On the kitchen table, their new essentials: a tarnished machete, gauze, painkillers, gloves, several meters of sturdy rope, surgical needles and thread.
“Come on, Diana, it’s time to go buy Daddy’s medicine.”
There was no reply.
Diana’s mother was in the kitchen, lit only by a lamp. Ever since the city gates had to be closed, light bothered her. This meant going against the experts’ recommendations. Whoever ventured out into those streets at twilight would find houses and shops alike with their windows and doors shut tight, but all the lights blazing. Some families, perhaps getting a little carried away, even went as far as swapping out their regular light bulbs for stronger ones. She imagined all those sleepless people, hoping, eyes wide, that the bright light would ward off the jaguars.
“Diana? Diana?”
Near one of the doors to the kitchen, reinforced with newly installed locks, the red light on the alarm flashed. Some of the jaguars were clever and had even managed to outwit that. She knew every departure was a risk, but supplies were starting to run low at the house. Going out meant coming up with a strategy and weighing risks and getaway plans. A lot of people judged her for going across town with her daughter in tow. She’d simply convinced herself she had no other choice. Everybody had heard the latest rumors about jaguars tearing apart children who’d been left home alone . . . jaguars opening doors. What’s more, Diana, from a young age, had always been a very clever girl. The moment mother and daughter set foot onto the pavement, Diana would begin to study the rooftops. She was able to pick up on nuances of sound and movement, or the flicker of the moonlight in a cat’s eyes. What is a daughter anyway? An angel, a weapon, permanence, salvation? Diana enjoyed—her heart pounding—the make-believe of being a hunter on unclean street corners.
“Diana!”
“I’ll be right there, Mama! I’m here with Daddy!”
The mother carefully touched the fresh scar. It started just below her left eye and continued down her entire neck. She’d nearly bled out; the blow had almost blinded her in one eye. She remembered, with a half smile, Diana asking if her sick father had come home for good.
“No, sweetie, we’re just borrowing Daddy.”
She didn’t see anything noble about the decision to take him in. In fact, after everything, she allowed herself very few things. The house, her daughter, her sick ex-husband. It made her days expand. Night, afternoon, morning, these meant nothing to her anymore. Her heart was a fossil. Breathe in, breathe out, walk, eat, defecate—protect the offspring at all costs! And protecting meant, first and foremost, not dying or being eaten.
Refrigerator: carton of milk, bottles of water, a bit of cheese, ham, some greens, colorful yogurts for Diana. The old house, with its well-heeled past, was big enough to have an ample pantry—packages of rice, beans, pasta, sweets, and snacks. She walked silently in the dark. Her rejection of bright lights led her to scatter lamps and candlesticks around the house. She inspected the windows—wooden planks and thick iron nails; she inspected both sitting rooms. There were, they said, specific household precautions to be taken that could scare off the jaguars. Every day, while Diana played alone in her room or watched TV, her mother began a procession through the house, checking locks and boards, testing alarms, spraying doors, windows, and the yard with scented sprays and cleaning products whose odor and chemical properties, she hoped, would repel jaguars.
She went upstairs. The hallway to the bedrooms on the second floor was dark except for Diana’s flashlight. Sitting on the floor in her white dress and sandals, the little girl was holding a book and reading it aloud. Every now and then, she would stop and stare at the closed door of the room in front of her. The girl showed no sign of having noticed her mother’s approach. The light from the flashlight created a luminous shell around the girl. Shadows swirled and curved around a tiny silver castle. The mother saw herself playing one morning in the yard. The memory was so old, so very old, that she could have been making it all up. Maybe she’d dreamt it and unknowingly stitched the dream to her real life.
That house had belonged to her family for generations; it’s where she was born, where she’d cemented her legacy and seed. A small child, she looked out at the yard. It seemed enormous! Suddenly, she realized she was alone. She took her first steps. She looked back—no one. Not her father, not her mother, not her nanny or the maids, not her grandmother. She loved to run, but she was afraid—the yard ended far, far ahead, it ended in mystery. She walked a little farther, took slow steps. She looked back again. She was no longer alone. A female figure, her face impossible to make out, said, in a low, gravelly voice, like a voice that had been scoured with steel wool:
“Go, run, little girl.”
She hoped the hall floorboards wouldn’t creak.
Diana looked to her like she was made of delicate glass.
Her daughter had extreme mood swings and crying spells. They’d had to go back to sleeping in the same bed. There were feverish moments, too. Diana would rave about jaguars, monsters. And death. She had to admit that the return of Diana’s father, even in that condition, had had a positive effect on the child. She’d even started eating better.
Pride be damned—if it’s better for him to stay, let him stay!
“Diana . . .” she whispered. “Sweetie?”
“Shhh!”
