Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

“‘Hear now, ladies and gentlemen, an astonishing tale, of the ship Catrineta, which has much to tell …,’” I recited, imitating Aunt Olympia’s grandiloquent tone. All my aunts, with the exception of Olympia, burst out laughing. Ermê appeared to be taking it all in with curiosity.

Pointing at me with her long, white, bony finger, where the ring with our family coat of arms shone, Aunt Julieta said, “José has been trained since he was a little boy to be an artist and a carnivore.”

“An artist?” Ermê asked, as if the idea amused her.

“He is a Poet,” said Aunt Regina.

Ermê, who was majoring in literature, said she loved poetry—“later I’d like you to show me your poems”—and that the world truly needed poets. Aunt Julieta asked if she was familiar with the Portuguese “Book of Songs.” Ermê said she had read a few things in school, and that she took the poem to be an allegory of the struggle between Good and Evil, with the eventual triumph of the former, as is common in so many medieval homilies.

“Then thou believest that the angel saved the captain?” asked Aunt Julieta.

“That’s what is written, isn’t it? In any case, they’re just verses from the fanciful popular imagination,” said Ermê.

“Then thou dost not believe that an actual incident, similar to the poem, took place on the ship carrying Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho from here to Portugal in 1565?” asked Aunt Regina. Ermê smiled delicately without answering, as the young will do with old people whom they have no wish to displease.

Saying that they, she and her sisters, knew every novel of the sea that dealt with the Catrineta, Aunt Regina left the parlor, to return shortly with an armload of books. “This is Salvation of the Shipwreck by the Spanish poet Gonçalo Berceo; this is Cantigas de Santa María, by Alfonso el Sabio; this is the book by that poor man Teófilo Braga; this is the Carolina de Michaelis; this is an unfinished novel of the cycle, found in Asturias, with verses reproduced from the Portuguese originals. And this one, and this one, and this”—and Aunt Regina kept piling the books on the antique table in the middle of the Small Parlor—“all of them full of speculation, unfounded reasoning, humbug, and ignorance. We have the historical truth here in this book, the ‘Ship’s Log’ of our ancestor, Manuel de Matos, second in command on the ship that in 1565 took Jorge de Albuquerque Coelho from here to Portugal.”

After that we went to the table. But the subject had not yet been closed. It was as if Ermê’s silence encouraged my aunts to speak further about the subject. “In the poem, which balladeers took upon themselves to spread about, the captain is saved from death by an angel,” said Aunt Julieta. “The true story, which is in the Log kept by our ancestor, was never told, in order to protect Albuquerque Coelho’s name and reputation. Art thou enjoying the squid? It’s an old family recipe, and the wine is from our country residence in Vila Real,” said Aunt Regina. “The historian Narciso Azevedo, from Oporto, a relative of ours, though fortunately not by blood—he’s only married to our cousin Maria da Ajuda Fonseca, from Sabrosa—claims that during the voyage some crewmen came to Albuquerque Coelho with a petition asking authorization to eat several of their companions who had starved to death, and that Albuquerque Coelho adamantly refused, saying that while he lived he would not allow such a brutish desire to be satisfied. Now that’s all very well,” said Aunt Olympia, “but in reality what happened was quite different; the seamen who starved to death had been thrown into the sea, and Manuel de Matos saw that the entire crew, including Jorge Albuquerque Coelho, would all starve to death simultaneously. Speaking of which, this kid we’re eating we raised ourselves, dost thou like it?” Before Ermê could reply, Aunt Julieta went on: “The crew was called together by Manuel de Matos, our ancestor, and while Jorge Albuquerque Coelho absented himself, stretched out in the berth in his cabin, it was decided by majority vote—and I quote the very words of the Log, which I know by heart—to draw lots to see who would be killed. Lots were cast four times, and four crewmen were killed and eaten by the survivors. And when the Santo Antônio arrived in Lisbon, Albuquerque Coelho, who prided himself on his reputation as a Christian, a hero, and a disciplinarian, forbade any crewmen to speak of the affair. From what eventually came to light, the romantic Ship Catrineta was created. But the cruel and bloody truth is here in Manuel de Matos’s Log.”

The parlor seemed to darken, and an unexpected gust of cold air came in the window and ruffled the curtains. Dona Maria Nunes, who was serving, shrugged her shoulders, and for several instants a powerful, almost unbearable silence could be heard.

“This house is so large,” Ermê said. “Does anyone else live here?”

“Just us,” said Aunt Olympia. “We do everything ourselves, with Dona Maria Nunes’s help. We take care of the garden and orchard, clean and cook, wash and iron our clothes. That’s what keeps us busy and healthy.”

“Doesn’t José do anything?”

“He’s a Poet; he has a mission,” said Aunt Julieta, the Keeper of the Ring.

“And because he’s a poet he doesn’t eat? You didn’t touch your food,” Ermê said.

“I’m saving my hunger for later.”

When dinner was over, Aunt Helena asked Ermê if she was a religious person. My aunts, accompanied by Dona Maria Nunes, always prayed a novena after dinner in the small chapel in the house. Before they retired to the chapel—Ermê declined the invitation, which pleased me, for we could be alone—I kissed them aunt by aunt, as I always did. First Aunt Julieta—a thin, bony face with a long hooked nose, delicate lips like the drawing of the sorceress in my childhood fairy tale books, small and brilliant eyes, contrasting with the pallor of her face—till then I had not found out why she was Keeper of the Ring and I wanted to ask her, Why it is thou who wearest the Ring? but I felt I would know very soon. Aunt Olympia was dark with yellowed eyes, she kissed me with her heavy lips and wide mouth and her large nose and her well-pitched voice; for every feeling she had a corresponding mimicry, almost always expressed facially with glances, scowls, and grimaces. Aunt Regina looked at me with the small, clever, mistrusting eyes of a Pekingese puppy—she was perhaps the most intelligent of the four. Aunt Helena stood up when I went to her. She was the tallest of all, as well as the oldest and prettiest; she had a strong and noble face, like that of my grandmother Maria Clara, the bomb-throwing anarchist, and her sisters called her the archetype of the family; they said all the men of the family were good-looking like her, but the photo of Uncle Alberto, their other brother, younger than my father, who died of the plague in Africa while fighting beside the blacks, showed a figure of singular ugliness. Aunt Helena asked to have a word with me in private. We left the dining room and spoke for a few moments behind closed doors.

When I returned, my other aunts had already retired.

“It’s funny the way all of you talk. It’s ‘thou’ this, ‘thou’ that,” Ermê said.

“We use ‘you’ with the servants and unimportant people we don’t know,” I said. “It was that way in Portugal and continued in Brazil when the family came here.”

“But you don’t use ‘you’ with the housekeeper.”

“Dona Maria Nunes? But she’s like one of the family; she’s been in this house since the time of Grandmother Maria Clara, even before my father and my aunts were born. Dost thou know how old she is? Eighty-four.”