Antonia and Martim, my loves,

While you watch a cartoon, I wonder how to begin this letter. I write, erase, rewrite, get distracted looking at you. So many good things come to mind that I hesitate to go dredging up the past. If your father knew I’d decided to tell you what happened to me, he’d say, Forget it. At first, I believed it was possible. More than him, more than anyone, I saw forgetting as the only way to move on. I spent hours devising strategies to expunge the reality of what happened, as if I could go back to being the same Júlia as before. But there are things that, even after they’ve happened, keep on happening. They don’t let you forget, because they repeat themselves daily. That’s why I can’t shake the idea that you know. You inhabited my womb, fed at my breast; you bathe with me, sleep in my arms, we snuggle up on the sofa together, so you know, just as I know every time I look at myself in the mirror. You just don’t know the words.

Last night I tossed and turned in bed, thinking: What if I die without telling them? At first I thought it would be for the best. Then I convinced myself that if I didn’t, the day would come when you would hear a rumour, you’d discover a tip of the story, then perhaps another and another — but there would always be a piece missing. The truth would be missing, because like this, the way I’m going to tell it now, I’ve never told anyone.

I can imagine your shock if you ever end up reading this letter. It won’t be easy to see your own mother shattered. First and foremost, I want you to understand something that took me a while to accept myself: if at any point it appears that I’ve gone insane, know that no one is truthful in sanity. No one. Not even your mother.

It was a Tuesday. The year, 2014. Brazil, the country of the future, seemed very close to fulfilling its destiny. In less than a month it would host the World Cup and, two years later, Rio de Janeiro would become the Olympic capital. Nothing pointed to disaster, neither in the city, which was on the cover of every newspaper and magazine, nor in my life. There was no way anything could go wrong, not least because our destinies were entwined. My office — at the time, just Cadu and myself — had won the public tender to design the golf course clubhouse. After one hundred and twelve years, golf was returning to the Olympics.

I remember what day it was because I’d left a note on my desk: Tuesday, meeting with City Hall. More precisely, our first meeting with the Secretary for the Environment, the owner of the land in Barra da Tijuca, and the international golf course designer, all together.

Severino, the doorman of my building, still wasn’t back from lunch and, as usual, I hid the key in a pot plant by the stairs. I never take anything with me when I go for a run, just my mobile in the waistband of my leggings and headphones in my ears. Up to that point, I remember everything, from the door of the building banging shut, me looking to see if any cars were coming, crossing the street, turning right, then left, passing in front of the Horto bakery and the newsstand. But from the moment I started up the hill to the Vista Chinesa lookout, the details are less precise.

I can’t say if there were other people, if there were more birds than usual, if monkeys crossed my path, or if the sun, which was shining brightly, disappeared behind a cloud at some point. When I run I switch off from the world. Nothing catches my attention — not the forest on either side of the road, or passers-by, or even the breathtaking view from the top. I only come back to reality when the metallic voice on my phone interrupts the music to announce my average speed and the number of kilometres I’ve run.

While my mind travels far, my body, on the contrary, is always present. My leg muscles contract, the pain arrives, searing, and I almost want to give up. But it has never happened. No matter how gruelling it is, I am incapable of telling myself Today I’m tired; today my body can’t take it. I force it to endure.

But with the pain comes pleasure, too, the endorphins spread, my blood circulates faster, and I feel I’m achieving my goal.

I repeated this ritual twice a week. The only difference here was the hour: I never ran in the afternoons. In the mornings there were more people, and I hated hearing my parents or Michel telling me that I shouldn’t run to Vista Chinesa, as it was deserted. Rio de Janeiro, even now, even being the most talked-about city in the world, has never stopped being dangerous. But until that Tuesday the danger was an abstraction to me.

Without me intuiting or foreseeing anything, without me thinking It’s deserted, or seeing someone strange in the distance, without feeling a scrap of fear, a shiver, a bad feeling, without me receiving any kind of sign from the outside world, danger suddenly appeared behind me. He was short, strong, put a pistol to my head, and said, Follow me, his voice blending with Daniela Mercury’s, his hand squeezing my arm, interrupting my run and dragging me into the forest, that beautiful, exuberant jungle, sung of in the most beautiful poems, exalted in tourist guidebooks and in the choice of Rio de Janeiro as the host city for the 2016 Olympic Games, that forest that everyone says is what makes the difference; after all, lots of capital cities have beaches, but a forest like that, tropical, verdant, immense, only in Rio, that leafy jungle, home to toucans, snakes, and monkeys, that forest that exhales a sickly sweet smell of jack fruit, that forest that everyone admires on their way up to Vista Chinesa and which I almost never notice, because when I run I switch off from the world, that forest became my hell.

The very instant my feet left the asphalt and began to tread on the fallen leaves in the humidity of the forest, I noticed that something about his hand on my arm felt unpleasant. Without turning my head, I glanced sideways and saw that he was wearing gloves. In the following seconds, or minutes, I can’t be sure anymore, all I could do was look at the gloves. The branches scratching my body, his voice, the sun disappearing between the trees, his threats, the sound of our footsteps in the forest, everything becoming diluted and losing its original form; all I could see was the gloves. I need to make an effort, I thought, I need to remember everything, just the gloves isn’t enough, but even now the only thing I can see clearly is the gloves. The rest was just blurry images. Later I saw other things. I saw pieces, fragments of that moment: a clearing a belt a whack my throat leaves in the sky a mouth moving a tongue shoes a bare chest a whack a little bird a punch a belt leaves falling from the sky another punch gag reflex bad taste a cloud pain it’s going to break midges a bad smell inside another whack aside from pain pain pain one jackfruit two jackfruits lots of jackfruits a face the details of a face a face distorting a face.

It’s hard to describe a face. It’s true even for a familiar face that you haven’t seen for a while. My grandma’s, for example, I can only reassemble with a photograph. Sometimes I wonder, doubtful: what did Grandma look like? The image of a diffuse face appears and takes on contours, but when I try to focus on a particular part — her eyes, her nose — I can’t, it’s as if the parts only exist together, as a whole.

What matters most about a person: the whole or the details? What we remember or what we forget?

Over the next few days, I had to describe the man’s face. The colour of his skin, the shape of his mouth, the size of his nose, the colour of his eyes, the texture of his hair, any and every distinctive feature, a scar, a mole, a mark, a tattoo. That was when everything began to grow confused, details came and went, mingled, swam into and out of focus. I had to remember, and the memory escaped me, like an image that comes to you in the middle of the night and quickly darkens if you try to hold onto it, or like a proof that has been left too long in a developing tank.

