by Luiz Ruffato
* * *
—
i wake up! I must have nodded off. Where are we? Outside the window are reams of barbed wire stretched between concrete posts that hem rolling hills the pale green of signal grass, gullies that show their yellowish bowels, a lone seriema in exile, two or three rangy bulls crammed under a solitary tree, the pointless soaring of a seagull, and a small abandoned house. The religious man isn’t sitting next to me anymore. Has he gotten off? Or did he change seats again? The passengers are no longer laughing, which means the drunkard must have fallen asleep. The fare collector watches something entertaining on his cell phone. We’d traveled by train a couple of times, back when trains still cut through these mountains. I was a young boy when they were taken down. We’d spend hours swaying on uncomfortable wooden benches…I always threw up…The listlessness of the diesel locomotive as it hauled heavy mixed train cars along the foothills of the Mantiqueira Mountains…The grating of steel wheels against steel train tracks…The air whistles that scattered birds and startled cows at pasture…The long waits at every station—Barão de Camargo, Sinimbu, Dona Eusébia, Astolfo Dutra, Sobral Pinto, Diamante…Aha, we’re in Sobral Pinto! The bus pulls up under an almond tree, three passengers get off, and the fare collector opens the luggage compartment to hand out their belongings; no one climbs on. There used to be a fertilizer plant here. We could tell by the smell that we were approaching our destination. The driver honks, accelerates, sets off. On one of our adventures, as Mom used to call them, when I was—what was it?—four or maybe five, we were all dressed to the nines, even Dad, who still hadn’t fallen out with the guidos, which is how he’d later refer to his brothers-in-law with vitriol. The train left Cataguases in the early morning, and by ten thirty we’d reached our stop in Diamante. Blue-eyed Uncle Paulino was already waiting for us at the platform, tall, slender, hat planted on his head, feet planted in his boots, clothes ripe with the smell of corn-husk cigarettes. We greeted each other awkwardly—we weren’t, we aren’t, the sort to hug—and Mom, Isinha, and Rosana climbed into the buggy he’d brought over from the fields, taking our knickknacks with them. Dad, João Lúcio, Lígia, and I went by foot. We walked slowly so that we’d be sure to manage the four kilometers to Rodeiro; Lígia and I led the way, picking at the mortadella sandwiches we’d brought with us, watching the birds chittering in the trees, and coughing behind every car that rolled by kicking up a thick curtain of dust that then idled heavily in the air. Behind us, Dad and João Lúcio walked side by side, chatting companionably. An hour later, in Rodeiro, we filed into Zelito Crovato’s ice cream parlor and Dad bought us each a round popsicle. Mine was red (raspberry?), Lígia’s white (coconut?), and João Lúcio had an almond one, and we ate them on São Sebastião Square, while playing with the monkeys. Before tackling the remaining half league to the farm, we stopped at Pivatto’s bar, where we stood at the counter and drank an ice-cold family-sized bottle of Coca-Cola, and went into Seu Giácomo Paro’s bakery for two trays of coconut cheese flan, because it was a tradition of ours to bring some for the family, whenever we got together at Uncle Paulino’s house. Uncle Paulino Mom’s oldest brother liked to
* * *
—
i wake up! I dozed off again. A string of enormous furniture warehouses lines the left side of the highway. Rodeiro! The bus flanks the roundabout. Shirt drenched in sweat, heart pounding frantically, legs trembling. Several passengers are already standing in the aisle, holding bags and cell phones. The city has spread like wildfire through arid woods, fast and unchecked. Box trucks clutter the narrow streets. Motorcycles and cars adorn low-slung, drab houses with enormous satellite dishes. The bus passes in front of the Spartano soccer field, honks, rounds São Sebastião Square, and parks. I get up, sling on my backpack, adjust my cap, stuff my hand in my shirt pocket, take out my ticket, hand it to the bus driver, and get off. It’s been twenty years…I need to eat something. “Excuse me,” I say to a man crossing the street. “Yes?” he asks, warily. “I was hoping to get lunch. Could you recommend somewhere?” He scratches his head, thinks, and settles on a place. “Casa Nova. Best restaurant in town. Just walk down that way, far as you can go,” he says, pointing at a street that runs crosswise. I thank him and head through the garden. Before turning the corner, I glance behind me and spy the man standing in the same place, watching. I head back along the bus route under the blistering sun. I walk down the sidewalk of Rua João Bicalho, squeezed between the curb and the walls of modest houses whose flung-open windows show elderly people enthralled by the television. Uncle Ênio used to love soccer. Whenever he could, he’d take us—me, João Lúcio, his two sons, and two other nephews—to watch Spartano play in their yellow jerseys with blue detailing. We’d head over from the countryside by bicycle and buggy, lugging with us half a sack of oranges to snack on throughout the match. The boys—Amauri and Marino—were still kids when Uncle Ênio moved the family to Rio de Janeiro, where he had more children. He never came back, and is now buried somewhere in those parts. He was a die-hard fan of Botafogo and Mom used to pretend he visited Maracanã stadium every Sunday. There are no Morettos left in Rodeiro, except for João Lúcio. Uncle Ítalo’s daughters moved to Brasília one by one—first Cíntia, the youngest, who passed her public service exam and now works, or worked, as a stenographer in the Senate, followed by Verônica, the middle daughter, and Lucília, the eldest, who’d held a candle for João Lúcio, became disillusioned, and never married—along with their mother, Aunt Biquinha. Uncle Paulino had two daughters and two sons. Dequinha wasn’t even eleven when he drowned in the reservoir where he’d gone to swim in secret. The daughters moved away after marrying, Nilda to Ubá, and Ana Paula, whom Aunt Alcina apparently still lives with, to Juiz de Fora. Rogério dropped off the map—he enlisted in the army, was sent to join the Jungle Infantry Brigade, and was never heard from again. At the end of Avenida Raul Alves Ferreira, near the roundabout, I enter Casa Nova, a crowded buffet with clinking cutlery and a hubbub of voices. “Good afternoon,” a young woman chirps amicably. “Are you familiar with the system?” she asks. She is walking before I can say anything, her voice drowned out by the racket. We dodge patrons, who wind through the restaurant balancing trays, and she shows me to a table, packed between a loud group of friends and a young couple who rock a stroller as they eat, their baby wailing relentlessly, frightened by the commotion and