A hungry face is an ugly face, her grandma always used to say. You should be ashamed telling me life is pointless, Maria de Fátima, you telling me when I put up with you every day and your devil-spawn sister, you’re telling me? Fátima keeps her eyes on the ground speaking so softly the words coming out her mouth barely audible: Sorry, grandma, I’m sorry I’m alive, I’m sorry I didn’t suffer like you, I’m sorry, grandma, sorry sorry sorry; it’s easy to say sorry, Maria de Fátima.

  Except when Fátima so often wanted to say it she just stood there lost for words. The real sadness is her grandma’s, losing her beloved daughter and her family and her husband and raising two ungrateful unfortunate rude granddaughters on her own. Fátima silent and ashamed when she was young she used to dream of growing up like her grandma, just like her, just like her. Have you ever imagined a life of such misfortune that you can serenely say, my suffering is greater, yours shall pass?

  ‘You truly are good for nothing, girl. Goddamn disgrace, didn’t I tell you to quit calling me Maria? My name is Maria de Fátima. I never ask you for nothing when’s the last time I asked you for something? But Grandma will that’s for sure, you’re good for nothing, not even no good for cutting cassava. It’s not Scarlett’s fault you’re like this little punk breasts all sticking out it’s not Scarlett’s fault they say you’re retarded, that you stand staring when there’s nothing there. You going around looking like someone who sees too much, what is it you’re staring at, brat? Are you looking for a slap? You put a curse on our family killing my mother so you could be born. You don’t have no mother you don’t know what that is and you’ll never know what it is to have a name. What you looking at, fleabag? You go through life seeing truth where there’s nothing, seeing us seeing beyond us. D’you think I’m gonna look after you when Grandma snuffs it? Think I’m gonna look after you, a pain-in-the-ass parasite punch bag? I’m getting out of here, me and Scarlett we gonna start a new life and you’ll be left here alone to die eaten by animals to die of starvation with no teeth no man no one will want you looking like someone who knows too much who don’t know nothing. What you staring at now, moron? Ah, if I was Grandma I’d give you what for. Why you still looking at me, brat? Nothing to see here, keep those eyes to yourself, wretch, shut those eyes or I’ll knock you on the floor and quit looking at me like that, I didn’t do nothing. Don’t play deaf, quit the staring quit that goddamnit, what are you looking at? Drop it, brat, quit that quit eating me up with those eyes, you witch, come here, you come here, now I want to see! Quit struggling now I wanna see you start praying for your life!’

  Vila Marta is a different place with the earth all upturned. Amidst all the houses going down the fissured streets other houses emerged. Unearthed: chewed over by time, broken, manhandled. The men are tired, stressed like hell, the oldest are busy, cleaning everything with brushes, taking photographs, cordoning everything off, putting it away, but they aren’t finding the body they came for, by God, they aren’t finding anything.

  A despair continues to burrow into Vila Marta, sweat dripping from foreheads, shovels furrowing the earth. A despair at having to keep digging somehow or other, having to keep going, with these strange people watching loitering, watching as if they know more than they let on. A despair at having to return every day, walk up the hill, put on the gloves, despair at finding nothing.

  It wasn’t a house that gave them away, it wasn’t mud, wooden slats, roof tiles, straw, it was none of those, none. It wasn’t the debris that they’d come looking for, caved-in roofs, smashed-in doors, all that upturned earth. They hadn’t come for any of that train-track crowd, just a body, the tip-off, another crime that may have been, not this great mound of time and worm-eaten earth and worm-eating dirt and where the hell did these scores of people come from? Not this. That’s why they won’t stop digging.

  There’s so many people gathering in the dust kicked up in Vila Marta that Fátima thinks she saw her mother’s face among all the people, all the digging. There’s her mother, but it can’t be the mother she hasn’t seen for so long, the mother she only knew from hearing Grandma lamenting her death caused by the girl’s birth, from hearing her grandma say it’s normal when a child is born a portion of you dies, but not quite as much as that.

