Collapse, over, I told myself at the hospital. I was trying to stay calm, so was Sulamita. But Sulamita had one curious characteristic. She was capable of sinking into the mud of her own life, to succumb to her private bog, but when it was somebody else in the swamp, she would rise to the occasion, start up her tractor and go about removing and pushing aside the rubble with great ability.
It was she who took the reins in the situation. It was she who called a taxi and came for us after I phoned the morgue, where she was on duty in the middle of the night, telling her what had happened. We had walked for over two hours before finding an inn where we could ask for help. Rita could barely manage to speak. On the way to the hospital I made up a bunch of lies to tell Sulamita, said I was with Carlão and Rita having a beer at their house when they started fighting, that we went to the inn together and Carlão, who was drunk, lost control and had a fit on the way back. Thanks to me, I said, the worst was averted.
At the hospital, after Rita was attended to, Sulamita insisted that I report Carlão. Is that cousin of yours a psychopath? He almost killed the girl. It’s very likely she’ll lose the baby.
You always ask me why I don’t spend time with my cousin, I replied. Now you know. Carlão is crazy, Rita is crazy, their lives are total confusion, and I don’t feel like being part of it.
I had been very clear with Rita before Sulamita came for us at the inn. I said, If you tell Sulamita anything, if you hurt my fiancée – my exact word, fiancée – I’ll rearrange your face myself. Afterward I felt sorry for being so coarse. At that moment Rita had ceased to be a girl with a bombastic smile and looked more like a slender thread, an insignificant little thing, but nevertheless her ability to do me in, to grind me into dust, was still enormous.
Rita was in the hospital for three days, and during that time it was Sulamita who looked after her. She took clothes, magazines, fruit, sat at her side and held her hand, saying, Rest easy, you’re not going to lose the baby. Everything’s all right. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to help you. Do you want me to let your mother know? Your father? Your brothers and sisters? Rita didn’t have anyone, or at least that’s what she said. We’re your family, said Sulamita, wracked with pity for Rita. We’ll take care of you. She repeated that talk of family endlessly.
Do we need to say those things? I whispered in Sulamita’s ear. Rita was sleeping, but I was afraid she was just faking. Of course we do, Sulamita answered. She’s your cousin. She’s not my cousin, I said, Carlão is my cousin. She is your cousin. And she could be lying on my table, said Sulamita. Instead of meeting her here, the most likely thing, considering what happened, was that I would receive her there, in the morgue, that way, you know how. Cold. But she’s warm. We have to take care of her. Put your hand on her arm, it’s warm, isn’t it? And she repeated the question as if wanting assurance that Rita was alive. Touch is the real difference, she said. I mean, on my table the touch is the same, it’s skin, it’s flesh, but it’s cold. It looks human, it is human, but the temperature says something else. Disgusting. That was the word she used. And Rita is warm, she continued; we have to be happy about that. Don’t you think she’s warm?
We spoke softly. Sulamita believed Rita was sleeping, but I saw in that swollen, purplish mouth a certain intent that I knew well, the beginning of Rita’s smile, a pilot-smile, the smile of a hooker not worth a plug nickel.
When Rita was released, Sulamita went to fetch her at the hospital. I was loaded down with work at the Berabas’ house, Dona Lu was being taken from one doctor to another, not only in Corumbá but also in Campo Grande, and I always went with her. She feels safe with you, the rancher had told me. Actually, José wasn’t holding up under the strain. He couldn’t bear seeing his wife being eaten alive by the worms of their son’s death. Even the police, who earlier had said they would find the man, or the man’s body, now held out no hope. They must be betting on the possibility of Junior having disappeared in the river. And José Beraba couldn’t take any more suffering. He couldn’t stand to see his wife suffer. He went off to his ranch and left his wife dying with me and Dalva. Every day there was a new health problem, a neck pain, another in the temples, in the neck and temples at the same time, her arms numb, tingling in the legs, tachycardia, vomiting, always some new symptom. And new doctors. If Junior were to appear, even dead, I knew the illness would go away. The same thing happened with my mother. At first the sickness is just a fiction, a kind of blackmail the body uses against the mind, and then, over time, it becomes a true cancer. That was what happened to my mother, right before my eyes. Pancreatic cancer. Metathesis. Dona Lu herself told me that for the last twenty-seven years her life had been to love that son. Everything else was secondary. God forgive me, she said, but after my son was born, even He, the Lord Almighty, took second place. First came my son, then everything else. God. Her husband. The memory of her beloved parents. Even herself. What’s to become of me? she asked Dalva in the middle of the night, when the cook came to keep her company during the rancher’s travels. Her ailment was not yet a disease but a symptom that would become cancer in the future, called “Where is my son?”, “I want my son back,” “Return my son to me.” That was the problem.
I couldn’t think about Rita. What are we going to do with her? Sulamita asked upon her release. Rita’s a big girl, I replied, she can take care of herself.
That night, when I got to Sulamita’s house, I couldn’t believe it. Rita, with that slutty face of hers and those peeling red nails, was sitting at the table, dining with my family. My father-in-law and my mother-in-law. And my sister-in-law.
