The Body Snatcher Read Free

any of that when you were beside her.
    When Carlão went shopping or traveled, she would come down to the pump and keep me company. She would come up to my room with fresh coffee. We would go swimming in a nearby lake. This place is the end of the world, she said. Last stop. Just look where you ended up. Take one morestep, you’ll drop into the beyond. If you go in the wrong direction, you’ll wind up in Bolivia.
    We sometimes remained quiet, side by side, smoking and gazing at the empty highway, until one day she asked me who the girl was who called me every day. Our faces were so close together that I could almost smell the coffee on her breath. My girlfriend, I said. And Sulamita is the name of a person? she asked. I thought it was some kind of mineral found in the region. Aluminum phosphate, those things. I laughed. She remained serious and said she was falling in love with me.
    I moved out the next day. I didn’t want any problems with my cousin.
    Now there I was, unemployed and with a kilo of cocaine hidden in the crawl space.
    Before taking a shower, I went downstairs, crossed through the hallway beside the bicycle shop, and offered the fish to the old Indian woman, the bike shop owner’s mother. Serafina was her name.
    There were other Guatós in the neighborhood. I saw them there, with their slanted eyes, their flip-flops, playing football in the late afternoon, doing labor of every kind, bodywork on cars, security, cleaning. They were no longer accustomed to life on the island from which they had been expelled by the army and to which they were later able to return when priests in the region began raising a fuss to defend them. Serafina preferred the city after her husband was hospitalized with heart problems.
    The only problem was living with her son, she said, now that the old chieftain had died. The family lived crowded into two rooms. Serafina slept in the kitchen with her three grandchildren, jammed against the couple’s bedroom. There were small mattresses leaning against the walls and clothesdrying behind the refrigerator. Grease from the bicycle shop was gradually making its way into the house and up the walls.
    The daughter-in-law wasn’t part of the tribe and got irritated when the old woman spoke Guató. Their mother would slap the little Indians for any reason, and now and then would hit Serafina, who would be expelled onto the sidewalk as punishment.
    On those occasions I took her to my room. She would be confused, disoriented. Do you think, she asked, it was because I went into the refrigerator? I got a banana. Was it because of the banana?
    They all went to the supermarket, she said that night. They’ll be back soon, with cans and crackers, she added, sighing. I have some fried sausage here. Do you want it?
    I thought it would be better not to leave the house, with all that powder going tick-tock in my head like a time bomb.
    I ate in a hurry, thanked her, and went back to my room to see if there was anything on television about a missing plane.

6
    The news I was waiting for didn’t appear till mid-morning. The reporter affirmed that the pilot had been missing since Sunday. His name was José Beraba Junior, which I knew from the documents I’d found in his backpack. What I didn’t know was that the young man was the son of a wealthy cattle rancher in the region. The images showed the pilot in an equestrian competition, skiing in Aspen, and vaccinating cattle with his father. They said the search for the disappeared single-engine plane would focus on the area in the vicinity of Corumbá where, according to radar, the last contact had been made at around four o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Concluding the coverage, a statement from his girlfriend. I know Junior is alive, she said, and I ask everyone to pray for him.
    So far so good, I thought. Everything under control, over.
    I dragged up a chair, reached the crawl space, and took out the pilot’s