“In his house, the dead man waits dreaming.”
“That’s all these stupid shits know how to say!” the priest cried, and Marina, who had reached out her arm to help him up from the floor, recoiled. “Filthy, defiled retards! So they sent that whore they got pregnant to talk to you, and that was all it took to get you to come? I didn’t think you were that stupid.”
In the distance, Marina heard drums. The murga, she thought, relieved. It was February. Of course. That was it. The people had gone to practice the murga for carnival, or maybe they were already celebrating in the soccer field over by the train tracks.
“He’s holed up in one of the houses back behind the tracks. He lives there, with his friends.” But how did the priest know about the pregnant girl?
It was the murga, she was sure. The Villa had a traditional troupe and they always celebrated carnival. It was a little early, but it was possible. And the cow’s head must be a gift from one of the neighborhood drug dealers, meant to intimidate. They hated Father Francisco because he reported them to the police or tried to rehabilitate the addicted kids, which meant taking away their customers and employees.
“You have to get out of here, Francisco,” she told him.
The priest laughed.
“I tried. I tried! But there’s no getting out. You’re not going to get out either. That boy woke up the thing sleeping under the water. Don’t you hear them? The cult of the dead? Don’t you hear the drums?”
“It’s carnival.”
“Carnival? Does that sound like carnival to you?”
“You’re drunk. How did you know about the pregnant girl?”
“That’s no carnival.”
The priest stood up and tried to light a cigarette.
“You know, for years I thought that rotten river was a sign of our ineptitude. How we never think about the future. Sure, we’ll just toss all the muck in here, let the river wash it away! We never think about the consequences. A country full of incompetents. But now I see things differently, Marina. Those people were being responsible when they polluted that river. They were covering something up, something they didn’t want to let out, and they buried it under layers and layers of oil and mud! They even clogged the river with boats! Just left them there, deadlocked!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb. You were never stupid. The police started throwing people in there because they are stupid. And most of the people they threw in died, but some of them found it. Do you know the kind of foulness that reaches us here? The shit from all the houses, all the filth from the sewers, everything! Layers and layers of filth to keep it dead or asleep. It’s the same thing, I believe sleep and death are the same thing. And it worked, until people started to do the unthinkable: they swam under the black water. And they woke the thing up. Do you know what Emanuel means? It means ‘God is with us.’ The problem is, what God are we talking about?”
“You’re talking bullshit, that’s the problem. Let’s go, I’m getting you out of here.”
The priest started to rub his eyes so hard Marina was afraid he would tear his corneas. The blind, deformed child had turned around and now had his back to them, his forehead against the wall.
“They set him on me to guard me. He’s their son.”
Marina tried to piece together what was really happening: the priest, hounded by those who hated him in the Villa, had gone crazy. The deformed child, who’d surely been abandoned by his family, followed him everywhere because he had no one else. The neighborhood people had taken their music and their barbecues to the carnival festivities. It was all frightening, but it wasn’t impossible. There was no dead boy walking around, there was no death cult.
But why were there no religious images? And why had the priest talked about Emanuel when she hadn’t even asked?
It doesn’t matter, we’re leaving, thought Marina, and she grabbed the priest’s arm so he could lean on her to walk, since he was too drunk to do it alone. That was a mistake. She had no time to react; the priest was drunk, but his movement when he grabbed her gun was surprisingly fast and precise. She couldn’t even fight back, nor did she see that the deformed child had turned around and started screaming mutely. His mouth was open and he screamed without a sound.
The priest pointed the gun at her. She looked around, her heart pummeling her ribs, her mouth dry. She couldn’t escape; he was drunk, he might miss, but it wasn’t likely in such a small space. She started to plead, but he interrupted her.
“I don’t want to kill you. I want to thank you.”
And then he wasn’t pointing the gun at her. He lowered it and then quickly raised it again, put it in his mouth, and fired.
The shot left Marina deaf. The priest’s brains now covered part of the nonsense letters, and the boy repeated: “In his house, the dead man waits dreaming.” He had trouble with the r sound, though, and he pronounced it “dweaming.” Marina didn’t try to help the priest; there was no chance he’d survived the shot. She took the gun from his hand and couldn’t help thinking that her prints were everywhere, that she could be accused of killing him. Shitty priest, shitty slum, why was she even there? To prove what, and to whom? The gun was trembling in her hand, now covered in blood. She didn’t know how she was going to go home with her hands all bloodied. She had to find clean water.
When she emerged from the church she realized she was crying, and that the Villa wasn’t empty anymore. Her deafness after the gunshot had made her think the drums were still far away, but she was wrong. The murga was passing right in front of the church. Only it was clear now that it wasn’t a murga. It was a procession. A line of people playing the same loud snare drums as in the murga, led by deformed children with their skinny arms and mollusk fingers, followed by women, most of them fat, their bodies disfigured by a diet based on carbs. There were some men, just a few, and Marina recognized among them some policemen she knew; she even thought she recognized Súarez, with his dark hair slicked back and wearing his uniform, violating his house arrest.
After them came the idol, which they were carrying on a bed. That was what it was: a bed, complete with a mattress. Marina couldn’t see the figure clearly; it was lying down. It was human-sized. She had once seen something similar during Holy Week, effigies of Jesus just taken down from the cross, blood on white cloth, something between a bed and a coffin.
She moved closer to the procession, though everything told her she should run in the opposite direction. She wanted to see what was lying on the bed.