But the girls weren’t there. Nor were they at the other outdoor café they often hung out at.
“Where are those tramps?”
“They must be somewhere.”
Hunger was snapping at their heels. They spent an hour searching for them, flummoxed. They tried, with no luck, to pick up another group of girls at a café and very nearly caused a fight at a bar they ended up getting kicked out of. Lust abated slightly in the face of reality, but not rage. Rage was still there, frozen, like a feeling superior to all others.
“Let’s go back to the estuary and set a boat on fire,” Pablo said.
But on their way to the estuary, they saw a shadow in the distance. An awkward shape lumbering toward them, emerging from the dark.
“No fucking way.”
“What?”
“It’s Marita.”
Sometimes the memory begins there, in that final, softly-illuminated shadow on the esplanade, on tiles white as blocks of ice, as if there were not one dock but dozens, hundreds of rows of docks, all lined up and glazed by the electric light of the street lamps lining the way. Other times the memory begins later, when they’re already heading into the dunes. Marita’s feet, from behind, are clumsily large, as are her arms, their volume disproportionate to any other part of her body. She’s wearing a maroon skirt and a blue Tshirt that don’t match, and black flip-flops with the Brazilian flag on them. Every time she takes a step, he can see the flags on the soles of her flip-flops. She’s a sullen person — not a person but a cylinder of flesh all out of proportion — and bulges out here and there as she walks. In the memory, he’s behind her for a time and then he moves up beside her. Or is she the one who moves beside him? It’s odd — during that space of time there is almost no sign of Marcos, Pablo, Tejas, or Rivero. And, when he looks at her, her mouth is more lusterless and rougher than it ever has been before, like a low sound in the middle of an inexpressive face. Most of the time, though, the memory is not made up of images but of sensations. The plants and branches in the memory are a tangle of dense, jungle-like vegetation that obeys a law of its own, one that has nothing to do with him. It’s as if the world itself were at a critical juncture in the memory, unable to keep going, as if norms and infractions were suspended there, or had conspired to create a strange testing ground, a zero-gravity capsule. In the memory his heart is cold, like an actor in a movie who he knows doesn’t have long to live.
It’s strange, too — he’s not sure if Marita protested right away or not; that’s one thing his memory has erased completely. He doesn’t know what they told her exactly, whether it was him or one of the others, what deceit set her in motion off toward the dunes. They must have spoken, there had to have been some prior conversation, some lie. But the lie, too, is missing from his memory, it’s disappeared. All he knows is that Rivero, when they’re walking toward the dunes, is telling Marita a story about some monkeys that escaped from the zoo, a monkey revolution, all the monkeys jumping the wall, helping one another escape, the city overrun by their screeching.
“Can you believe that?”
“Tell me again.”
Marita likes having stories told to her. Later, he would search the internet, unable to find it, the implausible tale of the monkey rebellion. Rivero tells it again.
“They all escaped, can you believe it? Hundreds of monkeys jumping around, stealing kids’ candy, pinching old ladies.”
Marita laughs. Then comes another blank in the memory, something avoided, the leap between the end of the esplanade and the start of the dunes. And suddenly all six of them are walking through the pine trees in silence, the sound of the waves in the distance. By the time they sit down, it’s all already begun. Rivero says, “Suck my dick, Marita, show these clowns how good you do it. Like the other day, remember?”
And Marita replies, “I don’t want to.”
In the memory, the violence doesn’t begin right away. There’s a lapse during which everything is still familiar and run-of-the-mill, like a trite conversation. Why does he feel like there’s even a point when they laugh? Nervous laughter, like someone shaking them awake. Marita struggles a little at first, and Rivero falls onto the sand beside her. Pablo and Marcos spring to his aid, and Marita stops moving immediately.
“It’s going to hurt more if you act like that,” Rivero says.
He takes off her panties.
The truth is he doesn’t know if that’s how it goes or not. His powerlessness, the concrete, physical reality of the situation, his nervousness, it all blends together a little. In his memory he can still hear the sea in the distance, hear it at regular, rhythmic intervals, like the whiteness of Rivero’s buttocks thrusting in and out between Marita’s legs. She doesn’t make a sound. The horror does not dissipate in the memory; it is, in fact, the only fixed image — powerless, frozen horror. The pounding of his nerves and heart is so intense it almost leaves marks on his hands, on his skin, everything seems about to meld, everything except for the bodies. Rivero gets up and Pablo crouches down. The scene is repeated. Suddenly there is a fetid, ocean smell, like rotting seaweed, a concentrated, ceremonious stench. Pablo has taken off his jeans and underwear. They’re balled up on the ground beside his flip-flops, buttons glinting like fish eyes in the night. He has a hard time fixing his gaze on those two flapping bodies and instead looks a foot or two beyond them, at the reeds where Marita’s panties lie. Blue panties with a nonsensical pattern. Pablo moans when he finishes, and Tejas crouches down. The operation is repeated once more, but this time it takes far longer. Marita, each time someone finishes, tugs down her skirt timidly, without moving. Tejas is on top of her now, like a stubborn child hell-bent on breaking an indestructible toy. There is a peculiar stagnation in the air, there among the pines, as Tejas raises himself up on his arms and then lets his body drop, again and again, and a fleeting sense, very faint, of the sound of flesh slapping, which lasts several minutes.
“Come on, man.”
“Leave me alone, asshole.”
He is still motionless, it’s as if he’s present but has not entirely taken shape, like a ghost who refuses to materialize. If he moves a little, turns slightly toward the beach that’s visible out beyond the pine trees, the feeling becomes somewhat more pronounced, and he gazes attentively into the distance as though trying in vain to remember something, a name. If he turns back to them, the feeling reappears, but chaotic, like a simple fact, enduring, overcome, crowded by the presence of many other feelings. Tejas moans when he comes. Marcos crouches down. In the intervening moments, he sees Marita’s face for a second, a millisecond. A face seemingly many miles away, a face engulfed. Next will come his turn; he thinks of that for the first time right then, disgusted, and the idea leaves him almost dizzy. His body had never felt that before. Fascination had never been mixed with repulsion, or sorrow, or absence. Marita gives a little shriek and says for the first time, “You’re hurting me.”