The Body Snatcher (8 page)

This one died yesterday, she said.

I noticed that Sulamita was pale.

Rape followed by murder, she continued. They found her tossed into a garbage dump.

We stared at the cadaver for several seconds.

Are you sure, she asked, that I don't have that smell on me?

Yes, I replied, taking her in my arms.

14

Then Sulamita started to cry. I can't go on anymore, she said, I can't take it, I can't and I won't, she repeated endlessly. She sounded like a broken record. I need to go away, she said. I can't take it anymore. She said that when she heard the sound of the meat wagon parking outside, her heart leaped like a toad fleeing from a snake. I can't take it. I feel like I'm going to vomit up my own stomach. I can't go on. Head of the morgue, she said. You know what my function is? It wasn't till the day I signed in and read the job description that I realized what was about to happen to my life. Till then I thought it was some kind of promotion, that I'd stop being an administrative assistant doing bureaucratic work, and make more money. I didn't understand that I'd be working in this horrible world of people who stink and rot. Of course I knew what it was, I took the qualifying exams, studied, knew the names of everything, all the instruments we use, all the types of brushes and clamps and saws that cut through the skull, I knew it all, the technical terms, the procedures, I knew but I didn't understand what they would mean in my life. That rancidity. You smell it, don't you?

And she began to cry again, pressing her hands against her face.

I took Sulamita by the arm. Let's get out of here, I said.

We crossed the street, went into a bar where the families of the cadavers crowded together to eat a cold sandwich while waiting to identify their dead. Everything here's like that, she said, contaminated, there's no place to escape, you can't have a cup of coffee in peace without running into those wretches suffering because their son, their mother, their brother died. Yesterday, a mother who lost her two-year-old son, drowned in the pool, beat her head against the wall and screamed.

I thought about how my own mother would have been happy if one day someone from the morgue had called, if we had gone there, identified my father's body so that later we could bury him and be done with the matter. That's the meaning of the word bury. To put a full stop to something. Bury the dead and take care of the living – who said that? Until we bury the dead, the living stay behind and bleed. The dead destroy us. Destroy Dona Lu. I had noticed that in the last few days it no longer mattered if she found her son alive. Finding his body would be enough. She was at the point where the cadaver was better than nothing. Better the cadaver. It was exactly how things worked. I knew this from my own experience. There are times when even bad news is welcome. We found an arm. A piece of the skull. We caught the killer. The grave. Anything will do.

We ordered Coca-Cola, and Sulamita began repeating that she felt ill from that smell of decomposition, of rotting things, and for me not to come close, my hair stinks, my clothing, the odor sticks like chewing gum, it doesn't do any good to bathe with just soap, she said, if I don't use alcohol on my entire body the smell won't go away.

I tried to calm her, while I tried to calm myself, by speaking of our plans, the land we would buy. I said that soon
she'd be able to resign from that place and be free of that stench. So you do smell it? she asked. No, I said. Of course I did, and in fact it was unbearable, a mixture of formaldehyde and offal, with the sun overhead cooking it all.

As long as the two of us aren't able to support my father, my mother, and my sister, I can't leave here, she said. They depend on me. Things were more complicated than I thought. Father, mother, and sister make up a total hell, I thought, and even so I went ahead with my lie, said that ranchers, cattle raisers, farmers also had families, naturally we're going to be able to support ours. Ours, I said, as if it were mine too. Though it was hers. Only hers. When we buy our land, I said, you'll leave all that behind. We're going to have cattle, we're going to make money.

I was certain none of that would happen, but I felt so sorry for Sulamita and so much affection for her that I went on making promises. Anyone overhearing me would believe I didn't think about Rita anymore, though I couldn't get her out of my head for even a second.

I've tried, she said, not looking at the faces of the cadavers. That was the tip they gave me when I got here. Don't look.

