Chapter 2
Gradually, everything went back to how it was before.
With the turn of the new year, we started hosting three secret dinners a week (Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays) to meet the demand of our growing waiting list. Every other week, on Wednesday mornings, five bodies were brought in by Umberto’s men.
I tried to strike up conversation with them to make the relationship more personal, but they were quiet, taciturn, and kept their heads down, dropping off the bodies in the guesthouse and promptly leaving.
I developed a habit of standing there, examining the dead, imagining their buried pasts stripped of personality, while Cora got changed.
They were brought in various states—dismembered, skinless, cut in half, sometimes headless, already bled, almost always without their internal organs.
“Whenever possible, I ask them to go ahead and clean everything out—I don’t want to overwhelm you,” Umberto once told me. He must not have realized that a cadaver cut in half or an armless torso could be so much more shocking.
It’s like what happens to doctors who work at trauma centers.
After a while death is just part of the norm, and seeing patients with blown-off heads or missing body parts becomes as routine as toast for breakfast. Each day, I was less bothered by not knowing who those people were, where they came from, or how they’d died.
I guess it was a defense mechanism, a survival instinct to keep me from losing it.
One way or another, though, it’s insanity.
Cora was working harder than ever with her stickered yellow chainsaw, forging ahead in her research on the human body. One night, as we shared a bottle of wine left over from a Saturday dinner, she shared her findings with me.
“It’s like assembling a car. Only in reverse,” she said.
She explained that the picanha cut was right about at a man’s waist, on the side of his abdomen almost at his buttocks, which is where the tri-tip is located.
Filet mignon comes from inside the rib cage and is as juicy as beef tenderloin, especially on people who don’t work out a lot.
Obese people have excess yellow fat, but they’re better than people who are very thin or muscular, whose muscles are more fibrous, and meat tougher.
“All these gym rats aren’t even fit to eat,” said Cora with a grossed-out look on her face as she poured herself more wine.
Black, white, Asian people—they all taste the same.
But foreigners and Brazilians don’t, a reflection of their unique terroirs.
Without a doubt, women are tastier than men, due to the higher percentage of body fat.
And besides, they have the best cuts: marbled breast meat, so tender, a true delicacy.
Nearly half the bodies that had been delivered at that point were chubby women.
Cora carved out the picanha, top sirloin, flank steaks, the tenderloin, and filet mignon.
Once the cuts were selected, she weighed and divided them into ten-ounce portions.
Ten were taken to the kitchen, where Hugo seasoned them for that night’s dinner; the rest were labeled and refrigerated for future meals.
They usually lasted us through the following week.
Before leaving the house in the late afternoon, Cora bagged whatever was left over to be cremated.
In the kitchen, Hugo continued to experiment with new flavor combinations, setting the menu according to the cut of the day.
In addition to the picanha and filet mignon—which he served grilled or roasted, always accompanied by a sauce—Hugo also gave attention to the humbler cuts, like cheek, tongue, rib, and shoulder.
Much to everyone’s surprise, the penis, though not very meaty, had an incredibly intense flavor due to the cavernous tissue, perfect for soaking up marinades, while the testicles were considered an aphrodisiac.
For the first course, Hugo prepared ossobuco with slices of shin and calf, liver terrines, breaded and fried brains, and stewed kidneys, which he also used as a filling in puff pastry pies.
The back muscles could be tough but were suitable for braising, which turned them succulent and full of flavor.
Bone marrow, from either the spine or the femur, was also put to use: Hugo turned it into broth, jus, reduction, or sauce.
Fried skin was deliciously crispy, and the belly, when cured, salted, or smoked, tasted just like bacon.
Regardless of the cut and preparation, customers were always satisfied and impressed, especially the first-timers.
Miguel continued to complain that the money was dirty, but he still used that dirty money to pay his mother’s hospital bills.
By the end of the year, she’d even stopped working for my parents and gone to live in Curitiba.
According to her doctors, the treatment was working, which kept Miguel quiet.
His relationship with Rachel didn’t last long after we started hosting dinners more frequently. She was smart; she got suspicious of Miguel’s sudden cash flow and started to press him for answers. They had a massive blowout. Her distrust was too risky, and he chose to end the relationship.
“Rachel would never understand,” he told me, devastated.
She really wouldn’t. I tried to comfort him as best I could, telling him he’d done the right thing, but he wouldn’t stop crying.
He took off his glasses and curled into a fetal position, trembling like a baby.
“Dante, I was always against this whole thing…” he said, wiping his face.
“From the very beginning, you know I was against these dinners … You forced me into this!”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I’m just worried. You’re doing a lot more drugs. Dante, it’s getting out of control.”
I turned away from him. It’s true that I had started doing a line or two now and again and took ecstasy when I was feeling down, but that didn’t affect my performance at all. I was in complete control of the situation; I wasn’t an addict.
“Why do you keep doing these dinners?” he insisted. “It’s not about the money anymore, is it?”
“What?”
“You like it, don’t you?”
“Fuck you, Miguel!”
“Sorry, I … I’m just confused, I feel like you guys forced me into this.”
“We were up against a wall, man!”
“I’m afraid of what could happen,” Miguel said, tears streaming down his face. He got up and looked at me, his eyes red. “Just promise me we won’t turn into monsters, Dante. Promise.”
I promised.