It had not been very difficult to gain personal access to the supreme leader of the Church of the Puritans after I had escaped, for one of the stooges that served as the archpriest’s shields in communication networks, my very good sister, UMP major, was interested in the Albertina affair.
The insinuation of the unlimited possibilities of manipulation of facts and testimonies through nepotism and traffic of influence within the police itself, which I had purposely left in the air, had intoxicated the Church. Enough, it seemed, to reduce the archimandrite to the most abject submission.
Exactly as expected: Before contacting the Church, I had spoken with my lawyer and he had told me that although it was possible in theory to untangle the Gonçalves da Nóbrega assets in the short term, the chances of that happening without Albertina’s body were scant at best.
Laws about heritage and inheritance had changed a great deal in the last twenty years because of new possibilities such as cloning, uploading of consciousness, and asexual human reproduction, but it was still not so easy to declare someone dead.
If the Puritans really wanted to get their hands on the whole family inheritance, they desperately needed good evidence that you were really dead, and they needed it before Sabrina could prove the stable union.
“Reverend,” I said with the happiness I always feel on the rare occasions when I know I have all the cards in my hand, “you had mentioned something like a payment of ten times my usual fees if a body were produced.”
He leaned forward in his chair, anxious.
“Take me to the body.”
“Pay me the money.”
Serapião stepped back, suspicious.
“Come on.” I felt so elated and lightweight I could almost feel my head floating above my shoulders. “I wouldn’t fool you. I don’t want pimps spitting papilloma in my face on every corner for the rest of my life.”
He gave that a little thought. Then he took a notebook out of his pocket, typed something, and two minutes later I saw, in the desk terminal, the credit bar of my bank account change color—from orange to green—and going up, up, up.
“The body?” The Archimandrite was impatient.
“Here.” I pushed a scrap of paper I had printed earlier across the desk. “This is the still unofficial content of the result of a detailed examination carried out on the automobile where Raul was found, and an experimental digester mounted secretly in the garden of the house. The police was there in the morning.
“Was the body in the car? Where? In the back? In the trunk? How these idiots did not notice that before…”
“No. It was in the tank.”
Serapião fell silent.
“The details are there. Calcium precipitation in the fuel filter. Indication of corrosion by ammonia in the hose. The laboratory even found traces of mitochondrial DNA in the reservoir, which allowed a positive identification.”
Adriana had passed me the preliminary forensic data shortly after ten o’clock. Slightly irregular, but blood is thicker than water. In addition, no one would have tried the tank if I had not suggested and, in the end, I also do my share of dirty services for the UMP, when the major whistles.
“I don’t get it…”
“Raul was working on a process to extract biodiesel from animal protein. Human beings are animals. Albertina was a human being. You want me to draw a diagram?”
“Did he use his mother to produce the smoke that smothered him to death?”
“His mother’s corpse. I don’t think she was still alive when he shoved her into the digester, where, by the way, the cops found fragments of a sweater and also a few strands of hair, still with traces of genetic material in the root. Aside from that, a good synthesis. That was it.”
“But that’s…obscene.”
“He lived with his mother to care for his mother. When she died…”
“She’s really dead, then.”
The bastard didn’t even have the decency to hide the triumphant edge in his voice.
“Well, that’s the good news,” I continued, preparing my firecracker. “The police have evidence that Albertina is dead. The bad news, at least to you Puritans, is that the same proof shows that she died before her son. Since her body was the weapon of his suicide, there seems to be no other way out, logically speaking, unless his lawyers can prove that Raul invented the time machine, and yet the story is still complicated.” I smiled, recycling my false pity. “Which means he’s the heir, not you. And without it, her fortune goes to… Well, to someone other than you. I’m terribly sorry.”
“No.” The Archimandrite jumped to his feet, gritting his teeth in anger. “You are not.”
“Yeah, I am not. And you know what I said about the papilloma urchins? It was a lie. I’ll love to punch their faces when they come after me. One at a time or all together, whatever.”
* * *
Sabrina came an hour after the man of the Church had gone. The coffee machine still had not been repaired. The work would have to be done by hand. Then I took out a bottle of bourbon from the drawer, two glasses the size of thimbles, and poured a dose for each of us.
She was wearing trousers and a turtleneck. Brown clothes, almost the color of her skin, but ample ones: the only notable curve was the elevation of her breasts, and yet more suggested than marked. No cleavage and knees this time.
I had sent her the police report in the morning. Now there was insecurity in her eyes: she wanted to know how much I had actually deduced on my own. If I’d hand her to the police.
“Raul stayed for a week without going to work, something totally averse to his character and his way of being,” I said as she sat down. “But it was a workmate who called the police, not his wife.”
“He called me, saying his mother was dead. And that he needed some time alone, to…to process what had happened, and then …”
“And then you left the man of your dreams utterly alone, in a minuscule house and the corpse of his mother, for seven days, without saying anything to anyone, is that it? Until he went crazy with pain and loneliness and decided to kill himself too, is that it?
“Saying it that way makes it sound so awful. But yes.”
