Where the Water Begins

Sunrise reached Lençóis Maranhenses as a thin peach line above the dunes, leaving the hollows blue. Renata stood with the small group that had traveled out from Santo Amaro, listening to the wind move across the sand. Their guide had brought them up a gentle ridge, and below it lay a lagoon so clear that she could see the pale slope continuing beneath the water. For years she had wondered whether the photographs exaggerated this place. Now she was here, in the quiet before the sun warmed the sand, and the photographs seemed to have left most of it out.

Gabriel stood a few steps away, holding the swimming goggles he had brought from town. He had been the most cheerful person in the vehicle, telling a story about getting on the wrong airport bus and making even the sleepy driver smile. Renata had liked his voice before she could properly see his face. In the growing light she discovered a broad mouth, dark curls flattened on one side, and an expression that did not match the others around him. Everyone else looked astonished. Gabriel looked as though he had arrived at an appointment he would rather cancel.

She had noticed the goggles when he sat beside her. They were still in their clear plastic box, with the price sticker attached, and he had turned them over several times during the drive. Now he opened the box, checked the strap, and put them away. Renata wondered whether the water disappointed him, though she could not imagine what improvement he might reasonably expect. A passing breeze lifted the edge of his shirt. He caught her watching and smiled, quickly enough to suggest that the smile had a job to do.

Their guide, Celina, explained that the lagoons were fed by rain and that the landscape changed as water and wind worked through it. She chose their route down, keeping everyone together. Renata followed, letting her feet settle into the cool sand. The distances were difficult to judge; what had looked like one smooth ridge became a succession of curves, and more water appeared between them. Gabriel walked beside her without crowding her, offering his hand once where she hesitated on a slope. She accepted, discovering that the confidence in his grip was real even if something else about him was uncertain.

At the lagoon, Celina pointed out the shallow place where they could enter and told them where to remain. A couple from their group went in first. Another traveler spread a towel on the sand; beside him, a silver-haired man with amber eyes and a cobalt-blue scarf folded the scarf into his bag. Renata left her shoes with her belongings and stepped into the water. It was warmer than she expected after the morning air, and tiny ripples moved over her ankles. Gabriel stayed on the dry sand, the unused goggles in one hand.

She did not call to him. Something in the way he stood reminded her of being eleven years old at a school dance, desperately hoping nobody would notice that she had not moved from the wall. Instead, she returned and sat near him, facing the water. He asked whether she was finished already. She explained that she was having trouble deciding where to look and that sitting seemed a sensible way to begin. This was true. It was also pleasant to see his shoulders relax.

They had exchanged the usual details in the vehicle: Renata was thirty-nine, lived in Recife, and owned a small shop selling school supplies; Gabriel was forty-one and managed a furniture warehouse in Fortaleza. Now the conversation acquired more useful information. He read the last page of a novel first, a habit she regarded as nearly unforgivable. She liked choosing gifts but disliked receiving surprise parties. He could cook one excellent dish and ruined rice with a consistency that seemed unfair. By the time he laughed at her suggestion that he publish a warning, she had stopped thinking of him as the entertaining stranger from the drive.

She wanted to know what happened when he was quiet. She liked the way his attention returned to her after every distraction, and how he asked another question when an answer interested him. When she reached for her water bottle, their hands brushed against the bag between them. The contact was accidental; the pause afterward was not. He looked at her for a moment, then at the lagoon, and she saw the earlier uncertainty return.

“I don’t actually know how to swim,” he said.

The confession was so plain that Renata understood how much effort he had spent avoiding it. He had never learned as a child, and as an adult he had become skilled at choosing the picnic blanket, guarding the bags, or remembering an urgent errand whenever friends entered the water. He had booked this trip for his birthday and bought the goggles on an impulse, imagining that he might become a different sort of person somewhere as extraordinary as this. Standing above the lagoon, he had discovered that he was still himself.

Renata looked at the unused goggles, then at the man who had kept an entire vehicle laughing before dawn. She told him she was glad about the second discovery. His expression changed in a way that made her wish she had said it sooner. She had not come to Brazil’s dunes expecting to meet anybody, but she was beginning to suspect that she would remember this conversation as clearly as the first view from the ridge.

They asked Celina about remaining at the shallow edge. With the guide nearby, they walked a few steps into ankle-deep water, staying on the gently sloping sand she had indicated. Renata offered her hand, and Gabriel took it, his fingers settling warmly around hers. They stood there while the others splashed farther along, and the water made wavering lines around their feet. After a while he stopped watching those lines and turned toward her.

His thumb rested against her wrist. In the new sunlight, she could see a small crease at the corner of his eye and the uneven place where he had missed a patch of beard. He said that he had already found an adult swimming class at home but had been postponing the booking. Renata suggested that he send her a message after his first lesson. He asked whether he could send one before then, and the warmth that moved through her had very little to do with the morning.

Back on the sand, they sat with their feet drying and their shoulders touching. Gabriel put the goggles away properly this time. When he looked at her, he did not seem to be preparing a joke. Renata raised her hand to his cheek and asked softly if she could kiss him. His answer came with a smile that was slower than the one he had offered on the ridge. She leaned toward him, and he met her with a tenderness that made her forget the voices of the group for several seconds. When they drew apart, she kept her hand where it was until he kissed her once more.

Celina eventually gathered everyone for the return, and Renata and Gabriel checked that nothing had been left behind. They had another two days in Santo Amaro. Walking back with the group, they arranged to spend the afternoon together in town, with no lesson, excursion, or difficult feat required. He took her hand again on level ground, where neither of them needed help. Above the lagoon, the dunes had turned almost white, and their joined shadows moved ahead of them along the guide’s chosen path.