Rubem Fonseca: Winning the Game and Other Stories

I don’t tell her that lazy people suffer from the instinctive impulse to achieve something but don’t know what. The fact of Venus being lazy was, to me, great luck. All the women I’ve seduced were lazy, dreaming of doing or learning something. But, especially, they enjoyed talking—speaking and listening—which in reality was what was most important. I’ll get back to that.

“You’re a professor of some kind; your clean fingernails threw me off.”

“You can call me professor.”

“All right, professor. And what about you? What’re you going to call me? Lazy girl?”

“I already have a name for you. Venus.”

“Venus? Horrible.”

“Your Venus is the one by Botticelli.”

“The painting? I can’t remember what it’s like anymore.”

“Just take a look in the mirror.”

“Silly flattery. Why is liking to get wet in the rain a disturbing sign?”

“That’s something I’m not going to tell you today.”

“Here’s the book. I couldn’t read it in the rain,” she says, taking a book from the pocket of her raincoat. “Ciao.”

It was only then that I saw her blue eyes: neutral. She had already become accustomed to my appearance and, perhaps, managed to see that my face wasn’t as ugly as my body.

That was our first meeting. Venus’s liking poetry was going to help me, but if she appreciated music, or theater, or cinema, or the plastic arts it wouldn’t change my strategy at all. Negrinha only liked music and wasn’t a lot of trouble, as she liked to talk, especially to complain about the man who lived with her before me, who only spoke of practical things—short-, medium- and long-range plans, schedules, notes in appointment books, errands, cost-benefit analysis of expenses, whether for a trip or buying a garlic press, and when she wanted to talk about some other topic, he simply didn’t hear.

Besides being a good listener, I can say interesting things, trivia from almanacs as well as more profound things that I’ve learned from books. I’ve spent my life reading and becoming informed. While others were kicking balls around, dancing, dating, strolling, driving cars or motorcycles, I was at home convalescing from failed operations and reading. I’ve learned a lot; I’ve deduced, thought, verified, discovered. I’ve become a bit prolix, it’s true. But I grew, during my martyrdom of shadows, by studying and planning how to reach my objectives.

A guy who’s had twenty operations on his spine, one failure after the other, has to have, among his major virtues, that of persistence. I discover, through the doorman of the building where she lives, that Agnes is the name by which Venus is known in the world of mortals. I leave an envelope with a note for her at the reception desk in her building.

The note: I suspect that you’ve read little poetry. You read the books in the park and skip pages. They must be short stories; no one reads poems that way. Lazy people like to read short stories; they finish one story on page twenty, then skip to the one on page forty, and in the end they read only part of the book. You need to read the poets, even if it’s only in the manner of that crazy writer for whom books of poetry deserve to be read only a single time and then destroyed so that dead poets can yield way to the living ones and not leave them petrified. I can make you understand poetry, but you’ll have to read the books I indicate. You need me, more than you need your mother or your Pomeranian. Here’s my telephone number. P.S.: You’re right; it’s better to be named Agnes than Venus. Signed: The Professor.

To make a simpleton understand poetry! But she liked that literary genre, so the topic of our conversations would therefore be poetry. The things a hunchback is capable of doing to make a woman fall in love with him.

When I’m looking for a new girlfriend, the old one is discarded; I need to concentrate on the main objective. It was time to say good-bye to Negrinha.

Astutely, I write some obvious love poems to Agnes and leave them, on purpose, in the printer tray on the computer table, a place that Negrinha always pries into. She’s all the time going through my things; she’s very jealous.

Negrinha becomes furious when she discovers the poems. She curses me, utters hard words, which I answer gently. She beats against my chest and my hump, says that she loves me, that she hates me, while I respond with soft words. I read somewhere or other that in a separation it’s the one who doesn’t love that says affectionate things.

Truthfully, I was very interested in Negrinha until she fell in love with me. But I am not and never was in love with her, or with any other woman I’ve been involved with. I’m a hunchback: I don’t need to fall in love with a woman, I need for some woman to fall in love with me—and then another woman, then another. I remember the pleasant moments I spent with Negrinha, in bed, talking, listening to music, and mixing our saliva. They say that this transparent liquid secreted by the salivary glands is tasteless and serves merely to fluidify food and facilitate ingestion and digestion, which only proves that people lack the sensitivity to perceive the taste of even their own saliva, and, worse yet, the necessary gustative subtlety to take delight in the taste of another person’s saliva. When they mix, the two salivas acquire an ineffable flavor, comparable only to the nectar of mythology—an enzymatic mystery, like others in our body.

I’m sad at having made Negrinha suffer. But I’m a hunchback. Goodbye, Negrinha, your saliva was delectable and your green eyes possessed a luminous beauty.

It takes Agnes a week to reply to my letter.

Her note: I do need my Pomeranian, but I don’t need my mother, maybe her checkbook. I’m going to stop by there.

When Agnes arrives, I’m already prepared to receive her. How does a hunchback prepare to receive a beautiful woman who must be arduously induced to give herself to him? By making plans beforehand—all the contingencies, as is the essence of planning; remaining calm, as we must when we receive the surgeon or the plumber come to fix the toilet in the bathroom; wearing loose clothing and sticking out the chest; remaining alert so that our face always appears benign and our gaze permanently gentle. A distracted hunchback, even if not Quasimodesque but having a good-looking face, as in my case, always exhibits a sinister mien.

Agnes comes in and observes the living room with a keen feminine eye. I’ve been living here for only a year; I move constantly, and my living room, despite being elegantly furnished, has something vaguely incomplete about it, as if it lacked light fixtures, furniture with no function, and other useless ornaments that result from the prolonged occupation of domestic spaces. The fine wooden bookcases—which hold my books, CDS, and DVDS of film, music, opera, and the plastic arts and always go with me when I change residences—are modular and easily disassembled.

Agnes stops in front of the bookcases that cover the walls of the living room and asks, without turning toward me, “Do you own this apartment?”

“It’s rented.”

“What are the books mentioned in your note?”

“You’ll find out in due time. It’s a schedule without preset period of duration. You’ll read a poem daily. The poets will never be repeated. You’ll have the entire day to read the poem. At night you’ll come here, we’ll have dinner, and you’ll talk to me about the chosen poem. Or about anything you wish, if you don’t feel like talking about the poem. I have the best cook in the city. Would you like something to drink?”

Agnes, who has kept her back to me till then, suddenly turns, exclaiming, “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I must be mad. Am I going to become a student? Is that it?”