Estêvão Santoro jerks his head away.
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: What do you mean?
ROSA IMACULADA: I have dreams of Murilo with his girlfriend. I just realized it. It’s him, definitely him. We have . . . I’m sure you can guess what. (Rosa begins to pull her shirt back on.)
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: You can’t be serious!
ROSA IMACULADA: The girl has long, shiny brown hair. She’s really cute. From a rich family. The house is so splendid. In the dream I climb a spiral staircase. The steps are marble. The railing is like gold. The girl lives with her parents. She has her own room on the top floor, a fine four-poster bed, and violet silk sheets . . . And, don’t misunderstand, I don’t like women that way.
Estêvão Santoro stares at Rosa with an incredulous look on his face.
ROSA IMACULADA: And that isn’t all. I have new, strange desires. I crave chargrilled chicken skin . . .
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: I don’t believe you! That was Murilo’s favorite!
ROSA IMACULADA: . . . which I couldn’t eat before. Anything burned tasted horrible to me. And what about this: grunge rock, like Autoramas. Before I detested it; now I like it. Beer. Football. And the most incomprehensible of all: Marmite. I hadn’t even heard of it before, and now I could eat it straight out of the jar with a spoon.
Estêvão Santoro collapses deep in the corner of the sofa, his red BOW TIE now askew. His shocked expression confirms that each item Rosa listed was correct: chicken, rock music, beer, football, Marmite—bingo! Santoro takes the rust-colored handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabs his brow. Rosa feels tired, at once heavy and light. She has said out loud the thing that has been bothering her for months. She has also received an explanation, and that brings on a faintness, making her afraid and disgusted, and (as even the most crushing diagnosis also comforts with the knowledge of where the tormenting symptoms are coming from) it also calms her: it will never just be “her”, Rosa Imaculada, again. Always and forever it will be “they”, Rosa and Murilo . . .
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: Rosa—may I call you Rosa? (Rosa nods)—I have to go rest. I’m sure you’ll understand how shocked I am. But I want to hear more. (Begins digging in his pants pocket.) Take this money; no, don’t object, Rosa dear, I know that you need it. I want to . . . Somehow I want to make up for this . . . and the conversations we will have . . . You have information about my son . . . that I need . . . you understand . . . I want to know more about him . . .
Rosa nods. Both stand up, shake hands, laugh nervously, and hug. Rosa escorts Estêvão Santoro to the door.
ROSA IMACULADA: Please do come again. Where are you staying?
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: Near Pelourinho. In a hotel named Beija Flor. Here’s my card with my number if you want to call and talk.
ROSA IMACULADA: Wait a moment.
Rosa turns away, rips the white order coupon off the back of a Claudia magazine sitting on the table, and writes her own phone number on it.
ROSA IMACULADA: I’m usually home, but it would be a good idea to make sure. Goodbye.
ESTÊVÃO SANTORO: Goodbye, Rosa. Remember to take good care of yourself.
ONEIRON: THE FIRST VICTIM
Oooon . . . ei-ron!
The women stare at Rosa Imaculada, whose eyes gape wide as she says the strange word. They didn’t expect this. They had imagined, and with good reason, that Rosa was trying to tell them about her heart operation again, about her child, about that strange man who invaded her home. Some of the women had even been ready with questions to give the story a direction. (Nina: What did he want from you in the end? Shlomith: Did I understand correctly that he was related to the organ donor? Polina: So was it him who blackmailed you?) Rosa had looked so intently focused, as if she were struggling to find precise words from her limited vocabulary, something savage to start with that would capture her listeners’ interest. And now this was the word that came out: Oooon . . . ei-ron!
Or was it three words? If it was one word, then Rosa had pronounced it oddly, staring into space: she drew out the beginning and then divided the end with an emphasis on the syllable boundary. The EI jumped out like a scream or a hiccup between the slightly mumbled beginning and the final growl, RON, which for all its gruffness was amazingly snappy. And then again: Oooon . . . ei-ron!
And if it was three words, they still couldn’t make any sense of it. The way that Rosa growled the end, RON, was particularly strange: the R didn’t roll sensually in her throat, and it didn’t soften into an uvular fricative—it was at its most revolting and impossible, an aggressive AR trilled with the tip of the tongue.
What did you say?
What is it?
What?!
Rosa Imaculada’s gaze is utterly empty. Her eyes don’t flutter even though Nina, who sits next to her, waves her hand in front of Rosa’s face. Before anyone can do anything, Rosa moves, but not like a person moves when she shifts position, say by fixing her posture vertebra by vertebra, or by stretching her arms, by flexing her legs. Rosa doesn’t do anything like that. She trembles all over like an aspen leaf in the wind. Or, since she isn’t particularly slender, since her body lacks the long petiole characteristic of aspen leaves that makes the aspen quake perhaps more elegantly than any other tree in the world—an effect that is heightened
