Under This Terrible Sun
Page 1
Under This Terrible Sun
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
About the author
Footnotes 1
Footnotes 2
Copyright
Under This Terrible Sun
Carlos Busqued
Translated by
Megan McDowell
Epigraph
…Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
Alfred Tennyson, “The Kraken”
Chapter 1
The barbs dig into the animal’s digestive tract so that we can pull it up to the surface without it tearing itself to pieces trying to escape. They are voracious animals with cannibalistic tendencies, and more than once the squid we’ve pulled into the boat is not the one that swallowed the lure, but a larger one eating the one we hooked first.
Cetarti was in the living room, smoking weed and watching the Discovery Channel, a documentary about night fishing for Humboldt squid in the Gulf of Mexico. The TV was on mute—the film was narrated in English and had Spanish subtitles. Standing in a boat, a guy was holding the lures they used to fish for Humboldts, luminous cylinders with fifty little barbs hanging from them, pointing upwards at an angle. Simulating the movements of the squid with his other hand, he was explaining how the lure worked: the Humboldt approaches the hook from below, opens its tentacles and takes hold of it, to swallow it in one or two movements. The barbs get embedded in its esophagus, and the fisherman only has to hoist it into the boat.
Which is certainly not easy: these predators, some almost two meters long, are extremely strong, and by the time they reach the boat they are enraged. There are fishermen who die in accidents every Humboldt fishing season. These animals eat ferociously, are always hungry, and are extremely aggressive.
The phone rang. The caller ID said “unknown,” which meant a call from a public telephone. Or from a person who was deliberately hiding their number. He didn’t answer. They called back twice, and the third time he picked up the receiver.
“Hello.”
“Good evening, I have this number as a Mr…” from the other end, a thick and sibilant voice hesitated, as if its owner were reading something. “Javier Cetarti, is he there?”
“That’s me.”
“Ah, a pleasure, sir. My name is Duarte, I’m calling from Lapachito, in the province of Chaco. I’m executor of the estate of Mr. Daniel Molina.”
Cetarti said nothing, none of those names meant anything to him.
“Daniel Molina was…” his voice faltered, sounding a bit uncomfortable. “Ahem, he was your mother’s companion. I have some bad news for you.”
While Cetarti listened, the guy on the documentary had the cameraman turn out all the lights and film the water. The screen went dark, except for the yellow subtitles:
Some twenty meters below us is a school of sardines, and the squid are hunting. We can see the green glow of their phosphorescent eyes…
Chapter 2
Sixteen hours after hanging up the phone (the time it took him to finish the documentary on Humboldt squids, watch another about nuclear arsenals and the politics of mutually assured destruction in the 1950’s US, roll some joints for the road, feed the Carassius fish in their tank, shutter the windows, get into the car, and drive six hundred and fifty kilometers), Cetarti entered Lapachito. He rolled down the window to air out the car a bit. He was walloped by the smell of shit, so he rolled it up again. The streets of the town were neglected and covered with a thin layer of mud; it must have rained recently, though there were no clouds. He looked at the clock; it wasn’t yet nine, but the sun was already beating down hard. He took a couple of turns around the town, to get a feel for the place. He didn’t see anything pretty—the paint was peeling on almost all the houses, and there were salt stains and thick cracks marring many of the walls, the result of the buildings sinking unevenly. The visual result was devastating. He stopped at a service station close to the central plaza. In the bathroom he washed his face, wet his hair, and put on deodorant. He went to the bar and ordered a café con leche and two croissants. While they were serving him, he phoned Duarte. Duarte had already given his statement, but he had to go pick up a couple of affidavits for the paperwork he was doing, so they agreed to meet at the station at a quarter to ten. He arrived a few minutes early; Duarte was already waiting in the doorway, standing next to the shield of the Chaco police. He was a solid man with a red face, fat and massive, who must have been around seventy years old. He had a wide smile and a disgusting set of teeth, yellowed fangs corroded by cavities. He was carrying a leather briefcase. He greeted Cetarti with a powerful handshake. He had enormous hands.
“I’m glad you made it all right. I’m sorry we have to meet under such circumstances.”
He slapped Cetarti on the back and ushered him in.
They walked down a hallway until they came to an office where a man in uniform was reading the newspaper online, with a desktop fan pointed directly at him. Duarte introduced them; the policeman was called Officer Cardozo in charge of the investigation. Cardozo invited them to sit, adjusted the fan to distribute the flow of air more equitably, and related more or less the same thing Duarte had told him the previous afternoon, only without scrimping on the lurid details. Daniel Molina “retired petty officer of the air force and represented here by Mr. Duarte,” had killed his lover and a son of hers at noon the previous day. That is, Cetarti’s mother and brother. He had killed them with a semi-automatic shotgun, fired into their chests. Then he had taken out his dentures and shot himself in the head, pressing the barrel against his chin.
