Nowhere People

Luisa knows that Henrique doesn’t like that she decided about the Indian girl and the child on her own, which is why since yesterday he hasn’t addressed a word to her beyond the essential. It isn’t just a tantrum, that’s not what he’s like, she knows that; he’s like this because he feels his authority was undermined in front of the rest of the team. The equipment had already been all set up when she appeared saying that there wouldn’t be any interviews. Perhaps he’d been wrong when he said it would be a project for them to undertake together, a test of how much ‘professional affinity’ there is between them. She wants to be with him, basically, that’s the only thing she is sure of. She runs her hand through his hair while he is driving. It is the truce that he must agree to. She puts her hand on his knee, strokes it, she kisses his cheek. They are leaving the Botucaraí mountains, they will go through the Centro de Soledade, because Henrique needs to copy on a photocopier all the documents and maps he got hold of from a Kaingang leader, they’re from the end of the nineteenth century, things that were obtained in some fight or were left over from some usurpation (not forgetting that there were Indians who settled there in the eighteenth century, fleeing the attacks on the Jesuit Missions). They entered the city. Without warning, Henrique stops outside a chemist, asks Maína to come in with him. He buys jars of baby food and disposable nappies for the child. They return to the camper van, they drive on as far as a stationer’s offering ‘Copying Service’. Luisa gets ready to make the copies, she asks Maína to come in with her and learn something that she might have to do herself one of these days, takes the child from her lap, hands him to Henrique, who holds him with the vulnerability of someone who is infertile. Luisa will not have his children, the children they always talked about until they discovered that there was nothing to be done about his condition. Luisa looks at him before going into the stationer’s and is glad to see that the man she so loves might have in his arms an even better reason for spending the next few days driving around for kilometres and kilometres on the highways of Rio Grande do Sul.

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all the colours of what is the least important

End of the third week. São Francisco de Paulo is one of the chilliest places in the state, particularly at night. Maína had quickly become friends with the interns. They went out to eat at the snack bar that the locals have told them is the most popular in town, to try the burger dubbed by the owner the ‘Aro Fenemê’ (after the brand of lorry wheels), a pressed sandwich (as is the custom in the region) with three kinds of sausage and five kinds of cheese served without lettuce or onion, just with one large slice of southern tomato and a lot of mayonnaise. Luisa and Henrique have stayed at the hotel with Donato. Henrique is completely attached to the boy. Luisa gets up from the bed, takes a sparkling water from the minibar. Donato is playing on the single bed that is beside the double. Henrique is watching the news. The national news is showing footage of bundles and more bundles of cruzeiro banknotes being packed up on conveyor belts on their way to the incinerator in the Central Bank, while an analyst is remarking that Brazil is the country with the third highest inflation in the world, after Zaire and Russia. Luisa asks him to turn the television off, she can’t bear it any more with this headache she’s got. In the last few days nothing has been able to lessen her migraine. Henrique says she needs to find a specialist and stop self-medicating. She changes the subject, saying how surprised she is at the Indian girl’s liveliness and that she’s thinking of a way to help her, perhaps taking her to Rio for the first term of her doctoral studies next year. Luisa knows Henrique is planning to stay in São Paulo for a bit, but vehemently rejects the idea of living in the Paulista capital herself. This has been the cause of the slight friction between the two of them. Henrique barely hears her, just lowers the volume of the set slightly so he can still catch a young, smiling economist announcing that a leading firm in the calculator sector has over the last year been investing in the production of fourteen-digit calculators where the normal would be ten, that they have been doing this purely as a response to Brazil’s current reality. Luisa sits on the bed where Donato is playing, she says that tomorrow she will do a filming session with Maína alone and, gently squeezing the boy’s toes, she tells Henrique, without making him take his eyes off the television for a single second, that the Indian girl had suggested being filmed naked when they first met.