She nodded.
“It’s a pair that lives here. They’re building a new nest,” she said, pointing toward a scrubby tree in one corner of the yard.
He looked at the tree, took a gulp of beer, then let his eyes wander around the garden.
“It’s nice here,” he said.
“That’s Mama’s doing. I don’t do a thing.”
He knew that she was looking at him and he smiled, but avoided her eyes, pretending to be interested in the plants growing by the wall.
“Bougainvillea,” he said, pointing to the one plant that he could identify.
“What is it, Anders?”
Now! Now or never. He gave her a quick glance.
“I guess I’m a little tired,” he said, and was seized by the desperate thought of staying in this sweaty, dusty city, moving into the house, living with Vanessa and her mother.
He looked at her. Their eyes met. What more can I want? He continued his train of thought, what more can a man, and a human being, demand from life? She loves me, this is an amazing country where I feel at home, and maybe I would be happy here.
She looked searchingly at him.
“What is it?” she repeated.
“I’m thinking about us,” he answered at last.
It felt like he was about to start crying.
“About us, about everything, about life.”
She nodded with seriousness like a trembling in her face, as if now she was beginning to understand the extent of his ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm. That the simplest question in the world to answer for him was the cause of great anguish.
“It feels a little strange,” he said. “With us and everything, I mean.”
Make it easy for me, he thought, put me up against the wall, get furious, throw things at me, kick me out onto the street!
But none of that happened. Instead she got up and disappeared into the house. He listened to the sound of her steps moving across the tiles and then up the stairs to the second floor. Then there was silence, only the come-on-along of the bird sounded like a stubborn admonition.
Anders Brant wiped the sweat from his brow, reached for the bottle, but it was empty. He went to the kitchen to get another one. The refrigerator was well filled: there was salami, cheese, natural yogurt, which she knew he liked, vegetables, chicken sausage, a package with a kilo of “beef Paris,” and on the topmost shelf, in a transparent plastic container, a cake.
He stared at the abundance, and realized that Vanessa and her mother had stocked up before his visit. With the refrigerator door still open he looked around the kitchen, and the impression of an approaching party was reinforced: plates of mango, graviola, pineapple, passion fruit, and bananas. A beautiful glass bowl was heaped with umbu, the fruit that was a specialty in the dry inland and which Vanessa liked so much. They had umbu the morning she stayed over at his pousada for the first time. She had stood looking out over the harbor area and the bay and ate, apparently relaxed, fruit after fruit. He was still lying in bed and observed her back and shoulders, her bottom and thighs. She had a way of resting more on one leg. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, an impression that was reinforced when she turned her head and gave him a smile. On her chin a few drops of fruit juice glistened.
He took a bottle of Brahma, carefully shut the refrigerator door, and returned to the patio. Vanessa had not come back.
He poured the beer, took a drink and waited, increasingly intoxicated. The bird couple flew back and forth to the tree. In their beaks they were transporting building materials. Occasionally their come-on-along, come-on-along sounded.
Twenty minutes passed. He got up, wandered indecisively across the patio, but sat down again. Beer bottle number two was empty. He wanted more, even though he was really feeling the effects of the alcohol, and a minute or two later he was on his feet again, stumbled, went toward the kitchen, but changed his mind, stopped, and looked toward the stairway. Not a sound was heard in the house. Soon her mother would come home.
Maybe he could make use of the drama from the day before, in order to retreat in a dignified way. He had not said a word about what he had witnessed. What if he now hinted that he was shocked and depressed, that he could not make any decisions in that state of mind? Then perhaps he could return to Salvador with a few vague words about meeting later, postpone the whole thing, prepare her for the inevitable.
He thought about the most recent e-mail he had sent to Vanessa. In it he had written that they had to meet to discuss things, and let her know that he would go to Brazil, partly to visit her in Itaberaba, partly to collect material for a couple of articles.
He thought she would understand, that his e-mail was a signal that perhaps it would be best to end the relationship. The deliberately vaguely worded message would give her a warning. He could never live with Vanessa. He realized that after he met Ann.
It was obvious that Vanessa had drawn quite different conclusions. She had seen it as a confirmation of their relationship, that he was coming to discuss their common future, so she filled the refrigerator with delicacies and awaited his arrival.
“Vanessa!” he called toward the upper floor, but got no response.
He went up the stairs, looking around. To the right was a small room with a TV and a few armchairs, to the left a corridor with four doors, one of which was ajar; that was the bathroom. He listened outside the other rooms but heard nothing.
She was sitting at a desk in her bedroom. Hanging on the wall was the poster they bought in Salvador. On the nightstand was a pile of books. The one on top was a Portuguese-Swedish dictionary.
She was sitting very quietly, with her back to him. She must have heard him but did not turn around.
“Vanessa, what is it?”
She turned her head and observed him. He had expected a tear-filled face, but her expression was calm, resolute.
“Are you still here?”
He was shamelessly happy, but at the same time somewhat upset at her coolness.
“Do you want me to leave?”
He wished that she would tell him to go away, but she only shook her head with a joyless smile at his childishness.
“I have a hard time talking about…” he began, but got no further.
“You have a hard time finding words? You, who are constantly orating?”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“Who’s forcing you?”
He owed her a reply.
“I wrote a letter.”
“I don’t want your letters,” she said in a cutting tone.
In the money belt was the letter, written the day before with great effort, before the murder of the homeless man. In the envelope there was money too. In the letter he explained that it was enough to pay for her education to become a web designer, something she had dreamed of doing for several years, that the money should be seen as a gift, nothing else.
Now he could not bring himself to bring out the letter, and above all not the money. To her it would look like he was trying to buy himself free. The rich man with the money belt, who amused himself for a while, then tossed her a tip and went his way.
“Okay, you don’t want anything,” he said, throwing out his arms in a gesture of resignation, but his face remained beet red, recalling her unfeigned delight at the gate and the well-stocked refrigerator.
She looked at him with contempt and he left the room-the room where they should have made love, talked, and dreamed-and stumbled down the stairs and out of the house. On the paved path-he noticed how artfully the small black-and-white stones were set in a sensuous pattern-he almost ran into a woman. He noticed her terrified expression before he hurried on.
“Excuse me,” he mumbled, and ran out through the gate, calmed down somewhat so as not to attract too much attention, but continued hurriedly down the street. He felt how the sweat immediately forced its way out of every pore in his body. The sweat of shame. The headache, reinforced by the beer, and now the unmerciful sun, sat like a clamp around his forehead.