'We are going to drive you down to Rio,' said Teresa. 'Then tomorrow we are going on an aeroplane.' 'To my people?'
'Yes,' she said, helplessly, and did not dare even to look at Alfredo. What were they going to do?
About midnight, when the houses of the institute's workers were dark, and nothing seemed to be moving, they crept out, listening to a dog bark, and found Antonio waiting for them in his car. The four drove down to the city. It was late in the night when they reached the flat. The door had had slats nailed across it, presumably by the janitor.
They told Ben to go to bed and try to sleep. He was not to be afraid. Meanwhile Alfredo, Teresa and Antonio conferred. Antonio had worked in the mines too. He produced his identity card, laid it on the table and said to Alfredo, 'Is yours OK?'
Alfredo brought his out from an inside pocket, and put it down beside Antonio's. Teresa could see that there had been problems of some kind with these cards, but that now things were in order. They were looking at her, and now she took her card from her handbag and the three documents lay together on the table. She was thinking of Alex's passport, and found these three sheets of inferior paper, the identity cards, insulting.
'One day I want a real passport,' she said to Alfredo. Antonio laughed in surprise, but Alfredo, having begun to laugh, stopped, seeing from her face she was saying something of importance. 'I want a passport like a little book, like the foreigners have like the Americans.' Alfredo nodded, and waited for her to go on. She dismissed her identity card with a gesture of contempt. 'It's not good enough,' she said.
Alfredo pondered this, then said, 'All right, I'll make you one now.' And he got up, found some paper in a drawer, folded it into a little book, brought it to the table, and sat down, looking sternly at Teresa, a biro poised. She was already laughing and Antonio was too.
'Both crazy,' said Antonio. 'Loco.'
'Name?' demanded Alfredo, like an official.
'Teresa Alves.'
'Dona Teresa Alves. Your hair is black?'
Later, through their lives, they would relive this scene, reminding each other, and telling their children, how Alfredo had found out first about Teresa, her life, about her while Antonio sat smiling and nodding and Ben slept next door.
'Dark brown,' said Teresa, and held a lock forward for him to see.
'Black in the shade and brown in the sun,' said Alfredo. 'I've noticed. I'll put black.' He wrote it and then: 'Your eyes are black, I'd say, but they aren't going to look into them. Shall I put black?'
'That will do.'
'You are how tall?'
She told him.
'That will do.'
'You are how tall?'
She told him.
'Nearly as tall as me. A good height. Do you have any distinguishing marks? They always want to know that.' 'I have a small mole on my lower back.' Antonio laughed. 'On your bum?'
'Yes, and another on my shoulder here,' and she held her collar away from her neck and he peered at it.
'I think we will keep these moles to ourselves,' he said. 'Anything else?'
'I've got this scar where I fell chopping pumpkins for the goats,
I fell on a sharp stone.' She held out her arm: a thin white line ran down her wrist to the top of her palm.
'They don't need to know,' said Alfredo. 'Right, then. Height, hair colour, eye colour that's enough for them. What's the name of your village?'
'The same as yours. Dust village, dust province, dust country. But it was Aljeco.'
'We'll put that. Your birth date?'
She hesitated, uncertain whether she wanted him to know how much younger she was than she had said.
He saw her reluctance and said, 'I'll put the same as mine. Now we'll need a photograph.'
And now he handed the little package of folded paper to Teresa with a bow. 'Your passport, Dona Teresa.' And she got up from her chair, took the thing from him, and curtsied to him.
They passed the time, chatting, and Antonio said he would follow them to Jujuy, and to the mines. He would be happier out of Rio for a bit. When the light came they drank coffee and the two men went off to arrange flights.
Teresa went in to Ben, found him awake, and said he must be brave and patient. If anyone came to the flat, she would be sure they would not come near him. She was going to lock him in, and this must not frighten him. She said all this because she was pretty sure 'they' would come after Ben, and with the door broken there was no way to keep them out. She took him juice, said it would be best if he slept, and on no account to make a sound if anyone came.
It was not long before she heard the men outside. She opened the door saying, 'Do you see what your thieves did to this door?'
putting them in the wrong, though they looked, she thought, like policemen chasing a criminal. 'Sit down, please,' she said, and sat herself, noting that both were staring at Ben's door.
Luiz sat at the head of the table, taking the commanding place from force of habit. The American was opposite Teresa, the protuberant cold eyes prepared for anger.