They received and treated Rita with the utmost affection. The utmost consideration. Rita slept in the same room as Regina and had her bed linen and clothes laundered. She needs to eat, said Sulamita’s mother. She would bring Rita soup.
All that was making me crazy.
One day, when the two of us were alone in the living room, I said, Look here, Rita, if that stuff about the child being mine is true, you should know I’m not going to acknowledge anything. Take this dough, get that piece of shit out of your belly or else go fuck yourself. Have the brat somewhere far away from me. You don’t have the right to fuck up Carlão’s life and then fuck up mine. Your plan of serial fucking up our lives is over. Declare victory, I said.
I said these things to Rita expecting her to slap me and throw the money on the floor, but she didn’t react. I almost didn’t recognize Rita. And where was that laugh of hers?
She’s trying to deceive you, over. It was in those days that I began feeling something odd, as if my internal radio, the one that was born inside me when I worked in telemarketing, when I would spend entire days saying over, listening, it was as if that internal radio was beginning to work, to tell me things, independent of my will. A clandestine radio. An interior voice, something that was mine but at the same time independent, spontaneous, telling me: beware, danger. It said: she thinks you’re a fool, that you were born yesterday, over. Danger. Danger, over.
My head felt like a pressure cooker. Everything worried me. Rita, Sulamita, Dona Lu, Moacir, the cocaine, everything.
Let’s get out of here, I told Sulamita one Friday, and we went to spend the weekend at a bed and breakfast in the region. Moacir had just given me another wad of money and I didn’t even consider economizing. Isn’t it very expensive? asked Sulamita when we entered the reception area, a cozy setting with a large blue sofa and armchairs with floral patterns where a few tourists were planning outings. This must be very expensive, Sulamita whispered. I lied and said that Dona Lu was a member and had given us the weekend as a present. Sulamita wouldn’t let me spend any more money. If we spend, she said, we don’t save, and we can only move if we build our nest egg. And don’t spend. Save and spend. And economize. She repeated that all the time like it was a prayer.
But I was spending everything, I couldn’t control myself. Serafina had asked me for money to visit her tribe, I paid for the visit. My father-in-law asked for money to repair his roof, I paid for the repair. Don’t say anything to Sulamita, he said. And afterward he asked for more money, I didn’t really understand for what, and I gave it to him. Later he said he was going to build a room in the rear, for Sulamita and me, and I gave him more money. If my father asks you for money, don’t give it to him, warned Sulamita. I suspect, she said, that my father has a second family. She spoke too late: the old man had already gotten a good piece of dough for his lover. If he actually had a lover.
Even today, when I close my eyes, I remember that weekend. We only left the room to hike trails and swim. I spent the morning floating in the lake, feeling the sun on my body, and after lunch we would sleep and make love. Sulamita sometimes left to go horseback riding, but I stayed in the room, thinking that everything was going to be all right, over. Not everything, over. Be careful, over. My premonitions, I thought, were a false alarm. They’re real, over. Be careful. They’re not real, I repeated. After all, who wouldn’t be impressed at seeing so much suffering? Good thing, I thought, that it was Rita who suffered, that it was Carlão who suffered, that it was Dona Lu who suffered, over. Better them than me, I thought. So far everything is fine, I thought. I’m safe in that bedroom with blue curtains, with everything blue like the blue sky outside. Black, over.
When we returned on Sunday night we found Sulamita’s mother saddened. Rita went away, she said with a disconsolate expression. She said to give you a hug. I really like that girl, my mother-in-law said, she was so patient with Regina.
Did she leave a letter? I asked.
No, just a hug.
I left there devastated, feeling like crap. How could I have treated the pregnant Rita that way? I didn’t know where to look for her, and the absurd idea occurred to me of asking for Carlão’s help. I even called my cousin, but I hung up when he answered the phone in a drunken voice. Carlão had been drinking lately. And crying at the door of his ex-wife. That’s what I was told.
That night I sat out in front of the workshop, hoping she would appear. Time passed, and in the darkness, as I looked at the deserted street and the line of telephone poles, all that existed was a strange silence that only allowed me to hear my heart throbbing in my head.
It was already getting light when I went to my room. And as soon as I lay down, the shouting began. Fuck them, I thought, burying my head under the pillows.
I didn’t get up until I heard the sirens.
I went downstairs just as I was, in shorts, without a shirt. Moacir had given Eliana a beating; it must be the thing in Corumbá to beat your wife. That was how couples got along, by beatings. Drawing blood.
Two policemen were talking, leaning against the patrol car, while two other cops, inside the house, were trying to defuse the situation.
I stood there, tense, disguising my feelings with small talk, thinking only about the drugs.
He’s a good guy, I said.
There’s women who deserve being slapped around, agreed one of the cops.
Some of ’em even like it, said the other.
We laughed, and I thought the matter would end there. But then one of the cops inside the house came out and asked for handcuffs.
We found ten kilos of powder here with the perp, he said.
Ten kilos. Almost ten kilos.