We drink some coffee next to the severed head of a mafioso with three bullet holes in his face. It’s been in a glass case for thirty years. A special formula preserves the skin color.

He speaks of “judicial corpses” and I lay out the problem. If I’m in possession of a photograph of a judicial corpse—that is, a corpse found in circumstances that require the intervention of the police and the judiciary—but I don’t have a name or any other information, how can it be identified?

He mentions the missing persons archive, the protocols observed for all bodies that undergo an autopsy, the technicians’ visual memory, specific features that can narrow the field by revealing the gender, approximate age, season when the person died (by the clothing), surroundings they died in, and much more.

“Then it is possible?”

“Absolutely possible.”

At that, I pull out the photos and ask for identifications and histories.

He picks them up, looks at them, sets them down, and says, “These look like suicides.”

“They are suicides.”

He says, “Absolutely impossible.”

On our way out we go through the labs. There’s a girl in a white coat with very pale skin. She notices me. That’s something, at least.

•

I walk for a bit, looking for a restaurant with two characteristics: grilled fish and people I don’t know, who won’t talk to me about things I am fully aware of because they’re in all the newspapers and our opinions on them are formed by all the same magazines.

A tourist standing next to me as I look at a menu in a window asks where he can try some of the local cuisine. Then he changes his mind—maybe he guessed what I was thinking of for my lunch—and asks for directions to the aquarium. As he heads off, he thanks me, saying, “You people have a very nice city here.” To this compliment, I reply that he can’t say “you people” because I don’t have anything; the city doesn’t belong to me. He says, “Oh, you’re not from here either.” We may not have understood each other.

It’s the season. There are many tourists around and the lady tourists give everyone a lot to look at, which is exactly what they want, which is all very nice.

In fact, last night, again, I dreamed I was walking around naked.

•

At the agency I show the photos to the woman in charge of the archives. From long professional habit, her first impulse isn’t to look at them but to turn them over and look for the registry number and date of receipt or publication. There’s nothing there.

“These aren’t ours,” she lets me know, unnecessarily.

“Do you remember them, for any reason? Do they remind you of anything?”

Now she’s enjoying them.