Chapter III. Half-Eaten #3
“If you’re close to Erik, you know what I mean.
That thing he did, smiling all the time.
Never saying what he truly thought. Always a little nervous, a little coy, a little too caught red-handed for my taste.
Never looking anyone in the eye. Last time we met, the poor thing was shaking from head to toe.
Just like Genebra’s pinscher—the dog is gone, too, it seems.”
Ariadne frowned. She took a silk nightgown from the floor and followed the trail of clothes to another room.
Augusto walked behind her, muttering that Genebra must have left in a hurry, but she stopped paying attention when she reached the bathroom.
On the sink were Erik’s old glasses, along with a double-edged razor blade, shaving cream, and a blue toothbrush across from Genebra’s things.
“I think I found Erik’s room,” announced Augusto, and she went after him.
The room was similar to the master bedroom, but she could see Erik everywhere.
There were books on the desk, on the nightstands, and on the floor; the bed had been made like he always did, with the pillow on top of the sheets; there was an empty coffee cup on the rug, and crumpled toffee wrappers.
She touched a white dress shirt neatly folded on the chair and checked the collar: as she expected, there was an E and a Y embroidered on it, like on all of his clothes.
“I don’t know what we’re searching for,” said Augusto, stepping on a cockroach. “Do you?”
“Any clue to where they went.”
On the desk were two books on obstetrics and several letters.
Some were unopened, but most had been read and folded many times.
I can help you if you help ME, said one of them, signed by R.
I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t desperate.
I have nowhere else to go! Ariadne checked the sender’s address, but the envelope was blank.
I’ve been following the instructions in your last letter, but my blood pressure is still high. Do you think this will affect the baby?
PLEASE MEET ME, read another letter. Ariadne ripped open one of the envelopes to see an unread note, and the content startled her.
It’s your choice, really, to keep ignoring me like this.
If my child dies, and you know that she might, it’s your fault.
MURDERER. In another, the writer went further: I can tell him where you are.
I can just say: take a look at Genebra’s house! And you’re gone. Easy, just like that.
“Augusto, do you know any pregnant guls?”
“Rafaela’s the only one I can think of. Why?” Augusto skimmed through the letters with a grave face. “It does sound like something she would say. And her husband has contacts.”
“What kind of people are they?”
“The happy couple?” mocked Augusto. “Not the good kind. Then again, which gul is?”
“What about you and Quaint? Are you bad?”
He scratched his chin, his stocky fingers lost inside his beard.
“It’s something I always ask myself. Am I good?
Can I be good? Is there any point in trying?
” Augusto shook the curtains of the bed, and a cloud of dust surrounded him.
“I flatter myself time after time, reassuring my troubled mind that I only eat the vile. And they are vile, oh yes. Quaint and I have a taste for the truly rotten. I don’t question my judgment of their character, but what does that make me?
Those idiots patrolling the streets at night also believe they are taking justice into their own hands.
At the end of the day, I still think I’m right, and I want to do what I can. ”
“You have to eat,” Ariadne pointed out. “Guls can only process human meat. The death squads don’t have any excuse for selling their own.”
“Yes, well, but why only humans? Why would nature do that to us? That’s what keeps ringing in my head.”
“Koalas only eat certain types of eucalyptus, which is poisonous to most animals. You’re not special.”
“I just fail to see the purpose of this existence. Are we here to eventually disappear, like we’re already doing?
There are fewer of us every century, and there are more elders dying than children conceived.
Are we your only predators? We’re already failing at that, and I don’t like the sound of it either.
Are we supposed to keep hoarding and living lavishly, until we’re no longer here? ”
Ariadne placed some letters inside her purse. The skin of her arms had been made so carefully that it even had greenish veins underneath the yellow undertone, slightly darker around the knuckles and elbows, matching the ones around her eyes, her neck, her inner thighs.
“I could tell you the same thing. To you, I’m prey.
I’m aware of it every second of the day.
I know, too, that my existence as a person, no matter how well-intended, is flawed.
