I told her of the interviews I’d had with Cavalcante Meier, my trip to Gordon’s, the meeting between her cousin Lilly and Márcio the biker. Her expression remained unreadable.
“Do you think my father killed that girl?” A scornful smile.
“I don’t know.”
“My father has a lot of shortcomings. He’s vain and weak, and worse, but he’s not a murderer. Anybody can take one look at him and see I’m right.”
I mentally ran through the faces of all the murderers I’d known. None of them looked guilty.
“Somebody killed the girl, and it wasn’t a robbery.”
“It wasn’t my father either.”
“Márcio the biker stopped to talk to you in the garden when he went to see your father.”
“You’re mistaken. I don’t know who that person is.”
I looked into her innocent face. I knew that she knew that I knew she was lying. Eve had a face by Botticelli, un-Brazilian on that sunny day, which perhaps made her more attractive to me. I don’t like suntanned women. It’s a device. The skin knows its color, like the hair, the eyes. It’s stupid to use the sun as a cosmetic.
“You’re very pretty,” I said.
“You’re an unpleasant, ugly, ridiculous person,” she said.
Eve got up and left, walking the way Bernard had taught her.
I went home, turned off the answering machine. Berta had gone to her place. All my life I’ve either not dreamed or forgotten most of what I dreamed. But there were two dreams I always remembered, always those two and no others. In one I dreamed I was sleeping and dreamed a dream I forgot upon waking, leaving the feeling of having lost an important revelation. In the other I was in bed with a woman and she touched my body and I experienced her sensations as she touched my body, as if my body weren’t of flesh and blood. I woke up (in reality, outside the dream) and ran my hand over my skin and felt as if it were covered with cold metal.
I woke up to the sound of the doorbell. Wexler.
“What’ve you been getting into? Do you know who’s after you? Detective Pacheco. Are you involved with the commies now?”
Wexler told me that Pacheco had come by the office early that morning, looking for me. Pacheco was famous throughout the country.
“He wants you to go down to the station and have a talk with him.” I didn’t want to, but Wexler convinced me. “Nobody gets away from Pacheco,” he said.
Wexler went with me. Pacheco didn’t keep us waiting long. He was a fat man with a pleasant face that belied his unsavory reputation.
“Your activities are under investigation,” Pacheco said with a sleepy air.
“I don’t know why I’m here; I’m corrupt, not subversive.” Another joke.
“You’re neither one nor the other,” Pacheco said in a tired voice, “but it wouldn’t be hard to prove you’re both.” He looked at me like someone looking at his naughty kid brother.
“A friend told me you’ve been bothering him. Stop doing it.”
“May I ask your friend’s name? I bother a lot of people.”
“You know who he is. Leave him alone, joker.”
“Let’s go then,” Wexler said. His father had been killed before his eyes in the Warsaw ghetto pogrom in 1943, when he was eight. He could read people’s faces.
“Be careful with that Nazi,” Wexler said in the street. “Look, just what kind of mess are you involved in?”
I told him about the Cavalcante Meier case. Wexler spat vigorously on the ground—when he’s angry he doesn’t swear, he spits on the ground—and grasped my arm firmly.
“You have nothing to do with the case. Drop it. Those Nazis!” He spat again.
I called Berta.
“B.B., you open with the Ruy Lopez and I’ll beat you in fifteen moves.”
It was a lie. Black has real problems with that opening when the players are equal, as was our case. I just wanted someone near who loved me.
“You look awful,” Berta said when she arrived.
My face is a collage of several faces, something that began when I was eighteen; until then my face had unity and symmetry, I was only one. Later I became many.
I set the bottle of Faísca beside the chessboard.
We began to play. As agreed, she opened with the Ruy Lopez. By the fifteenth move I was in a tight spot.
“What’s going on? Why didn’t you use the Steinitz defense to leave the king file open for the rook? Or the Tchigorin defense, developing the queen side? You can’t be that passive against a Ruy Lopez.”
“Look, Berta, Bertie, Bertola, Bertette, Bertier, Bertiest, Bertissima, Bertina, B.B.”
“You’re drunk,” Berta said.
“Right.”
“We’re not going to play any more.”
“I want to hug you, rest my head on your breasts, feel the warmth between your legs. I’m tired, B.B. And I’m in love with another woman.”
“What? Are you pulling a Le Bonheur on me?”
“A mediocre film,” I said.
Berta threw the chessmen on the floor. An impulsive woman.
“Who’s the woman? I had an abortion because of you; I have a right to know.”
“The daughter of a client.”
“How old is she? My age? Or are you already looking for younger ones? Sixteen? Twelve?”
“Your age.”
“Is she prettier than me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. But she’s a woman I’m attracted to.”
“You men are such childish, weak braggarts! A fool, you’re a fool!”
“I love you, Berta,” I said, thinking of Eve.
When we went to bed, I thought of Eve the entire time. After we made love, Berta fell asleep, belly upwards. She snored lightly, her mouth open, torpid. Whenever I drink a lot, I only sleep for half an hour, and I wake up feeling guilty. There was Berta, her mouth open, sleeping like the dead. Sleeping is such a weakness! Children know that. That’s why I don’t sleep much, the fear of being unarmed. Berta was snoring. Strange, in such a gentle person. The sun was coming up, with a fantastic light somewhere between red and white. That called for a bottle of Faísca. I drank it, showered, got dressed, and went to the office. The watchman asked, “The bed catch on fire last night, sir?”
I sat down and did the final brief for a client. Wexler arrived, and we started talking about inconsequential matters, things that wouldn’t get us excited.
“It must be hell being the son of Portuguese immigrants,” Wexler said.
“What about the son of a Jew killed in a pogrom?” I asked.
“My father was a Latin professor, my mother played Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms on the piano. Your father fished for cod, your mother was a seamstress!”
Wexler went to the window and spat.
“Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Belsen, and Buchenwald. The five B’s of the piano,” I said.
He gave a painful look, an expression only Jews can achieve.
“Forgive me,” I said. His mother had died at Buchenwald, a young and pretty woman in her photo, with a sweet, dark-complexioned face. “Forgive me.”
The day ended and I decided not to go home. I didn’t want to face Berta, the answering machine, anyone, or anything. All I could think of was Eve. My passions are brief but overwhelming.
A cheap hotel on Correa Dutra Street, in Flamengo. I got the key, went up to the room, lay down, and stared at the ceiling.
There was one bulb, a dirty globe of light, which I turned on and off. The street sounds blended with the silence into an opaque, neutral mucus. Eve. Eve. Cain killed Abel. Someone’s always killing someone else. I spent the night tossing in bed.
In the morning I paid the hotel and went for a shave and haircut.
“The Steinitz defense,” I told the barber, “isn’t really that effective. The rook’s mobility is limited; it’s a powerful piece, although predictable.”
“You’re right,” the barber said cautiously.