“Where can I find Chicken Zé?” he asks a man in Bermudas, Hawaiian sandals and a T-shirt with a three-strand gold chain wrapped around his neck, but the man looks at Augusto with an ugly expression, doesn’t answer, and walks away. Further ahead, Augusto sees a boy. “Where can I find the boss of the beggars?” he asks, and the boy replies, “You got any change for me?” Augusto gives the boy some money. “I don’t know who you mean. Go to the corner of Major Valô Square, there’s people there who can tell you.”
At the corner of Major Valô Square are a few men, and Augusto heads toward them. As he approaches, he notices that the man in Bermudas with the three-strand gold chain is in the group. “Hello,” Augusto says, and no one answers. A large black man without a shirt asks, “Who was it said my name is Chicken Zé?”
Augusto senses that he is unwelcome. One of the men has a club in his hand.
“It was Benevides, who lives on Carmo, corner of Sete de Setembro.”
“That lush is a sell-out, happy to be living in a cardboard box, grateful to be picking up paper in the street and sell it to the sharks. People like that don’t support our movement.”
“Somebody needs to teach the fucker a lesson,” says the man with the club, and Augusto is uncertain whether he or Benevides is the fucker.
“He said you’re president of the Beggars Union.”
“And who’re you?”
“I’m writing a book called The Art of Walking in the Streets of Rio de Janeiro.”
“Show me the book,” says the guy with the gold chain.
“It’s not with me; it’s not ready.”
“What’s your name?”
“Aug—Epifânio.”
“What the shit kind of name is that?”
“Search him,” says Chicken Zé.
Augusto allows himself to be searched by the man with the club. The latter gives Chicken Zé Augusto’s pen, his ID card, his money, the small pad of paper, and the semiprecious stone in a small cloth sack that Augusto received from the bagger of fat women.
“This guy’s nuts,” says an old black man observing the goings on.
Chicken Zé takes Augusto by the arm. He says: “I’m going to have a talk with him.”
The two walk to the Escada da Conceição alleyway.
“Look here, Mr. Fancy, first of all, my name isn’t Chicken Zé, it’s Zumbi from Jogo da Bola, you understand? And second, I’m not president of any fucking Beggars Union; that’s crap put out by the opposition. Our name is the Union of the Homeless and Shirtless, the UHS. We don’t ask for handouts, we don’t want handouts, we demand what they took from us. We don’t hide under bridges or inside cardboard boxes like that fucker Benevides, and we don’t sell gum and lemons at intersections.”
“Correct,” says Augusto.
“We want to be seen, we want them to look at our ugliness, our dirtiness, want them to smell our bodies everywhere; want them to watch us making our food, sleeping, fucking, shitting in the pretty places where the well-off stroll and live. I gave orders for the men not to shave, for the men and women and children not to bathe in the fountains; the fountains are for pissing and shitting in. We have to stink and turn people’s stomachs like a pile of garbage in the middle of the street. And nobody asks for money. It’s better to rob than to panhandle.”
“Aren’t you afraid of the police?”
“The police don’t have any place to put us; the jails are full and there are lots of us. They arrest us and have to let us go. And we stink too bad for them to want to beat up on us. They take us off the streets, and we come back. And if they kill one of us, and I think that’s going to happen any time now, and it’s even a good thing if it does happen, we’ll get the body and parade the carcass through the streets like Lampião’s head.”
“Do you know how to read?”
“If I didn’t know how to read, I’d be living happily in a cardboard box picking up other people’s leavings.”
“Where do you get the resources for that association of yours?”
“The talk’s over, Epifânio. Remember my name, Zumbi from Jogo da Bola; sooner or later you’re going to hear about me, and it won’t be from that shitass Benevides. Take your things and get out of here.”
Augusto returns to his walkup on Sete de Setembro by going down Escada da Conceição to Major Valô Square. He takes João Homem to Liceu, where there’s a place called the Tourist House, from there to Acre Street, then to Uruguaiana. Uruguaiana is occupied by police shock troops carrying shields, helmets with visors, batons, machine guns, tear gas. The stores are closed.