I have to consume what victimizes others—clothes, food, technology—to survive, at least in the world we know right now,” she said. “Keep doing what you can.”
“Still, it’s frustrating. I can’t understand Quaint, who chooses to live side by side with humans, or Genebra, who eats her decrepit friends when they tell her they’re ready to die.
Then I look at you and wonder how you can live with us and treat our health, knowing what we do—or worse, what we want to do. ”
“I know what to expect from guls.” Ariadne massaged her upper arms, feeling a hint of pain. “Knowing how bad you can be makes me feel safe, because I know. I can’t say the same about my kind.”
The last room they entered was the kitchen.
It had no fridge or stove, but there were expired packages of biscuits on the table and an empty milk carton near the trash.
The pinscher, they found, was heavily decayed, and Ariadne would have guessed he had died locked up and hungry if the flooring had not been damaged by a bullet.
When they finished searching the apartment, Ariadne and Augusto returned to Cabaré.
I’ll stay until Quaint comes back, he assured her without a smile, for your safety.
Augusto scowled whenever Friedrich and Lena walked near them, never interacting but always close, sniffing the air around her.
Some people can’t see a human on their own without thinking they’re in a restaurant …
At about six o’clock, Quaint descended the staircase and thanked Augusto, and a taxi took them to the hotel.
“The receptionist said there are no other guests on our floor,” said Quaint when they were alone in the mirrored elevator.
“They made it gul-only after the curfew law. Humans don’t know, of course, they think it’s merely being refurbished, but I’m pleased that we can talk freely here. Mind accompanying me to the pool?”
“Pool?”
“I need some fresh air.” Quaint led the way down the corridor, removing his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. “I’m feeling a little suffocated.”
The pool he referred to was not the main one she had seen through the window, but a more private one located on the gul-exclusive floor. As he said, there was no one else there, not even clerks or maids, only empty sun loungers.
A light breeze brushed her face, and Ariadne leaned against the screen panels to look at Copacabana beach. The ocean was already dark, as was the bottom of the pool, and the potted plants adorning the terrace ruffled with the wind. Quaint undid his tie with a sigh.
“You look like you discovered something.” Ariadne stared at the black water.
The last time she had been to a pool was almost twenty years ago, at the age of thirteen, and she felt a childlike urge to jump into it.
There’s no need for a swimsuit, someone had encouraged her back then, open hand on her tiny back.
No one can see you from here. Instead of jumping, she knelt in front of the pool and touched the surface with her fingertips.
“Have you?”
“Maybe.”
“Ladies first.”
Ariadne sat on the floor, taking the letters from her purse to give them to Quaint.
It took him a few seconds to realize what they were about, but when he understood, he began to read eagerly.
While Quaint walked around the pool, holding the letters up to his face, she took off one of her flats and touched the water.
Ariadne submerged one toe, feeling the warmth of the pool, then her entire foot.
Behind her, Quaint huffed with irritation and crumpled one of the envelopes in his fist.
“Spectacular. Simply spectacular.”
“Augusto thinks the letters were written by someone called Rafaela.”
“Oh, they were definitely written by Rafaela.” Quaint took a deep breath, his figure becoming harder and harder to discern as night fell.
“Who is she?”
“A self-centered, unhinged gul who managed to find a husband even worse than herself, and now they’re reproducing.
” Quaint folded the letters and put them carefully inside her purse, crouching by her side.
“Her husband, Dami?o, is so odious that I have to restrain myself from jumping onto his neck every time we meet. Hopefully, we won’t have to deal with him at any point. Only Rafaela.”
The lower part of her leggings was already wet, and she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. Quaint was little more than a shadow, recognizable only by the outline of his hair, nose, lips, chin, neck.
“What about you?” asked Ariadne. “Did you find anything?”
“Some government officials were looking for Erik last year. The band said they were all half-eaten humans.”
“Half-eaten?”
“I suppose they meant the amputees that appear on TV.”
Half-eaten, she thought dryly, her leg going up and down in the water. His expression softened, and he pointed at the pool with his chin.
“You can go in if you wish.”