Winning the Game and Other Stories

by Rubem Fonseca

  “You’re neither one nor the other,” Pacheco said in a tired voice, “but it wouldn’t be hard to prove you’re both.” He looked at me like someone looking at his naughty kid brother.

  “A friend told me you’ve been bothering him. Stop doing it.”

  “May I ask your friend’s name? I bother a lot of people.”

  “You know who he is. Leave him alone, joker.”

  “Let’s go then,” Wexler said. His father had been killed before his eyes in the Warsaw ghetto pogrom in 1943, when he was eight. He could read people’s faces.

  “Be careful with that Nazi,” Wexler said in the street. “Look, just what kind of mess are you involved in?”

  I told him about the Cavalcante Meier case. Wexler spat vigorously on the ground—when he’s angry he doesn’t swear, he spits on the ground—and grasped my arm firmly.

  “You have nothing to do with the case. Drop it. Those Nazis!” He spat again.

  I called Berta.

  “B.B., you open with the Ruy Lopez and I’ll beat you in fifteen moves.”

  It was a lie. Black has real problems with that opening when the players are equal, as was our case. I just wanted someone near who loved me.

  “You look awful,” Berta said when she arrived.

  My face is a collage of several faces, something that began when I was eighteen; until then my face had unity and symmetry, I was only one. Later I became many.

  I set the bottle of Faísca beside the chessboard.

  We began to play. As agreed, she opened with the Ruy Lopez. By the fifteenth move I was in a tight spot.

  “What’s going on? Why didn’t you use the Steinitz defense to leave the king file open for the rook? Or the Tchigorin defense, developing the queen side? You can’t be that passive against a Ruy Lopez.”

  “Look, Berta, Bertie, Bertola, Bertette, Bertier, Bertiest, Bertissima, Bertina, B.B.”

  “You’re drunk,” Berta said.

  “Right.”

  “We’re not going to play any more.”

  “I want to hug you, rest my head on your breasts, feel the warmth between your legs. I’m tired, B.B. And I’m in love with another woman.”

  “What? Are you pulling a Le Bonheur on me?”

  “A mediocre film,” I said.

  Berta threw the chessmen on the floor. An impulsive woman.

  “Who’s the woman? I had an abortion because of you; I have a right to know.”

  “The daughter of a client.”

  “How old is she? My age? Or are you already looking for younger ones? Sixteen? Twelve?”

  “Your age.”

  “Is she prettier than me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not. But she’s a woman I’m attracted to.”

  “You men are such childish, weak braggarts! A fool, you’re a fool!”

  “I love you, Berta,” I said, thinking of Eve.

  When we went to bed, I thought of Eve the entire time. After we made love, Berta fell asleep, belly upwards. She snored lightly, her mouth open, torpid. Whenever I drink a lot, I only sleep for half an hour, and I wake up feeling guilty. There was Berta, her mouth open, sleeping like the dead. Sleeping is such a weakness! Children know that. That’s why I don’t sleep much, the fear of being unarmed. Berta was snoring. Strange, in such a gentle person. The sun was coming up, with a fantastic light somewhere between red and white. That called for a bottle of Faísca. I drank it, showered, got dressed, and went to the office. The watchman asked, “The bed catch on fire last night, sir?”

  I sat down and did the final brief for a client. Wexler arrived, and we started talking about inconsequential matters, things that wouldn’t get us excited.

  “It must be hell being the son of Portuguese immigrants,” Wexler said.

  “What about the son of a Jew killed in a pogrom?” I asked.

  “My father was a Latin professor, my mother played Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms on the piano. Your father fished for cod, your mother was a seamstress!”

  Wexler went to the window and spat.

  “Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Belsen, and Buchenwald. The five B’s of the piano,” I said.

  He gave a painful look, an expression only Jews can achieve.

  “Forgive me,” I said. His mother had died at Buchenwald, a young and pretty woman in her photo, with a sweet, dark-complexioned face. “Forgive me.”

  The day ended and I decided not to go home. I didn’t want to face Berta, the answering machine, anyone, or anything. All I could think of was Eve. My passions are brief but overwhelming.

