It could happen that not too far from the railway station, but far enough, I would come upon some solitary person walking through the empty streets — under such circumstances, tailing another person was impossible, because in those neighborhoods the itineraries are too short, and especially because I had no way of dissembling or fading into a landscape as barren and quiet as that, both of us, walker and pursuer, would be the only living creatures in the desert, and thus too visible, etc. — and so it could happen that if I saw someone in the empty streets, I’d feel an initial impulse to follow him at a discreet distance, but in the end I’d give up on it; the very desolation of the neighborhood would override any argument and conviction. It was as if the desire for adventure, for fiction to a certain extent, as I explained just now, which had originated someplace as a variant of curiosity, had dissolved before assuming any true form.

The atmosphere on the outskirts of the city turned out to be both intimate and alien to me; I could recognize the language, since I shared it, but I’d lost a bit — or a great deal, I don’t know — of the pulse of its expressions and of the local idiom in general, its resonances. And so these birthday walks were approximate in more than one sense. My birthdays consisted of vague gestures of this type, an exile for a few hours toward a part of the past and toward a geographic area that no longer belonged to me, but because they’d been mine once, I had considered them united until that moment: both parts were one and the same, a mixture of time and place. When the day was nearly over, I’d return from the outskirts as if I were coming back not from another reality, but rather, from a brother planet, an outlandish dimension into which I could set foot only once a year, when the calendar, underscoring my presence, so to speak, in the world, invited me by this same operation to suspend that presence, to doubt it, or at least, to hide it.

The path that ran along near the water kept displaying its neglected surface; in reality, I didn’t expect it to change, but between one thought and another, some sideways glance at a distraction or some specific point in the landscape that called for my examination, I gradually arrived at the aforementioned place, the oblong building that stood at the lakeshore, with large, empty terraces on either side and great, wide windows that gave onto the water. One didn’t need to examine it for long to know that it had been the old boathouse, converted at some point into a café, according to what it said on several lecterns on both terraces and on a sign over the entrance: CAFÉ DO LAGO. The structure was modest and embellished at once. As one could easily imagine, it was in the same style as the terrace on the plaza by the pedalinhos, as well as the guardhouses, or tool sheds, whatever they were, that were scattered across the park.

I went to sit down on the left-hand terrace, as far as possible from the water, from where I had a rather privileged view of the lake; I could also see, from the vertex of the old boathouse, how the panorama slowly opened out until it achieved its full breadth even beyond the swans’ area, which now could be seen, on the left-hand shore, as a slightly undefined concentration, a mixture of trees and various facilities. While I was waiting to be served, I began to consider the most recent events. Obviously, the episode with the fish and the turtles, and the associated thought, too, which arrived like an instantaneous revelation, though I should have foreseen it: I was ensconced in my birthday month, and what’s more, the day itself was only a few days off. By now I’m sufficiently acquainted with the fatal succession of nights — Borges said this, I believe — to understand that no distraction or idea can stop time from being realized and the future from arriving. It’s not that I wanted to postpone my birthday, it was my certainty that it made no difference to start thinking about it in advance, though I hadn’t expected to, in that park in the south of Brazil.

Then I happened to have the thought, as I mentioned before, of the two friends whose birthdays seemed to them an opportunity, or alibi, for writing about themselves in relation to time, or to life and its possible changes, and the impact all this had on them. And as I remembered them, an odd thing happened, my birthday vanished from the horizon as a looming eventuality, to assume the validity of the present itself. I felt, as I say, truly ensconced in the day of my birthday. I mean, in one way or another, reality had organized itself in such a way as to anticipate this date, and it inspired in me a feeling of solidarity and concord toward both friends and their books, and one of gratitude toward the carp and the turtles for prompting the moment and having allowed me to preside over that near-secret aquatic celebration. Consequently, from where I sat, I could devote myself to contemplating the calm waters of the lake, and also to reconsidering for a moment these most recent events and thanks to them, understanding that the whole park in its entirety had worked as an unexpected catalyst for my birthday.

A young waiter had left me the menu, only to take refuge immediately inside the café, probably wanting to benefit from the air conditioning. By now a brief age had gone by since his first appearance — short if one takes into consideration the span of a lifetime, long compared with the time most anyone would spend deciding what to order. For a moment, I thought I saw him keeping an eye on me from one of the windows. Not openly, like someone looking straight out, but diagonally, most of his body hidden behind the wall and his face peeking out a bit. I didn’t give much thought to him, because at the same time I discovered I was being observed from another angle: swan No. 15 was headed right toward where I was sitting.

It had its eyes riveted on me, as if it were trying to memorize what it would say when it arrived and wanted to get a head start. I recognized the swan because the father and daughter were aboard, their heads peeking out from behind the animal’s neck, one on either side. I recall that the girl was laughing as the father talked, and that her laughter became heartier just after her father said something and she looked at me. They were talking about and laughing at me, I supposed. It was the worst that could happen to me that day, being sensitized to the opinions of others in such a way. Perhaps I was mistaken, but it’s not easy to overlook certain signs, especially when someone wants to disguise them. The swan kept coming nearer, despite almost touching the shore and having the entire lake to itself, spread out behind it like a mirrored metal fan, tinged slightly with green because of the reflections of the plant life. The father and daughter seemed to be in control of the boat; but seeing them like that, sunken up to their necks inside the enormous body, made me think of them as involuntary yet unnecessary participants in the actual scene that was unfolding.

The scene was the most bucolic of paintings or photos: the afternoon light, the lacustrine landscape, and eloquent in the foreground, the swan looking directly up the line of sight. It was looking at me, as I said, and would keep doing so even if I changed tables or left the terrace. It would keep on looking at me if I stationed myself to one side of the lake, even if I spied on it from behind a tree, or if I actually placed myself behind it. Even to me, one of the protagonists of the critical moment, what was happening was impossible. I started thinking about causes. It obviously involved a dramatic exaggeration. It’s common to find eyes that look at us from paintings or photographs, as if they looked out once and for all, since they’ll never look away from us while we are looking at them. One of the friends I’ve been mentioning has to this day never forgotten an event from his childhood when an older lady lavished praise on a painting whose model gazed at all times at whoever was beholding her.