Escarro and Escarrilho grab Germano Santos Vidigal under the arms, lift him bodily, he hates to be a bother, and sit him on a chair. Escarro is still holding the cat-o’-nine-tails, the handle is still looped over his wrist, the fury that had gripped him has passed, but he still yells, Bastard, and spits in the face of the man who sits slumped in the chair like an empty jacket. Germano Santos Vidigal opens his eyes, and, incredible though it may seem, what he sees is the trail of ants, perhaps because there are so many of them in the place where his gaze happens to fall, it’s hardly surprising, human blood is a delicacy for ants, when you think about it, they live on nothing else, and three drops of blood have fallen there, Father Agamedes, and three drops of blood make a well, a lake, an ocean. He opened his eyes, if you can use the word open to describe the narrow slits through which light barely penetrates, and what light does enter is too much, piercing his pupils with pain, which he is aware of only because it is a new pain, a knife sticking into flesh already pierced by another one hundred revolving knives, and then with a moan he stammered out a few words that Escarro and Escarrilho both hastened to hear, regretting now having beaten him so badly that they may have rendered him incapable of speech, but what Germano Santos Vidigal wants, poor man, still subject to his bodily needs, is to relieve his bladder, which for some reason is suddenly sending out an urgent signal, and will, if not heeded, empty itself right here and now. Escarro and Escarrilho don’t want to get the floor any dirtier than it already is, and they also cherish the hope that they have finally broken this stubborn man’s resistance and that this request is the first sign, one of them goes to the door to check that no one is in the corridor, nods, then goes back inside, and together the two men help Germano Santos Vidigal to walk the five meters that separate them from the latrine, they lean him up against the urinal and leave the poor man to unbutton his fly with clumsy fingers, feeling for and extracting his tortured penis, his cock, not daring to touch his swollen testicles, his torn scrotum, and then he concentrates, calls on all his muscles to help him, asking them first to contract and then to relax so that the sphincters soften and relieve the terrible tension, he tries once, twice, three times, and out it spurts, blood, mingled perhaps with urine, although it’s impossible to tell from that one red stream, as if every vein in his body had burst and found an outlet there. He tries to hold it back, but the stream continues to pour forth as strongly as ever. It’s his life pouring out of him, and it’s still dribbling out when he finally puts his cock away, lacking the strength now to rebutton his fly. Escarro and Escarrilho lead him, feet dragging, back to the room of the ants and sit him down again on the chair, and Escarrilho asks, in a voice full of hope, So now will you talk, he has the idea that having been allowed to go to the toilet, the prisoner has a duty to speak, after all, one good turn deserves another, but Germano Santos Vidigal’s arms drop to his sides, his head slumps onto his chest, and the light goes out inside his brain. The larger of the ants disappears under the door, having completed its tenth journey.
When it returns from the ants’ nest, it will find the room full of men. Escarro and Escarrilho are there, along with Lieutenant Contente, Sergeant Armamento, Corporal Tacabo, two nameless privates and three specially chosen prisoners who state that the policemen left the room for a minute, no more than that, to deal with some urgent matter, and when they returned, found the prisoner had hanged himself on a piece of wire, just as we see him now, with one end tied around that nail there, and the other wound twice around Germano Santos Vidigal’s neck, yes, his name’s Germano Santos Vidigal, it’s important to know that for the death certificate, the official doctor must be called, yes, as you can see, he’s kneeling, yes, kneeling, but there’s nothing odd about that, if someone wants to hang himself, even if it’s only from a bedstead, it’s all a matter of will, does anyone have any questions, Not me, say the lieutenant, the sergeant and the corporal, and the two privates and the three prisoners, who thanks to this stroke of luck will probably be set free today. There is great indignation among the ants, who witnessed everything, at different times, but meanwhile they have joined forces and pieced together what they saw, they know the whole truth, even the larger of the ants, who was the last to see the man’s face close up, like a vast landscape, and it’s a well-known fact that landscapes die because they are killed, not because they commit suicide.
The body has been removed. Escarro and Escarrilho put away the tools of their trade, the stick, the cat-o’-nine-tails, they rub their knuckles, inspect the tips and heels of their shoes, in case some thread of clothing or some bloodstain should reveal to the sharp eyes
