Crossing the River Read Online Free PDF

a canoeist, eyeing the whitecaps on cobalt blue.
    We pulled into the slanted cobblestone ferry slip. Ramshackle buildings squatted on either side. There were no lines, no designated places to park. A couple of men ambled out of the building on the right, a brightly painted yellow bar with the image of a giant beer bottle on its wall. It was labeled Nova Schin . We looked out at the river. The ferry was still out in the middle, a matchbox in the distance. Peter walked up to the window to order. “ Um novo shin ?” Months later, we would learn it was pronounced “nova skeen,” but the man gave Peter a thumbs-up and cheerfully retrieved a cold, wet bottle of beer.
    The little ferry scraped its metal gangplank up over the cobblestones. A truck, a few cars, and several motorcycles inched their way off the boat. No one seemed in a hurry. I watched, mesmerized. What would that be like—to not be in a hurry?
    Once on board, we left our car to go stand at the bow. Penedo glimmeredwhite across the water, church towers poking up like little exclamation points. A big blocky building had been dropped in the middle of what was otherwise a perfectly preserved nineteenth-century town. We passed a brushy island on the left and looked upriver, then down, to open hills spreading away on either side. We were crossing over from the state of Sergipe into Alagoas. Splashes of red flame trees and swishing palms came into focus as we drew closer to the far shore.
    â€œThis could be it.” Peter said, glancing at me. We felt a rev of excitement. “If we live here,” he said, pulling himself up a little taller, “I’ll need to bring a rumpled white linen suit.”
    As the ferry docked, we squeezed back into our little Fiat, and Peter carefully backed it down onto the cobbles of the landing, which expanded into a riverside plaza. Despite the lack of signage, we found the Pousada Colonial, a B and B in an eighteenth-century house on the far side of the square recommended by our guidebook. Katia, the pousada ’s small and bustling manager, led us up a dark wood staircase and opened a door into an airy, third-floor room. We swung open the heavy wooden shutters.
    â€œOh, it’s lovely,” I sighed, propping my elbows on the two-foot-thick windowsill. I looked down onto the spreading scarlet of a flame tree and across the plaza to a broken balustrade rimming a now-languid Rio São Francisco. It had been a long time since I’d had the time to just look out a window—fifteen years to be exact, since I’d moved from twelve-hour days for my teaching career to that plus two children. We stowed our bags and clumped back down the wide stairs to interrogate Katia at her old rolltop desk by the front door.
    â€œ O mar é longe daqui? ”—How far is the ocean? Is there a hospital? A school?
    She assured us there were two schools: private, Catholic, one run by nuns, one by priests.
    â€œI’m not sending Skyler to a school run by priests,” Peter said. Thinking of my cute, blond, eager-to-please little boy, who would be unable to understand the local language, I had to admit, after all the scandals, I kind of agreed.
    Both schools were K-12, which was a relief; Molly and Skyler could be in the same building. While I didn’t expect supremely social Mollyto have any major problems adjusting, I was more concerned about Skyler. He, too, could be socially adept but was initially more reticent. It would be good for them to pass each other in the hall, especially in the beginning when, without Portuguese, they’d be unable to talk to anyone else.
    We ducked through the stone-walled restaurant on the pousada ’s ground floor and headed up the hill to check out the school with the nuns. Half refurbished and half falling apart, Penedo’s narrow cobblestone streets were lined with mostly nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century row houses—in oranges, pinks, blues, and