The Insufferable Gaucho (5 page)

This time I went to fetch the coroner and stayed with him until he
finished examining both bodies. Elisa’s mother, asleep beside us, was seized
from time to time by dreams, which wrested incomprehensible and incoherent words
from her. After three hours the coroner had decided what he was going to tell
me; it was what I had been afraid to imagine. The baby had died of hunger; Elisa
had died from the wound to her throat. I asked him if that wound could have been
inflicted by a snake. I don’t think so, said the coroner, unless it’s a new kind
of snake. I asked him if the wound could have been inflicted by a blind
alligator. Impossible, said the coroner. Maybe a weasel, he said. Weasels have
been seen in the sewers recently. Scared to death, I said. That’s true, replied
the coroner. Most of them die of hunger. They get lost, they drown, they’re
eaten by alligators. We can forget the weasels, said the coroner. Then I asked
him if Elisa had struggled with her killer. The coroner looked at the girl’s
corpse for a long time. No, he concluded. That’s what I thought, I said. While
we were talking, another police officer appeared. His rounds, as opposed to
mine, had been quite uneventful. We woke Elisa’s mother. The coroner said
goodbye. Is it all over? asked the mother. It’s all over, I replied. She thanked
us and left. I asked my colleague to help me get rid of Elisa’s corpse.

The two of us took it to a canal where the current was strong and
threw it in. Why don’t you throw out the baby’s body too? asked my colleague. I
don’t know, I said, I want to examine it, maybe we missed something. Then he
went back to his beat and I went back to mine. I asked every rat I met the same
question: Have you heard anything about a missing baby? I got all sorts of
answers, but in general our people look after their young, and what they told me
was all second-hand. My rounds took me back to the perimeter. The pioneers were
working on a tunnel, all of them, including Elisa’s mother, whose bulky, greasy
body could barely squeeze through the crack, but her teeth and claws were still
the best for digging.

I decided to go back to the dead sewer and try to see what it was that
I had missed. I looked for tracks but couldn’t find any. Signs of violence.
Signs of life. The baby hadn’t made its own way into the sewer, that much was
obvious. I looked for food scraps, traces of dried shit, a burrow, all in
vain.

Suddenly I heard a faint splashing. I hid. After a while I saw a white
snake break the surface of the water. It was thick and must have been a yard
long. I saw it dive and resurface a couple of times. Then it emerged cautiously
from the water and scaled the bank, making a hissing sound like a leaking gas
pipe. For our people, that snake was as lethal as gas. It approached my hiding
place. Coming from that direction, it couldn’t attack directly, which meant, in
principle, that I had time to escape (but once in the water I would be easy
prey) or sink my teeth into its neck. It was only when the snake went away
without any sign of having seen me that I realized it was blind, a descendant of
those pet snakes that humans flush down the toilet when they get tired of them.
For a moment I felt sorry for it. And I celebrated my good luck in an indirect
way. I imagined the snake’s parents or great-great-grandparents descending
through the infinite network of sewer pipes; I imagined their bewilderment in
the darkness of the sewers, not knowing what to do, resigned to death or
suffering, and I imagined the few that survived, adapting themselves to an
infernal diet, exercising their power, sleeping and dying in that endless
winter.

Fear stimulates the imagination, it seems. When the snake was gone, I
resumed my methodical search of the dead sewer. I didn’t find anything out of
the ordinary. The next day I talked with the coroner again. I asked him to take
another look at the baby’s corpse. At first he looked at me as if I’d gone
insane. Haven’t you got rid of it? he asked. No, I said, I want you to check it
over one more time. Eventually he promised he would, as long as he didn’t have
too much work that day. As I did my rounds, waiting for the coroner’s final
report, I kept looking for a family that had lost a baby in the previous month.
Unfortunately, the work we do, especially those who live near the perimeter,
keeps us constantly on the move, and by then the mother of the dead baby could
well have been digging tunnels or searching for food several miles away.
Unsurprisingly, my inquiries didn’t yield any promising leads.

When I returned to the station I found a note from the coroner—and
another from my commanding officer, asking me why I still hadn’t got rid of the
baby’s corpse. The coroner’s note confirmed his earlier conclusion: there were
no wounds; the cause of death had been hunger and possibly also exposure to the
cold. The little ones are particularly vulnerable to harsh environmental
conditions. I thought about it long and hard. The baby must have cried itself
hoarse, as any baby would in a situation like that. Surely his cries would have
attracted a predator? Why hadn’t they? The killer must have snatched the baby,
then used back ways to reach the dead sewer. And there, he had left the baby
alone and waited for him to die, of natural causes, as it were. Could it have
been the baby-snatcher who later killed Elisa? Yes, that was the most likely
scenario.

