Everyone at home seemed ill at ease. Zana and Rânia only talked behind closed doors; near to me, they exchanged words in soft whispers, fluttering like butterflies. Five or six days went by like this, and I remember that one Thursday it rained all night, and in the morning the roof was leaking. Dirty water streamed from the living-room ceiling, and the garden was awash. In the slum at the back, misery and confusion; the shacks were flooded, and from early on Domingas and I helped to drain the water from the corridors, and remove furniture from the tiny mud-spattered rooms. We left them with the sound of crying children in our ears, thinking our neighbors had lost everything. In midmorning a weak sun appeared over the city, the foliage took on a greener sheen, and a warm breeze moved the huge leaves of the breadfruit trees. Inside the house, silence: Zana had gone to exchange confidences with her daughter in the shop. Domingas went to change her clothes. When she came out of her room, she had a new dress and perfume on, and red lipstick. Her look couldn’t hide her apprehension. I saw her tense face turned towards the living room: Omar had just come down and was having a cup of coffee. It was unusual to see him down so early. He didn’t touch the food prepared for him every morning. He walked around the room, then suddenly went up and banged on Zana’s door. When he came down, he didn’t even look at Domingas: he said he wouldn’t be back for lunch. He went out unkempt, scruffy, looking grim. My mother gazed after his reeling figure, treading the ground as if he were kicking it. She stood between her room and the kitchen, till she lifted her head and said: “The weather’s still vile.”

I began digging channels to drain off the pools in the garden and stop them from getting infested with insects. The ground was covered with dead lizards and grasshoppers, fruit and leaves; from the ditch, by the side of the flooded henhouse, came the stink of rot. Little by little, the garden began to heat up with the humidity, and the sun, still watery among the thick clouds, wasn’t strong enough to remove the marks of the night’s rain.