The sun reigned over everything without pity. People ran as if it were possible to escape the heat. Here and there you could see asphalt melting. In that city, life was like that, the sky blue, the ground steaming, and people trying to flee the furnace. Here things rot faster, that’s what they say. More worms, over.
I parked the car at the corner and observed the mansion that occupied the entire block, with its palms positioned geometrically, as if they were soldiers. I counted twelve soldiers. Toward the rear, the door to the barracks. They were there, I thought, gathered and desperate. Waiting for the fallen warrior.
A uniformed guard opened the iron gates, and a police car left the locale.
In the garden, two dogs who looked more like sheared goats sluggishly watched the youth cleaning the pool with a long pole. Flies buzzed.
What the hell was I doing there?
At night, tossing in bed, the idea that I was beside the pilot at the exact moment of his death and, worse still, that I had been capable of robbing the dead, came back to haunt me, frighten me, fill me with terrible foreboding. It was as if it had made us partners, over. Me and the cadaver. Suddenly, he was one of my problems. Him and all that cocaine in my crawl space. And that was when it struck me as an excellent idea to go to the family’s house and leave an anonymous letter with a map showing the site of the crash. Follow the Old Highway, take the trail with the carnaubas. The path dotted in red with precise markings would guide the family. It took me almost an hour to draw the map. An X marking the spot. Your son died here. P.S. He didn’t suffer, over.
More than the image of the cadaver abandoned in the river, what agonized me was thinking what was going on inside that house. We’re sure he’s all right, his girlfriend had said on television. The mother crying. That I understand, over. Mothers who deteriorate like that, rotting away from so much crying. Before learning that people die, I learned that they disappear. They move away from home and evaporate. They leave us perplexed, looking at the empty bed, which is almost like a scream, a clubbing in the morning. You dream about them every night. Dream they’re alive, dream they call, dream they’re coming home. Always the same dreams; you end up actually believing they’re alive. And there’s also the research, which says that seventy percent of the disappeared return. You may no longer believe in God, but you believe in research. You cling to those percentages as if they were a prayer. And the numbers, along with the dreams, make that person into a kind of living-dead. A zombie. I knew all of that very well.
Even today I couldn’t think of my mother as someone who made wedding cakes, decorating with icing the steps that lead to the rococo top where the sugar bride and groom smile eternally. I remembered her as almost a bleeding attachment of the telephone that was constantly close by. Waiting for my father to call and say he hadn’t died or abandoned us or lost his memory. That he was alive. That he was going to return. Almost twenty years later, more dead than alive, my mother still kept the phone in her lap and waited.
The truth is that the dead need to really die. They need to be put in the coffin and buried. Or incinerated. You have to be there when the last shovelful of dirt is tossed in.
What the hell was I doing there? The ideas that come forth in the night, all of them, the ones that seem good and the ones that seem bad, are always terrible. False alarms. Deceptive advertising. Consumer alert: don’t try to do this while awake. A map of the site of the accident? What did I care if they were suffering? I didn’t even know those people.
After the guard disappeared into the garden, with the dogs trailing him, I went to the gate and watched the guy cleaning the pool. He didn’t appear to be in any hurry. The tragedy inside there had nothing to do with his dead leaves. Or with the chlorine being thrown into the pool. And there was still a lawn that went on forever to tend to, with pergolas and clusters of plants that weren’t normally seen in Corumbá.
If I wanted to help, the best thing would be to call the police. Anonymously. Or the family itself. At least it was a way of settling accounts with the cadaver, who had given me all that cocaine as a gift. Although he hadn’t really given me anything. As the saying goes, finding isn’t stealing. The truth is, I didn’t owe anyone. There was no reason for me to get involved with those people.
I lit a cigarette, thinking that maybe, one day, someone would come by my house to say where my father’s body was. In an abandoned lot behind a cement factory. At the bottom of the river. With two bullets in his head. Buried in a backyard on the outskirts.
Are you the driver? asked the guard, appearing suddenly before I had a chance to escape.
I could say I was just looking at the garden. Beautiful lawn, isn’t it? My roses are parched. The daisies died. Nothing thrives in this sun. It wouldn’t have been at all difficult to start a conversation or get out of there, but out of fright I said yes and was led toward the mansion. On the way, I gathered my courage. That’s why I’m here, I thought. I’m going in there to tell everything. The image I had of them was like a dog that has to be put down. I’m going to end their dark hope. Go inside and do it right, I told myself. Go there and deliver the coup de grâce, over.
Care for something to eat? Dalva, the cook, a short woman with thick legs, was eating roast beef and kale, her elbows supported on the table. She wiped her plate with pieces of bread. With her mouth full, she told me the story of the young man. He had gone to spend the weekend at the ranch of a friend. He called on Sunday after lunch advising that he would arrive in an hour. He liked to fly. He was always flying around the savanna. To buy drugs, I thought. From Bolivians.
Half an hour later, I was taken to an office with lots of pictures of the family. And of cows exhibited at fairs. Prizewinners. I sat there, alone. Father and son embracing, on the wall. The boots of the two are identical, attention-grabbing, I noted. Hereditary boots. The watch I pawned is on the boy’s wrist.
Suddenly, the screaming began. It was a woman’s voice. I don’t care a bit what they’re going to do, she said, you’re the father and it’s you, you, it’s you who have to do something, I want my son back, bring my son back.
The door was shut, but it was still possible to hear the she-wolf howling. They’re all alike, she-wolves. The same howls that cut deep down inside you like a razor.
Shortly afterward, the man in the photo came into the office, wearing the same boots as in the picture. He seemed confused. He said we had already spoken by telephone. Yesterday, he said.
I said that it must have been another driver. But he didn’t hear me. He was in a hurry. I already have information about you, excellent information.
I was there to tell him about the accident. After all, that was why I had come into that house. To speak about the explosion and the crash. To kill the hopeless dog. I can take you to the scene, I thought of saying. It’s shitty to feel sorry for others. I stood there, my finger on the trigger, and ended up accepting the job and agreeing on a good salary.
When can you start? he asked.
Tomorrow.
I left thinking that at any moment I could call and come up with some excuse. Or simply not show up. Disappear from the map.
And it’s exactly because of this that we fuck up our lives. We always think we can get out in time.