I remembered the pilot, his eyes. At times, for no reason, those eyes appeared in my memory. And the final breath. When I took Dona Lu to the church, I also remembered those eyes. The eyes of someone about to die. The eyes die first, that's my impression. Before anything else. They cloud over. And fade away.

Sulamita continued: They said, “Look at the lesion in the liver, the lesion in the stomach, look at the fracture in the skull, look at the lesion, just the lesion.” But who says I can do that? I go directly to the eyes. To the face. I can't help it, every day when I come here I tell myself “Today, you idiot, you're not going to see anyone's face.” I get here and
before I realize it, I'm staring at the face of the deceased. It's like I even want to see that dead face. Like I enjoy seeing it. But I detest it. One more, I think, one more for my funereal gallery. I know very well what the mouth, the nose are like. As soon as I close my eyes the faces parade before me like some horror film.

After ordering coffee, which was lukewarm and tasted of leftover grounds, she told me that part of her job was also assisting at exhumations. They dig up the cadaver and I have to stand there, watching. It's like that here. One task worse than the other. I have to do the sutures after they're all eviscerated. Besides describing the clothes they're wearing, the color of their hair, eyes, teeth. And that's not the worst part. The worst is at night, in bed, having to close my eyes and sleep. That's the worst part. And then wake up and come back here. That's what's terrible.

Last night, she said, the table, which isn't ergonomic because the state can't even get that right, the state doesn't give a shit about its dead, the table twisted as we were carrying an old man who had died of a heart attack, and he rolled onto the floor. I started crying and thought, It's not enough that the man has died, do I also have to drop him?

We remained in the bar for a time; it was almost five o'clock and the sun continued strong, as if it were still early afternoon. I commented on that to Sulamita, and she added, True, that's another problem with my job. Everything in this city rots more quickly.

Out of the way, said Sulamita's mother, coming to the table carrying the steaming platter. Fish with annatto was the dish. My mother-in-law's specialty. I've already tried making
broth of piranha and alligator meat, but this is my strong point, the old lady repeated.

It was Sunday and we had spent the morning fishing, my father-in-law and I. En route, we left Sulamita and Regina at the grotto near the Vista Alegre ranch, helped Sulamita take Regina from her wheelchair and place her in the water, then continued ahead to fish.

It was the rainy season, the river was high, its level had risen significantly, forming a body of water that stretched out of sight. Further on in, my father-in-law said, it's real beautiful, there's bayous, swamp birds, lowlands, mountain ranges, salt marshes, one of these days I'll take you there. To me, if God exists he's the Pantanal. We've got everything, we've got forests, we've got pastures, we've got clear fields, we've got the most beautiful birds you can imagine. Today I'm going to teach you to fish, he said. I already knew how to fish, I knew that entire area, I'd hiked through it with Rita, one of our favorite activities. We would sometimes rent a boat and turn off the motor in mid-river and stay there, letting life drift by. Just Rita and me.

Father-in-law, that's what I called him, and he called me my son. To me, he said while we fished, now you're my son. And then he began praising Sulamita: You don't know how precious that woman is, precious and brave. The adjectives poured out like a waterfall. Now she's playing with Regina, who loves to swim. It's only when she's swimming that Regina feels that her legs aren't a hindrance, he said. In the wheelchair she's just a trunk, but in the water her legs are reborn, I think. Sulamita has more patience than you can imagine. Sulamita has a great heart. It wasn't easy for us, he continued, for me and my wife, to have Regina. A crippled child is almost a half-child. A burden for us, and
I say that with total love. At first, her mother didn't even want to look at the girl: she thought she'd given birth to a monster. But Sulamita, who was a little five-year-old girl, gave us a true lesson of love. She was the one who first fell in love with Regina. The older Regina got, the more twisted and ugly she became, but Sulamita loved her. Have you seen how the two get along?