Kelly is reading the part of the newspaper marked by Augusto as homework.
“This is for you,” Augusto says.
“No, thank you. You think I’m some kind of performing dog? I’m learning to read because I want to. I don’t need little presents.”
“Take it, it’s an amethyst.”
Kelly takes the stone and throws it with all her strength. The stone hits against the skylight and falls to the floor. Kelly kicks the chair, wads the newspaper into a ball, which she throws at Augusto. Other whores had done things even worse; they have attacks of nerves when they spend a lot of time alone with a guy and he doesn’t want to go to bed with them. One of them tried to take Augusto by force and bit off his entire ear, which she spat into the toilet and flushed.
“Are you crazy? You could break the skylight. It’s over a hundred years old. The old man would die of a broken heart.”
“You think I’ve got the clap, or AIDS, is that it?”
“No.”
“You want to go to the doctor with me for him to examine me? You’ll see I don’t have any kind of disease.”
Kelly is almost crying, and her grimace reveals her missing tooth, which gives her an unprotected, suffering air, which reminds him of the teeth he, Augusto, doesn’t have and awakens in him a fraternal and uncomfortable pity, for her and for himself.
“You don’t want to go to bed with me, you don’t want to hear the story of my life, I do everything for you, I’ve learned to read, I treat your rats well, I even hugged a tree in the Public Promenade, and you don’t even have one ear, and I never mentioned that you don’t have one ear so as not to annoy you.”
“I was the one who hugged the tree.”
“Don’t you feel like doing it?” she yells.
“I don’t have desire, or hope, or faith, or fear. That’s why no one can harm me. To the contrary of what the old man said, the lack of hope has liberated me.”
“I hate you!”
“Don’t yell, you’re going to wake the old man.”
The old man lives in the rear of the store, downstairs.
“How am I going to wake him up if he doesn’t sleep?”
“I don’t like to see you yelling.”
“I’m yelling! I’m yelling!”
Augusto embraces Kelly and she sobs, her face against his chest. Kelly’s tears wet Augusto’s shirt.
“Why don’t you take me to the Santo Antônio Convent? Please, take me to the Santo Antônio Convent.”
Saint Anthony is considered a saint for those seeking marriage. On Tuesdays the convent is filled with single women of all ages making vows to the saint. It’s a very good day for beggars, as the women, after praying to the saint, always give alms to the poor petitioners, and the saint may notice that act of charity and decide in favor of their petition.
Augusto doesn’t know what to do with Kelly. He says he’s going to the store to talk with the old man.
The old man is lying in bed in the small room at the rear of the store. The bed is so narrow that he doesn’t fall out of it only because he never sleeps.
“May I speak with you a bit?”
The old man sits up in bed. He motions for Augusto to sit beside him.
“Why do people want to go on living?”
“You want to know why I want to go on living, as old as I am?”
“No, all people.”
“Why do you
want to go on living?” the old man asks.
“I like trees. I want to finish writing my book. But sometimes I think about killing myself. Tonight Kelly hugged me, crying, and I felt the urge to die.”
“You want to die so as to put an end to other people’s suffering? Not even Christ managed that.”
“Don’t talk to me of Christ,” Augusto says.
“I stay alive because I don’t have a lot of pains in my body and I enjoy eating. And I have good memories. I’d also stay alive if I didn’t have any memories at all,” says the old man.
“What about hope?”
“In reality hope only liberates the young.”
“But at the Timpanas you said—”
“That hope is a kind of liberation … But you have to be young to take advantage of it.”
Augusto climbs the stairs back to his walkup.
“I gave the rats some cheese,” Kelly says.
“Do you have some good memory of your life?” Augusto asks.
“No, my memories are all horrible.”
“I’m going out,” Augusto says.
“Will you be back?” Kelly asks.
Augusto says he’s going to walk in the streets. Solvitur ambulando.
