THE IRON TRIVET

The trivet was buried under a layer of fine sand, behind three empty boxes and a tube that no longer carried anything anywhere. Antônio pulled the iron out by both ends. With it came a smell of old grease, trapped in the dark clay of the back kitchen. Nael recognised the piece before it came out whole. It belonged to the low stove that stood there when the bar still had three tables and a refrigerator hidden under the kitchen table. He crouched by the hole opened in the floor and ran his fingers along the round edge of the firebox. The ash had hardened like stone. It still works, he said. Célia stayed by the storeroom door, leaning on the rough wall to ease her foot. Antônio was looking at the optical line vibrating inside the opening, blue and narrow, as if the ground breathed through it. The guesthouse's link to that cable had already eaten the stove's energy. One cooking unit was left, tied to the visit that would begin under his feet. In the main room, the utility company's projection had changed colour. The technical tariff had gone up during the night. The datacenter consortium had included in the calculation a refrigeration additive. PFAS, compounds that kept water away from the cooling circuits and left in the price a dirt no one saw. The switch spared water intake on that shift and spread the charge across the lines connected to the enterprise. Antônio read it twice. Then he turned his face to the firebox. The last unit will be gone before it gets light, said Célia. Antônio confirmed the release with his iris. He went to the built-in compartment, took out two sealed portions of corn and a bowl of mash already dry at the edges. He held the portions against his chest for a moment. Nael found, at the back of the storeroom, a bundle of stalks kept since the last harvest that had failed. He broke one against his knee. The dry sound filled the kitchen. Ilva came from the back room with the band on her leg marked by a red line. She saw the trivet, the open firebox, the corn on the worktop. She did not ask where they had got it. She crouched and took from the clay an empty termite nest, hard and hollow, which served to shield the flame from the wind coming through the gap. The first spark did not catch. Nael scraped the ash with an old spoon, opened a smaller space between the stalks and blew gently. The ember appeared at the bottom, red, then orange. Antônio fitted the trivet over the clay mouth. The iron rocked once and found support on three points. When I was a boy, he said, my mother made corn here before she opened the door. Nael raised his eyes. There were many years in that before, some sold by the metre of road, others buried under the storeroom. He took a flat stone from near the optical cable and set it under one of the trivet's legs. The iron stopped giving. Célia opened one of the portions and poured the grains into a shallow pan. Ilva set aside a finger of water from the common jug, just enough to moisten the hardened mash. The water hissed as it touched the hot metal. None of them remarked on the steam. It rose low, smelling of corn and clay, and was lost among the ducts fixed to the façade. The artificial intelligence servers would receive their chemical cooling without hearing that pan. The valley would pay the difference in the food it managed to heat. Antônio raised his hand to his face, as if looking for the mark of the reading that had kept him bound to the guesthouse. Then he pulled a message for his son out of the air. The recorded voice appeared in the space between the kitchen and the main room, too short to be private. I'm back. He stood looking at the suspended sentence. Nael stirred the corn with the spoon. Célia did not go near the visor. Ilva took the mash out of the pan before it burned and divided it into four unequal parts, leaving the smallest near Antônio. Send it, said Nael. Antônio erased the sentence. He began again. I'm here when you want to talk. This time he sent it. The optical line vibrated under the maintenance plate. The flame stayed small, sustained by the stalks left over from a crop without water. When they ate, the cooking unit remained intact in the bar, useless for now and necessary for later. Nael picked up the still hot trivet with a folded cloth and carried it outside. He put the iron by the storeroom, where the earth was beginning to grow light.