TWO FALLEN LEAVES

The stalk broke without a sound. Luzia heard it anyway, crouched in front of the torn screen, because for eight nights she had been counting the leaves before going to sleep. On the first, there were six. On the fourth, three were left. At that hour after the working day, she found only the gnawed leafstalks and a dark line climbing the stem. Ilva brushed the saúvas away with the backs of her fingers. The pequi seedling gave way at the height where the pierced container pressed the screen. The root came out too whole, short, surrounded by dry earth. Nael had planted that seed with a spoonful from Antônio's reserve. Luzia meant to measure the first shade with her feet and eat the first fruit before she turned ten. She got her own age wrong to make the conversation last longer. Can it go back in, she asked. Ilva pressed her fingernail against the root. The outer part crumbled into a pale powder. The centre already had the colour of the cable buried under the yard. In the bar, the panel had been repeating the same rising curve for days. Praseodymium and neodymium had become more expensive again, first in an old quarter, then in shorter cycles, until the mining operation had turned the rise into an extraction priority. Below the graph, suppliers from outside the country that had dominated refining appeared advancing on the market. Each advance raised the premium paid per tonne in Buritaçu. The credit reached the holders of the water-use concession before the dust settled on the leaves. The man came over resting his injured heel only on its edge. He was carrying his mother's cotton band in his hands. He stopped when he saw the exposed root. I can tie it, he said. It's dry inside, said Ilva. Luzia picked up two fallen leaves. She used to take one of them to the water vigil and lay it on the container that waited for the tap. When the leaf moved, there was wind. When it stayed still, she said the night was holding its breath. Now she tried to fit a leaf onto the stalk, as if the vein could find the place it had come from. The mining operation was paying that night for the acceleration. The panel posted to the account of the holders of the water-use concession an environmental credit equivalent to twenty-three minutes of domestic water. The sum came into the house, met the shared debt and disappeared inside it. Four negative minutes remained. The man read the balance twice. They paid with what we owed, he said. The utility company called it automatic reparation. Ilva carried the seedling to the kitchen on the bowl Nael had gathered up. The household panel recognised plant matter with no activity and opened the house inventory. She changed the first entry, from food crop to biological loss. The offer of the rings was still lit in the corner, waiting for the authentication the man had refused. The tap gave a knock. The apportionment began before the time shown the day before. She changed the second entry. She removed irrigation as a purpose of the reserved water. The panel recalculated consumption and classified the spoonful used in planting as a domestic diversion with no productive return. The debt went up a fraction. The man closed his hand over the band. Accept the rings, he said. Only until Antônio comes back. Ilva laid the root on the table. The earth left a trace between them. Less water would have killed it sooner. It's already dead. The word reached Luzia in the yard. She came in carrying the leaves against her chest and asked where the shade would be. No one answered. The girl went to the place where the seedling had been and put both feet together inside the little hole. Her body cast a narrow strip over the bank. She measured three feet to the screen, though five would have fit. In the cold mirror, Ilva changed the third entry. Where there had been a line for green seedling, she wrote the final state, dry root, six leaves reduced to two, domestic water interrupted during growth. She added the chain of cause in separate words. Accelerated extraction. Mineral price. Magnets for servers. Datacenter water reserve. The parallel ledger kept the terms without converting them into efficiency. When she went back to the yard, Luzia was pulling out of the earth the saúvas still looking for the stem. She placed each one outside the screen. They came back through another opening. The man had folded the cotton band around the root. The debt remained divided between him and Ilva, with no reduction, and the occupancy was still pending Antônio's return. He had used his mother's fabric to wrap a plant that would travel with no one. Luzia raised the two leaves. Can I keep them until another one grows, she asked. Ilva took one of them from her hand and gave the other to the man. The girl looked at the hole, then at the panel lit inside the bar. When Antônio comes back, who tells him the pequi is gone, she said.