The Body Snatcher (6 page)

The young people of the city organized and went out in search of the pilot, in the vicinity of the Old Highway. At the location of the accident there was now a cross. And flowers.
JUNIOR LIVES
. Banners like that proliferated around the city.

The worst part was the vigils. I would sometimes arrive for work and there was no other way to get into the garage
except by stepping on flowers and candles. We would gather up the bouquets to open a path, throw everything in the trash, but right away they would bring more flowers, more garbage, and block the entrance again. On a Monday, there were also bags of French fries and Coca-Cola cans strewn around. In the riding area. Where people suffered a little to enjoy themselves a lot. At the misfortune of others. Instead of going to the park or the movies, they suffered on our sidewalk, joining hands, with prayer and song. And later, tired of amusing themselves by crying, they would return to their homes, satiated.

There was no rest. By day, indignation, and at night, bad dreams. In them there was always a cake with several layers, like the ones my mother used to make, and on top, instead of the smiling bride and groom, was the wreckage of an airplane around which vultures and gulls circled endlessly. I observed the small dark cloud of birds and, as I was getting up to shoo them away, I realized I was moving with the vultures. I woke up, feeling the giddiness of rapture. Or of falling, I don't really remember.

The epidemic didn't last long. A month, perhaps. A bit more. And when we were at the apex, with the entire city greatly enjoying itself, the inevitable happened. That's how an epidemic works, according to immunologists. It peaks and then begins to retreat. Descend. Really plummet.

Just as we were beginning to experience a bit of peace, Dona Lu sank for good. She wasn't resigned. How could my son, so loved, my only son, my love, not come through this door again? I want my son, she repeated to her husband like a spoiled little girl.

We could hear her sobs from the kitchen. Doctors came to sedate her. But she would wake up and resume her wailing. Sometimes she would become confused and ask us if
Junior had woken up, if he'd had breakfast. Sometimes she would call me to look at albums of Junior as a child. We spent afternoons like that, looking at photos from the past.

I recall that one day when I returned from the bank where I'd gone to pay some bills, I went to look for her in the office to give her the receipts and found her with her head on the desk, weeping uncontrollably, crying like a small child. Where is my son? she asked when I came in. I want my son, she said, almost imploring, looking into my eyes, that's how she spoke to people, with her penetrating gaze, fearless, and when you answered, she would listen with almost childish attention, believing, as if the others were incapable of lying.

What could I say at that moment? That her son was food for the piranhas?

True, I had said that. In different form. Not to her, to her husband. If she answered the phone I hung up. But on two occasions, in the middle of the night, from the pay phone at the corner of my block, when I was sure it was him on the phone, I said point-blank: your son is dead.

And hung up. I thought the information would help, that knowing it they would go forward, look for the body in the river or else start to accept the idea that their son had died, at least that, but what's odd is that at no time did they take that hypothesis into consideration. Some crazy guy keeps calling, Dalva said one morning. A psychopath.

And so my warnings were just one more element of the family's nightmare. They would listen to me and the next day go on believing their son would be found. They didn't want to know that he had fallen into a river full of piranhas. They didn't even give it a thought. The piranhas. They had raised cattle for decades and were all too familiar with losing steers to the piranhas in the very river where their son had crashed, but they chose to overlook that detail.

Five weeks after the accident I received my first pay and took Sulamita for pizza in a restaurant near the belvedere on Santo Inácio Hill, from which we could see a stretch of the Paraguay River in the distance.

The night was hot, stuffy, and we sat at a table outside to enjoy the view.

Sulamita was a bit down, and I felt her mood had to do with my reluctance to meet her family. She had been insisting on it for some weeks, and I had put her off a little because of Rita. Not that I didn't like Sulamita. But Rita was something else entirely. Rita was as bubbly as a waterfall, everything about her was lushness and strength, hyper-feminine, legs exposed, always wearing rings, necklaces, and clogs, always gesticulating. I was crazy about all of it.

