“What does he look like? Can you describe him?”
“He’s more or less your height. He’s got a pockmarked face. Talks like he’s from Rio Grande do Sul.”
“Exactly where is the farm located?”
“It’s near Tinguá, on a hill. I’ve never been there.”
“Tinguá is in the Baixada Fluminense,” explained Niemeier.
After hearing Dona Maria’s account several times and asking her not to speak about it with anyone, as it could hurt the measures they were going to take to catch the killer, the military men got in their cars and left.
Before the cars pulled away, Dona Maria said to Colonel Aquino loudly so the others in uniform could hear, “For Mr. Carlos Lacerda I’d do anything.”
LUCIANA phoned Lomagno.
“Know what I’d like to do today? Have lunch at the Jockey Club and watch the horse races.”
“So would I, but I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“What if we meet there on Beira Mar?”
“I’m expecting a phone call.”
“Who from?”
“Chicão.”
“Chicão? What does he want?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t in when he called.”
“We could take a trip.”
“Let’s wait a bit.”
“My life is so tedious. . Sundays are such a bore. . Has Alice come back from São Paulo yet?”
Lomagno hesitated. “Not yet. I discovered she took the diary she was writing.”
“Diary?! That’s so childish. I kept a diary when I was twelve. What the devil does she write about in the diary? Her fits of insanity?”
“She doesn’t have fits of insanity.”
“Now you’re defending your sweet little wife?”
“It’s not like that at all. I just don’t like for you to speak ill of her. You know that.”
“What does she write about in that little diary of hers? Eh?”
“I don’t know. I never read it.”
“You were never curious?”
“No.”
“Afraid of discovering she has a lover? Every woman has a lover, didn’t you know? And they tell the truth in their diary. Dear Diary, I’m madly in love, my husband is a boring brute, and I’ve found this sensitive man who sends me red roses. The sly ones like Alice are the worst.”
“What about you? Do you have a diary?”
“Not yet, for now all I have is a lover. Who doesn’t send me red roses.”
“What’s with you?”
“Sundays are so boring! And this thing is still in its beginning!”
“You’re nervous. Calm down.”
“You’re not expecting a call from Chicão. That’s just an excuse not to see me. I’m finding you indifferent.”
“That’s silly.”
“Don’t try to fool me. I’m not Alice. I’m warning you. My insanity isn’t the tame kind.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“A glass of champagne doesn’t get anybody drunk.”
“Early in the morning?”
“It’s eleven o’clock. Let’s meet at Beira Mar, my love. Please. I’m begging you.”
Had she set down the champagne glass and joined her hands in a gesture of prayer as she did after fucking? Lomagno wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“I have to call Chicão.”
“Isn’t he supposed to call you?”
“Yes, but if Chicão doesn’t call, I have to try to find out what he wants.”
“You said you didn’t know where Chicão was. You said he had orders to disappear. How are you going to call him? Pedro Lomagno, I didn’t do what I did so afterward you could make a fool out of me!”
Nymphomaniacal harpy. Because of her, two people had been killed. How had things ever gotten to that point?
“Did you hear what I said?!”
“I heard, Luciana. .”
“Then we going to meet at Beira Mar. Now! Chicão can go to hell.”
“It’s impossible, dear. Be reasonable.”
Luciana’s tone changed. Now, sarcastic and bitter. “Did that Negro ever play the woman for you? Or did you play the woman for him?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“Paulo did. Why not you?”
“Your husband was different from me.”
“You’re a bi just like he was.”
Lomagno hung up. Perplexed, stunned, he analyzed what he was feeling. A month earlier he was overwhelmed by a permanent and irresistible desire to be with that woman, to eat and drink with her, to go to bed with her. He remembered the pleasantry of falsely casual public encounters, carefully planned, of attending a ballet where he, from the back of his box, would spend the night watching her through opera glasses while Luciana, knowing she was being observed, sent him subtle hidden signals, running her tongue over her lips, or biting them, or secretly caressing her own breasts almost bared by the low-cut evening gown. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he had tired of her; the way he tired of everything, it was true, but never in that manner. He couldn’t understand what had caused that sudden, so powerful, feeling of aversion. Paulo’s death, which she had planned? He disdained Paulo. And Paulo had to be killed, or he would have driven Cemtex into bankruptcy. Then what was it? Now, he wanted Alice by his side. Did he love Alice?
Maybe he wasn’t asking the right questions, maybe he wasn’t giving the right answers to the right questions or to the wrong questions he was asking himself. Maybe there was no question to ask, or no answer to the confusion, the turmoil he was feeling at that moment.
AS ALWAYS, Mattos awoke before Alice, who had slept with him in the new bed.
But neither had slept well.
Both remained immobile in the darkness, eyes shut. Alice amused herself for a time with the dark images that formed under her closed eyelids: black gases, expanding like stormy clouds of carbon in an endless opaque vault, assumed almost indistinct shapes in continuous mutation — a face with no eyes, a black butterfly, a hunchback, her own face. .
“Are you sleeping?”
“No,” said Mattos. “It always takes a long time for me to fall asleep.” (When he slept with a woman.)
“I think I’m going to take another pill,” said Alice.
Mattos got up, turned on the light, and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Alice was wearing a short-sleeved nightgown closed up to the neckline. Mattos was in undershorts and a long-sleeved shirt that he had rolled up to the elbows. Neither of them wanted to sleep naked in front of the other.
“Better to take a sleeping pill than lie awake, don’t you think?”
“Wouldn’t you like a glass of warm milk?” asked Mattos, worried about the woman’s thin, pallid face and the dark circles around her eyes.
“All right. If that doesn’t work, I’ll take a pill.”
They sat on the edge of the bed, drinking milk.
“Are you having trouble getting used to the new bed?” asked Alice.
“I’m not sleepy.”
“You slept better on that sofa?”
“I always sleep badly.”
“Are you angry with me because of the sofa bed?”
“No. Lie down. Let’s see if you can get to sleep now.”
Again in darkness. “May I hug you?”
“Yes.”
Alice hugged Mattos.
Sleeping embraced by a woman was tiring and disagreeable to Mattos. A woman up against his body kept him from thinking straight.
Now in the living room, Mattos, who had gotten dressed as if leaving for work, thought about the woman sleeping in his bedroom. If he had a friend, he would ask what he should do in such a situation. His pride had been badly hurt when she left him. It did no good for Alice to return now, humble, crazy, prodigal. He no longer wanted to live with her. He didn’t want to live with any woman.