Nowhere People

When he came back to Brazil in nineteen ninety-five with only the clothes on his back and a law trainee’s rucksack, the first thing Paulo did on walking out of the arrivals area at Salgado Filho Airport was get into a taxi and ask the driver to take him to Barra do Ribeiro (he didn’t stop to think about whether the money he had changed in São Paulo would be enough for the whole fare). They passed the last of the three bridges that come after the Casa das Cucas, asked the driver to clock exactly six kilometres, and stopped nowhere at all. There was no more encampment. He made the driver pull over. He walked between the low shrubs, a sign that there once used to be a clearing here, a little open space, came to the foundations of the white house. Nothing left. He returned to the taxi, asked them to drive on a bit further south. He managed to find another three encampments; he stopped at all three and asked after the Indian women. They told him that they’d moved to a village in the north of the state, and that was it. Seeing that the driver was starting to lose his temper, he asked if they could keep trying just a little longer, the driver refused, they had gone much further than they’d agreed, and Paulo threatened to stay right where they were and not pay the fare, and the taxi-driver gave him another twenty minutes. They arrived at what seemed to be the last encampment. A well-spoken Indian who was very insistent on selling his handicrafts gave him the news of Maína’s death. Paulo asked how it had happened and he said it would be best for Paulo not to know. Paulo grabbed hold of his arm hard, said the information was very important to him. The driver got out of the cab, telling Paulo to let go of the Indian. Paulo stopped short, apologised to the Indian and (in front of the Indian) thanked the taxi driver for his intervention (sometimes Paulo needs them). He looked up at that sky, the landscape that had acquired a threatening horizon. Time to return to Porto Alegre. On the way back, he couldn’t look at the road. The first days flew by. A week, a week in his parents’ house was enough for him to have his first crisis. He no longer needed the superhuman self-control that he had learned in London, in his homeland some kind of relief ought to be possible (relief that no longer existed anywhere), but no. Thinking that it will get better. Allowing himself to feel hope. This is the fatal symptom of a moment when you are no longer able to find peace. He started to medicate himself, fixed up some job or other to keep himself busy, went back to studying law to keep himself busy; he couldn’t get seriously involved with anybody. One day he started teaching at a social awareness programme in Vila Cruzeiro. It was this that kept him going. And so the years went by. Trying not to succumb once more to the confusion of thoughts, trying not to give in to panic and to the growing fragility of his emotions. He met new people, had girlfriends, watched his friends get poorer, get richer, marry, separate, people who had been alienated going into politics, people bursting with ideas getting tired of politics. There was no place to hide: his friends are the new impresarios, the judges who will soon become High Court judges, High Court judges who will soon be serving on the Supreme Court, coordinators of the most important government programmes, actors, writers, state police chiefs, heads of the Federal Police, members of the Public Ministry, academics, newspaper editors, owners of high-traffic blogs, tweeters with many followers, advertisers, diplomats. Life goes on. He enrolled in the master’s programme to keep himself busy and completed it with honours to keep himself busy, he started teaching on a law course, one of those really crappy ones in a far-flung corner of Rio Grande do Sul just to keep himself busy. Paulo saved up money and bought himself an apartment in the centre of Porto Alegre when it wasn’t yet fashionable to live in the centre of Porto Alegre. His parents still keep up a crazy pace of trips with married friends of theirs. His sister has married a Canadian and had four children, she isn’t planning to come back to Brazil. A lot has happened in the world. He never heard from Rener again, or the Lebanese men. Two years ago, Leonardo, who is today one of the country’s District Prosecutors, invited him to be his chief of staff, Paulo did not want to accept (working with a friend, as his subordinate, is one of the hardest things), but he accepted. Today is the graduation day of the girl who is working as an intern in Leonardo’s office. The Ceremonial Hall at the state university is packed. Paulo hasn’t the patience to watch guys his age showing off long-legged twenty-year-olds with highlights in their hair, each one more Miss Brazil than the last, the keys to their imported cars, their thousand-real suits, their anabolic workout. The intern is a sweet girl but she isn’t worth the sacrifice. Paulo leaves at the beginning of the guest of honour’s speech. He leaves the building, crosses Avenida Osvaldo Aranha heading towards Independência. He’s hungry, he decides to have dinner in a restaurant in Barros Cassal, where the food is good and cheap. He sits at a table in front of the television because it’s the furthest from the table where the members of a crummy local band are sitting, yet another crummy band trying to relive a great moment in the world history of rock music, with their stereotypical clothes and a breed of dog in their name. Right in time for the news. He asks for a steak with a fried egg, listens to the story about that Indian in the mask who is going to have a hearing tomorrow afternoon at the Central Forum. Yet another dickhead doing whatever he can to draw attention to himself. He is being accused of theft, but there are many other accusations. The man gives laconic answers to a few questions and then asks if he can tell some stories by his mother, an Indian woman called Maína. Paulo gets up, walks straight over to the volume button, turns it up to maximum. The guys from the appalling band protest. He shrugs, tells them to go suck Bob Dylan’s greasy dick. The story told by the man in the mask is about an old Indian woman who spent her days by the side of the road gathering up loose pages from newspapers and magazines carried there on the wind, and Paulo begins to shake, he is shaking from his head down to his feet, and one day, the masked man continues, the old Indian woman was bitten by a lizard and before fainting from the poison that was circulating round her body she made a bonfire of the paper she had gathered and when the flames began to imitate a sacred song of return the Indian woman dressed herself in them and disappeared. Paulo turns, takes his blazer off the back of the chair and leaves the restaurant. He doesn’t even look at the guys from the band gesturing for him to go fuck himself.