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Virginia seemed a vaguely anachronistic name to me, almost ridiculous — until I met her. It was the day I turned fifty. By then I had already lost the brilliant future that, in the recent past, some critics had promised me. Those same critics hadn’t liked my latest novel. They mocked it, they destroyed it. After that I never managed to finish so much as another short story. I’d write half a dozen pages and then stop for lack of ideas and conviction. Conviction, incidentally, is much more important than a good idea. I would rub everything out. Then I would start again, then I’d remember the reviews, and I’d rub it all out again. It was bad. Real bad. I went back to drinking. At night I would lie down in bed, but I didn’t fall asleep. I got up and drank. Manuela, my first wife, asked for a divorce. She said:

“I hate losers. Most of all I hate losers who drink too much.”

I didn’t argue with her. I didn’t have the heart to argue. I packed my bags and moved to a small apartment, on the other side of the road, to stay close to the kids. After three months, however, I realized I couldn’t pay the rent for much longer. I swallowed my pride and asked for asylum at my mom’s. I went back to writing reviews for newspapers and literary magazines. I used a number of pseudonyms, first because I didn’t want my detractors to rejoice at my no longer being able to live off my copyrights alone; and also because I could thereby, without any risk, trash my fellow writers, including some friends, or rather, ex-friends, people who’d distanced themselves from me, out of fear, presumably, that my failure might infect them. For the record: writers on the way up do not like to be seen with writers on the way down.

I took particular pleasure in destroying the debut novel by a young talent who, before he had dared to take that step, had become relatively well known as a literary critic. Américo, I’ll call him, had been the first to throw stones at me. The guy was nearly two meters tall, very blond and very white, of an absent-minded kind of beauty, like an angel on vacation. I used the exact same technique with which he’d destroyed my book, including some of his own killer phrases, to clip his wings. My only happy moments in those days were the ones I spent at the computer writing that review, and then reading them in the newspaper and hearing the comments, the laughter, from other critics and writers.

That was my life, then, or what was left of it, when I got an invitation to take part in a series of panel discussions (at the festival in Paraty) on the future of the Portuguese-language novel. In Brazil, unlike Portugal, my books had always been very positively received by critics. Regrettably, they’ve sold little. The gathering went well. I did my thing. I told worn-out jokes as though I’d just invented them myself that very moment. I illustrated fanciful opinions with true stories. I laughed, I was moved. At the end, the audience rose to their feet to applaud me. I still had three days before I was due to return to Lisbon. My talk was in the morning. There were another two that afternoon. I decided to give them a miss. I put on a bathing suit, thinking, as I put it on, how archaic and formal that word sounded in contrast to the Brazilian word sunga. “In my day, we used to go to the baths at Estoril,” I heard my maternal grandfather’s (weary) voice. In that local word sunga you can sense the echo of drums. My grandfather really did use bathing suits. He would go to the baths like other gentlemen would go to mass. He would never have worn a thing called a sunga. I slipped a pair of Havaianas onto my feet and went down to the front desk. The receptionist, a girl with deep eyes and cascading hair, laughed for no reason when I asked her for a towel. She handed me the towel and laughed again. She explained I just needed to go straight up the road, past the little stone bridge, to get to one of the loveliest beaches in the city. I walked about twenty minutes till I found it. A perfect bay, ringed from behind by tall mountains of a ravishing green, and in front of it the calm sea and the flocks of islands. Beside the sand, in the shadow of some trees that were low but thick with foliage, there were three or four round tables, and half a dozen plastic chairs, light in color, punished by the sun: a bar. I sat down and ordered a caipirinha. I thought about my imminent return to Lisbon and a heavy sadness closed around me like a fist. I was turning fifty but nobody, not even my mother, had called to wish me a happy birthday. I was taken by a stupid desire to cry. The owner of the little bar, a sleepy, extinguished mulatto — extinguished truly in the sense of a candle whose flame has gone out — dressed only in an old pair of blue shorts, brought me the caipirinha and then moved away, humming quietly. I recognized the tune before grasping, as if in a revelation, the meaning of the words:

How sweet to die at sea,
amid the sea’s green waves.
So to the sea’s green waves,
to drown himself he fled.
And there he found a place
in the green waves of the sea,
And made his wedding bed
in Yemanja’s embrace.