Carlão believed she was attending to clients, and Sulamita thought I was putting in overtime at the Berabas', and we would go to motels, fill the tub and stay there, fucking and escaping the heat.

One day we were embracing in bed after making love when I asked why she didn't get out if her relationship with Carlão was so bad. I think that at the time I was also thinking about a more serious step with Rita. Why? she said. Because I have a heart. Carlão left a long-standing marriage and two daughters to be with me, and now that I'm with you, in a good thing, now that I'm in love with you I just say ciao? Just like that? No, I'm not that kind of woman. I want to do things right, she said. Without hurting anybody.

After that, I understood where Rita was coming from and slowed things down. Actually, I saw it was time to end the affair. But that wasn't easy. We had a crazy connection, she knew how to keep me close. Naturally, we started fighting a lot too. Especially because of Sulamita. Or Carlão. I didn't like the idea of dumping Sulamita, and that irritated Rita.
Carlão also exasperated me. He would sometimes call three times in a row to ask dumb questions. A goddamn drag. You're not even married and already act like a husband, she said. That's when things heated up. We'd fight, she'd phone and I wouldn't answer, or vice versa. I would plead, she would plead, we'd both say no and yes, yes and no, we'd make up and then fight again, go back, and get offended, then make up again.

Our relationship really heated up one Thursday when I went out to have some beers with Carlão and he told me he wanted to have a child with Rita. I got pissed off.

That Saturday at the pizzeria, in that infernal heat, without even the hint of a breeze, I finally told Sulamita she could set up the lunch with her family on Sunday.

She kissed me and said she loved me. But she was still sad, I noticed. Sad and in love.

On Sunday I woke up resolved to get my life back in order. Rita called and I made a point of telling her, I'm going to meet Sulamita's family, and we may get engaged. You're ridiculous, she answered, and hung up in my face, before I could tell her she was the one who was ridiculous with that talk about a baby.

As I was getting ready to leave, Moacir knocked at the door. I had been trying to talk with him for a week, to find out what the fuck was going on, why he was so tuned out, didn't open his workshop anymore, slept late, left the junk piled up at the entrance to the house, cans from the shop. The neighborhood kids were already starting to steal that crap.

He was also drinking. At least that's what Sulamita kept telling me. But what really worried me was Eliana. It was true that we were making some money. Not much, because my strategy was to sell cheaply to undercut the competition. But it was dribs and drabs, coming in every day. Every day
Moacir would push a few fives and tens under the door of my room: he paid for his part, and that was good for both of us, I could spend it all without calling attention, I spent it on motels and restaurants with Rita, and with Sulamita too, I'd bought a ring for Sulamita that I was going to take to the lunch, and a tray for Sulamita's mother and a hunting knife for her father. I spent everything, but without calling attention to myself, while Moacir – what a bungler, and that business of not opening the workshop? And Eliana, who went around in new clothes, all dolled up? Why'd she dyed her hair blonde? To make herself stand out?

On Friday, as I was leaving for work, I noticed that everybody in Moacir's house, including Serafina, was wearing new sneakers. The same model. What's this, I asked, a football team? I explained to Moacir that he was attracting unwanted attention. You think the people in the neighborhood don't see it? You go barefoot and all of a sudden show up in new Reeboks? You think people don't spot the splurge?

I'll be careful, he said. He swore he'd talk to Eliana, but I noticed that he reeked of alcohol, and became more concerned.

I'm talking seriously, I said.

I know, Moacir answered. He asked how much of the drug we had left.

A little less than two hundred grams, I answered.

Is that all? We don't even need to bag it. Let me have it all, I have a major buyer.

The sun was searing when I got in the car, and the landscape shimmered like it was a bad film.

12

Your car was stolen? Go to Puerto Suárez and see if it's there. That's what I'd read about the city. Now I was driving through the muddy streets of Puerto Suárez, though my van hadn't been stolen. We were there, Moacir and me, to negotiate.