On Rosário Street, empty, since it’s nighttime, near the flower market, he sees a guy destroying a public telephone; it’s not the first time he’s run into that individual. Augusto doesn’t like to interfere in other people’s lives, which is the only way to walk in the streets in the late hours, but Augusto doesn’t like the destroyer of public phones. Not because he cares about the phones—since he left the water and sewerage department he has never once spoken on a telephone—but because he doesn’t like the guy’s face; he shouts “Cut that shit out,” and the vandal runs off in the direction of Monte Castelo Square.
Now Augusto is on Ouvidor, heading toward Mercado Street, where there’s no more market at all; there used to be one, a monumental iron structure painted green, but it was torn down, and they left only a tower. Ouvidor, which by day is so crammed with people that one can’t walk without bumping into others, is deserted. Augusto walks along the odd-numbered side of the street, and two guys come toward him from the opposite direction, on the same side of the street, some two hundred yards away. Augusto quickens his pace. At night it’s not enough to walk fast in the street, it’s also necessary to avoid having the path blocked, and so he crosses over to the even-numbered side. The two guys cross to the even-numbered side, and Augusto returns to the odd-numbered side. Some of the stores have security guards, but the guards aren’t stupid enough to get involved in someone else’s mugging. Now the guys separate, and one comes down the even-numbered side and the other down the odd-numbered side. Augusto continues walking, faster, toward the guy on the even side, who hasn’t increased the speed of his steps and seems even to have slowed his pace a little, a thin guy, unshaven, designer shirt and dirty sneakers, who exchanges a look with his partner on the other side, somewhat surprised at the speed of Augusto’s steps. When Augusto is about five yards from the man on the even-numbered side, the guy on the odd-numbered side crosses the street and joins his accomplice. They both stop. Augusto comes closer and, when he is slightly more than a yard from the men, crosses to the even-numbered side and continues ahead at the same speed. “Hey!” one of the guys says. But Augusto keeps on going without turning his head, his good ear attuned to the sound of footsteps behind him; by the sound he can tell if his pursuers are walking or running after him. When he gets to the Pharoux pier, he looks back and sees no one.
His Casio Melody plays Haydn’s three a.m. music; it’s time to write his book, but he doesn’t want to go home and face Kelly. Solvitur ambulando. He goes to the Mineiros pier, walks to the boat moorings at Quinze Square, listening to the sea beat against the stone wall.
He waits for day to break, standing at dockside. The ocean waters reek. The tide rises and falls as it meets the sea wall, causing a sound that seems like a sigh, or a moan. It’s Sunday; the day comes forth gray. On Sunday the majority of restaurants downtown don’t open; like all Sundays, today will be a bad day for the poor who live on the remains of discarded food.
belle
“THE WALTHER’S HOT, IF THEY CATCH YOU WITH IT, it’ll spill over to us. After you do the job, throw it away, in the ocean or the lake.”
“Leave it to me,” I said.
The Dispatcher went on. “Remember the Glock and the shit storm it caused?” As if I could forget the black guy who pretended he was living in the rocks with the cockroaches but wasn’t one of us, and smelled of scented soap and wore a fancy watch and when he stuck his hand in his waistband to pull out the piece, I shot him in the head and took his weapon, a Glock 18, automatic, a beauty, the best thing to ever come out of Austria. But it was hot, and when they caught me with it, they worked me over and broke two teeth here in front, crippled my right hand. They wanted me to confess to killing the black guy and said they’d go easy on me if I told them who’d hired me, but I didn’t open my trap and didn’t confess to a goddamn thing.
“You didn’t know who ordered it.”
“By the victim, you suspect who’s behind it. It’s simple. Want me to say his name? Don’t fuck with me, old pal, look at my false teeth, my gimpy hand. I knew, I was tortured, and I didn’t rat anyone out.”
“They broke the wrong hand,” said the Dispatcher. “If they knew you were a lefty …”
I walked away with the fool still talking to himself. I went to the hotel where the customer was staying—that was the name, customer, we used for the guy who was going to be hit. I called my girlfriend to be beside me at the door.
