Crimes of August: A Novel: 5 (Brazilian Literature in Translation Series)

by Rubem Fonseca

  At the end of that period of rancor, a feeling of regret started to overcome her. This began when she saw in her closet a piece of silk that she had bought to make a dress. She had seen her mother, in a print dress of faded calico, coming out of a store in Carioca Square. Surely she had bought some remnants to make another horrible dress.

  Salete thought about that as she smoothed the piece of French silk against her breast. Her mother had never had a silk dress, never had the pleasure of feeling the softness of silk on her skin, the poor woman.

  An idea began taking shape in her mind. She put on the simplest skirt and blouse in her wardrobe, removed her jewels. Carrying a package with the cut of silk, she took a taxi and told the driver to take her to São Cristóvão.

  “Where in São Cristóvão?”

  “Favel—uh, Rua São Luiz Gonzaga.”

  When they arrived at the street, Salete asked the driver if he knew where Elisa Cylleno Square was.

  The driver didn’t know.

  “I’ll show you.”

  They drove through a series of alleyways without finding the square.

  “Just where exactly do you want to go?” asked the driver.

  “The Tuiuti favela.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t go into favelas, ma’am. Very dangerous. Not even the police go there.”

  They drove around a bit more. Salete spotted Rua Curuzu.

  “You can drop me off here,” she said.

  From Rua Curuzu she remembered how to get to the favela.

  She arrived at the foot of the hill. She started climbing, passing by shacks in whose doors she saw the same women from her childhood, hanging clothes on lines to dry, carrying undernourished children, some of them pregnant, urchins playing marbles in the dirt, men in undershirts drinking at an openair bar. They all looked at her, finding her presence strange.

  “Who you looking for, dear?” asked an old woman with a child in her arms.

  “Dona Sebastiana’s house.”

  “It’s up there.”

  “I know where it is.”

  The door to the wooden shack, covered with zinc sheets, was closed. Salete knocked.

  Her mother opened the door. She didn’t recognize her daughter.

  “It’s me . . . mother.”

  “Salete? Salete?”

  They stood there silent for several seconds, her mother wiping her hands on her dirty skirt, shifting her feet in clogs.

  “I brought you a gift.”

  “Don’t you want to come in . . . ?”

  Salete entered. She remembered those odors impregnating the house: body smells, mold, rancid food, the stench of poverty. The few pieces of furniture, old and broken, appeared to be the same ones from her time.

  “What about my brothers?”

  “Joãozinho is in prison. He fell in with some bad company. Tião disappeared one day and never came back. Like you.”

  “I came back, mommy. Open your gift.”

  Sebastiana opened the package.

  “What am I going to do with something like this?”

  “Make a dress.”

  “A dress? Me, walking around in a silk dress here in the favela?”

  “You’re going to leave the favela,” said Salete impulsively. “I’ve come to take you to live with me.”

  Sebastiana covered her face with her hands and began to cry.

  Salete approached her mother. Affectionately, she caressed that swollen body racked by sobs.

  “Forgive me, mommy.”

  They both cried, hugging. Along with the pain and repentance she felt, Salete also thought her mother needed a bath.

  “I’D LIKE to talk to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “May I come by your place?”

  “Alice, forgive me for the way I—”

  “May I come by your place?”

  “My shift ends at noon.”

  As soon as he hung up the phone, Mattos received another call.

  “Why don’t you come by here?” the inspector asked, after the other party had spoken.

  “Think I’m crazy? I can’t be seen with you.”

  “Why don’t you tell me by phone?”

  “Don’t you want to see the letter?”

  “Where, then?”

  “At your apartment, right away.”

  “I’m receiving a visitor today. Can it be tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow my wife has to hand the letter over to Bolão.”

  “All right. At my place. Write down the address. Is seven o’clock okay?”

  When they entered the apartment on Avenida Atlântica, Salete’s mother asked, “The apartment yours, Sassá?”

  Sassá was Salete’s nickname when she was a child.

  “I live with a man. He gave it to me. We’re getting married. We’re just waiting for his separation to come through, it’s very complicated.”

  “Is he very old?”

