I had explored the Floating City on my Sundays off. However, Halim knew the area better than I did; knew and was known. When he had sold more than usual, he shut up shop early and went into the tangle of alleyways in the crowded neighborhood. He went from house to house, greeting acquaintances here and there, and sat at the table of the most distant bar, where he had a drink or two and bought fresh fish from his cronies coming back from the lakes.

Before our conversation, he offered a coil of tobacco to a friend from Janauacá Lake, Pocu, who came to Manaus to sell star apples, piassava fiber, and manioc flour. When he couldn’t sell his goods, he exchanged them for salt, coffee, sugar, and fishing tackle. He always brought some fried fish for an appetizer, and told stories; as a ship’s captain, he had traveled along many of the rivers of the area. We heard a small part of a story even Halim hadn’t heard: about a pair of brothers who lived in an abandoned boat, hidden, permanently stranded, near the mouth of the river Preto da Eva: two people with the same blood, brothers, living far from anywhere, without a sign of human life anywhere near. One afternoon, at the end of a great day’s fishing, Pocu met them and talked with them.

“Animals …” murmured Pocu. “They lived just like animals.”

“Animals?” Halim shook his head, looked at the swell on the river and the boats piled up in the little harbor by the steps of Remédios Square.

“That’s right, animals. Except they looked happy.”

“I know an animal, but one without much courage.” Halim loosened his tongue, took another swig of arrack, and rolled a cigarette as his gaze wandered between the Floating City and the jungle.

Now we could hear the racket of people carrying their nets, the shouts of the boatmen, grunting pigs, voices nearby, children crying, all the noises of nightfall.

“An animal without much courage,” he said again, with a cigarette in his mouth. He fixed a time to meet Pocu, for him to come by the shop next day, before the heat got too intense. The ex-sailor left the bar, and for a moment I began to imagine what the end of the story of the brother lovers might be. Had Pocu made it up? How much truth, or how many lies are there in the words of a sailor? He recounted these events with a keen conviction, as if it were an intimate truth, so much so that I went on thinking about the two brothers, mated, in a boat.

“That’s it, majnun, a real madman.” Halim snapped his fingers, then stroked the gray stubble on his chin, which made his face look even older. “Omar wants to live a life of excitement. He won’t give up on that, he wants to feel excitement at every moment of his existence. Zana thought our son …” Halim looked at the riverbank, as if trying to remember something. “Do you know something? I too … I believed he’d studied for a whole semester in a top-flight school and later he’d get into a university. Not even São Paulo could mend Omar’s ways! What’s more, there’s no saint or city could put him to rights.”