bothered by the heat, which the ceiling fans do nothing to temper. I hang my backpack and hat off the chair and make my way the bathroom. I push open the door, head to the urinal, unzip my pants, pee, zip up my pants, and step over to the sink. I hang my glasses off my shirt collar, wash my face and hands, dry them with a paper towel, and put my glasses back on. I stand in line by the hot food station, pick up a tray and spoon white rice, black beans, a slice of fried polenta, a piece of pork loin, and some greens (maybe chicory) onto my plate, then grab a knife, fork, and napkins. “Anything to drink?” asks the woman as she weighs my food. “Water,” I say. She puts the bottle and plastic cup on the tray, then hands me a plastic card with a barcode, which I slip into my pant pocket. I circle back to my table. The mother now toddles the still-screaming baby in her lap, as her husband smiles awkwardly. It’s possible we had witnessed the end of an era, in which large-bellied men with grayish hair flaunted their good health and money as the women contemplated their jaded grandchildren with admiration. Rodeiro was a small and quiet town then, a square and four streets down which buggies, bullock carts, bicycles, Dr. Jerônimo Novaes’s Volkswagen Beetle, Rubens Giusti’s Rural Willys, the town van, and the milk truck slowly rolled. Time, on horseback, with its showy harness, trotted leisurely, hat doffed in gentlemanly greeting at the women leaning out the windows and the men sitting in chairs on the sidewalk, G’morning, G’afternoon, and G’night. On a Saturday like today, Italians would flood country roads, bringing with them sacks of rice for milling, corn for grinding, colts for shoeing, and popcorn, jiló, okra, tomato, oranges, eggs, chickens, and suckling pigs to sell in th
e market; and with the money they made, they bought sugar, wheat flour, and ant and rat poison, as well as notions for sewing. By that time, though, it would have been empty, evening having quietly withdrawn behind closed doors. The small farms peppered along the mountain range rose and slumbered with the sun. They’d wake up and have piada for breakfast, eat lunch at nine, grits with milk at noon, have dinner at three, and at seven they ate cornbread with milky coffee or else stuffed themselves with popcorn while playing truco; by nine they were sound asleep. On Sundays, there was mass, and the whole family would head back into town. They’d wake up early, dress in their Sunday best—clothes proper for seeing God in—and make their way to São Sebastião Church. Father Jaime, a systematic Dutchman with a fondness for the bottle, who spoke in a language impossible to understand, had a habit of drawing out the end of the ceremony with his sermonizing, to the dismay of his congregants. Then, people caught up with each other—it was a time for seeing relatives and friends, for sharing news and information, for enjoyment. Business was handled, relationships sparked, animosities cemented. It’s all come to an end. If, for example, I were to strike up a conversation with the couple now sitting in the place of the young parents with the baby and not speaking to one another, busy fingering their phones every second, if I were to ask these two people who are more or less my age if they remembered the old days, if I were to mention names, or raise incidents that were either humorous or tragic—like when Seu Matias Rinaldo, whose wife had cheated on him, tried to hang himself with a rope he’d fastened to a girder but instead brought the walls and roof of his house down on the few pieces of furniture he owned, and then spent the rest of his life brooking the quiet derision of his compatriots—if I were to ask them if they remembered this episode, I wouldn’t even get a sigh. I wonder if all these people stuffing themselves with food and drink realize they walked these streets as children. Because they are the same streets…except different…I wipe my mouth with a paper napkin, get up, shove on my cap, sling on my backpack, pull out the plastic card, weave through the tables, and grab another bottle of water. The woman behind the scale adds it to my tab. I make my way over to the cash register, where the barcode reader shows the price of my meal, take my wallet out of my back pocket, and pay. I fill a small plastic cup with coffee, mix in two drops of sweetener, drink the warm, watery substance, toss it in the bin, and leave. There isn’t a breath of wind on this sun-drenched afternoon. Maybe these men and women, young and old, who eat and drink with dispassion, are right…These are the same streets…except…different…You can’t bring the past back to life…I walk down the narrow sidewalk, squeezed between the curb and the walls of modest houses whose flung-open windows show elderly people paralyzed by the television, fans humming. A house’s rooms don’t hold the voices and joys and sorrows of those who lived in it. A house exists only here and now; there is no before or after. You may be able to touch the furniture, the objects, but never the people, much less their stories…These houses will one day also crumble, and not even the memory of them will survive. You’re right, Mr. Mendonça, it’s the present that matters…But if I were to walk as I am now, anonymously, along the front of the Spartano field, down Rua João Bicalho and through São Sebastião Square, and cross paths with no one, could anyone say I had been in Rodeiro today, when nobody saw me? Steam rises from the cobblestones, turning everything hazy and undefined. I walk through the Rodeiro of my childhood…Zelito Crovato’s ice cream parlor was over there…And Bar do Pivatto…And the Turk’s store…I head down the street bordering the cemetery, where soon I will see Mom, Dad, and Lígia again…Dad had never paid much attention to me. He may have always been locking horns with João Lúcio and Rosana, but at least he respected them. They’re opinionated, he used to say, and pigheaded. But they’ve got grit! He thought of me as shy and cow-hearted, while the world belonged to people who were daring and audacious, A man’s got to be gutsy, the weak get trod on, he would claim. The specter of failure had stuck to my skin. I’d failed as a son, as a husband, as a father…I’d failed as a brother…As a member of our family…Maybe Dad’s anger had to do with the fact that out of all his children, I resembled him the most—in face, body, and manner—and that he had big dreams for me. Maybe—why not?