  It must just be a memory she never had, wanting it to be her mother coming by herself, so many highways from Vilaboinha, so long after the birth of the girl. It was funny thinking about her mother, she wanted so badly to have a picture of her mother that must be it, it wasn’t her mother it was nothing, just wanting her mother to be coming from far away, Ma, her mother listening and forgiving, her mother there to mother her. Her mother? She can just picture it.

  Tonho never saw the girl or the child. He came home the devil inside him he came up to Fátima and the girl hid, the girl took Scarlett and the pair of them crouched under the sink. Fátima lying on the table, knocked down, Fátima getting a beating, submitting, the crocheted cloth pressing into her face, she was watching the girl and her daughter, watching the pair of them and wondering what flesh is the eye made of, that hurts when beaten from afar.

  Fátima getting a beating sometimes used to watch the child and wonder if her hardened flesh would be enough, if she was learning like this watching her mother’s beatings, if she was watching like somebody learning. Fátima sometimes watched Scarlett all quiet in the girl’s lap and thought about herself born through the pain, strange, small, mad, her body all covered in warts that didn’t appear of their own accord.

  She watched the child and she took it, quietly she took her beating so quietly, yet again she didn’t beg for her life, yet again she said nothing. It was her body suffering, not her, her body belonged to Tonho, not her. She just watched the child hoping against hope that her father’s shouts that the whole beating that none of this would awaken, in her daughter, the desire to be like her mother. At least it was her father doing the beating.

  There’s so many people gathering in the dust raised in Vila Marta that Fátima thinks she saw Tonho’s face, but no, it’s just the dust swirling playing tricks on her, no, no, it must be nothing. Imagine Tonho coming by all those highways and for what? Imagine Tonho lost in the scrubland of Vila Marta with his dog, imagine Tonho better not imagine Tonho, just imagine, if she kept on imagining Tonho and he were suddenly to appear.

  Tonho didn’t even call his daughters, not Scarlett let alone the girl. Tonho wasn’t going to come by all those highways to find them, he wouldn’t, dammit, he didn’t even know Scarlett came to São Paulo alone bundle and gourd and silence. And after what he did to Maria de Fátima… No, it must be nothing. Just imagine it: Tonho making it here by all those highways.

  Every time Fátima left her and Tonho’s house, the house that used to be Cida’s, every time Fátima left to ask her grandma something, her grandma found something else to do. She busied her hands as if the damn things were always poised to put words in her mouth. Fátima was never very rude she didn’t pester except for once, she was only just married, when she told Tonhão the lamp maker that her mother hadn’t died, she’d actually turned into the girl. Dammit, did you have to keep going on about Cida?

  Her grandma who pretended not to see disobedience, her grandma who pretended not to hear rudeness, her grandma talking with her was like consulting a tree, she reared up tall out of the earth and gave Fátima a beating but a beating, my God, a beating to raise the dead. Any moment palm skin at any moment they both understood, goddamn, they were both suspect because Cida didn’t come and see them not even in dreams. It was understood that they would never talk about Cida’s death again. But every day they would curse the day the girl first drew breath. That was when Fátima vowed: she would never give Tonho a daughter.

  The excavators hadn’t come to Vila Marta to find the earth turned inside out, these houses unearthed. They hadn’t come to find remains objects fragments, the layered history of mankind. They hadn’t come to find cracked pitchers, entire lives, fossilised. To them it’s of no interest what the earth holds, its way of telling stories, to them it’s of no interest how like the gorilla-woman the earth feels and speaks: it transforms.

  History aches for pain, our bodies understand, to them none of this matters. Perhaps all these houses born of the feverish earth are just a way of saying none of this matters. Perhaps they are this small part that makes a place other, not a body. The metamorphosis of Vila Marta Vilaboinha, the photographs, none of it matters. Only the corpse they will soon soon be finding. Pronto.

