Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

“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.