HEART, OH HEART!
Rosa Imaculada manages to calm Ulrike. Rosa Imaculada, who has a tendency to hysterical reactions, is as cool as a cucumber this time. Astutely, Rosa goes and sits next to Ulrike and wraps her arm around the girl. She is not even startled when she barely feels Ulrike’s slim figure as she hugs her. Ulrike is softer than cotton to her, and soon she won’t even be that, Rosa has finally realized. Soon she won’t be able to feel anyone. She won’t even be able to touch herself with so much as the brush of a feather.
Then, as if some divine wisdom has descended in the form of a tiny fairy on the lips of that normally hot-headed woman, Rosa begins to explain, in cheerful Portuguese-laced English, an idea that she has obviously been bouncing around in her head for more than a few moments. The idea runs more or less along these lines: not breathing is just as normal here as breathing was there. While before we breathed and didn’t think about breathing, now we don’t breathe and we don’t think about not breathing. Cês entendem, né? This material around us, esta substância maldita, is some sort of cursed substance that influences us in a very strange way. If we could take a piece of it with us in the moment we’re snatched back to where we came from—at this point Rosa Imaculada gives a wink that assures victory—the learning of the entire earth would be overturned. All of science would have to be rewritten!
Rosa Imaculada’s eyes gleam. She sees the sparkle of flashbulbs and jostling crowds of reporters as they all, all seven, step back into the world. She sees it as clearly as if she were watching the television news. She sees them appear, one by one, on the surface of the earth like the thirty-two Chilean miners trapped in the San José copper-gold mine (along with one Bolivian), whose rescue operation she had watched unceasingly, as she lay in her bed awaiting death or salvation. In order to save those thirty-three legendary heroes, an unearthly, demanding drilling operation was carried out—and at this point Rosa Imaculada’s gaze suddenly begins to blur. Of course they wouldn’t be drilled out, since they weren’t below ground. Where would they come from then? And where in the world would they pop out?
The beautiful picture begins to fade. The women, she along with the others, fade somewhere into the background like fluttering astral beings. In the foreground, a massive shuttle-shaped rescue capsule appears, which one by one disgorges dirty men stained by the dark underworld, to thunderous applause.
Rosa strains to see the women coming back. Shoo, away, you miners! This welcome is for her and those six others! They would come one at a time, in order of arrival, a happy smile on their lips: first skeleton-thin Shlomith (not Florencio Ávalos), then one-shoed Polina (not Mario Sepúlveda), then she herself (not Juan Illanes), Nina with her baby belly (not Carlos Mamani), and after Nina, poor mute, bald Wlibgis (not Jimmy Sánchez). After Wlibgis, graceful Maimuna would appear (not Osmán Araya), and finally beautiful Ulrike (not José Ojeda).
And they begin to come, and unfortunately, it looks ridiculous. They don’t glide smoothly to the ground, they fall headlong, collapsing on each other like rag dolls thrown angrily in the air. There are no hurrahs or clapping. Instead they are laughed at. Pictures are taken of them, and it will only be a matter of time before they are published on the cover of a tabloid.
Rosa shakes her head in irritation: NOT LIKE THAT! Hesitancy begins to draw ugly creases in her face—how in the world will they come back to earth?
But then, as if the tiny invisible fairy had whispered the answer in her ear, she understands: they will materialize! This insight shakes Rosa, and joy spreads across her face once more, the wrinkles smoothing and a glint returning to her eyes. Why didn’t she realize this before? There will be no flopping. They will simply appear. They will materialize out of thin air. That is exactly how they will return to the old world!
Rosa already possesses an abundance of knowledge about these things. In a certain telenovela, there had been a medium who began excreting ectoplasm after a sitting. The clear goop took the shape of a hand that could write! The ectoplasm excreted by the medium covered an invisible hand that had an important message for a woman participating in the séance who had been crushed by grief. Thereza was her name, and her son had died from a police bullet in the previous episode. She wanted to tell her son, I love you, você tá no meu coração: you will always be in my heart. And so the medium’s ectoplasm hand wrote the son’s response: Go home, open the linen closet, and spread out the bottom sheet. And the woman did so. And in the folds of the sheet she found half a million in one hundred Brazilian real bills!
Rosa Imaculada rocks Ulrike in her arms and forgets everything. She forgets the glare of the flashes and the reporters swarming around with their mouths opening with questions. She forgets the miners, the Florencios, the Marios, and the Juans, who at least had a place even if it was located seven hundred meters underground, a place they could come from and a place from which others wanted them to emerge. A place where supplies to meet their desires were sent. Well, not alcohol of course, but food, drink, medicine, tobacco, and all sorts of harmless entertainments. Amazing Chilean Babe Named Bianca Bends Over! Because the most important thing was that those industrious men stayed healthy and didn’t go crazy in that enclosed space.