—a portrait of me in academic dress to hang on the wall. Even his redneck brother-in-law, Ênio, who couldn’t write his own name on his voter registration card, had gotten his life on track in Rio. But I had proven to be changeable, fearful, unworthy…Though he never accused me of it, deep down I know Dad suspected that I, his failed son, had been the one to find the gun on top of the wardrobe and show it to Lígia. His contempt only grew, and I don’t recall us exchanging anything more than formalities after Lígia…after she…after Lígia died…He couldn’t hide how uneasy he felt around me…I spot the gate to the cemetery—sweat drenches my shirt and hat—cross the street, climb the concrete steps—my pulse bounds—and pant up the steep hill, tombs on either side, some modest, others ostentatious. It’s no use trying to cheat death. Whether they bear photographs and epitaphs, names and dates, every tomb—in marble or brick, or even those shallow graves whose only adornment is a white-painted wood cross with handwritten names and dates, almost entirely faded—is the same as those more humble resting places that lie in a corner by the crumbling wall, small mounds of dirt with no identifying markers. Death renders us equal in annihilation. Just as our bodies decompose, so do the memories of our passage through the world. Here is the enormous, black-marble Moretto family vault that João Lúcio commissioned to house our history. I open my backpack, grab the bottle of water, now tepid, and take a sip. On the vault, large oval portraits of Anacleto Moretto (07/03/1897–08/22/1962) and Luigia Peron (04/18/1902–12/09/1970) bear no epitaphs as they reign over the dead. Grandpa Anacleto, spindly and blond, his face stern but kind, it was said, died when I was one. Grandma Luigia, hot-tempered—always in a black dress, long hair up in a bun—used to curse around the clock, despondent. Inside the three niches, illustrated by small, round photographs: André Bortoletto Moretto (11/26/1963–07/11/1973), or Dequinha, skinny and quiet, and Paulino Moretto (09/29/1926–12/29/1992), intestinal obstruction; Lígia Moretto Nunes (08/03/1960–09/23/1975), for whose soul Father Jaime refused to pray, and my mother, Stella Moretto (11/06/1933–09/02/1995); Ítalo Moretto (08/17/1929–01/01/1985), bedridden for years, bitter, reeking of shit and piss, covered in sores, and my father, José Nivaldo Nunes (02/27/1931–05/03/1997), who passed away in hardly better circumstances. Now incommunicable, inaccessible, unreachable. Soon I too will be a portrait, a date, a name…Body, bones, dust…Nothing at all…I did everything wrong…And time has run out…I’m a sack of guilt and remorse…Lígia…We weren’t much for photographs…I wonder when this was taken, and who took it. “I’m sorry to bother, but are you family?” asks a man around my age, pointing at the tomb. I nod. Bashful, he says, “Then we must be related…I mean, Zilma, my late wife, may she rest in peace, was the niece and goddaughter of Dona Alcina Bortoletto, who was the wife of Seu Paulino Moretto, who is…” “My uncle,” I say, annoyed. “My mother Stella’s brother.” “Oh, so you must be João Lúcio’s brother!” “That’s right.” He holds out a hand rough with callouses, “Pleasure to meet you.” “Sure, a pleasure,” I say. “I’m the caretaker here,” he boasts, sweeping his eyes over the cemetery’s entire, awful expanse. “I’ve got your brother to thank for it. Great man,” he says, “I do my best to live up to the trust he’s put in me.” I take off my hat, wipe the sweat off my head with the back of my left hand. “Are you passing through?” he asks. I tell him I am as I put on my hat. “Can I interest you in a coffee, or some water? I live just over there, see.” He points to a row of houses in the distance. “Third one from the corner.” I thank him but explain that I’m in a hurry and just came to pay my respects. He asks where I live. “São Paulo,” I answer. He sighs, “Ah, São Paulo!” And adds, “I’ve got two kids who live there…Quite a ways, isn’t it? And big, huge…And what about all that v
iolence, huh? I visited once and was scared so stiff I never went back…The stuff you see on TV…It’s the wild, wild west…” He asks again, “Can I really not interest you in some water, or coffee? Vanessa, my current wife…Zilma died several years back, not even the doctors could figure out what she had. So I married again, you know how it is, the kids spread their wings and then you’re left to grow old on your own. And that’s no good, is it? Being alone like that…So I got together with Vanessa. She’s a good woman, attentive. So if you like we can head down there, she’d be over the moon to meet a brother of João Lúcio’s. He’s been so helpful, and not just to me, since you could say I’m family and all, but to anybody who needs a hand. He may have gotten rich, but he never forgot where he came from.” “No, thank you though, really. Maybe some other time,” I insist. He says goodbye and hefts his slender body downhill, skirting ditches gouged by heavy rain, which sweeps pieces of coffin and bits of bone onto the street when it falls. The air is still, the silence only broken by the occasional distant sound. A metallic clanging, someone striking metal with metal. The shrill voice of a child riling up a dog that runs and barks with glee. The engine of a speeding motorcycle. The monotonous dun-dun-dun of an unintelligible song. Before making my way down, I spy, up on the hilltop, the white marble vault where Prazeres lies under the name Barboza Vieira Moretto and family. I heft my slender body downhill, skirting ditches gouged by heavy rain, and reach the street. I seek out the scant shade of the skeletal trees that dot the pitted sidewalk. A cat sits at a window watching the movement outside, drunk on the heat. That’s where Maneco Linhares’s grocery store used to be…And Giácomo Paro’s bakery was over there…And the bocce ball court was right there…Nothing’s left…Here is where the warehouse with the rice huller once marked the end of a city that now stretches on for three more blocks, practically all the way to where the widower Seu Tatão Ribeiro lived in seclusion with his brood of children in a rickety thatch house made of cob walls and bamboo stakes, smoke always rising from its woodstove chimney. The deafening thump of carioca funk crackles through heavy-duty speakers installed in the trunk of a black lowered Punto parked in front of a boteco. “É o caralho do caralho / Do caralho mesmo / Ô recalcado, não rouba minha brisa / Eu comprei com meu dinheiro / Então cuida da sua vida.” Young men and women drink beer around a portable metal grill, a green awning sheltering them from the sun. A few steps later, a small group of believers gathers in the tiny, single-exit room of Breath of God Ministries, yelling with Bibles lofted over their heads, their sounds stifled by the frenzied rhythm of the music next door. Little by little, the houses thin out. The cobblestone road morphs into a long tongue of gravelly sand. There isn’t a breath of wind, or a single cloud…I pull labored gulps of hot air into my lungs. The strong scent of weed hangs in the still air. I hear laughter but can’t tell where it’s coming from…After a curve in the road, through a grove of eucalyptus trees, I spy Seu Maneco Linhares’s farmhouse perched on a hilltop in the distance. I cross the small bridge over which Mom had once