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.