The Body Snatcher (5 page)

If the whole thing were just a film, we'd be at the moment when you feel like telling the character to get out of there. It's a tense scene: the character knocks at the door of the fatal house and asks, Anyone there? No one answers and he goes in anyway. And inside there's a killer or a dead body or both. In the film, the guy goes ahead and the rest you know already. Lots of blood. Pure adrenaline. In real life, you don't go in. By way of compensation, you do worse things. You rob a cadaver. You hire some loser of an Indian to sell the blow you stole off the corpse. You fuck your cousin's wife. You do that because you believe you can make a mistake, just one, just one more, and another, just one more little screw-up, and then return and go on with your path, your film, because the course of life continues there, static, waiting for you to screw up and return later.

Before I realized it, we were on the floor, her grunting, me sweating, both of us in a clumsy frenzy like the dogs
I've seen copulating in the vacant lot next to my house. We barely managed to rip our clothes off, we fucked clothed, with Rita's panties chafing my cock. The heat and the fear of being caught increased my desire; I let her take charge, the bitch. On top of me. Lick my face, she said, bite me, suck me, put it in, put it in, deeper, and then, just as I was about to come, she started calling me puppy, and it was as if that word had the power to drag me away and make me understand what was going on. You're gonna be at my feet, puppy, she said, you're gonna obey me, be my slave. I was overcome with terror, Puppy, a collar, she repeated, breaking the rhythm, not allowing me to come, and it was only then that I grasped what was happening and decided to set things straight. I got her off me, placed her on the floor. She opened her legs but I didn't plunge into that fissure. Instead I held her head between my legs and did the rest by myself, using my hands, until I came.

I left her lying there, her face smeared with cum.

10

I drank two cups of coffee.

You don't look very happy, said Dalva when I entered the pantry.

I was late, but no one seemed to care. The atmosphere in the house was completely unlike the day before. There were many people in the garden, friends, politicians, and journalists, and trays with coffee and juice came nonstop from the kitchen. We could even hear a few laughs if we paid attention. Did you hear? Dalva asked.

I already knew everything and repeated to myself: so far so good, over. Everything under control.

Hours earlier I had woken up startled inside the van, with Sulamita leaning against my window. What're you doing here? she asked, giving me a kiss. I had parked in front of her house, waiting for her to return from the rescue mission.

Morning came and we went to the local bakery, holding hands. Sulamita's pants were stained with mud, wet up to the knees. I began talking about my new job right away, emphasizing the name of the family so she would make the inevitable association, and when it happened, I was overcome with an uneasy feeling as if I were stuck in mud. Quite a coincidence, she said.

Afterward, while we were having coffee, she told me that the plane had gotten stuck in a sandbar, with its cabin out
of the water, and that it had been recovered and there was a chance the pilot was still alive.

I thought I hadn't heard right.

He wasn't there, she repeated.

Who?

The pilot.

He wasn't in the plane?

His safety belt was undone, and both the plane's doors were unlatched.

She said there was a theory that the youth had lost his memory and was wandering through the woods. Or was seriously injured, somewhere in the nearby area. Two teams, one by land and another by air, were combing the Pantanal at that moment.

She also said that all the investigators had been reassigned to speed up the search. When we have a case like this, she said, it's always the same old story: the governor squeezes the secretary, who squeezes the director, who squeezes the department head, who squeezes the precinct chief, and the thing explodes in the ranks.

Later, at home, in the shower, I had to repeat aloud to myself that there was no way they could involve me in that episode. They couldn't incriminate me. Arrest me. I hadn't done anything. Except steal. I had checked the boy's pulse twice. Very good coke, over. I reviewed everything, every detail, organizing my thoughts. It wasn't hard to imagine what happened after I left the scene of the accident. My mistake was undoing the pilot's safety harness and not closing the doors. It was a lapse on my part. Dead, over. Released, he was carried off by the current. Rotted, over. It was a matter of time, they would find the body caught in some bend of the river. I read somewhere that bacteria work quickly in cases of death. That idea also tormented me: the
corpse floating, its face in the mud, the belly swollen, and flies buzzing around it.

On the other hand, there was a degree of comfort in it. So far everything's okay, I told myself. I'm not the cadaver. I'm not going to rot. Or float, over.

For the rest of the morning I stayed in the garage, listening to the news on the radio. The topic was nonstop. They said lots of things. That the open area aided the sweep and that the pilot would be found in the next few hours. That the pilot was a black belt in judo. That he was in excellent physical shape. That he had won the latest equestrian competition in Rio de Janeiro. Rich family. They repeated that a lot, the wealth. All that money, I thought, doesn't keep you from ending up like that. In the swamp. They also said that Junior was a young man much loved by all. Handsome. A good guy. Except they didn't mention that he liked snorting coke. Incredible how a tragedy is enough to turn an ordinary person into a hero.

It was that same day, a bit later, that I saw her for the first time. Dona Lu, that's what everybody called her. Lu for Lourdes.

She was under fifty, compact, and seemed to be made of some material that would break easily. The type of person who, if I were God, I'd pay to play on my team. She looked you in the eye when she spoke, without affectation, in a very feminine way. I don't know how to deal with that type. The result of certain combinations, wealth with kindness, beauty with kindness, wealth with beauty, or even just kindness or pure beauty is very destructive. It puts an end to you. You're reduced to dust, that's the truth.

Dona Lu stood beside the car, waiting for me to open the door. The subtle smell of a rich woman quickly permeated everything. It took me a time to understand that my duties also included opening doors.

She asked me to take her to the church. On the way she asked several questions: if I was married, if I had children, family, if I liked Corumbá. She also said that I had brought good luck to her family. And that the police thought her son was still alive. She herself was certain of it. You'll like him, she said.