leaned in delight as she urged us children to point out the small tetras and piabas whirling in the stream’s clear waters, now muddied and fetid, plastic clinging to the brush lining the banks…Lígia lying in her coffin in a white dress, a plastic bouquet of baby’s breath in her gloved hands, veil covering her face…My heart raced as the afternoon fell away…Even addled by the Tryptanol Dr. Gilson Machado had prescribed, I used to wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night and see Lígia idling in the shadows, quiet, her eyes sorrowful, trying to say something…A motorcycle buzzes by and the passenger yells something I can’t make out. A pickup speeds in the opposite direction. The motorcycle vanishes into the dust. The pickup vanishes into the dust. I vanish into the dust…I cough and cough and cough…I wipe my glasses with the edge of my shirt. Slowly the cloud lifts, revealing a canopy of avocado trees that were already old when I was a kid, and had marked the entrance to the land of Seu Orlando Spinelli, murdered some years ago, they said, by an employee he’d raised as his own son. Nothing remains of the stone house, not even its foundation…The termites eat through everything, in a fury…Lígia used to like stopping here to drink fresh water from the well. She’d fearlessly climb over the fence, ignoring the dogs of ragtag coloring that charged toward her, and cross the path into the garden, where the Spinelli kids—a bunch of ugly, red-faced bumpkins who were pale blond and ungainly—used to hide away. There was no point in telling Lígia off, she always went and did the same thing every time. Unimpressed, Mom would rush to apologize to Dona Assunta, who laughed it off and politely offered us a bucketful of ripe star fruit to eat on our walk. We used to stop at the crossroads to catch our breath. A cross wrapped in crepe paper stood lodged in the mud, a sign that some traveler had been ambushed there…Ahead of us, a long uphill trail led to Bagagem and Serra da Onça, where the Bettios, Finettos, Benevenuttis, Prettis, and Michelettos lived scattered around the hills, people we knew by name…Behind us, a downhill road skirted large grottoes called Angicos, home to the families of Seu Rubens Giusti, Seu Beppo Chiesa, Seu Giacinto Bettio, and to the Spinellis, Seu Federico, and Seu Tarciso. Grandpa Anacleto’s farmstead crested another road; the Furlanetos, Visentins, and Bortolettos dwelled in the direction of Três Fazendas; and on the way to Os Gomes, past Seu Raimundo Ferreira’s greengrocer, were the rocky lands where the Rinaldis lived in penury and the Scarpas lived in sin. I trudge down the steep slope with the sun at my back. In the past, summer storms would isolate these families. Streams, brooks, and small rivers spilled over, flooding paths, trails, and tracks. The days were gray and wet, and the mud slick. Everything—the grown-ups, the animals, the hours—would become gloomy; that is, except for the plants and for us kids. We used to cook up all kinds of fun and games, whether it was squelching in the mud outside, or playing truco, buraco, burro, brisca, or scopa indoors, for a couple of coins or for nothing at all. We’d leap over gates and cattle guards, dodge mad dogs and furious bulls, run from geese and be startled by snakes. In the farmlands that we passed, the rows of corn and the rice paddies, the fields of tobacco and beans, the corrals of dairy cattle, and the vegetable gardens all doffed their straw hats in greeting, G’Morning! From the houses edging the road wafted the smell of lard being rendered, and the sound of someone beating laundry on mine rocks. Today the meadows are riddled with weeds, pimpled with termite hills, cut through with gullies, the barbed wire is rusted, and the fence posts have fallen…In the crumbling walls, windows frame gnarled branches…Water trickles from a pipe into a concrete tank green with mud…There is the lazy groaning of bamboos rubbing together…The plopping of a traíra that’s snapped a dragonfly from its hidey-hole…Somewhere, a white-tipped dove coos…Mom was the first to move away. She met Dad in Rodeiro during St. John’s Eve. He’d been buying something at an auction at the São Sebastião Church kermis organized by Seu Santo Chiesa. Less than two years passed between their first meeting and the day Mom donned a veil and tossed her bouquet. Dad lived near Corgo do Sapo and every Saturday rode to Grandpa Anacleto’s farm on horseback. Mom claimed her father had taken a shining to his son-in-law, though the same couldn’t be said of Grandma Luigia. She ragged on him till the very end, accusing him of being an impiastro, a bastardo. As a woman, Mom had no right to an inheritance. It was rumored that Dad was the illegitimate son of Commander Joaquim Santiago Nunes, though all he got from him was his name. Having never met his father or mother, he lived as a ward in Corgo do Sapo, where he did a little bit of everything, until the age of around twenty-five. After they were married, Mom and Dad moved to Cataguases, without a penny to their name. Being naturally gifted, it wasn’t long before Mom had fine-tuned her skills and become a consummate seamstress—permanently cooped up in the basement surrounded by patterns and mannequins. Dad got a job at Industrial. He started from the bottom, sweeping the weaving room, and soon won the trust of the foreman and assistant foreman, who promoted him to weaver. Not long after, his smarts and eye for detail landed him in the fabric wa
rehouse, of which he would eventually become the manager. He hated leaving Cataguases, and on the rare occasion he did, sulkily, he steered clear of Corgo do Sapo, perhaps out of fear he might bump into one of his adopted siblings. Mom used to carp at Dad about it and accuse him of having an inferiority complex. But Dad insisted he was a man of the present, A guy’s got to look ahead, he used to say with pride. I stop in the shade of a silk floss tree, grab the bottle, and have a sip of water. Warm. I take off my hat, wipe sweat from my head with the back of my right hand, and put my hat back on. I wipe my glasses with the edge of my shirt. My legs ache…I wonder what time it is. A smooth-billed ani watches me with interest from its perch on the wire fence. I fill my chest with hot air and continue walking. Uncle Ênio…Married with two small children, he decided to try his luck in Rio de Janeiro, even though he’d never been anywhere bigger than Ubá, where he used to go to visit the Perons, Grandma Luigia’s side of the family, who lived around Campo de Aviação. After hearing no word from Uncle Ênio for over a year, everyone expected the worst. He was her favorite sibling, and Mom was sick with worry. We were thick as thieves, she’d cry, heartbroken at his disappearance. One day out of the blue, he showed up in Rodeiro with a heavy wallet, and treated everyone to beer and cachaça. It took