FOUR MOUNDS OF FARINHA

Four voice marks available. Two files without guarantee. The notification filled the centre of the panel while the man divided the hardened farinha with the edge of the spoon. He made four mounds, although there were three people at the table. To the fourth he added the crumbs left by the pan and pushed the portion to Antônio's empty place. Ilva did not correct the count. The rotor installed the day before drew air through the grille of the service cabinet. The kitchen was still hot, but a refrigerated tongue reached the foot of the table and preserved the machines that charged the house for energy. Outside, the murici leaves had lost their green film under the dust from the mine. One of the branches brushed the duct whenever the wind came down from the pit. The man opened the sequence of audios. The first and the second showed temporary retention. On the four remaining, the platform offered two choices. Keeping cost two marks per file. Letting it expire authorised destruction at the end of that hour. Play the third, he said. His own voice came out of the panel smoother than it had come out of his mouth. It told how his mother kept ripe fruit in a ventilated box, away from the window, and how one of them had rotted while he was travelling. The platform had removed a throat-clearing, two inhalations and the noise of someone dragging a container. What remained was a clean memory, suited to any mother. Stop. The playback ceased when Ilva's profile recognised the voice. That one stays, he said. The screen asked for a reason. Among the options were affective value, proof of origin, household dispute and authorised training. He chose affective value. The kitchen camera framed his face and requested the confirmation sentence. The man read the six words displayed. Two marks disappeared. The farinha began to crack in the mounds. Neither of them ate. Play the fourth. In this one, he spoke of the walk to Buritaçu. The harmonised version had compressed the pain in his heel into three equal pauses. The panel showed the sound line as a road without stones. Then came a question from Ilva, When you get here, do you want to stay with me. Her voice had lost its rise at the end, and the question had acquired the weight of a summons. I didn't hear it like that, he said. You heard it through the network. You asked it like that. I asked if you wanted to stay. With me. She pulled the bowl closer, though she did not eat. The cut between her fingers opened a new stain on the strip. The audio went on. He had answered, First I need to go back to her house. Then a vehicle muffled two words, and the platform would fill the gap with the most probable prediction if anyone requested full accessibility. The suggestion appeared below the sound wave. Settle matters. The man touched the predicted phrase and rejected it. What did you say, asked Ilva. It doesn't matter any more. It matters if they're going to complete it for you. He played the passage three times. The first time, the engine could be heard. The second, a syllable stayed trapped under the noise. The third, Ilva brought her face close to the speaker and recognised the word sell. Sell what. He closed the playback. My mother's house. Ilva's spoon fell into the bowl. The sound triggered the acoustic camera, which separated metal, ceramic and human speech. The panel proposed linking the revelation to the file. He refused before she could reach out her hand. You said you'd go back there. I said that before I came. You're going to sell it. If you keep this audio, the platform may demand proof of the property's provenance to validate what I said. If you delete it, you'll say I hid it. She held her eyes on him. For one hundred and seventeen days, she had known the room where he slept only by the reverberation of the messages. She had never asked whose walls they were. Nor had he said that the strip fastened to the partition had been cut from the last thing taken out of that house. Keep it, she said. To have proof against me. With the word sell. The man opened the fifth file without playing it. The thumbnail indicated twenty-eight seconds, almost all of them silence. The sixth had the length of a short farewell. Two marks remained, enough to save only one of the three. He chose the fourth. This time, he did not use the sentence offered. He authorised the retention in his own wording, declared that no predictive filling could become part of the passage and linked the decision to the sale not yet made. The utility company accepted his iris, consumed the two marks and issued an integrity record. From that moment on, he could demand the withdrawal of any completed version. The last two files went dark. You can still listen before the hour, she said. He pushed the panel to the centre of the table. We're not going to listen. They stayed in front of the countdown. At three minutes, he took Antônio's portion close to the grille, where the cold would slow its souring. At two, she ate a spoonful of her own farinha. In the last minute, neither of them touched the screen. The two sound lines came apart into grey blocks. The panel confirmed irrecoverable destruction and withdrew from the man the right to request restoration. Ilva remained with the question she had not asked in time. Outside, the wind tore from the murici a dust-covered leaf. It spun under the sodium light, struck the cabinet duct and fell with its green face against the dry earth.