Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

Augusto looks at the top floor of the building where his grandfather lived, and a bunch of idiots gather around him and look upward too—voodoo followers, buyers of fabric remnants, idlers, messenger boys, beggars, street peddlers, pedestrians in general, some asking “What happened?” and “Did he already jump?”; lately lots of people in downtown have been jumping out of windows from high-rise offices and splattering themselves on the sidewalk.

Augusto, after thinking about his grandfather, continues in the direction of his objective for today, but not in a straight line; in a straight line he should go to Tiradentes Square and along Constitution, which leads almost to the large gate of the place he’s going, or along Visconde do Rio Branco, which he usually chooses because of the Fire Department. But he is in no hurry to arrive where he wants to go, and from Teatro Street he goes to Luiz de Camões to make a quick stop at the Portuguese Royal Academy reading room; he insists that this library have his book once it is finished and published. He feels the cozy presence of that vast quantity of books. He leaves immediately for Avenida Passos, not to be confused with Senhor dos Passos Street, arrives at the Tesouro alleyway and heads toward Visconde do Rio Branco by way of Gonçalves Ledo, in the midst of Jewish and Arab merchants, bumping into their poorly dressed customers, and when he gets to Visconde do Rio Branco trades the commerce of clothing for that of second-hand items, but what interests him on Visconde do Rio Branco is the barracks of the Fire Department; not that this was his destination, but he likes to look at the Fire Department building. Augusto stops in front of it; the courtyard inside is full of large red vehicles. The sentry at the door watches him suspiciously. It would be nice if one of those enormous red trucks with its Magirus ladder came out with its siren on. But the large red vehicles don’t come out, and Augusto walks a bit further to Vinte de Abril Street and arrives at the gate of the Campo de Santana, across from Caco Square and the Souza Aguiar Hospital.

The Campo de Santana has in its vicinity places that Augusto is in the habit of visiting: the mint where the government used to print money, the archives, the new library, the old college, the former army general headquarters, the railroad. But today he just wants to see the trees, and he enters through one of the gates, passing the one-armed man sitting on a stool behind a tray and selling cigarettes by the unit, the pack sliced in half by a razor, which the one-armed man keeps hidden in a sock held by a rubber band.

As soon as he enters, Augusto goes to the lake; the French sculptures are nearby. The Campo has a long history: Dom Pedro was acclaimed emperor in the Campo de Santana, rebellious troops camped there while they awaited orders to attack, but Augusto thinks only of the trees, the same ones from that far-off time, and strolls among the baobabs, the fig trees, the jackfruit trees displaying their enormous fruit; as always, he feels the urge to kneel before the oldest trees, but getting down on his knees reminds him of the Catholic religion, and he now hates all religions that make people get down on their knees, and he also hates Jesus Christ, from so often hearing priests, pastors, ecclesiastics, businessmen talk about him; the ecumenical movement in the church is the cartelization of the business of superstition, a political non-aggression pact among mafiosi: let’s not fight among ourselves because the pie is big enough for everybody.

Augusto is sitting on a bench, beside a man who is wearing a Japanese digital watch on one wrist and a therapeutic metal bracelet on the other. At the man’s feet lies a large dog, to which the man directs his words, with measured gestures, looking like a philosophy professor talking to his students in a classroom, or a tutor giving explanations to an inattentive disciple, for the dog appears not to pay great attention to what the man says and merely growls, looking around him with his tongue hanging out. If he were crazy, the man wouldn’t be wearing a wristwatch, but a guy who hears answers from a dog that growls with its tongue hanging out, and replies to them, has to be crazy, yet a crazy man doesn’t wear a watch; the first thing he, Augusto, would do if he went crazy would be to get rid of his Casio Melody, and he’s sure that he’s not crazy yet because, besides the watch he carries around on his wrist, he also has a fountain pen in his pocket, and crazy people hate fountain pens. That man sitting beside Augusto, thin, hair combed, clean-shaven, but with groups of pointed hairs showing under his ear and others coming out of his nose, wearing sandals, jeans too big for his legs, with the cuffs rolled up to different lengths, that crazy man is perhaps only half crazy because he appears to have discovered that a dog can be a good psychoanalyst, besides being cheaper and prettier. The dog is tall, with strong jaws, a muscular chest, a melancholy gaze. It is evident that, besides the dog—the conversations are, cumulatively, a sign of madness and of intelligence—sanity, or the man’s mental eclecticism, can also be proved by the watch.

“What time is it?” Augusto asks.

“Look at your watch,” says the man with the dog, the two of them, man and dog, observing Augusto with curiosity.

“My watch isn’t working very well,” claims Augusto.

“Ten hours thirty-five minutes and two, three, four, five—”

“Thank you.”

“—seconds,” the man concludes, consulting the Seiko on his wrist.

“I have to go,” Augusto says.

“Don’t go yet,” says the dog. It wasn’t the dog; the man is a ventriloquist, he wants to make me look like a fool, thinks Augusto; it’s better for the man to be a ventriloquist, dogs don’t talk, and if that one talks, or if he heard the dog talk, it could become a cause for concern, like seeing a flying saucer, for example, and Augusto doesn’t want to waste time on matters of that sort.

Augusto pats the dog’s head. “I have to go.”

He doesn’t have to go anywhere. His plan that day is to remain among the trees until closing time, and when the guard starts blowing his whistle he’ll hide in the grotto; it irritates him to be able to stay with the trees only from seven in the morning till six in the afternoon. What are the guards afraid will happen at night at the Campo de Santana? Some nocturnal banquet of agoutis, or the use of the grotto as a brothel, or cutting down the trees for lumber, or some such thing? Maybe the guards were right and starving criminals go around eating agoutis, and fucking among the bats and rats in the grotto, and cutting down trees to build shacks.

When he hears the beep of his Casio Melody alerting him, Augusto goes into the farthest point of the grotto, where he remains as motionless as a stone, or rather, a subterranean tree. The grotto is artificial; it was built by another Frenchman, but it has been there so long that it appears real. A loud whistle echoes through the stone walls, making the bats flap their wings and squeal; the guards are ordering people to leave, but no guard comes into the grotto. He remains immobile in the total darkness, and now that the bats have quieted down he hears the delicate little sound of the rats, already used to his harmless presence. His watch plays a rapid jingle, which means an hour has passed. Outside, it is surely nighttime and the guards must have gone, to watch television, to eat; some of them may even have families.

He leaves the grotto along with the bats and rats. He turns off the sound on his Casio Melody. He has never spent an entire night inside the Campo de Santana; he has walked around the Campo at night, looking at the trees longingly through the bars, now painted gray with gold at the top. In the darkness the trees are even more disturbing than in the light, and they allow Augusto, walking slowly under their nocturnal shadows, to commune with them as if he were a bat. He embraces and kisses the trees, something he is embarrassed to do in the light of day in front of other people; some are so large that he can’t get his arms around them. Among the trees Augusto feels no irritation, nor hunger, nor headache. Unmoving, stuck in the earth, living in silence, indulging the wind and the birds, indifferent even to their enemies, there they are, the trees, around Augusto, and they fill his head with a perfumed, invisible gas that he senses and that transmits such lightness to his body that if he had the aspiration, and the arrogance of will, he could even try to fly.