SEEDS IN THE REFRIGERATOR

The cabinet fan kept the bar awake, a thin note behind the service wall. Antônio pushed the old refrigerator into the strip of shade under the porch. The jammed appliance left two pale lines on the floor, where the dust had not reached for months. Nael came after, slowly, carrying under his arm the leather ball the two of them used on the land behind the bar, when the ground still raised dust without bringing ore with it. The ball had lost its pattern. What remained was a thick seam, redone many times with fishing net thread, and a dark patch near the valve. Antônio tapped it with the tips of his burnt fingers. The leather answered low. You kept that inside the refrigerator, said Nael. I kept it there because nobody looks for a ball where there's no cold. The kitchen visor projected the wait for the inspection onto the workbench. Three advertised items remained open for checking, corn, lodging, domestic preparation. Antônio had invented the offer to take Ilva's voice out of the sensitive debt collection. Now the list stayed there, a kitchen forbidden to cook and a bar displaying food it could not serve. Ilva came out of the side door with the folded terminal against her rib. The wound in her leg changed her step, but she did not ask for support. She looked at the refrigerator out of place, the ball in Nael's lap, the glowing visor. Someone's going to come in here, she said. Antônio nodded. They are. And they'll find what I promised. Nael opened the refrigerator door. Inside were an empty ice tray, the cut wire of the old thermostat and a plastic box Antônio had forgotten behind the vegetable drawer. The box held six pequi seeds, hard, each wrapped in dry fibre. He took them out one by one. My father kept them like this, said Antônio. To plant when the rain allowed. Nael took a seed between thumb and forefinger. He smelled the husk. His bad knee cracked when he bent down, but he did not let go of the ball. Your father had a yard. He did. Then he sold the back plot to pay for the first motor. The man turned one of the seeds over. There was a crack at the tip, fine as a vein. Ilva brought her face close. The dry pulp showed inside, yellow and intact. This one will still take, said Nael. You know that, asked Antônio. I know by the weight. Nael rested the ball between his two feet, made the leather turn and stopped it with the seam facing up. Antônio recognised the mark. It was the spot where he had kicked crooked one rainy afternoon and broken the bar's roof tile. His father had charged for the tile, not the ball. The following week, Nael turned up with money from a shift guiding machines through the Lajes. The first refrigerator had arrived three days later, hidden under the kitchen table, while Antônio's mother pretended not to see. The mine was still a promise back then. Nael squeezed the ball's seam until the leather creaked. Ilva sat on the step. The terminal vibrated once inside her hand. The human review of her voice remained without a time, without a name, without a face. She did not look at the screen. Antônio set aside two cracked seeds and handed the four closed ones to Nael. Take them home. And you. I'll keep the open ones. They won't give seedlings. They'll give the inspection something to talk about. Root, old stock, yard stuff. Better than corn that doesn't exist. Ilva raised her eyes. Antônio closed his hand over the two cracked seeds. The inspection would find seeds, a refrigerator with no function and a suspended kitchen. Perhaps it would leave with one more line about domestic irregularity. Her voice would stay away from the debt collection a while longer. Nael put the four seeds in his pocket. Then he set the ball on the ground and pushed it with his heel. It rolled along the clean strip left by the refrigerator, hit the leg of the table and came back to Antônio. Tomorrow at four I'll get it right, said Nael.