Rafael
#6
For the last year, I have been in competition with an old man in Leblon, but recent events persuaded me to retire from the race. We were the only two regulars who ate our breakfasts at the same lanchonete; there, we used to fight over sunlit tables.
Bibi Sucos starts outside on the sidewalk with green plastic chairs and wooden tables and two or three waiters milling, conversing, smiling, and, occasionally, taking orders. From there it continues inside to a curved covered countertop that is overstaffed with a few more employees loitering, chatting, passing food and drink forward. Though many are young, all have worked there for more than five years; they are all friends.
Whenever a customer orders, one of the men outside yells over the counter. His voice travels through a window cut from a wall lined with shelves of fresh tropical fruit to the cooks behind hidden from sight except for their down-tilted eyes and noses. After preparing the order, they hand it to one of the employees at the counter, who hands it to one of the waiters outside; eventually, the baton is passed to a person outdoors. It is a happy, relaxed, inefficient system.
In the afternoons, children from a nearby school flood the restaurant. They laugh with the singular Brazilian ease and, although bodies of that age naturally move quickly, I have never seen one in a hurry. For a while I thought that they were without a sense of time, but, now, I think that they believe in infinity. After all, up until the age of nineteen, I did too.
In the mornings, the cafe is quiet and the dense vegetation from the surrounding street blocks almost all of the sun’s rays. Even on bright days, its light only ever collects on two tables while it glows in patches on the bordering avenue. On these mornings, the prized tables fill up as soon as the sun strikes, and that is why, over the past year, I’ve found myself in constant competition.
♦
When I first started eating there, the old man walked to the restaurant alone. In his hands, he carried a newspaper or a novel; on his head, he wore a baseball cap that hid his baldness and accentuated the short white hair on the sides of his head; over his eyes, he wore square glasses that transitioned to dark in the day. Except for his slight pallor, he appeared to be in good physical health; despite being neither boisterous nor ebullient, he always returned the affection and humor that the staff sent his way. He used to sit there for hours, sporadically breaking from the page to shut his eyes and angle his face toward the sunlight.
Time made me grow fond of him. Although we never spoke, there were a few occasions when we gazed into each other’s eyes, and I remember half a dozen instances when I returned a pen he’d forgotten to the staff. With our passing meals, I started to enjoy our distant companionship, and I imagined that our silent competition restored vigor in him: While the rest of the world coddled him, I treated him as an equal.
During the first few months that I saw him, I didn’t detect any major changes; but with each passing day I did witness a minuscule whittling of the spirit, an almost imperceptible dilapidation of the body. Unlike children who grow by the second or middle-aged adults who remain the same for decades, the old man represented time itself as though he was shaving off exactly the amount of life twenty-four hours contains. The thought never failed to create an ache at the bottom of my stomach during meals—it still does now. But it is not unusual for unpleasant thoughts to pass through my mind, and I’ve learned, over the years, how to angle my spine so that they glance off, leaving me relatively unscathed.
♦
Three months ago, he stopped showing up to the restaurant. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. One morning, after a few weeks of absence, I asked Wagner about him as he came over with a handwritten bill and a credit card reader.
“I haven’t heard anything,” he said. “He always travels a few times each year to see his family, but, normally, he tells us before he goes. It is a little strange.”
“Maybe a last minute trip came up,” I said, passing him my card.
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve never spoken to him.”
“But you see him here all of the time?”
“Yes.”
He handed me a copy of the receipt. “He must have taken an unexpected trip.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” he smiled.
“I’m not worried,” I said, returning the same smile. “I don’t even know him.”