Then a question occurred to me, something I hadn’t asked the coroner,
so I got up and went looking for him. On the way, I saw many rats who seemed
carefree or playful or preoccupied with their own problems, scurrying in one
direction or the other. Some of them greeted me warmly. Someone said, Look,
there goes Pepe the Cop. The only thing I could feel was the sweat beginning to
soak all through my fur, as if I’d just crawled out of the stagnant waters of a
dead sewer.

I found the coroner sleeping alongside five or six other rats, all of
them, to judge from their weariness, doctors or medical students. When I roused
him from his sleep he looked at me as if he didn’t know who I was. How many days
did he take to die? I asked him. José, is that you? asked the coroner. What do
you want? How many days does it take a baby to die of hunger? We left the
burrow. Why did I ever become a pathologist? said the coroner. Then he thought
for a while. It depends on the baby’s constitution. Two days or less in some
cases, but a plump, well-nourished baby could last five days or more. And
without drinking? I asked. A bit less, said the coroner. Then he added: I don’t
know what you’re trying to get at. Did he die of hunger or thirst? I asked.
Hunger. Are you sure? As sure as you can be in a case like this, said the
coroner.

Back at the station I got to thinking: the baby had been taken a month
ago and probably took three or four days to die. He must have been crying all
that time. And yet the noise hadn’t attracted any predators. I returned to the
dead sewer once again. This time I knew what I was looking for and it didn’t
take me long to find it: a gag. All the time he was dying, the baby had been
gagged. No, not
all
the time. Every now and then the killer had taken
off the gag and given the baby a drink, or maybe left it on, but soaked the
cloth with water. I picked up what was left of the gag and got out of that dead
sewer.

The coroner was waiting for me at
the station. What did you find there, Pepe? he asked when he saw me. The
gag, I said, handing him the scrap of dirty cloth. The coroner examined it
for a few seconds, without touching it. Is the baby’s body still here? he
asked me. Get rid of it, he said, people are starting to talk about the way
you’re behaving. Talk about or criticize? I asked. It comes to the same
thing, said the coroner before he left. I didn’t feel up to working, but I
pulled myself together and went out. Apart from the usual accidents, which
can be relied upon to blight everything we undertake, it was a routine beat
like any other. When I returned to the station, after hours of exhausting
work, I got rid of the baby’s body. For days there were no new developments.
There were attacks by predators, accidents, old tunnels collapsed, several
of our number were killed by a poison before we could find a way to
neutralize it. Our history consists of the various ways we find to elude the
traps that open endlessly before us. Routine and mettle. Recovering bodies
and recording incidents. Identical, calm days. Until I found the bodies of
two young rats, a female and a male.

I had heard they were missing on
my rounds of the tunnels. The parents weren’t worried; they thought the
young couple had probably decided to go and live together in a different
burrow. But as I was leaving, not overly preoccupied by the double
disappearance, someone who had been friends with them both told me that
neither the young Eustaquio nor the young Marisa had ever expressed any such
wish. They’re just friends, good friends, which is remarkable given
Eustaquio’s peculiarity. And what kind of peculiarity is that? I asked. He
composes and declaims verse, said the friend (so he was obviously unfit for
work). And what about Marisa? Not her, said the friend. What do you mean,
not her? I asked. She doesn’t have any peculiarity like that. To another
police officer, these details would have seemed irrelevant. But my instincts
were alerted. I asked if there was a dead sewer anywhere near the burrow.
They told me that the closest one was a mile away, at a lower level. I set
off in that direction. Along the way I came across an old rat followed by a
group of youngsters. The old guy was warning them about weasels. We said
hello. He was a teacher leading an excursion. The youngsters weren’t ready
yet for work, but nearly. I asked them if they’d noticed anything strange in
the course of their outing. Everything is strange, shouted the old guy, as
we went off in opposite directions, strange is normal, fever is health,
poison is food. Then he burst into cheerful laughter, which went on ringing
in my ears, even when I turned into another passage.