him all day to get from São Sebastião Square to the farm, there were so many people to greet and rounds to buy. In a week, he got rid of the few pieces of furniture he owned and took his wife and kids with him to Campo Grande, in practically the clothes on their backs. Campo Grande, the important state of Guanabara, as he solemnly explained and we repeated with pride. Whenever Campo Grande played Botafogo for the Carioca Championship, we thought of Uncle Ênio…He ended up selling his part of the land he’d inherited to Uncle Paulino, who vowed to never leave the place where he’d been born…Uncle Ítalo soon left the countryside too. At first, he single-handedly ran a sawmill that he had bought for next to nothing—a bandsaw that turned logs into planks and a circular saw that turned planks into boards, laths, rafters, and timbers. This was around the time when he was financing João Lúcio’s bus fare from Cataguases to Rodeiro, so he could spend weekends playing ball for Spartano’s B team. Dad groused left and right about how ungrateful his son was, When it’s time to help out around the house, suddenly nobody’s around…Uncle Ítalo didn’t last long. After he had a stroke, his youngest daughter Cíntia moved to Brasília, taking Verônica with her. Lucília, the eldest, had been promised to João Lúcio and stayed behind to help Aunt Biquinha nurse Uncle Ítalo, who could neither walk nor talk, and even needed assistance when it came to doing his business. By the time Uncle Ítalo died—of spite, they said—the old sawmill was already manufacturing wardrobes and beds, and João Lúcio was engaged to Maria Teresa. So Aunt Biquinha and Lucília left too. None of them ever stepped foot in Rodeiro again. Uncle Paulino held out for as long as he could. He buried Dequinha, and Aunt Alcina spent the rest of her days in deep mourning. He married Nilda off to the owner of a fruit store in Ubá. He married off Ana Paula, who moved to Juiz de Fora and convinced Rogério to do his basic training there. Her husband was a police sergeant, and Rogério fell under the spell of his uniform, joined up, and was dispatched to Humaitá, in Amazonas, never to be heard from again. Uncle Paulino bought a small house in Rodeiro up near the road to Ubá, at the insistence of Aunt Alcina’s family. Yet every morning he rode out to the country, where he kept a handful of rangy, tick-ridden cows in the meadow, grew beds of puny vegetables, and fattened up barrows in the mango grove. Mom said it saddened her to see him wake up before dawn, wolf down a handful of piada, knock back a cup of coffee, light his corn-husk cigarette, climb into his buggy, and vanish into the gloom, whether rain or sunshine, as though making his escape…As soon as he came into money, João Lúcio bought Uncle Paulino’s parcel, which encompassed Uncle Ênio’s—at his request—so that it wouldn’t end up in the hands of a stranger, as he explained to family. By the time Mom died, there were trucks all across Brazil with the name Pádua Furniture slapped on the side of the trailer. But even though his business had continued to grow, and even though it now occupies the biggest warehouse on the outskirts of the city, he still hasn’t managed to incorporate Uncle Ítalo’s land. His daughters hate João Lúcio with such passion they’d rather let the whole thing be overrun by wilderness, out of pure obstinacy. Whenever we used to reach this point, at the tip of the scarp, Aunt Biquinha would holler, Praised be, it’s Stella! and ask her daughters to meet us while she spruced up for her guests. Uncle Ítalo would wave and immediately drop the hoe to scrub his face and hands. After the bend, having heard Aunt Biquinha’s cry, we would find Aunt Lola at the front door to her house, Amauri in her arms and tearful, snot-nosed Marino standing beside her. Uncle Ênio, busy weeding the high fields, would make an appearance later. Bitter-melon vines grow amid shards of tile and chunks of brick. A brindled dog races toward me, barking. I stop. What now? He corners me on the ledge. I take off my backpack and place it between my trembling legs and his sharp, bared teeth. My heart races. I whisper, “Quiet now…Quiet…” and fix my eyes on the dog to show him I am not the enemy, just as my dad had taught me. Then I hear—we both hear—a voice. “Tainha! Tainha!” A bald man in glasses, barefoot, no shirt, and belly jutting out from his shorts rounds the bend, fighting to hold a thick leash pulled taut by a white pit bull. João Lúcio! “João Lúcio, it’s me, Oséias!” I shout. “Cut it out, Tainha!” He scolds the brindle, who growls in retreat. João Lúcio wraps the leash around his hand and steps closer to study me with his nearsighted eyes. “Oséias…?!” he says with surprise. He turns around and tells me to follow him. “I’ve got to tie Chicão up.” João Lúcio still wears the gold chain and cross he got for his First Communion…He tugs along a placid Chicão, while Tainha pads cagily behind me. We walk those two hundred meters in silence, enough for my body to settle down after the fright. There is the scent of grilled meat…At the next fork, where Uncle Paulino used to live, stands a tall wall. A black, grimy Triton pickup truck is parked on the crushed-rock yard, in the shade of five American pepper trees. We walk through a side gate into a grassy backyard. To the left, a pool and a seven-a-side soccer field. In the middle, a house of exposed brick ringed by a veranda, the roof plated in solar panels. To the right, a pool house with a grill, whitish smoke curling up to the sky. João Lúcio locks the pit bull up in a dog pen at the back of the property, by the orchard. I stand under the weak sun, which still burns my skin. João Lúcio returns and tells me to leave my bag inside, gesturing at the kitchen door. I cut across the veranda into a large room whose walls are half-laid in white brick. In the early evening light, it resembles a sultry, yellow grotto. Long rustic wood table, ten chairs, French-door refrigerator, six-burner gas range, outsized china cupboard, outsized sink. I place my bag on the burnished concrete floor, near the hallway. The hands on the wall clock read 5:10. One sheet of a Coração de Jesus desk calendar shows “Mar 7, 2015. Sat. Sts: Felicitas and Perpetua.” I walk out. Tainha, sitting alert at the door, gets up and eyes me. I spot João Lúcio in the pool house and step cautiously past the dog, who follows me in silence. In one hand, João Lúcio holds a can of beer, while with the other he rakes the embers. “Help yourself to a beer,” he says. Tainha quiets down and shuts his eyes, stretched out near the grill. I open the fridge, take out a can of beer, open it, and have a sip. “You still living in São Paulo?” João Lúcio asks, pulling up a chair and sitting down. I take a long drink of the beer. “That’s right,” I say and set the beer down on the table next to a greasy cutting board, a toothpick holder, a napkin holder, a cell phone, and a golden—or is it gold?—wristwatch. “What are you doing here, Zézo?” he asks. I remove my hat and hang it off the back of the chair. “Just passing through…” “Passing through?!” he barks with sarcasm. “Did you try to find me in Rodeiro?” he asks. “No.” I take another long swill of beer. “You walk?” he asks. “Uh-huh,” I mumble. João Lúcio gets up, tosses the empty can into a black trash bag, grabs another beer from the
