Rubem Fonseca: Crimes of August

“That case of the workshop? Did the boy’s father show up?”

“No, sir. The boy said the old man doesn’t have anybody to take care of the orange grove.”

In a small automotive repair shop, in a fight, the mechanic Cosme, using a lug wrench, had hit in the head a guy who had left his car for work, killing him. The mechanic, a skinny guy, twenty-two years old, had a huge hematoma over his left eye. The shop belonged to him and his father, a Portuguese who was absent at the time of the fight, at the orange grove the family owned in Nova Iguaçu. A woman, called as a witness, had complicated matters by saying she had seen a guy in a gray shirt hit the victim in the head with something. Cosme, when arrested, was wearing a red shirt.

“Is the woman back from her trip?”

“No. I went to her apartment on Friday, and no one knows when she’ll return. She must have that thing you said about seeing everything in gray.”

“For us to be certain whether the woman is colorblind, it’s necessary to have her vision checked.”

“Sir, the boy confessed. The woman’s disappeared. The inquest period is ending.”

“Go to Nova Iguaçu and subpoena the old man to come to the precinct to talk with me. The mother comes here every day to see her son, so does his wife. It’s just the father who doesn’t appear.”

“He’s taking care of the oranges.”

“These Portuguese families are very close. For them, not all the oranges in the world matter more than a son.”

“The grove is, pardon the expression, in the middle of nowhere.”

“I want the old man here day after tomorrow.”

“I have to go to the Senate to talk to senator Freitas.”

“I’ll do that. You’re going to leave here directly for Nova Iguaçu. Now.”

Cosme had been brought from the holding area and taken to the room where he normally received visits from his wife. The two were sitting, silently holding hands, when the inspector entered. The woman wiped her face, swollen from crying and her eighth-month pregnancy. Beside the bench was a lunch pail with food that she brought daily for her husband. The woman knew she owed those meetings to the inspector and tried to smile but didn’t succeed.

“You brought some nice food for him?” said the inspector. “One of these days I’m going to try those delicacies.”

“Whenever you like, sir. Today it’s a cheese turnover,” said the young man, taking it from the lunch pail. The woman remained silent. The two were young and unattractive. Cosme’s ugliness had afforded Rosalvo the opportunity to repeat to the inspector other lessons learned in school: Cosme was a Lombrosian type with physical stigmas of criminality such as recessive forehead, prominence of the zygomas, sharpness of the facial angle, prognathism, plagiocephalism. “Sir, don’t laugh at me, that means an oblique, oval head, asymmetric, pressed between the two halves so that the right side, more developed in front, corresponds to a greater development of the left side in back.”

Looking at Cosme, the inspector saw none of that. Just a scared youth.

“I had your father summoned to come here to talk to me,” said Mattos.

Cosme jumped up from the bench.

“Don’t do that, sir, please, my father is a sick man.”

“I need to speak with him.”

“Please! Isn’t everything already decided? Everything decided? Please,” said Cosme, holding the cheese pastry.

Could the cause and effect relationship be essential to the nature of all the reasoning relevant to the facts? Mattos asked himself. What good were inferences resulting from a chain of suppositions? He knew that propositions allusive to the facts could only be contingent. The conclusion to which he was coming, observing the tremulous couple before him, resulted merely from the senses, from impressions of the moment, which might be false. Everything could be false. My God, my mind is becoming as bizarre as Rosalvo’s.

“I’m very sorry, but I need to question your father.”

The inspector left the room after saying this, not wishing to see the couple’s other reactions. He had no desire to further confuse his ideas and perceptions. For better understanding, he wanted to have more facts available — and more perceptions and more ideas. The attempt to understand things always led him to a frustrating vicious circle.

Mattos stopped beside one of the two lions flanking the stairway of the Monroe Palace. He turned to look at the imposing São Borja Building on the other side of Avenida Rio Branco. The senators had chosen a very convenient place for their dalliances.

The Senate was in session, but Senator Freitas wasn’t on the floor. His aide Clemente Mello Telles Neto, an elegantly dressed young man in a white three-piece linen suit, said the senator was busy at a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee.

“What’s this about, Inspector?”

“I prefer to tell the senator himself what this is about.”

“It’s going to be difficult for you to speak with him. The senator is a very busy man. Is it anything personal?”

“No. It’s not personal.”

“Then you can speak with me.”

“I want to speak with him.”

“Then you’ll have to wait for the right time.” Pause. “Look, let’s agree on this: you leave me your phone number, and when the interview is possible, I’ll call and let you know.”

Mattos gave the precinct’s number to the aide. “Tell the senator it’s in his interest to speak with me.”

“I’ll tell him,” said the aide, formally.

The inspector took a small pad from his pocket.

“What’s the senator’s phone number, please?”

After hesitating, Clemente gave the inspector the number of the senator’s office.

Leaving the Senate, Mattos walked along Rio Branco to Rua Sete de Setembro. He turned to the left onto Rua Uruguaiana. The Cavé was on the corner.

He went into the tea room and sat down facing the door. It was ten minutes before five. For a few moments he thought of leaving. Why stay there and see the woman who had rejected him? What did Alice want from him? Help? He didn’t want to take revenge on her by refusing to help her, or take revenge by helping her, which would be even more petty. He sat there, staring at the art-nouveau drawings on the wall.

He stood up when Alice arrived and pulled out a chair for her to sit. They sat on opposite sides of the table, without looking at each other, silent.

The waiter approached.

“Tea and toast?” asked Mattos.

Alice nodded.

“Are you still in the, the Department?”

She doesn’t even want to say the word police, he thought. Federal Department of Public Safety is a bit less shameful.

“Yes.”

Alice opened her purse and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, which she placed on the table. She tried to smile. “I smoke now.”

Mattos picked up the lighter and lit her cigarette.

The waiter brought the tea. Alice put out her cigarette in the ashtray.

“I have an appointment at 5:30. With the maestro. You remember the maestro?”

“Maestro?”

“The old man who ran the claque, Mr. Emilio. Remember?”

She vaguely recalled Mattos having said that as a student he’d been part of the claque at the Municipal Theater in order to attend operas free while making some pocket money.

“I haven’t seen him for some time. . The last time, I cut class to meet him by the Chopin statue. . That’s where the claqueurs gathered. . That day we were setting up the claque for Parsifal . .”

Alice stuck another cigarette in her mouth. Mattos picked up the lighter and lit the cigarette.

“Wagnerian operas were always a lot of work for the claqueurs. In Parsifal you’re never supposed to applaud at the end of the first act, and making the audience keep quiet was much harder than making them clap hands. I remember Mr. Emilio saying, ‘We’re not going to ask some second-rater for an encore.’”