“He just came in.”
It was him. Medium height—Marina had said five-eleven or a little less—short black hair, dark skin. Jeans, white short-sleeve shirt, the newspaper under his arm. Even the leather pouch was there, on a strap. It could only be him.
“I don’t believe it, Fats!”
“Now you see. I told you to trust me, it was just a matter of time.”
The guy came in, took a look around, said something to the waiter, and chose a table near ours. He placed the pouch on a chair and sat down in the other. From where we were, we could see him in profile.
I called Marina.
“We found your friend, he’s just come into Bar Brasil, on Mem de Sá. Do you know it?”
“Yes. I’m on my way. Don’t let him leave.”
“Hurry up. I don’t know if he’s going to stay here for long.”
I hung up.
“Look, André. He’s pretending to read the menu.”
“He is reading the menu.”
“No he isn’t. I saw when he opened the menu without looking at it. He merely opened it for show. And he’s not turning the pages; he merely opened it and left it open, to fake it. See? He’s looking in our direction. At the table with the women.”
At a table across from us, three women were taking loudly and laughing.
“What can they be laughing so hard about?” I asked.
“They’re beautiful, young, and judging by their clothes they have money. Do you need any other reasons to laugh about nothing?”
“And which of them will he choose to follow?”
“He’s not thinking about that yet. He just got here, he’s analyzing the terrain. And it won’t depend solely on his choice. It’ll depend on how they leave the bar. They may leave together and get into a car nearby. That would be it for the loony. Or it may be that one of them leaves before the others, walking toward the subway, for example. That would be ideal for him.”
“I just saw him give the waiter his order.”
“Excellent, it means he’s going to stay for a while. At least until Marina gets here. Where was she—at home?”
“I don’t know.”
“With her husband?”
“I have no idea, Fats!”
“I was thinking: it would be funny if her husband followed her when she left.”
“The husband following his wife who’s following a stranger who was following her.”
“Yes, like those Russian dolls, one coming out of the other.”
“Look what the guy ordered: kassler with potatoes. What else do you two have in common?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out very soon.”
“Find out how?”
“I’m going to talk to him. Or rather, we’re both going to,” Fats said, standing up and taking his glass of beer.
“What? You’re going to spook the guy!”
“Come with me.”
I grabbed my beer and we went to the other table.
“Everything okay, boss? All right if we sit here?” Fats asked.
He raised his head and looked at Fats, then at me, without a word. “No,” he finally answered, returning to his food.
“Why do you follow women?” Fats demanded, sitting down at the table. I sat too.
He gestured to the waiter, asking for the check.
“Take it easy, we’re good people, we just want to talk.”
“Who are you two?”
“A female friend of yours hired us. We’re detectives.”
“From the police? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“We know that. And we’re not cops.”
“I don’t have a female friend. You’re crazy.”
“We’re crazy? You go around following women in the street and run away when one of them wants to speak to you, and we’re the crazy ones?”
The waiter brought the check. Fats grabbed it.
“Leave this to me, I’m treating. And bring three more beers, please.”
I thought the guy was going to split, but he surprised me; he stared at Fats for an instant, then nodded and said: “This city is like an insane asylum.”
“May I?” I asked, pointing to the newspaper.
“Of course.”
I looked at the date on the front page: it was from last week. He understood.
“I don’t like reading newspapers.”
“Then why do you always have one under your arm?”
“To give the impression that I’m normal.”
I found that humorous. I got the impression that this nut was pretty cool. In different circumstances we might even have become friends.
The waiter brought the beers. We drank in silence for a bit.
“Who hired you?”
“Her name is Marina. The woman from Avenida Calógeras who you followed for a bunch of nights.”
“Marina. A beautiful name.”
“And a beautiful woman as well.”
“Without a doubt. A pity she’s so unhappy with her husband. She deserves something better.”
“How do you know she’s unhappy with her husband?”
“It’s just a hypothesis.”
Fats laughed. “Why do you follow women if you don’t want to be with them?” he asked.
“What makes you think that’s any of your business?”
“I know it’s none of my business, but you could tell me, couldn’t you?”
“No.”
“How do you choose them? What are your criteria?”
The guy finished his beer. He drank rapidly, and I took that as a sign he might bolt at any moment. Sitting down at his table had been a terrible idea. Curiosity is Fats’s weakness, and it would be to our detriment.
“I follow women who want to be followed. I can see it in their eyes, the clothes they wear, the way they walk—I know when they want a little adventure. Those three over at that table, for instance. None of them are any good.”
“Why not? Because they seem happily married?”
“No. They have lovers. They’re too happy to just have good marriages. They probably love their husbands, fine, but they have lovers. They don’t need another adventure.”
I was still thinking about what he had just said when the guy left. There was no way to stop him, it was all very sudden. He took the pouch and the newspaper and left.
Seconds later, Marina entered the bar.
“Where is he?”
“He just left.”
We went out onto the sidewalk. We could still see the guy, walking along Mem de Sá toward the Lapa Arches. Marina could catch up to him if she so desired.
“Now it’s up to you, angel.”