It’s maddening when words don’t stick to the image. All cracks are exasperating, but this one hurts my body. I want to shout, Please, give me the right word, then someone says, There isn’t one, there’s no such thing as the right word, but I don’t believe it, I think there’s a right word for everything, and if you talk talk talk you eventually find it.

The right words might be: I was raped. Your mother was raped. Me, your mother, I was raped. It happened. I was. Raped. Raped. R-a-p-e-d.

It’s what you’re going to hear from someone in a casual conversation, one glass too many, a more intimate conversation, or even from me: Mummy was raped, did you know? But something’s still missing. I still need to explain what the word meant to me at that moment and in all of the following moments over the last five years in which I became your mother. It was already night when my feet returned to the asphalt, now bare, gashed by branches. Finally I’d found the road; I don’t know how long I spent lost in the forest, disoriented, wandering this way and that, watching the sky grow dark at a frightening speed, until I did, I found the asphalt, and the asphalt had never seemed so soft, so welcoming, so close. I was alive, that’s what I thought: I’m alive. It was the only thing that mattered, I wanted to get to a safe place and tell people: I’m alive.

I imagined that my parents, my brother, and Michel were looking for me. I’d told Cadu that I was going for a run to Vista Chinesa before going to the meeting; for sure I wasn’t going to be late, imagine, no way was I going to be late for our first meeting with City Hall about the Olympic golf course club house. And, when I say I won’t be late, I’m never late. For sure he’d called my mother or Michel, everyone was worried, retracing the route from my place to Vista Chinesa dozens of time. I’d most likely see them along the way.

I caught a glimpse of someone heading downhill on a bike, so fast that they probably barely noticed I was there. A short time later, I looked up and saw a forest ranger. I assumed he’d ask if I needed anything, but he kept walking as if I didn’t exist, and I confess that, despite my dismay, I felt relieved. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, I just wanted to get home and tell everyone I was alive. When I was almost in Horto, a couple approached me; I quickly dismissed them with my hand, a curt gesture, making it clear that I didn’t want contact, and it was only then that I realised my shirt was torn. As I touched it, I saw the marks on my stomach that ran all the way up to my arms. I put a hand on my face, and it hurt. My nose and my eye were swollen.

I started to cry. That healthy body that had run to Vista Chinesa in leggings and a T-shirt, that could run six kilometres in forty minutes, had become a hurt, fragile body, covered in marks. That was when I stopped thinking that I was alive and began to wonder what living would be like from then on, how I was going to work, eat, bathe; I’d clearly never be able to sleep again, or kiss Michel, or have sex with Michel, and what about the children I wanted so badly, what was I going to do? I was alive, but still didn’t know if life would be possible.

My dad and brother were heading up the hill by car as I turned left at the top of my street. We just missed each other. I continued on downhill for almost ten minutes by myself, going very slowly, my feet bare and scratched. Still at a distance, I saw a woman at the door to my building. I couldn’t immediately tell who it was. It was only when I drew closer that I recognised the dress, a dress she wore often.

Diana came running towards me and I felt that I could switch off, surrender my body to someone else, to that friend who was so dear, who hugged me tightly, tenderly, who welcomed me with her slender body, and for a few seconds I passed out, which was the best thing that could have happened to me just then, to be unconscious in her warm, caring arms.

As I slowly came to, I heard her shouting to Severino, who helped carry me up the stairs to the first floor. They placed me on the sofa, the door closed, Severino had gone, and I lay there, waiting. Diana picked up the phone and told my mother, Júlia’s here.

I saw that she looked drawn, her back curved, her gaze lost. We hugged one another and cried, as if I could pass a little of my dilacerated body to her and she could give me a little of her intact body. She asked me if I wanted to talk, and I replied with a gesture. Shower, do you want one? Again, I couldn’t articulate a thing. So she said, Let’s go, and took me to the bathroom. She turned on the tap and said, It’s OK, I’ll help you. What I most wanted was to take my clothes off, but what I most wanted to avoid was being naked. The part of me that had died was my body, and my body was what was most alive, screaming with a gaping mouth, teeth on show.

I lifted up my arms and she took off my T-shirt. My bra had stayed behind in the forest. Tears kept streaming from her eyes and she suddenly apologised; of course she wanted to come across as strong, she didn’t want to show me that she was frightened, horrified, she wanted to seem as natural as possible, be reassuring, tell me that everything would soon be alright, but none of it was natural, and she crumbled. We hugged again. The water will calm you, she said, but she must have wanted to say: The water will wash that filth off you.

I didn’t have the strength to take off my leggings, so Diana did it for me. My thighs had as many marks as my stomach did; I didn’t know if I could handle that body that had never been so mine and so little mine at the same time. I want to take it back, exchange it: this body’s different now. When she went to pull off my underwear, I grabbed her hands. I was ashamed. Terribly ashamed, as if every detail, including the worst, of what had just happened to me was written between my legs. As if, no. It was. Anyone could tell just by looking at my naked body.

The warm water was carrying me far away, dissolving the solidity of my shoulders, my legs. I stood there motionless with my eyes closed for a long while, until the tears returned, uncontrollable. With one hand on the wall and the other on the shower door, I slid down until I was sitting. A short time later, Diana got in the shower with me. Her hands on my head, lathering up the shampoo, was my first joy. The second was the water running over my face with the bubbles.

I perked up a little, and before I knew it I was trying to scrub off my skin, that impure layer, with the sponge, all I wanted was new skin. You learn early on that skin regenerates, it flakes off and grows back — just think about when you sunbathe or exfoliate. Therefore, I could, all I had to do was scrub hard and the evil would leave and I’d be me again, intact.

Just as I turned off the shower, I heard the doorbell. Wrapped in a towel, Diana ran to answer it, distraught. I opened the shower door and threw myself into my mother’s arms, into the embrace I’d been longing for from the second I’d felt the cool metal of the pistol against my head.

It was the first time I’d spoken. I didn’t need to say anything, the rape was there for all to see on my face, in the marks, but she hadn’t seen me arrive, she hadn’t seen the torn clothes, and I wanted to make sure she knew, so I said one thing and fell silent. I remember wondering if it was worse to be in my place or in hers; a pain that couldn’t be touched, the impossibility of physical, palpable suffering, the void that separated us. I would watch my mother lose weight over the coming days, but she would never know in her body the torment that I had experienced, and there couldn’t be anything worse than the tangible lack of knowledge of your child’s pain.

