“How long have you worked here?” Espinosa knew the answer and the doorman knew he knew, but it was a place to start.
“I’ve worked here almost five years.”
“So you must have known Dona Magali pretty well.”
“From the beginning. She moved in around the same time I started.”
“And how did she act with you?”
“Sir, I’m only not saying she was a saint, God forgive me, because of her profession, but she was a marvelous person. She gave us presents every Christmas; when she got here late at night, she always had a little piece of candy, a chocolate …”
“Besides the occasional tip,” Espinosa added.
“Every once in a while she would give a gratuity…. It was a pleasure.”
“And because of her occupation, did many people come to see her?”
“Only when it wasn’t the other officer’s day, and even then it wasn’t a lot of people. They had to be recommended.”
“And when were those days?”
“Officer Vieira had his own schedule: he came on Wednesday afternoons, Friday nights, and I think she went to his house on Sundays.”
“So on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays she had other men here?”
“Right. But like I said, it was only people who had been referred to her.”
“I know. And girlfriends? Didn’t any women ever visit?”
“There was Dona Flor. There was also Dona Vanessa, but she lives here in the building.”
“What apartment does Dona Vanessa live in?”
“She lives in 803, but she went to visit some relatives for a few days. She was really shaken by Dona Magali’s death; she even had to call a doctor. But she should be back soon.”
“Do you get along with all the women in the building who share Dona Magali’s profession?”
“I’m the night doorman, sir. But they know that I’m very religious and treat me with all due respect, just as I do them.”
“And on that Friday night you didn’t see her come back?”
“I saw her get out of the car with the other officer and meet Dona Flor in front of the building. They didn’t stay long and soon all three of them left. Mr. Vieira was inebriated and couldn’t manage to get out of the car; he was halfway in and halfway out. After they left I didn’t see any of them again. When Dona Magali came back I was in my room. My stomach wasn’t feeling very good that night and I’d had to leave the desk several times.”
“That’s fine, Ismael. Here’s my card with my contact numbers. As soon as Dona Vanessa comes back from her vacation, ask her to call me; you don’t need to tell her about our conversation.”
A couple entered. She made a slight gesture with her head and arm that could have been a greeting or a signal. The doorman replied with a look as he stuck the card in his pocket. Ismael returned to his chair, and before Espinosa could close the glass door the television was already back on.
The distance to the Peixoto district was short; Espinosa crossed it on foot, contemplating the moral conflicts of a born-again doorman in a building so heavily populated by sinners. In spite of the heavy summer-evening air, announcing an imminent shower, he wasn’t in much of a hurry, walking as if he had all the time in the world. Less than two weeks to go before Christmas. The season temporarily transformed the scene: it became cinematic, a kind of romantic noir, and the prostitutes, street kids, and dispossessed of all kinds looked like players in the cast. Not that they were outwardly transformed; they went about their business as usual. The change was extremely subtle; perhaps people saw their own pasts in a new light. For Espinosa, even this rearrangement was not completely conscious or accessible; it was as if the play of light, the shadows of forgotten facts that made up his own past, had shifted, creating relief and nuance where before there had only been flatness. Still, things happened at this time of year that didn’t happen in other seasons. On Christmas Eve, the simple sight of an illuminated window cast a kind of spell; the yellowish light of a lampshade seen through the window of an apartment building became a flickering hearth. Around it, a traveler recently returned from distant lands narrated extraordinary exploits to a small group of friends. The hearth came from all those American and European films, where Christmas was always snowy and white, or from the stories of Somerset Maugham, where tales of the South Seas were recounted around an English fireplace. He didn’t feel like an idiot ruminating along such lines because he knew he wasn’t thinking logically but enjoying a semidelirious daydream (which wasn’t to say that he believed logical thinking to be a by-product of reason). The first drops fell on him as soon as he’d crossed the square.
Flor was confused about Espinosa. On the one hand he was Vieira’s friend; on the other, he was a policeman in charge of investigating her friend’s death. On the two occasions she had been summoned to the station to provide clarifications, it was clear that the motive for the summons was not to strengthen or refresh their friendship. She considered this a shame, since she found the officer very attractive. His own attraction to her had become more obvious: his way of getting closer by distancing himself; the tension in the air whenever they found themselves alone; but above all the sparkle in his eyes, the same sparkle she’d seen in the eyes of the boys in Recife when they deposited on her windowsill crumpled banknotes wet with the sweat of their hands.
These thoughts crossed her mind as she helped Vieira into his bath. She had promised to come by every day, at the beginning of the evening, before the TV news, to help him with his bath and take care of the man she now considered her own. She’d had the idea of putting a little bench inside the shower so that he could bathe while seated; his body ached more than it had the first day. And in order not to get her clothes wet while she was helping him, she had asked his permission to do so in the nude.
The greatest intimacy they had experienced up to that point had been holding hands while walking through the streets of Copacabana. And suddenly this.
