Perfect Days

by Raphael Montes

  He opened the door of the chalet and went to the car. He was wearing only a T-shirt, but the cold didn’t bother him. He got the rug from the trunk and rolled it out on the floor of the chalet. He laid Breno’s body on it and cleaned up the blood. He thought about rolling him up in the rug and throwing it into the lake. He had read a few detective novels in which the criminals had done that. But in the real world, the gases released during the process of putrefaction could cause the corpse to work its way loose and float up to the surface. Perhaps a few rocks would help keep him at the bottom. Still too risky. It also occurred to him to dig a hole in the forest, but he discarded the idea: he wasn’t used to digging in the earth and might wake someone up.

  He made up his mind. He left the chalet and headed for the linen room. His feet moved quickly through the night. In silence, he turned the door handle and groped in the dark for the light switch. He reached for the pile of black plastic bags on the top shelf. Then he went to the kitchen, which was next to the dining room, praying it wasn’t locked. It wasn’t. He found a long serrated knife. On the way back, he saw a pair of pruning shears lying forgotten near a flowerbed outside Bashful Chalet. He took them with him too.

  • • •

  Gloves on, he began to work. He cut off Breno’s clothes, leaving him naked on the rug. It was ironic that Clarice had been satisfied with so little. He put the crumpled clothes in a plastic bag and hastily stuffed Breno’s glasses and belongings into a compartment of the doctor’s satchel. He was anxious; it was his first time exploring a fresh corpse.

  Breno’s body shook when the knife sank into the skin of his neck. With a vertical stroke, the skin—still warm—parted softly, leaving an open groove behind the knife. Teo was transported to the anatomy lab, to his moments with Gertrude, to the pleasures of dissection. As he visited each part of the corpse, he saw the books he had studied in his mind’s eye. Illustrations became reality.

  He had to squat to work on the thoracic cavity. He found the costal cartilages of the ribs and began to cut them with the shears. When he was finished, he lifted up the sternum, gaining a view of the organs inside the box of bone. The heart was still contracting weakly.

  Teo slowly calmed down. He found the rusty smell of blood pleasant. He acted with calculated movements, like a dancer rehearsing steps around the body. He was sweating profusely, and when he wiped his forehead on his forearm, he glanced at Clarice. If she woke up, would she be able to see her ex-boyfriend in the corpse laid out there? He knew she wouldn’t. The love she felt for Breno was physical. Faced with that sight, there could be no love or pain. Just disgust.

  He squatted down to cut the edges of the diaphragm and pull out the viscera, immersed in yellow fat. The blade slipped, pierced the glove, and nicked his right thumb. Shit! Fluids oozed from the cut intestines. After washing his hands, he quickly bandaged up his finger.

  He went over to Clarice and stroked her face, excited by the situation. He wanted her to wake up. He wanted her to see Breno like that, just a carcass. “Wake up, Clarice,” he whispered. He wanted to nibble her earlobe but resisted the urge. No matter how positive the shock might be, he didn’t want to take any risks.

  He put on new gloves and began to dismember the body. He cut joints, chuckling to himself when he heard the peculiar sound of the legs being detached at the groin. Pok. It reminded him of a jar of olives being opened. He divided the legs into two segments, at the knees. He did the same with the arms, at the elbows, after cutting them off at the shoulders. Pok. Pok.

  Two hours passed. He wasn’t used to carrying out those procedures with such rudimentary instruments. His back hurt, but the worst part was still to come: separating the head from the body. He sawed at the bottom of the neck. The muscles gave way, and only a few ligaments offered some difficulty. The blade was growing blunt, making the task exhausting. With his weight on the thorax, Teo continued sawing, as he forced the head in the opposite direction until it came lose.

  Breno’s face was covered in blood, his mouth wide open in a black, tongueless void. His eyes were open too, but Teo closed them: he was a medical professional, not a butcher. The rug was filthy. He rolled it up and tied it with a pillowcase. He double-bagged the pieces of Breno, adding some white stones he had found in the garden.

  Through a crack in the door, he stared out at the darkness. He calculated that he’d need to make two trips—about three minutes each—to dump the bags into the lake. None of the other chalets had a direct view of that area, so he allowed himself to make a little noise. He hurled the bags as far from the edge as he could, then ran back and repeated the exercise. He did the same with the rug. He washed the instruments and returned them to their places.

  When he finally sat down to rest on the armchair, he needed a shower. He stood under the jet of hot water for half an hour as it massaged his back. Looking in the mirror, he noticed a swelling on his right cheek. He sprayed cologne around the room to get rid of the acrid smell clinging to the furniture.

  In a state of ecstasy, he sat on the metal bench at the side of the lake. Breno was dead. Clarice was his alone. The fact still hadn’t sunk in emotionally. He had yet to absorb what it meant, but something told him it was good.

  He scanned the surface of the lake, looking for anything abnormal. He sat there for hours, cracking his fingers, reflecting, smiling, until Friday began to dawn. It was time to go back to bed and try to sleep. He knew he wouldn’t be able to.

