After observing, in the skylight, the bulb monsters of the large room—he now has long eyelashes and still has the loupe for looking at textiles—Augusto returns to writing about the art of walking in the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Because he is on foot, he sees things differently from those who travel in cars, buses, trains, launches, helicopters, or any other vehicle. He plans to avoid making his book into some kind of tourist guide for travelers in search of the exotic, of pleasure, the mystical, horror, crime, and poverty, such as interests many people of means, especially foreigners; nor will his book be one of those ridiculous manuals that associate walking with health, physical well-being, or notions of hygiene. He also takes precautions so that his book does not become a pretext, à la Macedo, for listing historical descriptions about potentates and institutions, although, like that creator of novels for damsels, he sometimes yields to prolix digressions. Neither will it be an architectural guide to old Rio or a compendium of urban architecture; Augusto hopes to find a peripatetic art and philosophy that will help him establish a greater communion with the city. Solvitur ambulando.
It is eleven p.m. and he is on Treze de Maio Street. Besides walking, he teaches prostitutes to read and to speak correctly. Television and pop music had corrupted people’s vocabulary, especially the prostitutes’. It is a problem that has to be solved. He is aware that teaching prostitutes to read and to speak correctly in his rooms over the hat shop can be a form of torture for them. So he offers them money to listen to his lessons, little money, much less than the usual amount a customer pays. From Treze de Maio he goes to Avenida Rio Branco, which is deserted. The Municipal Theater advertises an opera recital for the following day; opera has gone in and out of fashion in the city since the beginning of the century. With spray paint, two youths are writing on the theater walls, which have just been painted and show few signs of the work of graffiti artists, WE THE SADISTS OF CACHAMBI GOT THE MUNI’S CHERRIE GRAFITTI ARTISTS UNITE; under the phrase, the logo-signature of the Sadists, a penis, which had at first caused some consternation among the students of graffitology but is now known to be that of a pig with a human glans. “Hey,” Augusto tells one of the youths, “cherry is with a y, not ie, graffiti is with two f’s and one t, and you need punctuation between the two sentences.” The youth replies, “Old man, you understood what we mean, didn’t you? So fuck you and your shitass rules.”
Augusto sees a figure trying to hide on Manoel de Carvalho, the street behind the theater, and recognizes a guy named Hermenegildo who does nothing in life but hand out an ecological manifesto against the automobile. Hermenegildo is carrying a can of glue, a brush, and eighteen rolled-up manifestoes. The manifesto is pasted with a special high-adhesive glue onto the windshields of cars parked on the street. Hermenegildo motions Augusto toward the place where he’s hiding. It’s common for them to bump into each other late at night, on the street. “I need your help,” Hermenegildo says.
The two walk to Almirante Barroso Street, turn to the right and continue to Avenida Presidente Antônio Carlos. Augusto opens the can of glue. Hermenegildo’s objective tonight is to get inside the Menezes Cortes public parking garage without being seen by the guards. He has already made the attempt twice, unsuccessfully. But he thinks he’ll have better luck tonight. They walk up the ramp to the first level, closed to traffic, where the cars with long-term parking contracts are, many of them parked overnight. Usually one or two guards are there, but tonight there’s no one. The guards are probably all upstairs, talking to pass the time. In a little more than twenty minutes, Hermenegildo and Augusto paste the seventeen manifestoes on the windshields of the newest cars. Then they leave by the same route, turn onto Assembléia Street and go their separate ways at the corner of Quitanda. Augusto goes back to Avenida Rio Branco. At the avenue he turns to the right, again passes by the Municipal Theater, where he stops for a time to look at the drawing of the eclectic penis. He goes to the Cinelândia area, to urinate in McDonald’s. The McDonald’s bathrooms are clean places to urinate, even more so when compared to the bathrooms in luncheonettes, whose access is complicated; in luncheonettes or bars it’s necessary to ask for the key to the bathroom, which comes attached to a huge piece of wood so it won’t get lost, and the bathroom is always in some airless place, smelly and filthy, but in McDonald’s they’re always odorless, even if they have no windows, and they are well situated for someone walking downtown. This one is on Senador Dantas almost across from the theater, has an exit onto Álvaro Alvim Street, and the bathroom is close to that exit. There’s another McDonald’s on São José, near Quitanda Street, another on Avenida Rio Branco near Alfândega. Augusto opens the bathroom door with his elbow, a trick he invented; the doorknobs of bathrooms are full of germs of sexually transmitted diseases. In one of the closed stalls some guy has just defecated and is whistling with satisfaction. Augusto urinates in one of the stainless steel urinals, washes his hands using the soap he takes by pressing the metal tab on the transparent glass holder on the wall next to the mirror—a green, odorless liquid that makes no suds no matter how much he rubs his hands, then he dries his hand on a paper towel and leaves, again opening the door with his elbow, onto Álvaro Alvim.
Near the Odeon Cinema a woman smiles at him. Augusto approaches her. “Are you a female impersonator?” he asks. “Why don’t you find out for yourself?” says the woman. Further on, he goes into the Casa Angrense, next to the Cinema Palácio, and orders mineral water. He opens the plastic cup slowly and, as he drinks in small sips, like a rat, he observes the women around him. A woman drinking coffee is the one he chooses, because she’s missing a front tooth. Augusto goes up to her. “Do you know how to read?” The woman looks at him with the seduction and lack of respect that whores know how to show men. “Of course I do,” she says. “I don’t, and I wanted you to tell me what’s written there,” says Augusto. Businessman’s lunch. “No credit,” she says. “Are you free?” She tells him the price and mentions a hotel on Marrecas Street, which used to be called Boas Noites Street, and where the Foundlings House of the Santa Casa stood more than a hundred years ago; and the street was also called Barão de Ladário and was called André Rebouças before it was Marrecas; and later its name was changed to Juan Pablo Duarte Street, but the name didn’t catch on and it went back to being Marrecas Street. Augusto says he lives nearby and suggests they go to his place.
They walk together, awkwardly. He buys a newspaper at the newsstand across from Álvaro Alvim Street. They head toward the upstairs room above the hat shop by following Senador Dantas Street to Carioca Square, empty and sinister at that hour. The woman stops in front of the bronze lamppost with a clock at its top, decorated with four women, also bronze, with their breasts exposed. She says she wants to see if the clock is working, but as always the clock is stopped. Augusto tells the woman to keep walking so they won’t get mugged; on deserted streets it’s necessary to walk very fast. No mugger runs after his victim; he has to come close, ask for a cigarette, ask the time. He has to announce the robbery so the robbery can take place. The short stretch of Uruguaiana Street to Sete de Setembro is silent and motionless. The homeless sleeping under marquees have to wake up early and are sleeping peacefully in the doors of shops, wrapped in blankets or newspapers, their heads covered.
Augusto enters the building, stamps his feet, walks with a different step; he always does that when he brings a woman, so the rats will know a stranger is arriving and hide. He doesn’t want her to be frightened; women, for some reason, don’t like rats. He knows that, and rats, for some even more mysterious reason, hate women.