It was a promise, but I couldn’t see much in that future; the sea was a long way away, and my thoughts were stuck right here, in the days and nights of the present, in the closed doors of the lyceum, in Laval’s death. Did Yaqub know that? He saw I was worried and sad. What I told him was that I was afraid; I wasn’t far off finishing my courses at school. A teacher had been murdered, Antenor Laval … He looked thoughtful, shaking his head. He looked at me: “I’ve got a friend too … he was my teacher in São Paulo …” He stopped, and looked at me as if I wouldn’t understand what he was going to say. Yaqub might have known Laval when he studied at the Salesian college.

He knew that Manaus had become an occupied city. The schools and cinemas had been closed, navy launches patroled the bay of the Negro, and the radio stations were transmitting communiques from the Amazonia Military High Command. Rânia had to shut the shop because the dockworkers’ strike had been ended by a confrontation with the military police. Halim advised me not to mention Laval’s name outside the house. Other names became taboo. The black cloth covering part of the lyceum’s facade had been torn down, and the doors stayed shut for several weeks.

Even so, Yaqub was not frightened by the green vehicles surrounding the squares and Manaus Harbor, or the men in green occupying the avenues and the airport. The devil himself in green wouldn’t have put him off. I didn’t want to go out of the house, and didn’t understand the reasons for the coup in the country, but I did know there had been conspiracies, troop movements, and protests all over the place—violence; it all made me afraid. But he insisted I accompany him: “I’ve been a soldier, I’m an officer in the reserve,” he said to me proudly.