Rubem Fonseca - Winning the Game and Other Stories

Only after these prolegomena should we introduce the penis into the dazzling rift, which will be balsamically aromatic, prepared to receive it.

How to do that with Nelly? She has an ugly body, drooping breasts, flaccid ass and belly. And when I suggested that she consult a plastic surgeon, she asked bitingly, “You think I’m some kind of Botoxed social butterfly? I’m a professional, a famous lawyer, respected, who makes a living by working.” Implicit in the way she said this was that I was a bum, a make-believe writer, who didn’t work.

I had a long talk with my friend Amancio. “I don’t know what to do about my life,” I told him. “I’m in love with Michele, and my wife is suffocating me, humiliating me, making me unhappy.”

Amancio was silent for some time. Then he said he had the answer to my problem. “I know you want to give Michele an apartment, don’t you?”

“Yes, I’d like to satisfy her fondest dream, which is to have a penthouse apartment in Leblon. But I don’t even have the money to buy a shack in a shantytown.”

“I’ve got the solution to your problem.”

Amancio’s solution horrified me.

“I can’t do that, Amancio, I don’t have the courage.”

“Think, think about it.”

“I would never do something like that.”

But that night, Nelly told me she was tired of living with a parasite and was going to find me a job in the bureaucracy that I couldn’t refuse.

“Go on, say yes. I’m ordering it, I’ve already decided.”

“All right, all right, Nelly, I’ll go by the office tomorrow.”

But I wasn’t about to obey Nelly’s intolerable ukase. Instead, I went to Amancio’s office.

“I’m in,” I said.

“Everything’s ready,” Amancio said.

He gave me a hypodermic needle and told me to scrape it on Nelly’s skin as she slept; one scratch would be enough. The needle was infected with tetanus. I remembered someone saying that a good way of getting rid of a person was by infecting them with tetanus, but I couldn’t recall who had said it.

I remained awake, holding the needle, without the courage to act. Then Nelly started snoring, and I believe that was what led me to do what Amancio recommended.

The next morning Nelly said she had a scratch on her leg, and I suggested she put a Band-Aid on it. Band-Aids don’t do a goddamn bit of good, Amancio had told me. “Shut off the water so Nelly doesn’t take a bath; if she washes the wound with soap and water, everything’s ruined; soap and water kill any type of infection.”

Nelly went to her office without taking a bath, with the Band-Aid on her leg. I stayed at home, suffering, judging myself a damnable murderer, a reprobate of the worst kind. I called Amancio’s office.

“Take it easy, take it easy. Stop by here and we’ll talk,” he said.

“You two got married under community property,” Amancio said. “When Nelly dies you’ll get everything, you’ll be able to write in peace, and if necessary, pay for publishing your book. Several writers who later became famous and important paid for the first printing of their books. Everybody knows that.”

Amancio explained that the incubation period of tetanus could vary from three to twenty-one days; the further away from the nervous system the wound, the longer the incubation period, and the longer that incubation period, the greater the probability of death, which is why he ordered me to make the scratch in the leg.

“God forgive me,” I said.

“What’s done is done,” said Amancio.

When you want time to go by quickly, it goes by very slowly. After ten days, nothing happened. But on the thirteenth day, Nelly began to experience contractions in her jaw muscles. I called Amancio.

“Ah, that’s good,” he said, “it’s the first sign of tetanus, what’s called trismus. Nelly’s going to be unable to open her mouth. Call me to examine her.”

“Nelly, my love, I’ve called Dr. Amancio; he’s coming here to examine you.”

Amancio examined Nelly at length.

“It’s nothing,” Amancio said, “just nervous tension. You must be having some problem at work. I’m going to give you a tranquilizer, an injection.”

He applied an injection in Nelly’s vein.

“Wonderful,” Amancio said. “Just look at her face.”

I looked. Nelly was laughing.

“She’s laughing,” I said.

“Exactly. It’s called risus sardonicus, a spasm of the muscles surrounding the mouth. Wonderful. Now we’ll wait for diaphoresis. She’s going to sweat, sweat, sweat, her temperature will rise, she’s going to suffer tachycardia and die of asphyxia caused by spasms of the diaphragm.” (I forgot to mention that Amancio abused the word wonderful —the food was wonderful, the film was wonderful, the shoes were wonderful, and so on.)

Amancio himself wrote the death certificate: general failure of multiple organs, which is what doctors put on the death certificate when they’re unsure of the causa mortis. Nelly had no other relatives, and since visits were forbidden, no one saw the risus sardonicus stamped on her face while she lay dying in bed, but I confess that I always remembered her Joker’s physiognomy and even had nightmares of Nelly sitting at the dinner table looking at me with a scornful or disdainful smile as I ate a plate of onions, the food I hate most.

Nelly owned countless properties and a variety of investments. I took part of the money I got and bought a two-story penthouse at the beach in Michele’s name. That was her dream, a penthouse on the oceanfront in Leblon. (In reality, I also had to spend a reasonably large amount to remodel the penthouse. The apartment was highly livable, but women are crazy about remodeling, and it was done: a new kitchen, two new baths, some walls torn down, a new sauna, a different floor—all in all, a new apartment. Plus the furniture … I spent a lot of money.)

“Look,” she told me when the work was finished, “you go on living in your house, and I’ll live in mine. The thing that kills love is two people living together, rubbing against each other all day. I know over a thousand cases. Another thing, nobody can show up at the other’s house without calling ahead.”

She was right. Since there was no friction, our relationship continued as perfect as before. Maybe it got even better, because we fucked in more comfort.

Amancio was constantly demanding. “You owe me,” he would say. Amancio might be a good tetanus contaminator, but it seems as a doctor he was nothing special. He had few patients and spent much of his time in nightclubs and houses of ill repute; as he himself confessed, he was fond of fucking whores.

“You don’t need to use a rubber if you fuck a whore. You need to use a rubber if you fuck a married woman, ’cause they catch diseases from their husbands, who’re bisexual,” he said.

Knowing his proclivities, I wasn’t concerned when he and Michele would go to art exhibitions together, which they did often.

I gave him a large amount of money and also a full power of attorney to buy, sell, subrogate, everything.

One day Amancio said he needed my help. He had a place in the mountains, a little past Teresopolis, and wanted to invite an acquaintance of his to spend a few days there, but in reality he wanted to imprison him in the cellar.

“What then?” I asked.

“After a few days I’ll let him go. It’s just to scare him. He’s a nobody.”

“What if he yells for help?”

“He can yell as much as he wants, no one’s going to hear. I don’t have a caretaker, and I lock the place up tighter than a drum. Take it easy.”

“Shit, you’re going to kill the guy?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “he’s a son of a bitch. And he’s screwing up my life. He doesn’t let me be with the woman I’m in love with.”