fridge, opens it, and has a sip. He walks to the grill, turns over the sausage rack, and flips the metal skewer. “I came to visit the cemetery,” I say. “Then I felt like going for a wander…Then…I didn’t expect to run into you.” What little hair João Lúcio has left is now gray. He seems tired. He lifts the skewer from the grill, rests the tip on the cutting board, and carves off bloodied hunks of meat. Tainha sidles closer, perhaps hoping to be rewarded for his recent show of fearlessness and courage. João Lúcio returns the skewer to the grill. He carries the dripping cutting board to the table and dumps the sliced meat onto a metal tray. I drain the can of beer. Get up, toss it into the black trash bag, and fetch another from the fridge. João Lúcio sits down and has a swig of beer, stuffs a piece of meat into his mouth. “You gonna eat or what?” he asks. “I had lunch in Rodeiro,” I explain. “The meat’s delicious,” he says, pressuring me to try it. I have a sip of beer, grab a piece of meat, stuff it in my mouth, and chew. It really is delicious…We sit in silence. João Lúcio scratches Tainha’s head. He has age spots on his hands, just like Mom. “How are you doing?” I ask. He stuffs a piece of meat in his mouth. “All right,” he says, and falls quiet. Mosquitoes whir, drawn to the smell of blood. Charcoal crackles in the grill. Canaries warble in the veranda rafters. “I visited Isinha and Rosana in Cataguases,” I say. “Oh,” he mumbles, uninterested. He has a sip of beer, gets up to rake the embers. “Isinha’s still working like crazy…Did you know Rosana’s a school principal now? She travels to the U.S. every year…” I continue. I have a sip of beer. Stuff a piece of meat in my mouth. The sun sets slowly. João Lúcio grabs a piece of meat from his plate and flings it at Tainha, who catches it midair. Satisfied with the result, he does it again, flaunting the mutt’s dexterity. “So, you quit smoking?” “I did.” Bit by bit, birds twitter to the trees in droves. “Is all of this yours now?” I ask, raising a subject I’m sure João Lúcio will be eager to discuss. He takes a long swig of beer. “That’s right…I’m trying to piece together Grandpa’s farm,” he says. “All I’m missing is Uncle Ítalo’s parcel…I haven’t bought it yet ’cause his moneygrubbing daughters think I’m swimming in cash and insist on asking for more than it’s worth,” he lies. I can tell he’s lying because his eyes sweep the thick concrete floor as he talks. He has another sip of beer, gets up. “I’m in conversation with some folks at a university over in Viçosa…I want to restore the native growth…Like it is over that way.” He signals at the lush green blanketing the mountain beyond the dog pen. “That section was preserved because of the mines,” he explains. “Do you remember the time we went in there?” I ask. “Galego had chased after some critter, an armadillo, I think it was, and you, me, Uncle Ênio, and Rogério set out to look for him. Except we lost sight of Uncle Ênio. We walked and walked and walked until we could see all those little houses from way up high…” “Rodeiro, wasn’t it?” he ventures with a smile. “And then there was the time that pregnant heifer went missing…They searched for her high and low…Thought somebody had lifted her…We only found her much later. One holiday, we happened across her skull in the middle of the forest. A snake probably got her…” João Lúcio polishes off his beer and tosses the can in the black trash bag. He grabs another from the fridge, opens it, and sits back down. “How come you remember all that stuff?” I have a sip of beer. “You had this double album, Músicas Inesquecíveis. You’d listen to it, lying on the yellow sofa…” João Lúcio calls Tainha over and pretends to examine his fur. “You went to the pictures a lot…To watch westerns…Especially spaghetti westerns…Do you still do that?” “Do what?” “Watch movies?” He has a sip of beer. “At home, we’ve got cable TV with a bunch of channels on it, but I always nod off the second I sit down.” Tainha vanishes, bored, into the backyard twilight. “You used to tell anyone who’d listen that you were going to visit Italy someday…” “Is that right?” “Yeah.” João Lúcio gets up to flip the skewer and turn over the sausage rack. “Did you?” “Did I what?” “Visit Italy.” “I did…” He seems a little flustered as he chops up the sausage. “Twice…But at the invitation of factories that manufacture furniture-making machines…” “Is it beautiful? Italy, I mean.” “I don’t know…Can’t say I saw much of it. Mostly just visited factories…” he answers, short. Then, maybe a little contrite, he has a sip of beer, and, sliding the rounds of sausage onto the metal tray, adds, “I mean, the little I saw was beautiful. But I don’t even remember the names of the places I visited…I think one of the cities was near Vicenza…Another near Treviso…Paludi, something like that…The train went through this sort of flat region…Thick fog…I ate a lot of squash-blossom pasta, just like when we were kids…Drank a lot of wine…Funny, I understood practically everything people said…But I couldn’t say a word…I’d just start stammering…Both times I bought machinery to expand the factory…” He has a sip of beer. “Did you see the family vault?” he asks, with pride. “I did.” “Had the whole thing redone…Turned out nicely, don’t you think?” “It did,” I concede as I have a sip of beer. Night had fallen without our noticing. João Lúcio’s profile shudders in the flickering light radiating from the grill. “I was thinking of Sino the other day…” I remark. “One hell of a dog…” he says with emotion. “As good as a person, he was.” “Yeah.” “I’ve got a picture of him at home,” adds João Lúcio. “The one where Dad, you, Sino, and me are standing in front of the house?” I drain the last of my beer. “That’s right…” he says. I get up and ask for the restroom. João Lúcio signals at a pair of doors on the other end of the veranda. “The one on the right,” he says. I wipe my mouth with a paper napkin. I make my slow way past a small alcove that holds a picture of St. Anthony of Padua, and through the bathroom door. I switch on the light, unzip my pants, empty my bladder. The mirror shows a caved face. Wrinkles. Gray beard hairs furiously pocking my flaccid skin. I switch off the light. Gently close the door. Wash my hands in the sink, wipe them with a towel. I make my slow way back, glancing sidelong at St. Anthony of Padua’s now-illuminated alcove. I wonder if the picture had been brought from Italy. João Lúcio has