  ‘But first listen good to what I’m gonna tell you, girl. There’s some flesh only holds on to words, so listen to me, brat: you are dead, never even lived. What else could you have become? You were born of a dead woman, born of my dead mother, you could only not be alive. Listen good when I talk to you: no one births darkness. Living things have names, even cursed things, only you cursed thing don’t. You’re dead, that’s why you got that faraway look. You think it’s what you want but what you want is bullshit. Gonna say you never realised? That you’re dead and all of us alive seeing Ma in you every blessed day. You don’t even know what it’s like to have a mother what a mother is. If you knew, you’d take off, go bury yourself far out of sight. You’d learn to die all over again if you had any feeling for me, for Grandma, for Ma. You’d bed yourself right down in the earth and leave life to us, the living.’

  Fátima thought she saw her grandma’s face. There were so many people so much dust she thought she saw Penha’s ruddy face. It must just have been a trick of memory, she hadn’t thought of her grandma’s face like that for so long, my God, for so long she couldn’t even remember her wrinkles, the depth of those thousand dried-up rivers, for so long that remembering felt like hauling her grandma’s flesh down the highways all the way from Vilaboinha.

  Her grandma didn’t show up just like that, my God, for so long that when she came upon her face in memory Fátima came upon her grandmother in the crowd. Honestly, what nonsense. All these people gathering… the dogs barking it’s as if they knew… all these people gathering, Fátima’s eyes it’s as if they knew: it was her, my God, it was her grandma coming, right out of the earth, from Vilaboinha.

  If she could, Fátima would have buried her body whole far out of sight, to stay there forgotten, deep in the earth like the woman inside the gorilla. If she could, Fátima would have disappeared, she’d have left São Paulo far behind like she left Vilaboinha, just so as not to have her grandma watching her saying, just so’s not to have her grandma watching her shouting, dammit, her grandma knows everything her granddaughter did before she ran away.

  Fátima hadn’t a centavo when she first went to the bus station to ask where’s São Paulo, how do you get there. On the way she walked quickly past the madman’s window, like the devil fleeing mass, so as not to see his loose skin, his missing arm, his sores. Beside him an array of saint statuettes. On the way back she found the madman furiously pumping his cock in his hand his cock, Lord forgive him, calling out come here my little filly.

  When she went back to the bus station, without any money of course, she knew, she walked very slowly past the madman, slowly slowly so she could really look at his sores. The madman just said come here come here my little filly, and Fátima could see the exposed skin the pus the ulcer, Fátima could see the flesh on show the part he didn’t have, Fátima wanted to come closer and the madman come here come here my little filly.

  She ran off to the bathroom at the bus station. She stayed there for a good hour, rubbing against the corner of the grimy furniture everything she could she rubbed furiously against the grimy madman, she didn’t stop thinking about those sores, Lord forgive her, just too good. She thought of prising open all those weeping sores, she thought about bursting the flesh licking the blood the hidden parts. Just too tasty, enough to give herself a tapeworm.

  She went back towards the house and the madman come here come here my little filly, and Fátima was burning up inside, and little by little Fátima stopped walking. She was going home weeping sore, she was going home flesh ulcer tapeworm. She went to leave squeezing her legs together, she reached the door, the madman behind her, she ran to close the window, the madman didn’t even know what to do what she wanted, the madman suddenly a child was crossing himself.

  Fátima her body burning up, Fátima with her own wounds, she approached the madman like a raving madwoman, she rubbed her body against his a bitch in heat, rubbed her body against his a starving whore and her body against his rubbing against it was blood, pus, spit, it was loose skin, flakes, it was flesh, bone, mad earth, coffee grounds, maps, the madman saw it all. His own fate in the grounds of Fátima’s skin.

  Fátima the little filly rubbed her whole body in the sores, sliding her fingers into the folds of loose skin, the madman was crazy, he pumped pumped his cock furiously, and Fátima madwoman went to slip onto not his cock but the stump of his missing arm, her face in the sores, the pus ripping the skin ready to explode, the madman crying out he didn’t want it even so he exploded with happiness, it was his body, it was his body that wanted it.

