It wasn’t the only odd thing in the city. Rio is an unusual place, full of surprises, and downtown is the best example of that. To start with, downtown isn’t in the center of the city, it’s at one end, along the oceanfront. If it were truly central it would be right in the middle, not on the edge of the beach.
“Do you have any idea where he waited for you to leave the library?” I asked, returning to my chair.
“He always waited for me at a sidewalk table, at Amarelinho. Every afternoon when I would leave the library, there he was. I would walk down the steps and head slowly toward home.”
“Slower each time.”
“That’s true, slower each time.”
She stared at me. The story she had to tell had been told and Marina awaited my reaction.
I lowered my head and shuffled some paper on my desk. Bills: lights, rent on the office, condo fees.
“All right. I’ll find that nutcase for you.”
* * *
After she left I didn’t stay in the office for long. I made some phone calls, saw a client, and around four o’clock closed down. I decided to focus on Marina’s case. She was paying well—Fats set the price this time. And it was hefty.
“Nothing like mixing work and pleasure,” he said as we sat at a sidewalk table at the Amarelinho, across from the National Library.
I thought that was where we should begin. Not that we expected to find the guy in the most obvious place. We knew he wouldn’t be at the Amarelinho. But Fats thought that, before anything else, we should try to better understand, or at least speculate about, what he was up to.
“We have to put ourselves in his position, right, André? It was from here that he watched Marina every day. Remember the lesson of a master, Chesterton’s Father Brown: it’s necessary to put oneself in the place of the criminal, it’s necessary to think like him to predict what he will do next.”
“The guy’s not a criminal. It’s no crime to follow a beautiful woman in the street.”
“He did more than that. The scoundrel broke the heart of a ravishing woman. And I should add: a ravishing married woman.”
“Pay attention, Fats, we’re at the Amarelinho, the way you wanted, and we’ve just ordered a fourth round of beers. Is that enough to put ourselves in the place of the guy or do we need to get completely plastered first?”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea. But it won’t be necessary, since I know why he stayed here.”
“So talk.”
“The guy’s a professional observer.”
“Huh?”
“Just what I said. Remember that story by Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’? The guy in the story, the narrator, was methodical. He would sit in a café in London looking out at the street packed with people. And he cataloged each type: merchants, lawyers, public servants, prostitutes, pickpockets, noblemen, and loan sharks; he would classify everyone. Our man is like that too, he’s no amateur. He has a method. And like Poe’s character, he starts by carefully hiding his observation point. A café in downtown London, a table at a bar in downtown Rio. See the parallel?”
“Go on.”
“From here, maybe from this very table where we’re sitting, he could observe at will, without really being seen. People of every kind pass through this square; Cinelândia is a kaleidoscope of humanity, if you’ll permit me a poetic image. Tourists, beggars, politicians, artists, con men, professors, students, drunks of every kind, and of course beautiful women.”
“Like Marina.”
“Yes. Imagine the guy sitting here, right across from the library. At six in the afternoon he sees her descending the stairs, a beautiful young woman, tall, elegant, wonderful, a goddess. He follows her with his eyes, intently. And then he thinks: Tomorrow I’m going after that woman. The next day, at the same hour, he begins his game with Marina. And the rest, we already know how it was.”
“And why do you think he gave up?”
The waiter arrived with two more beers.
“Marina sent a message: she didn’t want him to act like the mandarin in the story. She was in love with him and hoped one day he’d speak to her. The waiting was proof of his passion. The guy understood that and chose to leave. He knew that if he continued the game, sooner or later he’d fall into the trap.”
“What trap?”
“The trap we all fall into, we romantics, those perpetually naïve about love. You, in fact, more than me.”
“What trap?” I asked, trying to sound bored.
“The same as ever, since Adam and Eve. The trap of commitment.”
“You think Marina acted hastily.”
“Of course. She didn’t know how to wait long enough. Marina scared the nutcase and he hit the road. When she copied the passage from the book and then purposely dropped it, she was telling him: Don’t be like the mandarin, don’t go away on the last night.”
“And he did.”
“Right. These things happen.”