“But why kill yourself like that, choking on the smoke from your mother’s body? Was it a sexual thing? Psychopathological? A message? What do you think?”
“I… I…”
She was scared. She knew that I knew.
“May I offer you an explanation?” Without waiting for an answer, I began. “Albertina was an obstacle. A hindrance. Even blind and paraplegic, she was an active, lively, almost independent lady…until her son began to speak of marriage. Of bringing another woman to live in the house, or leave the house and leave her too, whatever. Albertina couldn’t accept that. And what method did she choose to impose her will on her child? The time-honored method of mothers of only children: blackmail, no, emotional torture. Guilt.”
My client swallowed.
“All the people who knew of your plan to marry Raul also told me that they were canceled about six months ago. Around the same time that, in the words of a friend and probable boyfriend, Albertina decided to become an invalid, blocking her son’s escape route. But children of strong, assertive women tend to get involved with strong, assertive women, and I’ll bet you’re the type. Seeing that Raul would not marry while Albertina continued playing the role of disabled mother, you concluded that it was time to get rid of Albertina. I suspect that the idea of disposing of the body through the exhaust of the car was yours, was it not? With Albertina dissolved in the atmosphere, it would be possible to keep the illusion that she had recovered her good mood and decided to travel, go on vacation, move to another country. And you finally might be together.
“Interesting.” She gathered her strength to build a mask of impassivity. But her eyes remained tense, haunted. “A bit morbid, though.”
“The suitability of means and ends was so great,” I continued, as if I hadn’t been interrupted, “with the prototype
installed in the garden of the house, and the fact that Albertina depended on Raul for her tonics and remedies made you forget the psychological factor of guilt. In the seven days Albertina’s body fermented in the digester, Raul was slowly feeling dilacerated from the inside out. Until, in the end, he decided to apply a form of justice to himself: since he had allowed his mother to be killed, he would now allow her to kill him. So he filled the tank, locked the doors, lowered the windows, sped up… I wonder what would have happened if Antonio had called the police one day, or even an hour, earlier.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know, will we?” She was smiling. Not a fake smile, but something that accentuated the cruel aspect of her face: she had regained her composure. It’s usually what happens when someone sees their sins exposed and, immediately, nothing happens to them. We all harbor an atavistic fear that the ground will open under our feet when some villainy we commit is articulated clearly in words. But if there are no immediate consequences, we relax and lower our guard. Some people even take great pleasure, exultation, from the effect.
Which leaves them more vulnerable than they can possibly realize.
“There’s a glass,” I said. “A glass with just a trace of juice, left in the kitchen sink of Raul’s house. It must be in some police evidence cabinet now. I don’t know what tests the authorities have done on it, or what further tests may still be carried out. Certainly fingerprints were collected and the rim scanned for signs of genetic material. I wonder if it wasn’t your fingerprints, your DNA on it.”
She shrugged.
“What if it is? It only proves that I was there one day. And why wouldn’t I have been there? Raul and I were dating. In fact, there is no proof that Albertina’s death was not perfectly natural.”
“I wonder if there was poison in the glass.”
“Poison?” She laughed a nervous laugh.
“The house was in perfect order except for two details: Albertina’s bed and that glass. The bed where she slept for the last time, and the glass…maybe the glass from which she drank for the last time?”
Sabrina was shaking. The temperature in the room was 25° C.
“And if there’s poison in the background, Albertina’s DNA on the rim, and fingerprints… Would there be other fingerprints mixed with Raul’s, I wonder?”
“You weak, stupid, sentimental, childish, invertebrate, idiot… Damn fool, I can’t believe you didn’t wash the glass after I left!”
* * *
“A good bluff, mentioning the glass.”
I smiled. It’s not every day that Adriana recognizes the merits of her older brother. Somewhere in the distance, my niece screamed, clinging to her father’s neck. As far as I could understand, she feared being swallowed by a black hole, and the cervical spine of my poor brother-in-law was her last anchor in this universe.
As unlikely as it might have seemed, they were both having a good time.
“It was Raul’s last drink, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. He drank a mixture of milk, brandy, and mango juice before he got into the car and killed himself. He probably didn’t see why he should have to do the dishes, if he wouldn’t need them anymore.”
“Makes sense.”
“Totally.”
In the distance, the gravity of the black hole had dragged my brother-in-law to the ground, and now father and daughter rolled across the grass. It was a sunny morning in the Sierra Park, and the lawn was still soft with the dew of dawn.
“Those two will have a hell of an itching bout later,” I observed.
“It’s all in the game,” Adriana replied. “But how did you know that she had prepared the poison for Albertina?”
I shrugged.
“His mother wouldn’t take a glass of juice from anyone other than her son. She probably didn’t even know Sabrina was in the house. Raul had to bring the drink to her. But he could not have put the poison in his glass.”
“In her deposition, Sabrina said he just walked into the kitchen when the mix was ready.”
I nodded.
“Makes sense. So, without witnessing anything, he could keep the illusion that there was nothing wrong. Raul was the kind of man who would let a strong woman do whatever he wanted with him, but for that very reason he was incapable of doing anything against a strong woman.”
