“It was such hard work,” Halim sighed. “What I saw, what I understood, was that this woman, my wife, grew in stature when she felt she was going to lose her son. She picked herself up, and thought everything through again. What I mean is, she reshuffled all the cards until she found her king of spades.”

One night, Zanuri reappeared, prying and sly as ever. She drove him out of the house with the fan for the fire. She insulted him in the two languages she spoke. Brainless burglar, thief, harami! Her eyes were burning, even if there were ashes in her heart. She said nothing to the neighbors, listened to none of the advice they wanted to give her; she shut her ears to everything. But inside, right at the bottom, the waves were swelling up. Halim, his mouth dry with so much desire, but also afraid, recoiled. Everybody knew about it now, the whole city, the settlements nearby: whispers in the air, fluttering down like confetti. No hunt like that can be anonymous. When a mother’s on the prowl, it’s a real storm; it turns the world upside down, a hurricane. Who knew what Zana was planning? Alone with herself, she was moving the sticks and blowing into the glowing embers. On her own, her voice quite calm as she chose her moment to pounce. She filled her basket with mysteries. She spent most of her time praying, with the other two faithful women, the three of them huddled together; she was the queen bee in the hive. Domingas joined this ritual every night. Did my mother want Omar back? I noticed a kind of desire in her, an anxiety she knew not how to hide, a shadow in her feelings. She left me in doubt; I lost my bearings when she bemoaned Omar’s absence.

Oh, how she missed the lady-killer’s body collapsed in the hammock! The runny sweat from the drinks and cocktails, and the heavy burst of sweating that came later, with its intoxicating aroma of strong, bitter alcohol, the whiff of a jaguar’s skin. Her hands drying his face, his neck, his hairy chest; Omar, almost naked, sprawled out in the red hammock, as a yellow battalion of fire ants surrounded the whisky and rum bottles on the cement floor. The smell of arnica, cocoa butter, and copaiba on the blotches and bruises on his body. These smells mixed with others: that of the large leaves of the breadfruit tree, like green fans; of the heavy, ripe cupuaçu, like a yellow velvet casket protecting its silvery pulp, giving off a strange perfume. The wet leaves with which she covered the bruised parts of his body; the cupuaçu juice with seeds in it to suck that she made for him in the middle of the afternoon when, reinvigorated, he opened his arms to my mother and kissed her familiarly on both cheeks, before drinking in the thick liquid.