Once at the edge of the lake, amid thickets of greenery slanting out toward the water, which made for a certain difficulty in moving about, I could appreciate the grouping of swans in all its majesty and realism. They were some three meters tall, and despite their size, their bodies were perfectly proportioned, so that the stylized curve of their necks, famously praised by modernista poets, offered in these gigantic models a new and incontrovertible argument confirming it. The swans’ verisimilitude extended even to minor details, such as the color of their bills, a brilliant orange verging on red, with one exception alone, whose bill was yellow, as in all likelihood occurs now and then in real life.

I don’t know whether there are many species of swans; the one I’m familiar with was well represented there in any case: the so-called common swan, its body white and with its characteristic black mask rendering its face mysterious and each specimen seemingly identical to the rest. Nor do I know the name for the other group I saw there — most likely “white-faced swan,” as simple as that — or perhaps these bordered dangerously on geese, since their only difference with the others was that they lacked a mask. Otherwise both types displayed a similar morphology. As the name indicates, the face of the white-faced swan exhibits no other color, apart from its bill, already mentioned, and its black eyes. The common swan, on the contrary, has a black cloth that rises from the base of its bill and stretches to cover its eyes. Described that way, it might seem to be a blindfold, but actually the mask is a bit wavy, and lends this variety a grace and dynamism that would otherwise be lacking without this whimsy, which at first strikes one as theatrical; also, toward the edges of its face, where one would expect its ears to be, if it had ears, were white openings that, I think, serve as eyes. Anonymous swans, we might imagine, attempting to pass incognito. The white-faced ones, on the other hand, have eyes that are two large black circles practically stamped on the skull.

Unlike almost all real swans, these were missing the caruncle, the fleshy outgrowth that grows at the base of their bill or on the head, and which, according to the field guides, tends to be erectile. It made sense that the swans lacked this accessory, since the only motion they could possibly simulate was by virtue of their pedals. I keep a photo in which they are arrayed in rows of six beside the boarding ramp, presumably moored. Beyond what I’ve just described, both their silence and their demeanor impressed me. These qualities might seem fantastical, but I knew I wasn’t deceiving myself: one has to activate one’s imagination to bestow life on these swans. It’s the same with all inanimate things, we have to imbue them with life, but rarely do we find in the inanimate the type of silence or demeanor I now confirmed, nor to such a degree, as we seek, let’s say, to fit them into some human scale. On Mondays the swans clearly didn’t swim too much. If one wanted to endow them with life, one could believe it was owing to the fatigue that had built up over the weekend, their heaviest workdays. Nonetheless, despite their being, so to speak, parked that way, their lifelike side was borne out in the fact that they seemed ready to move at any minute.

The swans held two passengers and had dual sets of pedals, and on the left, similar to a car, was an semi-circular iron handlebar that made do as the rudder. I began to walk through the area, gazing at the lake through various arrangements of branches, or straight through the leaves of shrubbery. I stood in the shade, camouflaged in my own way by thickets that were nearly marshy, but curiously, everything else, the whole of the lake and the group of swans, but not me, seemed to be crouching, lying in wait for a certain signal. The trees on the opposite shore of the lake were mirrored in the water, itself fairly green, but some patches of bougainvillea, lilac-colored in this case, also stained the lake’s surface.

Probably because of their uniform alignment, but also the absence of any distinguishing marks — the exception being the yellow-billed swan — the swans at first seemed to lack individuality. But that first impression didn’t last long, because when I’d walked onward, after taking a path that ran parallel to the shore, and reached the swan-rental facility, from which I could consider the creatures from their tail ends, I could see that a particular number had been painted on each. Closest to me were Nos. 24, 3, 15, and 11; Nos. 18 and 10 completed the row. I’m not sure why these details matter. In a park where the presence of humans had adapted itself so closely to the nature of the surroundings, these artificial models seemed mysteriously alive to me, in their own fashion eloquent and mute at once.

In order to go out on the dock and board a swan, you had to pay a rental fee at a narrow cement ticket booth with a Spanish-tile roof, a little like a chalet-style guardhouse. A sign atop it said PEDALINHOS and listed the prices for weekdays, weekends or holidays. The minimal rental was fifteen minutes, which may give the wrong idea about the true dimensions of the lake, since whoever wanted to go to the far end would need a good deal more time. It seemed unlikely to me that the swans were capable of getting up much speed, and a little later, when I saw one in action, I confirmed their slowness. The planking that doubled as a dock had pipe handrails painted green. To the left of it, more difficult to access by water — on foot you’d have to cross a narrow and perhaps risky plank — were moored other, more conventional boats, resembling open cars, which were clearly old, less graceful, and out of use for some time.

The lake is in the form of an elongated ellipse, and the pedalinho station stands just past the midpoint of one of its longer arcs. I could have easily circled the lake, following the path that paralleled the shore just a few meters from the water, but for some reason that I cannot now recall, maybe because I simply thought it was getting too late, who knows why, in the end I didn’t. For almost its entirety the lake is surrounded by a strip of marshy land, low brush, and wild thickets. The pedalinho area stands next to an open plaza separated from the lake by still more plant life, through which one sees only intermittent reflections from the water, as if the lake were a mere intuition or belonged to a strange land.

The plaza next to the swans has as its epicenter a singularly beautiful Rationalist terrace, where there rises a structure that resembles a spinning top, with concentric circular platforms of uneven size, its Constructivist style similar to that of the small guardhouses described earlier, and painted the same antique yellow. I remember that the name of the architect, whose surname was German, appeared on one of the side walls of the circular structure. I walked around the small plaza, from which one could see the pedalinhos gleaming in the sun, especially their curves, that is, their flanks and their necks. I couldn’t imagine the spot crowded with families or young people on a Saturday or Sunday, since it now seemed definitively overcome by solitude. At the entrance I’d seen the swan attendant, dressed in a shirt that was blue or sky-blue, and an ice cream vendor in a yellow-trimmed red uniform, who had left his cart standing in the middle of the path a few meters away. Both stood leaning against one of the short columns that guarded access to the plaza. Every so often the boat attendant would turn to check on the swans; a reflex action, no doubt, since he could be sure no one was around. Or perhaps he, too, also intuited the presence of a flickering or secret life in them and, prompted by this suspicion, kept a close watch.

At times a solitary walker, like myself, appeared on the path, or one with children, or perhaps a couple, whatever; but whichever it was, whether a regular or a first-time visitor, everyone walked around this section of the park as if gone astray, or on the whole with the slow step of someone groping his or her way through unsafe or unfamiliar terrain. Conceivably it was the deep shade, contrasting with the luminous reflections from the lake, that gave the area a cave-like air, the air of a place given over to secrets and surprises. .