Rubem Fonseca's Cold Case: The Ephemeral and the Historical in Agosto

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THE word ephemeral, from the Greek ephemoros signifying a day's duration, connotes evanescence or transience. In ancient texts ephemoros also referred to events that were deemed insufficiently important to accord them a place of permanence in the collective memory (Eisenhauer 286). In this latter sense the ephemeral is the antithesis of historiography, whose purpose is to express meaning through the creation of enduring memories, particularly as they pertain to events in the public sphere. Through its fusion of police procedural and historical novel Rubem Fonseca's Agosto (1990) implicitly addresses this dichotomy of the ephemeral and the historical. Fonseca's narrative juxtaposes the activities of fictional homicide detective Alberto Mattos with those of a central figure of twentieth century Brazilian history, President Getulio Vargas (1882-1954). Agosto's chapters dedicated to the last three weeks of Vargas's life (August 1-24, 1954) eschew irony and mimic standard historical accounts of the period. However, the novel's interpolation of ephemeral events in the life of detective Mattos, coupled with the ultimate failure of the protagonist's investigative activity and the novel's anticlimactic conclusion, an underlying critique of official history's presumed authority. (1) Agosto's protagonist, Alberto Mattos, embodies the roman noir detective's hard-boiled uncertainty, characterized by a quest conducted on uncertain terrain, lacking confidence that the truth will ever be reveled (Chiappini 50). Unlike the nearly omniscient traditional detective or, for that matter, the official historian, roman noir investigators make no claim to authoritativeness. Although he is a public and not a private investigator, Mattos is no exception to this tradition. Like the noir detective Mattos's investigative activity is predominately a compendium of mistakes, spurious leads, and false conclusions. Matto's daily existence is also played out amidst the marginal realism of transient interactions with Rio de Janeiro's petty criminals, winos, prostitutes, gamblers, and anonymous homicide victims. (2) His personal narrative consists of fleeting, mundane events such as routine paperwork, doctor visits, and ephemeral relationships with women. It is particularly significant that Mattos's most recent lover, Salete Rodriguez, is a fashion model. Salete represents a profession and an industry that derives its meaning and revenue from the evanescence of tastes and preferences. (3) A fashion model's career itself is brief, limited in duration by the transience of youthful glamour. In Agosto's penultimate chapter Salete takes this focus on ephemeral physical grace to its logical conclusion. Just seconds after a hired assassin murders Mattos before her eyes, the killer compliments Salete on her beauty. Salete's reaction-even after witnessing the slaying of her paramour--is merely to seek reaffirmation of the killer's praise: Voce me acha bonita mesmo? Jura? (343). When the hit-man assures Salete that his bullet will spare her face she thanks him, then closes her eyes as she awaits the fatal shot (343). In this episode Salete's behavior approaches that of Frederic Jameson's postmodern schizophrenic, a subject given over to an undifferentiated vision of the world in the present (120). Salete represents the individual who is unable or unwilling to commit to a world view informed by a sense of temporal continuity. Since she has little or no awareness of a connection to the past, events become for her powerfully, overwhelmingly vivid and 'material' (Jameson 120). For Salete notions of a coherent chronology or the existence of enduring memory, even when applied to her own recent biography, fail to find a place in her consciousness. Her denouement represents a total embrace of the ephemeral, expressed in her ultimate desire to look good for a fleeting moment, be it the duration of a photo-flash or a gun shot. …