After a while I came to the dead
sewer. Sewers in which the water is stagnant are all pretty much the same,
but I can usually tell, with a fair degree of certainty, whether or not I’ve
been in a particular dead sewer before. That one was unfamiliar. I examined
the entrance for a while, looking for a dry way in. Then I jumped into the
water and swam. As I drew closer I thought I could see waves coming from an
island of detritus. Naturally, I was worried about running into a snake, and
I swam toward the island as quickly as I could. The ground there was soft; I
sunk into a whitish mud up to my knees. The smell was the same as in all the
dead sewers, not decomposing matter so much as the inner essence of
decomposition. I made my way slowly from island to island. Occasionally I
had the impression that something was clutching at my feet, but it was only
trash. On the last island I found the bodies. There was only one wound on
young Eustaquio’s body: his throat was torn open. It was clear that young
Marisa, however, had put up a fight. Her skin was covered with bites. I
found blood on her teeth and claws, from which it was simple to deduce that
the killer had been wounded. I struggled with the bodies one at a time, and
finally got them out of the sewer. Then I tried to transport them to the
nearest settlement, carrying one for fifty yards, putting it down, going
back for the other. At one point, as I was going back for young Marisa’s
body, I saw a white snake that had come out of the canal and was heading
toward her. I froze. The snake wrapped itself twice around her body, then
crushed it. When it began to swallow her, I turned and ran to where I’d left
Eustaquio. I wanted to scream. But I didn’t even let out a
whimper.

From that day on, I intensified my
investigations. I was no longer satisfied with routine police work:
patrolling the perimeter and dealing with problems that anyone with a
modicum of common sense could solve. Every day I went out to the furthest
burrows. I engaged their inhabitants in the most trivial conversations. I
discovered a colony of rat-moles living among us, performing the lowliest
tasks. I met an old white mouse, a white mouse who couldn’t remember his
age. In his youth he had been inoculated with a contagious disease, along
with many of his kind, white mice who had been imprisoned and then released
into the sewers in the hope of killing us all. Many died, said the white
mouse, who could barely move, but the black rats and the white mice
interbred, we fucked like crazy (as only those who are close to death can
fuck) and in the end not only did the black rats become immune, but a new
species also emerged: brown rats, resistant to any infection, any alien
virus.

I liked that old white mouse who
was born, so he said, in a laboratory on the surface. The light is blinding
up there, he said, so bright that the surface dwellers don’t even appreciate
it. Have you been to the sewer mouths, Pepe? Yes, once or twice, I replied.
So you’ve seen the river that the sewers all flow into, you’ve seen the
reeds, the pale sand? Yes, but always at night, I replied. So you’ve seen
the moonlight shimmering on the river? I didn’t really notice the moonlight.
What did you notice, then, Pepe? The barking of the dogs, the packs of dogs
that live by the river. The moonlight too, I admitted, but I couldn’t really
enjoy the view. The moon is exquisite, said the white mouse; if someone were
to ask me where I’d like to live, I would reply without hesitation: the
moon.

Like a moon-dweller I patrolled
the sewers and underground drains. After a while I found another victim. As
before, the killer had left the body in a dead sewer. I picked it up and
carried it to the station. That night I spoke with the coroner again. I
pointed out the similarity between the tear in the throat and the other
victims’ wounds. It could be a coincidence, he said. And whatever’s doing
this doesn’t eat them, I said. The coroner examined the body. Look at the
wound, I said. Tell me what kind of teeth rip the skin like that. Any kind,
any kind, said the coroner. No, not any kind, look carefully. What do you
want me to say? said the coroner. The truth, I said. And what is the truth,
in your opinion? I think these wounds were made by a rat, I said. But rats
don’t kill rats, said the coroner, looking at the body again. This one does,
I said. Then I went to work and when I returned to the station I found the
coroner and the chief commissioner waiting for me. The commissioner didn’t
beat around the bush. He asked me where I’d got the crazy idea that a rat
had been responsible for the crimes. He wanted to know if I had shared my
suspicions with anyone else. He warned me not to. Stop fantasizing, Pepe, he
said, and concentrate on doing your job. Real life is complicated enough
without inventing unreal things that are bound to throw it out of joint. I
was dead tired; I asked him what he meant by
out of joint
. I mean, said the commissioner, looking at
the coroner as if to seek his approval and adopting a deep and gentle tone
of voice, that in life, especially if it’s short, as our lives unfortunately
are, we should strive for order, not disorder, and especially not an
imaginary disorder. The coroner looked at me gravely and nodded. I nodded
too.