Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

Mattos left the room.

Afterward they talked, in the living room. Mattos gave Alice two keys, one to the street door of the building, the other to the door of his apartment.

“We could have lunch together,” said Alice.

“By lunchtime I don’t think I’ll have completed my work. We can have dinner.”

They left the building together. Alice caught a taxi.

“Want a ride to the city?”

“I’m not going to the city. Thanks.”

IN A HOUSE ON RUA OLIVEIRA DA SILVA, a small street near Xavier de Brito Square, in Tijuca, a committee made up of Army Colonel Alberico, Air Force Colonel Arruda, and Navy Commodore Osório met that morning to evaluate the task they called “the mission.” The three military men were well known and respected by their comrades in uniform, subordinates as well as superiors, which was the reason they were chosen to serve on that informal commission, whose objective was to visit military units to demonstrate to the troops the bankruptcy of the government and foment repudiation of Vargas. The death of Major Vaz was the driving force of the “missionaries” and the principal accusation of the committee. Next came the corruption and degradation of the administration, which in addition to the sea of mud included the assassination of opposition leaders who clamored for a moral basis for the country. Finally, there was demonstrated to the members of the military — privates and corporals were excluded — the administrative calamity that was leading the country to ruin.

The same denunciations could be read daily in the articles and editorials published in the nation’s large newspapers.

WHEN SHE MOVED OUT, Alice had left Lomagno a note saying she no longer wanted to live with him. She asked her husband to find a lawyer to deal with the legal separation. She had concluded by saying her health was good and for Lomagno not to worry or to look for her, as she would get in touch with him when the time was right.

Lomagno had found the note just before leaving for the extraordinary meeting of Cemtex stockholders. He had asked the maid what time Dona Alice had gone out. The two slept in separate bedrooms. The maid replied that madam had arisen and had left immediately, without even having breakfast, around nine a.m. No, she hadn’t taken a suitcase or package with her when she left.

In addition to Pedro Lomagno, present at the Cemtex meeting had been Claudio Aguiar and half a dozen stockholders. Luciana Gomes Aguiar had presided. The chief legal officer of Cemtex, Rafael Fagundes, had directed the procedures. Luciana Gomes Aguiar had been elected president of the firm.

Claudio Aguiar had remained silent, sighing occasionally.

After the meeting, Luciana and Lomagno met at Lomagno’s garçonnière, an apartment on Avenida Beira Mar near the intersection with Avenida Antonio Carlos. Shortly after they became lovers, Luciana had replaced all the furniture, carpets, paintings, china, and kitchen utensils in the apartment. Towels, sheets, and dishes were thrown in the trash. “I don’t want anything that recalls the cheap women who came here,” Luciana had said.

They were known to the doorman as Mr. José Paulo and Dona Luiza.

As soon as they arrived, Luciana embraced Lomagno, kissing him.

Her husband’s death had increased the desire she felt for her lover. The same thing, however, wasn’t happening with Lomagno. He moved his body away so that Luciana wouldn’t realize that his sex showed no sign of life after the passionate kiss.

In the past, in the first times when they met there, as soon as Luciana entered the garçonnière, Lomagno would exhibit the erect manifestation of his amorous ardor, throwing himself impetuously onto her, ripping her clothes, biting her, raping her, amazing her. Part of that furor was pure playacting. But the pleasure was real that he felt in those early encounters: carrying Luciana to the bedroom, turning the woman over and over in bed, making her feel like a fragile doll in the hands of a powerful male; it was true, at first, the swaggering pleasure he felt in exhausting her and finally receiving Luciana’s gesture of submission: her hands clasped in a mute entreaty of devotion and surrender.

It was something he couldn’t succeed in fantasizing with Alice.

Now, pretending with Luciana was becoming more and more painful.

“I’m going into the bathroom for a moment,” said Lomagno.

“Don’t take long, love, I’m dying. .”

In the bathroom, Lomagno took off his clothes and contemplated himself in the mirror. The sight of his own naked body managed to bring some blood to his limp penis. While he gazed at the powerful muscles of his chest, his arms, his thighs, Lomagno stroked his penis until the shaft and head began to swell. Watching his penis harden excited him and increased the flow of blood to the labyrinths and caverns of the member. The more tumescent the image in the mirror, the larger and more rigid grew the penis in his hand. When he felt the moment was right, Lomagno ran to the bedroom, threw himself onto Luciana, who was lying on her back mouthing obscenities. He bit his lover’s breasts, neck, arms; he grasped violently the flesh of Luciana’s legs and buttocks, making her roll over in bed. Movement and force were the mechanism of sex. He possessed the woman.

“We need to talk about our situation,” said Luciana, sitting up, exhausted, after arranging the pillows against the headboard to support their backs. “Now you’re going to dump that woman, aren’t you?”

“Take it easy, Luciana. We have to wait a little, you know that as well as I do.”

“Her father and mother left Alice a lot of money. Who handles business for her?”

“I do. I put most of it in real estate.”

“Are you married under community property or separation of assets?”

“Separation. My old man thought it was better that way. But these days Alice probably has more money than I do.”

“But she doesn’t have more money than me, and isn’t prettier than me,” said Luciana.

“I don’t know how much you have, but I imagine not.”

Luciana caressed Lomagno’s body. Lomagno took her hand, moving it away from his sex. Sweat on his face. He remembered Freitas, at the A Minhota restaurant, calling Luciana a nymphomaniacal harpy. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his hand. He joked: “Empress Messalina, I have to make a phone call.”

“Wait. . you can call afterwards,” whispered Luciana.

“It’s urgent. Important business.”

INSPECTOR MATTOS spent most of the day trying to obtain information about Anastácio, known as Squinty, and about the prisoner Bolão. A reporter from O Radical, who received money from Ilídio, owner of the betting sites near the newspaper’s downtown headquarters, ended up providing the reliable information he needed.

“I take a bit of scratch from that son of a bitch, because the paper doesn’t pay me anything and my wife, you know about it, is hospitalized in Belo Horizonte with TB.”

“I know, I know.”

“Mattos, you’re not on the take, I know, but you’re one of the few exceptions, everybody’s in their pocket. Politicians, judges, people who if I told you their name you wouldn’t believe me. It would be one fucking exposé. The problem is that no one would publish it. And I’m not crazy enough to put that in the paper.”

“Does Squinty work for Ilídio? Are you sure?”

“Not the slightest doubt. Bolão too.”

Before taking his leave, Mattos listened patiently, his stomach burning, to the reporter recount his vicissitudes and suffering.

When he got to his apartment, two surprises were awaiting him.

In the living room, sitting in silence around the table, Alice, Salete, and an old black woman.