“Damn, angel, asking permission to take your clothes off? In front of me? Son of a bitch, I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“You don’t want me to? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
“Damn, Flor, of course not! A beautiful woman like you asking my permission to take her clothes off? Who would have thought? Men ought to get down on their knees to beg you to take your clothes off in front of them!”
“But that’s them. You have every right. And you’re injured; maybe you wouldn’t want it.”
“And there are still people who consider hooker a bad word.”
Before helping Vieira to the bench, Flor tested the water temperature. She twisted the showerhead so the water would fall on his back and not on his scalp, which was bruised in several places. Then she removed her dress—she wasn’t wearing a bra—and, after a consulting glance at him, her panties. Flor’s youthful splendor contrasted with the tired, wounded body seated on the bench. Leaving the door to the shower open, Flor moved in and out, depending on what part of Vieira’s body she needed to lather up. For balance, he leaned on her body, at first timidly and respectfully (he considered it the least he could do for a woman who asked permission to take her clothes off); but as the bath wore on, he began exploring the parts of her body within his reach. She wasn’t bothered in the least by his shapeless, flaccid, potbellied body. She encountered plenty of beautiful, athletic bodies in her profession; with the man she had chosen for herself the important thing was the feeling of security and tenderness she felt by his side. Of course, if the two happened to coincide that would be even better, but this wasn’t the case with Vieira. Her long-fingered hands soaped up his old body meticulously, careful not to miss any of the healthy parts and careful to avoid all his bruises. Since he was seated and she was standing, every time she bent over to clean his back, the rigid points of her breasts brushed against Vieira’s face and lips; his hands moved inside her legs. When she reached his stomach, Flor’s movements slowed down, a delay full of caress
es. Feeling his erection reach its maximum, Vieira grabbed her waist, pulled her gently down to him, her legs resting on top of his. Mounted on his thighs, though not sitting on them, with her arms pressed against the walls of the shower, Flor delicately lowered herself onto his lap, and without seeking permission, she let him penetrate her as deeply as he could, initiating a slow, smooth movement that only her youth made possible, like a piston picking up speed, never in the least pressing against his legs, until his climax. They remained in this position, the water falling between them, the muscles in Flor’s legs trembling from the continuous contraction. When she at last rose, Vieira let himself sit there, enjoying the sensation of the water falling on his back. His mind felt empty; the only thing that counted was his body, which, after relaxing with pleasure, began to ache where he had been beaten. His first thought was that he would be with her until death did them part.
After drying him off and dressing him, Flor gathered up the pillows at the head of the bed so that he could watch the news. Vieira felt pain in several parts of his body, but every corner of his soul rejoiced. The wound on his lips and his broken teeth made it hard for him to ingest solid foods. Flor held the bowl of soup while Vieira, his hand trembling from the previous effort, tried to raise the soup to his mouth without spilling it on his shirt.
“Shit, it seems like I’ve even got that goddamn Parkin son’s.”
“What’s that?”
“Some fucking disease old people get that makes them all shaky.”
“Honey, after what you did there in the bathroom, you can shake all you want. Would you like me to make you some eggnog?”
“Eggnog? Damn it, Flor, an eggnog…. I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve heard of that…. You really are the shit. First you ask me if you can take your clothes off, then you offer me eggnog … next thing I know you’re going to be calling my dick ‘sir.’ “
With every remark, Flor frowned coyly. When she said good-bye, before the news came on, she blew him a kiss, saying:
“Sweetheart, if that policeman friend of yours shows up, ask him not to be so pushy.”
“Espinosa? What the fuck did he do?”
“Nothing, honey, it’s just that he’s always summoning me to the station. I don’t know what he wants from me…. He even came by my apartment.”
“Your apartment? The fuck was he doing there? Did he bother you?”
“No, of course not, he’s very polite … but he sure can be pushy. I just wanted him to lay off a little.” And once she was already in the hall, only her head sticking around the door: “Don’t call him, babe; cops are like that. Just as well that you’re not one of them anymore.”
And she closed the door after blowing him a kiss.
“Espinosa! Telephone!”
It was almost lunchtime when Espinosa walked slowly toward the office where he had spent the previous day sorting through paperwork.
“Hello?”
“Espinosa?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Clodoaldo. Your kid is still alive. I didn’t find out anything about the man. I’m talking from a public phone. Tomorrow I’ll be on the Avenida Atlântica again. Bye.” Clodoaldo spoke as if dictating the text of a telegram.
Despite the economy of the message, the essential had been conveyed, and the hypothesis that the boy had fled his protection confirmed. Espinosa felt deeply relieved. He left a message for Kika: “The kid’s alive. Espinosa.” Then he left immediately—for no reason, not even to eat, although it was time; just to free up his mind. He needed to walk a little, even in the beating, noonday December sun. There was a food-by-the-kilo place directly in front of the station, but what he needed at that moment was some space to think. At the old station, he used to sit in the square, right in front of the wharves of the port; now, all he had to do was walk two blocks and he had Copacabana Beach at his disposal, the ocean stretched out as far as the eye could see. He could think better looking out over the sea; he felt his mind relax, and his ideas arrived in digestible form.
