Nowhere People

Catarina does not give up on Donato; in the space of two weeks she has made the masked man an internet hit, his public appearances attract more and more people, radio and tv programmes have already included him in their news broadcasts, a young musician from the city has recorded his chants and — using a backing track (and videos edited by Catarina) — is planning a performance accompanied by the Teatro São Pedro Chamber Orchestra for the end of the year, a performance which, he has promised, will be broadcast online. Donato’s intentions remain unclear, however, to Catarina and everyone else. She needs to make him adopt a position (this is undoubtedly the next step), she tells herself as she drinks an Old Engine Oil beer at the Etiquetaria, looking at those walls covered with dark wood panelling and made even gloomier by the very weak light coming from the lamps and the chandeliers that give the bar a hazy texture. An oppressive place, but she likes it. They still have the spaceships, trains, racing cars, crazy buggies and assorted wind-up toys from the sixties and seventies, all of them incredibly well preserved, scattered in every corner and on the dusty surface of the coffee table in front of her. She always discovers some new toy when her drunkenness hits a certain point. She finishes her beer. She has given up waiting for the friend who was coming to meet her to hand over the items that were in the house of a mutual friend, a friend Catarina doesn’t want to speak to any more. She gets up, pays for what she had and walks out of that darkness. It would have been good, actually, to have met the friend who didn’t show up, to have a chat, but it’s no use, there are some things she can’t share with anyone. She walks down Protásio Alves. It’s a lovely day. She comes to the little amusement park outside Santa Teresinha Church, buys twelve tickets, heads straight for the big wheel. She hands the bundle of tickets to the man operating it, telling him not to disturb her because she isn’t getting off the ride till she feels like it. She gets into pod number six. The wheel starts to rotate; after a while she loses track of how many circuits she has done and it’s then that she starts paying attention to the landscape. She looks at the crowds below her, recognising the lad in the blue cap she walked past earlier today on the street where her building is, then at the Bordini supermarket, and she gets the impression that he has been standing there watching her now for some time. He seems to have realised that she’s spotted him (though she still cannot see his eyes), he turns, he walks away. There is nothing Catarina can do. There is no way of escaping from the pod without throwing herself out; it will be several minutes before she puts her feet on solid ground. Let him go. Poor thing (the best of them all).

Days later. Today Catarina has understood the reason for his fixation with the Sheraton. His target is actually the Sheraton restaurant: the president of the National Indian Foundation has lunch there when he comes to Porto Alegre to visit his girlfriend.

When he received the medical diagnosis the day before yesterday confirming that the youngest of his three daughters, the one aged a little over one and a half, has hearing problems — ‘She suffers from severe auditory deficiency,’ the doctor reported — what the employee who looks after the swimming pool at the Nautical Union Guild club felt was self-hatred, a hatred at having no way of meeting the costs of the surgery and the other hugely expensive treatments they had ahead of them. He tried in vain to sleep, and in the morning he couldn’t look at his wife, he couldn’t eat his breakfast. He needs a loan because he has no more time to lose; he went to his parish church to speak to the priest, but it was too early, he knew it was too early, the priest only arrives around ten. He wasn’t able to wait, the bus took longer than usual. He lives a long way from the club. He arrived at the Nautical Union Guild to explain his absence from work the previous night and attempt to get his manager to excuse it. He had to wait for the meeting that the manager was attending to come to an end. His colleagues told him about a madman who was causing absolute mayhem outside the Moinhos shopping mall, which is the one at the Sheraton Hotel. At the time he attached no particular significance to this, but when he left the club, dazed, even with his manager having signed off his absence, the club employee thought it would not be a bad idea to go up to Quintino Bocaiuva towards 24 de Outubro, turn onto Tobias da Silva and walk on as far as Félix da Cunha.