Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

I got the car and went to Cavalcante Meier’s house. I stopped a hundred yards from the gate. I put a Jorge Ben cassette in the tape deck and kept time with him on the dashboard.

The first to show was the Mercedes. Cavalcante Meier in the back seat. The chauffeur in navy blue, white shirt, dark tie, black cap. I waited another half hour until the gates opened, and a Fiat sports car came roaring through like a shot.

I followed it. The car took the curves at high speed, tires squealing. It wasn’t easy to keep up with it. This is the day I die, I thought. Which one of my women would suffer the most? Maybe Berta would stop biting her nails.

The Fiat stopped in Leblon, in front of a small building. The girl got out of the car, went in a door marked Bernard—Aerobics for Women. I waited two minutes.

A carpeted waiting room, walls covered with reproductions of Degas ballerinas and dance posters. A bleached, heavily made-up receptionist in a pink uniform said hello from behind a metal-and-glass table and asked if I wanted something.

“I’d like to enroll my wife in the aerobics class.”

“Certainly,” she said, getting a card.

I scratched my head and said I didn’t want my wife going to just any class, maybe I’m old fashioned but that’s my way.

The receptionist smiled with her whole mouth, the way only people with all their teeth can, and said I’d come to the right place, an academy frequented by ladies and young women from society. She emphasized the word “society.” Her nails were long and painted dark red.

“What is your wife’s name?”

“Pérola … Uh, er, is the teacher a man or a woman?

A man, but there was nothing to worry about, Bernard was very respectful.

I asked if I could see a little of the class.

“Just a tiny bit,” the blonde said, getting up. She was my height, with a willowy body, small breasts, really solid.

“Do you work out too?”

“Not me, this is the body God gave me. But it could be Bernard’s work; he can perform miracles.”

She glided in front of me till she came to a door with a mirror on it, which she opened slightly.

The women were following the pounding rhythm of music from speakers spread around the floor. In quick succession they bent their trunks forward, their heads down, stuck their hands backwards between their knees, then straightened their bodies, raised their arms again, and began to repeat the entire process.

There were about fifteen women, in leotards. Most were blue but there was also red, pink, and green. In the middle of the room stood Bernard, also in a leotard, holding a swagger stick. He must have been a ballet dancer; he was certainly proud enough of his firm buttocks.

“Don’t bend your knees, Pia Azambuja! Pull in your buttocks, Ana Maria Melo!”

Smack! The swagger stick rapped Ana Maria Melo’s fanny.

“Follow the rhythm, Eve Cavalcante Meier! Don’t stop, Renata Albuquerque Lins!” Bernard used the students’ full names; they were the names of important fathers and husbands.

The receptionist closed the door.

“You’ve seen everything, haven’t you?”

“Does he always hit the students?” I asked.

“It’s just a tap, it doesn’t hurt a bit. They don’t mind. They even like it. Bernard is marvelous. When they come here the students are full of cellulite, flabby, have bad posture, awful skin, and Bernard gives them the body of a beauty queen.”

We filled out my wife’s card.

“Pearl White?”

“My wife’s an American. Pearl means Pérola.”

I don’t know what I see in making jokes nobody gets, but I do it all the time.

I paced back and forth in front of the Fiat, playing White, controlling the center: K3, Q3, KB4, K4, Q4, QB4, KB5, K5, Q5, QB5, K6, and Q6. Power and focus of action. Gioco Piano. Sicilian. Nimzo-Indian.

Eve came out with her hair wet, wearing long cotton pants and a knit blouse, her arms bare. She carried a large handbag.

“Hello.” I planted myself in her path.

“Do I know you?” she asked coldly.

“From your father’s house. He hired me as his lawyer.”

“Oh … ?”

“But he already fired me.”

“Oh … ?” She spoke brusquely but made no move to leave. She wanted to hear what I had to say. Women are curious as cats. (Men are like cats too. Whatever.)

“Someone was trying to involve him in the death of Marly Moreira, the girl they found in the Barra with a bullet in her head.”

“Is that it?”

“A blackmailer named Márcio claims he has papers that incriminate your father.”

“Anything else?”

“The police suspect him. I have more to say, but not here in the street.”

When the waiter came she ordered mineral water. God, Bernard, and Strict Dieting had created that marvel. I ordered Faísca. We sat there in silence.

“If my father is in danger, you should speak to him. I don’t see what good it does to talk to me.”

“Your father released me from his service.”

“He must have had some reason.”

I told her of the interviews I’d had with Cavalcante Meier, my trip to Gordon’s, the meeting between her cousin Lilly and Márcio the biker. Her expression remained unreadable.

“Do you think my father killed that girl?” A scornful smile.

“I don’t know.”

“My father has a lot of shortcomings. He’s vain and weak, and worse, but he’s not a murderer. Anybody can take one look at him and see I’m right.”

I mentally ran through the faces of all the murderers I’d known. None of them looked guilty.

“Somebody killed the girl, and it wasn’t a robbery.”

“It wasn’t my father either.”

“Márcio the biker stopped to talk to you in the garden when he went to see your father.”

“You’re mistaken. I don’t know who that person is.”

I looked into her innocent face. I knew that she knew that I knew she was lying. Eve had a face by Botticelli, un-Brazilian on that sunny day, which perhaps made her more attractive to me. I don’t like suntanned women. It’s a device. The skin knows its color, like the hair, the eyes. It’s stupid to use the sun as a cosmetic.

“You’re very pretty,” I said.

“You’re an unpleasant, ugly, ridiculous person,” she said.

Eve got up and left, walking the way Bernard had taught her.

I went home, turned off the answering machine. Berta had gone to her place. All my life I’ve either not dreamed or forgotten most of what I dreamed. But there were two dreams I always remembered, always those two and no others. In one I dreamed I was sleeping and dreamed a dream I forgot upon waking, leaving the feeling of having lost an important revelation. In the other I was in bed with a woman and she touched my body and I experienced her sensations as she touched my body, as if my body weren’t of flesh and blood. I woke up (in reality, outside the dream) and ran my hand over my skin and felt as if it were covered with cold metal.

I woke up to the sound of the doorbell. Wexler.

“What’ve you been getting into? Do you know who’s after you? Detective Pacheco. Are you involved with the commies now?”

Wexler told me that Pacheco had come by the office early that morning, looking for me. Pacheco was famous throughout the country.

“He wants you to go down to the station and have a talk with him.” I didn’t want to, but Wexler convinced me. “Nobody gets away from Pacheco,” he said.

Wexler went with me. Pacheco didn’t keep us waiting long. He was a fat man with a pleasant face that belied his unsavory reputation.

“Your activities are under investigation,” Pacheco said with a sleepy air.

“I don’t know why I’m here; I’m corrupt, not subversive.” Another joke.