She ended her story:
“. . . and after she threw the frog against the wall—yuck!—the princess saw that he had turned into a handsome prince, Daddy! And then they got married and lived happily ever after!”
Pleased, Diana closed the book, got up off the floor, and kissed the door.
“Bye, Daddy! We’re going to go buy your medicine.”
The door was locked from the outside. Discreetly, meekly, the father made himself heard.
With some force, the mother grabbed her daughter’s arm and pulled her away.
The air, or the glow, or maybe some play between the dancing light and shadows, in short, something in the surroundings of the street emanated that uncomfortable, but subtle, electricity—a certainty of how big a threat hung over their heads.
The mother could feel it on her skin.
It had been a few days since they’d last set foot outside. It was as if the city didn’t even exist until Diana and her mother arrived on the scene. The street, the city, and its invasion of jaguars were a book that you open and then set aside and forget. Diana’s mother always liked to monitor her daughter’s initial reactions. First the girl became alert, looking for any sign of a jaguar in the street. Then she would relax. Finally, a sad acknowledgment—there was a street, was it real?—washed across her daughter’s face.
They lived in a small tourist town famous for its well-preserved historic district. The mother was born and raised there, and now she was afraid of being devoured there. The only time she lived away from the town and that house was when she was in medical school. Her family still had some holdings, though nothing like those bygone glory days, with warehouses and textile and clothing stores. The street was warm and quiet. It was fairly wide and paved with uneven stones. She had always loved her street’s cobblestones, but now, in these new times, they were a problem—it wouldn’t be easy to run on that ground. Diana and her mother’s house was part of the neighborhood’s row of colonial houses, almost all of them carefully preserved by wealthy business owners or families.
Before the jaguars, both sides of the street would have been filled with little tables and chairs; people of all ages drinking, talking, smoking, flirting; regulars and tourists alike at the various bars and restaurants, with delicious aromas and colors that cut through the wee hours.
Street performers would juggle and play music; artisans, either indigenous or local, would roll out their mats and peddle their artwork and trinkets; beggars would also pass by and hold out their black and brown hands in search of some change from visitors and residents, almost all of whom were white. They would ask fearfully; they would ask furtively. Because everybody knew—Diana’s mother shut her eyes and ears to those terrible stories—about the clandestine militias who had the habit of carrying out periodic cleanup operations.
And now? Nothing.
Nothing, nobody.
Nothing.
Just that warmth, hanging in the air.
It was better not to draw their attention. The mother knew, however, that when the jaguars did decide to get you, there was no point in running. On their walk they would have to pass three street corners before reaching one of the neighborhood’s two main squares, where essential services like pharmacies, a police station, and a market still operated. They wore running shoes, the soles of which they had both covered with quilted fabric. Once again, they noticed there was still that strange contrast that had caught Diana’s attention on their first few outings. Look, Mama, look how funny, she would say, pointing at some of the houses. Because the languorous twilight, coupled later with the newly fallen night, acted as a reverse mirror, reflecting the houses that radiated the intensity of the glowing light bulbs. Doors and windows were shut with metal boards and bolts; but through the cracks in those windows and the doors, a pulsing light, a light welcoming the sleepless prey.
Some streetlights still worked; others not. In front of several of the houses and businesses, piles of garbage, plastic bags trembling intermittently.
Diana made a startled gesture to get her mother’s attention.
Movement.
The two were on alert.
Diana squeezed her mother’s arm.
The machete, steady in her fist. Show yourself! Come on, you piece of shit animal!
But the animal might also be human. There were reports of the militias breaking into houses, or charging for protection, or prowling around and raping women in the streets. Common criminals might also come out. On the other hand, radio and text messages assured that everything was under control. Without a doubt, tanks patrolled the streets. Armed soldiers in protective vests, masks, and helmets could be seen, though not often enough. It even reminded her of her adolescence, in the early 1980s, when she used to secretly smoke weed at her student movement pals’ house and go to a bar nearby that played subversive records, and every now and then got beaten up by soldiers. Just around the corner, then down an alley up ahead. The bar was over there. Long after, it was set on fire. Then it became an electronics store. And finally, a church, whose founding pastor, she’d read just before the jaguars arrived, when newspapers and magazines were still circulating, wore an electronic ankle bracelet.
On the right, around the corner . . . All the streetlights were out—only two houses glowed through the cracks.
Movements, something big and burly. Yes, something just over there.
“Mama?”
“Shh. Quiet.”
Diana had the talent and soul of an artist. At first, her mother had wanted to stifle it, pressured mainly by Diana’s father, back when they were still married. One of Diana’s most beautiful drawings consisted of moving shapes, in colors blending tones of navy blue, a leaden hue invented by the girl, and shades of black (when Diana painted in black, she was so delicate, and morphed, in her mother’s eyes, into a fairy). The movement in the drawing suggested bodies of jaguars, which in Diana’s eyes were reincarnated on the thick sheets of paper as hybrid beings of movement and smoke. Whatever lay in the darkness around the corner, moving and breathing and lurking, that’s what Diana drew and transformed.
