Had he had to go in a hurry? Why? Zana repeated the question, as if she would get an answer by sheer repetition. She asked after Yaqub, but she was looking for Omar. She hardly spoke to Rânia, kicked the air for no reason, and sat thinking about Omar’s fate. It was no longer the devil in the shape of a woman: it would have been easier to say to the neighbors: “These madwomen take our children from us, and our money.” Words she’d used at other times, when Dália, the Silver Woman, danced for us all; when the other one, the Pau-Mulato, lived with Omar in an old boat, thinking she was going to spend her life sailing up and down the river, reading the palms of the people on its banks, forecasting bright futures for ruined lives. Both of them, Omar and Pau-Mulato, living it up onboard their boat or on deserted beaches, but watched over by a dense, powerful shadow.
Zana’s dream of seeing her sons together, in an impossible harmony, was gone. She went back over her detailed and ingenious plan. “My sons were going to start a construction firm, Omar was going to have a job, work to do; I was sure …” She called my mother over to her, and said: “Omar lost his head; he was betrayed by his brother. I know all about it, Domingas … Yaqub got together with that Indian, did everything in secret, ignored my Omar, ruined everything …” Domingas listened and went away, leaving Zana alone, cursing Yaqub’s plot.
A few days after the fight, Rochiram went to the shop to talk to Rânia. He looked like a stranger, Rânia said after the encounter. He was short, sharp, never even pronouncing the twins’ names. He said in Spanish: “I’ve brought a proposal to close the matter.” He gave her a sealed envelope and said goodbye. She guessed the tone of the document; even so, when she read the letter in front of me, she went pale. Rochiram demanded a fortune in exchange for what he’d paid Yaqub for drawing up the plans and to Omar for the commission on the land. Apart from that, he’d wasted a lot of time on this business. He threatened her with the law, and wrote that he already knew influential people, “the most powerful in the city.” Rânia asked for a delay, “Some months for us to straighten our lives out.”
She told her mother of Rochiram’s demand. She said she’d do everything to avoid Yaqub taking Omar to court.
“That Indian is a crook,” said Zana. “Bloodsucker! The food I cooked for the ungrateful wretch … I practically spoon-fed the pale-faced parasite! He’s ruined my son’s future!”
She no longer dyed her hair, and the white curls made her look older than her face, still almost unwrinkled. My mother wouldn’t pray with her, or tell her about Omar’s attack. “Yaqub couldn’t react, he hadn’t time,” she said. Zana looked at her askance: her eyes were really strange. But Domingas was not intimidated. She smiled as if she were abreast of everything, and left her mistress perplexed, next to the oratory.