Diana came back into the bathroom with a pale face, harried, saying she was sorry, she’d just called Dr Brito, our gynaecologist, and he’d said that I shouldn’t shower under any circumstances; first, I had to go get a rape kit exam done. I don’t know how I didn’t think of it earlier, she said, and repeated over and over, Shit, shit. I glanced at the shower and saw my wet underwear on the floor. My mother followed my gaze and understood. Too late.

I wanted to reassure them both, shift the blame from Diana. Even if I hadn’t showered, I wasn’t doing the exam, I said, God forbid that I should have to set foot in a police station, that story ended there, my story, ours, no one else’s. It was my privacy, my torment, and the sooner I put a full stop to it, the better. To be honest, I continued, there’s no way I could do the exam, I can’t imagine myself lying on a bed, someone touching me.

But Dr Brito asked you to be at the São Vicente Clinic in two hours, she said, he needs to examine you. So it isn’t over, I thought, it is just the beginning. I left the bathroom wrapped in a towel, and went to get dressed in my room.

When Dad and José arrived, furious, they already knew. My father, in the manner of his Syrian family, had his hands in the air, crying openly, at the top of his voice, My little girl, my little girl, his broad arms wrapping around me, suffocating me against his chest. My brother just hollered, I’m going to get that son of a bitch, I’m going to smash that son of a bitch, he’s going to pay for what he did, that son of a bitch. But the minute Dad let me go, José hugged me, too; tenderness overcame anger. Everyone was thinking the same thing I had been when I came out of the forest: I could have been dead, but I was alive.

I told José that I’d showered and that it would be impossible to find the man, but he was obsessed with the idea of catching him. He went through my things in the bathroom, carefully putting everything in a plastic bag, saying, There has to be some proof of him here — a fingerprint, a strand of hair, something. He was wearing gloves, I said.

Dad reassured him, We’ll see about that later, we’ll see what can be done later, for now we’re going to stay here with Júlia. I remember looking at the four of them and thinking that if I hadn’t gone for a run to Vista Chinesa that afternoon, they wouldn’t be there, suffering with me, or worse, because of me. To this day, I think that if I hadn’t gone out, my life wouldn’t have been shattered, but I’d hate it if someone said that to me, if someone had asked in a reprimanding tone, C’mon, what were you doing up there on a Tuesday afternoon, have you no sense of danger, don’t you know what Rio de Janeiro’s like, do you think you live in Tokyo or Stockholm, their inquisitorial gaze telling me that it was basically my fault, because if I hadn’t gone for a run alone, none of it would have happened and no one would be suffering because of me; I’d have spared myself and everyone else. My head was lost in these suppositions when Michel arrived.

I was afraid of how he’d react, afraid he’d blame me, be disgusted, repulsed, or angry. It was a relief to see that, at least at first, there were tears in his eyes and love in his gestures. I had the impression that, instead of pushing us apart, pain might unite us.

Our two years together had placed us at an impasse. He wanted to shack up together, those were his words, but he thought it was too early to have children. We’ve got time, he’d say, let’s wait for the right time, while I was pressed for time. I was turning thirty-five and wanted to get pregnant soon, but suddenly time became everything but pressed. It was suspended, and would remain so until I didn’t know when. Trauma, a word I’d hear from the police dozens of times, interrupts everything around it; it interrupts the world itself, shuffles time, memory, and you’re swept out of the landscape.

Cadu got there just as we were leaving, already in the foyer. I bowed my head, ashamed, as if my darkest intimacy had been made public. A fight going on, the whole time, between the body that was no longer mine and the body that had never been so mine. I wished Cadu wasn’t there, and the feeling reiterated the fact that I wasn’t going to report the incident, that I didn’t want to talk to anyone else about what had happened. I needed to push forward, get up, cling to a buoy in the churning sea, to the words that made sense of it all: I’m alive, and that’s what matters.

When I was about to get into the car I turned back, wanting to know how the meeting had gone. At first, Cadu was silent, then he replied, It went really well, Júlia, they loved the project. After a short pause, he continued, But don’t think about that now, take a few days off, relax, I’ll skipper the boat until you think you’re ready. No, I said, I want to think about it, it’s precisely what I want to think about, nothing else. He agreed with a nod, saw the desperation in my eyes — anything to get me out of the hole I was in, and work, in my case, was the best thing. After my body, it was my next biggest obsession.

Bleeding, I told the receptionist at the São Vicente Clinic Emergency Department. I was led to a small room. Diana came in with me. Everyone else waited outside. Dr Brito arrived a few minutes later and gave me a hug. I know it’s unpleasant, he said, but I need to examine you. I lay down on the bed, spread my legs, and felt Diana’s hand squeezing mine. A bit wider, he told me. I complied. The cold room, the cold bed; I felt my cold body on the moist forest floor, in another space, another time, but also in the same space, at the same time, the cold forest on the hospital bed, the cold forest in so many other places, a time spent in so many other times.

Dr Brito inserted the speculum, and shortly said there were no tears in the uterus, which was very positive. I was and I wasn’t there, inhabiting a fluid state between the presence and absence of my own body. I became distressed when he mentioned the difficulty of getting the antiretroviral cocktail at a private hospital. The problem wasn’t the cocktail in itself, but the possibility, which was dawning on me for the first time, that I might have been contaminated with a disease — AIDS or any other. Then I came to my senses and asked a bunch of questions, which he answered with great patience and kindness, always reassuring me, saying that everything was going to be OK. Even though I knew it wasn’t true, I needed to believe that it was, I needed to hear that it was.

After the examination, I was taken to another room, where people were beginning to arrive one after another. Before I knew it, there were suddenly seven, eight, maybe ten or eleven of us in the hospital room, friends were talking in loud voices, and all I could think about was getting out of there when Dr Brito asked me if I wanted to sleep at the clinic. My look of desperation must have answered for me, because he quickly added that if I preferred to go home, he’d give me a prescription for tranquilisers.

Diana, a kind of shadow of mine in the days that followed, phoned a friend who worked in the public healthcare system and requested the cocktail. Two hours later, there it was, those enormous, nauseating pills that I’d have to shove down my throat for two weeks.

I remember thinking that if I didn’t take the cocktail, I could erase it all. What if I pretended nothing had happened? What if I convinced myself nothing had happened? Then nothing would have happened. I’d stop taking the cocktail, because nothing had happened, it was just a nightmare, a mistake, a poorly placed comma that I could now dislodge from my story. But then I’d look at the pill and swallow it, petrified.

