Dance With Snakes

by Horatio Castellanos Moya

  I leafed through the newspaper I’d bought that morning. Mena’s article was in the national news section.

  But now the announcer was saying that according to anonymous police sources close to the investigation, Jacinto Bustillo, the ex-husband of the woman killed yesterday afternoon, was the man suspected to be driving the yellow Chevrolet and planning the snake attacks. They’d finally identified me!

  I stirred the soup, which was thickening nicely, and tried a piece of meat to see if it was tender. My succulent lunch would be ready in less than a half hour. I had another sip of rum and took out some of the bread that I’d taken from the supermarket yesterday afternoon.

  The announcer reported that there was a rumour that government insiders believed the snake attacks could be part of a plan to destabilize the country’s leadership, a theory that had legs, especially considering that the murder of Dr. Abraham Ferracuti would intensify the infighting within the party. He also reported that a special committee had been formed, by presidential decree, to be led by the city’s police commissioner to stop the snake attacks as soon as possible.

  The news update ended. I turned the dial and found the classical music I needed to organize my thoughts. I lay down inside the car, the little radio resting on my abdomen, my hands laced at the back of my neck, and my gaze fixed on the rusty ceiling of the Chevrolet. They must have been looking desperately for us, with their entire arsenal, street by street, combing through parking lots and garages, ordered to annihilate us the instant we were spotted. My sore body was begging for rest and I nearly fell asleep, but hunger prevailed.

  The soup was delicious and invigorating, the mix of snake meat and marijuana totally innovative. What a way to enjoy Valentina – it was as though every piece of meat had been infused with her voluptuousness, as though her capacity for extreme anger and pleasure was transmitted to me with every bite, as though her lustful spirit had been distilled in the thick, hot liquid. I remembered the dream I’d had the night before, when Valentina had wrapped herself around me in a slippery, orgasmic embrace, and the soup seemed to taste even better.

  Once sated, instead of falling victim to the drowsiness that comes after a feast, I felt incredibly energized and lucid. I wanted to talk, to do something. But first I had to get cigarettes. I put out the fire, had a last sip of rum, tore out the page of the newspaper with the office’s telephone numbers, and walked over to the scrapyard’s front gate. I thought it would be bolted by now, that the yard would be completely abandoned during the weekend, and that the watchman would be gone. I was right. I looked for a hole in the chain link that I could go through to get to the vacant lot next to the yard. I made it to the sidewalk. I walked a few blocks, under the blazing sun, until I found a store.

  Two young men were sitting on the steps with a trail of beers before them, hangovers still written all over their faces. They looked at me distrustfully. An elderly woman gave me the cigarettes without hiding her disgust. I felt like having a cold beer. I asked for one. I sat down on the steps. The soup had been marvellous and I felt sociable and animated. The young men became uncomfortable and guarded. They moved over to the other side of the steps. I lit a cigarette and offered them one. They said no thanks. I was so thirsty I drank half the bottle of beer in one gulp.

  “Is there a phone booth around here?” I asked.

  They told me it was three blocks away. I wondered whether they recognized my face from the composite sketch that was in the paper.

  “I heard they caught that nut with the snakes,” I said.

  How? Where?

  The old woman listened in from behind the counter.

  “They just said it on the radio,” I explained. “He went back downtown and they caught him there.”

  “I hope they kill that son-of-a-bitch,” the clean-shaven one said angrily. Then he told me he’d like a cigarette after all.

  “What are you talking about? It’s too bad they caught him,” said the one wearing sunglasses. “He had those politicians by the balls.”

  “I wonder if you’d like it if those snakes bit you or someone in your family.”

  The old woman said she was sure the appearance of the snakes was an ominous sign, evidence that the end of days was near, just like it said in Revelations. There was no other way to explain such a disaster.

  I told them I agreed.

  I drank the rest of my beer. I got up and limped off to find the telephone, remembering that I hadn’t warned the ladies I’d be gone for a while.

  I dialled one of the numbers listed for the newspaper office. I asked for Rita Mena. She came on the line quickly. I identified myself, warned her not to interrupt me or I’d hang up, and I told her everything that had been written about me hadn’t captured the essence of what was happening.

  “I’m not crazy, and I’m not a criminal. I’m just someone who through tremendous effort and sheer will became what I am today: Jacinto Bustillo, the man with the snakes,” I said, inspired.

  The poor girl was stunned. She kept quiet while I smoked.

  I told her that it was me she’d seen driving by the Presidential Palace. But that didn’t matter; I wasn’t interested in getting inside the politicians’ lair.

  “There’s no plan and there’s no conspiracy, the way they’re saying on the radio. Only chance and logic have allowed me to complete my mutation. But you wouldn’t understand,” I said, thrilled, as though I was able to express myself perfectly and freely for the very first time.

  Before I hung up, I promised to call again.

  I tossed my cigarette butt in the street. I walked back to the scrapyard, excited, wanting to see the ladies and tell them about the commotion we’d caused throughout the country so they could relish their fame, the fact that they were the talk of the town. But I didn’t want to pass by the store again. I went down a parallel street and walked until I got to the vacant lot, where I turned to go back in the way I’d left.

