ESTÊVÃO SANTORO (interrupts fervently): Tell me how it feels!
ROSA IMACULADA (taken aback): Excuse me?
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO (impatiently): Tell me how the new heart feels.
And this is the critical moment, although neither knows it yet, the moment that could have been nothing more than one small, strange twist in a discussion, the content of which has otherwise been more light small talk than emotional confessions, which is more than desirable in these unique circumstances: a certain safe superficiality, a distance . . . acknowledge the facts . . . respect each other’s grief and understand each other’s relief . . . Rosa could have responded with something vague such as “Well, it’s in there pumping away,” or “It’s big, but I’m already used to it,” or “Sometimes I forget the whole thing happened,” (although this might have been an insulting response in this situation) but no, Rosa didn’t evade the question. Instead of politely sidestepping it, she approached it head on. For a long time she was quiet, observing an entire spectrum of expressions on Estêvão Santoro’s face, impatience turning to curiosity, curiosity turning back to annoyance, annoyance to embarrassment, and embarrassment to empty horror (an expression that anyone who has lost a loved one tragically recognizes on the faces of her companions in misfortune but outsiders usually interpret as arrogance or rejection), and, this has been proven time and time again, empty horror is only a short journey from remorse, which can reach the level of “I wish I had never been born.” But Rosa did not allow Mr. Santoro to fall to the bottom of the well of remorse. Instead she made a move that changed EVERYTHING.
ROSA IMACULADA: Would you like to touch it?
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: Excuse me?
ROSA IMACULADA: You can place your hand on it.
Rosa moves her stool closer to the couch, and Estêvão Santoro mechanically extends his hand toward Rosa’s chest. Rosa grabs his hand and guides it to the right place.
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO (in an almost piping, little boy’s voice): I don’t feel anything . . .
ROSA IMACULADA: Put your hand under the shirt. No reason to be shy.
Estêvão Santoro obediently slips his hand under Rosa’s red and white striped negligée shirt. The hand is large and clammy. When Santoro’s hand is in the right place, Rosa presses her own hand on top of it. On Murilo’s heart. Yes: Murilo’s heart, not hers. Rosa is sure of that now. The new heart has been sewn into her chest and there it is, a kind and compliant creature, because it doesn’t reject her, but something is still wrong. The heart is becoming part of her in a way no one told her about before the surgery . . . There are things Rosa has never told anyone. Not the doctors, not her friends, and not her grandmother—least of all her. Every once in a while, the new heart plays nasty tricks on her. It sort of sends messages. Not like Lula (Lula doesn’t talk to her any more) but in a very different way. Not with words but with actions. It makes her think about things she’d prefer not to think about. It forces her to feel strange feelings. Example No. 1: For many nights she has been having a dream of an extremely beautiful girl who lives in a large, white house behind a wall. She’s come to visit the girl. She climbs the winding stairs to the girl’s room, and they exchange a few insignificant pleasantries (“Hello”, “How are you?”, “Did you miss me?” and so forth). Then, without further discussion, she tumbles the girl on the violet-colored silk sheets and slips her finger under her panties into her wet, nearly ready pussy. With her other hand she removes her shorts, climbs onto the girl, and after pushing into her begins a rapid series of movements. She thrusts, rams, and twists herself inside the girl, lithely rotating her sporty rump. She nibbles the girl’s lips with her teeth and sucks on her neck with her lips and pulls the girl to sit on top of her. She wets her thumb with her own saliva and shoves it in the girl’s anus so deep that she reaches the wall between the vagina and the rectum. With her first two fingers she massages the girl’s perineum, rotating the thumb against the rectal wall at the place she can feel her own organ doing its piston motion . . . Her penis swells even more, grinding brutally against the thumb as if wanting to push it away, but the thumb only presses more violently back . . . and so the thumb and forefinger and middle finger and the whole hand squeeze and knead and rock the now dripping almost-woman lost in abandon in her lap . . . And every time, at exactly this spot, the girl completely goes off the rails. She screams and rises and pushes down and rises and pushes down and rises and crashes down and moans and comes, and at that moment she wakes up to her own orgasm with her lower abdomen wet, her whole body hot and sweaty and pulsating, and she doesn’t understand, truly doesn’t understand, not until NOW, now that she has seen Murilo’s photograph, her own nocturnal self . . .
ROSA IMACULADA: Can you feel the pulse?
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: Sort of . . .
Suddenly Rosa pushes the man’s hand away and pulls her shirt off.
ROSA IMACULADA: Put your ear against my breast. Then you’ll hear it.
Estêvão Santoro does as ordered and hears the sound, TuTUM, tuTum, TUtum, tuTUM, and begins to sob. Rosa strokes his hair.
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO (sobbing): What is it like . . . now that it’s there?
ROSA IMACULADA (in a quiet, calm voice): It’s big, bigger than my own was. They had to put it in deeper, and that’s why it felt strange at first, kind of heavy and occupying too much space. At first I