Ever since our supply ran out, Moacir wouldn't leave me alone. He stopped drinking, got his act together, and when he hammered his old pieces of junk in his hot, dirty workshop, he would try to convince me to meet his friend Ramirez, the Bolivian. Or rather, almost friend. I'm friends with a guy who works for him, Moacir had said. Juan. Another Bolivian. Their scheme is foolproof, you just have to use your own car.

The more I resisted, the more Moacir tried to convince me. With a van like mine, he said, I'd be rolling in dough. Know what my plan is?

He was funny, with those stripped bikes in that shithole shack, the Indian was talking about the future.
My
plan is to get away, I said, to get the hell out. We'll make a bundle with Ramirez, he promised. Ramirez's like you, he don't want problems. He wants money. You and him got a lot in common, you know? You're gonna be friends, I'm sure of it. Ramirez only gets along with people like you. If everything works out and we get in, know what I wanna do with my part? Open up a real workshop, with a gigantic hydraulic lift, you know, a hydraulic jack? To raise the car? Right in downtown
Corumbá. Hire a couple of guys to work with me. Everybody in uniforms. If you go to Puerto Suárez with me and meet Ramirez, you'll see how easy it is to get the dough.

Naturally, I didn't take any of that seriously. In reality, it was Sulamita's reaction the next day when she discovered Rita's panties in my bedroom that made me change my mind. Whose are they? she asked. I don't know, I answered, preparing for a fight that never came. Actually, what happened between us was anticlimactic. First a great silence, then an emptiness, a void. Sulamita said nothing, and I started to make up things while she sat on the edge of the bed, under control, biting her lip, listening to me repeat that I didn't know how the panties had got there, I swear I don't know, I repeated, it must be something the Indians did, those goddamn kids, they come into houses, rummage around in everything – and then Sulamita interrupted and said that whenever she received a body in the morgue she couldn't help thinking that hours before that piece of meat was breathing, the heart beating, the blood flowing. It hurt to think, she said, that he, the cadaver, had plans before he died, a trip, a house, a child, forgiveness, whatever, you always think you can put off your dream till tomorrow, you think “I'll take care of it tomorrow,” but then you catch a bullet in the brain, or die run over by a truck, or your heart bursts, and just like that it's all over. There
is
no tomorrow. She said this the Sunday I met her parents, while we were eating the fish her mother had spent all morning preparing, all of us at the table. She could hardly breathe from such happiness. Finally, she said, I thought I had found the man who would be the father of my children. That was me. Project Children, of course. Me, the father. The provider. Full of responsibilities. Suddenly, she continued, I could see a wonderful future for me and my family. That was my
dream, right in front of me, and I thought we would make it come true. The dream. You and I. The fact that her father, her mother, and her sister liked me only served to confirm her dream. We were going to save our money, she said, and buy some land in the Pantanal. Build a house. Raise cattle. And now, she said, those panties, those stinking panties from some vulgar woman, have ended it all.

Sulamita wasn't nasty or accusatory. She was sad, vulnerable, and for that reason her dream hit me hard that night; I could almost taste blood in my mouth. Raise cattle in the Pantanal, a family. I imagined ourselves like Dona Lu and José Beraba, without the dead son, of course, but the same kind of solid marriage, the kind only money can sustain, businesses, cattle, a future as certain as a mathematical formula, and I was thinking about that when I kneeled beside Sulamita and set the panties on fire with my lighter, swearing to never again do anything that might hurt her, nothing, I said, and asked her to forgive me, said that I wanted the same thing she did, marriage, land, children, whatever you decide is fine with me.

A man can't spend the rest of his life screwing around with crazy women like Rita.

Sulamita and I made love that night in a different way, without fury or anxiety like with Rita, much less our usual way, eager and affectionate, it was something deep, throbbing, impulsive. I plunged toward something very profound, deep down, a grotto, and returned to the surface moaning, happy, plunged and submerged, very slowly and with great impetus, advancing and retreating, until I came.