They are in NATO, the bar that Passo Fundo has made his favourite. Paulo wants to go home. In the state he’s in, however, it would be a real mistake. His parents are travelling early this morning to Montevideo with friends, that’s less than two hours from now. When that happens (they usually go to Montevideo by car) his mother doesn’t do her packing till shortly before they go, which means that right now she will be awake with almost every light in the house on, chasing after all the accessories and items of clothing that she cannot possibly leave behind under any circumstances. A conversation between the two of them would be a disaster. Paulo is afraid of what he might say, of acting out the scene that reveals the truth of the universe to someone you love, or of being assailed by an attack of paranoia that will make him want to wish he were dead as soon as it all passes. (Paulo does not like losing control.) No, better to stay here and wait for the dawn. Passo Fundo gets up every fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom to snort some of the coke he got earlier from the Colonel. He and Paulo are at Igor and Luciano’s table, two guys who share the same girlfriend, Márcia Boo. She kisses one, then she kisses the other. Cristiane and Magali are there, too, they don’t stop talking. Paulo knows he can have either one of them, but whenever he tries to look closely at them in that dark bluish haze he sees Maína’s face. The cognac he brought in his rucksack is nearly finished, he fills his glass under the table so the manager of the bar doesn’t see him, the waiters aren’t paying any attention at alclass="underline" each time he does this, the two girls sitting beside him laugh like hyenas. He contemplated inviting the two of them for a threesome, he even started imagining he was fucking them under the table and then while the two of them were sucking his cock he would be going down on Márcia Boo while she kissed Igor and Luciano, Luciano who’s also known as Posh-boy Luciano. This daydream lasted just a few minutes. It passed. He heard someone at the table more than once mention the name David Cooper and the title of the book The Grammar of Living, and (as if he were in a tunnel of psychosis in which the possibilities of reaction are delayed) he gets up, theatrically, saying: ‘Language was invented in order to destroy communication, which in turn has been used to destroy communion. The final strategy ought to be to use what destroys us to destroy the very thing that is destroying us, in such a way as to allow for areas of hope and the conclusive death of cretins.’ He looks around at everyone sitting at the table. ‘Many thanks for your attention,’ he shouts, as if he were being strangled, and sits. At the other tables there are musicians from the blues band who were on earlier in the evening, a company whose play is on the bill at midnight from Thursdays to Saturdays at the Arena Theatre, two people from the group who will be coordinating Luiz Inácio da Silva’s presidential campaign. A few couples in clinches. There is, in short, that kind of harmony in the air (the sharing of a fleeting victory). And at that moment Paulo is a man of steel, he’s proud of his bearing, of his courage and his health, he has no doubt that if he had money in his pocket for a taxi he’d go off to find Maína. He’d spend several days there trying to work out the secret of getting used to having so little. And at that moment, Paulo discovers what he is going to do with the money from the office. Tomorrow afternoon he’s going to seek out one of those companies that specialise in pre-fab homes, he will get costings, then he will tell Maína. Paulo is at NATO, he has his arms stretched out across the top of the table, his hands with fingers laced together, his eyes lost in an unseemly gladness, and everyone around him knows that he is not his usual self.
on the way
Maína had said it wasn’t his problem when Paulo returned to the subject of building the wooden room, five by four, so the girls could all sleep more comfortably, saying that he would use the money from the office to do this. ‘It’s the government’s problem, not yours,’ was her short answer, which she followed by putting her hand over his mouth to stop him going on. She looks at the time on her watch (when Paulo gave it to her, she said it didn’t feel right getting so many presents from him), she looks towards the north, spots the Beetle approaching. By her count, this is the eleventh time they meet. As soon as he has steered the car over, she runs to his window, she makes a point of showing him the calendar she has drawn up on the last page of the exercise book. He opens the door, she gets in. He drives to the usual place. When they stop by the grocery shop to collect the key, he is told that the owner has replaced it for a different one, that he has changed the padlock for a bigger one, determining that from that moment on — and this was the day before yesterday — no one was allowed to get onto the property without written authorisation. Paulo asks Maína whether she wants to go to Porto Alegre. She says yes. Yes, of course.