She kissed me on the cheek. And went after the crazy man.
“I don’t like happy endings,” Fats said, standing beside me.
“We don’t know what the ending will be.”
“Want me to tell you?”
“No.”
The Story of Georges Fullar
by Raphael Montes
Copacabana
I didn’t know he lived in Copacabana. What I mean is that it wasn’t premeditated, you know? We moved in September of the year before last; my parents chose the apartment, I just went along. I don’t have much say there at home. If it were up to me we would’ve stayed in Méier, my friends are all from there. I studied for nineteen years in the Venceslau district, and I never liked the beach—I didn’t find the slightest attraction in living in Copacabana.
Our apartment is at the corner of Ministro Viveiros de Castro and Duvivier. My mother loves living in the South Zone, she talks about it all the time, how she’s come up in the world, how she struggled to get where she is, and how what she wants now more than anything is to be happy. The corner is near the Arcoverde subway station and she almost never uses the car—she hates to drive.
The street is treelined, quiet with a few hotels, quite attractive with their mirror-glass façade, that, according to her, provide greater security. And everythin
g is nearby (as she says with pride): supermarket, luncheonette, flower shop, manicurist, cybercafé, a dance studio, a bakery, and three gyms. I even signed up for the cheapest one, though I definitely don’t have the patience to work out.
So . . . on Thursdays there is a street market with fruit, vegetables, and fish over on Ronald de Carvalho. I always have to go with my mother. It’s close, but she insists I keep her company and take the cart. We get there toward the end, to pick up the leftovers; my mother thinks she’s the world’s greatest negotiator when she buys four limes for a real. Be patient. I’m mentioning the market because it was there that I first saw Georges Fullar. It wasn’t until then that I found out he lived in Copacabana. When I laid eyes on him I was paralyzed—my mother was sticking a few grapes in my mouth to judge if they were sweet but I barely noticed. Hey man, put yourself in my place: you’re at an outdoor market and you see your idol a few feet away. Georges Fullar in Bermudas and slippers carrying a bag of bananas. Can you believe it?
What? You don’t know who Georges Fullar is? Only the greatest writer in the country. Sordid Harvest, you read it? A classic. He’s been mentioned for the Nobel Prize. Georges was a philosopher and an academic. That was back in the 1950s. During the dictatorship he fled to Europe and began to write in order to survive. He wrote a few unimportant detective novels under a gringo pseudonym. You know, the ones they sell at newsstands printed on cheap paper? Georges wrote dozens of them. Extremely hard to find nowadays. I bought three in a used-book store, written in French, but I don’t understand French. I keep them just to have them.
When he returned from Europe Georges published Sordid Harvest. It was a smash. It’s a political novel but also a work of suspense. You can’t stop reading it. It’s not shallow or pseudo-intellectual, you know? It has incredible profundity, a power I can’t explain. It’s told from the point of view of a political exile. It’s the best crime novel I’ve ever read. Sordid Harvest, make a note of it. Later you can look for it. It’s really good.
I had to go after Georges. At the market, I mean. He was tall, bony, and had a head of white hair, easy to follow. He moved somewhat aggressively through the crowd, and the funny thing is that no one recognized him. The greatest writer in Brazil buying half a kilo of fish like he was just another guy. I don’t know how long I watched him. I saw when he finished shopping and headed down Ministro toward our building. He entered the lobby. Jesus, beyond living in Copacabana he was my neighbor! Me on the fourth floor; him on the second. Only two floors between me and the baddest dude in Brazilian literature. I almost flipped.
I told you, didn’t I? I’m a writer too. I’ve got a couple of novels put away in a drawer somewhere. I’ve never tried to publish because I feel I’m too young. A writer’s got to be old, you know? Have experience. I like my work, but nobody writes anything of value in their early twenties.
But what I was saying is that I couldn’t get Georges out of my head. I told my mother, and she insisted I call him on the intercom and explain my admiration for him and all the rest. I was against the idea, I didn’t want to be a nuisance. I tried to forget about him.
* * *
Copacabana is the world squeezed into a single district. Families, whores, street vendors, drunks, old ladies, nannies, gringos, lottery-ticket sellers, and actors are constantly rubbing elbows on the sidewalks of Portuguese mosaic stones. Some weeks later, I was returning from college when I saw Georges having lunch at Galeto Sat’s, right at the beginning of Barata Ribeiro. I wasn’t planning to eat out (actually, my mother was at home waiting for me for lunch), but I couldn’t resist and went in. I sat at the table next to him, ordered Cornish game hen, potatoes, farofa, and a beer. I ate slowly, watching Georges gnaw on chicken bones and thinking: Man, the greatest Brazilian writer gnawing chicken bones right in front of me.
He had already finished eating when he started a conversation. You may not believe it, but that’s exactly how it happened: he started a conversation with me. “You’re the new people on the fourth floor, aren’t you?” I nodded and replied that he lived on the second. He smiled, even though his eyes remained very hard. Georges had grave, always deep eyes, a characteristic of a talented writer who is ever observing the world around him. He added some complaints about the building—he had lived there for thirty years and the new super, a woman, was a cow. A cow. I wasn’t expecting to hear Georges Fullar call someone a cow. I let him go on talking about water leaks, and the problem of having the subway station so close. In addition to being a talented writer, Georges was old and, you know, old people love to complain about life.