I had seen, and I even forced myself to talk to Regina, though I couldn't understand her grunts. She's saying she wants ice cream, Sulamita would translate, when the three of us went out together. She's saying she wants juice. She's asking me to change her diaper. Sulamita, and only Sulamita, understood that language, which was as twisted and deformed as her sister's body.

After fishing, we went for Sulamita and Regina at the lake. Regina was exhausted and fell asleep in the car on the way back.

Now, ravenous, we sat around the table, along with two of Sulamita's cousins, a widowed aunt, another widowed aunt, and her ninety-year-old grandmother. How chic, said the aunt when Sulamita showed her the ring I had given her. It wasn't an engagement ring, but now it might as well have been. Sulamita herself said it was for an engagement. An elegant thing, the aunt repeated. Really chic, the other aunt said. I had also brought Serafina, explaining that she was like a mother to me, and the Indian woman remained silent, eating nonstop, eating and looking, without understanding anything that was happening.

Sulamita had suggested we invite Carlão and Rita also so she could meet them, but I made up a long story that Rita was having problems of nausea because of the pregnancy. I didn't want to lay eyes on that tramp's face. The gall. Wearing boots and her hand on her hip, wanting to know
what was “going down” between us. Shit is going down, I should have answered.

After that day at the morgue, Sulamita and I decided to speed up our plans. Or rather, Sulamita decided. We'd buy a small piece of land and get married. She wanted to get married first, but I was like a bad driver. Forward and backward. More backward than forward. I balked. I hindered the flow. Sometimes I would get really worked up. I even mentioned the marriage to Dona Lu one afternoon when I took her to the doctor. Nowadays she was constantly seeing doctors because she couldn't sleep anymore except with pills. I'm very happy for you, Dona Lu said. I so wanted my son to marry Daniela, but Junior didn't think about serious commitments. A naughty boy. She asked me to inform her when we set a date. We want to give you and your fiancée a gift. We think a lot of you. My husband and I, and Dalva too. You're overqualified for the position of driver, I've said that to José, and he agrees. And you've been very good to us at this time. And she stopped. It was always like that: Dona Lu would talk her head off and then fall silent in the back seat, quiet.

My father-in-law always had a newspaper under his arm, marking ads for land sales. All of them were either too expensive or too far away. That's what I told him. We've got to do the thing right, I repeated.

Tomorrow, he said, I'm going to talk to a real-estate broker. We'd had lunch and were a bit logy, plopped on the sofa, the entire family, with the television on. I had taken Sulamita home, and we spent the rest of the afternoon watching all that Sunday crap. I fell asleep there, my head leaning on the shoulder of Regina, who was sleeping.

I woke up at seven and Sulamita had gone to the morgue. It was her day to be on duty.

I said goodbye to everyone, I'm going to catch some sleep, I said. Tomorrow I start work early.

Auhnsjfgfl, grunted Regina when I kissed her. How was I supposed to understand that growl?

15

Sunday night. Moacir bellowed. Eliana bellowed, and the children bellowed.

I stood in the hallway, wondering whether or not I should interfere.

Eliana said: She exasperates me. I don't have to put up with that crazy Indian woman, who almost burned my house down. Moacir: Don't change the subject; I wanna know who gave you that piece of meat. And those gizzards.

More shouts. Meats and butcher shops were mentioned. Alceu. Something broke. Glass. And more shouts.

I scratched my head, lit a cigarette. The devil was on the loose. Things are bad today, said a neighbor when he saw me getting out of the car, a retired guy who was all the time poking his nose in where it didn't belong. They've been yelling like that all afternoon, he said.

The name-calling went on and on. Tramp. Drunkard. Bastard. Whore. Limp-dick. It was only when I heard the word “trafficker” that I decided to knock on the door.

Moacir opened the door.

What's happening here? I asked. The neighbors are stirred up.

Moacir came out and closed the door. Eliana continued hurling insults. That woman, he said. Have you heard the rumors? About her and Alceu? You know who Alceu is, the butcher? A kinda cross-eyed guy?