Their caress, Halim repeated, as he went out of the Biblos. He reread Abbas’s gazals in his breaks from work. At six in the morning he was already selling his trinkets in the streets and squares of Manaus, in the tram stations and even on the trams themselves; he only stopped hawking his wares at about eight at night; then he went around by the Café Polar, before going back to his room in the Pension Oriente.

Early one Friday morning, he met Cid Tannus, who paid court to the last Polish and French girls still living in the city, decaying in the wake of the rubber boom. They drank the wine Tannus had bought from French and Italian sailors. Then came Abbas, still sober, but buoyed up by other orders for gazals. He slapped Halim on the back: “Well, old pal? What kind of a face is that?” Abbas, faced with the prospect of failure, whispered into his friend’s ear: “The gazals will have their effect, and patience is a powerful weapon, but a timid man will never win his lady.” He asked for two bottles of wine, gave them to Halim, and said: “Tomorrow, Saturday, two bottles of wine and … congratulations, old man!”

Finally, Halim decided to act, full of a courage heightened by the wine. Always, in our conversations, he got excited when he recounted the details of his campaign. “Ah …” he said to me, “the burning desire, the anguish that overtook me that morning.”