Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

“I’m going to chew another antacid.”

Salete watched Mattos chew the antacid tablet.

“You don’t. . don’t feel like it?”

“I will. In a little while.”

“I’m not bothering you, am I?”

“You never bother me.”

“I went to the Getúlio Vargas Foundation and enrolled in the secretarial course.”

“Congratulations. That makes me. . feel like it.” It was a lie.

“Let me see.” Salete reached toward the inspector’s pubis. He backed away.

“In a little while. In a commentary on the Talmud, a scholar known as Raba said that the erection of the male member can only occur with ‘the aid of reason.’”

“You read that in that book?” Salete pointed to the book the inspector had just picked up.

“A different one.”

“I think you read too much. Dona Floripes said that a man who frequented her house went crazy from so much reading. He wanted the girls to pee on him.”

“If I go crazy, I promise not to ask you to urinate on me.”

“You should do other things. You should dance. Dancing is good for the head.”

“On top of everything else, the doorman told me the water is going to be out until six o’clock. Let’s wait.”

The doorbell rang.

“Who can that be?” said Salete.

Mattos opened the door.

“Did I give you my address?” asked the inspector, surprised to see Alice in the hallway.

“I saw it in the phone book.” Pause. “Colette died, did you know. On the third. She’s going to be buried day after tomorrow, in the Père Lachaise.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“You said you liked her books.” Alice tried to identify the book the inspector had in his hand, unsuccessfully.

“Right now I have my own cadavers to worry about. I’m a cop, or did you forget?”

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

“I have a visitor.”

Alice raised her gaze past Mattos’s shoulder and saw Salete.

“I’m sorry. . I came by to — I’ll phone you later. . Is it all right if I call you later?”

“Yes. Call, if you want to.”

The inspector closed the door.

“Who was that woman?”

“A friend.”

“Pretty.” Pause. “I’m going to see if the water’s come,” said Salete, without moving from her position. “Are you mad because she left when she saw me?”

“No.”

“She’s a lady. . I saw that right away. Is she your other girlfriend? The real one?”

“It’s nothing like that. Let’s change the subject.”

“You’re mad.” Pause. “I didn’t know you liked blondes. .” Pause. “If you’d asked, I would’ve gone away and left you here with her, without getting upset.”

In Dona Floripes’s house she had been taught that men existed to be pleased, that men existed to be deceived and exploited, and therefore it was necessary to know how to dissimulate.

But she didn’t want to deceive or exploit this man. “It’s not true. I was jealous of her. I would’ve been very unhappy if you had sent me away.”

Mattos gave Salete a kiss on the cheek.

“I’ll go see if the water’s come,” said Salete.

When she entered the bathroom she saw her face in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. However small, a mirror always attracted her gaze.

She brought her face close to the mirror. She would like very much to be blonde and have blue eyes, like that woman, and like that woman know how to look directly at others, as the blonde woman had done when looking at her from the door. Now, from up close, she contemplated her face in the mirror. The eyes were very round; everyone said it was almond-shaped eyes that were pretty. The eyebrows were thick and dark, the nose too long, the mouth too large. Why had God made her so ugly? What saved her was her body.

She removed her clothes and tried to see her body in the small mirror. She would have liked at that moment to see herself nude in a large mirror in order to forget the blonde lady. At home she would dance naked in front of an enormous wall mirror, and the sight of her nude body in motion always caused her immense happiness. But in Mattos’s apartment there was only that crummy mirror that let her see only her horrible face.

The pipes in the bathroom began to rumble. The water was back. Salete filled the bathtub, taking care to see that the temperature was right. Then she stood beside the tub. She didn’t need to strike a pose; she wasn’t like many of the girls she’d met at Dona Floripes’s, who would try to appeal to johns by hiding their breasts and butt behind cloths, sucking in their belly, contorting themselves by placing one leg over the other to conceal the curved opening between their thighs. She shouted: “You can come in.”

Mattos entered the bathroom.

“Get rid of that book.”

Salete watched the inspector put the book in a corner, on the clothes hamper. Where was the look of surprise at her nudity, or that other look, that of desire? She took Mattos’s hand and placed it on her breast.

“Can you hear my heart?”

She had seen that in a film. It wasn’t one of the clever whore’s tricks that she’d learned in Dona Floripes’s house; whenever she was nude in front of Mattos, her heart would pound, and he must be able to feel that with his fingers. Her body trembled.

“Yes, I can hear your heart beat.” He turned his back to her, picked up the book, and left the bathroom.

Salete retrieved her clothes from the floor and dressed sadly. She went back to the living room. Mattos, his elbows supported on the table, was deeply absorbed in reading the book in front of him. Salete left in silence, without the inspector noticing.

IN THE SENATE GARAGE, Senator Vitor Freitas, accompanied by his aide Clemente, got into the official car at his disposal and ordered the driver to take them to the Aeronautics Club. The club, on Marechal Ancora Square, wasn’t far from the Senate; normally the car would arrive in less than ten minutes, but that day, after half an hour stuck on Avenida Presidente Antonio Carlos, the senator got out of the car and, along with his adviser, walked the rest of the way.

A crowd was at the door of the club, and several times Vitor Freitas had to invoke his status as senator to finally be allowed to enter.

The coffin with the body of Major Vaz had just been sealed and was being covered with the Brazilian flag.

“We’re late,” Clemente said.

“Where’s the brigadier, Eduardo Gomes? I need for him to see me here,” said Vitor Freitas. The brigadier had been the UDN presidential candidate in 1946 and 1950. In the first election, he had lost to General Gaspar Dutra, who had been Vargas’s secretary of war during the dictatorship. In the second, he had lost to Vargas himself, an unexpected victory for the ex-dictator, who thus avenged himself on one of the military officers who had led the movement that deposed him in 1945. Despite being twice defeated, the brigadier maintained in the eyes of the middle class the romantic aura as a revolutionary hero acquired during the episode of the Eighteen of the Fort, on July 5, 1922: seventeen officers and soldiers and one civilian left Copacabana Fort and headed for the Catete Palace, where the commander of the fort had been taken prisoner for insubordination, ready to fight an unequal battle. They were marching along Avenida Atlântica when they were attacked by forces loyal to the government of President Epitácio Pessoa. The civilian and a lieutenant died. Three officers, among them Eduardo Gomes, were seriously wounded.

Clemente spotted the brigadier in the middle of a group of air force officers and civilians. But Freitas was unsuccessful in offering his desired condolences to Brigadier Eduardo Gomes. The senator managed to say, “Brigadier, the martyrdom of Major Vaz shall not be in vain.” But the brigadier, whose leadership among younger air force officers, though himself in the reserves, was indisputable, didn’t hear what Freitas was saying, for at that instant he shouted in irritation, “I’ve already said the cortege will not go past the door of the Catete. It will go along the beach. This is not the moment for provocation.”