What happened was that Azaz, a tough guy and a layabout, spread the tale that Halim spent his life chasing Indian girls, both his own maid and others in the neighborhood. He also said, this Azaz, that there were lots of children who asked for his blessing in secret. The carefree Halim was the last one to find out about this. He heard the slanderous tales when he was relaxing with friends in the Encalhe, a bar installed in the skeleton of a wreck below the Educandos neighborhood, then settled by former rubber tappers, almost all of them very poor. There were always two or three with a machete or a sharpened knife in their pocket. But Halim liked the Encalhe, the fried manioc and fish they served at makeshift tables, and already in those days he was inseparable from his bottle of arrack and the backgammon board. Halim heard the rumors, stopped laughing, and pushed the grimy dice away.

A. L. Azaz had no fixed address: he was an idler who found shelter in big abandoned houses, where he broke in and lived for a stretch, pretending to be the owner. He picked up leftovers from rich people’s banquets, and afterwards boasted about his tawdry sexual exploits in the Encalhe. But he looked like a ruffian, and he was a famous slanderer, always to be found gossiping in the early evening, when poison creeps into the voice, and evil silences good judgment. He was stocky, with crinkly blondish hair and tight trousers, the pockets always full of sharpened bits of metal.

Halim closed the board, put the dice away, and paid the bill. He looked at one of his friends: “You mean this Azaz hasn’t a home? Then he should come alone, unarmed, on Sunday at three, to the Praça General Osório.” Everyone found out. Who can resist a duel? There was even an audience, people from the Educandos, the customers from the Encalhe, the peddlers from the market, all of them there, sitting in the shade of the oitizeiros around the edge of the square: an immense, green oval arena, a setting for many festivals in the June season.