  The ladies had gone back to the Chevrolet. They’d had enough sun and were full of energy, as well as a hunger and thirst that had led them to finish the rest of the soup and Valentina’s flesh. They were resting inside the car, looking placid and satisfied, which made me wonder what effect the mix of marijuana and Valentina would have on them.

  I told them I’d gone to speak to one of the journalists who were writing about us. The whole city was in a panic. People thought they saw us and were afraid of being attacked in places we’d never been; crazy rumours about why we were attacking were spreading everywhere. It was as though we were the harbingers of political groups or drug traffickers trying to take power.

  They looked at me silently and without changing their expressions, uninterested in my worries. I told them the authorities had identified me as Jacinto Bustillo, that they had a description of the yellow Chevrolet and were probably looking for us right now, determined to exterminate us as soon as the opportunity presented itself. That didn’t impress them either. Rather, I noticed a certain gleam in their eyes and a hint of a smile that gave me the impression I should change tracks.

  “I found a radio,” I said, pointing to the set a little nervously. It was the first time I found myself unable to read their behaviour.

  “We forgot to tell you,” Beti said.

  Don Jacinto listened to it every night, very quietly, so people walking by wouldn’t notice that the car was being lived in, she added.

  “He liked to listen to classical music to fall asleep,” Carmela mumbled.

  I turned on the radio. I tucked myself into a corner of the car, and stared at the set so I wouldn’t have to look at them. I turned the dial until I found a rock music station called La Nueva Era. I felt a strange tingling that made me more and more nervous and restless. It got so strong I had to get out of the car. I lit a cigarette. I walked through the stacks of cars towards the fence at the back of the yard, feeling inexplicably uneasy, until I realized that the tingling was coming from my groin. Even worse, for a little while now I’d had a budding
erection.

  Goddamn! Then I understood. Valentina . . .

  I took a walk around the scrapyard, downcast and smoking anxiously. My palms were damp with sweat. Although I was prolonging the minutes as much as I could, although I was getting the idea that this decision was only up to me, the moment would come, inevitable and precise, perhaps with a certain air of sarcasm, and it would do me no good to try and slap it or scare it away. On the contrary, I needed to drain it of its meatiest emotions, to discard my image as a sacrificial lamb and transform into one of an ephebe drunk with pleasure and lust.

  I went back to the yellow Chevrolet. I got inside. They were as I’d left them, splendid in their peacefulness, a touch of mischief in their expressions. The radio was playing that song by Maná that went, “No sabes cómo te deseo, no sabes cómo te he soñado.” 1 I looked in my pockets.

  “I want you to try something,” I said.

  “Contigo yo alucinaría . . .”2

  I took out one of the bags of cocaine I’d taken from Raúl Pineda’s table. I turned a can upside-down so I could use it as a flat surface and spread out the glittering white powder. Curious, they came closer.

  “What is that?” Beti asked.

  “Magic powder,” I said. Then I spread some on my middle finger and offered it to her. “Try it. You’ll like it.”

  She narrowed her eyes distrustfully at me.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  She passed her forked tongue over my finger over and over again, until she finished the line.

  “Now it’s your turn,” I said to Loli, the timid one, the most affectionate.

  She turned to look at Beti, waiting for a reaction.

  “Oye mi amor, no me digas que no . . .” 3

  I spread more cocaine on my finger and held it out to her. She licked it, as distrustful as Beti at first, but later with delight.

  Carmela said she didn’t want any; she wasn’t about to go around experimenting. The soup had tired her out too much to try any unknown substances, what with the herbs I’d added to it.

  “My tongue and mouth are asleep,” said Beti. “But I’m starting to feel really good.” Loli said the same thing was happening to her.

  “Cheer up,” I said to Carmela, the most obstinate one, the least tame. I brought my finger closer.

  “Oye mi amor, no me digas que no . . .”

  She frowned and licked my finger as if she were being forced.

  I rolled up one of the letters Aurora had sent Don Jacinto and inhaled through it the pure, potent powder I’d taken from the narcotics officer.

  “I want more,” Beti said.

  Loli said she did, too. She felt amazing, happy.

  I gave them another round.

  I did another two lines, while Carmela watched, still reluctant. But when Beti and Loli were finishing off their fourth dose, she said she wanted some too, before all that magic powder disappeared. She felt a delicious tickling below her belly, she said. She felt like doing you-knowwhat. The three of them looked at one another like accomplices, with that gleam in their eyes and that hint of a smile that had made me so nervous earlier.

  The song had ended and some idiot was talking nonsense into the microphone. I turned the radio off.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  I lolled back in the corner.

  “That powder really turned me on,” Beti said. She raised her plump body.

  There was barely any coke left.

