Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

MATTOS OPENED the door for Alice. She handed the LP to him.

“A friend brought me this from her trip to Europe.”

Tristan und Isolde .

“With Lauritz Melchior and Kirsten Flagstad. It’s for you. I hope you like it.”

“Thank you very much.”

As he looked at Alice, the inspector thought about the psychiatrist’s words. . circular insanity. . biform psychosis. . alternating-type madness. . intermittent psychosis. . typical circular vesania. . manic-depressive psychosis. .

“I’m very nervous. . Could you get me a glass of water?”

“Cold?”

“No, it’s to take a pill.”

Alice took a pill from a small container in her purse.

“I’m going to separate from Pedro.”

“May I play the record?” asked Mattos.

“I can’t bear living with Pedro any longer.”

Mattos put the disk on the Victrola. Music from the overture flooded the small room. He identified the melody of one and the other: love and hate, Isolde and Tristan, Alice and Alberto, paradox and madness.

“My mother died, did I tell you? I don’t have anywhere to go, I think I’ll go to a hotel. Or maybe come here.”

Typical circular vesania.

(Stick out your tongue, Alice?)

“There’s no comfort here.”

“Who said I need comfort?” replied Alice.

“I only have two other operas. One of them is a 78.” Mattos laughed.

“I know. Turn up the sound, and we’ll listen to it in bed.”

“A guy’s coming here. An informant, a rat.”

“If he shows up, we won’t let him gnaw on anything.”

“He’s a police informant. He’ll be here soon.”

They fell silent.

The doorbell rang.

“Must be him.”

Alice went into the bedroom and closed the door.

Anastácio Santos, a.k.a. Squinty, came in. He had small eyes that were even smaller when he wanted to see sharply and squinted his eyelids to correct for his myopia.

He looked suspiciously at the closed bedroom door. “Is somebody in there?” he asked.

“A woman, sleeping,” said Mattos.

“With that music on?”

“Music helps her sleep.”

“Leave the music playing,” said Anastácio, taking an envelope from his pocket.

Mattos read the letter with some difficulty.

“Who’s this Genivaldo?” he asked, handing back the letter.

“He’s a dip, a friend of Bolão’s.”

“Is Bolão a pickpocket too?”

“Yeah. The two of them work for Mr. Ilídio when the pickpocket business is slow.”

“How much do you want for the information?”

“They told me you got an in with Mr. Pádua. I wanna make a deal with Mr. Pádua, but he ain’t having any.”

“I don’t make deals either.”

“Sir, I think the info I gave you is worth something.”

“That’s true.”

“I pulled the Esmeralda job. Mr. Pádua found out, and now he’s after me. I wanna return the jewels and save my ass.”

“All right. I’ll talk to Mr. Pádua. Today’s Friday. Pádua goes on duty on Sunday. I’ll speak with him on Monday when I relieve him. I can’t guarantee anything more. I don’t have any influence over Mr. Pádua.”

Indecisive, Anastácio stuck his hand out to Mattos. After hesitating a second, Mattos shook the jewel thief’s hand.

The letter that Genivaldo had written Bolão, along with family news, said that Ilídio had paid Old Turk to kill Inspector Mattos. “But Old Turk screwed up and the inspector killed him.”

Mattos went into the bedroom. Turned on the light.

Alice was lying on the sofa bed, completely dressed. “Leave the light off. Lie down beside me.”

Mattos lay down beside Alice. The sofa was narrow, their bodies touched. The window was shut, the blinds drawn, and the darkness in the room was very intense.

Alice embraced Mattos tightly. “I can’t see your face. I’m trying to remember what your face is like, but I’ve forgotten.”

The inspector also didn’t know what her face was like, there on the sofa bed. All that came to mind was Alice’s face from the time they were going together.

Mattos felt Alice’s fingers lightly brushing his face. “Your nose is large. . A man should have a large nose. . What are you thinking of me? At this moment?”

“Nothing.”

“If I ask you to take off your clothes, what will you think of me?”

“Nothing.”

Alice got up from the sofa. Mattos saw her in outline, undressing. Accustomed to the darkness, he could make out the whiteness of Alice’s nude body, standing motionless.

They sat down on the sofa. For some time they held hands. Mattos heard Alice’s ragged breathing. He kissed her cheeks and caressed her fine hair. Alice lay back and pulled Mattos’s body onto her.

CLIMERIO SPENT TWO DAYS HIDDEN in the shack in the middle of the banana grove, most of the time lying on the mattress from which tufts of straw poked out of holes. Oscar and Honorina took turns bringing him food and a bottle of water. Afterward Oscar built a rudimentary woodstove in the shack for Climerio to cook and make coffee. He would have liked to have a hot maté tea, but his comrade had been unable to arrange the herb. In any case, he lacked the appropriate gourd for the drink.

Being alone in that place became unbearable. At one point Climerio picked up the revolver and thought about putting a bullet in his head. That day Climerio told Oscar that he’d go crazy if he didn’t get out for a walk. “Nobody’s going to come looking for me in this place.”

“Did you kill somebody, my friend?”

For the first time, Climerio told Oscar what had happened. Oscar didn’t attach much importance to what he heard; he didn’t know who Carlos Lacerda was, or Gregório, or any of the others involved in the Tonelero crime, which he’d heard spoken about vaguely when he went to Simplício Rodrigues’s general store in the village. He had no radio in his house and spent the day tending his banana plantation on Taboleiro hill. The only thing Oscar knew about politics was that the president was Getúlio.

At the end of the afternoon, Oscar and Climerio got into a wagon, pulled by a skinny horse, and went to the village. After buying fertilizer, Oscar went with Climerio to Simplício’s store, where they bought cigarettes and drank booze. Oscar explained that his friend Almeida, who lived in Rio de Janeiro, was spending a few days at his house.

In the store was a woman, Dona Maria.

“I live in Rio too,” the woman said. “Fifty-seven Rua Santa Isabel, in Vilar dos Teles.”

“Vilar dos Teles,” said Climerio, “I know where that is, it’s in the sticks.”

“And where do you live, in Copacabana?” asked Dona Maria.

“No need to get mad. I was just kidding,” said Climerio.

Inspector Mattos awoke when the first light of day filtered through the blinds in his bedroom.

He looked at Alice sleeping at his side but quickly averted his gaze from the woman’s face. Seeing Alice asleep struck him as an indignity, a gross invasion of the privacy of a defenseless person. He would never allow anyone to watch him sleep; since he was a boy, when he lived with his parents, he was the first to get up; he detested being caught sleeping, even by his mother.

Whenever he slept with a woman, he always awoke before her.

Carefully, he got out of the sofa bed. He took his clothes to the living room and dressed.

That weekend he was off. He could use the time to do some investigating.

He heard Alice’s voice. “Alberto?”

He went into the bedroom.

“What time is it?” Alice had covered her body with the sheet, up to the neck.

“Eight o’clock.”

“I have to get up. A lot to do today.”

She wanted Mattos to leave the bedroom so she could get dressed. She felt embarrassed to be naked in front of him.