The people didn’t stop talking. Their voices blended together — some high, some low, mingling and rolling into a ball in my head. It was the first time I’d heard those voices, autonomous, bodiless, that assumed a presence even when there was no one around. Later, I would hear them quite often.

A nurse arrived, stuck a needle in my right arm, and took several tubes of blood. The sickly aroma of jack fruit came to me mixed with his smell, the man’s, with another smell that I couldn’t identify but knew was from the forest, a smell that I picked up not just in my nostrils but also in my stomach, in my saliva, a smell that impregnated several parts of my body and came back to me over and over, the physical memory of that Tuesday: revulsion, a different kind of distress to the kind that constricts your chest. The nurse was still there with the needle in my vein when I turned to one side and vomited.

The voices had disappeared. I heard the silence, theirs and mine. The certainty that no matter how much I talked I’d never manage to express the turmoil inside me also brought me the certainty of solitude. The certainty that we’re alone — not just me, but all of us.

What kind of gloves, they would ask me later, what colour gloves, are you sure, do you remember properly, what kind of gloves, what colour gloves, thick or thin, black or blue, are you sure you’re not mistaken, are you sure the gloves were like that, what kind of gloves, what colour gloves, now you’re not sure anymore, now I’m not sure anymore, what colour gloves, what kind of gloves, a person who’s been through trauma can either remember everything, the details, including what kind of gloves, what colour gloves, or they forget almost everything, how much am I making up, how can I be sure they were like that, the kind of gloves, the colour of the gloves, make an effort, if I remember the colour blue five times and the colour black two times, does that mean the gloves were blue, or do we repeat the fantasy more than our actual memory, what kind of gloves, what colour gloves, his fingers were protected, thick or thin, were they torn, were they long or short, what kind of gloves, what colour gloves?

It was Dr Brito who handed me a piece of paper with the name and contact details of the person we should see if we wanted to report it.

The next day, when I woke up, still under the effect of the tranquilisers, my parents and José were already at my place. Michel had slept over. I couldn’t remember my dreams, which was rare, probably as a result of the medication. I’m alive, I thought, relieved. Whenever the memory returned, and it was all the time, I repeated the mantra: I’m alive. In the forest, the feeling that I was close to death was strong. There were moments when I told myself, I hope he’s satisfied, I hope it’s good for him, I hope he gets his rocks off, he doesn’t get upset, he isn’t disappointed, but he lets me live. I thought, Let him do what he wants — it’s the only way he’ll leave.

The voices, their voices, grew louder in my head. I needed people to be there as much as I needed them not to be there. Have a seat, said my father, before telling me they’d talked and come to the conclusion that I should go to the police. The perpetrator had to be caught. I stood immediately. I didn’t even want to hear of it. Please, let me wake up, I’m not going to think about it now, in fact, I don’t want to think about it. I already have, the matter’s dead. Let it go. Forget it. I just want to forget it, I said. I’m going to forget it.

I went back to my room and fell asleep again. Two hours later, they were still there, on the same topic, and I was trying hard to be patient. Until José said, You should do it for others, too — for other women, he corrected himself. You need to report it, the guy can’t be left at large out there. Who’s to say you were the only one, or will be the only one? For the first time, an argument touched me. I looked at the four of them, and saw how much they were suffering. The dark circles under their eyes, their weary faces. No matter how alone I was, I wasn’t the only one.

It became apparent that we all needed to cling to an objective in order to get back to the surface. To breathe. Theirs was to contact the police, report it, catch the guy. I agreed to go ahead with it, certain I’d be doing it for them, and doing something for them was, at that point, what I could do for myself.

Dad pulled the crumpled paper out of his pocket and called the police. That same afternoon, the officers would be there. José and Michel would be at work. My parents, Diana, and I would be present.

I heard their voices when they came in, the same ones that anyone would have heard, but in my head they grew louder, mingled, became independent of their bodies. At times I made out the voice of a woman asking how I was and if they could come in, saying, We don’t want to disturb you, but the male voices blended together and I couldn’t tell who was saying what.

In a row, I first saw an older man, who sat at the desk. Then a woman with waist-length, straightened hair took a seat on the edge of the bed, almost on my feet. Then two men, one very muscular. This was the team that was going to oversee my case.

I asked my parents to leave — I couldn’t be objective with them around — while Diana stood smoking a cigarette at the window. The woman explained that she would ask me several questions. I know it’s a painful process, she said, but I need as many details as possible to find the assailant. One of the men standing introduced himself as the records clerk and asked if he could take a seat. It was the woman who led the conversation, and she told me that the man at the desk would do an identikit sketch.

I refer to them as men and woman, because although I knew their names at the time, I can’t remember them now. The precision they asked of me in those hours, of which I thought I was capable, was lost with each day that passed.

When the clerk sat down, I noticed that he had a gun. When the woman got up to go to the bathroom, I saw that she did, too. I presumed that the muscular man leaning against the wall also had one. I tried hard not to panic, repeating, behind what I was saying out loud: They’re here to protect me, they’re the police, they’re not criminals.

Diana lit another cigarette.

The woman asked me for a full account: Tell me everything that comes to mind, how it started, where you were, what time it was, what he looked like, how he approached you, what he was wearing, his physical features, what he did to you, if he was armed, what his voice was like, and at the end I’ll ask you questions.

It was the first time I’d told the story in so much detail, at first, in such a technical and objective manner that I felt like I wasn’t saying anything. But as I talked, time became tangled, as if I didn’t know the order of events. When had he made me suck his dick, before or after he punched me or my attempt to get away? I stuttered, hesitated, and then she told me that a statement should be made right after the crime. The more time goes by, the more jumbled one’s memory becomes.

When she saw how hard it was for me and the uncertainty that was beginning to set in, she decided to move on to the sketch. Little by little, I understood that it was like putting together a puzzle. First, you need to draw the shape of the face, long and oval in this case, then the strongest features — scars, a beard, or accessories — and, last of all, fill in the eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, hair.

The sketch artist held up the page and asked if that’s what the mouth was like. When I said it wasn’t, he asked more questions and went back to drawing.

Wider?

Narrower.

Were there any blemishes?

No.

Was the top well-defined?

What do you mean?

Did it have a sharp outline?

A little. I mean, no. I mean, yes.

No or yes?

Maybe. Yes. But not much.

Black?

White.

Mixed race?

White.

Olive complexion?

Maybe.

Maybe?

Yes. White, olive complexion.

Eyes?

Can we continue another day? I’m tired, I told the woman practically sitting on my feet.