  A cheap hotel on Correa Dutra Street, in Flamengo. I got the key, went up to the room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling.

  There was one bulb, a dirty globe of light, which I turned on and off. The street sounds blended with the silence into an opaque, neutral mucus. Eve. Eve. Cain killed Abel. Someone’s always killing someone else. I spent the night tossing in bed.

  In the morning I paid the hotel and went for a shave and haircut.

  “The Steinitz defense,” I told the barber, “isn’t really that effective. The rook’s mobility is limited; it’s a powerful piece, although predictable.”

  “You’re right,” the barber said cautiously.

  “The Tchigorin defense jeopardizes the queen, something I never do,” I continued. “Everything’s wrong, the idiotic lyrics of the national anthem, our positivist flag without the color red—what good is the green of our forests and the yellow of our gold without the blood of our veins?”

  “It’s scandalous,” the barber said.

  While the barber talked about the cost of living, I read the paper. Márcio Amaral, also known as Márcio the Suzuki, had been found dead in his apartment in the Fátima section. One bullet in the head. In his right hand was a .38 Taurus revolver with one spent cartridge in the cylinder. The police suspected homicide. Márcio the Suzuki was said to be involved in the drug trade in the city’s South Zone.

  “I don’t care any more. Screw them all, that bastard of a senator and his ice queen daughter, the pale shadow, the dead secretary and her gabby parents, the biker, Guedes—they can all go to hell. I’ve had it.”

  The barber looked at me uneasily.

  There was a note for me in my apartment: Where have you been hiding? Are you crazy? Wexler wants to talk to you, urgently. I’m at the store. Call me. I love you. I miss you like mad. Berta.

  I still liked Berta, but my heart no longer beat faster when I heard her voice or read her messages. Berta had become the perfect person to marry, when I was old and decrepit.

  I called Berta, set up a meeting for that night. What else could I do? I dialed Wexler.

  “I thought Pacheco had you,” Wexler said. “Raul is looking for you. Says it’s important.”

  Raul’s telephone rang and rang and rang. He answered just as I was about to hang up.

  “I was in the bathroom. Guedes really wanted to talk to you. Stop by Homicide,” he said.

  I told Raul about Pacheco’s threats. Raul said to be careful.

  At Homicide, Guedes saw me right away.

  “I’ll play straight with you,” he said. “Read this.”

  The handwriting was rounded, the dots over the i’s little circles. Rodolfo, don’t think you can treat me like this, like an object you use and then throw away. I feel like doing crazy things, having a talk with your wife, raising a scandal in the company, going public in the newspapers. You have no idea what I’m capable of. I don’t want an apartment anymore, you can’t buy me the way you do everybody else. You’re the man of my life, I never had another, I didn’t want to and I still don’t. You’ve been avoiding me, and that’s no way to end a relationship like ours. I want to see you. Call me, right away. I’m really out of my head and nervous. I might do anything. Marly.

  “Well?” Guedes said.

  “Well what?”

  “You have any ideas?”

  “What idea could I have?”

  “What do you make of the letter?”
r />   “Has the handwriting been analyzed?”

  “No, but I’m sure it’s Marly Moreira’s. Know where the letter was found? On one Márcio Amaral, commonly known as Márcio the Suzuki. The person who killed Márcio searched the room, possibly looking for the letter, but forgot to look in the victim’s pockets. That’s where the letter was.”

  “An amateur,” I said.

  “A real amateur. They tried to fake a suicide without knowing the tricks. No sign of gunpowder on Márcio’s fingers, the bullet’s path was downward; lots of mistakes. The killer was standing, and the victim was seated. I think I know who the murderer is. An important man.”

  “Be careful. Important men can buy everybody.”

  “Not everybody’s for sale,” Guedes said. He could have said he was incorruptible, but the ones who really aren’t for sale, like him, don’t brag about it.

  “Senator Rodolfo Cavalcante Meier killed Marly,” Guedes went on. “Márcio, we don’t know how, got hold of the letter and started blackmailing the senator. To cover up the first crime, the senator committed a second one, killing Márcio.”

