The Body Snatcher (13 page)

You're not one of the family.

I'm paying for the burial, I insisted, the coffin, the flowers, the tomb. She could at least show respect for the deceased.

I must have been talking too loud. Now Eliana and Alceu were looking at me. Let's go get some coffee, Sulamita said.

I had been drinking coffee all night. I was swimming in coffee, nervous, irritated. And had a headache.

We left and I felt the light rain cool my body.

Those guys over by the lamp post, I told Sulamita. You see them?

What about them?

I've never seen them before in this neighborhood.

You're making me nervous, she replied.

I left Sulamita talking to herself, went back into Moacir's house, woke up Serafina and took her to the window. I know them, she said, they live in the neighborhood.

When I went back outside, Sulamita said I needed to calm down.

Why don't you believe me? I asked.

For God's sake, he killed himself. How many times do I have to tell you that he wasn't murdered, he killed himself. Moacir was in a bind and he killed himself. That's what happened.

But I'm in danger, I insisted. They want to kill me. And if I die, if I turn up dead, don't say I didn't warn you.

At ten o'clock we got in the car, following the undertaker in the black hearse carrying Moacir's body. At that exact moment, a deluge burst over the city.

At the cemetery, only Eliana and Alceu plus the children had umbrellas. The others, few in number, watched in the falling rain as the gravedigger lowered the body into what seemed like a muddy reservoir.

After the burial, I saw Eliana leaving hurriedly with the children, at Alceu's side. Serafina followed her, but I saw Eliana say something to her in a stern manner.

I approached and asked if there was a problem.

There's no room for her in the car, said Eliana.

She turned her back and walked away, the widow. The merry widow incarnate.

Before parking in front of the bike shop, I asked Serafina to look around. Look carefully, I said, make sure there's no stranger nearby, over. Behind the car. Look there. The other side of the street. On the corner. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get a gun, I thought, as I quickly got out of the van.

I called Dalva to say I wouldn't return to work, and spent the rest of the day in bed. A lot of things were still confused in my head. Maybe I should quit my job with the Berabas. So as not to arouse suspicions later on, at H-hour. The problem is that from the outside, over, the view is different. The particulars get lost. Besides which, an abrupt departure could arouse suspicions. Maybe later on, some detective in the Pantanal, a Joel in boots and hat, would turn up saying “funny that the Berabas' driver quit at that moment rather than some other.” But it's also true that the opposite could occur and I would be suspect not for leaving but for staying. For being Sulamita's boyfriend. Sulamita, of all people, who's in charge of the morgue. So, I told myself, I have to do some figuring before I act. Weigh up the pros and cons. But the truth is, there's something that can't be measured.

Whenever an airliner crashes I think about the people who get to the airport early and have the chance to move up their trip. Wouldn't they be trading a sure, safe flight for the one that's going to plunge into the ocean and kill 198 passengers? The worst airline crash ever, the experts will say. Things could also have happened the other way around. And precisely because he didn't move up his flight, the guy dies. Because the plane marked with an X was that one and
not this one. And there are even worse variations. Maybe it's his presence that determines the crash. Maybe our fate is written in our DNA. Maybe God is just settling accounts with you and all the others are going to die as supporting players on whatever flight you take.

That's what I mean. Logic, intelligence, strategy, and plans all exist, but there's also the mystery of life. The truth is that we can only go so far. Beyond that, it's luck. And luck is luck. That's what I was thinking in the shower when there was a knock at the door.

I wrapped a towel around me, left the bathroom, and remained quiet for several moments, with the lights out. It's me, said Sulamita. Open the door.

On the way back from the cemetery, two hours earlier, I had dropped her off at home and felt something in the air, something unspoken, as if Sulamita found odd the fact that I didn't even ask if she wanted to go to my place. Ever since the day she discovered the pilot's phone and backpack in my crawl space, since our argument, we hadn't talked about the subject. We weren't separated, but we weren't together either. Not fighting, but much less at peace. With Moacir's death, things were in a state of suspension. I could very well have made it easier at the moment I left her at her house. Let's resolve this mess, I could have said, but I thought she'd ask for further explanations, and I didn't consider myself in any condition to offer them to anyone.

I unlocked the door and Sulamita came in. We embraced in silence for a long time. I smelled a pleasant fragrance in her hair. She looked pretty in a light-colored blue dress, loose-fitting and sheer, that slipped off her body when I undid the shoulder straps.

It was nothing special. A bit of fury in the heat, only that, and afterward silence, with my heart beating, racing.
And still later, a diffuse sadness, a mad desire to get out of there.

Later, in bed, smoking, I once again felt my head brimming with problems. And I said to Sulamita: You may not believe it, but Moacir was killed. And I don't want to die. I'm not going to die.

I said I had a plan in mind. A very good plan that would resolve my life. Our lives, I added. You can help me, I said. We can do this together and continue on our path. Take care of our family, the way we had dreamed. Of Regina and your parents. Of Serafina. But you can also turn it down. You can put on your clothes and leave. And never come back. But if you stay, you'll have to help me. Because I'm going ahead with it. With or without you, I'm going ahead with my plan.

That's what I told her.