I don’t enjoy popping anybody, but it’s my job. The Dispatcher told me one day he read in a book that a man just needs two things, fucking and working, but all I needed was fucking; work is for shit. But I use a disguise: to everyone I’m a vendor of computer products, and I always carry around a small leather briefcase full of brochures.
Before we went to the hotel, my girlfriend arrived at my apartment and took off her clothes and her white body filled the darkened room with light and I looked at her ass to see if it had any marks from her bikini or the sun. She knew if she showed the least hint of suntan I’d beat the hell out of her, but her ass was whiter than an ambulance.
Her name was Belinha, she was eighteen, she liked me because I was an outlaw, and because she knew my hard-on was for real. She despised those guys who take pills to get it up, said she couldn’t love a man who faked it like that. And she sucked my cock and I made her get on her knees on the bed and I sucked her pussy; she got off on being sucked like that. I would stick my tongue in there, and sometimes she’d ask me to put my nose in. Her pussy was fragrant and I would stick my nose in. I forgot to say that besides a large cock, I also have a large nose. Then I’d ram my cock in and she would come; that was the beginning.
She didn’t know the kind of work I did, she thought it was something to do with smuggling or drugs and asked to see my tools and said she liked being an outlaw’s girl, but I couldn’t explain my job to her; I myself didn’t really know what was behind it all. The Dispatcher would call me and say he had a job and give me the file on the customer, sometimes it was some important guy whose name was in the newspapers. I’ve even done foreigners. I was well paid, trustworthy, proof of which were the false teeth in my mouth, the scar on my face, and my busted right hand with fingers bent like thick pieces of wire.
My girlfriend came from an important family rolling in dough, was educated in the finest schools, and spoke French. She called herself Belinha or Isabel or Isabella or Belle. I preferred Belle because she was the most beautiful girl in the world. We were in my apartment waiting for the time to go to the hotel where I was going to meet the customer. Lying in bed after fucking, she said, “Explain that stuff about pistols and revolvers, the difference.” I said that in a revolver the bullets are in a cylinder we call a drum, each cartridge has its own ignition chamber, and after each shot
the cylinder rotates, bringing a new cartridge into alignment with the barrel. There are six-cartridge drums, the most common, and nine-cartridge, depending on the size of the revolver. A pistol, like the Walther semiautomatic P99, has a clip with cartridges that slides into the handle, and after each shot the empty cartridge is ejected and a new cartridge is loaded from the clip and placed in position for firing.
She also wanted to know why I used a pistol and not a revolver, so I explained, while she held the Walther as if it were a dead rat, that pistols were smaller, lighter, and more reliable, and besides, a pistol allowed the use of a silencer. “This fucker screwed into the barrel of the pistol is the silencer. There’s no such thing as silencers for revolvers—I mean, there is, but they’re bulky mothers that enclose the drum and make the weapon too heavy. Nobody uses them, they’re a museum piece.”
She also asked what I felt when I snuffed a guy, and I answered I didn’t think about anything, just like a soldier in war. The difference is that I didn’t win a medal when I killed the enemy.
I put on a coat, and she dressed in some high-class women’s clothes, and we went to the customer’s hotel and waited in the lobby for the guy to arrive. Belle was an elegant girl when it came to dressing, sitting, speaking. Anyone who looked at her would say: This is a well-born girl from a good family. That’s why I told her I’d beat the hell out of her if she got a tattoo like she’d been talking about doing.
My appearance is nondescript: I’m a thin guy with a big nose, an inoffensive look, hair starting to go gray. Wearing that dark suit I looked like an insurance salesman. The Dispatcher had told me the customer was going to a meeting away from the hotel and should be back around nine that night. I had two pictures of his face in my pocket.
Then the customer showed up. I was a bit surprised to see him, not much, I’m an old whore and don’t really get surprised. But the guy was in a wheelchair, being pushed by a young woman who looked like a nurse. That fucker the Dispatcher hadn’t told me the customer was a cripple.
Winning the Game and Other Stories Page 16