Rubem Fonseca: Winning the Game and Other Stories

I came to an agreement with Gisela; I don’t like to see anyone suffer.

Maria José stopped smoking and her teeth are no longer so yellow.

The new book is almost completely written. It’s going to be even better than the first.

Success, that’s something I understand.

FLUTTERING LOCKS OF REDDISH HAIR whipped by the wind and rain, smooth and radiant skin, she is Botticelli’s Venus walking down the street. (The one in the Uffizi, born from a seashell, not the one in the Staatliche Museen, with a black background, which is similar but has dry hair arranged around the head, descending evenly down the body.)

Don’t think that I boast any extraordinary perspicacity, but the fact is that if the woman I observe is as motionless as a statue, I can still tell the rhythm of her steps when she moves. I understand not only muscles, but also skeletons and, according to the symmetry of the bone structure, can predict the articulation of the ankles, knees, and ilium, which determine the rhythm of the body’s movement.

Venus walks unbothered by the rain, sometimes turning her head toward the sky to wet her face even more, and I can say without the slightest poetic stuffiness that it’s the walk of a goddess.

I have to create an elaborate strategy to get close to her and achieve what I need, a difficult task, as women, at first contact, feel repulsion towards me.

I follow her to where she lives. I watch the building for several days. Venus likes to walk in the streets and to sit in the square near her home, reading. But she stops all the time, looks at people, especially children, or else feeds the pigeons, which in a way disappoints me; pigeons, like rats, roaches, ants and termites, don’t need any help. They’ll be around after bacteria finally put an end to us.

Looking at her from a distance, I am more and more impressed by the harmony of her body, the perfect balance among the parts that make up her wholeness—the extension of the members in relation to the vertical dimension of the thorax; the length of her neck in relation to the face and head; the narrowness of her waist in combination with the firmness of the buttocks and chest. I need to approach this woman as soon as possible. I’m racing against time.

On a day with heavy rain, I sit beside her under the downpour, on a bench in the square. I have to find out right away if she likes to talk.

“Too bad the rain doesn’t allow reading today,” I say.

She doesn’t answer.

“That’s why you didn’t bring a book.”

She pretends not to hear.

I insist: “He makes the sun shine on the good and the bad, and sends the rain on the just and the unjust.”

The woman then stares at me quickly, but I keep my gaze on her forehead.

“Are you talking to me?”

“God makes it rain on the just and the—” (My eyes on her forehead.)

“Ah, you were speaking of God.”

She gets up. Standing, she knows she’s in a favorable position to thwart the advances of an intruder.

“Don’t take it wrong. I saw that you must be one of those evangelicals looking to save souls for Jesus, but don’t waste your time; I’m a lost cause.”

I follow her as she walks slowly away.

“I’m not a Protestant pastor. In fact, I doubt you can guess what I do.”

“I’m very good at that. But I don’t have time today; I have to get to an art exhibit.”

Her voice displays less displeasure. She possesses the virtue of curiosity, which is very good for me. And another essential quality as well: she likes to talk. That’s even better.

I offer to accompany her and, after a slight hesitation, she agrees. We walk, with her a short distance away from me as if we weren’t together. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible.

At the exhibit there is a single attendant, sitting at a table, filing her nails. Negrinha, my current lover, says that women who file their nails in public have trouble thinking, and filing their nails helps them reflect better, like those women who reason more clearly while removing blackheads from their nose in front of the mirror.

While I look at the paintings with studied indifference, I say to her, “Avant-garde from the last century, spontaneous abstract vestiges, subconscious, sub-Kadinski; I prefer a Shakespearean sonnet.”

She doesn’t reply.

“I’m trying to impress you.”

“It wasn’t enough, but mentioning poetry helped a little. I’d like to understand poetry.”

Poetry isn’t to be understood; poetry is no pharmaceutical instruction sheet. I’m not going to tell her that, not for the time being.

“How about getting an espresso?” she asks.

I look for a place where we can sit. Being taller than I, Venus makes my hump look larger when we’re standing side by side.

“Now I’m going to find out what you do,” she says, appearing to be amused by the situation. “You do something, don’t you? Don’t tell me, let me guess. Well, we already know you’re not a Protestant pastor, and you’re not a teacher; teachers have dirty fingernails. Lawyers wear ties. Not a stock broker, obviously not. Maybe a systems analyst, that hunched-over position in front of the computer … Uh … Sorry.”

If I had looked in her eyes, what would I have seen when she referred to the spinal column of a guy bent over in front of the computer? Horror, pity, scorn? Now do you understand why I avoid, in the initial contacts, reading their eyes? True, I might have seen only curiosity, but I prefer not to risk glimpsing something that could undermine my audacity.

“And you, do you know what I do?”

“Clean nails without polish. You like to read on a park bench. You like getting wet in the rain. You have one foot larger than the other. You want to understand about poetry. You’re lazy. Disturbing signs.”

“Does it show?”

“You could be a photographer’s model.”

“Does it show?”

“Or an idle, frustrated housewife who goes to a fitness center where she does dance, stretching, bodybuilding, specific exercises to strengthen the gluteus. The, the—”

“The ass. Is that the word you’re looking for? What about the ass?”

“After the breasts, it’s the part of the body most exposed to danger,” I add.

I’m a bit surprised at her naturalness in using that vulgar word in a conversation with someone she doesn’t know, despite the fact that I know from long experience that no one employs euphemisms with hunchbacks. Or other niceties: it’s common for people to belch and fart absentmindedly in my presence.

“Does it show?” she repeats.

“Or else it’s none of that, and you have a bookbinding workshop in your house.”

“You didn’t answer. Does it show?”

“What?”

“That I have one foot larger than the other?”

“Show me the palm of your hand. I see you’re planning a trip. There’s a person that has you concerned.”

“Right again. What’s the trick?”

“Everyone has one foot larger than the other, is planning a trip, has somebody who makes life difficult for them.”

“It’s my right foot.”

She extends her leg, shows her foot. She’s wearing a flat leather shoe styled like a sneaker.

“But, anyway, what’s my profession?”

“Bookbinding. A woman who works with books has special charm.”

“There you’re wrong. I don’t do anything. But you got one part right. I’m lazy. Is that one of my disturbing signs?”

“It’s the main one,” I reply. “A famous poet felt laziness to be a delicious state, a sensation that relegated poetry, ambition, and love to a secondary plane. The other unique sign is enjoying reading on a park bench. And finally, liking to get wet in the rain.”