The stiff and his best piece

Literary Review, Summer, 1995 by Haroldo Maranhao, K. David Jackson

"Brace yourself. Yeah, all of a sudden. About an hour ago. Get on over there, right away. You've got to. There's a problem I don't know how to solve, and no one else does either. I can't talk from here. Get going. You'll find out over there. Didn't I say that I can't talk from here? It's a delicate matter, I can't say any more. Stop wasting time, goddammit."

Maida's face was swollen from crying and I hugged her: what can anyone say at a time like that? There were two or three people in the living room, relatives I supposed, I didn't really pay attention. She looked me straight in the eye, as if checking to see whether I knew what was up. But I didn't know anything, Xavier had kept it all a mystery. She took me by the arm and opened the door of the bedroom where Salad was stretched out naked on the bed. I felt a shock:

"But how on earth?"

Maida said she didn't know how it had happened. He had died, he was dead, utterly and definitively dead, but there he lay, just like I saw him. She explained that they'd tried right away to lower it, but it kept coming back, as if there were a spring in it.

Xavier and the funeral home employee came in. Maida went out and shut the door, so that no one else would see Salad in that condition.

"See the frigging problem we've got?"

The funeral man opined that it could all be solved just by tying it to his thigh.

"What?" Xavier protested. "What're you suggesting? That would be a dirty trick on Salad and a low blow for Maida. Tie it? No way. There won't be any tying."

"And what, sir, would you suggest be done?"

"That's why I brought you, to figure it out, you guys have experience, you know how it's done."

"But did you notice the size of it, sir? Want to see?"

He removed a tape measure from his pocket and measured it: forty-five centimeters!

"Holy shit!"

"Now look, gentlemen. The deceased is fat. Look for yourselves. He's very fat."

He pushed on the body lightly and skillfully, tilting it.

"Look at the hips. Enormous hips. A lot of fat, a lot of volume. Under normal conditions, the coffin would already be wide, it would have to be wide, the man is huge, look at the diameter of his thighs. Measurements aren't necessary, just look. If we don't tie it down, then what?"

"Look, forget all about tying."

Xavier turned toward me:

"Did j'ever see a dirtier trick? A dirty trick on Salad. We lower it, but it doesn't stay, it goes back to the same place, just like a jack-in-the-box. Here, I'll show you. Oh no, it froze!"

Xavier steadied himself, hung on with his two hands as if he were grabbing a lever, up, down, sideways, nothing. The funeral man, who was stronger than Xavier, held on tight and pulled with a big tug, and it was as if he were trying to bend a marble pillar.

"It's frozen. What now? What a pain in the ass. Dammit, it's like Salad is listening to all this crap about tying it, about messing around with his stick, pulling and tying it to his thigh with a cord. Well it froze, so now what? But did you ever see such a fucking macho?! Who would have imagined, eh, Salad, eh? Puta la madre, a big instrument like this must have made them drool. Shit, with all this fat I would have thought he'd have a tiny stick, I don't know why but it seems fat people always have tiny sticks. But just look at that club! How did Maida ever handle all of it? Look how thick, like a beer bottle. A third leg. A hitching post."

I interrupted him and said to the funeral man:

"What do you think? We have to find some sort of a solution, this is a problem that can't wait."

"Well, I must confess that this is the first time I've ever had such a problem. It's not easy! Tying, as you see, can't really be done anymore."

Maida came in discreetly, beginning to get nervous, sensing that we weren't finding a solution and that everyone had gotten quiet when she came in, not wanting to upset her. Fantastic woman, I thought, because any other would be creating a scandal in the arms of her girlfriends. Someone knocked on the door and she hurriedly covered the body with a sheet. The bed was transformed into an Arabian tent or a camping shelter. Who wouldn't find it odd? It was Salad's niece who, not knowing what was going on, made a perfectly reasonable inquiry:

"Have you already dressed uncle? And why is he all covered? What's going on?"

Xavier took care of it:

"Maida and the girl there, please allow us. Just leave it to us and we'll dress him."

The two women left and the funeral man agreed it was a good idea to dress the cadaver, since rigor mortis sets in relatively fast. It was a big job to stuff the brute inside his clothes, the three of us sweated with the effort, and Salad didn't cooperate.

Maida came back in, trembling and very tense, and I took her to a corner.

"Listen, Maida, how ever did this happen?"

"How should I know?"

"Was this the first time?"

"No. It would always get like that."

"Were you two . . . were you...?"

"No. I was sleeping. I woke up to an awful snoring sound, I looked to see, and he was dying."

"Sleeping? You were sleeping?"

"That's right. Sleeping."