Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

I washed the shovels and the pickax and returned them to the tool shed. I knocked on the iron door of the house.

“It’s me, you can open the door.”

The woman opened the door, as frightened as ever. “Did you see anything?”

“No. And I didn’t hear any strange noises. Did you?”

“No,” she answered. “Would you like some tea? I’ll make us some tea.”

I stayed at the estate for another week with the woman, despite the music. There’s nothing more irritating than violin music. Every day I would go to the grave where those two were rotting, to see if there was any bad smell in the air. Nothing. In the market in the village they recommended an elderly couple as caretakers for the woman. The old man was a robust type who worked all day in the garden, him and my mother. I’m joking, but I wish she could have been my mother. I liked her. If I’d had a mother like her, I’d be a different man, my fate would be different, and I’d take care of her. I’d have someone to love.

She was in the garden with the caretaker, puttering in the soil. “I have to leave,” I said.

“I don’t know how to repay you for what you’ve done for me. I’m well. I’m no longer afraid.”

“You’re not well. But no one is going to phone you in the middle of the night anymore or follow you in the streets to frighten you.”

“How can I pay you? You must be needing some money.”

“I’ve already been paid. But you can give me a ride to the bus station in the city.”

The woman drove me to the bus station.

“When you need anything, look for me. Give me your telephone number,” she said.

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Sonya must know how to find you if I need you, doesn’t she? She was very kind, recommending you as my guardian angel.”

I didn’t answer. The woman waited with me until the bus arrived, the two of us in the car listening to the music she liked, and the violin didn’t seem so irritating.

I got on the bus. She waved at me as the bus pulled away.

I AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF AUNT OLYMPIA declaiming “The Ship Catrineta” in her grave and powerful contralto voice.

My soul I deny thee, O demon,

Thou serpent of land and of sea.

To God and His hosts it looks upward,

From body and torment to flee.

An angel descended from Heaven,

Delivered him safe to the lee.

The demon was rent by his fury

And peace again ruled o’er the sea.

Come ev’ning the ship Catrineta

Had landed, from Satan set free.

Then I remembered that today was my twenty-first birthday. All my aunts must be in the hall, waiting for me to wake up. “I’m awake,” I shouted. They came into my room. Aunt Helena was carrying an old, dusty book with a leather cover and gilded clasps. Aunt Regina was bringing a tray with my breakfast, and Aunt Julieta a basket with fresh fruit gathered from our orchard. Aunt Olympia had on the dress she wore in Molière’s École des Femmes.

“It’s all a lie,” Aunt Helena said. “The demon didn’t explode, and no angel saved the captain; the truth is all in the old ‘Ship’s Log’, written by our ancestor Manuel de Matos, which thou hast already read, and in this other book, ‘The Secret Decalogue of Uncle Jacinto’, which thou art to read for the first time today.”

In “The Secret Decalogue” my mission was defined. I was the only male in a family reduced, besides myself, to four unmarried and implacable women. The sun was coming through the window, and I could hear the birds singing in the garden. It was a beautiful morning. My aunts asked anxiously if I had chosen the girl. I answered yes.

“We’ll have a birthday party tonight. Bring her here, so we can meet her,” said Aunt Regina. My aunts have taken care of me since I was born. My mother died in childbirth and my father, my mother’s first cousin, committed suicide a month later.

I told my aunts that they would meet sweet Ermelinda Balsemão that night. Their faces beamed with satisfaction. Aunt Regina handed me “The Secret Decalogue of Uncle Jacinto” and they all solemnly left the room. Before beginning to read the Decalogue, I telephoned Ermê, as I called her, and asked if she’d like to have dinner with my aunts and me. She was happy to accept. Then I opened “The Secret Decalogue” and began to read the commandments of my mission: It is the inescapable obligation of every first-born male of our Family, above the laws of society, religion, and ethics …

My aunts dug their most extravagant formal dresses out of trunks and closets. Aunt Olympia was wearing her favorite clothing, which she saved for very special occasions, the dress she had worn the last time she played Phaedra. Dona Maria Nunes, our housekeeper, constructed enormous and elaborate hairdos for each of them; as was the custom in our family, none of the women had ever cut her hair. I stayed in my room, after reading the Decalogue, getting up from the bed now and then to look at the garden and the woods. It was a hard mission, one which my father had carried out, and my grandfather and great-grandfather and all the rest. I got my father out of my head right away. This wasn’t the right moment to think about him. I thought about my grandmother, who had been an anarchist and manufactured bombs in her basement without anyone suspecting. Aunt Regina liked to say that every bomb that exploded in the city between 1920 and 1960 had been made and thrown by Grandma. “Mom,” Aunt Julieta would say, “could not tolerate injustice, and that was her way of showing her disapproval; the ones who died were for the most part guilty, and the few innocents sacrificed were martyrs in a good cause.”

From my window, by the light of the full moon, I could see Ermê’s car, its top down, as it came slowly through the stone gate, climbed the hydrangea-lined road, and stopped in front of the beefwood tree that stood in the middle of the lawn. The cool evening breeze of May tossed her fine blonde hair. For an instant, Ermê seemed to hear the sound of the wind in the tree; then she looked toward the house, as if she knew I was observing her, and drew her scarf around her throat, pierced by a coldness that didn’t exist, except within herself. With an abrupt gesture she accelerated the car and, now resolute, drove toward the house. I went down to receive her.

“I’m afraid,” Ermê said. “I don’t know why, but I am. I think it’s this house, it’s very pretty but so gloomy!”

“What you’re afraid of is my aunts,” I said.

I took Ermê to the Small Parlor, where my aunts were waiting. They were most impressed with Ermê’s beauty and breeding and treated her with great affection. I saw at once that Ermê had won the approval of all. “It will be tonight,” I told Aunt Helena, “let the others know.” I wanted to finish my mission as soon as possible.

Aunt Helena told lively adventures of our relatives, who went back to the sixteenth century. “By obligation, all the first-born were, and are, artists and carnivores, and whenever possible they hunt, kill, and eat their prey. Vasco de Matos, one of our ancestors, even ate the foxes he hunted. Later, when he began to keep domestic animals, we ourselves would slaughter the lambs, rabbits, ducks, chickens, pigs, and even the calves and cows. We’re not like others,” said Aunt Helena, “who lack the courage to kill an animal or even see one killed, and want to savor it in innocence. In our family we’re conscious and responsible carnivores. Both in Portugal and in Brazil.”

“And we have eaten people,” said Aunt Julieta. “Our ancestor Manuel de Matos, was first mate on the Catrineta and ate one of the crewmen who was sacrificed to save the others from starving to death.”