She also asked if I was religious. I remembered reading somewhere that people prefer celebrities to Santa Claus. Actresses, in my opinion, are more interesting than saints. Between Madonna and Hail Mary I would stick with Madonna, but you can't say that in surveys or to Dona Lu.

There was no one in the church. Just coolness and the dim light and her, on her knees, praying. I felt sorry for her, felt like shortening the path she would have to follow. I thought that if I told her the boy was dead, if I took her to see the body and she could give him a proper burial, with a wake and flowers, if she could cry at the tomb, she wouldn't, like my mother, have to keep the home fires burning for a long time. Stark death isn't the hardest thing. Worse is mystery. Doubt. That's what destroys us.

We went home in silence, and in the rearview mirror I saw that Dona Lu was crying softly.

That devastated me. I remembered my mother crying, the tears dripping into the beaten egg whites. I thought about the happy brides who ate my mother's cakes of tears at their wedding parties.

That night, I went to pick up Sulamita at the precinct. There was a farewell party; it was her last day on the job. The next day she would be transferred to the Forensics division, as head of the morgue.

They were drinking beer, sitting at the tables.

Know what her work's gonna be? they asked me.

I had no idea. They laughed, trying to tease me.

Sulamita's gonna talk with cadavers, they said. Laughter. Now it's serious, they told me. A corpse is the plane's black box. Everything's recorded in that hunk of flesh, and you just have to sit down and know how to listen. The deceased. The dead truly speak. They tell all. Who did it. How he did it. That's how you crack the crime, they said. Someone added, My best teachers were the great killers. The hard part, they said, is putting up with the smell.

A young guy I'd never seen there, with thin legs and a voluminous belly, recalled an investigation in which the detective, new at the time, and who later died of a heart attack, went into the bathroom in the victim's house, got some perfume and scattered it around the place. Just imagine the smell. Rotting flesh with perfume. They guffawed. The stench, said the precinct chief, whose name was Pedro Caleiro, that hot smell of rot along with the perfume – I almost killed Raul, the idiot. We were sweating like pigs. They laughed loudly. Especially Dudu, the chief's assistant, a blond guy with blue eyes and the face of an old Weimaraner. It was he who suggested that Sulamita use Vicks VapoRub.

It was a hot night, suffocating. I stopped paying attention to what they were saying. The image of Dona Lu weeping behind her sunglasses wouldn't leave my head.

What's wrong? Sulamita asked.

I must've drunk too much, I said, and went out to vomit in the hallway, where a few tires and other junk were blocking the exit.

Sulamita brought a glass of soda. She sat down by me and took my hand. Are you feeling any better?

I said yes.

She said her family wanted to meet me. My mother's going to make lunch for you on Sunday.

I asked if she would mind if I left.

Sulamita was affectionate with me. I'll take you to the car, she said.

As I was leaving, I heard her ask Joel, Can you give me a ride, Tranqueira?

Of course, Sweetheart.

At home, I kept tossing in bed, looking at the clock, unable to sleep. The image of the body floating in the river wouldn't leave my mind.

At three o'clock I got up, went to the pay phone at the corner and called the Beraba family.

I have some important information, I told whoever answered the phone.

Who's calling?

I recognized the rancher's voice.

Your son is dead, I said.

And hung up.

11

First Brian blew his brains out. Ten days later, Robbie hanged himself. And then Justin drank rat poison. And Max, three days later, followed the path of Brian, Robbie, and Justin. I thought to myself, the people in that area, Texas, I'm not sure exactly where it was, Wisconsin, the people there must wake up every morning wondering who's going to hang himself today. Who's going to jump from the tenth floor?

It's no coincidence, concluded the experts. I don't know where I read the story, but the theory is that it's an epidemic. Somebody kills himself and the news spreads like the flu. A powerful virus. It appears in all the papers, on television, radio, and those dead who hours before were just a shy student, just a widower, a peaceful appliance salesman, or the son of Chinese immigrants, with no talent or luster, are transformed into celebrities like movie actors or baseball players. A dark fame, true. Infectious stars.

The others, the ones who don't kill themselves, foster death and mount the spectacle. That's also part of the sickness. They gossip, comment, really smear themselves. They devour newspapers. They live off that. The funeral is a great event, with the presence of the mayor, who eulogizes the hanged man in a lovely speech. Schoolchildren join hands and sing a hymn. A period of mourning is declared and the team flag is flown at half-staff. It's like the awarding of a local Oscar. It's a prize, the homage. You kill yourself, and
in exchange you become famous in your little town. For a few days. And sometime later, somebody else hangs himself, and then another, in a vicious circle that paradoxically lends life to those dead cities with names like Frostproof.

An epidemic, say the sociologists. And it does no good to wash your hands. No good to disinfect with alcohol. Or wear a mask. The only way for you not to blow your brains out is to turn off the television. Turn off the radio. Not to read newspapers. To leave the city.

I felt contaminated myself. In my opinion, what we were experiencing in Corumbá was an outbreak. Of a different sort, but equally vicious. In all the papers, on the radio and television, the exclusive topic was the pilot's accident. The difference was that no one had killed himself. It was pitiful seeing Dona Lu. She had lost a lot of weight. I practically had to carry her to the car when we went to the church. On those occasions, the vultures hovered around her, all but asking for autographs. Does it hurt badly? is what they wanted to know. How much does it hurt to have a son disappear? Jackals after raw meat. They liked feeling pity for that rich and attractive woman, who was royally screwed despite being rich and attractive. They felt good about that. Dona Lu's misfortune allowed them to feel sympathetic. In fact, that's another symptom of the epidemic. Pathological generosity that surges in the community. Instead of fever and diarrhea, there suddenly appears that symptom, compassion.