Little by little, she discovered that her distant brother had calculated the right moment to act. Yaqub waited for his mother to die. Then, like a panther, he pounced. It was worse for Omar when he tried to run away. Now it wasn’t his mother’s claws he was trying to escape from, but the hounding of an officer of the law. He jumped from perch to perch, spending the night in safe houses belonging to his drinking cronies. He knew he was in for it; there was no way out. What had entered his head? He just abandoned his hiding place and wandered around anywhere. Cid Tannus saw him in a bar on the top of the Colina, where he’d often gone with Pau-Mulato. Then he found out he’d stayed at the Pensão dos Navegantes, throwing parties for girls from upstate. Rânia began to get visits from the owners of lodging houses and pensions; visits and threats—they badgered her about Omar’s debts, the shindigs they said he gave. He’d come back in the small hours, with a girl in tow, then the two of them raised the roof till morning and stopped the guests from sleeping. Next time, they’d call the police. He vanished from the Pensão dos Navegantes, and all his other hideouts. Rânia lost track of her brother, and thought he might be on some beach or by some lake, lying low and waiting for her to clear his name. Now he was wanted for various crimes; there were all kinds of complaints against him, because Rânia couldn’t settle all her brother’s debts. She knew: she had to save money for what would happen later.

12

12

Sooner or later, time and chance catch up with us all. Time had not effaced one of Laval’s lines, painted on the floor of the gazebo in the Praça das Acacias. Some years later, one day early in April, a stroke of fortune linked Laval’s destiny to Omar’s.