Horacio Castellanos Moya - Dance With Snakes

“Good morning, ladies,” I said. I lay down on a blanket to keep reading the letters and, to my great delight, I found Don Jacinto’s supply of rum next to me. I drank from a bottle, lit another cigarette and started to read. It was a typical tale of romance between a chief accountant and his secretary, both married, he, middle-aged, and she, in the prime of her youth. “It couldn’t have been just a soap opera story. Something more profound, more devastating must have happened to poor Don Jacinto,” I said to Beti.

She raised her flat head, narrowed her eyes even further, and wagged her forked tongue. “They killed her.”

“What!” I exclaimed, surprised that they already knew the whole story.

“Her husband killed her when he found out she was cheating on him with Don Jacinto,” she explained.

I took another long swig from the bottle. I put the letters and the other documents back in the glove compartment. It would be better if the ladies told me Don Jacinto’s story.

“He had her killed,” Valentina clarified, without moving. She was stretched out from under the steering wheel all the way to the back of the car.

Suddenly I realized that I was covered in sweat. Judging by the sweltering heat, it might have been noon already.

“He never told us the details,” Beti said. “He’d only say that the husband had her killed in a staged robbery.”

So that was the burden that Don Jacinto had been carrying, I thought.

“But that wasn’t all,” Loli murmured indignantly, without uncurling herself. “The husband told Don Jacinto’s wife and daughter the whole story, including the murder, to make sure he really destroyed him.”

That was when I heard the sound of someone circling the car, banging on the body, asking where the old heap had come from. I slipped a piece of the cardboard back from the driver’s side window. It was a pair of security guards from the mall. What a nuisance. The best thing would be to wait until they got tired of being out in the sun and went to eat. Carmela tensed. She was upright and started to hiss.

“Relax,” I whispered, “they’re going to leave.”

But they weren’t leaving. They were talking about calling a tow truck to take the car out of the parking lot. A piece of junk like this went against the shopping mall’s regulations, and if one of the bosses caught them doing nothing about it, they’d be reprimanded.

I got out of the car.

Surprised, they looked at me with a distrust that quickly turned to hostility. They ordered me to leave the parking lot immediately — this was private property, not a homeless shelter. I told them that I was just going to the supermarket to buy a bottle of water, but they said I was in no condition to walk down the aisles. What would decent people say? Hadn’t I noticed what I looked like? Couldn’t I smell the stink? They stood in front of me with their hands on their clubs, determined not to let me pass, to force me to leave. But I’d carelessly left the car door open. And the ladies couldn’t stand it. That was why Don Jacinto had always closed it so quickly when he got out of the car.

The security guards weren’t so composed once they saw that Beti had got out and was slithering towards them, hissing, her flat head raised, her eyes deadlier than ever. Terrified, they took off like a shot. But Carmela had a different nature; she was barely out of the car when she threw herself in the air and wrapped her body around one of guards’ neck. He couldn’t even defend himself. The impact and the pressure on his windpipe killed him instantly.

“That’s enough,” I said, so they’d get back in the car.

But Valentina said they’d come with me to get water; it had been a long time since they’d been out for a stroll and they were sick of being cooped up in the car. I told them to be discreet and try not to make a racket. It’d be best if they followed underneath the cars while I looked for a faucet to fill up the bottles. Then they should go back to the Chevrolet. But there wasn’t a tap anywhere in that vast expanse of pavement, at least not one that I could find, so I decided to go to the supermarket. I went into the mall and, to my great surprise, I saw that the four of them were right behind me, smugly following me down the corridor in single file. This caused quite a fuss. Terrified people ran screaming into the stores. There was no turning back now. I was dying of thirst and I had to get to the supermarket. The problem was that all the commotion was affecting the ladies, especially Loli, the shy one. She hurled herself onto an elegant woman who was coming out of a small and very exclusive boutique, unaware of the disturbance, and bit her on the calf. Stiff with fear, the woman shrieked and fell to the ground, convulsing and foaming at the mouth until she turned purple and was still.

The mall was suddenly empty, and we turned and filed into the entrance of the supermarket. I ran, because a security guard was hurrying to close the glass doors, but Beti was quicker and threw herself onto his wrist. He rolled around on the ground, howling. He tried to pull out his gun but was overcome with violent shaking. He banged his head twice on the ground and stayed down. The frightened customers were running towards the back of the grocery store. Valentina slid majestically over to them. I drank a bottle of water, then grabbed another and went to get cigarettes, loaves of bread, and some cans of tuna and sardines. Before I walked over to the exit, I spotted Valentina crushing the neck of a young guy who looked like a gang member. Back in the mall, the alarms wailed and I moved quickly, aware that the police would arrive any minute. A security guard at a jewellery store managed to open the plate glass door halfway. He took a shot in my direction, but in that instant, the ladies caught up with me and, furious, they turned to face him. We rushed to the Chevrolet. I took the cardboard from the windshield, sat on the stool, started the car and headed for the exit.

I drove calmly. I even removed the cardboard from the driver’s side window and opened it so we could get a little air. The four of them were looking at me, surprised. Beti said they’d never seen so much excitement in so little time. I smiled, pleased to see them happy. I reached for the bottle of rum and took a big swallow. I lit a cigarette. Then I realized that I was driving towards the suburb where Don Jacinto’s wife surely still lived. I opened the glove compartment, took out the registration and read the exact address. It was easy to find the house. I parked in front and covered the windshield and window again. I was about to get out, when Beti stopped me.

“You aren’t just going to leave us here, are you?”

I told her that if I showed up with the likes of them, Don Jacinto’s wife would die of fright and then I wouldn’t be able to tell her what had become of the old man.

Loli muttered that it wasn’t fair to leave them shut up in the car; they’d known Don Jacinto longer than I had and they wanted to meet his wife and daughter. Carmela agreed and Valentina shot me a pleading look. I told them I would take them on condition that they stay hidden and not let themselves be seen by anyone in the house. They agreed. I opened the car door and they got out. I lost sight of them.

I rang the bell. From behind the door, a woman’s voice asked me who I was. I said I had an urgent message from Don Jacinto Bustillo. She opened the door partway, without undoing the chain. She looked at me with displeasure and then noticed the yellow Chevrolet.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I repeated that I had a message from Don Jacinto for his wife. She told me that he’d disappeared, that he might be dead, that he had no wife now. Although she was looking at me with disdain, I could tell that she was the one I’d been looking for.