A few days later I’m woken up by a honk and shouting under our window. It’s evening, on the plaza an accordion is playing, the parrot in the lobby is squawking to itself. Tuuli is asleep. I fling open the shutters of 219. In the moonlight or in the streetlamp light the pickup is parked next to the fountain. Felix in a panama hat is kneeling in the back of the truck and ruffling the fur of the district policeman’s heavy dog, David is leaning on the hood and smoking. Oi, Svensson! he shouts, come down, we’re late! The dog barks, and Felix laughs. For the first time in days I have to go outside, for the first time in weeks Felix and I clap each other on the shoulders. Not missing, Svensson? Not in jail, Felix? Not dead, dog? We have a table and chairs put out on the Praça de São Geraldo of Tupanatinga, Felix gesticulates for Antarctica and small glasses, and the innkeeper sets a bottle in front of him. David fills the glasses, the dog gets a bowl with beer, and Felix summarizes: no one got thrown in jail, as you can see of course, the pipelines are now officially approved, the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora has fresh water. Rua do Lixo didn’t vote, the decision was postponed, but there are no longer any candidates, the blue candidate Gonçalves Meirinho deeply regrets the death of the red Santos, under such circumstances he cannot enter the city council, porco dio! Maybe later. The reports in the Seraverde newspapers came fast and furious. Toward morning Santos had been strolling all in red across the blues’ square, he laughed at blue drunks, pointed to the blue trio elétrico, he’d wrapped his dog Lula in the red flag of the PT and was pulling him along behind him on the chain. The blue musicians were long since in bed, only the last remnants of the blue celebration were still sitting there under the blue garlands or lying under the benches. Of course they mocked and laughed at Santos as much as he had them, Felix says, they told him off in the most un-Christian manner. But then a shot rang out, and the red candidate was suddenly lying on the ground and in his own blood, in front of the silent trio elétrico and amid the last guests of the blue celebration. From one second to the next the square emptied out, no one had seen anything, they’d heard nothing but the shot. No one called the police, the fire department or an ambulance. Santos must have been lying there for several minutes among the drunks and sleepers and waiting for his death, says Felix. He raises his glass to clink, and David nods. But then, and this the police have since verified, a street sweeper passed by in his donkey cart and immediately thought of us and the Fundação’s pickup. With the cart he never could have reached the hospital on Avenida Osvaldo Cruz in time. He didn’t want any trouble either, and therefore didn’t inform the police. Santos left the blue celebration square and the political stage on, of all things, the donkey cart of a garbage collector, Felix recounts, he was left outside the door on Rua do Lixo so we would save him. We, of all people! Felix and David’s laughter comes fast and furious and resounds on the empty plaza in front of the Pousada Majestic, the bandaged Lula is lying at their side. Felix has forgotten the blood on the door, the gulls’ feathers in oil, the crack of Lula’s bones, Lula’s eyes and his own vomit, I think, and toss back another glass. I waste too much time on memory. The hotel’s shutters are still closed, Tuuli must still be asleep, I’ll tell her this story later, but Felix interrupts my thoughts. There’s fresh water on the garbage street now! Santos was shot, okay, it was in a certain sense a political murder, okay, in his own way he provoked this end himself. The dog sat next to Santos and licked his face, police dogs are faithful souls, but he couldn’t prevent the shots, he couldn’t get help. The doctor on Avenida Osvaldo Cruz phrased it right, it was Sodom and Gomorrah, you can’t save everyone. Still, the dog is a good dog, the stump has healed, the doctor ministered to him movingly, the dog didn’t slobber or bite, he simply lay still for a whole week and waited to heal. And then he healed. He stood up and was a completely different dog, Felix says, and pets this completely different dog, sweet and friendly. On the night of the full moon a few days ago they then came up with the idea of giving this new dog a new name too. The dog is lying on the cobblestones and looking at me, without batting an eyelash. I notice Lula’s clear eyes, I notice the bandages on his stump, I sense the healing itch under those bandages. The sharp police dog and corrupt PT candidate’s four-legged mutt Lula has become the three-legged Lua, purified and named after the moon, four letters have become three. Felix laughs and pets the dog’s head. To Lua’s health! he says, refilling the dog’s bowl. Lua’s accident, says Felix, if he may call the incident with the Heckler & Koch that, should be understood as a catharsis, the corruption has literally been shot out of the reds’ bones. Lua is calmness itself. Even Felix’s own guilty conscience has sort of gone up in gun smoke. I ask: Sort of? Sort of, says Felix, and at the same time the wooden shutters open on the third floor of the Pousada Majestic. Tuuli looks down at us from above. We’re doing fine, says the black dog Lula or Lua, don’t worry, he barks up to Tuuli.
Tuuli and I pack our things and leave our room 219 over the Praça de São Geraldo, she steals an ashtray, I take along the Words worth poems. The bill for the Pousada Majestic we pay in reais and dollars one to one, our American money is enough for the days and nights we spent waiting for Felix. We fell out of time and can afford it, we tip well. David throws our luggage in the back of the truck, and Lua marks the turned-off fountain of the Praça de São Geraldo of Tupanatinga with lifted hind leg. The three-legged dog jumps without help onto the back of the truck and we leave the town. Away we go, I think, on we go! David drives, Tuuli sits next to him and rolls a cigarette, I with my two thousand eight hundred eighty-three hours of peace service in my bones wonder whether all this can be true. Everything is the same as always, we buy cans of beer in various villages and stop on the roadside. We do as the padre does: Urinating is good for you, we say, and laugh. Felix and I hit each other on the shoulders and remind each other that we really exist, in the middle of Brazil, in the middle of the desert, in the middle of the jungle, on the way to the sea. We drive through the sertão and bathe in a river full of piranhas, we sleep in the monastery of the Holy Mary, we stroll in orchid gardens. We drive to Pedra, and climb up the black stone, and Felix declares with hands raised to the sky that the world belongs to us. Tuuli looks out the window for hours, we talk, she sings, we laugh. We drive past bananas and sugarcane, past green hills and herds of cattle, we dance in Caruaru and sleep on the bank of the Rio Ipojuca. Lua sings “Girl from Mars.” Felix wins a hundred reais at dice in Fortaleza, he loses a hundred reais on the international game Brazil versus the Netherlands, in a café in Macarana he bets on Oranje, everyone thinks his blond hair is Dutch. The game ends 2–2. You can’t win them all, says Felix, patting Lua’s head. Tuuli sees the ocean first, Lua sees the ocean for the first time. We sleep a few nights in the sand. Tuuli removes the bandage from Lua’s stump. In Natal we take off his chain, Lua hesitates. When he then runs along the water, you can almost no longer tell that his leg is missing. Felix borrows a surfboard, I’m Robby Naish! he cheers, and Tuuli applauds. In the morning she wears my purple Los Angeles Lakers cap and in the evening Felix’s panama hat. David leaves the Heckler & Koch in the glove compartment. I read and lie on my back, sometimes I take notes. On the white beach of Jericoacoara we collect the roundest and palest stones. Tuuli, Felix and I throw the pebbles far out into the Atlantic. No one wins, no one loses. It’s a tie, says Tuuli, and never wants to let us go. Lua asserts that this is happiness. David talks on the phone with the padre, everything is all right in the Fundação Ajuda de Nossa Senhora. The water is running. Felix and I learn capoeira, we fight and dance at the same time, we walk barefoot, we never hit each other intentionally. Lua orders chicken hearts for breakfast. On the large dune overlooking the village Tuuli kisses first me, then Felix, then me again. Peace service in deprived areas of Latin America, says Felix, crazy, aaah!