I can’t swim. I grew up in a land of fishermen, the son and grandson of fishermen on my father’s side, but I never learned to swim. My father couldn’t swim either. My paternal grandfather drowned when the small boat he was on capsized as it was coming into the harbor. The boat was called Flower of the Atlantic.

There was nobody on the beach. I got up and walked down into the sea. The water was so light, I could barely feel it on my body. The ground didn’t feel like it was made of sand but of some substance that was soft and warm, which had taken a liking to my feet. I no longer felt sad, on the contrary, there was a kind of euphoria now pushing me forward. I would not go back to Lisbon. When, the following day, the newspapers reported my death, perhaps then Manuela would feel sorry for the way she had treated me. The same critics who had condemned me would line up to exalt my work, and I would return, albeit dead, to the bestseller lists. Américo would try to hide his crime but he would be exposed, and no newspaper would ever accept his reviews again. I was getting so enthusiastic that I had to hold myself back from running. Dying, yes, but slowly. I walked a hundred meters or so, a hundred and fifty, the water always at my knees. I walked another hundred. The island, in the distance, got a little closer. I kept walking. I could already make out a few of the details of the island: a ruined jetty, part of a wall glittering in the sun; yet still the water had not even come to my waist. I realized, when I looked back, that I had walked a long way. The coastline was as far away as the island. You could get to Angola on foot at this rate. I lost heart. It was like trying to drown myself in a soup bowl. I lay on my back and shut my eyes. My hands touched the muddy bottom. I remained like that for some time. The sun prickled my face. I dreamed of algae, jellyfish, shipwrecked caravels, mermaids drowned in the shallow tide.

“You’re a writer?”

I opened my eyes and there she was, standing between me and the green islands, as if she had been cut out of a tourist postcard. She was wearing an elusive burnt-yellow bikini, which made her seem even darker and, in a strange way that I can’t quite explain, almost fierce.

“My name’s Virginia . . .”

The receptionist. Virginia, aged eighteen, only child of Dona Marta, the hotel’s owner. She put her long arms around my neck and kissed me on the lips. I didn’t go back to Lisbon. I married Virginia three months later and, at the invitation of Dona Marta, who had always liked me, I started to manage the hotel.

Does it irritate you (I’m addressing the critics here) that I should summarize my love story in one brief paragraph, along with the fine friendship I established with Dona Marta? You think it’s too abrupt? I’m sorry about that, but it really was very fast. Virginia put her long arms around me, held the nape of my neck in both hands, kissed me, and the next moment I was married.

Five years went by (also very quickly). Dona Marta died from a mugger’s bullet, in a suburb of Rome, the city where her family had come from, and where she’d moved for fear of the violence in Brazil. And then, one rainy July afternoon, I saw a very tall young man walk into the hotel, his clothes drenched, sticking to his body, and his very blond hair dripping with water. He stood in front of me like an amazed cherub:

“Pacheco?!” There was a kind of shock in his voice. “Pacheco, the writer?”

I recognized him by his height. It was harder to recognize myself in his incredulity, so long had it been since I’d heard my real name. I hadn’t been Pacheco, the writer, for quite a while. I was Mr. Pedro now, the Portuguese man who’d married Virginia, Dona Marta’s son-in-law, the owner of the Perfect Loves Hotel. In short: a good guy, not exactly young any more, balding, but still attractive, nice-looking. The young man insisted:

“I’m sorry, aren’t you Pacheco, the writer Pedro Pacheco?”

“Américo?”

The past came back to me like a body—blow. I felt an ancient bitterness rising into my soul. I hesitated a moment between hugging him and smacking him. I hugged him:

“What are you doing here?”

Américo had arrived in Paraty that same afternoon to take part in a series of panel discussions on the state of the Portuguese-language novel. “A lot of people have come from Lisbon,” he said, and he cited various familiar names. I asked him (because I felt I needed to ask him something) how many novels he’d published now. Américo looked at me with ill-disguised suspicion:

“How many? Just one, Of Love and Death — you didn’t read it?”