  I was looking at a decent man doing his job with dedication and intelligence. I felt like telling everything I knew, but I couldn’t. Cavalcante Meier wasn’t even my client, he was a disgusting millionaire and maybe a vile murderer as well, but even so I couldn’t turn him in. My job is to get people out of the grasp of the police; I just can’t bring myself to do the opposite.

  “Well?” Guedes asked.

  “The senator wouldn’t have to kill anyone himself. He’d find somebody to do the job for him,” I said.

  “We’re not in his home state,” Guedes said.

  “We also have hit men here who’ll kill for next to nothing.”

  “But they can’t be trusted. The police get hold of them, rough them up a bit, and they spill their guts. They’re not mafiosi working under some code of silence,” Guedes said. “Besides, you agreed that both crimes were the work of an amateur.”

  I repeated that I knew nothing about the crimes and that my opinion was off the top of my head.

  “Raul said you could help,” Guedes said, disappointed, as I left.

  I set up the chessboard and put a bottle of Faísca in the ice bucket.

  “I don’t feel like playing chess or drinking wine,” Berta said.

  “What is it, honey?” I asked, knowing only too well.

  “The only way I’ll stay with you is if you give up that girl.”

  “There’s nothing between us. How can I give up what doesn’t exist?”

  “You care about her, that exists. I want you to stop caring about her. You once told me you only care about those who care about you, that you only care about those you love. I want you to care only about me. Otherwise, good-bye, no more chess games, no balling any time you feel the urge, no wine binges. I hate wine, you idiot—I drink it because of you. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.”

  “What about chess?”

  “Chess I like,” Berta said, wiping her tears. Berta was a protagonist in my life, instead of her own.

  I promised to make an effort to forget Eve. I let her beat me using the Blemenfeld countergambit. To tell the truth, she’d have won anyway, since the whole time I was asking myself how Marly Moreira’s letter had fallen into the hands of Márcio the Suzuki. P-Q4, N-KB3. Cavalcante Meier would surely have kept it in a safe place. N-KB3, BP-Q3. Why didn’t he destroy it? Maybe he never received it, maybe someone intercepted it. P-B4, P-B4. In that case it had to be someone in his house, assuming the letter was sent to his house; it might have gone to his office. I had a hunch it was the house. The butler? I laughed. P-Q5, P-QN4. “You’re laughing, are you?” Berta said, “In a few minutes you’ll see.” PXKP, BPXP. It was Berta’s turn to laugh. Someone in security, or the wife, whom I’d never seen, or the daughter, or the niece. As Raul said, you have to suspect even your own mother. PXP, P-Q4. “Mate!” Berta said.

  “B.B.,” I said, “not even Alekhine could have played so brilliantly.”

  “You just played badly,” Berta said.

  I was willing to forget Eve, as I had promised Berta, but when I got to Cavalcante Meier’s house it was Eve who opened the door, and my enthusiasm returned. I had first gone to his office, where they told me the senator was at home, sick. I had a newspaper in my hand with a story about the death of Marly Moreira. The case was back on page one. Ballistics had proved that Márcio the Suzuki was shot with the same gun that killed Marly. Detective Guedes had said in an interview that a big name was involved and that the police were close to arresting him, whatever the consequences. There was also talk of drug dealing.

  “I want to speak with your father.”

  “He can’t see anyone.”

  “It’s in his interest. Tell him the police have the letter. Just that.”

  She looked at me with her impassive doll’s face. Her healthy skin had the appearance of porcelain, rosy cheeks, red lips, bright blue eyes, a luxuriant growing thing in the prime of life. She was like a color slide projected in the air.

  “He can’t see anyone,” Eve repeated.

  “Look, girl, your father’s in a bind, and I want to help him. Tell him the police have the letter.”

  Cavalcante Meier received me wearing a short red velvet robe. His hair had been carefully combed and oiled, recently.

  “The police have the letter,” I said. “They know it was sent to a certain Rodolfo and think you’re that Rodolfo. Fortunately the envelope hasn’t been found, so they can’t prove anything.”

