What are you doing here? Sulamita asked as soon as I entered the morgue. I had the feeling that she didn’t want me to kiss her.
Sulamita had asked me several times not to go there, not even to pick her up after work. That place isn’t like a precinct, she had said, or a government office. Sometimes I feel like I’m in the devil’s kitchen. And that’s where I work. Where the devil cooks up misfortune. We have a huge refrigerator, rusty, and every morning my heart races when I think of what I’m going to find in those drawers. You can’t imagine the smell that impregnates our clothes and hair. The smell of carrion, sulfur, garbage. Think of any kind of stench you’re familiar with, it’s worse there, she had said. It’s rancid and thick, you can almost pick it up with your hands. I don’t want you to visit me. Not you, not anyone.
I didn’t think about any of that when I went to get her. I had phoned twice, but apparently answering calls wasn’t the morgue’s forte. My head was boiling, I tried to calm down, I needed a bit of the comfort that Sulamita’s mere presence brought me, and that’s why I was there.
An hour earlier, I’d been in bed listening to Moacir dismantling my car in his workshop, nervous because I knew ten kilos of cocaine were there, when Rita knocked at the door. In shorts, boots, with braids in her hair. She couldn’t have chosen a worse moment, I thought. Smoking. Enormous gall on her part. Rita was incredible. She wanted to know what “weird business” was “going down” between us. Why didn’t I answer my cell phone? What had she done wrong? Didn’t I love her anymore?
Rita was a cynic. Her breasts free under her T-shirt and her nails painted a garish orange, as if she wanted to catch me in a snare.
Carlão told me you’re pregnant, I said. I know everything. The baby you two are having. A beautiful family, I said. I can’t understand how you can do that to Carlão. Pregnant and coming here after me. I also said she disgusted me. It’s one thing, Rita, for us to have some fun, another for you to have a child with Carlão.
The child is yours, she replied. Just like that, to my face. And then she explained, confusedly, that she really had talked with Carlão even before speaking with me, despite the child being mine and not his. It’s yours, she said over and over, not his, it’s really yours, I was just preparing the ground. You know it’s not his, but Carlão is a great guy, it’s yours, and you remember how Carlão helped you when you were all screwed up? When that telemarketer woman killed herself because of you? I don’t want to hurt Carlão, she said. She said: We don’t need to do that to people. Goading. Sulamita doesn’t deserve to suffer either. That’s how I am, I don’t like to make anyone suffer. And lately, she concluded, we’ve fought so much, I don’t know what’s happening, it’s like there’s a black cloud hovering over us. You don’t answer my phone calls, I didn’t have the chance to talk about the pregnancy.
I pushed Rita away, I don’t believe it, I said, get out and leave me alone, and that was when she grabbed my arm, shouting that the child was mine. You idiot, she said, you idiotic piece of shit, whose do you think it is? I was afraid the neighbors would hear.
The child is yours. Get that through your skull. I’m one month pregnant. And now you want to run away from your responsibility? You think you can get me pregnant and just run away?
We fell silent, lost in thought, at the door to my bedroom. Down below, Moacir was still hammering my car.
How can I be sure you’re not lying?
She laughed wearily.
I’m not joking, I said. You lie so often to Carlão. In fact, what guarantee is there that the child isn’t Carlão’s? Or whoever’s? How many men do you have, Rita?
And then Rita slapped me; at the time, I remembered my telemarketer who’d committed suicide. It’s not everyone who’s up to taking a slap like that. I’m going to tell you the truth, Rita said, the child isn’t yours. I’d never have a child with a fool like you.
I wasn’t prepared for that upside-down declaration. I watched Rita leave, coldly, descending the stairs in fury. I didn’t know whether I should shout, run after her and grab her by the hair, whether I should slam the door with all my strength. My desire was to attack and to ask forgiveness at the same time. To strike and retreat. That was why I went looking for Sulamita.
Did I do the wrong thing coming here? I asked.
I tried to hug her but she drew back.
What is it?
That curse. I already explained it to you, she said. A strange odor impregnates me when I’m here. Can you smell it?
The smell of shampoo, I said, after sniffing her hair.
Really?
Of course. You smell as good as ever, I insisted. But it was a lie. A putrid and nauseating odor came from everywhere, including from Sulamita.
She smiled. Want to see something?
She took me by the hand and led me to the inner chamber of the morgue, an immense room lined with tiles that once had been white but now were merely dingy. In the middle, three ruined stainless-steel tables. On one of them was a cadaver, underneath a sheet that covered almost everything except the feet.
Sulamita explained that the autopsies were done there. Rapes, homicides, a little of everything, she said. People from around here and throughout the region. We get bodies in every day. It’s rare for us to have a day, one lousy day, without someone arriving here.
She told me that was her job. Coordinating the autopsy team. Receiving the cadavers, storing them, cleaning them, placing them on the table for the coroner to examine. She also said that she witnessed the autopsies.
And without my asking, she took me to the middle table and pulled back the sheet from the body of a still young woman whose legs were covered with abrasions. A heart-shaped earring was on her right ear.
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.