Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

The thunder and lightning begins again.

Mojica, the ex-bagger of fat women, tells Augusto that business isn’t very good; the crisis has hit him too, and he’s even thinking of going back to his old business; for reasons he can’t explain, there’s been an increase in the city in the number of middle-aged women with money wanting to marry a thin, muscular man with a big prick like him. Fat women are gullible, have good temperaments, are almost always cast aside, and they’re easy to deceive. “One a year is enough for yours truly to lead a comfortable life; and it’s a big city.”

From Tiradentes Square, ignoring part of Benevides’s instructions, Augusto goes to Jogo da Bola Street, taking Avenida Passos to Presidente Vargas. Crossing Presidente Vargas, even at the traffic light, is always dangerous; people are constantly getting killed crossing that street, and Augusto waits for the right moment and crosses it by running between the automobiles speeding past in both directions and makes it to the other side panting but with the euphoric sensation of one who has achieved a feat; he rests for a few minutes before proceeding to his right to Andradas and from there to Júlia Lopes de Almeida Street, from which he sees Conceição Hill and quickly comes to Tenente Coronel Julião, then walks a few yards and finally finds Jogo da Bola.

“Where can I find Chicken Zé?” he asks a man in Bermudas, Hawaiian sandals and a T-shirt with a three-strand gold chain wrapped around his neck, but the man looks at Augusto with an ugly expression, doesn’t answer, and walks away. Further ahead, Augusto sees a boy. “Where can I find the boss of the beggars?” he asks, and the boy replies, “You got any change for me?” Augusto gives the boy some money. “I don’t know who you mean. Go to the corner of Major Valô Square, there’s people there who can tell you.”

At the corner of Major Valô Square are a few men, and Augusto heads toward them. As he approaches, he notices that the man in Bermudas with the three-strand gold chain is in the group. “Hello,” Augusto says, and no one answers. A large black man without a shirt asks, “Who was it said my name is Chicken Zé?”

Augusto senses that he is unwelcome. One of the men has a club in his hand.

“It was Benevides, who lives on Carmo, corner of Sete de Setembro.”

“That lush is a sell-out, happy to be living in a cardboard box, grateful to be picking up paper in the street and sell it to the sharks. People like that don’t support our movement.”

“Somebody needs to teach the fucker a lesson,” says the man with the club, and Augusto is uncertain whether he or Benevides is the fucker.

“He said you’re president of the Beggars Union.”

“And who’re you?”

“I’m writing a book called The Art of Walking in the Streets of Rio de Janeiro.”

“Show me the book,” says the guy with the gold chain.

“It’s not with me; it’s not ready.”

“What’s your name?”

“Aug—Epifânio.”

“What the shit kind of name is that?”

“Search him,” says Chicken Zé.

Augusto allows himself to be searched by the man with the club. The latter gives Chicken Zé Augusto’s pen, his ID card, his money, the small pad of paper, and the semiprecious stone in a small cloth sack that Augusto received from the bagger of fat women.

“This guy’s nuts,” says an old black man observing the goings on.

Chicken Zé takes Augusto by the arm. He says: “I’m going to have a talk with him.”

The two walk to the Escada da Conceição alleyway.

“Look here, Mr. Fancy, first of all, my name isn’t Chicken Zé, it’s Zumbi from Jogo da Bola, you understand? And second, I’m not president of any fucking Beggars Union; that’s crap put out by the opposition. Our name is the Union of the Homeless and Shirtless, the UHS. We don’t ask for handouts, we don’t want handouts, we demand what they took from us. We don’t hide under bridges or inside cardboard boxes like that fucker Benevides, and we don’t sell gum and lemons at intersections.”

“Correct,” says Augusto.

“We want to be seen, we want them to look at our ugliness, our dirtiness, want them to smell our bodies everywhere; want them to watch us making our food, sleeping, fucking, shitting in the pretty places where the well-off stroll and live. I gave orders for the men not to shave, for the men and women and children not to bathe in the fountains; the fountains are for pissing and shitting in. We have to stink and turn people’s stomachs like a pile of garbage in the middle of the street. And nobody asks for money. It’s better to rob than to panhandle.”

“Aren’t you afraid of the police?”

“The police don’t have any place to put us; the jails are full and there are lots of us. They arrest us and have to let us go. And we stink too bad for them to want to beat up on us. They take us off the streets, and we come back. And if they kill one of us, and I think that’s going to happen any time now, and it’s even a good thing if it does happen, we’ll get the body and parade the carcass through the streets like Lampião’s head.”

“Do you know how to read?”

“If I didn’t know how to read, I’d be living happily in a cardboard box picking up other people’s leavings.”

“Where do you get the resources for that association of yours?”

“The talk’s over, Epifânio. Remember my name, Zumbi from Jogo da Bola; sooner or later you’re going to hear about me, and it won’t be from that shitass Benevides. Take your things and get out of here.”

Augusto returns to his walkup on Sete de Setembro by going down Escada da Conceição to Major Valô Square. He takes João Homem to Liceu, where there’s a place called the Tourist House, from there to Acre Street, then to Uruguaiana. Uruguaiana is occupied by police shock troops carrying shields, helmets with visors, batons, machine guns, tear gas. The stores are closed.

Kelly is reading the part of the newspaper marked by Augusto as homework.

“This is for you,” Augusto says.

“No, thank you. You think I’m some kind of performing dog? I’m learning to read because I want to. I don’t need little presents.”

“Take it, it’s an amethyst.”

Kelly takes the stone and throws it with all her strength. The stone hits against the skylight and falls to the floor. Kelly kicks the chair, wads the newspaper into a ball, which she throws at Augusto. Other whores had done things even worse; they have attacks of nerves when they spend a lot of time alone with a guy and he doesn’t want to go to bed with them. One of them tried to take Augusto by force and bit off his entire ear, which she spat into the toilet and flushed.

“Are you crazy? You could break the skylight. It’s over a hundred years old. The old man would die of a broken heart.”

“You think I’ve got the clap, or AIDS, is that it?”

“No.”

“You want to go to the doctor with me for him to examine me? You’ll see I don’t have any kind of disease.”

Kelly is almost crying, and her grimace reveals her missing tooth, which gives her an unprotected, suffering air, which reminds him of the teeth he, Augusto, doesn’t have and awakens in him a fraternal and uncomfortable pity, for her and for himself.

“You don’t want to go to bed with me, you don’t want to hear the story of my life, I do everything for you, I’ve learned to read, I treat your rats well, I even hugged a tree in the Public Promenade, and you don’t even have one ear, and I never mentioned that you don’t have one ear so as not to annoy you.”

“I was the one who hugged the tree.”

“Don’t you feel like doing it?” she yells.

“I don’t have desire, or hope, or faith, or fear. That’s why no one can harm me. To the contrary of what the old man said, the lack of hope has liberated me.”