Rosa Imaculada received a new heart and survived it.
Rosa Imaculada also received much more than a new heart, and that she did not survive.
But now Rosa rocks Ulrike in her lap like a rocking chair on a spring, lost in entirely other thoughts. What lovely things Thereza had done with the five hundred thousand reais her son had left her through the medium!
The gall of bitterness wells within Rosa. If she had found half a million reais in her sheets, she wouldn’t be in this fix right now, that was for sure. She would be at home with her son and grandmother, recovering from major surgery, and she wouldn’t have had to worry for a moment about her income. She would have been able to recover in peace. The operation itself had gone remarkably well, and Rosa hadn’t suffered from any rejection symptoms. On the contrary: the new heart had pretended to become a seamless part of her. It hadn’t just taken the place of the removed heart, it had taken over everything. It began to pump strange thoughts into her body. And then things started happening. Bad things. Because of money problems.
If Rosa Imaculada had had half a million reais, she never would have opened the door of her home to Estêvão Santoro again. She would have stood tall and in a resolute voice said, “Enough. Dear Estêvão Santoro, my words are insufficient to say how grateful I am to you and your son Murilo, whose heart now beats in my chest. I can never express how sorry I am for his death and your loss. But dear, good Mr. Estêvão Santoro, now you must seek help for your sorrow elsewhere. I must focus on recovering and on my little son. These are the most important things in my life right now.”
But Rosa Imaculada never said those words to Estêvão Santoro. She didn’t have half a million reais, so she opened the door of her home to this father who had lost his son. This father who was the grandson of a rubber baron and who was swimming in cash. She opened her door, and she opened it so many times that she lost count.
If only she’d had money wrapped in a sheet . . .
Because Ulrike has calmed down and because Rosa’s eyes have stopped glittering, Shlomith sees fit to open her mouth. Let Rosa tell her moving story about her heart now. She is clearly in an amenable mood. Let Rosa tell about her death and about Esteban Santiago, or whatever the man’s name was, the man whose name Rosa repeats in her fits of madness and who has clearly done her much evil.
It is obvious that no matter what direction Rosa Imaculada’s story takes, she will become so thoroughly emotional about her own tale that calming her down will take the “rest of the day”. The thought of that feels, as theoretical as it is, somehow comforting, and comfort is what Shlomith longs for now more than anything else. In order to receive comfort herself, she is prepared to comfort her afterworldly sister as she convulses with no tears. In fact she practically longs for Rosa’s grief, which might go dry in time as well. Like tears, secretions, pain and ecstasy went dry. She waits with more anticipation for Rosa’s grief than for perhaps any of the scraps of story she has heard, which quite frankly she could never understand in the least. Even Nina didn’t understand Rosa’s stories, despite having practiced “a little fado” for her “own enjoyment” long ago (or so Nina claimed, although she would never agree to sing a single line for them). Rosa’s torrent of words only left behind snatches of detail that never joined together in any imaginable way, and two names which repeated persistently, little Davi and this Esteban or Eduardo, who, as Shlomith understands it, knocked at Rosa’s door over and over and who, of this Shlomith is more or less sure, bought something with his cold, hard cash that she didn’t ultimately want to sell to him.
THE STORY OF THE HEART
The heart located and working on the left side of Rosa Imaculada’s rib cage was, in principle, when viewed superficially, almost normal: two atria, two ventricles, valves, veins, arteries, and aorta. But it wasn’t an entirely normal heart, because for some unknown reason, the left ventricle began to expand, and the heart muscle couldn’t pump blood at its previous efficiency. That was where Rosa’s troubles started.
The woman who surrounded the heart was at least as extraordinary as her recalcitrant organ. At first glance she too could have been almost anyone. She was not particularly striking or of sufficient visual caliber to attract many lingering stares, but she was also not insignificant. Definitely not that. Rosa was fleshy without being slack. Black hair plaited in innumerable small braids framed a face that had an
