That’s enough. Give me that shovel — come on.
Holding his hand out, he starts walking toward the boy, who is unable to abort his movement and rams the shovel into the bottom of the hole one last time. A metallic clang leaves everything in suspense for a long second. Everyone looks at one another. Jasmim raises an eyebrow and takes a deep breath.
Okay, Joaquim. Let’s see what you’ve got there.
Joaquim’s grandson or great-grandson works perseveringly as the old man rolls a cigarette and passes down instructions. He and Jasmim watch the activity from a distance, lying in the hammock strung between two tree branches at the edge of the neighboring property, which is overrun with a tangle of vegetation, listening to the growing riot of crickets and toads.
Didn’t you dream that the treasure was under the front steps?
Yes, but they wanted to tear down the steps and said that afterward I’d have to move the position of my front door to pacify the spirits. Imagine. Move the position of my front door! The spirits here are cool. I don’t want to upset them.
What are you talking about?
This house is kind of haunted. I was the first person to rent it in ten years. There was no electricity, water, nothing. I fixed everything. In the first few months I kept hearing a woman’s laughter, and one day I was lying in the hammock over by that tree, and I felt a hand stroking my face and heard a woman saying, Don’t be afraid. I got the hell out of there, of course. I moved the hammock here, and nothing has happened since. I don’t want to mess anymore with these things. I lied to Joaquim and said I’d actually dreamed about that rock there, so they’d dig and then leave once and for all. I didn’t know what to do.
Damn Jesuits.
Will you sleep here with me? I’m going to be scared.
I’ve got to go back. I left the dog there.
Can I sleep at your place then?
Of course.
Did you see how Joaquim got a fright when he saw you? Do you know him?
I’ve never seen him before.
His eyes just about popped out of his head. He almost rolled into the lagoon.
It is already dark when the old man and boy come walking up the property toward them, Joaquim carrying his homemade device, the boy with the shovel slung across one shoulder and holding a rusty bicycle frame in the other hand.
NINE
He waits at the top of the steps for his mother to arrive. He expects to see her black Parati, but the car that appears around the bend in the road is an older-model champagne-colored Honda Civic. She parks diagonally in his outdoor parking space. He hugs her. It is the first time he has seen her since the funeral. She is wearing red gloves and a beige wool coat. She looks smaller and thinner than he remembers. Before she came, he had decided to tell her about his conversation with his father on the eve of his suicide, but when she called minutes earlier to say she was in town and needed instructions on how to get to his place, his conviction went down the drain. By the time he said good-bye, he already knew he’d never be able to tell her. She would torment him for the rest of his life for not having warned the family immediately or done something to stop the tragedy. He can never tell anyone. The only other person capable of understanding the pact was directly involved and placed a pistol under his own chin and fired it, taking care to tilt it to cause as much damage as possible.
Now his mother stands back a little, without taking her hands off his waist, gazes into his eyes, and studies him with a smile on her lips. They don’t look much alike, but staring at a close relative is a little like staring in the mirror, and there must be something of him in his mother’s watery black eyes, wide open and earnest. Perhaps it is more a question of faith than recognition, but he sees something of himself in them. She must be seeing her ex-husband in her son’s features now. And he knows that she feels relatively young and safe as she looks at him, because he doesn’t have any way of knowing what has changed in her. The car’s radiator fan turns itself off, and they realize it was on. His mother takes off her gloves and strokes his beard.
You look good like this. But you’re too thin.
I’ve missed you.
You’d better have.
Is that your boyfriend’s car?
Yes. Ronaldo lent it to me because it’s an automatic and has a heater. I was nice and warm on the way up, and there was hardly any traffic on the road. Want to make your mother a coffee?
The sun is framed by a clearing of clouds, and the forecast is for fine weather until Monday. He carries her bag down the steps, and she follows him, taking photos of the view of the bay. She looks worried when she reaches the bottom of the steps and sees the front of the apartment.
Isn’t there a danger the ocean might come up here?
Of course not, Mother. If the ocean came up as far as my window, the whole of Garopaba would be underwater.
He puts her bag in the bedroom and smooths out a wrinkle in the clean sheet that he has just changed as he explains in a loud voice that she’ll be sleeping in his bed and he’ll sleep in the living room. She doesn’t answer, and when he returns to the living room, she is sitting on the sofa with her hands together between her knees, dumbfounded, staring at the dog standing on the rug in front of her.
What happened to her?
She was run over. It was nasty. She almost died.
She’s limping and missing an ear.
It’s just a piece of her ear. She’s getting better. If we take her to the beach, you’ll see. She can already run a little.
How old is this dog?
Fifteen or sixteen. You haven’t seen her in ages, have you?
Not since I left your dad.
Beta takes a few steps toward the sofa, and his mother draws back.
She remembers you.
Get that pest out of here, please.
He opens the door, puts the dog outside, and closes it.
After drinking a black coffee and chatting some more, he takes the key to the Honda and drives her to lunch at a fancy restaurant on a hill overlooking Rosa Beach. It is early for the weekend surfers, and the place is still empty. The wood and stone building is decorated with furniture made from recycled timber, Indian statuettes, African masks and totems, turtle shells and whalebones. Ballads are playing softly on hidden speakers. They pick a table near the deck with a view of the beach and the lovely Meio Lagoon, where it is said that many people have drowned after getting tangled in the seaweed. In the background enormous waves break and march staunchly across the sand with lacy swaths of foam in tow. His mother is enchanted with the crystal glasses, the votive candles, the sunflowers in test-tube-shaped vases. They order a seafood moqueca. The waiter suggests some wines, and his mother chooses a South African pinotage. He spots a right whale’s spout and points at the blue ocean. His mother puts on her glasses and manages to see the next two spouts, but then the whale disappears. The stew arrives, and the penetrating smell of the seasonings and seafood wafts across the table.
This puréed arracacha is really good. Have you been here before?
No. A friend who has a bed-and-breakfast nearby recommended it.
Have you made many friends here?
A few.
I thought you’d become a bit of a hermit.
Life here is normal.
Normal for you. I don’t get why you have to hide yourself away in a deserted place like this in the middle of winter when you could be in Porto Alegre, or even São Paulo like your brother. I think you’re still upset about your father’s death and will end up coming back. But it’s your life. You’re an adult. I know you like to be on your own. You’ve been like this ever since you were a child, and I’ve always respected it, but I’ve never agreed with this lack of motivation to do something with your life. How long are you going to stay here giving swimming lessons to a handful of students? Living alone with that disgusting dog. She won’t last long. This isn’t a place to make a life for yourself. I’ve always thought your lack of initiative was your father’s fault. He always told me to let you be, let you do what you wanted. Let the kid study PE. Let the kid ride his bike and swim: it’s what he likes. You inherited the worst of your father, and it wasn’t the booze or the cigars or his lack of respect for me, but this absurd notion that you can live in the middle of nowhere like people did a thousand years ago and that it was an accident that you were born in the twenty-first century in a big city where you can do things, create things, make money, travel the world—