Nowhere People

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two

A few kilometres further down the road and refusing to admit that, for a moment, his nerve had failed him and that the sight of the girl had struck him like almost nothing else in his life, Paulo imagines that some lorry (even though not a single vehicle has passed him going in the opposite direction) must have stopped already and offered her a lift. He goes on for a few hundred metres, pulls over, turns off the engine. Takes a deep breath, twists round towards the back seat of the Beetle, pulls off the dark grey cloth covering the various bags holding the clothes from the theatre company, opens one, takes out a white face towel that looks unused, a sweater and a pair of tracksuit bottoms, size S. He also finds a little retractable umbrella in the worst sort of green, a luminous lime colour. He looks ahead, then again into the rearview mirror, starts the engine, switches the indicator left and gets back onto the southbound lane, keeping his speed slow because of the storm that is getting ever stronger and the worn-out tyres which threaten to send the vehicle skidding on the water. He feels put out, a feeling that gets worse as the number of kilometres increases: three hundred and sixty, three hundred and sixty-one, three hundred and sixty-two, sixty-three, four, five, six, three hundred and sixty-seven. (He hadn’t realised he had driven so far.)

She is in the same place, in the same position. He tells himself to take care, not to startle her. She looks up and gets to her feet, picks up her plastic bags, taking a few steps back as she realises that the car is going to pull over. He stops beside her, lowers the window halfway while trying to appear as unthreatening as possible, asks her to get in (as though addressing a foreigner with an incomplete grasp of Portuguese), says he’ll give her a lift, perhaps up to the nearest petrol station or the highway police watch-post. She doesn’t answer, looking him straight in the eye. He insists, but she remains fearful. ‘It’s not going to work, these types of good intentions just do not work … ’ he mutters quietly before picking up the umbrella and getting out of the car. As soon as she sees him opening the door, she crosses the road. Once on the other side she begins to walk hurriedly south. For a moment he stops where he is, there in front of the Volkswagen, watching her move away (the rain and its weight cover him with deafness and mineral obliteration). He returns to the Beetle, takes the towel and the items of clothing and, cursing uninterruptedly, without any clue what he might lose or gain by doing this, he leaves the car and goes after her.