switched on the lights in the pool house, now crowded with clouds of swarmers. Thousands of stars gleam on the horizon. The full moon washes everything in a soft blue light. João Lúcio sits with Tainha at his feet. I grab a round of sausage, stuff it in my mouth, and chew. I toss the empty beer can in the black trash bag, take another from the fridge. I open it and have a sip. “And how are the wife and kids?” I ask. “All right,” he says, and falls quiet. I sit at the table. A chill breath swathes the gloom. “You spend Saturdays here on your own?” I ask. “It’s how I wind down,” he says. “It’s nice up here. There’s not even cell service…” João Lúcio has a sip of beer and stuffs a piece of sausage in his mouth. A cricket strikes up its tinny song. “Things will be a bit livelier tomorrow, you’ll see. The factory hands start trickling in around ten o’clock…They grill meat, play ball, fish in the reservoir…Do you remember the reservoir? I’ve cleaned it up. It’s teeming with fish now. Tilapia, tetra, carp…At the end of the day, they head home. All of it, on my dime. Except for the meat and drink, which is BYO. It’s worth the expense. They leave here feeling happy…Start the week in high spirits…” he concludes. “You’re really well liked, aren’t you?” I say. He gets up to flip a batch of sausages he must have set on the grill in the short time I was away. “I met the caretaker…Used to be married to Aunt Biquinha’s goddaughter,” I explain. “Afonsinho?” “He didn’t say. The man was determined to have me over for coffee.” “Did you take him up on it?” he asks, sipping anxiously at his beer. “No.” “So you haven’t met his…his new wife?” he asks. “No.” João Lúcio sighs in apparent relief. He checks his wristwatch, abandoned on the table. “The road’s in good shape up this way. Gravel and everything.” “Yeah…Leozim, the current mayor, is a former employee of mine,” he says. He drains the last of his beer and tosses the can into the black trash bag. Bored, Tainha rolls around in the grass. “Look, Zézo, I’v
e got to get going soon.” João Lúcio fixes his eyes on the thick concrete floor. “I…uh…I’ve got…I’ve got some stuff…to sort out…in Guidoval…So…Come with me.” I get up and follow João Lúcio as he walks into the kitchen and flips on the light. I collect my backpack from a corner. He flips on the light in the hallway and opens a door to the left, flips on the light in one of the bedrooms and says, “You can sleep here.” The queen-sized bed is meticulously made. “If you get cold—the temperature always drops because we’re so close the woods—there are blankets in here.” He opens the wardrobe, revealing two colorful duvets. I set my backpack on the floor. He walks out into the hallway and opens another door. Flips on the light. “Bathroom,” he says. “There are clean towels in the closet,” he explains. “Make yourself at home.” He steps into another room and shuts the door. I flip off the bathroom light, flip off the bedroom light, and make my way back to the pool house. The fire gives its last gasp. I stoke the embers with the rake. I grab the skewer, steady the tip on the cutting board, and carve the meat with a knife. I return the skewer to the grill, carry the board to the table, and slide the hunks of meat onto the metal tray. I decide to play nice with Tainha and toss him a piece of meat. He sniffs it, bolts it down, cheerfully wags his tail. I shake the can. Though there’s still some beer left, it’s probably warm by now. I tip the liquid into the grill—the embers sizzle—and toss the can in the black trash bag. I take another beer from the fridge, have a sip. I sit down, stuff a piece of meat in my mouth. Chew. João Lúcio pitched these walls along the exact floor plans of Uncle Paulino’s house, which Grandpa Anacleto had built. To do so, he’d had to knock the whole thing down…Thick wood logs set on a stone foundation had held up adobe walls and a colonial-style roof. Through the front door, which once led to an enormous courtyard—now a parking lot—where beans were threshed and coffee set out to dry, was the living room, up a set of six wood steps reserved for the most illustrious guests. On the wall, an austere black-and-white portrait of Grandma and Grandpa. Three stools and a small table covered in a lace tablecloth. On the right side, a guest room with a queen-sized bed and chest. On the left side, the living room: a floor-to-ceiling cabinet with small glass doors that showed stacks of thick ceramic plates, heavy iron skillets, and spare cutlery, and a pair of solid locked doors that hid glass jars of compote and tins of meat preserved in lard, drawers brimming with documents, notions, medicine, and wood bins for storing rice, beans, corn, and coffee; a table with eight chairs; and a corner for stocking the harvest—burlap sacks of unhulled rice, corn kernels and coffee beans, braids of tobacco. To the left, the bedrooms. First, Grandma and Grandpa’s—large, tall bed, mosquito net, and chest. A passage to the boys’ room—two large, low beds and a chest. And a passage to Mom’s room—low, narrow bed—the only one with no window. All of them sporting a feather mattress and comforter. Beneath the pitted floor, a basement used to shelter a rooster, hens, cockerels, and pullets. To the right of the living room stood the kitchen, which on an average day doubled as the main entrance, with a pantry and a woodstove that was always burning. A door led to a small chamber that opened onto the fields and had a half wall into the living room; in winter, this space served as a stable, harboring calves that in turn warmed the house with their bodies. This was also where the broody chickens nested. The dog pen is now over what was once the granary, filled with corn stover kept as animal feed for when the pastures failed. Where the pool now stands was once the barn for the buggy, the bullock cart, and the horses’ saddlery. Hanging from the eaves in the living room there used to be a gray, long-abandoned wasp’s nest. Scattered around the rooms were cats—Grandma Luigia’s little treasures—in all colors, shapes and sizes…If I had any cigarettes, I’d probably smoke one now…Here comes João Lúcio…Freshly showered in khaki shorts, black moccasins, and a black polo shirt. In his hands is a plastic container and a roll of tinfoil, which he sets on the table. I have a sip of beer. He grabs the sausage rack and opens it onto the cutting board. He tears off a piece of tinfoil and wraps the sausages, then places them in the plastic container. He puts the rack in the sink. He circles back to the grill for the skewer, carves off a large hunk of meat, and drops it on the cutting board. He wraps the meat in tinfoil and sticks it in the plastic container, which he then closes. He returns the skewer to the grill and carries the tinfoil back to the kitchen. Tainha watches him come and go. I have a sip of beer. João Lúcio takes his time in the house and lumbers out