“Here are photos of the scene, if you’d like to see them,” said Cardozo, handing him a folder.
There were some twenty photos that Cetarti flipped through quickly. This Molina’s head was a disaster (seen from behind it looked like a bag with the bottom removed), but his mother’s and brother’s faces were intact, and they both wore the same expression, like they were staring fixedly at something that wasn’t terribly entertaining. He was amazed at how old they looked, especially his brother; if Cetarti remembered correctly he was forty-three, and he looked sixty. He went through the photos only once, and then put them back on the table.
“It’s clear that Mr. Molina executed the woman and her son,” Cardozo resumed, “and that he then turned the gun on himself. What we don’t know is what caused the situation. Perhaps you can help us with that.”
“I wouldn’t know what to tell you.”
“Oh, wait just
a moment, we need to take your statement right away…” The officer minimized the newspaper webpage on the computer, opened the word processor, took down Cetarti’s personal information, and asked him to repeat what he had said. Cetarti did so obediently.
“Did your mother at any point tell you anything that could have led you to predict this outcome?”
“It’s been years since I’ve seen my mother. I didn’t know she lived here, or that she’d gotten married again.”
Cetarti shifted in his seat. He thought he would like to disappear from the room right then. He couldn’t think of any pleasant place to reappear in.
“And your brother?” asked the policeman. “Was there animosity between your brother and Mr. Molina?”
“I know even less about him. I’m surprised they lived together, he left home before I did.”
“They didn’t live together,” Duarte interjected. “Your brother was visiting.”
“All the same.”
* * *
The policeman jotted a couple of lines on the back of a photocopy and then put the note away in the same folder as the photos.
“We’ll be finished in just a bit.”
He finished typing the document, printed two copies, and handed them to Cetarti to sign.
“That’ll do it. If you identify the bodies you can take them as soon as the paperwork is done, they’re in the cemetery morgue, at the disposal of family.” He opened a drawer and took out a manila envelope that he handed to Duarte. “Here are the copies you asked for.”
Duarte took the envelope, thanked him, and told him that if he should need anything, to just ask. On the sidewalk, he asked Cetarti if he had a car with him. Cetarti answered that he did.
“Great, the cemetery is a couple kilometers from here and I came on foot. Can you give me a lift? We can chat about a couple things on the way.”
Chapter 3
Cetarti had turned on the air conditioning and it was cold inside the car, but the sun beating in through the windows made his skin burn, as though there were nothing between him and it. He was sweating and the sweat got cold, but the sensations of cold and burning didn’t cancel each other out, they instead coexisted unpleasantly. Still, it was better than being outside. Duarte gave directions and had him make a couple of turns, and after ten or twelve blocks they came out onto a slightly larger avenue.
“OK, turn right here, and it’s two kilometers further, more or less. I’ll let you know when we’re about there.”
In spite of the punishing sun, the carpet of mud on the pavement hadn’t dried at all. It was on all the streets.
“It rained a lot here, looks like,” said Cetarti.
“No, hasn’t rained here since April, more or less. You saying that because of the mud?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, that’s because the water table has risen, the groundwater is almost even with the surface. Look at the houses: they’re all cracked. The ground is all mud now, they’re sinking. The cesspits are overflowing—a lot of this mud on the street is shit and piss. That’s why the trees have died, they all rotted the first year. Get your car washed when you leave, because the metal will corrode, and have them wash inside the fender, this mud is poison to the metal on cars.”
“Thanks. How long has it been like this.”
“Well… since the Caucete earthquake. More or less a year, year and a half after that, the water started to rise. It’s been like this for four years now, maybe five.”
“And why don’t people leave?”
“Well, since it happened gradually, people just got used to it, and anyway, you may laugh, but there’s some dough to be made around here. A lot of people here live very well off the land.”
“But doesn’t everything just rot?”
“The water table is only high in town, it sits in a slight depression. If you go out around eight kilometers the land is fine, it’s higher up.”
The town’s landscape slid past the car, almost shining with the malignant power of the sun.
“Course, without trees the sun beats down something terrible.”
“Yeah, this sun is something, it’s pretty punishing. But you get used to it, it’s not like a person can’t live here.”
They were silent for a few minutes, and the houses became more sparse alongside the road.
“We’re almost there. Please forgive me for asking this, but, ah, what do you plan to do with your mother and your brother?”
“…”
“With the bodies, I mean. Are you going to take them to Córdoba?”
Cetarti thought for a few seconds.
“If I can and it’s less hassle, I’ll bury them here… I’ll have to see how much it costs, too, and what kind of formalities there are. The truth is I don’t really know, this whole thing caught me by surprise.”
