Seven in the morning.
At the bakery, we ordered coffee and bread with butter.
The chances of getting away with theft are almost a hundred percent, said Sulamita. And if you kill someone, there’s only a fifteen percent probability of getting caught. These are statistics from a study in Rio de Janeiro, she said, showing me the newspaper.
I was nervous, and Sulamita was trying to calm me down. But she was worse than me, and I had to calm her as well.
If Rio is like that, I stated, in the rest of Brazil it’s far worse. Corumbá isn’t even Brazil; we’re practically in Bolivia.
Keep your voice down, she said. The problem is that we’re not just stealing.
But we’re not killing, I argued. We haven’t killed anybody.
Keep your voice down, she repeated. The issue, she said, ignoring my arguments, is that we’re selling a false cadaver to one of the richest families in Corumbá.
The ransom was the most sensitive part of our plan. Sulamita had set the details, always considering that the police could be alerted. I’m a cop, she had said on several occasions. In fact, after beginning to work with cadavers she insisted on repeating that fact as if she had no connection to the morgue and those bodies.
I was sure the Berabas wouldn’t ask for help, perhaps from all the time I’d spent close to Dona Lu. They wanted the body, wanted the burial, wanted to hold a mass and later regularly visit the tomb.
Anyone who hasn’t been through it, I told Sulamita more than a hundred times, can’t understand. You don’t have the faintest idea of what a death without a body is.
Of course I do, it’s like a crime without a body: it doesn’t exist.
It’s more than that, it’s like being in purgatory. There are days when you accept that the person is dead. Then you cry and pray. At other times, you hear a sound at the door and think he’s come back. You run to the living room and there’s no one there. And if the phone rings in the middle of the night you pick it up, full of hope. And you never stop suffering. Or believing. Life doesn’t matter anymore, but you also can’t die completely, because there’s always the possibility of the door opening or the telephone ringing. And you want to be there when it happens.
After seventeen calls making threats, the moment had come for the ransom, and we knew it. We barely slept that night.
The day before, I had called José Beraba demanding that he rent the car with license plate 3422 from the Panorama agency. Sulamita didn’t want José Beraba to use one of the family’s luxurious and flashy vehicles for the operation, and we had taken care to verify the plate numbers of the available cars at the rental agency.
Sulamita continued delving into what she called “technical questions.” Now, when she aired her ideas and theories, she said “I” and “you.” I did the same thing, I thought. At the beginning there was a certain reserve on our part, we didn’t speak in such personal terms, there wasn’t any “I” or “you,” just the fisherman. The fisherman who called the Berabas late at night. And made threats. Now, I thought, we were that fisherman.
Before leaving the bakery, Sulamita told me that at the end of the afternoon she’d bring her uncle’s car for the operation. It’s better for it to stay with you. I’ll take a taxi, she said.
I walked with her to the bus stop.
I love you, she said.
In such situations I always felt obliged to say “Me too.” And I always remembered Rita. “Me too,” Rita used to say. It’s the response of someone who feels nothing.
Here comes your bus, I told Sulamita.
Do you love me?
Yes, I answered.
Then say it.
I already did.
Say: “Sulamita, I love you.”
Sulamita, I love you.
She got on the bus and waved at me from the window, smiling, making me feel like a rat.
I went home to get the car, and before going to work I stopped by Eliana’s.
Talk to your Indian, she said when I gave her money for purchases. That crazy woman refuses to eat, she just sits there with that imbecilic look on her face, and I’ve got two kids to take care of.
Serafina was sad, in the corner of the kitchen, huddled in a chair, her coarse ugly hands entwined in her lap. I felt enormous affection for her. I kneeled beside her and asked for a little more patience. Just a few more days and I’ll take you away from here, I said. You’re going to live with me and Sulamita.
She smiled. I think it was the first time I ever saw Serafina smile.
There weren’t many teeth in her mouth.