smelling heavily of cologne. He grabs his gold-tinted watch from the table, fastens it on his wrist, and slips his cell phone into the pocket of his shorts. “See you tomorrow then,” he says. “Oh, I’ll be long gone by the time your guests start arriving,” I explain. “Uai, how come?” he asks, taken aback. “I’m…uh…leaving, early in the morning…” I say. “Well…then…then I guess I better send a car to collect you.” “No, no, don’t bother…I’d rather walk…enjoy the fresh morning air…” “If that’s what you want…” he says, obliging. João Lúcio takes the plastic container, turns toward the gate, and vanishes into the night gloom, with Tainha trotting ahead of him. I hear the car unlock with a beep. João Lúcio circles back and says, “Follow me.” We leave the pool house and cut across the veranda, past the illuminated alcove of St. Anthony of Padua and the bathroom. “When you leave, lock the kitchen door behind you and leave the key right here.” He points at a space between the wall and the rafter. “The gate will lock on its own. They’ve all got keys…” We walk back without speaking. I think of asking if the picture of St. Anthony of Padua had come from Italy, but I am cowed by our silence. João Lúcio marches straight to the dog pen. I linger in the pool house. I hear João Lúcio call tenderly for Chicão, then see both of them emerge—thick leash clipped around the pit bull’s neck—and make their way to the parking lot. I walk beside them on the lawn, at a distance. I don’t want to get Chicão riled up. João Lúcio picks up the dog and puts him in the truck bed, fastening the leash to the latch. “Someone tried to kidnap me,” he says. “They wanted me to get a security guard…Can you picture me going around with a security guard? Chicão commands respect…” He rounds the car and opens the passenger door. Tainha bounds into the front seat. “Tainha’s my alarm,” he says, slipping his hand into the glove compartment and pulling out a gun. “This is my life insurance.” João Lúcio steps back around the car and opens the driver’s door. He slides the gun under his seat. Looks up at the blue night sky, now studded with wisps of clouds. “Is everything all right with you, Zézo?” “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.” We shake hands. “Come by again, when you’ve got more time…” he says. He climbs into the car, turns on the headlights, starts the engine, accelerates, honks, and turns onto the road. I stand in the dark and watch as the lights of the pickup truck disappear behind a cloud of dust. My body is swathed in cold and quiet. I walk back over crushed rocks that warp the soles of my shoes. I shut the gate and cross the lawn. Swarmers whirl madly around the lights of the pool house. I cut through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the room. Flip on the light. Grab the plastic bottle from my backpack. I open the zippered compartment, take out the Cebion tube and the brown-paper package held together with Scotch tape. I flip off the light and leave the bedroom. Walk down the hall, through the kitchen, and back to the pool house. I place the plastic bottle, Cebion tube, and brown-paper package on the table. Stoke the embers with the rake. I have a sip of beer, spit it out. It’s warm. I unwrap the package, which holds a small wood mortar and pestle. I feed the brown paper to the fire. Uncap the Cebion tube. I tip the pills into the mortar and crush them into a powder. The palms of my hands are raw and sore. I fill the plastic bottle halfway with tap water. Riffle through the drawers for a small spoon. I transfer the powder into the water bottle, cap it, shake it, and stare at the milky liquid. I wash the spoon and return it to the drawer. I look around for a hammer. On a shelf, I find a hatchet and a bottle of ethanol. I break up the mortar with the hatchet, douse the wood pieces in ethanol, and feed them to the fi
re blazing in the grill. I try to chop up the pestle, to no success. I douse it in ethanol, toss it in the grill, and bury it under a mound of red embers. I grab my wallet from my back pocket, pull out my ID and driver’s license, and feed both to the fire. I put away my wallet. Place the hatchet and the ethanol back on the shelf. I pick up the Cebion tube and the plastic bottle and head into the kitchen, gently shutting the door. I step down the hall and into the bedroom, flip on the light. I place the bottle on the nightstand. Slip the empty Cebion tube into the zippered compartment. I take out some clean clothes—shirt, underwear, and socks—and lay them out on the table. I sit on the bed, slip off my shoes, socks, and shirt. I pull the plastic bag (shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, dental floss, toothpaste, and toothbrush) from my backpack. I pad barefoot down the hall and switch on the bathroom light. I pull down my pants and underwear. Hang them off a hook on the door along with the plastic bag. I sit on the toilet. Grandma Luigia used to love showing her cats off to guests, angering Grandpa, who thought their sole purpose was to kill mice. In the evenings, she’d sit on a stool hauled into the garden, and brush her long hair in the company of her little treasures. I empty my guts. Flush. Place my glasses on the sink. I open the closet, grab a towel. Put the shampoo and conditioner on the shower floor. Unwrap the bar of soap and set it in the soap dish. In the drain are strands of a woman’s long black hair. I turn on the shower, and warm water runs down my body. Grandma used to christen the cats with patrician names like Prince, Duke, Marquis, Count, Viscount, Baron, and their female equivalents…When one died, another would immediately inherit his or her title. I rinse my hair. Mom used to claim Grandma loved her little treasures more than her own children…I close the tap. Dry myself on a wooly towel that smells of softener. I put on my glasses, collect my pants and underwear, step out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around my waist. In the bedroom, I pull on a pair of clean underwear, fold my dirty laundry, and stuff it in my backpack. I tread back to the bathroom, hang the wet towel on the curtain rod in the shower. Squeeze some toothpaste onto my toothbrush. Carefully brush my teeth. I rinse my mouth. Pat my face dry with a hand towel. Take a square of toilet paper and wipe my glasses. I collect the shampoo and conditioner and dry both with a towel, toss them into the plastic bag. I grab the bar of soap and slip it back into its package, toss it into the plastic bag. I flip off the light, walk down the hall and into the bedroom, tuck the plastic bag in my backpack. I open the wardrobe and pull out a duvet. Take off my glasses and set them on the nightstand beside the plastic water bottle. I extend the duvet over the top sheet and lie down. Frogs croak. Birds trill. The ceiling seems to press down on my body…A mosquito buzzes crickets chirr frogs