One night Halim woke coughing and short of breath. He lit the kerosene lamp, and saw a yellow spider’s web reflected in the bedroom mirror; he smelled smoke and thought the mosquito net was slowly burning by his side. He jumped out of bed and saw Omar curled up next to Zana. He yelled at him and shooed him out, waking everyone up, and accused Omar of being an arsonist, while Zana repeated: “It was a nightmare, our son would never do that.” They had an argument in the middle of the night, until he left the house, banging the door behind him. Zana and Domingas went after him, and caught up with him near a newsstand in the Municipal Market. He was standing, smoking, looking at the lighted fishing boats that had just tied up in the Escadaria harbor. He told the two women he would come back later, and spent the rest of the night thinking over the nightmare, fixing his gaze on the boats and the river Negro, until the voices and laughter of the dawn brought him back to reality. He was barefoot, in his pajamas, and the first fishermen of the morning thought he was mad. One of them brought him back home, leading him by the arm as if he was sleepwalking. He slept for two nights in the storeroom of the shop, and refused to accept his son’s presence in the room; he would not put up with interference in the marriage bed. Later, when he was calmer, he even suggested that they should make love in Omar’s presence. Zana, without losing her cool, said: “Fine, in front of the children, Domingas, and the whole neighborhood. Then I’ll say we’re going to have another child.”

By the time Rânia was born, Halim was resigned to the limited space in the bedroom. On Zana’s rare visits to the shop, he dismissed the customers and backgammon players, shut the doors, and went up with her into the little attic storeroom, where a small window looks out over the river Negro. They spent hours there, far from the three children and the orphan that acted as their maidservant, far from practical jokes and interruptions. The two of them alone, as he liked. A breeze wafted in from the river, bringing the whiff of fish and the scent of fruits and pepper. He liked this smell, which mingled with others: the sweat of their bodies, the mustiness of the piles of cloth, leather sandals, cotton hammocks, and the rolls of tobacco. When he opened the shop again, he celebrated the event by having a sale of all the stuff littered around the little room. It was a real jamboree, but it happened less and less often.