Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

“In cold places beggars freeze to death on the streets,” Augusto says.

“Too bad that heat doesn’t kill them too,” Kelly says.

Whores don’t like beggars, Augusto knows.

“The difference between a beggar and others,” Kelly continues, “is that when he’s naked a beggar doesn’t stop looking like a beggar, and when others are naked they stop looking like what they are.”

They arrive at the used-book shop. Kelly looks at it from the street, suspicious. The shelves inside are crammed with books. “Are there enough people in the world to read so many books?”

Augusto wants to buy a book for Kelly, but she refuses to go into the bookstore. They go to São José Street, from there to Graça Aranha Street, Avenida Beira Mar, the Obelisk, the Public Promenade.

“I used to work the streets here, and I’ve never been inside this place,” Kelly says.

Augusto points out the trees to Kelly, says that they’re over two hundred years old, speaks of Master Valentim, but she’s not interested and only comes out of her boredom when Augusto, from the small bridge over the pond, at the opposite side from the entrance on Passeio Street, at the other end where the terrace with the statue of the boy, now made of bronze, when Augusto, from the small bridge spits in the water for the small fishes to eat his spittle. Kelly finds it funny and spits too, but she quickly gets bored because the fish seem to prefer Augusto’s spit.

“I’m hungry,” Kelly says.

“I promised to have lunch with the old man,” Augusto says.

“Then let’s go get him.”

They go up Senador Dantas, where Kelly also worked the streets, and come to Carioca Square. There the portable tables of the street vendors are in greater number. The main commercial streets are clogged with tables filled with merchandise, some of it contraband and some of it pseudo-contraband, famous brands crudely counterfeited in small clandestine factories. Kelly stops before one of the tables, examines everything, asks the price of the transistor radios, the battery-driven toys, the pocket calculators, the cosmetics, a set of plastic dominoes that imitate ivory, the colored pencils, the pens, the blank videotapes and cassettes, the coffee strainer, the penknives, the decks of cards, the watches and other trinkets.

“Let’s go, the old man is waiting,” Augusto says.

“Cheap crap,” Kelly says.

At his walk-up, Augusto convinces the old man to comb his hair and to replace his slippers with one-piece high-lace boots with elastic on the sides and straps at the back for pulling them on, an old model but still in good condition. The old man is going out with them because Augusto promised they’d have lunch at the Timpanas, on São José, and the old man once courted an unforgettable girl who lived in a building next to the restaurant, built in the early nineteen hundreds, and which still has, intact, wrought-iron balconies, tympanums, and cymas decorated with stucco.

The old man takes the lead with a firm step.

“I don’t want to walk too fast. They say it causes varicose veins,” protests Kelly, who in reality wants to walk slowly to examine the street vendors’ tables.

When they arrive in front of the Timpanas, the old man contemplates the ancient buildings lined up to the corner of Rodrigo Silva Street. “It’s all going to be torn down,” he says. “You two go on in, I’ll be along shortly; order rice and peas for me.”

Kelly and Augusto sit at a table covered with a white tablecloth. They order a fish stew for two and rice with peas for the old man. The Timpanas is a restaurant that prepares dishes to the customer’s specifications.

“Why don’t you hug me the way you did that dirty black guy?” Kelly asks.

Augusto doesn’t want to argue. He gets up to look for the old man.

The old man is looking at the buildings, quite absorbed, leaning against an iron fence that surrounds the old Buraco do Lume, which after it was closed off became a patch of grass with a few trees, where a few beggars live.

“Your rice is ready,” Augusto says.

“You see that balcony there, in that blue two-story building? The three windows on the second floor? It was in that window to our right that I saw her for the first time, leaning on the balcony, her elbows resting on a pillow with red embroidery.”

“Your rice is on the table. It has to be eaten as soon as it comes from the stove.”

Augusto takes the old man by the arm, and they go into the restaurant.

“She was very pretty. I never again saw such a pretty girl.”

“Eat your rice, it’s getting cold,” Augusto says.

“She limped on one leg. That wasn’t important to me. But it was important to her.”

“It’s always like that,” Kelly says.

“You’re right,” the old man says.

“Eat your rice, it’s getting cold.”

“The women of the oldest profession possess a sinuous wisdom. You gave me momentary comfort by mentioning the inexorability of things,” the old man says.

“Thanks,” Kelly says.

“Eat your rice, it’s getting cold.”

“It’s all going to be torn down,” the old man says.

“Did it used to be better?” Augusto asks.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“In the old days there were fewer people and almost no automobiles.”

“The horses, filling the streets with manure, must have been considered a curse equal to today’s cars,” Augusto says.

“And people in the old days were less stupid,” the old man continues with a melancholy gaze, “and not in such a hurry.”

“People in those days were more innocent,” Kelly says.

“And more hopeful. Hope is a kind of liberation,” the old man says.

Meanwhile, Raimundo, the pastor, called by his bishop to the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Savior of Souls, on Avenida Suburbana, listens contritely to the words of the supreme head of his Church.

“Each pastor is responsible for the temple in which he works. Your collection has been very small. Do you know how much Pastor Marcos, in Nova Iguaçu, collected last month? Over ten thousand dollars. Our Church needs money. Jesus needs money; he always has. Did you know that Jesus had a treasurer, Judas Iscariot?”

Pastor Marcos, of Nova Iguaçu, was the inventor of the Offerings Envelope. The envelopes have the name of the Church of Jesus Savior of Souls printed on them, the phrase I request prayers for these people, followed by five lines for the petitioner to write the people’s names, a square with $ in large type, and the category of the offering. The SPECIAL prayers, with larger quantities, are light green; the REGULAR are brown, and in them only two prayers can be requested. Other churches copied the Envelope, which greatly annoyed the bishop.

“The devil has been coming to my church,” Raimundo says, “and since he starting going to my church the faithful aren’t making their offerings, or even paying the tithe.”

“Lucifer?” The bishop looks at him, a look that Raimundo would like to be one of admiration; probably the bishop has never seen the devil personally. But the bishop is inscrutable. “What disguise is he using?”

“He wears dark glasses, he’s missing one ear, and he sits in the pews at the back, and one day, the second time he appeared at the temple, there was a yellow aura around him.” The bishop must know that the devil can take any appearance he wants, like a black dog or a man in dark glasses and missing one ear.

“Did anyone else see this yellow light?”

“No, sir.”

“Any special smell?”

“No, sir.”

The bishop meditates for some time.

“And after he appeared, the faithful stopped tithing? You’re sure it was—”

“Yes, it was after he showed up. The faithful say they don’t have any money, that they lost their job, or they’re sick, or they were robbed.”