The end of the year. Lada Niva is the make and model he most likes to say, followed by the Fiat Uno, the Saab Scania, Toyota Bandeirantes and a long and varied list of other names almost all of which are compound nouns connected to the inexhaustible world of the automobile. Besides these, he likes words like fireman, pilot, lifeguard — this latter, as it happens, printed in yellow on the back of the red t-shirt he is currently wearing as he and Henrique are on their way to Guarulhos airport to meet the woman. They are on the Tietê riverfront road, one of the few places that make him less impressed by the things shown on television, it’s almost his favourite place in São Paulo. Countless vehicles with endless differences that make him demand from Henrique the proper names and the proper updates to the models (about five minutes ago it was the Maserati, seen for the first time), all taken in as fast as the quick-fire answers given to the questions that he himself takes on the task of asking. This is the greatest proof that he has integrated perfectly into his new life. Comfortable being Version boy: upper-middle class, são paulo devoted body and soul to his collection of Matchbox and Hot Wheels miniatures. Today is the first day of his summer holidays. He feels proud because Henrique, as though speaking to an adult, told him at breakfast that all his expectations as regarded his school performance had been achieved and so, next year, he would be staying on in the same school. This is good, because that girl is there, Rener, who of all his classmates inspires him with the greatest confidence about what to say, how to speak. Because he has merited it by his own efforts (this was the expression Henrique used), they would spend the rest of the morning at that bookshop, Paulista, for him to choose two books. Henrique was not explicit as to the language, but Donato knew what his father expected of him. He chose one in Portuguese, one in English. Donato understands the enormous dedication shown by Henrique, his father Henrique, to making the two of them a family. At school the older teachers talk quite a lot about family and about God (the word God troubles him less than the word family). In the drawings he does, it is only him and Henrique. Donato likes to draw someone holding his left hand. Starting from today he knows that he can draw the woman, she will be the one holding his left hand. Donato hopes he will be able to draw her a lot, to draw her forever, he hopes that she makes an effort (as much as the two of them) to get a
very good or an excellent, just as he has managed to get in almost all his assignments at school. Donato understands the enormous dedication shown by Henrique. Donato understands Henrique and, most of the time, he tries to pre-empt his actions so as not to disappoint him. The first and only time he responded with aggression to a classmate, he was taken to the office of the headmistress, who told him, ‘You are lucky to have been taken in by someone as good as senhor Henrique’; she told him that undisciplined attitudes like Donato’s would only disappoint him. Disappointment is a word Donato does not like, but it helps him to understand the world all the same, even more than other words that are better to say. Disappointment justifies words like careful, a word he relates to Guarulhos (the name of the airport, which comes from the Guyanese tribes, that is what Henrique explained to him before they set off in the car today after the bookshop). Guarulhos is a word Donato likes, but he finds it a bit strange, a bit heavy in his mouth, like another word he found strange the other day, though not as heavy, the word anaphylactic, which he tried to say but could not. Henrique then insisted that he try again. He tried and couldn’t do it, and Henrique articulated the word with measured care. He tried again and couldn’t. This was not the first time he pressed him to get it right, to correct himself and say a word that was interrupted or not even begun. In situations like these Donato feels like he is playing pick-up sticks on his own, and in this game he is not allowed to be defeated, and yet he will never be allowed to win. Over the summer, when they are spending more time together (and because this time the woman will be there as a spectator, a spectator you can count on to be a spectator), Henrique will require of him, and with some rigour, the correct pronunciation of words in Portuguese and in English and, later, when March comes around, speaking with fluency and precision will be an absolute duty for Donato, enough of this childishness, he will say to himself in that way he has, and years later it will be like juggling. In Guarulhos they find a space in the car park easily. When they reach the arrivals area they learn that the flight is expected to land half an hour late. Donato takes his father’s hand, Henrique is his father, and squeezes it. And when he gets his attention, albeit only briefly, he says — as though they were exploding in his mouth — he says the words he had not been able to pronounce on the way, he pronounces them in sequence, one, two, three times, defeating an opponent who will never be in his imaginary game of pick-up sticks, offering his response to Henrique’s dedication that they should be a family, like the family the older teachers teach at school.