Free Nowhere People by Paulo Scott

foam, he rests his plastic head on her plastic lap, asks for her hand in marriage, and cries.

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Roman drawings
    According to Paulo’s instructions, when they pass the last of the three bridges that come after the Casa das Cucas, they will be exactly six kilometres from the encampment. Passo Fundo wonders how many times his friend took the same route before he knew for sure that there were six kilometres between the bridge and the Indian girls’ tent (that’s just one of the questions that goes through his head as the Monza speeds along the BR-116; questions to which there might be no answer). Then they see the two-person blue igloo-style tent belonging to Paulo, half of the Indian girls’ tent and, as they get higher than the tops of the trees that block their view of the building work, two men doing the roof. Passo Fundo’s cousin slows the Monza, pulls over onto the right-hand side of the road, switches off the engine, unlocks the boot. They get out of the car. Passo Fundo puts another guaraná seed in his mouth, looks around at the place. He couldn’t say no when asked for help by the one friend who supported him when his father, a retired police chief, kicked him out of the house when he found a bag of more than a hundred grams of cocaine under the mattress slats. (Father and son had reached a kind of truce. In an attempt at reconciliation, they’d even attended half a dozen sessions with the therapist at a clinic near the Moinhos Hospital, one of those specialists in family problems related to substance dependency; as a result the ex-policeman felt betrayed when, even though he knew he was breaking the bond of trust suggested by the therapist, he searched Passo Fundo’s room and discovered cocaine in sufficient quantity to be sure that it was for dealing.) Paulo doesn’t care what other people say since he’s already been branded a cokehead, a loose cannon, messed up and every bit as irresponsible as Passo Fundo (or more), just for being his friend and taking him in on the two occasions he tried to get clean; Passo Fundo tries to reciprocate adequately whenever the chance arises. They unload the eleven tins of paint, the two buckets, the brushes, sponges for the retouching, rags, solvents, a sports bag holding his fleece sweater, a pair of shorts, a sleeping bag, two packets of cream crackers, a bottle of water, a half-full Smirnoff and his clarinet in its wooden case. They carry the things over to the other side of the road. The girl who can only be Maína is the first person to appear. Showing no surprise at seeing them there, she says that Paulo is round the back and then goes into her tent.
    Maína knows she hasn’t welcomed them as she ought to, but what could she do? What else could she say? That the builders had arrived at six in the morning and, that same moment, had set about unloading the material round the back of the encampment? That she hadn’t come out of the tent and had made her sisters stay lying there where they were and asked her mother not to leave either? That she’s been hearing Paulo’s voice telling the workers how careful they were to be, where the room was to be built and, again and again, that they should be quick and un-intrusive? The worst kind of invasion, one which could have been avoided and hadn’t been. That (around nine in the morning, when her younger sister escaped from the tent and ran over to Paulo, making the others run out after her) Paulo talked about the men being finished with the whole thing in two days, assuring them that they’ll be surprised when the job is all done? That she tried as best she could to be attentive to the four nasty, hulking carpenters who might under other circumstances have intimidated her?
    Passo Fundo and his cousin don’t make it further in. Following on the heels of the Indian girl, Paulo emerges from behind the tent and greets them, declaring in a tone that is solemn and, as such, out of place, that there is nothing more