Teresa began at once: 'That was a bad thing you did. You stole him from here. He is not your property.' She was speaking to Luiz, but he said, 'I am not to blame. I had nothing to do with it. That part of the institute has nothing to do with Brazil: it is under separate international control.' And he waited for Stephen Gaumlach to speak. He did not: he had twisted himself to stare at Ben's door.
'But you are both here,' said Teresa, seizing the to her nub of the situation.
'I am an old friend of Professor Gaumlach's,' said Luiz. 'But you knew those men were coming to get Ben.'
'I am apologising on Professor Gaumlach's behalf,' again directing his colleague with a look. It was ignored. 'Instructions were exceeded. The door should not have been broken in.'
'If you expected us just to give Ben to you then why did you send criminals? They were just street criminals.' And before either man could say anything the American seemed to feel no need to 'And you put Ben into a cage like an animal, without clothes.'
'I've told you,' Luiz Machado said. 'That had nothing to do with our institute. But it was obviously a misunderstanding.'
Teresa said, 'I think the misunderstanding was that you did not expect us to find him like that.'
Here Luiz nodded, acknowledging that she was right, and that, too, he was impressed by how she was standing up for herself: she knew must know from Inez how important he was.
Now Stephen Gaumlach spoke, as if he had heard nothing of their argument. 'You can't keep him. You don't understand, do you?'
'I know you want him for your experiments. I know. I've seen with my eyes .' And she indicated her eyes with her two forefingers.
He leaned across the table to her, fists clenched, his face dark with rage. 'This . specimen could answer questions, important questions, important for science world science. He could change what we know of the human story.'
And now Teresa felt attacked direct, into her great respect, her reverence, for knowledge and for education; that area, like a window into an unknown sky, where she could have bowed down and worshipped and she burst into tears. She told herself, furious, that she was tired and that was why she was crying, but she knew the truth. As for Luiz, he believed this ignorant girl was frightened because she was challenging authority, and was going to get into bad trouble because of it. Knowing Professor Gaumlach as he did he did not much like him he saw Teresa rather as he might a mouse that has decided to stand up on its hindlegs and threaten a cat.
As for the professor, he was irritated that Teresa was crying.
Both men thought she was defeated: there was a great deal she could have said in accusation that she had not laws had been broken in ways that could easily have serious consequences. But it was not calculations of a legal sort that made her say what she did now. It was the hateful bullying face in front of her, those cold angry eyes, while in her mind's eye she saw Ben howling naked in the cage, she saw the white cat, with faeces dripping down on her fur from the cage above. She said in Portuguese, 'Voce egente ruim' The hatred in her voice did reach her antagonist, if he did not understand her words. Now she said in English, 'You are bad people. You are a bad person.'
She did not address this to Luiz, and this was not because he had absolved his institute from all blame, nor in her mind were thoughts of a political kind this American was a member of the most powerful nation in the world, that kind of thing: she was not interested in politics. No, she disliked Stephen, she hated him, as instinctively as she judged Alex Beyle a kindly but weak man who was good to her while he was around but forgot her the minute he left. She knew that for this famous professor to insert wires into a cat's head, and her kittens' heads, and measure her feelings as she tried to feed them while dirt dripped on to her white fur, to make monkeys sick she could see now only too clearly the little paws stretched out to her for help he would do anything at all and never think of what it cost the animals. He was a monster of cruelty.
But she was still weeping because of the conflict that was tearing her apart. Luiz said, 'You say that Ben is owned by what did you say his name was?'
'Inez she's your friend, isn't she? she must know the name. Alex Beyle. He's an American film-maker and Ben will be the star.' 'I understood that there will be no film?'
'That isn't certain. Alex is in .' She named the little hill village where Alex and Paulo were working on their script, or scripts, knowing that it was not likely Luiz would know it. 'He is off on location now. The weather is bad. The telephone is not good. I shall tell him what has happened when he telephones me, and I'll say you want to talk to him about Ben.'
Her voice was steady now. She got up. 'If you'll excuse me, I have work to do.'
Slowly, the two men got up. Luiz, as always, was calm, was smiling. As for the other man, staring at Ben's door, he looked like a red ant she knew now what the resemblance was that had been bothering her to recognise it.
She said, 'Ben is asleep. He is not well after what was done to him.' And she stood in front of Ben's door.
'You must not take Ben out of the country,' said Stephen, threatening, seeming to loom over her.
'He can go where he wants. He has a passport,' she said.
Luiz said to Stephen, 'We should go.' His voice told both Stephen and Teresa that there was a plan in his mind.