I got into the water there, and swam toward a bank of accumulated rotting trash, and when I reached it I had to climb up a beach of filth. Beyond the bank, above water level, I could see the thick bars at the top of the sewer’s entrance. For a moment I was afraid I might find the predator huddled in some corner, feasting on the body of the hapless Elisa. But I could hear nothing, so I kept going.
A few minutes later, among cardboard boxes and old food cans, I found the girl’s body left in one of the few relatively dry parts of the sewer.
Elisa’s neck was torn open. Apart from that, I couldn’t see any other wound. In one of the cans I found the remains of a baby rat. I examined them: dead for at least a month. I searched the surroundings but couldn’t detect the slightest trace of the predator. The baby’s corpse was complete. The only wound on poor Elisa’s body was the one that had killed her. I began to think that perhaps it hadn’t been a predator. Then I put the girl on my back and picked up the baby in my mouth, trying not to damage his skin with my sharp teeth. I retreated from the dead sewer and returned to the pioneers’ burrow. Elisa’s mother was large and strong, one of those specimens who can face up to a cat, but when she saw the body of her daughter, she burst into long sobs that made her companions blush. I showed them the body of the baby and asked them if they knew anything about him. No one knew anything, no child had been lost. I said that I had to take both bodies to the station. I asked for help. The mother carried Elisa’s body. I carried the baby. When we left, the pioneers returned to work, digging tunnels, looking for food.
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.