I’ve never understood if madness comes all at once or little by little, if a mad person is born mad, if they go mad from one day to the next, or if it happens slowly, and when is it that you realise you’re going mad, or that you’re almost there, or do you never realise it, and if you ask, is it because you’re not mad yet? I wonder every day if I’ve gone or if I’m going mad. It happened a few years ago, then there were the Olympics, and they went well, inexplicably well, but only for a month, because the Olympics in Rio were Rio suspended from itself, or the glimmer of a utopia, the makeup you know how to put on so well but only once in a while, and then the city went downhill, the country went downhill, politics emptied of projects under the sole pretext of catching corrupt politicians and businessmen, corrupt politicians and businessmen were arrested in Rio at the same time that the city was becoming acquainted with its own hell, for the first time not even Rio was capable of saving Rio, which slowly went mad, while I too may have gone mad, or am going mad, but no one sees my madness, then Michel and I got married, we had you, we’re ridiculously happy, now when people look at me they no longer see the body of a woman destroyed, they see the body of a woman who’s had two children and didn’t stop running even when she was pregnant, they see the body of a woman who had a normal birth and a C-section, Antonia was about to be born when her heart sped up, Martim was already out, and suddenly an anaesthetic, an incision, my hands bound as if on a cross and the baby girl wailing, the body that breastfed, one baby on each breast, people look at me and think, Wow, what an intact body, they don’t even remember what happened or, when they do, they weigh it up and say, But she got it all afterwards, she got married, gave birth, she’s a great mother, she lives in a lovely home and she’s beautiful, look at that body, you’d never know it had been dilacerated, torn apart, fragmented, you’d never know that this woman was once a nervous wreck, no one sees what I’m thinking, no one knows I’m going mad or possibly already have, or maybe they know and I don’t know that they know, no, they don’t know, no one knows, I’m not even sure myself, it’s so hard to know, I’ve put myself back together, I haven’t put myself back together, I’ve almost put myself back together, I’ll never put myself back together, I’m still in pieces, I’ve gone mad, I’m going mad, when they were in my belly did my children sense an intact body or a splintered body?, you’re both beautiful, perfect children, but will you be intact on the inside or, because you received nourishment and energy from a splintered body, will you also have a splintered soul?, is what I see of you what you are?, is what others see of me what I am?, because you lived in my belly for nine months do you know that a man once entered me by force, with so much force that he touched me right there, on the uterus where you grew?, do parents pass on their traumas to their children even if we don’t say anything?, at the week-twelve ultrasound the doctor said, One’s a boy, the other one’s hidden, and I immediately remembered the Mexican clairvoyant, son dos niños iguales, they’re two identical children, and breathed a sigh of relief, but then in the week-twenty ultrasound the doctor said, How lovely, a girl and a boy, you can celebrate, and Michel did, he really wanted a girl, more than anything a girl, and I pretended to be happy, but over the following days the nausea came back, heartburn, churning stomach, tiredness, and it wasn’t because of the pregnancy, it was the news, news of the girl moving around inside me and me thinking, Not a girl, and then me telling myself that I shouldn’t think these things because babies feel everything, it says so in the literature, if the mother suffers they suffer, if the mother smiles they smile, all the mother, always the mother, are you sure, doctor, are you sure you aren’t mistaken?, isn’t his willy just tucked away, doctor, can you have another look?, the doctor smiled and I looked deep into his eyes, opening my eyes wide, and said, Doctor, when they grow up, this boy and this girl, I’m going to have to tell them that their mother was raped, then the doctor stopped smiling and Michel looked uncomfortable, where had I got that from in a moment of joy?, we were there to celebrate, not dredge up the past, why bring it up if we’d already overcome the trauma, if we’d forgotten the pain?, now it was all happiness, a boy and a girl were on their way, twins is all a couple wants, and in the silence I repeated, Doctor, when they grow up, this boy and this girl, I’m going to have to tell them, your mother was raped, and the doctor suddenly looked at me and sighed, ah, This idea that our children have to know everything, you could just not tell them, to be honest, if I were you I wouldn’t, then he wiped my belly plastered with gel clean and told us we could go, we just had to wait for the report at reception, congratulations again, twins, a boy and a girl, and he shook Michel’s hand hard, and I didn’t know, I don’t know if I’m going mad or if I’m already mad, it must be hard to tell.

It was the first time Márcia had come to my apartment. She tried to hug me, but I hesitated, I wouldn’t have been able to bear that hug, I’d already collapsed so many times, now I wanted to pull myself together, so I gave her a kiss on each cheek as we do at the practice. I thought it would be better if she sat in the armchair, which I had positioned with its back to the chaise longue, where I lay down.

In my first three years of therapy, I barely said a word, sometimes I’d arrive mute and leave mute, sometimes I’d blurt out, I’m leaving, in the middle of the session, sometimes I wanted to give up, paying to be silent makes no sense, that silence, one of us with her back to the other, what should I say, why should I speak, speak as if I were alone but with a shadow behind me, a shadow that from time to time would highlight what I’d said, zero in on a sentence, a word; she was interested in what was out of place and would spiral around it, another path starting from the rock in the middle of the path, and it was only after three years that I began to talk, and then I didn’t stop, I’d arrive talking, I’d leave talking, I wanted extra sessions, the ones I had didn’t feel like enough, I wanted to talk to her around the clock, and suddenly she had called me, it was her idea to come to my place to hear me, and there she was, sitting in my armchair, and I couldn’t talk, I didn’t want to talk.

The silence was like going back to the start, an erasure of the years of analysis. It took all of my previous issues, my exaggerated relationship with my father, my dilemmas with Michel, my concerns about work, my existential crises, my questions, my doubts, my obsessions, and tossed them all in the bin. The silence told me that those seven years that I had previously thought so worthwhile didn’t matter at all anymore.

Of all that we had thought about together, concluded together, what could help me understand what had happened?

My first words were, It’s over, and then I reassumed my silence. A few minutes later, I repeated, It’s over. So many things were over — my body, my work, my relationship, the things I wasn’t sure about, my issues, my life was over. It’s over. It was the only thing I could say, always with a long pause between repetitions, the pause required to hold back my tears. And each time she tried to ask me a question, each time she tried to get me to say more, I would interrupt her and say:

It’s over.

It’s over.

It’s OVER.

After an hour in which I just repeated the same words or remained silent, I noticed that her body was moving in the armchair, she was going to get up. I could always tell the moment she was going to get up, when she would say the same thing with which she ended every session. Then she moved, stood, picked up her bag, and said, We’ll continue. At that instant I felt tremendous anger. I hated her, hated her for having come to me, hated her for wanting to hear me, hated her for existing, hated her for leaving, hated her for not having understood anything, I hated that everything was over, I hated that everything went on.