  12

  The pedal boat splashed along noisily. Father and son were pedaling hard, laughing out loud, feeding the geese pieces of bread and dipping their hands into the water to feel the temperature. Teo watched it all.

  Shortly before sunrise, he had gone to the chalet. A purple mark was beginning to appear on his right cheek next to his swollen upper lip. He had iced it with some ice cubes he’d taken from the kitchen. He had taken a painkiller and rubbed some ointment onto his lip to relieve the pain. Then he had returned to the metal bench with the book by Clarice Lispector. It sat closed on his lap.

  How long would it take someone to notice Breno was missing? Would the investigation lead the police to Clarice? Had someone seen him leave home or take the bus to Teresópolis? These things were out of Teo’s control, which made him uneasy. He didn’t want to think about them.

  He opened the last pages of the book. The short story was called “Forgiving God.” The character’s initial state of mind was like his when he had first met Clarice: lighthearted and unperturbed, a tenderness and fondness he’d never before known. The story was about the character’s breakdown in the face of the brutality of nature—a metaphor for God—when she came face to face with a dead russet-furred rat. The narrator responded by turning against God, who had placed a dead rat in her path.

  He understood what it meant: he hadn’t been responsible for Breno’s death. A higher power had placed Clarice’s ex in his path. Breno had been an obstacle to be overcome, a piece to be eliminated. There was nothing to be upset about. His inner state of disarray was a result not of the causes but of the consequences. His peace of mind had become frayed. What would Clarice think of him when she found out?

  Teo returned to the chalet around midday. Clarice was awake.

  “What happened to your face?” she asked as soon as he took off the gag.

  “I hurt myself when I was out walking this morning. You were asleep.”

  “That’s what I do most of the time these days.”

  He turned on her laptop and apologized for having missed breakfast. He found it odd that she’d accepted his excuse about the bruise so passively. Had she really believed him? He glanced around the room. Everything was as it had been before—or appeared to be.

  “I need a date,” she said. She lifted her hands to her hair and shook it in a beautiful movement.

  “A date?”

  “How long is this going to go on?”

  “I don’
t know, Clarice.”

  “It’s almost Christmas.” She narrowed her eyes. “My mother’s going to think it’s strange if I don’t show up.”

  “Don’t ask me for a date.”

  “I need to be home for dinner on Christmas Eve.”

  “Christmas is only three weeks away.”

  “So, three weeks.”

  “You told me you didn’t know if you were going home for Christmas.”

  She sidled over to him and slipped her arms around him. Her breasts under her blouse brushed his T-shirt.

  “Please,” she asked.

  She climbed onto the bed behind him, massaging his shoulders. Her smell was delicious. He was almost able to forget what he’d done.

  “Jesus, Teo, you’re really tense,” she said without stopping the circular movements over the knots in his neck. “My ex was like that too—he couldn’t relax.”

  His shoulders stiffened.

  “I thought about what you told me. I think you’re right,” she said. “My relationship with Breno is over. I don’t love him anymore. I’m just afraid to turn the page.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’ve come to that conclusion.”

  “I think he was cheating on me,” she said. “He had flings with some of his violin students. If our relationship meant something to him, he would have come after me. But he hasn’t, has he? He hasn’t come.”

  Clarice looked at him from only a few inches away. Was that a smile in the corner of her mouth? He was certain she knew. She knew and was playing with him. She was challenging his sanity.

  “I need to go out,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Teo put the cuffs and gag back on Clarice. He had cramps in his legs. He slammed the door, saying he was going into town and wouldn’t be long.

  • • •

  He didn’t want to go out. It was Friday, and he was tired. Clarice’s voice was suffocating, the hotel was suffocating, the line of couples waiting to ride the pedal boats was suffocating. The trip into town was his escape valve.

  While he was there, he had lunch and did some shopping. In a café he ordered a glass of guava juice as he watched the afternoon news on the TV on the wall. He didn’t see anything about Breno’s disappearance, which made him calmer. Clarice was a prisoner on the bed and could never make it to the door without unlocking the cuffs. Breno was at the bottom of the lake and didn’t seem to be from an influential family. When his family reported his disappearance, it would be filed away before they even made it home.

  He sat down near a colorful garden and closed his eyes. He needed to talk to someone—someone who wasn’t Clarice. He called his mother.

  “Hang on a sec, son. I’m just taking down a recipe,” she said.

  In the background, a man’s voice was saying . . . two cups of apple cider vinegar, two cups of cream, two green apples, a pound and a half of . . .Thirty seconds later the television was turned off.

  “There. How are you?”

  “Fine, and you?”

  “Samson’s necropsy results are in. They found residues of my medication in his stomach. Samson died of an overdose of Hypnolid.”

  “Oh . . .” he said, feeling rotten. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. You had no way of knowing he was going to eat your box of medication!”

  “You don’t get it. Samson didn’t eat my box of medication. Someone did this to him.”

  “Come again?”

  “Someone gave Hypnolid to Samson. He didn’t eat the box.”

  “Who would do something like that?”