Soon afterward, he invited me to sit with him. He asked my name, and then I made a mistake: I introduced myself and confessed I knew who he was, that I had read Sordid Harvest and that it was my favorite book. Man, Georges’s expression changed immediately, and now it wasn’t only his eyes that were hard. Much later, after we became friends, I understood his reaction better: he didn’t like to talk about his work or his life. That was why he lived alone. He had no maids or servants, no children, not even a pet. Really solitary, Georges. It was only when he drank that he talked and opened up.
“Literature is like a steak,” he once told me, when I asked why he hadn’t written anything since Sordid Harvest. “Would you rather eat a steak or talk about a steak?”
“Eat a steak,” I answered.
“The same is true of literature,” he said. “Talking about literature doesn’t hold the slightest appeal.”
We spoke very little about it; he left no opening. There were nights when we drank wine or whiskey, and then there was a way to initiate a few conversations about literary criticism, methods of writing, theories (Georges detested rules), and literary festivals (he also hated literary festivals—a gathering of people to talk about steak).
From time to time a journalist or literature student would show up looking for an interview, an opinion, or even a photo with him. They were all shooed away. Georges wanted to be forgotten by the world. And little by little the world did forget him.
You must be wondering what we talked about. Georges loved talking about women. Beauty, gentleness, maternal devotion. He was enchanted by that and also by their scent. He was a bit of a pervert, Georges. As well as cultured, obviously. We would usually meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays; he would come down from his apartment and we would order sandwiches from Cervantes. It was one of Georges’s vices: the ham-and-pineapple sandwich from Cervantes. We would eat and gorge on wine. The guy knew a lot about wine. And sacred music. Cinema, cuisine, and sculpture too.
We visited the Drummond statue in those days, there at the end of Copacabana. He pointed to some tourists who were posing beside Drummond. “I’ll bet those sons of bitches have never read a single poem of Carlos’s,” he said. “Life is really shitty, you write and become a statue for a bunch of scumbags to take a picture with.” As we were leaving, some idiot tried to cornhole the statue and guffawed. Shitty, huh?
He never came to our home. I invited him once, he said no, and the subject died there. I also never asked him to autograph my books. Because writers are like that: the more adulated they are, the more they disdain people. He liked me because I didn’t pester him, didn’t ask questions, didn’t push. We met for months without my telling him that I also wrote. Understand, it’s not like I hid anything. I just didn’t think I had the right to talk about it with him.
But there came a night when I told him. It was a Thursday, I think. That was some time ago. Georges and I had killed two bottles of wine and several sandwiches. He was on the balcony of his apartment, sitting in the rocker, and began speaking of the period when he published Sordid Harvest. He told about the launching, the criticism in the media, the prizes, the glamour, and concluded: “The literary scene is so full of shit.” He used a lot of four-letter words, Georges.
That was when I came to feel at ease talking about his book, the impact it had on me, about violence, the honesty I saw in the protagonist’s voice . . . He interrupted
me, agreed, and said that was why he had stopped writing. “I don’t know how to be honest anymore,” he confessed. He himself had experienced everything depicted in Sordid Harvest, which is the reason the book was so authentic and vibrant.
“The writer needs to live what he writes,” he said. “What am I going to write about? A decrepit old man who screws whores and strolls along the beach in Copacabana?”
He was talking about self-fiction, you know? It’s the latest thing. Nowadays almost every book has a writer as protagonist. It goes like this: writers writing about writers who don’t publish; university professors writing about university professors in midlife crises; scriptwriters writing about scriptwriters who work hard and earn little.
“They never stop that mutual masturbation,” Georges said. “Gravediggers, firemen, garbagemen, and cabinet makers should be characters too.”
It was then that I said I was writing a book. Four friends sharing an apartment in Copacabana. The main character was a food lover. And there was a hooker named Cora who was a strong female character. He loved the hooker. And loved the idea. In later meetings we didn’t even need to drink in order to talk about my book. He would show up and ask right away how it was progressing. He never offered to read a single page. He just liked to listen and put in his two cents’ worth.
Near the beginning of the book there’s a scene where the protagonist hires a hooker for his virgin friend. That part kind of stymied me. I didn’t know much about hookers. Georges understood right away. The next Tuesday, when I got to his place, he had company.
“This is Suellen,” he said. She was a short, busty woman with curly hair that smelled of shampoo. She was chewing bubble gum and wearing shorts that showed the panties up her ass. I wasn’t taken with Suellen in the least. She was sexy, but her style didn’t turn me on at all.
Georges told me to make some caipirinhas in the kitchen because Suellen only drank caipirinhas. As I was squeezing the limes, he came in and said I was going to screw her. I was against the idea, but he said it was already paid for and I needed to screw a whore to write the scene authoritatively. Did I want to be a decent writer or a hack? He was forceful, Georges.
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