On the Sunday morning he doesn’t take Beta for her swim, in order to avoid upsetting his mother. He thaws out a fish for lunch and opens two beach chairs on the paved area in front of the apartment. Beta barks a lot, and he catches his mother pouring hot water from the Thermos on her, but when he confronts her about it, she swears it was accidental. The pest passed underneath right when I was going to fill the gourd, and I got a fright.
A woman goes past on the footpath and stops in front of them to chat. He realizes it’s Cecina only when she starts saying that he’s a good tenant, the best she’s ever had in the off season, really easygoing, unlike his granddad, who lived here many years ago. He has never talked to Cecina about his grandfather, and the inappropriateness of her comment can only be some kind of veiled message, but it is a topic for another time. When Cecina leaves, his mother asks what she meant with that comment about his grandfather.
I haven’t got a clue. She’s not all there. She’s always confusing me with other people who have stayed here before.
Close to midday, he goes inside and sets about seasoning and baking the fish. It is a while before he hears her voice again.
Come and look at this, son.
He goes outside and looks around but can’t tell what his mother is referring to.
Over there. A booby fishing. It’s a brown booby. Watch.
The bird is gliding between the fishing boats at a height of seventy to ninety feet. It starts its descent in a wide circle, then suddenly changes course, folds itself into an arrow, and pierces the water at a right angle. It bobs up seconds later without a fish in its beak and takes flight again, resigned.
If there’s one thing I love, it’s watching these birds that fish by diving. I used to come up to Florianópolis and Bombinhas a lot with my family when I was a teenager, and I’d spend hours watching the boobies. My dad knew everything about birds. They have pockets of air in their heads to absorb the impact when they dive. Did you know that? I like it when they stand still on the rocks with their gawky feet and white bellies. They’re such show-offs. Dad once told me that someone had found a booby that had plunged into the water with so much force that it had gone beak-first into the mouth of a fish. They pulled the fish out of the water with the booby’s head still in its mouth. They had both died at the same time because the booby’s head had got stuck, and it had drowned. Can you imagine?
He looks at his mother, who keeps watching the booby like an awestruck child, and smiles to himself. He feels a lump in his throat.
A friend of mine would say that their lives were connected.
After lunch they go for ice cream at Gelomel. He suggests they visit another beach, but his mother says she is tired and isn’t up for another long drive. They head up Antenas Hill in the car to enjoy the view of the town, beaches, dunes, and Siriú Lagoon. When it starts growing dark, they go home and make a simple dinner of coffee and sandwiches. His mother asks how he is doing for money.
I’m fine. The money from the car has kept me going, and I can live off my wages from the gym no problem. You don’t have to worry about me.
Have you got anything you can lend me?
He can’t understand why she would need money. She tells him she had plastic surgery.
Where, Mother?
I had a chin tuck. And got rid of the bags under my eyes. You don’t want your mother to look like a toad, do you? I know you have no way of knowing the difference, but I look a lot better.
But where did your money go?
I don’t know. Everything’s really expensive. I lent Dante some money too, and he’s going to pay me back, but I don’t know when. He said he’ll only have some money after he finishes his book. Because he has to stop working in order to finish. I’ve got four installments left to pay on the surgery.
Now I know how he got to Vietnam last year.
He’s going to pay me back.
Doesn’t Ronaldo have any money?
He has a bit. But I don’t want to ask him. He didn’t want me to have the surgery. I think he’d give it to me, but I only want to ask him as a last resort. But if you can’t spare anything, don’t worry. I’m just asking.
I’ve got almost nothing.
He promises to wire the little savings he has to her the next afternoon, and she promises to pay it back as soon as possible. They wake up early on the Monday morning so she can drive back down to Porto Alegre. It is starting to grow light, and the lamppost flickers over their heads. He closes the trunk, hugs his mother, and kisses her on the cheek. He tells her to take it easy on the highway. Before backing out of the driveway, she half-opens the window.
I don’t mean to meddle, but I don’t think the little black girl really likes you.
• • •
Jasmim doesn’t answer the phone all morning but calls early in the afternoon when he is at work. She is sobbing, out of breath from crying so much.
I need you to come here now.
I can’t leave before five. What’s wrong?
A new wave of sobs makes it impossible for her to speak.
For Christ’s sake, what happened?
Come as soon as you can, okay?
At five-thirty he speeds breathlessly down the driveway to her cabin, leans his bike against the fence, and notices that the front steps are gone only when he is about to knock. Not only have the steps disappeared, but they have given way to a deep, irregular hole surrounded by clods of damp soil ranging in color from beige to black. A pick and a spade are lying on the grass. He makes his way around the hole and knocks on the door. Jasmim shouts that it is open and tells him to come in. He places one foot on the threshold, grips the doorframe with both hands, and enters the cabin with a kind of rock-climbing maneuver.
She is prostrate on the ground in muddy jeans and a windbreaker. There is dirt on her hands, in her ponytail, and on the tip of her nose. Her eyes are dull, and the cheekbones that he sees as if for the first time are glazed with tears. She gives him a pained little smile when she sees him. He turns on the light, kneels, and hugs her, asking what has happened. She sighs with relief, but her kisses are no more than involuntary reflexes. She points at the kitchen counter and turns her face the opposite way as if something terrible that she’d rather not see is sitting there. He gets up and goes over to the counter. There are two objects. A silver candlestick, the length of a child’s recorder, and a kind of iron goblet or chalice, with bronze or some other orange-colored metal on the inside. Both are still covered with dirt.
I’m positive the candlestick is made of silver, says Jasmim in a tired voice behind him.
This goblet here looks like it’s bronze on the inside.
I think it’s gold.
It can’t be.
Jasmim lets out a deep sigh. He puts the objects back on the counter, crouches in front of her, and takes her rough, muddy hands in his. She tells him that she asked her neighbor to help her remove the front steps last night. The neighbor noticed that the block of steps was a little loose, worked on it for a while with a sledgehammer, then tied it to the back of his pickup with a rope and accelerated up the driveway to pull it off. Because the travel agency doesn’t open on Mondays, she spent the whole day digging with the same tools her neighbor had lent her and already had weary arms, blisters on her hands, and an aching body when she hit something strange with the spade. The objects were wrapped in crumbling swaths of fabric, and she burst into tears as soon as she brought them inside.