Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

“I don’t know that gentleman personally, only by name. The one who knew him well was Paulo. It seems that Lieutenant Gregório helped him obtain — overcome certain, uh, bureaucratic difficulties. You know how it is. .”

“Be more specific.”

“You know what Brazil is like.”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“If you had an import-export business you’d know.”

“But I don’t.”

“To import or export anything you need a license from Cexim. It’s not easy to get. Often the cooperation of an influential friend is necessary. Lieutenant Gregório helped Paulo get an. . important. . license for his firm, Cemtex, in which I also am a partner. For Brazil to grow, businessmen need to humble themselves by asking favors.”

“Did Gregório frequent the home of Paulo Gomes Aguiar?”

“I can’t say. I do know that they met a few times. . They had a good relationship. . I wouldn’t call it a friendship. . Yes, I believe that gentleman did go to Paulo’s house, sporadically. .”

“Dona Luciana told me her husband was in the habit of using the services of a macumba priest. That individual would have been in their home the day Gomes Aguiar was killed.”

“It’s true. Paulo often consulted him. I thought it strange that an intelligent person like Paulo would believe in such a fraud, a confidence man who exploits people’s superstition. I don’t think he’d be capable of committing violence.”

“Do you know him?”

“I went to his macumba site in Caxias once, with Paulo. Strictly out of curiosity.”

“Could you give me the address of that site?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know it. I don’t even know how to give you correct information about the locale. But I can take you there. I think that by going to Caxias, I can end up finding the place. I remember a bar, things like that can orient me.”

“Would it be possible tomorrow?”

“I believe so.”

WHEN HE LEFT LOMAGNO’S OFFICE, Mattos’s stomach ached terribly. He had a doctor’s appointment for that afternoon. From the Mineira milk bar, on Rua São José facing the Cruzeiro Gallery, he phoned the doctor and canceled the appointment. He drank half a liter of milk and left to catch the streetcar at the Tabuleiro da Baiana; it had been years since streetcars went to the Gallery.

In the streetcar, on his way to the Dr. Eiras clinic, the inspector thought about the interview he had conducted moments earlier.

Lomagno was very uneasy at first; by the end, very calm. Was he getting used to the lie he was telling, or to the truth? The story about the macumba priest might be true. And also what Lomagno had told him about Alice. That thought made his stomach and his heart ache, hindered his reasoning, prevented the cop from thinking clearly about the role of — not Gregório yet, it was still too soon! — of the mysterious black man. Alice mentally ill. He hadn’t perceived that when they had been together. How could such a beautiful woman be ill? No, he would not allow his lucidity to be compromised by irrelevant doubts: the Negro was Gregório, he was more and more certain of it. The F for Fortuna engraved in the gold ring. Then why was he, who liked repeating Diderot’s maxim that skepticism was the first step toward truth, now full of certainty? Alice’s illness again. Alice. He remembered his mother’s sister, who wasn’t right in the head, telling him — just when was it? — that she’d seen sputum on the sidewalk and had stood there mentally repeating to herself, “Do I lick it or not?” Knowing there were several crazy people in his own family, he considered it possible he himself might suffer a psychotic episode. Possible, but not probable. In any case, he hoped never to come to having an irresistible urge to lick someone’s spit off the sidewalk.

Arnoldo Coelho, Alice’s psychiatrist, had worked for a time at the Asylum for the Criminally Insane and received the inspector graciously. Nevertheless, he only agreed to speak about his client when Mattos, after explaining he was investigating a homicide, guaranteed that the information he provided would remain confidential.

“She suffers from manic-depressive psychosis.”

“Can you give me more details about the illness?”

“Falret called it circular insanity; Baillarger, biform psychosis; Delay, alternating-type madness; Magnan, intermittent psychosis; Kahlbaum, typical circular vesania; Kraepelin was the first to use the terminology manic-depressive psychosis. Kretschmer—”

“Doctor, I can’t take anymore hearing about those Germans whose names all begin with K. In the police academy I studied judiciary psychology, legal psychiatry, forensic medicine, criminal anthropology. It nearly killed me.”

They laughed.

“Was your professor Alves Garcia?”

“I wish. I wasn’t that lucky.” Pause. “Doctor, tell me about Alice.”

“When she’s in her manic phase, she has an irresistible need for movement. She’s ironic, really biting. She has frenzied ideas, with vertical rapid associations. She compulsively writes page after page in her diary. She behaves prodigally. On one occasion she gave me a gold watch. A Vaucheron Constantin. Of course, I returned the watch.”

“She keeps a diary?”

“Yes. But I didn’t read it. In her depressive phase she becomes very apathetic. She once went into a stupor. That was when we had to hospitalize her.”

“Are there any medicines?”

“Yes, medicines exist. Manic-depressive psychosis is curable, but not all patients have the same positive response. Alice’s is, shall we say, a more difficult case. She’s very intelligent, as occurs in fact with many of these psychotics, and she’s cooperating rather well. Whenever she comes to the hospital — Alice knows when she’s having an episode — I tell her, ‘Stick out your tongue.’ If she does, I know she’s in her manic phase; if she doesn’t, she’s in the depressive phase.”

“Does she hallucinate?”

“No. Let’s say she has illusions, at the height of the episodes. Hallucination is perception without an object. Illusion, the deformed perception of the object.”

“What kind of illusions?”

“Some ideas of persecution, transitory and epiphenomenal.”

IN THE MORNING, while the president was in Belo Horizonte, General Zenóbio conferred at length with General Caiado de Castro at the Catete Palace. The main topics aired were the disturbances in Marechal Floriano Square, the gathering of military officers at the Aeronautics Club, and the interrogation of Lieutenant Gregório in the barracks of the Second Military Police Battalion.

In the afternoon, Zenóbio, the secretary of war, called a meeting of seventy-three generals serving in the capital, among them General Estillac Leal, who had come from São Paulo especially for that purpose.

No general was willing to make a statement to the press following the meeting.

Later, at about seven that night, a note would be distributed: “At the meeting today, at which were present all the general officers serving in this capital, along with the army general in command of the Central Military Zone, Estillac Leal and his Chief of Staff General Floriano Keller, the following position, arrived at yesterday by high-ranking officials of the three armed forces, was reaffirmed: to persevere in the goal of investigating the criminal action that culminated in the assassination of Major Rubens Florentino Vaz, to effect the trial of the criminals by the justice system, and, furthermore, to remain, under any circumstance that may occur, within provisions imposed by the Federal Constitution.”

GREGÓRIO HAD BEEN INTERROGATED at Galeão air base for eight hours. The main interrogators had been Inspector Pastor, Prosecutor Cordeiro Guerra, and Colonel Adyl. Several air force officers were also present.