“Quite different from you, right, little brother?”
I looked up into the blue sky, pretending to think deeply.
“Fortunately, I don’t have strong women in my family.”
And I made myself scarce, running from the police as fast as I could.
* * *
Carlos Orsi is a writer and a journalist specializing in coverage of scientific topics from Jundiaí, São Paulo. He has published the story collections Medo, Mistério e Morte (1996) and Tempos de Fúria (2005), and the novels Nômade (2010) and Guerra Justa (2010). His works of fiction appear in anthologies such as Imaginarios v. 1 (2009), and in magazines and fanzines in Brazil and abroad.
When Kingdoms Collide
Telmo Marçal
I, for one, also mocked love then. I had fun with the imbeciles who shed tears watching TV, cooing over the passions of heartthrobs and starlets. I never thought those things could get me: the bittersweet anguish, the fires burning in one’s heart, the dizzyness… It’s because of love that I’m laying low in the mountain ridge, between the trees, keeping watch through the crosshairs of my gun. Searching for targets so I can have my vengeance.
I never felt any hatred towards the Kale Leaves. Even before I ever met one of them. Now I want them all to die: they murdered my girlfriend.
* * *
Once, when I was just a kid, we entered a hotel owned by the Greenies, me and two mates, both high-strung. Segregation was still to be approved, but it was already as if in place: everyone did what they wanted and nobody said a word; they were being led by the horns.
We couldn’t care less about the doorman’s scowling face. One of my friends was so cheeky that he told the man, in all seriousness:
“You have an ugly mug. You must be hungry. Want to go with us and grab a bite?” The guy was about to answer to this, but he only managed to gasp. He came with us, coughing, all the way to the desk.
The concierge told us something to the effect that that dump was reserved only for clorophyll people. That was exactly what we had wanted to hear.
“Reserved for what? For Artichoke Heads? Show me the line in the license where it says that. To me, this looks just like a hotel with a bar, where everybody has the right to drink.”
They had to swallow that. But we couldn’t swallow anything good. They only served vitamin and mineral salts mixtures.
Why did the boss choose me for that mission? Maybe because of my previous experience?
Ages ago I had a row with the Greenhouse Flowers. The message came when I was still washing the gunk from my eyes.
“Wakey wakey, sissy boy! Open your eyes! There’s work to be done. Go and fetch me an Asparagus Sauce and go with it for a walk among the herd. Be very careful, so nobody gets bitten. Go now, move that ass out of bed!”
It’s not always easy to get what the boss means. Fortunately, the mission specs always come in a formal tone. I was told to be at the gates of a palace at 9 AM, in the Village of Sintra, to escort the official delegation of the Kale Leaves to the Council Square. Nothing too complicated, if it wasn’t for the fact that this rendezvous would happen in thirty minutes. I ran down the stairs, cursing.
But there was a limo and a motorcade waiting by the door. Everything equipped with internal combustion motors.
“Hurrah for such comfort!” I shouted, saluting them.
I sat shotgun and we rode on with full blasting klaxons. No semaphore seemed red enough for us to stop.
I only noticed there was someone behind me when we got in the fast lane. I didn’t say a word; I just made a call to the boss, which he answered while lifting weights at the gym. The damned old man, well into his nineties, loves to
torture his bones.
This time I got the message loud and clear.
“Very funny, letting a Neanderthal like you at large, among the Cabbages. What you’d talk about? About the best bars to find cod pastries? You will remain outside, by the door, very quiet, while letting your colleague deal with everything. She’s cute, isn’t she? Prick up your ears, though: she’s a bit loony, and very interested to go to the other side. The only thing keeping her from doing it is money for the therapies.”
The old man is like me: he loves her in all colors, even green.
I looked at the girl again, and she said a very nice Hi, good morning. I had never seen her before, so she probably was a new acquisition. I know pretty much everyone at the service, we aren’t so many. Lisbon doesn’t have much to hide anymore.
Upon our return, my colleague and the Big Lizards chatted their heads off the entire way, with me having no place there. When we dropped the passengers off, I told the driver:
“Forget I was here.” And moved to the back seat.
I put myself to the task of knowing better a wonderful girl named Rita. I think I fell in love with that first conversation.
She was a wonderful, but concerned girl. Very worried about all the madness in the world.
“Do you think it’s normal to send special agents to guard the Greenhouse rulers?”
I told her something zany to make her laugh:
“Our mission is to assure that they wear their robes, otherwise they would walk around showing their tomatoes.”
And she laughed, so nicely, so beautifully.
The truth was that there was anger in the air all right. Admiration for the solar beings had started to lose its appeal. Everyone here is living a shitty life, eating oatmeal and bathing in cold water, while those gentleman bask in the sun, far from the madding crowd, drinking juices and taking a healthy shit.
There were even people that, according to the reports, took this much too seriously. And, this morning, while I was falling in love, I got precisely such a message. “A chance of provocation on the part of demonstrators; reinforce security measures.”
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World Page 5