They followed the safety instructions. The mother raised her arms, made sudden, jerky movements, snorted; she shook the blade over her head, hopped around. Anybody watching her from afar (and there were eyes peering from the windows of the houses) might compare her to a marionette. Diana also pitched in: she screamed and flickered her flashlight on and off, swinging it around at random. When they were locked inside the house, from time to time the two of them heard, from a distance, the very noises they were now making.
It worked. Coincidence?
Nobody really understands the jaguars. They already know where they came from, and when. But what do they want, besides occupying, devouring, and reproducing?
They are not ordinary jaguars by any means. Their presence has spread throughout the country’s towns and threatens to infect other countries as well. They display unprecedented intelligence and brutality; on the other hand, they have phobias and behaviors not seen in any known feline species.
Right, the mother breathed a sigh of relief, I think it worked. And in the shadows? Warmth, once again.
They proceeded.
On the next block, that house. Still abandoned. As pressing as this trip was, both Diana and her mother always glanced in its direction, however briefly. For Diana, the house reminded her of the evil castles in her comics and cartoons; for the mother, the house jerked the rug out from under adulthood, revealing a trapdoor that was always open. It wasn’t even a happy memory. It also wasn’t something she would consider a trauma, or a defining moment. The house just came to her.
The Vampire’s House.
That’s what she and her little friends used to call it. One of their games involved throwing stones at the windows and running away at full speed. They also ran whenever Mr. Khalil, the owner of the house, approached. Their families, very discreetly, had advised their children to avoid contact with the Lebanese man. Khalil owned a business in the historic district and two cheap restaurants in nearby neighborhoods. Sometimes he spoke a different language, which couldn’t be human. And, they all whispered, he’s not a Christian. He married and had two daughters, who inherited the house. Ever since the jaguar outbreak had started, however, they’d fallen off the map. Had they run away? Been murdered, kidnapped, eaten? All she knew was that the house had suddenly been abandoned. Now it resembled a shell, a carapace, something that insects shed and forget forever.
On the next block, Diana let out a scream.
“Diana!”
The mother covered the child’s face, Diana’s left arm pointing frantically at something on one of the sidewalks.
A mound of flesh and bones lay on the ground.
It was a gruesome sight, but one of undead horror. As Diana clutched at her mother’s waist and buried her face in her stomach—trembling, cornered, like a tiny crystal bird—her mother almost admired the sight of death. The dog—or what used to be a dog—lay there, ripped apart. Blood was everywhere, fresh blood. The mound was not the slithering horror of something rotting, maggots squirming; it still had a fresh glow, in its flesh, fluids, bones, its newly forsaken life force. Hours, or just minutes before, the dog had run and lived on the neighborhood streets. It had been something designed by nature, a desire.
There was only chaos on that sidewalk. Unmade beds came to the mother’s mind. Rooms destroyed by internal storms, miniature domestic storms.
This was very good, the mother concluded. Somebody’s had dinner and is lethargic, belly full.
“Come on, Diana.”
The child couldn’t move. She was still clinging to her mother, arms of steel locked around her mother’s waist. The mother looked around. They shouldn’t stand there for too long, because not all jaguars eat at the same time.
“I’ll get you some chocolates, but just today, okay? And if they have any comic books, we’ll buy those too.”
Unfortunately, the streets had no desire to spare them. Just ahead, between the end of the street and the square, a car, still running, had been abandoned. Its headlights were still on, illuminating a disembodied arm on the cobblestone street.
Shit . . .
The mother sounded the distress call. They should run past, but first she needed to check. What if someone was asking for help? She’d stopped practicing medicine shortly before the divorce, but she could still give first aid. Diana was rattled, about to lose control. Quickly, the mother took the gauze from her backpack and wrapped it around the girl’s eyes.
“Sweetie . . . sweetie! Calm down. Mama’s going to see if these people need her help.”
Inside the vehicle, a disaster. Shredded seats, blood, guts. Two children. She doubled over in agony as she looked at them there, in pieces. As she scanned the inside of the vehicle, the light from her flashlight seemed to slice through the bodies once again. There was no way anybody was still alive inside that car. My god, my god.
Then a head moved. She almost let out a scream. The passenger? No, the driver.
“Sir? Are you okay?”
She moved slowly closer to him. But when she shone her flashlight over the driver’s drooping head, his mouth was open, and a slimy black centipede slithered out. Some insects, possibly flies, buzzed all around.
With a near howl, the mother collapsed. She knelt on the ground in shock—the flashlight she was holding toppled out of her hands and spun around a few times, flickering across the empty street until it went out. Diana, without pulling off the gauze, felt around until she found her. Touching her mother’s face, her fingers got wet.