Then she said:

When that damn cell phone rang in the crawl space, it turned my life upside down. You know me. I've always been well organized. I like things to be done right. I plan ahead for everything. And I do it by following rules. If rules exist, if there are laws, it's for people to have better lives, or so I imagine. In my opinion, order is everything. It wasn't by accident that I went to work for the police. I know: there's a lot of ingenuousness and idealism in that choice, we're not in Sweden, the police here are corrupt, but it's one thing to read about it in the papers and another to live and work like an honest person in a public agency. You know that corruption exists, but you don't see it. Corruption isn't something that comes from below. It has nothing to do with employees like me. You know everything's rotten, but you lead an honest life, with honest people who do their job.
And suddenly I find myself in the middle of an endless mess. Suddenly there's a missing pilot, cocaine, a huge debt in dollars, and I'm in the center of the confusion. And I love you. I left the house the day I discovered everything, and spent almost forty-eight hours off the air, not understanding a damn thing. All I could think about was “I love the guy.” Until that day, you were the man in my life, and then I find out you're also some kind of trafficker. I asked myself what a sensible person should do in my situation and there weren't many answers. If I wanted to help, I ought to turn you in. The day Moacir died, even before learning it was a suicide, I realized I had to act quickly. Today it's Moacir, I thought, and tomorrow it may be my boyfriend. That's when I decided to ask for Joel's help, remember Joel? Tranqueira? I called Joel and said, Tranqueira, I really need to talk with you. I wanted to understand what was happening, to read the inquest papers on Moacir, to discuss it with Joel, tell him everything and, depending on the seriousness of the snafu, come here and persuade you to give yourself up. Joel is very good at giving advice and I know I can trust him. But Joel was in a meeting at that moment and asked me to come to the precinct later. And that's when the thing that wasn't supposed to happen happened. It has to do with God, I imagine. And with the telephone, too. It's strange how the telephone causes tragedy in people's lives nowadays. A part of our lives takes place over the phone, and it's also over the phone that people fuck themselves up. Joel didn't hang up properly and locked my line. At first I shouted, thinking he could hear me. But suddenly I began hearing their conversation. Besides Joel there was another person; I think it was Dudu, I'm not sure. They were putting the squeeze on a third person, the owner of a junkyard. From what I understood, the guy was caught red-handed distributing
drugs and they were demanding a bribe to quash it then and there.

It's one thing to know the president is corrupt, the governor is corrupt, the secretary of security is corrupt. But the guy who's been working with you for seven years? Right beside you? Who has lunch and dinner with you? Who comes to your house? Joel? The one who taught me everything? I'd hold my hand over a flame for Joel. If Joel, Tranqueira, who calls me Sweetheart, is corrupt, if he's like that, then everyone in the precinct must be on the take. Nowadays there aren't any thieves without partners, corruption is a network, a pack. So why should I worry if my boyfriend steals a kilo of coke from someone who's already dead? Of course you shouldn't have gotten involved with Ramirez, but the truth is you haven't killed anybody. You haven't hurt anybody. You're not a murderer. Or a rapist. That's what matters. If you had taken someone's life, in that case there's no forgiving a homicide. But you're not a pedophile. Not that I condone what you did, but it's one thing to pick up a gun and kill, and another to do what you did. You're not a killer. That's why I'm here. Of course if you were arrested I could wait. But I'm already waited so damn long. I don't want to give up on our life or our plans. And our family needs us.

Now, she said, taking my hand, tell me about your plan.

23

My plan is like a fishing story. Imagine a solitary fisherman in his boat on a calm, sunny day. You know, there's everything in these Pantanal rivers. Truly horrible things. Otters and lizards so big they look like alligators. And alligators with sawtooth tails that resemble dragons. And piranhas that are miniature sharks with jaws that jut out and teeth as sharp as Swiss knives. And twenty-foot-long anacondas that can swallow an ox whole. Dreadful animals. Venomous. But the worst of all, the most threatening and dangerous, the most pitiless and predatory, is our solitary fisherman, who amuses himself on a sunny day. Really something awful. There he is, smoking a straw cigarette and thinking about life as he waits for some fish to take his bait. And suddenly he sees something caught in the branches of the vegetation. What is that? He approaches the right bank of the river and sees a body floating. Actually, it is what is left of the body of our pilot.

All of that, I continued, happened three months ago, when the accident and the pilot's disappearance in Corumbá was all over the news. The fisherman understands the deal immediately. He watched the reports on television and knows the accident took place in the vicinity. And his life is hard. He's unemployed and has no money. And he knows the Berabas. Who doesn't? Rich people from the city. And then, right there, while the sun bakes his brains, he concocts an incredible plan.

Sulamita, in bed, nude, her arms behind her head, listened to my plans, her eyes glued to me.

The jails are full of people with incredible plans, she said.

Imagine, I continued, that the fisherman recovers the body and buries it somewhere without telling anyone. Now, like in a film, you skip ahead in time. Three months later, the police have given up the search and things have calmed down. What does the fisherman do? He phones the Beraba family and says: I have the body of your son. If you want to bury him, all you have to do is pay me $200,000. And hangs up.

And are they going to pay? Sulamita asked.

They'll pay any amount, I guarantee it. Haven't you ever heard the saying “a man only begins to be a man when he buries his dead”? It's the gospel truth. There are no civilizations without death rituals. Without burials. Without them, we go back to the caves. Without them, you don't honor the deceased, his memory, you don't pay homage to him, you don't have a tomb to visit. We turn into zombies if we leave our dead to rot on the ground. On a personal level the tragedy is greater. I remember once on All Souls Day finding my mother crying in the kitchen and she said to me: “If at least there were a tomb for us to visit.” My mother was suffering because my father had died. She was suffering because she couldn't declare that death.

Won't they involve the police?

No. Dona Lu will do whatever it takes to obtain the body.

You're pretty confident, she said.

“The dead kill the living,” I replied, ever hear the saying?

You've got a lot of sayings.

Know what it means? Until we bury our dead, they go on living, killing us. That's what it means. They kill us by hammering at our awareness that we haven't done our part.
We don't allow them to return to dust. It's not only us, the living, who want to bury the dead. They themselves also want to be free of our world.