  The madman stood there weeping with joy. Who doesn’t want to tear open a rash who doesn’t want to scratch an ulcer who doesn’t have a cock to stick inside some open hole in the flesh, who doesn’t have a cock depends on the flesh left on other people, just so good, the flesh that’s left the stump always a half, it’s just so good to be eaten by the limb the madman didn’t have.

  Fátima went running out, arms limbs head hot, with rapid strides, she ran huge bigger than all of us, she went running off to deal with the girl with her sleeping dog, Fátima went tearing down the street she went running like a madwoman, not a little filly, a dog, and the madman crying with joy never left his window open again.

  Transformation: migration within.

  Migrate: to leave and yet remain.

  An Eyeful

  Later the excavators will patiently collect the evidence. Once the body is stored away, bagged and tagged, they will calmly review all the evidence. Upon this final act, with the police there waiting, one of them will notice that among the photographs taken to document the excavation other photographs had been discovered, all gathered by the same hand.

  They aren’t proof of a crime. They show nothing but a dust-covered family, the earth loose between their ageing edges. They’re no proof of a body these creased, barefoot figures, these children with their hunger on show. They aren’t the body of any dead person these photographs, this soulless portrait. Little do the excavators know, forgetting is a crime without a corpse.

  All his life before Fátima left for São Paulo, day after day Tonho returning home again went kicking the dogs through the streets along with the earth and rocks, again went beating the dogs with the plank, that is if he came across a dog hiding, because dogs in the street were no more. Not inside him, inside him the dogs are still there, the plank don’t kill them no matter how dead they are outside, nothing kills these dogs they don’t even sleep, damn things, inside him it’s dog city.

  That’s why Tonho comes home up to the wooden slat door, like all his life in Vilaboinha, he looks for Fátima slat in hand, every day he bumps into Fátima but not today. Where is that woman she’s not in the doorway not in the kitchen, who does she think she is inside everything, come on out, you bitch. Tonho goes round knocking over everything bumping into everything hitting at the corners he bumps into the bedroom, goddamnit, he goes trailing Fátima and bumps into her scent, the dogs are in hot pursuit, the disgust dammit making him gag.

  ‘What’s going on Fátima? Where the hell d’you think you’ve gone?’

  In Vila Marta the shack was a good place for keeping memories.

  Fátima and Scarlett lived in it just the two of them where they could easily have fit a mother father children family. There was no yard, just a bedroom and kitchen, roofing, nails and wooden slats. The two of them woke up cleaned everything before sunrise, Fátima lifted the mattress, Scarlett swept. Fátima shifted the Costone cookie boxes aside, dug out rice feijão heel of bread, Scarlett wouldn’t stop fussing with the cleaning cloth, putting away the objects that fell.

  The two of them woke up cleaned left everything gleaming all before sunrise, while the digging went on, sleepless, never even dozed. Fátima washed the dented pans the forks the tines they had, Scarlett beat the cloths out through the gaps without opening the slatted door. She’d close it quick smart slat to slat, close it as quick as she could, couldn’t stand too much. Any crack left open and the shack would be taken over by the earth.

  Goddamn, lucky Fátima has her daughter.

  In Vilaboinha the sun comes along every day it reaches the sky sprawls out and lies down on everybody, settling its full weight down on our skin on our shoulders our aching eyes. Every day at noon we weary people, dragging our lives out, sweating, dishevelled, half dead, complaining about anything and everything, the sun doesn’t care. It was our mistake we didn’t even imagine, such complaining you wouldn’t believe: how blessed we all were. One day the sun disappeared and it was still daytime. Sure you can guess what happened next.

  Fátima thought she saw her grandma’s face, there were so many people gathering in Vila Marta that Fátima thought she saw through the gaps in the clapboard shack the dust-covered face of her grandma. There were so many people she thought she saw another dust-covered grandma face, her weary memory, once again she saw her grandma in the dusty convoy. Nonsense, so many people dragged out gathering, so much flesh through these streets, imagine, her grandma a whole convoy, so much of her, goddamnit, must be nothing.