The August 1977 issue of Playboy

I did not read it. I did not read any issue of Playboy. To the extent I ever saw the magazine, I looked at the pictures! But now I have indeed read a sample of it. The Brazilian version. There was one. As there was one of MAD, or so I inferred from newsstands back in the day. Still reading – aloud – Portuguese as well as Spanish, I have been going through another Luis Fernando Verissimo anthology, and in it is a relatively lengthy story titled The Eleventh Commandment. It's about a young couple named Claudio and Vânia, who have lived well and may continue to, but change is coming. Here's an excerpt, translated by me:

"Have you met him?" I asked Vânia as we were mixing the drinks. That perfume she had bought in Paris. On our trip.

"Who? Max? Yes. At the airport. We know each other very well. Do you know he has the Mercedes of my dreams?"

It wasn't a premonition. Or jealousy. I only had the idea that something was coming to an end. Vânia was dressed in white, like an offering. Her breasts almost showed over her decolletage. Somehow, for the nipples to appear or not was like the difference between a 49% and a 51% stock holding.

After dinner (Vânia insisted on serving it American-style, although I'd said, trying to balance plate, utensils, and glass, that at times like this I always lacked an extra knee), Maxwell complimented me on the drinks. He was older than Claudio, close to forty. He said that either he was quite mistaken or he had detected the flavor of tequila.

"You are right. Vodka, tequila, lemon, and a dash of grenadine. I've always said that it was this, not a pickaxe, that did in Trotsky."

The story continues: Maxwell is a scion of old old money, down from São Paulo, negotiating some sort of deal with Claudio, a scion too but one dealing himself and his family out, with the perhaps reluctant approval of his aged father and a dimwit brother who has wrecked a lot of cars. The father had got rich, then had a heart attack, and given control to Claudio. About whom Maxwell says, "He's throwing it all away."

I looked at Maxwell. He was still looking at the three on the sofa. He wasn't asking a question. I said nothing. Vânia passed by us and threw a kiss. I caught it in midair. Maxwell gave me an amused look. I pretended to crumble the kiss in my hand and then drop it in my drink. An improvised ingredient. He laughed. Perhaps he'd bring me along when he ravished Vânia in his Mercedes. To make the drinks and the witticisms.

There follows more chitchat. It's not probing but neither is it idle. The unnamed narrator has long known Claudio and his family, but always as a friend, never as an employee. He has traveled with the family in Europe, and interpreted for foreigners visiting their factory in Brazil. He's also – and only a South American would ever say this – helped Vânia with Proust. Helped her do what, I have no idea, but let me let Verissimo tell the story. Maxwell rightly identifies the fellow as not just knowledgeable but sensitive.

"You are not part of this. You are outside, yet you cannot withdraw from it. Decadence fascinates you. Does it or does it not? Who was it who said that at the apogee people make History and in decadence Literature?"

"Claudio and Vânia aren't at or in the decadence of anything. They're powerless innocents. This business never had an apogee such that there could be a decadence so attractive."

"A dash of decadence," Max suggested, smiling.

I pretended to hesitate a bit before accepting this new ingredient, gesturing to add it to the drink in my hand.

After that, Max said that to the ignorant pastoralism of Rio Grande do Sul the industrialism of São Paulo appeared to be one of the corrupting demons of St. Augustine, I said that was a gross simplification...He said the wealthy of this state had a macho sense of possession which made them angry at acquisitive outsiders, I said that the wealthy of São Paulo were themselves the true provincials who could not see Brazil beyond their own smokestacks. Then we talked about Corinthians and Internacional [soccer teams], agreed that the food was still good in São Paulo, and were quite certain that there was no further point in listening to Miles Davis. And when we looked, it was again at Vânia's decolletage, now as she leaned over the sofa to kiss her father-in-law's head.

Max asked, "Do you know what's the eleventh commandment?"

"Not to quote St. Augustine on a full stomach?"

"No, it's not to covet your neighbor's wife unless you have an inexhaustible source of income."

Uncharacteristically for Verissimo, the story is nowhere near over, but that only means it has a couple of pages more to go, not just a couple of paragraphs. It ends indecisively, but I suspect no Playboy subscriber (are or were there ever such guys?) complained. The business deal doesn't happen, and I think neither does infidelity. But it's risque, in an austere and very literate way, and that may be exactly what Playboy's prose, in any language, always delivered.