Winning the Game and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca Read Free Book Online Page B

looking at the players but turning his head slightly, his neck taut; he could be listening to what the group was saying.
    â€œI think it’s just our impression,” murmured Fernando, “and anyway, whoever he is, why should we care? No debts, no worries.”
    â€œI don’t know, I just don’t know,” Anísio said pensively. They went back to playing cards, in silence, waiting for the False Perpétuo to leave.
    At the end of the month, according to the newspaper, the squad had executed 26 people—16 mulattos, 9 blacks, and 1 white, the youngest, an ex-reformatory inmate, being 15, and the oldest, 38.
    â€œLet’s celebrate the victory,” Gonçalves said to Marinho, who between them had won the majority of the bets. They drank beer, ate cheese, ham, and meat turnovers.
    â€œThree months of bad luck,” Anísio said somberly. He had also lost at poker, on the horses, and on soccer; the lunch counter he had bought in Caxias was losing money, his credit with the bank was getting worse, and the young wife he had married a little over six months before was spending a lot.
    â€œAnd now August is coming,” he said, “the month Getúlio shot himself in the heart. I was a kid, working in a bar on the same street as the palace, and saw it all, the crying and the screams, the people filing past the coffin, the body being taken to the airport, the soldiers firing machine guns into the crowd. If I was unlucky in July, just think of August.”
    â€œThen don’t bet this month,” said Gonçalves, who had just lent Anísio 200,000 cruzeiros.
    â€œNo, this month I plan to win back part of what I lost,” said Anísio with animosity.
    The four friends, for the month of August, expanded the rules of the game. Besides the quantity, age, and color of the dead, they added national origin, marital status, and occupation. The game was becoming complicated.
    â€œI think we’ve invented a game that’s going to be more popular than the numbers game,” Marinho said. Already half drunk, they laughed so hard that Fernando wet his pants.
    The end of the month was approaching, and Anísio, more and more irritated, argued frequently with his companions. That day he was more exasperated and nervous than ever, and his friends, ill at ease, were looking forward to when the card game would end.
    â€œWho’s for an even-money bet with me?” Anísio asked.
    â€œWhat kind of even-money bet?” asked Marinho, who had won more frequently than any of them.
    â€œI’ll bet that this month the squad kills a young girl and a businessman. Two hundred thousand bills.”
    â€œThat’s crazy,” said Gonçalves, thinking of his money and of the fact that the squad never killed girls and businessmen.
    â€œTwo hundred thousand,” Anísio repeated in a bitter tone, “and you, Gonçalves, don’t call other people crazy, you’re the one who’s crazy for leaving your homeland to come to this shithole of a country.”
    â€œYou’re on,” said Marinho. “You don’t have a prayer of winning; it’s almost the end of the month.”
    Around eleven o’clock the players ended the game and quickly said goodnight.
    The waiters left and Anísio was alone in the bar. On other nights he would rush home to be with his young wife. But that night he sat drinking beer until shortly after one a.m., when there was a knock at the rear door.
    The False Perpétuo came in and sat down at Anísio’s table.
    â€œWant a beer?” Anísio asked, avoiding either the polite or familiar form of address with the False Perpétuo, uncertain of the degree of respect he should show.
    â€œNo. What’s this about?” The False Perpétuo spoke quietly, in a soft voice, apathetic, indifferent.
    Anísio told him about the bets he and his friends made every month in the game of Dead Men. The visitor