  “I tore up the envelope,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t destroy the letter too. I kept it in a drawer in the table by my bed.”

  “A banker’s failing, keeping documents,” I said.

  “I didn’t kill Marly. I haven’t the faintest idea who did.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that. I think it was you.”

  “Prove it.”

  He looked like Jack Palance, Wilson the gunslinger pulling on his black gloves and saying “Prove it” to Elisha Cook Jr., just before he whipped out his Colt and shot him in the chest, then threw him face down into the mud furrowed by wagon wheels.

  “There are a lot of Rodolfos in the world. I can prove I never saw the girl in my life. Do you know where I was at the time the crime was committed? Having dinner with the Governor. He can confirm it. You’re a man consumed by envy, aren’t you? You hate people who made it in life, who didn’t end up as jailhouse lawyers, don’t you?”

  “I don’t hate anyone. I merely feel contempt for scum like you.”

  “Then what are you doing here? After money?”

  “No, after your daughter.”

  Cavalcante Meier raised his hand to hit me. I stopped his hand in midair. His arm had no strength to it. I released his hand. He was a piece of filth, a courtly exploiter of people, sybarite, parasite.

  Raul was waiting for me at the office.

  “Guedes has been taken off the Marly Moreira case by order of the Commissioner, as of today. He gave interviews against regulations. They think he’s bucking for promotion. He’s been transferred to a precinct in the sticks. He can’t open his trap.”

  Guedes wasn’t out for promotion. He believed Cavalcante Meier was guilty and wanted to go public before they could cover it up. He believed in the media and in public opinion. Naive, but that kind of person often achieves incredible things.

  “So how’s it going?” Wexler asked.

  “Ah, Leon, I’m in love!”

  “Aren’t you always? Berta is a nice girl.”

  “It’s a different one. Senator Cavalcante Meier’s daughter.”

  “You want to screw every woman in the world,” Wexler said in recrimination.

  “That’s true.”

  It was true. I had the soul of a sultan out of the thousand and one nights; when I was a boy, at least once a month I would fall in love and cry myself to sleep. As an adolescent, I began dedicating my life to screwing. The daughters
of friends, the wives of friends, women I knew, and women I didn’t know—I screwed everybody. The only one I didn’t screw was my mother.

  “There’s a girl in the outer office who wants to speak to you,” Dona Gertrudes, the secretary, told me. Dona Gertrudes was becoming uglier by the day. She was starting to get a humpback and mustache, and I had the impression that she looked cross-eyed at me, one eye in each direction. A saintly woman. On second thought, was she really?

  Eve, in the outer office. We stood there reading each other’s expression.

  “Do you play chess?” I asked.

  “No. Bridge.”

  “Will you teach me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I held myself in check so I wouldn’t fly around the room like a June bug.

  “It wasn’t my father, I know it wasn’t.”

  “I love you,” I said. “From the first day I met you.” Her look was like a blowtorch.

  “I was pretty shaken myself that day.”

  We were holding hands when Wexler came into the room.

  “Raul is here. I told him you were busy. You want to talk to him?”

  “It must be something to do with the Marly case. Yes, I’ll talk to him. Wait here,” I told Eve.

  I was at the door when Eve said, “Save my father.”

  I turned. “You have to help me do that.”

  “How?”

  “You can begin by not lying to me any more.”

  “I won’t lie again.”

  “What did you say to Márcio the Suzuki at your house? Where did you know him from?”

  “Márcio supplied cocaine for my cousin Lilly. But she kicked the habit about six months ago. That day I asked Márcio if Lilly had gone back to snorting, and he said no. I was afraid he was there to bring drugs for her.”

  “Where did Lilly get the money to buy the stuff?”

  “Daddy gives Lilly anything she asks for. She’s the daughter of his brother who died when Lilly was a child. Her mother remarried and wanted nothing to do with her, so Lilly came to live with us when she was eight.”

  “Why did you say you know your father didn’t kill Marly and Márcio?”

  “My father couldn’t kill anyone.”

  “So it’s just a feeling, a simple assumption?”