Rubem Fonseca - Crimes of August

“I always forget to check.”

“You have to take care of your health. The hemoglobin count from your blood test indicates that you’re having gastric hemorrhaging. We’ll see what the x-ray has to say.”

“I take care of my health. I always carry antacids in my pocket and drink milk all the time.”

The radiologist handed him a glass with a thick beige-colored liquid.

“What’s this concoction that I’m drinking?” The taste of dirt mixed with chalk, similar to the taste of the whitewash on walls he sometimes ate when he was a child.

“Barium. For the contrast.”

Mattos took off his clothes, put on a gown, and lay down on the x-ray table.

The x-rays were taken.

“You may suffer some constipation because of the barium,” the radiologist said.

A CHECK OF FINGERPRINTS with the Félix Pacheco Institute confirmed that the corpse identified by Mattos at the morgue was Ibrahim Assad.

Mattos had asked Leonídio to record the name of whoever came to the morgue to claim the body and provide him with the information at once. For three days the cadaver had remained in the refrigerator, without receiving a single visitor. Administrative measures were being taken for Assad to be buried as an indigent when an employee of the Santa Clara mortuary showed up to embalm the body.

“The remains are going to be transported to Caxambu, in Minas, to be buried,” Leonídio said. “The body snatcher says he doesn’t know who paid the expenses.”

In the office of the Santa Clara funeral home, an employee received Mattos and explained that the person who had paid the costs of embalming and transport of the body had asked for his act of charity to be anonymous.

“That person knows the mother of the deceased, a lady without resources. . There are still good people in this world capable of a disinterested act of kindness. .”

Mattos, who until then had not said he was from the police, showed his ID. His stomach felt heavy because of the barium he’d taken for the x-ray, but at the same time he believed the test had improved his health, and that he was cured.

“I’m investigating a murder. Tell me who paid the costs.”

“You put me in a difficult position.”

“Out with it. I’ve got a lot ahead of me today.”

“A difficult situation. .”

“Do you prefer to go the precinct with me?”

“It was a police officer, like you.”

“His name.”

The employee wiped sweat from his forehead with a purple handkerchief he took from his pocket. “Mr. Ubaldo Pádua.”

THE MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS, Lesseps S. Morrison, received by President Vargas, said that Rio de Janeiro was still, despite a degree of pessimism among some of its people, one of the most pleasant cities, and certainly the most beautiful city, on earth.

Morrison, visiting Rio for the third time, accompanied Henry Kaiser, one of the kings of the American automotive industry.

In the audience with the president of the Republic, Kaiser assured that his firm was ready to transport immediately to Brazil a factory with an annual production capacity of fifty thousand automobiles intended for the domestic market and for export.

Also present at the meeting were Secretary Oswaldo Aranha, the American Ambassador James Kemper, and Mr. Herbert Moses.

When the Americans left the interview, Kaiser commented in the car taking them from the Catete to the Hotel Copacabana Palace that from the photos of Vargas he’d seen in the United States, always smiling and with a cigar in his mouth, he expected him to be a happy and good-natured person; he had been surprised by the president’s melancholy and somber appearance.

“He must be sick,” said Kemper, who had also noticed Vargas’s sadness. “It’s the only explanation for his depression.”

Morrison ventured the hypothesis, quickly accepted by the others, that the president might have the same flu virus that he had caught upon arriving in Brazil. “It was very kind of him to receive us in that condition.”

MATTOS TRIED ALL DAY to locate Pádua.

When he got home, Alice was sitting in the living room writing in a thick notebook with a leather cover.

“My diary. But it’s not really a diary, it’s more a book of thoughts. I was writing about the death of Colette, what it means to me. I wrote down what you said to me that day: I have other deaths to worry about.”

“I said that?”

“Yes.”

“May I read it?”

Alice closed the notebook. “No one has ever read my diary. I’ve never shown it to anyone in this world. Especially you. One day, when we were seeing each other, I gave you a poem I had written, and you laughed, saying it was funny.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You don’t like poetry.”

“I never told you I don’t like poetry.”

“You only like opera. Because when you were a little boy your mother would play ‘Una furtiva lagrima’ on the Victrola, and you would cry.”

“You’re making that up.”

“It was you who told me.”

“Making up that business about me not liking poetry.”

“A policeman can’t like poetry. He has other deaths to worry about.”

“Did you look for an apartment to rent?”

“I didn’t have time. Know what I’d have liked to do these days? I’d have liked to go to São Paulo to the International Writers Conference, but you didn’t even think about taking me.”

“You didn’t mention it to me. In any case, I couldn’t leave Rio. I’m in the middle of a very difficult investigation.”

“Please don’t yell at me.”

“I’m not yelling.”

“Try to control your aggressiveness for a minute and listen to what I’m going to read to you now.” Alice displayed a sheet of paper in her hand. “Can you do that? One minute?”

“All right.”

“Let’s go sit in the bedroom.”

Mattos took of his coat. Now, owing to the present of Alice in the apartment, he left his revolver at the station.

They sat on the bed. “May I read?”

“Go ahead.”

“Declaration of Principles of the Conference on Poetry. Are you paying attention?”

“Yes, yes.”

“See how it is? You can’t hide your impatience.”

“Please, read, I’m paying total attention.”

“The poetry section of the International Writers Conference, meeting in São Paulo, during ceremonies commemorating the quadricentennial of the city in whose foundation collaborated the poet-priest José de Anchieta, recognizes the considerable technical progress that has characterized poetry, both international and Brazilian, systematized by critics of the most diverse conceptions; proclaims the broad right of the poet to aesthetic search and the necessity that he dominate his instrument in order to enrich creation; and manifests not only the conviction that conquests of form will be directed toward expressing great collective aspirations, belief in human beings and in individual rights, as well as confidence that there will be found in all its fullness the way to reach the sensitivity of the man of today — that’s directed straight at you, Alberto — the man of today unattuned to the poetry of high quality that is being published.”

“Interesting.”

“Interesting? Do you know who’s in São Paulo at this very moment? Robert Frost, William Faulkner, Miguel Torga, João Cabral de Melo Neto. And all you can say is ‘interesting.’”

“Wonderful.”

Alice tore up the paper she was holding. With closed fists she beat against Mattos’s chest, saying that he couldn’t treat her so cruelly. Her blows were weak; Mattos let her go on striking him until she tired.

Leaving Alice lying on the bed, now immobile as if dead, Mattos went back to the living room. His stomach hurt, but there was no milk in the refrigerator, and he had run out of antacids.