THE TRANSPORT STICKER

If he eats Antônio's portion, said Nael, he sleeps in here. The man had his leg stretched out on another chair and was looking at the bowl divided in the middle of the table. The larger part had been in front of him since the night before. No one had touched it. The heat came into the kitchen with the dust from the ducts, lifting the sour smell of the used gauze wrapped around Ilva's hand. Nael put a fourth, empty bowl by the burner. It was smaller, with a chip in the rim. Antônio eats when he comes back, said Ilva. Then this one is for whoever hasn't come back yet, answered Nael. The visitor picked his bag up off the floor and opened it slowly. Inside there was a change of clothes, a packet of cassava-peel flour and a transport body sticker, still stuck to the back of his hand. Every so often the sticker projected a green sentence onto his skin. The country's metal, the country's future. In his city, the candidates had taken over the intervals on the transports with promises about rare earths. One wanted to keep the ore under flag and contract. Another offered national refining, new jobs, a clean word for machines that would keep arriving close to the springs. Whoever agreed to repeat the campaign got priority in the lodging queue for a week. He showed the sticker without touching the projection. I said the sentence to get through the station, he said. Then it stayed with me. Ilva saw the word future pulse on his skin, beside the earth packed under his nails. The mine appeared in those speeches as a distant reserve, a kind of buried safe. Buritaçu was left out of the sentence. The stream, the whitewashed houses, the porch that burned the feet, all of it fit into the mute part of the advertisement. Nael pushed the larger bowl closer to the man. Eat. He did not pick up the spoon. He took the packet of flour out of the bag and poured the contents onto the table. It did not come to a handful. Mixed in with the grains there was a strip of thin fabric, folded four times. He opened it. It was a cotton band, washed so many times it had lost its colour. My mother used this to cover bread, he said. I brought it for the trip. It won't fix the foot. Ilva held out her injured hand. The gauze had already hardened at the edges. He tore a strip off the fabric with his teeth, wound it over her cut and tied a small knot, firm, without pulling too hard. Then he set aside another piece and kept it by the chair. For when the membrane comes loose. She left her hand on the table. The band smelled of old soap, something the valley now recognised only in other people's memories. Nael shared the flour into three heaps and pushed the smallest towards himself. The man received Antônio's portion without protest. He ate slowly, leaning on the edge of the chair, while the fourth bowl stayed empty among the three of them. When he finished, he took off the transport sticker. The skin under it was paler, almost smooth. He stuck it to the underside of the table, where the green projection went on repeating future to the legs of whoever sat there. Ilva did not tell him to remove it. She dragged his bag over to the wall, next to the bed where the old data collector sat, and set aside for him the narrow space between the table and the bedroom door. Nael watched the bag change places. Now he sleeps inside, he said. The chipped bowl went on waiting for Antônio.