  “No, he’s still young. Look, here’s the bathroom. It’s got everything, soap, talcum powder, towels. Take a bath while I get some clothes for you.”

  Salete opened her closets and after much searching found a large dressing gown that was out of fashion but which she hadn’t thrown out. She never got rid of her disused clothes, and because of that her closets were packed with clothing.

  The gown was a bit tight on her mother, but it would do. Sebastiana looked like a different person.

  “We’re going to the city to buy you some clothes.”

  Salete knew that at Casa Santa Branca, on Rua Ouvidor, they were having a big sale of batistes, woolens, organdies, cashmere, silks, alpacas, cottons. They would buy some cloth and then go to a seamstress.

  MATTOS OPENED the door for Alice. She handed the LP to him.

  “A friend brought me this from her trip to Europe.”

  Tristan und Isolde.

  “With Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad. It’s for you. I hope you like it.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  As he looked at Alice, the inspector thought about the psychiatrist’s words . . . circular insanity . . . biform psychosis . . . alternating-type madness . . . intermittent psychosis . . . typical circular vesania . . . manic-depressive psychosis . . .

  “I’m very nervous . . . Could you get me a glass of water?”

  “Cold?”

  “No, it’s to take a pill.”

  Alice took a pill from a small container in her purse.

  “I’m going to separate from Pedro.”

  “May I play the record?” asked Mattos.

  “I can’t bear living with Pedro any longer.”

  Mattos put the disk on the Victrola. Music from the overture flooded the small room. He identified the melody of one and the other: love and hate, Isolde and Tristan, Alice and Alberto, paradox and madness.

  “My mother died, did I tell you? I don’t have anywhere to go, I think I’ll go to a hotel. Or maybe come here.”

  Typical circular vesania.

  (Stick out your tongue, Alice?)

  “There’s no comfort here.”

  “Who said I need comfort?” replied Alice.

  “I only have two other operas. One of them is a 78.” Mattos laughed.

  “I know. Turn up the sound, and we’ll listen to it in bed.”

  “A guy’s coming here. An informant, a rat.”

  “If he shows up, we won’t let him gnaw on anything.”

  “He’s a police informant. He’ll be here soon.”

  They fell silent.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Must be him.”

  Alice went into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Anastácio Santos, a.k.a. Squinty, came in. He had small eyes that were even smaller when he wanted to see sharply and squinted his eyelids to correct for his myopia.

  He looked suspiciously at the closed bedroom door. “Is somebody in there?” he asked.

  “A woman, sleeping,” said Mattos.

  “With that music on?”

&nb
sp; “Music helps her sleep.”

  “Leave the music playing,” said Anastácio, taking an envelope from his pocket.

  Mattos read the letter with some difficulty.

  “Who’s this Genivaldo?” he asked, handing back the letter.

  “He’s a dip, a friend of Bolão’s.”

  “Is Bolão a pickpocket too?”

  “Yeah. The two of them work for Mr. Ilídio when the pickpocket business is slow.”

  “How much do you want for the information?”

  “They told me you got an in with Mr. Pádua. I wanna make a deal with Mr. Pádua, but he ain’t having any.”

  “I don’t make deals either.”

  “Sir, I think the info I gave you is worth something.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I pulled the Esmeralda job. Mr. Pádua found out, and now he’s after me. I wanna return the jewels and save my ass.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to Mr. Pádua. Today’s Friday. Pádua goes on duty on Sunday. I’ll speak with him on Monday when I relieve him. I can’t guarantee anything more. I don’t have any influence over Mr. Pádua.”

  Indecisive, Anastácio stuck his hand out to Mattos. After hesitating a second, Mattos shook the jewel thief’s hand.

  The letter that Genivaldo had written Bolão, along with family news, said that Ilídio had paid Old Turk to kill Inspector Mattos. “But Old Turk screwed up and the inspector killed him.”

  Mattos went into the bedroom. Turned on the light.

  Alice was lying on the sofa bed, completely dressed. “Leave the light off. Lie down beside me.”

  Mattos lay down beside Alice. The sofa was narrow, their bodies touched. The window was shut, the blinds drawn, and the darkness in the room was very intense.

