The three young men enter the patio, the back door is open. Paulo puts on the knuckleduster, the other two are carrying iron bars, a fifty-centimetre bar each. Paulo goes in first, the only person he meets is an Indian man who introduces himself as the electrician. Paulo asks where the owners of the house are. Understanding the nature of the situation when the other two come in holding their iron bars, the Indian man says that the guy who owns the house and who hired him will be back soon with the bit of wiring that needs to be changed. Paulo says that’s fine and asks him to take a seat on a bench. He gathers up Rener’s tools and the clothes belonging to the couple, trampled on and heaped up in a corner of the living room. He doesn’t find the Walkman. He puts everything into the bags he has brought with him, hands them to the two guys who have come with him. He doesn’t know what he’ll do with the electrician, this guy who, Paulo now sees, has an annoying face. Now isn’t the time to hesitate, he has got this far. He asks how much he’s earning, the man says he charges eighty a day. Paulo takes two fifties out of his wallet and asks to see the other man’s wallet. The electrician hands it over without hesitating, Paulo opens it, removes his travel pass ID. He checks the photo to be sure that it really is the same man, puts it in his pocket, tells him to get another one made at Arsenal Tube station, puts the notes in the part of the wallet where the travel pass was, says that’s for his day plus twenty for the disruption. He holds out his hand in greeting, the Indian man shakes it, and Paulo says he can go. One of his companions asks Paulo if he knows what he’s doing, it’s stupid to let the man go like that, he’ll call the police. Paulo just says that they can go, too. The electrician excuses himself and gathers up his things, he leaves. Paulo explains that he is going to stay, he has a Walkman to claim from the owner of the house, and then he will stop by their place to pick up the big bags. He asks them to leave one of the iron bars. One of them says staying there is madness. Paulo’s ego swells when he hears him say this. The two of them leave. Alone in the house. (What a grotesque stage he has set up.) He puts on his hood and his glasses. He positions himself by the door, he tests the weight of the iron bar, its inertia, its movement. He doesn’t stop to think, doesn’t look for any logic. He hears the noise of the gate and the steps coming down by the side of the house. The shadow, oblivious, moving at the windows, close by, exciting. The sound of the door, the sound of the handle, they’re one and the same, the door opening, the movement already seeking a response. His own movement, the movement of attack, the knot that seems to grip all the knots that hold those two strangers together. The second blow to the back, the same height as the first, he doesn’t think about the cowardice of taking the other man by surprise; the cry, and the single kick that knocks his opponent down to the floor, a kick from the leg with the good knee, a kick to the head, stamping on the right side of his face and a blow straight to the hip. The doubt. The spit. Conquest and then withdrawal. The air that is never fresh for someone who can’t sleep. On the pavement he dares not look back. The bar is hidden inside his jacket, the knuckleduster unused in his pocket; he starts to think again. What make of Walkman was it? He takes off the hood and glasses. He walks on for a few metres. Birthdays. He waves at the passing taxi, the driver stops, asks where he’s headed. Chelsea (where everything seems always to be in order). The driver says he can get in. Paulo gets in and settles himself on the seat, his stomach has already stopped hurting, and when he looks out he spots the cocker spaniel and then the lady.
mosaic
She chooses the name, and two days later he is born.
It’s much more difficult than Maína had imagined, she will need clinical monitoring, other consultations like this one, this fifth consultation since Donato was born. She can barely control her impatience. Her difficulty communicating with the doctor, the same woman with whom Maína had been so cooperative at first, the doctor who, after asking Maína to turn off the radio cassette player, writes puerperal condition in large block letters on a little consultation slip and leaves it on the table for her. And this, like all the gestures that came before it, takes no account of the dread that Maína felt for the first few hours of the child’s life: the revulsion she felt as she held him in her arms. There has to be some other reason besides the expulsion of the placenta and the reaction this provokes in the nervous system, in the pituitary-hypothalamus axis, because of the sudden drop in hormone levels. This, too, was noted down, but not on the same bit of paper, not in today’s consultation. Nothing can explain Maína’s desire to harm the baby. Every single day: probationary days. Months waiting for the recontraction of the uterus. In search of moderation. Paying no attention to the doctor, she presses her son to her chest and tells him in Guarani that it’s time to find a way out. She says goodbye, knowing how hard the doctor is struggling to get over her ineptitude for attending to indigenous girls. If she could, she would never see her again. In the car park the driver grants her permission when Maína says she’s going to the ice cream place. ‘Fifteen minutes’ (in this space before meeting up with the FUNAI official in order to register the birth). She crosses the street, walks up to the entrance of the shop, climbs the steps. She goes straight over to the counter, shows the money she has brought (she is not a beggar), points to the tub of vanilla ice cream: one scoop, in a cone. She sits at the table by the little wall that separates the table area from the pavement; she has chosen the spot that any other customer would have chosen. She rearranges the baby in her lap. She smears his lips with the icy-cold mass. At this moment three schoolgirls make a noisy entrance. One of them stops, makes a face and approaches. Maína behaves as if to her equals and, as soon as they have introduced themselves, asks if the girl would like to hold Donato. The schoolgirl thanks her, says she isn’t really that good with children. Maína laughs and says, lying, that nothing could be easier than holding a child.
three
The fifth of March, nineteen ninety-two, the sky is the best shade of blue, the Minuane wind that usually sweeps across the Southwest at this time of year still hasn’t made its aggressive appearance, the leaves are holding onto a green that as yet shows no signs of tiring. The number of cars starts to dwindle until there are just a few on the road (and only heading towards Porto Alegre). Now there isn’t a single car passing the encampment, and the BR-116 is a landscape taken from a magazine, and for the first time since Donato was born Maína is able to hear the tranquillity without the interruption of engines and wheels putting tonnes and tonnes of pressure on the tarmac. She puts some trainers on her son (he needs to get used to them). They head towards the middle of the road to look out at the horizon. They play. If any vehicle were to approach they would hear the sound from kilometres away. The little boy moves away from her hand and from one moment to the next, without any help, and as he has never done before, he runs off towards the south, runs until he feels he’s too far from his mother. They will stay there several minutes. Perhaps no one will tell them that a lorry carrying dangerous chemicals has overturned at the exit to one of the bridges further up and the highway police have had to stop the traffic in both directions. And she softens as she watches him: he cannot help but contrast with that damn horizon.