“No, no!” I realized that my double denial, an excess of vehemence, might seem stranger still, and I attempted to correct it: “No, no, my friend, unfortunately I haven’t read it. I’ve been living here, in Paraty, for almost five years. Hardly any news from Portugal reaches me here.”

Américo leaned forward slightly, fixed his lucid angel-eyes on me. He wanted, perhaps, to confirm that I had not, in fact, come to read the vile things he had written about my last book; either that or he knew the true identity of the person who had destroyed his first, his only novel.

“Have you heard of a guy called Camilo Durao?”

I denied it, horrified: “Camilo what?” Camilo Durao was the pseudonym I had used to murder Of Love and Death. I didn’t regret it. As best I could remember, the novel really was mediocre, boring, a little over two hundred pages that were sweating from the effort of seeming original. Américo was part of that group of writers quite capable of affirming, with tears in their eyes, their total dedication to literature — “if I don’t write, I waste away,” or “oh, writing for me is like breathing” — despite the fact, unfortunately, that they have nothing to say. Having conquered the final page, I don’t think there’d be many readers who could summarize the plot. I’m not sure it even had a plot. Still, Américo pretended to believe me. He clapped me on the back with the manly delight of somebody who has run into an old drinking buddy from his wild youth, and gave me a big, magnanimous smile:

“What about you? Have you written much?”

I hate him. I hate it when people slap me on the back. Besides, he knew I had never been able to write again. I didn’t tell him this, of course, I changed the subject, and amid laughter and recollections I showed him the hotel. Finally I invited him to stay in the best room. That night I had dinner with him and the other Portuguese writers in a small restaurant overlooking the river. Virginia liked Américo at once.

It has only been three months since that night, no longer than a sigh, but to me it feels like it all happened in a different incarnation. The German (I must tell you about him) was also there. Even now, after everything that’s happened, I can’t help thinking of Martin with affection, I can’t help missing him. I met him not long after arriving in Paraty. Here, where he lived for more than fifteen years, everybody called him The German, but Martin Ries was a Luxembourger. His small travel agency, Man at Sea, organized diving excursions for the tourists. The German was a tall, solid man with copper-colored hair cropped short and an explosive temper which led him to perpetrate some crazy things only to, later — the very next moment — come to his senses and transform into the sweetest person in the world. We played tennis on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Saturdays we played chess.

Américo stayed in Paraty for a couple of weeks then returned to Portugal. Before leaving, he insisted on interviewing me for a literary magazine of which he himself was the editor. He sent me the magazine a few days later. I thought the way he presented me really rather nice. Too nice, perhaps. I was left with the suspicion that he was trying to excuse himself for the way he had destroyed my novel. The second week in October, I received an invitation to São Luís, up in Maranhão, to a festival of Portuguese-language cinema, where a film based on one of my novels was in competition. I said goodbye to Virginia and set off for Rio by bus, planning to fly from there to São Luís, making the most of the stop to call in at my publishers, to buy some books, and settle two or three little bureaucratic problems. When I arrived in Rio, however, I learned that the film had been withdrawn from the festival, due to some dispute or other with the producer, and I gave up on the trip. I called Virginia to tell her I was intending to come back home that night; the exact moment she answered, however, an idea (a stupid one) occurred to me: I should surprise her.

“Honey?! It’s me. Yes, I’m already in São Luís . . .

I told her I’d be staying a week in Maranhão as planned, that it was very sunny, that my chest was already aching from missing her so much, etc., those kinds of things, and I hung up.

I rented a car and that same night, after a quiet dinner with my publisher, I returned to Paraty. By the time I arrived at the hotel, I was exhausted, and dawn was breaking. I went inside, carrying the small yellow suitcase I always travel with, a bag of groceries, and a huge bunch of flowers, I found no one at reception (perhaps Adriano, who does the night shift, had gone to the bathroom), and climbed the solid wooden staircase to the second floor, where our apartment was, trying to move as silently as I could. I put down the suitcase, and the bag, but not the bunch of flowers, and opened the door. Virginia was stretched out on her front, on the bed, totally naked. Her beauty, so exposed in this way, open and defenseless, in the harsh morning light, dazzled me. Only then did I see the man. He looked up, startled, the moment I dropped the flowers:

“Pacheco?! But . . . what the fuck are you doing here?”

