THE SHALLOW PAN

The small plate was still on the projection, warm from the sun on one side, cold on the other. Beneath it, the reconstruction waited for Nael's iris and let a blue light through at the rim, thin as a fingernail. Valdo divided the corn dough into four unequal pieces. The largest stayed near Nael. Antônio had not come back yet, but his share was put on a shallow lid, covered by another lid. Ilva sat on the porch step, her leg stretched out, and untied the cloth wrapped around the cold mirror. The dark screen gave back her face without asking for a face, without asking for a voice. The rental company sent the finished version of the route at seventeen minutes past five. It began at the broken stake, went down the upper curve, crossed the strip where the waterwheel had worked and ended in a technical void. The void had a perimeter, a temperature, an incline and a projected removal cost. The buried house fit entirely inside that word. I write the version received in a corner that feeds no confirmation at all. The rental company delivered a sequence with no inhabitants, no wooden paddle, no corn of three families ground beside the Lajes. I take the word void out of it and leave the defect in view, a line that ends before saying what it covered over. Nael ate standing up. The dough still gave off a faint steam, and he held it by the edges, moving the food from hand to hand when the heat bit. Valdo chewed slowly, with his covered index finger held against his chest. The membrane had a yellow stain in the centre. Confirm it and be done, said Valdo. Nael looked at the plate on the panel. If I confirm, they come and dig. If you don't confirm, asked Ilva. The blue light rose one degree. The company was offering assisted substitution by contracted memory. Old routes sold by Nael, internal images bought from the mining operation, statements made when he was still paid by the metre of path would be compared until they produced a sufficient route. The service would cost him full availability for twenty days. During that time, any movement outside the house would require a prior call and a companion accepted by the consortium. I know where the version closes too quickly. I erase the equivalence between the curve and the technical hole, and give back to the parallel ledger the measurement of the wheel and the distance between the water and the buried door. The correction does not protect the ground. It only stops the lie from arriving smooth. Ilva pulled away the plate. The panel searched for Nael's face at the same instant. I refuse, he said. The answer went in as if it had been waiting for years. Refusal registered. The rental company kept the reconstruction active and transferred the recognition to in-person collection of material memory. A team would come when there was an access window, with no set time, with no obligation to notify whoever lived above the layer. Valdo left half of the dough on Antônio's plate. They'll bring machines, he said. They'll bring people first, answered Nael. I remember the version I accepted before I found the wheel. It said residual erosion. I take that expression out of my volume and leave the sentence broken off, with the earth showing underneath. Ilva wrapped the cold mirror in the cloth. She did not hide it under her arm. She put it inside the shallow pan, under the lid meant for Antônio. The food was left without a place. I keep that exchange too. The company received a refusal. The valley received a pan that weighed more than the corn. Nael wiped his fingers on his trousers, went past the cracked mill and out through the yard. He did not take the direction of the north access. He walked to the pequi seedling, lowered the screen crossed by the saúvas and began pulling out of the earth the dry threads that marked the ants' path.