“It’ll be okay, Mama. We’ll be okay.”
And they were.
They returned home at a brisk pace. Daddy’s medicine, some supplies, cheap comics in front of the drugstore. They’d had the fortune of joining forces with a neighboring family, whom they met at the supermarket. They didn’t speak to each other; the whole group kept their eyes on the street and on the corners.
It was on the corner of their street that they came across the jaguar. Huge, one of the biggest the mother had ever seen. The animal lay down, that fulsome pose cats do, in the middle of the street. The group whispered to one another; some wanted to flee, others tried to muster the courage for battle. The mother shushed everyone.
Something was wrong. There was something very, very wrong with that animal.
“Do you hear that?”
The jaguar moaned in pain. It writhed, licking certain body parts incessantly. The group even retreated, calculating the best response for survival. But the jaguar didn’t change its behavior. It glanced at the group with disinterest and continued to moan. After quick deliberation, the group continued along the sidewalk farthest from the jaguar. Pressed together, the members of the group lined up and slid down the street in a movement similar to that of paint being squirted forcefully from a tube.
The mother, at a glance, thought she recognized, resting between the jaguar’s gigantic paws, a piece of clothing worn by one of the victims of the abandoned car. A frenzy of death and bloodlust churned the woman’s stomach—the group, Diana in particular, watched in terror as the jaguar came closer and closer, staring the woman down. The jaguar didn’t try to defend itself—it rolled onto its back, lifted its paws, and, groaning, offered its neck.
She raised her blade, but held it there, because Diana clutched at her mother and screamed:
“Mama! Mama?! Mama?! Please, no no no no!”
The cat’s entire body was reduced to painful spasms.
She felt rescued from a nightmare. She was ashamed to look directly at her daughter, whose face was pale. She slipped from the attack position and turned her attention to the jaguar. She, and it was a female jaguar, had a golden coat with irregular dark spots that looked so soft and beautiful to her . . . She held back an almost automatic urge to pet her. The jaguar’s cries of pain were interspersed with a purring sound, like that of any house cat; although the jaguar was wounded, the purring had depth and power. And a heat emanated from the jaguar. The smell of life mixed with the strong odor of blood.
The mother was able to get a better look at the wounds from what she assumed had been a fight. Let’s get out of here, come on, let’s go, somebody said; or was that her instinct speaking, her perception of risk? But was there any way back now? Diana, weeping, felt pity for the jaguar. Was there room in that child’s heart for another act of mercy? Mercy in her disappointment, stamped with her mother’s name and face? It’s just that the jaguar had become unescapable. If there were an attack, if the jaguar awoke in a fit of rage, or in a defensive reflex for not quite understanding those two human females, there would be little hope for mother and daughter; they, of course, would try to defend themselves, flee, kill, survive. But no, the jaguar wasn’t unescapable for that reason. It’s not that Diana and her mother were positioning themselves for a sacrificial suicide on top of a mountain. Pain, anxiety, and fear coursed through the bodies of those three females in such a way that an invisible bond committed them to a new story, a story woven in an unknown but profound language.
Angry at herself, and under Diana’s proud supervision, the mother cared for the jaguar. The animal understood her care. She did not threaten them at any moment, allowing the mother to apply anesthetics and antibiotics, and to suture her wounds. After her treatment, the jaguar leapt to her feet, scaring her caretakers. Nothing happened. She just crept along the street purring, glancing back one time, before she disappeared into the night.
Back at home, the mother kissed Diana several times and hugged her. She tousled the girl’s curly hair—just like her maternal grandmother’s—and wiped her face. In the kitchen, the groceries were strewn across the table. A chair called to her. But she knew that if she sat down, she would pass out from exhaustion. Better to get everything sorted first.
After putting their things away, they went down the hall.
“Do you have the key, Mama? Can I open it, can I?”
“You know I’m the only one who can open the door, sweetie,” she lied.
She took the key—heavy, long, with a heart-shaped adornment on the end—and slid it into the latch, then slowly unlocked and opened the door.
Diana tossed the medicine through the bedroom doorway—half a kilo, partially unwrapped, of raw, bloody meat. In the domesticated darkness of the bedroom, feline eyes emerged. Glowing and hungry. 
Cristhiano Aguiar is a writer, critic, and professor originally from Paraíba, Brazil, and now based in São Paulo. He was named one of Granta’s Best Young Brazilian Novelists in 2012. His work has been published in translation in Argentina, Ecuador, the US, and the UK.
Zoë Perry’s translations of contemporary Brazilian literature have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Astra, Latin American Literature Today, and The Paris Review. She is a founding member of the Starling Bureau, a literary translators’ collective.
Illustration: George Wylesol
