Halim found out more about the Englishman, and a few little facts about Omar. He found out he wasn’t English, and certainly wasn’t called Wyckham. His real name was Francisco Keller, or Chico Quelé, as he was known in the quay area by pilots, sailors, and stevedores. He was the grandson of poor Germans, people who had gotten rich and then lost everything. Hadn’t he been a bank manager? Yes, he had worked in banks, in various departments, but Quelé doesn’t last the pace, he hates regular hours, detests clocking in and saying good morning and good afternoon to the same people every day, all your life. He’s a deserter from routine. Quelé had met Omar in the Veronica, a huge sauna-cum-brothel, full of lamps with lilac tissue-paper shades. Omar and Quelé drank together in the Veronica, at the same table, larking about with the same girls. Quelé. Francisco Alves Keller, tall, blond from his father’s side, and delicate. He had the sweet talk to attract the Indian girls and half-breeds, lovely dark-skinned beauties, almost like children, smiling with their milk teeth. Quelé had other things too: the best whisky, English toffees in his pockets. Silk blouses. Bottles of French perfume. More than that, topping it all: an Oldsmobile. An ancient car, just a shell. Quelé scavenged the engine, the wheels, the windows, and the bumpers from another car. From the shell he made a kind of stunted convertible: a monster intended to impress. He only went to the Veronica in the convertible; the Oldsmobile arrived quietly, sliding down the soft, sandy slope, with its engine off, the headlights illuminating the lilac-colored building, surrounded by assai palms. The car looked like an old steamer, one of those ones with wheels, like from the Mississippi, from earlier times: “our time, Halim,” said Tannus. The girls left their clients in the middle of the room, ran to the car, and right there, on the sand, Quelé handed out bottles of perfume, sweets, blouses, and kisses. He got fresh with the girls on the edge of the jungle, among the wet caladiums; they caressed him and begged him to take them for a spin in the Oldsmobile. Quelé never went any farther. He never went to the huts at the back of the Veronica. He didn’t like the smell of other bodies having fun on the kapok-stuffed mattress. He didn’t go out with the girls; what he really liked was a bit of fun, with languishing looks and bites—the quirks of a strange man.

“But your son’s game for anything, Halim. He’ll pluck the rarest orchid, but he won’t turn down the commonest plant from the mudflats.”