  The tickling in my groin suddenly came back, but more intensely this time, and my growing erection was starting to feel uncomfortably tight in my underwear. I took off all of my clothes. And, before I lay down on the blanket in the corner, I looked for the bottle of rum to see if there was any left. Beti was in front of me now, her head raised and her gaze beginning to drift away. I took a sip just as she started to slide over my thighs. She went past my erection and up my chest, slowly spreading herself along my skin. She rubbed her head into my neck, under my ear, while she excitedly stroked my penis and testicles with her lower body.

  “That’s nice,” she murmured.

  She coiled up the lower half of her body and wrapped it around my penis, gripping tightly, making circular movements. I caressed her head with my left hand and slid my right over the part she’d curved around my erection.

  I moved over so she could lie on the car floor. Her body was stretched all the way out. I started to lick her all over her body, first her chest, then her belly, then all the way to the end of her tail. She’d never felt like this, she sighed. I got down on all fours so I could lick her better. That’s when Carmela, the impulsive one with the short, thin body suddenly coiled herself around my erection and clung to it like a limpet. Without loosening her grip, she moved back and forth along my glans, getting me so excited I fell to the floor, begging them to stop for a minute and let me go, or I would come right then. I held my breath to try and stop the spasms. A few drops of semen leaked out of my throbbing penis.

  Beti was stretched out, recovering. Carmela had moved over to the side, gasping for air. She was a very emotional girl.

  Loli was the only one who kept still. She looked so long and thin with her neck lifted up, a shy expression on her delicate face. I looked her in the eyes. She held my gaze. She was the one I liked the most, no doubt about it. Something moved inside my chest when I looked at her. She was the only one I could fall in love with.

  I went over to the can to finish the last bit of cocaine. I did a line and held out my finger to the little gluttons who kept asking for more.

  I looked at Loli again.

  “I want you,” I said.

  She looked down.

  “Me too,” she whispered. “But I’d like you to put some music on.”

  I picked up the radio.

  “I want to dance with you,” she said.

  I told her the ceiling was too low; that I couldn’t dance unless I did it on my knees.

  “Let’s get out,” she said.

  I got out, naked and anxious, my erection less hard. I put the radio on the ground and found a song by the Beatles called Dear Prudence. The sun was still blazing, even though it was much lower in the sky. She moved up my body and rested her head on my shoulder, her tail softly coiled around my penis. I put my hands on her back. I kissed her neck tenderly. Our connection was so intense it was as though the movements I made with my lips were being transferred directly to my penis. We moved softly and slowly, rhythmically, like two partners performing an ancient ritual.

  “I could really fall in love with you,” I whispered.

  “Me too,” she said, gripping my erection with her slippery skin. “I’d love to dance with you all afternoon.”

  The song ended.

  Beti and Carmela had climbed up onto the hood of the Chevrolet and started banging on it with their tails, applauding us.

  “That’s lovely!” Beti exclaimed. “I want to dance, too.”

  Carmela suggested I dance one song with each of them. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had the whole scrapyard to ourselves.

  Loli let go of me and climbed up to the hood looking a little saddened, I thought. We’d been too obvious and the others must have noticed that there was something more between us than just desire. Beti came over to me so we could dance to the next song that idiot DJ would play, as soon as he shut his mouth.

  “That’s nice,” she said again.

  I had to plant my feet firmly on the ground because she made a move that enabled her to stroke my penis, testicles and anus at once, in a kind of salacious merrygo-round. The dizziness that came over me was so strong and so sudden that I had to lean back on the car. That old Eric Clapton song Layla came on, and Beti moved up my body and laid her head on my shoulder.

  “Did you like that?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, while we moved to the lively rhythm of Clapton’s song. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

  But something was off; there was a kind of discomfort, a growing distance
between us, caused by the fact that I’d already chosen a girl who was watching a little sadly from the hood while I gorged myself with her friend. That didn’t keep me from staying excited or my body from shaking at Beti’s carnal touch, of course.

  The song ended.

  “It’s my turn,” Carmela said.

  But you couldn’t hold someone close and dance to the next song; it was the kind you had to sort of bop around to, or at least that’s what I thought. I said so, without wanting to upset Carmela. I started to move to the rhythm of the Police song, singing along to the chorus, Walking on the Moon, while she sat upright in front of me, balancing herself and humming more and more enthusiastically, bordering on ecstasy, as though we really were walking on the moon, dancing between the craters. And then right before the song ended, I made out the sound of a helicopter that was flying low and getting closer.

  Suddenly, a light went on in my head.

  I shouted for them to get inside the Chevrolet.

  I took out the blanket from inside the car as fast as I could and put it on the roof. I started frantically throwing dirt, ashes from the fire, and trash on the hood and the trunk, trying to camouflage the telltale yellow. Terrified, they’d gone inside to hide in those corners of the car where even I couldn’t see them. I continued to camouflage the car until I thought the helicopter was almost directly over me and then I threw myself inside and slammed the door. I curled up in the middle, waiting for the worst – for the helicopter to land on the yellow Chevrolet and for the machine-gun fire, the explosions and the fire from the flamethrowers to start. The helicopter flew in low circles around the scrapyard looking for us among the hundreds of cars, stopped in mid-air a few times, once very close to the Chevrolet, and suddenly flew off.