  Alice embraced Mattos tightly. “I can’t see your face. I’m trying to remember what your face is like, but I’ve forgotten.”

  The inspector also didn’t know what her face was like, there on the sofa bed. All that came to mind was Alice’s face from the time they were going together.

  Mattos felt Alice’s fingers lightly brushing his face. “Your nose is large . . . A man should have a large nose . . . What are you thinking of me? At this moment?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If I ask you to take off your clothes, what will you think of me?”

  “Nothing.”

  Alice got up from the sofa. Mattos saw her in outline, undressing. Accustomed to the darkness, he could make out the whiteness of Alice’s nude body, standing motionless.

  They sat down on the sofa. For some time they held hands. Mattos heard Alice’s ragged breathing. He kissed her cheeks and caressed her fine hair. Alice lay back and pulled Mattos’s body onto her.

  CLIMERIO SPENT TWO DAYS HIDDEN in the shack in the middle of the banana grove, most of the time lying on the mattress from which tufts of straw poked out of holes. Oscar and Honorina took turns bringing him food and a bottle of water. Afterward Oscar built a rudimentary woodstove in the shack for Climerio to cook and make coffee. He would have liked to have a hot maté tea, but his comrade had been unable to arrange the herb. In any case, he lacked the appropriate gourd for the drink.

  Being alone in that place became unbearable. At one point Climerio picked up the revolver and thought about putting a bullet in his head. That day Climerio told Oscar that he’d go crazy if he didn’t get out for a walk. “Nobody’s going to come looking for me in this place.”

  “Did you kill somebody, my friend?”

  For the first time, Climerio told Oscar what had happened. Oscar didn’t attach much importance to what he heard; he didn’t know who Carlos Lacerda was, or Gregório, or any of the others involved in the Tonelero crime, which he’d heard spoken about vaguely when he went to Simplício Rodrigues’s general store in the village. He had no radio in his house and spent the day tending his banana plantation on Taboleiro hill. The only thing Oscar knew about politics was that the president was Getúlio.

  At the end of the afternoon, Oscar and Climerio got into a wagon, pulled by a skinny horse, and went to the village. After buying fertilizer, Oscar went with Climerio to Simplício’s store, where they bought cigarettes and drank booze. Oscar explained that his friend Almeida, who lived in Rio de Janeiro, was spending a few days at his house.

  In the store was a woman, Dona Maria.

  “I live in Rio too,” the woman said. “Fifty-seven Rua Santa Isabel, in Vilar dos Teles.”

  “Vilar dos Teles,” said Climerio, “I know where that is, it’s in the sticks.”

  “And where do you live, in Copacabana?” asked Dona Maria.

  “No need to get mad. I was just kidding,” said Climerio.

  Inspector Mattos awoke when the first light of day filtered through the blinds in his bedroom.

  He looked at Alice sleeping at his side but quickly averted his gaze from the woman’s face. Seeing Alice asleep struck him as an indignity, a gross invasion of the privacy of a defenseless person. He would never allow anyone to watch him sleep; since he was a boy, when he lived with his parents, he was the first to get up; he detested being caught sleeping, even by his mother.

  Whenever he slept with a woman, he always awoke before her.

  Carefully, he got out of the sofa bed. He took his clothes to the living room and dressed.

  That weekend he was off. He could use the time to do some investigating.

  He heard Alice’s voice. “Alberto?”

  He went into the bedroom.

  “What time is it?” Alice had covered her body with the sheet, up to the neck.

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “I have to get up. A lot to do today.”

  She wanted Mattos to leave the bedroom so she could get dressed. She felt embarrassed to be naked in front of him.

  Mattos left the room.

  Afterward they talked, in the living room. Mattos gave Alice two keys, one to the street door of the building, the other to the door of his apartment.

  “We could have lunch together,” said Alice.

  “By lunchtime I don’t think I’ll have completed my work. We can have dinner.”

  They left the building together. Alice caught a taxi.

  “Want a ride to the city?”

  “I’m not going to the city. Thanks.”

