Another geometry

Andrés was looking at me for an eternity as though he was assessing what I had just proposed to him. As a matter of fact, I myself was thinking whether it was really worth doing what I proposed.

"Dunno…", he eventually said, "I think it's a bit risky to enter without having been invited. Besides, isn't it bad to give so much importance to this business of Renan?"

"I proposed it because I think that whatever his next steps are, this tournament is a chance to see what he is up to. Not that it's exactly what he's planning, but it can give us a clearer indication of what's next."

I ended up telling him to forget about it. In fact it would be a bit ridiculous if we got caught trying to enter a place we hadn't been invited to. If Renan didn't want to invite us, he should have his reasons, so what we had to do was to respect them. This day seemed to start going on exactly like yesterday. This repetition of events and circumstances did get on my nerves.

I stayed the night on the farm Taurinos. I'm in fact respecting Renan's decision by staying far from the very farm Teixeira for the tournament days. I'm in doubt as to whether to tell Andrés what Renan said to me some time ago in a talk that he intended to destroy Andrés or whatever that meant. I eventually decided to tell Andrés only to discover it was no novelty for him.

"He said that to me at school, when we fought", he declared smiling, "that's just Renan's bullshit, he is hot-blooded as hell."

Then there was a pause. As usual, we were looking at the mountains framed by the porch on the farm Taurinos. The talk with Renan on that day refused to disappear from my mind. Andrés' claim that he knew about that talk did not reassure me, I didn't know why.

Adriano came alone from Renan's this time. He walked in still impressed with the results of the championship. Renan's animals had a clean sweep over all the competing pets while Guilherme lost one of his pitbulls. I didn't even know he had dogs, thought all the pets in that shed were Renan's and nobody else's.

"There was even a fight between Renan and a guy from São Paulo", Adriano commented casually.

"Why?" Andrés was interested.

"Because the guy said Renan was cheating, but everybody saw there was no cheating there. He was in fact desperate because he had lost three of his dogs to Renan's in the battle. And he turned on Renan, but neither Guilherme nor we had to help. Guy left Taurinos for São Paulo with a broken nose and blood everywhere on his face. And if we didn't succeed in taking Renan off the guy, he'd have left the tournament in even worse condition, because Renan beat him nonstop and didn't want to get off the fight. It was not a fight really. It was a massacre. He left with three dead dogs and a broken face. His face has now another geometry", laughed Adriano, amused.

"Oh well…" Andrés was astonished at his brother's narration. He and I exchanged looks. Adriano didn't understand our derelict looks. We had been excluded from the event altogether. third party narrations was what was left for us as the only way to set up a panel of what happened within the tournament. What we understood was that Renan was growing more and more aggressive in time.

The issue of Renan breaking down the Paulistano's face with punches was new even to Andrés, that not only once had been fighting with the young member of the Teixeiras. I thought I'd ask Andrés what Renan was like in a fight, but I also thought he'd never give me a trustworthy portrait of the issue, since he was personally involved in the quarrel and didn't want to look weak before me or anyone else telling me he got a thrashing from Renan, two years younger than him. Maybe because it might not have even happened.

These tiny little monsters | Russian roulette

Radio Universal: A Permanent Season