* * *
From the Amarelinho we went to Marina’s building, following the route she said she took every day. We crossed Rio Branco, took Pedro Lessa to the end, turned onto Graça Aranha, which joins Calógeras, and after a ten-minute walk we were there. I remembered the Pan América well. The apartment of my former client faced Avenida Beira-Mar and had a dazzling view. Marina’s faced Calógeras.
“This is where he stood, contemplating Marina,” Fats said, leaning against the lamppost.
We stayed there for some minutes, looking for I don’t know what exactly. The doorman began regarding us suspiciously. I thought it best for us to leave.
We then began our rounds through the bars, as planned at the table at Amarelinho. That night and the following two nights we made our pilgrimage to the downtown bars in search of the man.
Rio is a city constantly inviting people into the street, and downtown is no different. I would meet Fats at the end of the day and we would hit the dozens of bars scattered along Rua do Lavradio, Lapa, the narrow streets leading to Cinelândia, the venerable Rua do Ouvidor and environs.
Those were long nights, I must say. And we didn’t find the guy.
“Patience, André, we have to be patient. I have the feeling we’ll find the man tonight.”
“You talk about method but don’t have one, you know that?”
“Trust me, little brother, today we’ll find that sly fox, trust me.”
It was eight at night when we entered Arco do Teles. I checked to see if our friend was in any of the bars.
“A change of plan, André,” Fats said, taking my arm. “Next stop: Bar Brasil.”
“You think he might be there?”
“No. But I urgently need to eat a kassler with potatoes.”
“You shouldn’t eat pork ribs. They’re fattening.”
“I’m already fat, have you forgotten?”
Deep down I knew my friend didn’t want to go to Bar Brasil just to devour his favorite dish. He had something in mind that he didn’t want to tell me just yet. Fats is like that; at times he thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes hiding some thought from Watson in order to enhance his brilliant deduction at the end. Watson in this case was me.
We walked to Rua Mem de Sá. I enjoyed walking at night in those streets. The infernal daytime bustle with people scurrying like ants gave way to a different lineage, the bohemians. And walking at night lets me see more calmly the old houses, the buildings from the time of the empire, the signs of another era written on the streets like a book open to whoever wants to read. I wanted to, I liked reading the city, especially downtown, where
everything is written.
We got to Bar Brasil and chose a table at the rear. The waiter quickly brought our dishes. Fats went with kassler. I ordered meatballs.
“Okay, out with it. Why Bar Brasil?”
He pretended to be startled. Then he smiled. “Elementary, my dear boy. We’ve been roaming around for three days. We’ve been to practically every sidewalk bar in the area. If he’s not in any of them it’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong place, understand? It boils down to this: the creep doesn’t want to be found. He doesn’t know that Marina put a detective on his tail, but to be on the safe side he decided to change his strategy. No sidewalk bars now, no showing himself. I’m going to a quieter spot, where I can contemplate women without a lot of people around, my way. That’s what he thought.”
“Then why didn’t he change neighborhoods?”
Fats cut off a generous piece of rib and chewed on it.
“Get one thing through your head, André: the man is methodical. He likes this area and doesn’t want to leave it. It’s his territory, understand? The guy knows the streets, the alleys, and the bars downtown the way you and I know our own faces in a mirror. It’s his home. It’s not just the setting for his life story, it’s the story itself. And listen to what I’m about to say, listen carefully: it’s from the village that you see the universe. Learn from that, my friend, learn.”
“You read that somewhere.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did.”
“All right, it’s from Alberto Caeiro. I mean, I adapted it a little.”
We fell silent. The waiter brought two more beers.
“How is it you know so much about a guy you’ve never met?”
“They’re merely hypotheses. And don’t forget: What songs the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. Sir Thomas Browne.”
“I think you chose the wrong profession. You should’ve been a literature professor.”
“If I’m going to starve to death, I prefer being the owner of a used-book store.”
“You’re not exactly starving. Not in the least.”
“A figure of speech, if you understand me.”
“What I understand is that everything’s very good—cold beer, tasty dishes—but where’s the guy?”
Rio Noir Page 18