Page 110 of The Secret Dinner

“Cheers to this merry evening! May we make it to two hundred, three hundred, a thousand dinners!”

The glasses clinked joyfully. Guests enjoyed the amuse-bouche and starter while chatting and drinking more and more. Within minutes the plates were licked clean, and the main course was served. One of the waiters lifted the first cloche, revealing grilled breasts in gravy with a selection of smoked vegetables. The diners’ eyes lit up with curiosity. They wasted no time digging in.

“It’s delicious,” said Kiki, scraping the gravy from the plate.

“The marbling on the meat … it’s divine,” Maitê agreed.

“There’s a sort of sweetness, right?” said Heckel.

“It’s spectacular,” said Soninha. “Are those almonds I’m tasting?”

I thanked them on behalf of the chef and maintained a safe distance from the table, keeping my eyes on the clock. There was a ringing in my head, and a feeling in my soul building: How much longer would it take?

Once, on the wall of a public restroom, I wrote a poem:

A PERSON IS BORN

GROWS UP

REPRODUCES

AND GETS SERVED FOR DINNER

4

The first sign came from Kiki Dourado’s nostrils. While Ataíde spoke loudly about his medical history from the end of the table, a trickle of blood ran from Kiki’s nose and dripped onto her plate. She hurriedly wiped it with the cloth napkin, looked down at the red stain, and somewhere between surprise and embarrassment, said:

“I’m bleeding.”

Nobody paid much attention. “Careless Whisper” was playing in the background. Ataíde continued on about his personal dramas, and from the center of the table, Umberto praised the artichokes, garnering the other guests’ approval. At the opposite end of the table from Kiki, Mateus and Maitê had put down their silverware and started whispering, no doubt because one of them was starting to feel sick. One by one, each voice at the table fell silent, lulled by a dizziness, an unexpected malaise, nausea, and headaches.

“My sister isn’t feeling well,” said Mateus as he tended to Maitê. She was breathing heavily and had broken out in a cold sweat. Her pupils were dilated, and she placed her hands on her stomach.

“Cramps,” Maitê managed to say.

She stuck out her tongue like her mouth was on fire. Umberto shot up shouting for the waiters, demanding water, but no one came. Later, when I went into the kitchen, I found them convulsing in front of the stove next to the bodies of the sous-chefs, who had also tasted the sauce before serving it.

“Dante, get us some water! She’s in pain!” shouted Umberto.

Feeling a jolt in his chest, the old man leaned clumsily against the back of his chair. Another trickle of blood dropped from Kiki’s other nostril. Albertina had turned to help her but was overcome by a violent coughing fit, drooling uncontrollably and arching her eyebrows. She tipped the entire bottle of wine upside down, desperate to get rid of the strange taste that had filled her mouth.

“There are hives on my hands,” she said.

All attention at that moment was focused on Maitê’s contorted face, her chest heaving for air. Ataíde continued to talk about his ex-wife’s stomach troubles and the great gastroenterologist he knew in São Paulo. Suddenly, mid-sentence, the congressman rested his swollen hands on the table, said “I don’t feel so good,” and vomited half the contents of his stomach.

Nilo Carlos and Gabriel Herméz had gotten up to help Maitê at precisely that moment and were struck by Ataíde’s vomit, soiling their Armani suits. Maitê fell from her chair, convulsing in spasms on the floor, her hands twisted into claws. Her teeth began to chatter loudly, like she was seized by hypothermia, and she bit off a piece of her own tongue, which slid from her lips and landed on her pale neck.

Albertina screamed, banging her closed fists on the table and hyperventilating. She was drooling and her eyes wouldn’t stop watering. The wine had been no help at all, and I honestly don’t know if she was screaming because of the vomit soaking her dress or because of her neighbor Kiki, who had begun reciting the Our Father in French while blood leaked from her eyes and mouth. I read later that carbamate acts like a fire inside the body, burning through everything in its path, while warfarin is an efficient anticoagulant, opening the doors for the fire to spread.

A second jet of vomit spewed from Ataíde’s mouth, speckled with little pieces of seagull meat and unchewed artichoke, but this time no one complained, as they had bigger concerns, like breathing. Maitê lay dead beside her chair. Long-standing partners on multiple bid-rigging schemes and bloated development projects, Nilo and Gabriel struggled for a breath, their gurgling mouths wide open in horror, letting out gravelly screams as their lungs pleaded for air.

The dining room took on an unbearable smell of sewage and run-down hospital. Ataíde wasn’t the only one vomiting. Albertina also threw up on the table, putting out some of the candles. At seventy-nine years old, she crawled alongside the chair legs, cursing, leaving a trail of diarrhea in her wake. Later, the newspapers chose not to mention that the widow to the famed industrialist Péricles Terranova, a lady who was a fixture of Brazilian high society, died shitting herself as she told the whole world to go fuck itself.

I remember standing in the middle of that eye-watering spectacle, marveling at how everyone was using their final breaths to yell over one another. It was a last-ditch effort to express themselves, to leave behind some record. Among the coughing, shaking, stifled screams, and asthma attacks, I heard a lot of swearing. Soninha Klein was the most outspoken at the table. As she writhed on the floor, the well-known cultural mover and shaker spouted insults she’d possibly only ever used with her household staff. But she was a strong woman: She managed to get to her feet and stripped off her gold brooches, bracelets, earrings, and necklace, which rolled onto the carpet. It was as if all that jewelry was suffocating her.

“You cocksucking bastards!” she screamed. “My lungs are burning!”

She ripped off her clothes, starting with her black turtleneck, revealing washboard abs and a hot pink bra concealing her beautiful breasts, the result of two surgical interventions. “Go fuck yourselves!” She took off her pants, but before she could pull down her underwear, she tripped over an unidentified pool of liquid with a strong sour smell. Little by little, Soninha’s nervous system came under attack until she could hold on no longer. The Bee Gees played in the background, singing “How Deep Is Your Love.”