The New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Etienne Cabet’s Voyage to Icaria in two parts, The Year 2440 by Sébastien Mercier, a bound volume of the weekly Under Cover, a novel called I Have Loved and Been Loved (no author), some agricultural guides, and so on. Three or four books are in German, and there is one in Italian, Anarchists: The Perspective of a Mental Doctor by Dr. Cesar Lombardi. Originally Giacomo put his three-volume dictionary in the library, but after one of the volumes went missing, he took back the remaining two. The communists hold meetings and bicker about what should be done. Elisabetta and I still talk about a new life, but it’s different than it was on the ship. Sometimes she strokes my cheek, but when I try to touch her breasts or in between her legs, she says: No, Bruno, not yet. She doesn’t say when, only “not yet.” I think that free love is useless unless it’s put into practice. Decio sees the main problem in the fact that the settlement has far more men than women and that most of the women suffer from old prejudices and reject polyandry. The married women selfishly stick to their husbands and families and only rarely are they willing to get together with anyone else. On the other hand, those who are single have two or three partners at most, and instead of devoting themselves to them equally, they play the coquette, inciting jealousy. Also the men who have steady partners only reluctantly loan them to others, and despite not having the courage to object to anything publicly, afterwards they snap at them at home. Decio said that he had given the matter some thought and we ought to try inviting some Indian women into the tannery, but after two or three weeks they picked up and went back to their people, and when Umberto ran after them, they threw rocks at him. Carlo drowned bringing our two horses to the river. Some say that he was drunk, but others don’t believe it and say it was murder too. Various proposals were submitted — call in the constables or hire the Indians, so they could guard our settlement against intruders — but no one knows with certainty who the intruders are and whether there even are any, and turning to the constables would be in conflict with the ideals of our settlement. In the end it was decided to purchase new, more modern muskets. There are also some Germans from Trautes Heim working on the road and Erasmo says that they were the ones who killed his brother, there’s no trusting Germans. The Germans from our expedition, who left us, took tools with them which weren’t theirs. Three families and twenty more settlers, almost thirty people, are planning to leave. Jean-Loup wants to go to São Paulo and open a shop selling sailor’s goods, just as soon as he rounds up the money. Domenico wants to set up a sawmill in Curitiba. Decio says he’s going to leave the settlement too, though he doesn’t know where to. Puig Mayol walked away from the settlement after cracking open the safe and stealing 500 réis, almost half our money. Gorand proposed establishing a settlement guard, to be governed by a duly and freely elected Council. One of the older settlers, Benito, said in reply that there had already been a Council elected a long time ago, but no one would listen to it. Gorand said, Exactly, if they had a settlement guard, then people would pay more attention to them, because most of the settlers were honest, but not all of them. And honesty isn’t an empty word and it alone makes possible firm relationships between people, since then people know what they can expect from others. Desiderio Mezzi, who everyone calls Desimezzi, said that religion had tried something similar, issuing all sorts of precepts and prohibitions, but honest people can do without religion. Marco said nothing to that, but one of the Frenchmen said that honesty was a result of faith in God, not faith in man, and that first there was religion and only after that honesty, because for people to be honest, they have to be afraid. Desimezzi said he didn’t agree and it was the other way around, and for that matter people are afraid of all sorts of things. Decio declared that the main thing people should be afraid of is their own stupidity. And Gorand said, Can anyone here be sure that our people weren’t killed by the holy rollers from Communia? It wasn’t the Indians, they would have run them through with spears or cracked open their heads with a rock, but they wouldn’t have cut their throats and crossed their arms on their chests. The crossed arms speak to a certain level of civilization. Benito said that there had been conflicts with Communia from the very beginning, and Cattina said that she, on the other hand, didn’t trust vegetarians, because anyone who didn’t eat meat must be out of their minds. Just one little piece of freshly grilled meat and it’s like your stomach is in heaven.