Paulo Scott - Nowhere People

Living by the side of the BR-116, without her older sister, who vanished from her life more than a year ago, trying to keep her spirits up, weaving baskets out of cipó vines, playing as best she could with her two younger sisters, allowing each day to be overtaken by the next, going unnoticed (even since becoming the target of her mother’s increased attention, for having twice attempted suicide: the first time, a little over two years ago, the week after a friend who lived in a neighbouring encampment had died for reasons as yet unexplained on a Sunday night when he had apparently gone off for a football match between the local teams; and the second, less than six months ago, when she was sure that she could not bear their difference from the non-Indians, that she would become a melancholy adult just like her mother). Now and again she hears of her forebears and of the indigenous people’s resistance in the lands to the south. She even heard this from three non-Indian, Guarani-speaking students who used to show up from time to time at the village (in the days when her family still lived in the village). She looks around her, she sees no resistance at all. Her little sister is playing in the soot, in the dust from the rubber tyres. She goes as far as contemplating how she might kill her before the girl is able to understand her own misfortune. She would have no remorse because she knows — and Maína does everything she can to believe it — that she would be going to a better life . Maína believes in the soul, even though she herself cannot imagine what the abstraction that reveals the soul must be like. Every night she dreams of someplace different, where there are no grown-ups or, at least, no adults like her father who took off when she was nine years old. Without him, things got complicated for her mother and the four children; they had to leave the village. Maína doesn’t know quite what to do: she has never been in a restaurant like this restaurant; she has never been in a restaurant at all. A few weeks earlier Maína had started to feel afraid, that’s why she ran away. Once Maína dreamed the image of God, he had a fragile body and came out of his hiding place to be with her. For a moment Maína thought this guy might be God or a spirit. What non-Indian would stop on the road and treat her this well? She finishes the snack that he’s ordered for her. Now she just needs to use a few words to make him understand that she wishes to get back into the raincloud-coloured car and accompany him wherever he would like to take her, even if it takes hours, the whole day, until she has invented a language that will work for them both, a language from the place of God and the spirits that like to pass themselves off as non-Indians, until she manages to close her eyes tight and (perhaps repeating the choice made by her older sister) disappear.

The road sign read ‘START OF ROADSIDE INDIGENOUS CAMP (NEXT 28 KM)’, and Paulo has already asked her three times where she would like to get out. She limits her replies to the same gesture with her hand to keep on going. So this time, which would be the fourth time, Paulo indicates right, pulling the car over in front of one of the huts. ‘Sorry, you’re going to have to get out.’ He articulates the words carefully and deliberately. She doesn’t reply. ‘I can’t take you any further,’ he says. She doesn’t budge. ‘Come on, Maína. You know it isn’t safe to be going around, just … ’ he can’t find the words, ‘just around like this, with a stranger. It’s dangerous.’ He gets out, walks around the car, opens her door. ‘You can keep the clothes. I just … ’ And she interrupts him. ‘Give lift to the city. Then I comes back alone. I come back, you let me.’ Well, Paulo, you begged her and now you’ve got what you asked for. ‘It’s just I can’t … ’ Without getting up, she says a choked please. Paulo looks around them, doesn’t see anyone, the hut they had stopped alongside gives every indication of being empty, no sign of activity. The girl is at a breaking point, weakened into an absolute conviction that she must run away and that if she fails at this moment she will end up in some other car or headed for some worse destiny. The moments pass; they are part of a test that intoxicates him. This morning when he turned on the hotel radio tuned to a local FM station they were playing a hit by Legião Urbana: every day when I wake up, I no longer have the time that’s gone. The same line that for much of the journey he’d had in his head and which is now the imaginary soundtrack getting in the way of his making a decision. His clothes dampening, the rain propels him on. But I have so much time, we have all the time in the world. There can’t be many things worse than her spending the rest of her adolescence and her life stuck on the verge of that filthy road. His house in Porto Alegre is empty, his parents are away, his sister is spending the whole year on an exchange in the United States. He closes the passenger door, resolved to bring her back tomorrow morning at the latest (that’s when the imaginary voice of Renato Russo starts belting out the chorus).

In Novo Hamburgo the rain is easing a bit and that should make things easier, but the coordinates Manoela has given him are not exact (the assistant’s house isn’t where she marked it on the map she drew on a piece of paper with the Pelotas hotel logo on it; nobody knows the alley she marked, swearing it couldn’t be easier to find). Beaten-earth roads, the wrong directions taking Paulo down increasingly steep and pot-holed slopes, getting further and further away from the built-up part of town. He has a phone number for Manoela’s assistant, but he hasn’t seen a payphone to call from in several minutes. Things are only no worse because the little Indian girl smiles peacefully each time he turns to her, as though the whole mess were completely normal, and because they are in a car whose rear wheel traction stops them from skidding on that muddy track. They might already have fallen into one of the ditches if they were in, say, a VW Passat or a Chevy Opala. He gives up and goes back to the convenience store where he asked for directions the first time. He calls the assistant. He wasn’t far, as it turned out, his mistake had been taking one turning too early. On the other end of the line the girl makes a point of telling him that the place he’d ended up in wasn’t the best place to get lost, it’s definitely the most dangerous part of the city, the so-called ‘Valmerão Pass’. He goes back to the main road, takes the correct turning. The assistant is waiting for them outside the house with a huge yellow umbrella, she notices that the Indian girl is wearing items of clothing belonging to the group and says only that she can return them any time she wants. Paulo returns the back seat of the car to its normal position. He tells Maína to sit there because the upholstery is dry. She shakes her head to indicate that she isn’t going to move.

The car is in the parking space in front of the house. Paulo and Maína go in the side door. Paulo takes her straight to the bathroom, turns on the light, shows her where the towels are, says he’ll be back in a minute. He walks through the house wondering what he can offer her to wear, he raids his sister’s wardrobe (the two of them are nearly the same size), takes a pair of jeans, knickers, socks, the black All-Star trainers with little skulls like the ones you see on pirate flags — his sister said she was going to give them to a charity shop — and an AC/DC t-shirt. He goes back to the bathroom, hands over the clothes, switches on the electric shower, sets it to what he thinks is a pleasant temperature, shows her how to lock the bathroom door from the inside and says he’s going to make something for them to eat. In the fridge he finds the pan with the spaghetti he made on Friday. He heats it up on the stove. He opens a can of tuna, he mixes mayonnaise and ketchup and garlic paste in a shallow jar, opens a litre bottle of Coke. He lays out a tablecloth, plates, cutlery and all the rest. He waits for her to come out of the bathroom. They eat in silence. She finishes the food on the plate and then, unprompted, helps herself to more. He goes to his room, collects all the issues of Trip magazine he can find, six in total, and leaves them with her. He says to choose whichever ones she wants. He looks at his watch: nine-thirty. There’s still time for a quick shower. He goes up to his father’s study to check whether anyone has left a message on the answering machine, listens to Adrienne’s message inviting him to a party tonight at the flat she shares with Serginho and Carlos. He goes downstairs, has his shower. When he comes back into the pantry, Maína has the magazines open on the table and she is looking at the pictures of the Trip girls. Without a word he clears the plates, goes out into the yard, walks over to the garage, gets two sheets of clean plastic like camping groundsheets, covers the car seats, which smell of wet dog, comes back, tells Maína to leave the magazines there, but she prefers to hold on to them all. Paulo picks up a tote bag belonging to his sister, one of the many she has bought and never used, puts the magazines inside, closes up the house, gets into the car and only then begins to hurry so that they will arrive in time for the ten o’clock showing at the Baltimore.