Rubem Fonseca: Crimes of August

When the steward Barbosa entered the room to shave him, Vargas was standing, immobile, in the middle of the room, wearing his striped pajamas. The steward asked him to put on a robe, as it was cold. “It doesn’t matter,” he replied. He added that he didn’t want to shave.

Barbosa left, and Vargas was once again alone.

He would do what must be done. Requital and redemption. A euphoric sense of pride and dignity engulfed him. Yes, his daughter would now forgive him.

He took the revolver from the dresser drawer and lay down in the bed. He rested the barrel of the gun against the left side of his chest and pulled the trigger.

MAJOR DORNELLES was speaking with Barbosa, in the hallway.

“Did the president say anything?”

“He said it didn’t matter.”

“What didn’t matter?”

“I asked him to put on his robe because it’s cold, and he said it didn’t matter.”

They heard a shot. Dornelles ran to the bedroom, followed by Barbosa. They opened the door and saw the president, in bed, his eyes shut, and a large bloodstain on the left side of his chest.

“Mr. President!” Dornelles shouted.

Barbosa looked in astonishment at the short white hairs appearing on Vargas’s pallid face. I should have shaved the president, thought the steward.

Dornelles touched Vargas’s arm. “Mr. President! Mr. President!”

“I should’ve shaved him,” Barbosa murmured.

Dornelles ran from the room and returned with Sarmanho, Vargas’s brother-in-law.

“My God!” exclaimed Sarmanho. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t know,” said Dornelles. “We have to telephone Medical Emergency.”

The telephone in the bedroom, a black device on the night table, wasn’t working.

“Call General Caiado!” shouted Sarmanho from the door to the room. His yell was so loud that it was heard by those on the ground floor, causing them to peer upward through the great open space of the stairs.

The chief of the military cabinet entered the room accompanied by Arísio Viana, president of the Diários Associados of São Paulo. Viana had heard on the radio news of Vargas’s leave of absence and gone to the palace to obtain further information.

Seeing the president wounded, his chest covered in blood, General Caiado fainted and was taken from the room.

Zaratini, the butler, ran to inform the president’s wife and children.

THE INSPECTOR ARRIVED at the precinct, and Pádua told him:

“Getúlio killed himself. Vilanova, of the GEP, just left for Catete Palace to do the forensic tests. Jessé de Paiva and Nilton Salles are going to perform the autopsy. Direct orders from the superintendent of police.”

“I’m going to the Catete,” Mattos said.

He had to see Getúlio’s dead body.

“Turn the shift over to Rosalvo,” Mattos said.

“I can’t.”

“Then I’ll take over ahead of time. Regulations allow that.”

“Only if you promise me something.”

“What is it?”

“Not to let the bums I arrested go.”

“I promise.”

As soon as he received the blotter and Pádua left, Mattos called Rosalvo’s house and ordered him to come immediately to the precinct.

Rosalvo arrived quickly.

“I’m going out on an assignment. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Take care of things here.”

ALZIRA VARGAS, in the suicide’s room, was searching through the pockets of the navy-blue suit her father had worn at the cabinet meeting the night before, when she was told the forensic experts had arrived.

“Let them wait,” said Alzira, now nervously searching the pajama pockets of the body lying on the bed.

What she was looking for was finally discovered under the president’s cadaver: a key to the Fichet safe in the bedroom.

Alzira opened the safe and rapidly placed the contents from its drawers into a briefcase she had brought from the governmental palace of the State of Rio, in Niterói, and which till then contained only a revolver.

THE CONFUSION at the Catete Palace was so great that Inspector Mattos had no difficulty in entering; he didn’t even have to show his police ID. The reception area was deserted. Behind the doorman’s counter was only the bronze statue of the Indian Ubirajara grimacing in rage.

The furniture was being removed from the office of General Caiado de Castro, on the ground floor. Someone told the inspector that this was where the body of Vargas would lie in state. The inspector climbed the twenty red-carpeted steps of the first flight of stairs, flanked by the handrails of decorative wrought iron and gilded cherubs. He stopped on the first landing. Where would the president’s body be? His stomach ached. He put three antacid tablets in his mouth. He needed to see Getúlio’s body.

People were hurriedly going up and down the stairs. The inspector climbed another seventeen steps and arrived on the second floor. He had the habit of counting the steps of stairs he ascended.

In the large formal salon, whose windows opened onto Rua Catete, he encountered an attendant wearing a navy-blue suit.

Mattos displayed his police ID.

“Police. Where’s the president’s body?”

“You should’ve taken the elevator,” the attendant said.

“Where is it?”

“From here it’s better to take the stairs, in the rear, to the right.”

A door concealed the stairs leading to the residential area of the palace. The inspector climbed three flights of stairs, each with nine narrow marble steps, and came to the residential floor. In front of the president’s bedroom was a group of people, among them an army captain with the gilded braid loop worn by aides-de-camp. The inspector showed the captain his police ID.

“I’m from the office of the superintendent of police. Have the forensic people arrived yet?”

“They’re inside. Is there anything?” The captain held the doorknob. “You want to go in?”

“I’ll talk with them when they come out.”

The inspector descended the stairs to the ground floor, where the confusion had increased. The number of people moving to and fro, yelling incomprehensible orders, was greater. In the gardens could be seen hurriedly placed light machine gun nests. There were no soldiers behind the few haphazardly piled sandbags, which imparted a melancholy and fragile appearance to that improvised war apparatus.

The inspector noticed at the third-floor windows a woman wearing dark glasses, who seemed to be crying. It was the wife of the president, Darcy Vargas. She had married Vargas when she was fifteen years old.

Mattos contemplated the pair of bronze birds on the platbands of the rear of the palace roof, leaning forward as if about to take flight. In the shade of the enormous trees in the garden, the silence was broken only by the soft gush of water from a small fountain of white marble.

A man whom Mattos recognized as Lourival Fontes, head of the civilian cabinet, was placing a pile of papers in the trunk of a car. Fontes closed the trunk and looked around stealthily to see if he was being observed. When he saw the inspector, he walked quickly back into the palace. Mattos followed him.

In the midst of the confusion on the ground floor, the inspector lost sight of Fontes. He ran up the stairs, counting the thirty-seven steps to the third floor. He approached the president’s bedroom. Through the half-open door, Mattos saw what he was looking for. There he was, Getúlio Vargas. Dead, sitting on the bed, held up by his wife and others who were trying to removed the bloodstained pajama jacket. Beside them, someone was holding a dark suit on a hanger. The movement of the people prevented Mattos from seeing the president’s face.

A visibly uncomfortable man who was taking notes put away in his pocket the pad on which he was writing. Seeing the inspector’s inquisitive gaze, he said: “My name is Arlindo Silva. I’m a journalist. This scene will never vanish from my mind.”