“Well, the money’s not your problem here. Molina had standard burial insurance from the air force and a supplement for family, your old lady is covered for sure, and we can work it out for your brother too, given the circumstances. Especially if we don’t spend much.”
“Good, that’s lucky. Whatever you think is best, then.”
“OK, we’ll see. That barbed wire fence there is the cemetery, and the entrance is over by those black bars.”
Cetarti parked under a tree in front of the bars and they got out. A dog came over and urinated on one of the wheels. Duarte chased him off with a fairly cruel kick to the ribs.
In the cemetery morgue they were received by a municipal employee wearing shorts, a sweat-stained Chaco For Ever T-shirt, a bandana around his neck, and rubber boots. He had them fill out some forms, took two more bandanas from a drawer, and put deodorant on them. He handed one to each of them.
“Put these on. The electricity’s been out for six hours now, and with this heat the bodies are smelling pretty strong.”
“If this is for me, I already identified them in the photos.”
The employee shook his head.
“You have to do it in person.”
They put the bandanas on and followed him to the freezers. The floor was covered by a couple centimeters of water, and there was a kind of walkway made out of wooden platforms. Duarte and Cetarti walked on the wood but Chaco For Ever didn’t, because of his rubber boots. The deodorant on the bandana did nothing to keep out the stench of death. They had placed the naked bodies of his mother and brother on the same slab. There was something incestuous about the image, in spite of the lost expressions in their eyes and the bullet holes. Cetarti went outside to vomit, leaning against the trunk of a cypress tree. He wanted to rinse his mouth out with water—there was a faucet a few meters away, above the walkway—but he thought about how it was the same water they used to wash out flowerpots from the graves, that the tap was the end of a pipe system that slithered through mud that was full of dead people, and the idea made him throw up again. Except for breakfast his stomach was empty, and at the end it was only a series of dry and painful heaves.
After a couple minutes Duarte came out and asked if he was all right.
“If you want, stay out here a minute and I’ll sign that you recognized them. Do you have your ID?”
“Yes. I’d be grateful.”
Cetarti straightened up, took out his wallet, and handed Duarte his identification.
“Go to the car and wait for me there.”
In the car he rinsed his mouth out with the last bit of mineral water left in a 1.5-liter bottle that he’d bought for the trip. He turned on the air conditioning and the radio. A local station was playing chamamé folk music. After a while Duarte knocked on the window.
“All right. It’s done,” he said, making himself comfortable in the seat. “I had them cremated, what do you think? We can save on the wake and all that baloney. It’ll happen tomorrow, around two in the afternoon.”
“Yes, that sounds good. Thank you for everything.”
“It’s nothing, I have to do all this anyway. I’m Molina’s executor.”
Cetarti found the word “executor” amusing; it seemed out of place. It sounded like a movie, the typical scene of the luxurious office where a lawyer reads out the will of a dead millionaire. And that image had nothing at all to do with this ghost town, the killings, and, fundamentally, with this giant man with rotten teeth who was smiling like he was in an ad for toothpaste from hell.
“He would’ve had to do the same for me, if I’d died first. He was my executor. Now I’ll have to find another one.”
Cetarti sat looking at him.
“In the air force, since you never know when you’ll die, you name a buddy as your executor, someone who’ll accompany the family in everything, see to the paperwork and formalities with the force, and work out who pays the burial costs and how, the life insurance and all that. Molina and I are petty officers in the air force. Or I am and Molina was, more like it. You feeling better now?”
“Much better.”
“I’m going to give you something that’ll do you good.” Duarte searched in the inside pockets of his briefcase, took out a rolled cigarette, and lit it. With the first hit the car filled up with a cloyingly sweet smell. Duarte handed it to Cetarti, who had gone mute from surprise.
“Why the dumb face?” Duarte asked, holding in his breath. “The stink of weed in this car’ll knock you over, sonny.”
Cetarti took the joint.
“You’re going to be feeling no pain after this. And the other thing we have to talk about is the dough you might be able to get out of this whole thing.”
Of all the news Duarte had given him the night before, Cetarti had been most motivated to drive to Lapachito by the news that there was a life insurance policy to collect. He had been booted out of his job six months before (lack of initiative, discouraging behavior), and he had eaten through almost all of his compensation without lifting a finger.
“Here’s the deal: Molina had taken out a life insurance policy in your mother’s name. It’s thirty thousand bucks, more or less. It’s not from an insurance agency, but through the air force’s group insurance. With the way things happened, we can finesse things a little, so you can be the one to collect the cash. It ain’t easy, but if we can do it, we’ll get the dough and split it fifty-fifty, what do you say?”