  IN A HOUSE ON RUA OLIVEIRA DA SILVA, a small street near Xavier de Brito Square, in Tijuca, a committee made up of Army Colonel Alberico, Air Force Colonel Arruda, and Navy Commodore Osório met that morning to evaluate the task they called “the mission.” The three military men were well known and respected by their comrades in uniform, subordinates as well as superiors, which was the reason they were chosen to serve on that informal commission, whose objective was to visit military units to demonstrate to the troops the bankruptcy of the government and foment repudiation of Vargas. The death of Major Vaz was the driving force of the “missionaries” and the principal accusation of the committee. Next came the corruption and degradation of the administration, which in addition to the sea of mud included the assassination of opposition leaders who clamored for a moral basis for the country. Finally, there was demonstrated to the members of the military—privates and corporals were excluded—the administrative calamity that was leading the country to ruin.

  The same denunciations could be read daily in the articles and editorials published in the nation’s large newspapers.

  WHEN SHE MOVED OUT, Alice had left Lomagno a note saying she no longer wanted to live with him. She asked her husband to find a lawyer to deal with the legal separation. She had concluded by saying her health was good and for Lomagno not to worry or to look for her, as she would get in touch with him when the time was right.

  Lomagno had found the note just before leaving for the extraordinary meeting of Cemtex stockholders. He had asked the maid what time Dona Alice had gone out. The two slept in separate bedrooms. The maid replied that madam had arisen and had left immediately, without even having breakfast, around nine a.m. No, she
hadn’t taken a suitcase or package with her when she left.

  In addition to Pedro Lomagno, present at the Cemtex meeting had been Claudio Aguiar and half a dozen stockholders. Luciana Gomes Aguiar had presided. The chief legal officer of Cemtex, Rafael Fagundes, had directed the procedures. Luciana Gomes Aguiar had been elected president of the firm.

  Claudio Aguiar had remained silent, sighing occasionally.

  After the meeting, Luciana and Lomagno met at Lomagno’s garçonnière, an apartment on Avenida Beira Mar near the intersection with Avenida Antonio Carlos. Shortly after they became lovers, Luciana had replaced all the furniture, carpets, paintings, china, and kitchen utensils in the apartment. Towels, sheets, and dishes were thrown in the trash. “I don’t want anything that recalls the cheap women who came here,” Luciana had said.

  They were known to the doorman as Mr. José Paulo and Dona Luiza.

  As soon as they arrived, Luciana embraced Lomagno, kissing him.

  Her husband’s death had increased the desire she felt for her lover. The same thing, however, wasn’t happening with Lomagno. He moved his body away so that Luciana wouldn’t realize that his sex showed no sign of life after the passionate kiss.

  In the past, in the first times when they met there, as soon as Luciana entered the garçonnière, Lomagno would exhibit the erect manifestation of his amorous ardor, throwing himself impetuously onto her, ripping her clothes, biting her, raping her, amazing her. Part of that furor was pure playacting. But the pleasure was real that he felt in those early encounters: carrying Luciana to the bedroom, turning the woman over and over in bed, making her feel like a fragile doll in the hands of a powerful male; it was true, at first, the swaggering pleasure he felt in exhausting her and finally receiving Luciana’s gesture of submission: her hands clasped in a mute entreaty of devotion and surrender.

  It was something he couldn’t succeed in fantasizing with Alice.

  Now, pretending with Luciana was becoming more and more painful.

  “I’m going into the bathroom for a moment,” said Lomagno.

  “Don’t take long, love, I’m dying . . .”

  In the bathroom, Lomagno took off his clothes and contemplated himself in the mirror. The sight of his own naked body managed to bring some blood to his limp penis. While he gazed at the powerful muscles of his chest, his arms, his thighs, Lomagno stroked his penis until the shaft and head began to swell. Watching his penis harden excited him and increased the flow of blood to the labyrinths and caverns of the member. The more tumescent the image in the mirror, the larger and more rigid grew the penis in his hand. When he felt the moment was right, Lomagno ran to the bedroom, threw himself onto Luciana, who was lying on her back mouthing obscenities. He bit his lover’s breasts, neck, arms; he grasped violently the flesh of Luciana’s legs and buttocks, making her roll over in bed. Movement and force were the mechanism of sex. He possessed the woman.