That was my despair. The world went on, and my body, too, my work, my relationship, the things I wasn’t sure about, my issues. My life was still there, even though it was over. She left, and it was only after the door closed that I began to think about the words that had accompanied me on my way home from the forest: I’m alive.

No, his nose wasn’t like that, it wasn’t so wide, it was narrower, the holes in his nose were narrower, that’s right, nostrils, no, not like that, why don’t you do what I’m saying?, am I sure?, of course I’m sure, that nose was poking me, I remember the nose, that is, I think I remember, now you’re confusing me, you keep telling me that I mustn’t remember, that I’ve been through a traumatic situation and that in traumatic situations people forget, so now I’m not sure, but his nose wasn’t that wide, I’m sure, I’ve told you about a hundred times he wasn’t black, some things you don’t forget, he was white, maybe a little olive-skinned, but not black, and his nose, you need to make it narrower, maybe I can help, I’m good at drawing, no, I haven’t studied identikit drawing, but I’m an architect, his nose wasn’t so wide, it was narrower, yes, that’s it, now it’s starting to look like him.

José went in a car with two plainclothes policemen. I went in another with the detective and a muscular man covered in tattoos. The vehicle I was in drove slowly, up the same road that a few days earlier I had travelled up on foot, clothed and intact, and on the way down, torn and broken. It was unbelievable that a simple run before a meeting now obliged me to retrace the route in a police car — civil police, but police nonetheless — trying to identify the exact place where the gloved hands had wrenched me from normality.

I felt like I was in a movie, the victim who exists merely to raise the suspense so that the hero can hunt for the clues that will eventually reward the victim, coming full circle, giving meaning to the initial despair, in this case my despair, the tears that returned as the car moved forward, and the hero, or in this case the heroine, the detective with hair down to her waist, asked me: Was it here?

Not yet, I said, not yet.

Supposedly, there is earnestness on the part of the police. A woman leads the case to foster identification and make me relax. They always ask permission to speak, to come in, and in this manner they keep asking, keep coming in, and before I know it I’m in the car with them. Everything begins to strike me as glaring and obvious, I find myself even more unprotected, I really want to throw myself onto my bed where, alone, I feel less helpless than I do with these police officers beside me. Nothing works, obviously, the earnestness doesn’t work, the realism in excess makes everything unreal, trust me to agree to go ahead with this investigation, we’re in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, not a Hollywood movie, here there are only loose ends, rough edges, everything’s such a mess that nothing works, there’s no way it can work.

I knew how to identify the exact location, because on the way up to Vista Chinesa there’s an emblematic place, a wall covered in graffiti known as the Wall of Relief, because it’s where the slope becomes less steep and Vista Chinesa is near. Another kilometre and you can already see it. I liked running past this wall, because the graffiti is colourful and creates an optical illusion. The colours get into your head and mix with your thoughts, the music, and the endorphins. A man and woman kissing, a giant mushroom, a psychedelic tree, a whale, a mouth smoking a joint. Whoever drew those things must have been really high: a whale in the middle of the forest, a blue whale, everything so colourful, red, orange, purple, really vivid, eye-catching colours, unlike the forest, which is just green.

It was when the wall ended that the cold metal touched my temple, the blue or black small, medium, or large glove grabbed my arm. I remember seeing the end of the wall, perhaps the man even collided with the wall, perhaps he staggered as he collided with the wall, and me with him. Like in that 4D game that you kids love, the images combining with reality, fiction interacting with what’s real, without your body being able to distinguish the spaces, the stranger dragged me away forcefully, saying incomprehensible words.

The Wall of Relief is on a bend, I said. It was at that bend. As soon as I pointed at the place, I felt the nausea coming on and asked to be taken home.

The detective came with me, asked if I was well, and asked for a glass of water. It was hot, that muggy, humid heat, the city’s typical sultriness. The men stayed in the forest, the police officers and my brother. For three hours they scoured the forest, looked for vestiges among dry leaves, branches, almost identical trees, scoured the ground, the soil, the mud. Maybe a monkey, a toucan, or a five-metre-long boa constrictor weighing forty kilos had eaten the traces left there, the traces that they were looking for, a piece of his clothing, a piece of his glove, a strand of hair, but all they found were my trainers, the trainers I thought he’d taken to delay my encounter with the asphalt: wait fifteen minutes and go, and I felt the weight of the cold gun the entire time, the minutes or hours that I spent lost in the forest, before feeling my bare feet on the soft asphalt once again.

The calibre of the revolver, 38, 82, 85, 86, 88, 444, 608, the size of the revolver, small or large, the colour of the revolver, black or grey, new or used, and do you think I know anything about revolvers? Revolvers are revolvers to me, they’re all revolvers, I wouldn’t have a clue about the calibre, I’ve never touched a revolver, I’ve never felt a revolver. If I show you some images, can you identify it? Maybe. So then look at these. I looked, I swear I looked, and even those images were still just revolvers to me, a bunch of revolvers. All I can say is that it wasn’t this one. The 608? Yes, the 608, the barrel wasn’t that long, I remember his hand touching my head together with the revolver, so the barrel must have been short. I’m sorry, I told you I’m tired, I can’t think straight, yes, I’m trying, I remember properly, it’s you who’s saying I don’t remember, but I remember everything, or almost everything, but a revolver to me is just a revolver, there’s just one name. Did you know the Eskimos have several words for the colour ‘white’, because each kind of white is a different colour to them, but we only have one, don’t we? We call all the different whites ‘white’ — well, it’s the same thing.

I awoke to the voices of the police officers in my apartment. By then, whatever was mine was ceasing to be mine. First, my body, then my apartment, people coming and going. Sometimes they didn’t even call on the interphone, Severino would let them in, and suddenly I’d be woken by the doorbell. And I’d always be in a state of lethargy, because I was taking more tranquilisers than Dr Brito had recommended. Before, I used to brag about being so controlled, an organised, disciplined architect. I knew my thoughts by day, my thoughts by night, but out of the blue I began to hear voices, forest animals, the wind in the treetops, my bare feet on the leaves.

I’d fallen asleep in the armchair; my neck hurt. I remember seeing my trainers wrapped in plastic on the coffee table. And I remember feeling José’s hand on my head, stroking it. Grandma’s necklace, I asked, did you find it? José shook his head, then reassured me, Mum’s on her way over.

