The Riverboat Ledger

The telegram came to the boarding house in Rio de Janeiro on a wet Tuesday in March, while Elias was at the long table in the front room with a law book open and a cup of coffee going cold, and the landlady brought it in on a tray as if it might explode.

It had come a very long way. From Manaus, two thousand miles up the Amazon, by the cable that ran down the river to Belém and along the coast, and it had cost somebody a great deal of money per word, so there were not many words.

JOAQUIM DIED SUNDAY STOP RIVER STOP FUNERAL HELD STOP WILL NAMES YOU STOP COME AT ONCE STOP PASSAGE PAID LLOYD BRASILEIRO STOP AMELIA ARRUDA

Elias read it three times, standing up, with the rain coming down the window behind.

Joaquim Arruda. Grandfather. A name on letters that came twice a year with money in them, and a photograph on the wall of a man with a white beard and a white suit standing in front of a river steamer, squinting into a sun Elias had never seen. Elias had met him exactly once, at the age of eleven, in this same city, the year after Elias's father died: a big, quiet, frightening man who had bought him an ice cream on the Rua do Ouvidor, looked at him for a long time while Elias ate it, and said, You have his eyes. Good. Use them. And then had gone back up the river, and never come again.

And now he was dead, in the river, and his will named Elias.