Reeeck, the chain echoes. All that grease made Moacir even blacker. The noise was irritating me. Squatting on the sidewalk, the Indian was trying to fix the chain of the bicycle of the young man, drunk beside him, who was amusing himself with the neighborhood dogs. Listless squalid animals so ugly it pained you to look at them. The dogs and the men. Dirty tatters. They barked. They pissed against posts. Reeeck. The sun was murder.
As Moacir was moving the pedal, jerkily turning the chain, the bicycle’s handlebars came loose. Damn, said the drunk, bursting out laughing. Better off tossing the whole thing in the trash, I thought.
I closed the window and lay down on the bed. I reread the note that Rita had left with Serafina that morning. Reeeck. Reeeck. “Thanks for hanging up in my face. Today is my birthday. You – just you, you alone – are invited to the party, at nine o’clock. Signed, Rita.”
I opened a can of beer and – reeeck – thought about what to do.
It would be nice to cool off in the chilly waters of the grottoes, but I felt too heavy to float. Very hot. I thought several times about calling the pilot’s family and backing out. The problem was that returning to São Paulo wasn’t part of my plans. Not even for business. I had already wandered under the Corumbá sun with the classified ads in my hand, looking for something like Carlão’s gas station, where he did everything from manning the pump to patching tires, with time to sit in the shade and let my thoughts wander, and all I had found was bakeries and backyard hydraulic pump shops. And other crap. Everything hot. Nothing for me. But the job in the rancher’s home was good. At least I’d have air conditioning, and that counted for a lot in Corumbá. WE HAVE AIR CONDITIONING, businesses wrote on ornamental plaques to attract customers. Ten degrees cooler is the formula for happiness in those parts. That’s what they were giving me: a good car, with air conditioning, to drive. Besides which, what did it matter that it was the house of the pilot that I had seen die? What did it matter that I had abandoned his body in the river? I didn’t kill anyone, over. Even if I had pulled the youth from the plane and carried him on my back to the city, nothing would have changed. He’d be dead all the same. We’re all going to die someday. What did it matter if I had swiped the coke? Let him throw the first stone, over. All of us steal something at some time or other. Almost all. At least once. Or we’re going to steal. Brazil is full of pricks, that’s for sure.
In the evening, calmer, I took a cold shower, removed the drugs from the crawl space, and got to work. I had decided I would sell the powder, make some money, and that would be that. A single sale. Without taking chances, because that’s how people fuck themselves. What was temporary becomes a permanent way of doing things. You start making money and somebody feels cheated. Somebody you owe or who owes you. Or is simply envious. A nosy neighbor. An instant enemy. The ones who come out of nowhere without you even noticing. Some guy you treated badly. And he calls the police and blows the whistle on you. Sulamita had said the same thing: catching criminals has little to do with the competence of investigators. Rather, nothing to do. It’s purely see-something-say-something, she said. 800-STOOLIE. People call us giving the name and address of the traffickers. The whole record. In the drug trade, she said, only one thing is absolutely guaranteed: someone is going to rat you out. You stand in line, waiting. It’s like owning a motorcycle: one day for sure you’ll have an accident. You might not die, but you’re going to fall. That’s the way it works. Therefore, I thought, no getting fired up over easy money. No buying more blow. That package was a present, nothing more. A gift from the cadaver. That was the most complicated part, thinking that my luck, the good things that happened to me at that moment, the drugs and the job, had to do with the deceased. Chance? A sign? Whatever it was, it would be an unforgivable sin not to grab the opportunity. That’s something I had learned in my life as a salesman.
The work of weighing and wrapping the powder helped me arrange my thoughts. I placed a gram in each envelope and sealed it with the red star. I’d seen that in a film, and it struck me as an effective strategy. My customers would right away associate the star with coke free of marble dust, glass, talc, or amphetamines. And I would also sell cheap. That’s the logic of business – better and cheaper.
Once the Indian stopped making noise, I opened the window again. At the corner, the knife-sharpener arrived with his equipment attached to an old bicycle. Three housewives gathered around him, holding colored parasols. Sparks flew from the grindstone, along with a buzzing that pierced my head like needles. Or bees.
A little later, the children returned from school in bevies. Moacir closed the bicycle shop. Men on their way home stopped at the corner bar. The street quickly filled with urchins laughing and running around in packs, playing football.
I smoked a cigarette and watched the sun set behind the house. The temperature started to become bearable.
At seven forty-five, Moacir appeared on the sidewalk and asked if he could speak to me. I gestured for him to come up.
He had bathed, but the grease had impregnated his skin. His sweat was dark, oily. His hair, a shiny mass. Skinny legs, sunken shoulders. He didn’t look like a chieftain’s son, and he’d be screwed if he were forced to hunt a jaguar like his ancestors. Perhaps he didn’t know what it was like to dance in a circle to the sound of the five-string viola, things that Serafina loved telling me about in detail. Now, on Sundays, he would stay in front of the TV, taking care of the children and waiting for his wife, Eliana, to return from the evangelical services. It was said in the neighborhood that she went to meet Alceu, the butcher. Where else could she get meat with no money? asked Serafina.
Moacir, a bit embarrassed, wanted to know if I could pay my rent ahead of time. He mentioned the medicines he needed to buy for his mother and the kids. The pharmacy is where the poor really get fucked.
I took part of the money I’d got from pawning the watch and paid for the following month. I asked a few questions and, without hearing anything he said, began thinking about whether Moacir might be the person I was looking for, a kind of mule, to operate my clandestine business. He had been in the area for a long time. He knew lots of people. And our proximity would allow me to control the situation.
I asked him if he wanted extra work. Easy money.
If it really is easy, he said, with a shrill laugh.
I thought I’d have to use all my telemarketer’s glibness to convince the Indian, but when I opened the drawer beside my bed and took out the fifty envelopes, Moacir was already sold. He started to jabber, saying that he himself had thought about going to Puerto Suárez and opening his own business, that it was a waste to have Bolivia practically in our backyard and not to take advantage of it, that he knew a guy there, Juan, who packaged capsules and was a friend of the biggest kingpin, Ramirez, and another, Wilsão, who had taken half a kilo to Araraquara in his stomach, and that “swallowing drugs” brought in “a bundle of dough.” Wilsão had been arrested afterward, he said, and that’s the problem. Wilsão drank and talked too much. When he asked me if Sulamita would cover for us, I answered yes and no, no and yes; I equivocated. Depends. You have to be discreet, I said, don’t say anything to her, leave Sulamita to me.
Before he left, I insisted that he be discreet.
Later I changed my mind and went after Moacir to dissolve the partnership, but he wasn’t at home anymore.
Sulamita phoned me when I returned home. The plane had been found in the Paraguay River, and she and Joel had taken part in the recovery.
I should have kept quiet, just waiting. Instead, I got in my van and left. I had learned something: it’s while waiting that you start exchanging ideas with the devil, over.