A few minutes later she walked in, carrying a cake. She mustn’t have imagined she would find so many people there, as she could barely hide her surprise. At the time I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment with a narrow living area ending in an open kitchen. The three police officers and detective were standing there, talking. My mother placed the plate on the counter, lifted up the cover, and asked, Would anyone like a piece?

The atmosphere was relaxed, each with their piece of cake, that formigueiro sponge cake with the chocolate sprinkles that my mother used to make when I was a kid and now makes for you kids and you love it, the cake I’ve never been able to eat since, but which was the only thing I could hold down then, my mother’s cake, warm; if it was cold I’d put it in the microwave, to comfort me.

They were all entertained — including my mother, who was describing the secret to making it fluffy, and José, who was making coffee to go with the officers’ snack — and no one noticed when I headed for the bathroom. I turned on the shower so I wouldn’t hear the voices coming from the living room, and sat down with my face in my hands. To them, it was a case, it was work, they were having a coffee and a piece of cake on a break, as I did at the office when I was tired of drafting, when my eyes stung because of the light from the computer.

They were just living out their routine, hence a pause for a coffee, a trivial conversation; the voice raised to tell a funny story and a guffaw were absolutely normal. But my routine, my triviality, were suspended. I didn’t want a bunch of people in my apartment; I didn’t want to see the officers who were investigating the crime I was a victim of eating my mother’s cake.

After knocking loudly on the door, José came into the bathroom and narrowed his eyes, waving away the steam with his arms. I lifted my head, our eyes met, and he asked, Are you OK? I hated answering that question, I hated hearing it, but knowing that the officers had left brought me a little peace, and lying on my bed between José and my mother, finally eating my piece of warm cake, made me think that even when nothing is OK there are moments when everything is OK.

I’ve brought images of several types of noses, said the forensic sketch artist as he spread laminated pages across the table:

The Nubian nose has a long, flat bridge with a downward-pointing tip.

The Greek nose is narrow and straight.

The hook nose is beak-like and curves downwards from the base to the tip.

The arched nose is like the hook nose, but has a slightly upturned tip.

The button nose is small and dainty.

The straight nose is flatter, with wide nostrils and a round tip.

The concave nose is small with a slight bump on the bridge.

The crooked nose has a bent bridge and rounded tip.

Could you point to the one that is closest to the nose of the man in question?

This business of calling the detective ‘detective’ was bothering me; I thought she was too important not to have a name, so I asked your father if he remembered the name of the detective who used to visit me at the apartment I lived in before we got married, before you came along, and he said, I think it was Gilda. It wasn’t Gilda for sure, Gilda’s my aunt’s name. Oh, that’s right, he said, if it wasn’t Gilda, it was, it was … Regina? Gabriela? Wait, I’ve got it, Do, Du, Dulcineia! That’s it, I shouted, Dulcineia! He wanted to know why I was asking, and I said I was writing about it, and he said, But you don’t write, and I replied, It’s just a letter, and he asked, A letter to who?, and I replied, To our children, and he said, But why do you like rummaging through the past so much?, and I said I wasn’t rummaging through the past, I was rummaging through the present.

Come to think of it, it isn’t really a letter. It’s more of a testimony. No, not a testimony. A testament. The testament I don’t want to leave you.

When I was pregnant, all I saw was pregnant women in the street, as if suddenly all women had decided to have children. They would pass me, smile, I’d smile back, and immediately afterwards I’d feel envious of their smiles, sincere smiles; after all, they loved being pregnant, carrying a being inside themselves, their hair was gorgeous, their skin was beautiful, their happiness could be seen in their eyes, and I, who had two babies, a boy and a girl, and I, who finally had everything I wanted, hated being pregnant. That is, I liked the idea. Sometimes, lying in bed, I would run my hand over my belly and was moved. But that business of carrying two babies around in my belly, nothing could have seemed more archaic, more bungling, more stupid on the part of nature. We learn at school that mammals are evolved, but I think it’s the oviparous animals who are evolved. They lay a few eggs, and soon their offspring are born: they don’t need to wait nine months, they don’t have back pain, their skin doesn’t get blotchy, they don’t have constipation, insomnia, nightmares, shortness of breath, nausea, heartburn, tiredness, so much tiredness that I could fall asleep anywhere, in front of the computer, at the bar, I could even sleep while walking, and I had to explain myself, justify myself, because there are so many pregnant women out there who do everything normally, they work, sleep, dance, there are so many pregnant women out there full of life, who don’t even bother to use the priority queue at the bank or the supermarket. On social media it was the same; suddenly, everyone was pregnant, but I think there’s an explanation for it: all you have to do is search for nappies, a cot, or a pram on Google, and suddenly the only thing you see are photos of pregnant women and babies. Beautiful pregnant women, with make-up, half-naked, photoshopped by the best celebrity photographers, with no blemishes, no stretchmarks, their hair strong, healthy. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, I’m not like that, I’m not a pregnant woman like all the others, maybe these blemishes are my body’s marks. I thought, The marks that stand out now, maybe pregnancy won’t let me hide anything, but, no, I’m reading too much into it, it’s in the books, these blemishes are common, so are the stretch marks, the tiredness, it just doesn’t happen to all women, but it did with you.

I turned to Michel and said, I’ve made an appointment with a photographer. I thought he’d hate the idea, he hates that kind of photography, but I told him, The photographer is an artist, he assured me he wouldn’t do one of those ridiculous albums, and, unexpectedly, Michel agreed, he even smiled, he seemed to like the idea. Off we went early one morning to the Tijuca Forest, and suddenly Michel pulled two fierce animal masks out of his backpack, handed me one and put the other one on, the photographer exclaimed, Brilliant!, and we took wild animals photos, which was how I actually felt, anything but human, and when the photos arrived it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, my heart was filled with genuine emotion, an encounter with a lost identity, growing with each photo that I uploaded to Facebook and Instagram, the comments flooding in, wow, how powerful, you look gorgeous, pregnancy suits you, lots of heart emojis, pregnant and masked, pregnant and wild, pregnant and animalistic, and suddenly I was pregnant and happy, pregnant and ridiculously happy, I’d never felt so beautiful, so adapted to my body, how wonderful it was to be pregnant, with twins to boot, a joy.

Those are the masks you kids love playing with. The two of you as wild animals running through the house, screeching and roaring, using the same masks that Mummy and Daddy wore for photos in Tijuca Forest, now hanging in your room.

I did an internet search, and found the same nose drawings that the sketch artist had shown me. Beside them was a subjective description of the owners of each shape:

Nubian nose: Curious and optimistic, Nubian nose owners try to please others. They seek solutions for every problem.

