Thermus

It was not eight in the morning yet and Donana and I talked on the porch of the farm Teixeira. She said Renan hadn't left home that night. That she had no way of holding the Police back home. She also said Renan was grounded until Adriano came home. That she understood perfectly well Duílio's complaints about what happened to his son in the night. The latter talked to "sêo" Octávio about the same theme and got more or less the same impressions as I got from his wife. He said we could go upstairs and talk to Renan.

We went there to find the young officer at the computer. Grounded with the internet. Seemed not to be so hard. Fifteen days in a scheme like this are like not being grounded to me. He didn't even raise his head to see who it was behind him. Maybe because he imagined. Maybe because he knew.

"Renan, we want to talk to you", said Duílio, not willing to waste any time.

He turned around to look at us. Seemed downcast. Not so much as Adriano should be, not even a tenth, but seemed real downcast. Maybe it was the sanction he was being submitted to. Maybe it was learning he wasn't getting any approval of his deeds from his own parents. The question Renan asked next took Duílio and me by surprise.

"Talk about what?"

"How cheeky. Turned our sleeping night upside down, sent Adriano to hospital and you still asking what we want to talk about?", I asked, enfuriated.

"The whole of Taurinos knows I hate this stupid nickname. You were warned. Ask Dica what I did to her son at Zé of the Depths' bar."

Master Danilo had told me the story. I resisted the temptation to ask how he had heard the man talk inside Zé's if he was at the square, well out of the bar. It was simply not the moment. Instead I told him I didn't know Célio's motivations to have mentioned the name but reminded him he would always be the only reference as a police officer in town, there was no escaping it nor the role he had to play in the community. Adriano, I told him, commented on the name only as a piece of information. There was no mockery in it at all. He just thought he'd put me in the picture of how things have always happened in these three months or so. I asked Renan why it had to be a secret to me.

"Because I don't fucking like the fucking nick. Need I say more?"

And he was done. Duílio asked him if he knew about his son's health conditions. Said he knew. I asked him if he knew how much blood he managed to draw from Adriano during the operation. He denied having drawn blood. I disputed that, saying it was what I saw through the window, blood oozing from everywhere on his body. The origin of the fulminant anemia he was a victim of, referred by the hospital physician in Varginha. He was silent. Typical body language of one who runs out of plausible arguments halfway.

"Some procedures were carried too far", he admitted at last.

"Oh congratulations, you're talking like a perfect police officer now."

At my side Duílio could hardly refrain from hitting the boy. A gesture that would only make matters worse. This is time for talking. A lot of it. Corporal punishment won't get us anywhere but trouble and strife, I thought. I told Duílio to take it easy and said Renan owed him apologies for the trouble caused to his family. Renan never fully apologized. We got a shadow of apology from him and nothing more.

"It's you who must guard the limits outside and inside town too, Renan. When people here indulge in too much alcohol and start fighting it's you who must supervise it all", said Duílio, calmly disguising a fit of rage inside, "what if you got no limit left yourself to give them? If you got no limits, how to impose them to the others?"

Renan said nothing at all. The body language was that one previously described.

The god Thermus was the god that protected the limits in Ancient Rome and was depicted by a great landmark of stone. According to Gibbons, legend had it that not even Jupiter could overcome him. I got the information with the colleague blogger José Ames in his blog Persona. I saw this on the internet few minutes ago. I did a search for limits, impressed by what Duílio had said to Renan about them. Limit. It has to be a keyword in the context of Taurinos.

I told Duílio there will be the need of giving Renan a shock so he can realize how wrong he's gotten things around here. I didn't know what sort of shock, neither did he. Shock for Mr. Conselheiro was a well applied belt all over sensitive parts of the body. Medieval and fatalist, his position concerning education was repulsive, to say the least. My position was never a secret between us. I told him we needed something that gave him the shock before things got real crazy around town. I showed him, in a more relaxed note, the search I did and the article about the god of the limits. He smiled and said it was something close to what he said.

At night, more internet and MSN. Trying to find Meire online, since it's been a while since we last talked. Will I always be in touch with her on the net? Won't it expire, be discontinued somehow?

And there she was. On the webcam, she looked at the farm Taurinos' dining room, met Duílio and Andrés face to face, the two still incredibly up after dinner. When they went to bed, impressed by the power the internet had to put me in touch with someone in the future, she said she had been online all these days expecting to find me on MSN again. We talked about practices I sometimes taught her. Especially those concerning astral projection. She said she remembered the practices well and had gotten surprising results out of them.

"I want you to come to Taurinos and visit me. Astral projection could help", I said, tempting her to try, "remember the one with the retrospective?"

"I have to spend nights recalling the whole of the day, no? Yes, I do remember that one."

"Give it a try. Concentrate on me, see what you can do with your retrospective of the day."

We would still take hours to say goodbye and disconnect.

Leaden night | Retrospective

Radio Universal: Obscure Police