As soon as he reached the sidewalk, he turned left and joined the masses of people who were heading to lunch. He felt perfectly happy in a crowd. Unlike most people, he didn’t feel suffocated, oppressed, or threatened there; he felt only peace. The noise of the cars, the voices of the pedestrians, the cries of the street vendors, the music from the shops, the quaking of the traffic—all worked as a formless whole, homogeneous and continuous, like the noise of an air conditioner that eliminated external noises without making itself heard. Even visually—when he wanted to see it this way—the fantastic variety of things to see, including people, was stripped of characteristics and acted as an undifferentiated background. For Espinosa, at times like this, the experience of being in the middle of a multitude was not dissimilar from being on a deserted beach.
The contrast between the Avenida Copacabana and the Avenida Atlantica, at that hour, was striking; the first was filled with people hurrying to and from work, the second was overrun by tourists. After going to McDonald’s to buy a double hamburger and soft drink, he found a bench in the shade facing away from the buildings, toward the sea. In the immense space made of sky and sea, he let his thoughts run wild, but they didn’t go far—they stayed with him, not far from where the boy had vanished. And he was alive. Clodoaldo’s telegraphic style didn’t allow for details. How had he found out that the boy was alive? From a third party? Had he seen the boy himself? Had he managed to speak to him? Espinosa would have to wait for the next day. While he was thinking and waiting, he fought a desperate battle to get the double-decker sandwich into his mouth without allowing any pink sauce to fall onto his shirt. It was a task that required the experience of a veteran, and he was the right man for the job.
The sea was calm; there were only a few swimmers in the water, a sign that it was cold. No boats on the horizon; the only shapes against the sky were the islands of Farol and Cagarras. He hadn’t had any trouble finding the bench beneath the shade of the generous almond tree; at that time of the day, and as hot as it was, anyone who was at the seaside was there for the pleasures of the beach, not to sit on a cement bench on the sidewalk eating a sandwich. But he didn’t do it unwillingly. He felt good looking at the green and the blue mixing in the space before his eyes while letting his mind wander. Outings like this one were not precisely “to think”; he knew how much trouble he had keeping his thoughts within minimal levels of rationality. Not that he was, or thought he was, crazy: his colleagues even held him up as a model of a policeman who used his head more than his hands. But what his coworkers didn’t know was that his imagination outweighed his logical thinking to such a degree that he sometimes wondered if he’d ever experienced a full sequence of purely logical thoughts. He’d chosen the Avenida Atlântica to think about the case because it was perfect for “concentrating his attention”—a concentration that didn’t last for more than a minute. The connection between the boy and Kika met with no resistance, and once he was in possession of the idea of Kika the doors to fantasy were flung wide open. Even before he’d finished his sandwich, he and Kika were already on unspoiled beaches in distant countries. Finishing his lunch, he noticed how far away his thoughts had strayed from any consideration for the kid, and he decided to go back to the station and await the following day, when the solid presence of Clodoaldo would serve as a starting point of reality.
That night, stretched out on his sofa, Espinosa let his mind move from one boy to the other, between the one who had mistakenly been killed and the one who had survived; and he tried to imagine what sort of person would throw gasoline on a sleeping child. He knew of groups that killed beggars, homosexuals, prostitutes, and street children, and he was aware of the surprising number of people burned alive while asleep in the streets of the great cities, but he didn’t believe in coincidences like that. That boy had been killed because someone thought he knew something that threatened someone else. He remembered a TV report about people killed while sleeping in the streets;
it mentioned ten such attacks per month. The immediate question was: who does things like that? The possible responses were varied: the extreme right, insane pyromaniacs, psychopaths, juvenile delinquents, members of religious cults, racists … and the list moved perilously closer to the people one met every day on the street, on the bus, at work, and even in churches, preaching universal love.
In spite of the open windows, he felt beads of sweat forming on his neck. He took off his shirt and got a beer out of the refrigerator. The sofa was hot; he preferred the rocking chair. After a few minutes, the chair’s wicker back started to hurt his own; he got up and stood by the balcony at his French window, looking at the little lights on the hill above the buildings. After a few minutes the beer got hot too. Kika orbited elliptically; sometimes she was so close he could almost touch her; at other times she was so far away that he could barely see her. There was no actual encounter. He drank only half his beer; he went to the bathroom to wet down his face and neck, came back to the living room, went into the kitchen, checked the refrigerator once more, then returned to the balcony. What would happen if Kika came in just then?
Once again, his reflections were interrupted by the phone. Kika would be suggesting that they move their meeting up, he thought. It would be Kika saying that she wanted to come to his apartment, he thought. He was so sure that it took him a moment to realize that the voice wasn’t hers.
“Is this Officer Espinosa?”
“It is.”
“This is Vanessa.”
“Vanessa?”
“The doorman gave me your card; he said you wanted to speak with me.”
“Oh, yes. Thanks for calling.”
“Do you still want to?”
“Want to do what?”
“Talk to me.”
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