THE BURITI MAT

The strip cut from the man's mother's house held up the net at the top of the corridor, dark with dust where it passed through the copper ring. By the end of the afternoon, the weave sagged more on one side. The blanket, the bag and the two mugs kept behind it made enough weight to show anyone who came in that the gap already had an owner. Ilva put the basin under the tap. The water came in short bursts, three breaths of pipe and a pause, three again. Nael listened from the threshold, without getting up. Before, it came without stopping up to the rim, he said. Before, there were people planting behind the houses, answered Ilva. He looked at the yard. The soil of the dead seedling was still open under the shade of the tank. He said nothing more. The man brought the shirt close to the basin. The part that had served as a strip was smaller now, fastened in the corridor. On the hem there remained an old stain, lighter than the rest of the fabric. He rubbed it between his fingers, looking for the dirt that no longer came out. That water is for today, said Ilva. I know. The tap coughed one last time. At the bottom of the basin there was less than two fingers' depth. She took out a mugful, wet the hair at the nape of her neck and ran her hands over her head slowly. The man stood waiting with the shirt held up. Nael pulled a bench close to the door and began untying the laces of his sandal. Luzia appeared on the porch with a piece of thread caught in her hair. She was carrying a silvery strip, light as onion skin. I found it on the roof of the teacher's house, she said. The drone went by there. Nael took the strip from her hand. He turned it against the light. It was a fragment of reflective film, used to mark roofs legible to the high camera. He gave it back. You didn't climb up. I climbed the wall. And saw what. The whole street, she answered. Antônio's house looks small. The man lowered the shirt. Behind the partition, the empty bag occupied the place the installers could call an available bed. The house's priority depended on that space seeming bodiless, without a blanket, without a bowl among the others. He knew the sum. He had arrived knowing little, he had quickly learned the price of every corner. If I take the net down before the sampling, he said, maybe they'll still choose this house. Ilva left the mug inside the basin. The water on her nape ran down her neck and vanished under her collar. And where do you sleep. On the bench. Or on the kitchen floor. Nael raised his head. His knee cracked as he shifted. Boys slept on the bench, he said. A man who's too awake falls off. Luzia came in without asking leave and sat by the wall. She kept looking at the net, as if it were a door someone had forgotten to make. Antônio can tell us to take it down when he comes back, said the man. He can, answered Ilva. The answer opened no passage for another. Outside, a heavy vehicle climbed the street and the cables fixed to the facade vibrated against the old plaster. The service cabinet let out a refrigerated breath through Renan's grille. The kitchen kept all its heat. Nael bent down to the low compartment and took out a rolled mat, made of buriti strips darkened by use. Antônio used to spread it in front of the counter on the nights when the bar still showed football on the communal broadcast. Nael pulled one end. The mat took up half the kitchen. This one stays here, he said. The man looked at him. What for. So nobody makes up that the corridor is an empty room. Ilva moved the basin close to the wall. She divided the water into three small containers. One for Nael to wash his feet before lying down. One for Luzia, who dipped her hands in and cleaned off the dust from the wall. The last stayed in front of the man. He did not touch the shirt. He took off his shoe carefully, freed his foot from the dry strip and washed only his face. The water darkened in the container. Then he poured the rest into a crack in the threshold, far from the dead root of the pequi. Luzia held the silver film above her head. When the drone comes back, I'm going to be on the roof, she said. Nael rolled the mat halfway and pushed it to the entrance of the corridor. The man helped with his good leg. The buriti weave lay across the way between the kitchen and the partition, too narrow for an installer's bed, wide enough for a child to climb onto when no one was looking.