It was his tone that annoyed me most, so surprised and yet commanding, very confident, and that faintly affected accent, which a certain class of Portuguese, the same people who frequent the fashionable bars and gossip magazines, like to cultivate. Américo got up and I noticed three things:

1. That he was wearing black socks.
2. That he had his gleaming blond hair impeccably combed back.
3. That he was shorter than me, thinner, and without the slightest doubt, much less well favored for the games of love (I imagine there will be critics who’ll want to mock this expression; fine by me, whatever, choose another. Honestly, I don’t give a crap about you critics).

Virginia was a heavy sleeper. She hadn’t woken. I said nothing. I took three steps toward Américo, gave him a valiant kick in the shins, which isn’t the most honest of blows, I realize, but it always works, and when he leaned forward in a spasm of pain, I broke his nose with a single punch. I left, slamming the door, bounded down the stairs, and a moment later I was on the street. As I ran I thought about how I should go back and talk to Virginia, I thought about the shame that would come the following day, when the whole city learned of the affair, I thought about how I had nothing left now, not even that shame, I thought about how I should have punched Américo a second time, I thought about this with some joy, and I thought with horror about what I was going to do next. Suddenly I found myself outside The German’s house. I hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door. When he opened it, I fell sobbing into his arms. I struggled to make myself understood. Martin looked at me bewildered:

“You caught Virginia with another guy?! No, no! Virginia would never do that. It’s not possible . . .”

I saw him change. It was as if he were the injured party. He pulled on his pants and a T-shirt while simultaneously slapping and kicking the furniture and the walls.

“What a total slut! Women are all the same!”

I snapped out of it, and tried to calm him:

“Hey, man, Martin, maybe she’s got some kind of explanation . . .”

The German threw me a twisted look as he opened a drawer and took out a pistol. I don’t know anything about firearms. It was a small, metallic implement, it looked like a toy. If some kid had tried to hold me up on the street with a weapon like that, I would have laughed in his face. I saw Martin put it in his pants pocket. He roared:

“An explanation?! The whore was there, in bed, with another guy, and you think she has an explanation? Just don’t leave this house, fuck’s sake. Wait here till I get back!”

He opened the door and disappeared. I went to the kitchen, took a beer out of the fridge, and sat down to drink. I was still there when one of the neighbors burst in:

“Pacheco?! What the fuck are you doing here?! Come quick. The German’s shot your wife . . .”

He killed her. Two bullets in the chest. Then he forced Américo to kneel down (that’s what the police investigators suppose) and shot him in the back of the neck. Finally he put the weapon in his own mouth and fired. Four bullets, three dead. A drama that for weeks on end puzzled the city.

“Why?!”

I know why. I knew it the moment I saw Martin leaving the house, shouting, to kill Virginia and her lover. I confirmed it, some days later, when, tidying my late wife’s papers, I found a letter signed by Martin, in which he addressed Virginia as “my little chocolate bonbon.” It seemed so very sordid, I thought. The intrigue I can accept. Even the double betrayal. What annoys me, and what I cannot forgive, neither Virginia nor Martin, is the style. For the love of God: little chocolate bonbon! There were three other letters written in an ignoble Portuguese, and in each one Martin referred to Virginia as bonbon. Or worse: baby squirrel, little vixen, bunny rabbit.

I don’t remember much of the first few days after the tragedy. I spent them drinking. Bit by bit, however, I began to calm down. One afternoon, as I was walking along the beach, I realized that Martin had, with those four shots, solved all my problems, including those I didn’t even know I had. Let’s take a look:

1. He killed my critic.
2. He killed my wife’s two lovers.
3. He killed my wife.
4. He secured me a rich inheritance.
5. He supplied me with a good plot for a novel.

I started writing again. I write with urgency. If I don’t write, I don’t die, I don’t waste away, and I don’t even risk going hungry. I’ve got my little hotel. I lead a peaceful life. The best thing about old age is that we no longer need to prove ourselves. I like walking on the beach in the early evening. I step into the tranquility of the waters and lie on my back, floating. I love it.