  “I can only think of one person.”

  Teo felt like hanging up but resisted the urge. He pressed the phone to his ear.

  “Clarice. She’s the only other person who’s been over here recently.”

  “Clarice? She wouldn’t be capable of such a thing.”

  “I think it’s monstrous too, but there’s no other explanation.”

  Patricia must have thought a lot about the matter over the last few days.

  “What about Marli?” he said.

  “Marli? Do you think she’d do something like that to Samson? She knew how much I loved that dog!”

  “She has the key to the flat. And she knows you take Hypnolid.”

  “But why would she do it?”

  “Well, Clarice doesn’t have any motive either. And I was with her the whole time.”

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  That was when it dawned on Teo that his mother suspected him. But she was dependent on him to look after her and couldn’t just accuse him with impunity.

  “It wasn’t Clarice. I’m sure,” he said.

  “When you get back, I want to talk to her. I’m very perceptive, you know. I want to get a sense of her character.”

  Marli had told Patricia she was “special,” and ever since his mother had used the argument to justify every harebrained notion that popped into her head.

  “I don’t want you to confront Clarice.”

  “I wouldn’t. I’ve got more tact than that. But maybe this young lady isn’t good for you.”

  “She’s very good for me, Mother.”

  “Remember that nightmare I had just before you took off on your trip?” Patricia’s voice grew weak. “I had it again, three times this week. The same one.”

  “It’s just your imagination.”

  “I’m frightened, Teo. Someone poisoned Samson. And in these nightmares, you die of poisoning too. It’s horrible!”

  He said good-bye, pretending to be upset. The conversation had made him feel even worse. It wasn’t Clarice’s voice or the chalet. It was the world that was suffocating.

  • • •

  That night Teo slept soundly. He woke up early and feeling good. Before breakfast, he chatted with the dwarfs at reception: no one seemed to have seen or heard anything the night before last. He strolled around the lake. The darkness of the water attracted his gaze to the surface. He kept waiting for something to suddenly bob up—a forearm, a liver. Nothing did.

  He took Clarice’s breakfast to the chalet.

  “You snored last night,” she said, biting into a croissant.

  “Sorry.”

  “I wasn’t complaining. You seemed really tired.”

  “Yes, I was.” He opened the suitcase to organize his shirts.

  “What sign are you, Teo?”

  “I’m not into that stuff.”

  “What sign are you?”

  “My birthday’s in September. On the twenty-second.”

  “Virgo. On the cusp. But you’re a typical Virgo.”

  “Typical how?”

  “Rational, determined, methodical. That’s you.”

  He didn’t believe that the position of the stars determined his personality traits, but he didn’t say anything. He remembered the site where he’d seen Clarice discussing astrology and deduced that she had a bit of a soft spot for the subject.

  “What time of day were you born?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I need to know to work out your moon and rising sign.”

  “What’s your star sign?” he said. He didn’t feel like talking about himself.

  “I’m a textbook Aries.”

  “How so?”

  “Impulsive, independent, sincere, often too sincere. Temperamental too, but I’d rather not tell you all my flaws just like that,” she said with a generous smile. She set aside her laptop. “I need to sleep a little more. You snored really loudly.”

  Teo took the opportunity to read the screenplay on her laptop. He saw how the story was progressing and identified the changes Clarice had made. She had taken his advice on several points, and it made him happy. He knew she’d never be able to write again without his notes. Little by little his agitation
began to lift, and he started to feel good again. Distracted, he hummed a song, drumming his fingers on the bed frame.

  • • •

  Teo was leafing through the photo album when Clarice woke up and asked what he was doing. His reaction was to close it. He still hadn’t shown her the photos and didn’t know how she’d react. Then he decided it wouldn’t be a problem to let her see them. They weren’t offensive or base. On the contrary, they recorded beautiful feelings, such as affection, companionship, and love.

  “My mother would love that,” she said. She looked at the photos as if she didn’t recognize herself in the images. “She’d leave it on the coffee table in the living room, next to her wedding album.”

  Clarice’s tone of voice when she talked about her mother was disparaging. Teo wanted to understand their relationship, but it seemed like such a mess to him. Although he didn’t love Patricia, he treated her with respect and care. Sometimes he thought about the day when he’d feel the coolness of her skin under his lips when he went to kiss her good morning and would realize she was dead. There wouldn’t be anything there besides the flaccid, worn-out body that had put him in the world. He imagined what he would feel. And also what he was supposed to feel. He was supposed to cry and let people see him with his defenses down.

  But deep down, in some obscure part of himself, he knew it wouldn’t make much difference. He’d miss his monthly allowance . . . the cheese omelet that she used to throw together for dinner when there was nothing else to eat . . . and that was it. Omelets and money. The connection between them was basically that. But was there a problem with that? His relationship with Patricia was, beyond a doubt, better than Clarice’s relationship with Helena.

  “Do you like your mother, Clarice?”

  “Why do you ask?” She put down the album.

  “The way you talk about her.”

  “My mother and I used to be really close. Time pushed us apart.”