Greek nose: Practical and loyal, people with Greek noses find it hard to talk about their feelings. They can seem aloof.

Hook nose: Fervent defenders of their beliefs, these people aren’t averse to risk-taking in order to attain their goals.

Arched nose: People with arched noses love their work and are highly organised.

Button nose: Button nose owners are spontaneous decision-makers, which can be trying for others.

Straight nose: Straight-nosed people tend to have strong personalities and get angry quickly.

Concave nose: Generous and always ready to help others. These people are also sensitive and easily offended.

Crooked nose: Good listeners and down to earth, crooked-nosed people make great friends and partners.

Now: which nose is most like that of the man in question?

I overheard one of the policemen whisper to Michel that before the guy was officially arrested, before he was tried, he would have to reckon with him, Michel. The officer understood that Michel had the right to settle the score with the man who had defiled the purity of his woman’s body. A man-to-man thing. Michel could do what he wanted with him — punch him in the face, pull out his teeth, kick him in the balls. The law was weak, very weak, it was lenient on perpetrators, and the police were there to ensure that the law of man was fulfilled, the law of instinct, not that ridiculous paper law.

Michel didn’t say anything to me, nor I to him. I have no idea what was going through his head, if he wanted to be alone with the man or not, but that afternoon I couldn’t think of anything else. What would I do if the officer told me: Now you can do whatever you want, use his body as you wish, we just need him alive, because he needs to be arrested, the newspapers need to show him in custody, our duty fulfilled, apart from that you can do as you wish. Punch him? Kick him? Scratch him? OK to set him on fire? Poke him in the eye? What would I do if he was in front of me again, this time in handcuffs, and I alone with him in a room where the police could come and save me at any moment, and safe, at the police station, not in the forest, just the two of us again, but me being able to do whatever I wanted to him now? I told myself: I’m against the death sentence, I don’t believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, I can’t think these things, I can’t want to beat him up, kill him, cut off his dick so he’ll never do it to any woman ever again, so he’ll never stick his dick anywhere else ever again, so he’ll never feel pleasure again, I can’t think that I’d like to get a chainsaw and cut off his dick, his body mutilated forever, like mine.

The land where the Olympic golf course was being built had been, decades earlier, an Integrated Public Education Centre factory. The prefabricated structures that were made there were taken to other sites all over the city and put together, piece by piece, until the buildings were finished, whole. But that was a long time ago, when Brizola was governor.

The owner of the land was a magnate; much of the land on which the neighbourhood of Barra da Tijuca sat was his. After accusations by environmentalists, the Rio de Janeiro attorney-general’s office launched an inquiry into excessive profits in the construction of the Olympic golf course. The document said there was a flagrant disproportion between what the owner was earning and what the city was losing or failing to earn.

Environmentalists alleged that, in addition to being an environmental crime, the construction companies would have exaggerated gains because the cost of building the course was somewhere in the vicinity of sixty million reais, while the potential for profit was as much as one billion reais.

In the beginning, it was just the smell. His smell, the smell of jack fruit, a smell that comes to me to this day in the most unexpected places — on holiday in Mexico, sipping margaritas by the sea, suddenly it’s there, the same smell that I smelled walking through the forest. I don’t choose it, it comes when it wants to, where it wants to. If someone were to say now: Remember the smell, I wouldn’t be able to. It decides when it wants to be remembered. It’s different from someone saying, Remember the guy, and I remember him.

I noticed a strange tone of voice when Dulcineia asked me why I’d gone for a run in the afternoon if I always went in the morning. I don’t know if I was getting paranoid — police, you know how it is, who trusts the police in Rio de Janeiro? — but suddenly she was insisting, Why did you go for a run in the afternoon if you always go in the morning?, as if the key to the crime might be in my answer. I was going to work out, I said, and I saw curiosity, surprise, in her eyes. If you were going to work out, why did you go for a run to Vista Chinesa? The meeting, I replied, the time of the meeting changed, it was brought forward, and Cadu … Who’s Cadu? Cadu called me at the last minute, I was on my way out, I had to come back, it would have been impossible to go to the gym. Is it that far away? It’s in Gávea. By the time I’d got the car, parked, worked out, showered, come home, there might have been traffic, it would’ve been risky. Risky?, Dulcineia asked, her tone of voice ironic. She must think I don’t want to collaborate, I thought, after all, the gloves are thin then thick, blue then black, the nose is small then large, and I kept on rejecting all of the photographs of suspects, but the tone of the question, that almost incriminating question, Why did you go for a run in the afternoon if you always go in the morning?, didn’t sit well with me. Yes, I knew it was more dangerous in the afternoon, but I’d looked through the window, seen the sun shining through the trees, and thought there wouldn’t be a problem. You thought there wouldn’t be a problem? That’s right, I answered, already annoyed. But there was a problem, she said. Yep, I agreed, there was. And that was when I convinced myself that the next time she showed me a photo of a suspect, I would agree to see him, maybe she was right, maybe it was better to see him live, it wasn’t always possible to recognise someone in a photograph like that, and they had much more experience than me, they worked with crimes, suspects, victims, felons, I was complicating things, I wasn’t cooperating, but I will cooperate, I told myself that instant, before she said goodbye and shut the door to my apartment.

That night, my mother burst into the living room, tossed her bag on the sofa, and hugged me. I was groggy, the effect of the meds I’d taken after the detective’s visit, and I felt nauseated from the cocktail, a nausea that blended with my nausea of the memory of what had happened, my body limp, unable to support itself, a body that was decomposing, that I wanted to disappear. She hugged me hard, as if, unlike me, she wanted the concreteness of my body, the solidity of my athlete’s muscles, her strong, healthy daughter, the daughter who never stopped, the daughter who enjoyed the city without fear, she wanted me as I was before, intact, and the longer she hugged me the more certain I was that she’d never have that daughter back again. Not the way I used to be. A piece of me, a big piece of me had remained in the forest, lost, torn, scraps of flesh, food for the animals.

If I was alone with the stranger in a room of the police station, with him handcuffed in front of me, I’d clobber him, I’d beat him until his face was deformed and no one would ever recognise him again, not even my memory. If I was alone with the stranger in a room of the police station, I’d hack at him with a knife, his guts spilling out, the floor covered in blood, his voice agonising slowly until his last breath. Before that, his dick dangling, no, his dick cut off and stuffed in his mouth so I wouldn’t have to hear his cries. But I didn’t say it. Nor did I imagine it.