A Body

By Catalina Infante Beovic, translated by Michelle Mirabella

We found a body in the bathroom. It wasn’t wearing any underwear, it wasn’t wearing any clothing at all. The body was wet, face down; its arm was twisted, with the palm of its hand toward the ceiling. We could hear the shower running from the moment we entered the bedroom, or maybe even before that, from the moment we opened the apartment door using the key the building super kept on hand for emergencies. Maybe that body was in the habit of showering with the door open. Maybe it didn’t manage to close the door, or it wanted to leave the water running while walking around naked. Who knows. Here I could skip to the part where later in the hospital they told us that the body had high blood pressure, that it had suffered a heart attack, which could have been avoided if it had taken care of itself. But some memories surfaced between the bathroom and the hospital that I don’t want to gloss over.

Neither of us cried when we saw it. My sister just took the body and, struggling, turned it over. She laid it on the floor on its back. Its eyes were closed, and its brow was split open. My sister rested the head in her lap and sat on the wet floor. She took her phone out of her backpack, dialed a number, deleted it, then dialed another. Who knows who she was trying to reach as I looked at the split-open brow of a face I could hardly recognize. I looked at that large, white body, the scars on its stomach. I wondered if that body was dead, if it would fall to us to dress it, to put on the makeup. I wondered if it had any suits, because bodies wear suits when they’re placed in coffins. I wondered if bodies found like this had to be taken to the hospital, if that’s what was done. Or if we could simply put it in the car and bring it to the police or a funeral home—the only one I know of came to mind, a vague image of a half-lit neon sign, on the corner of Bustamante or Vicuña Mackenna. I used to mix those two streets up when I was a girl.

I got in touch with Susana and asked her to call an ambulance, my sister said. I didn’t want to ask her why she didn’t just call an ambulance herself, because I wouldn’t know how to call one either, which number to dial. I also wouldn’t know where to tell them to go, whether to the hospital, a funeral home, Susana’s house. I also wouldn’t know how to explain the body, why it was there, sprawled out on a bathroom floor. I couldn’t even say if it was dead or not.

Here I could skip this part and jump to when later we were in the waiting area at Salvador Hospital hoping that a doctor would speak with us. I could talk about how the emergency room was flooded due to a clogged toilet, and that the pee smell connected us with a state more profound than any silence, fear, or introspection. I could continue the story from there, it would be easier, but there were other memories in that bathroom, scenes my sister and I had blocked out. She kept her gaze locked on her phone; she didn’t want to look me in the eye, stiff before an unclothed body that I hadn’t seen in over fifteen years, and that she had visited behind my back these past few weeks. We were reminded then of a scene, both of us at the same time. We didn’t just look alike physically to the point of confusion, we also thought in the same way, felt nearly the same way, had the same memories. Or at least that’s what I believed. In that memory the two of us are there, many years ago, in a car with our matching pajamas, as that body drives slowly down Vicuña Mackenna or Bustamante. The lights from the signs stream through our eyelids, painting our faces in shades of red, blue, and orange.

Here I could pull us out of that bathroom and jump right into describing our hermetic mouths, standing in a corner of that room which reeked of pee. But other memories came, before the building super and some neighbors showed up; before the paramedics struggled to lift the body onto the stretcher and then into the ambulance; before arriving at Salvador Hospital; and before an aspiring doctor, no older than 27, told us, in the middle of the night, that the body had suffered a heart attack. As my sister stared at her phone, we were reminded of that scene in silence. I don’t know how or in what order the scene must’ve come to my sister’s mind, but in mine, I recalled how that body pulled open our covers in the middle of the night. How it secretly put us in the car. How it drove slowly down that street full of lights. How it parked in a small alleyway, outside Susana’s house. How we feigned sleep, afraid to open our eyes, terrified to talk to each other, pretending to fall into a deep sleep until we actually did. The next day we woke up at Susana’s, asking no questions, because we children didn’t ask questions. Over the years we accepted that night as a dream that we never spoke of. And while I observed that body whose face I hardly remembered, my sister didn’t cry, but she did tell me that this body had contacted her a few weeks ago, that it wanted to see the two of us, that that night should’ve been so different. That that afternoon she and the body talked about some trivial topics along with others that were a bit confusing. That it had asked her for us to forgive it, for abandoning us like that, that it wanted so much to see the two of us. You can’t forgive a body you hardly know, I said to my sister. Then she did cry, as if she were saying goodbye. I tried to do it too, the crying. But I couldn’t.

So here’s where I can now tell the part about how they took the body to an operating room, that we waited suspended in the pee smell of that place, that my sister’s clothes were stained and I remained stiff among the people. That after a few hours the doctor came out and explained to us that it had been a heart attack, that it could’ve been avoided if it had cared for itself, that the only thing left to do was to contact a funeral home, that they had the information for one nearby, on Bustamante or Vicuña Mackenna.

About the author and translator:

Catalina Infante Beovic is a Chilean writer, publisher, and co-owner of Librería Catalonia in Chile. She has written three books of short stories of the indigenous peoples of Chile, authored the picture book Dichos redichos and the artist’s book Postal nocturna, and in 2018 published her first book of stories, Todas somos una misma sombra. “Ferns,” published in 2020 by World Literature Today and subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was her English-language debut. Her website is www.catalinainfantebeovic.com.

Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish to English literary translator whose work appears in World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, Firmament, the Arkansas International, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and an alumna of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Her website is www.michellemirabella.com.