Luisa said it would be a complete waste of time going up the Pão de Açucar on a cloudy day like this one in Rio de Janeiro. Donato knows she’s taking unfair advantage of her right to reorganise the outing agreed by the three of them. Her threadbare excuse is her perpetual migraine, she says she woke up at five and didn’t go back to sleep. The reason, looking at the situation objectively, is solely and exclusively the fact of Henrique having been called in as a last-minute replacement for a Mexican analyst at a think tank in Teresópolis, a private meeting to come up with public policy suggestions organised by a group of young businessmen from Minas and Rio (the money’s good, in the financial crisis he is going through there was no way he could say no) and, because of this, he is prevented from returning before Thursday, that is, three days from now. Now the itinerary is up to her. Donato doesn’t want to think about this too much, he has a map, he knows which buses he needs to take. He never puts himself on a collision course with Luisa, he just ducks, weaves, leaves little notes. In spite of the occasional embarrassments caused by his stutter, he considers himself at a great advantage to the rest of the social universe: he is better informed than most of the adults around him and entirely confident as regards his inability to make mistakes caused by absent-mindedness, an excess of pride, resentment or vanity. He leaves a note at the hotel reception, takes the circular-route bus at Leblon towards Gávea, Jardim Botânico, Humaitá, Botafogo. He gets off at Voluntários da Pátria, the main street in Botafogo, walks to Rua das Palmeiras, to the big house numbered fifty-five. He goes in. He walks around the courtyard, there’s a stylised thatched hut that has been set up right near the entrance on the left of the main building, he spots the class of children aged around nine who are probably starting one of those guided tours and joins the group. The teacher, a really young redhead, looks at Donato, says nothing. They go into a hall with an exhibition of ceramic objects, pieces representing Asurani art made by the people of that name who live in Médio Xingu, about a hundred kilometres from the city of Altamira in the state of Pará. The guide’s little jokes make up for his weak presentation, rather unconvincing and lacking relevant information even for a gang of students from any old municipal public school. All is going well until the teacher emphatically states that the greatest mistake made by the white man was to remove the Indian from his habitat and because of this ‘we all have to fight for Indians to return to their natural state, living in harmony with nature … ’ Before she has finished, Donato raises his hand. This throws her, there’s a moment of doubt (you can see it in her eyes) and she gestures to him that he may speak. He says that she is wrong, it would be best to take every last savage they can find in the forest and civilise him, give him a real chance to ‘ensure his dignity in today’s world without needing favours from anyone, before the process of decimation has been completed.’ He concludes by saying that the past will never come back. The teacher is stunned; two students immediately ask ‘miss, what’s decimation?’, and, fortunately, the guide launches into one of his comedy routines and Donato goes off to explore other parts of the Museum of the Indian less propitious to his enthusiasm.