They are in Paulo’s house, in the little room next to the garage at the back of the property, the place his mother used to paint her pictures, do her clothing designs, sew, all this before the slipped disc at the end of last year that made her stop indefinitely (she’s talked ever since about boxing up those things and getting the place done up). As soon as they came inside, Maína ran over to the pile of magazines on top of the table, one of those tables that designers use, or architects. She’d never seen magazines like them, they had huge pages inside, pages that unfold, till they end up as big as a road sign. On each page there are a lot of scribbled lines, drawings made up of different coloured dots that almost muddle your vision. Paulo hands her a pair of scissors saying she can cut out anything she likes, do whatever she likes, and that’s what she does. She also uses some large sheets of paper and pieces of cardboard that are hanging on the wall. He goes over to one of the bookcases, takes out a plywood box, puts it down on the table, asks Maína to look, opens it. Inside are a dozen little glass jars with classroom gouache, oil paint, different-sized brushes. He shows her how to use the paints, he finds a large roll of sticky tape, says that he’ll try and find his sister’s old camera, the kind that develops the photos instantly (Maína doesn’t really understand what he means by developing the photos instantly). Paulo is some time coming back. When he does return, he enters the room to find Maína finishing the first outfit, the one she’s going to wear. ‘Preparing some costumes, Maína?’ he asks. ‘Spirit dress,’ she replies, seriously. ‘And are they for us?’ She approaches him from behind, uses her hands to measure the breadth of his shoulders. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘for us to know.’ He is intrigued. ‘To know?’ ‘Yes, to know,’ and she measures the distance from his face to his waist. He shows her the Polaroid, says there’s still one photographic sheet left to use. They mustn’t get the picture wrong. She doesn’t answer. He sets up the camera, sits in the only armchair in the room, watches. Maína gets his outfit ready even more quickly than she’s done her own, she opens up the black and brown gouaches, takes one of the finer paintbrushes and passes it to him, inviting him to paint with her. They paint around the edges of the holes that will be the eyes, the one that will be the mouth, they cover the chest and forehead with inscriptions. The paint dries quickly. In those minutes Paulo explains how the polarisation of the photographic sheet works; Maína doesn’t take her eyes off her creations for a second. She gets hold of his costume, tells him to take off his t-shirt, puts it straight on to his body; his head is covered, his upper back and trunk down to just below his waist, she takes the purple paint and paints a few more details, she adds the sleeves, asks him not to move. She crouches down, takes his trainers and socks off his feet, then brings her hands to his belt buckle, removes his trousers and underpants. He doesn’t react. She takes off her trainers, her t-shirt, her skirt and knickers, puts her one on, she only asks for help attaching the second sleeve. ‘Now what?’ he asks. ‘You can move,’ she replies. Moving with some difficulty so as not to tear the paper, he walks over to the armchair where he had left the Polaroid. He positions it on one of the bookshelves, setting the timer to go off in ten seconds. He presses the button. He walks as fast as he can over to her. They get themselves into position. ‘Ready.’ The flash goes off after winking three times less brightly, it makes Maína laugh under her decoration. ‘Shall we go outside?’ she suggests. ‘Are we going to catch fire like in the story you told me that time, is that it?’ She doesn’t answer. They leave the room and walk perhaps five metres, which is the mid-point between the two buildings. She embraces him as hard as she can, and his jacket tears over his shoulders. He doesn’t move. She bites his chest, tearing off a bit of paper. He takes her whole body in his arms and, without even noticing the paper outfit coming apart, carries her to his room, lies her on the bed, turns off the light, turns on the one in the corridor, strips her naked and strips himself, too. Maína is barely participating, she rolls about in the bed, she slips, forcing him to change the way he’s kissing her, the places he’s kissing her. With more than half of his body off the bed, he holds on to her hips, his face rough and unshaven slides down her belly, he breathes out, mouth, lips, the slowness of the zig-zagging motion moistens her.