Perhaps he forgot things, and omitted some strange scenes, but memory invents, even when it wants to be faithful to the past. Once I tried to coax a recollection out of him: didn’t he recite Abbas’s poetry before he went courting? He looked me right in the eyes, and then his head turned around towards the garden, his gaze fixed on the old, half dead rubber tree. All there was was silence. Lost in the past, his memory was hovering around the far-off afternoon when I saw him reciting Abbas’s gazals. It was an overture, and Zana was excited by the deep, melodious voice, which must have touched her soul before delirium took hold of their bodies. Omissions, lacunae, forgetfulness; the desire to forget. But I remember; I’ve always had a thirst for memories, for an unknown past, abandoned on some beach by the river.

Yaqub had already been living in São Paulo for some six years, more and more proud of himself, more and more of a genius. But he didn’t boast; he let it be known what road he had taken, and it was always the right one. At the end of every line, an arrow pointed to a glorious destiny, and marriage was part of that destiny. What did not enter the surveyor’s sights was Omar going to São Paulo. In that year, 1956, Omar had already abandoned the Vandals’ Cockpit, and there was no mention of studies, diplomas, anything like that. Antenor Laval brought him books and invited him to read poems in the pension where he lived. He admired Omar’s intonation; after Omar recited one of his friend’s poems, he would say: “That’s the voice of your perfect reader.” The two of them didn’t stay indoors long, and Omar emptied his mother’s purse and dragged Laval to the pavement in front of the Café Mocambo, where veterans and novices from the Rui Barbosa Lyceum passed by.

He was living it up as much as ever, and one night came home with a new girl, from the slum in the street at the back, Calisto’s sister. The two of them had a ball: they danced around the altar, smoked the hookah, and drank as much as they wanted. In the early morning, Halim smelled cooked peach palm and jackfruit; he saw bottles of arrack and clothes scattered on the floor, fruit stones and peel on the Bible open on the carpet in front of the altar, and saw his son and the girl, naked, sleeping on the gray sofa. Slowly the father came down, the girl woke up, frightened and ashamed, and Halim, halfway downstairs, waited for her to get dressed and get out. Then he went over to his son, who was pretending to be asleep, dragged him to the edge of the table, and then I saw Omar, now a mature man, take one slap, just one; his father’s huge hand swung and fell hard, like an oar, on his son’s face. All of Halim’s vain entreaties, all his rude replies were concentrated in that blow. It was like a hammer falling on hollow wood. What a hand! And what an aim!