On holiday you could deceive yourself into thinking that the world is ever warm and friendly and secure, that only pleasure dictated the direction of one's movements.

Then the mother-in-law texts you: the dog is unwell and listless. The day before we left, Sam seemed much improved, on treatment for what the vet thinks is an irritated bowel. When the husband rings his mother, she says she is keeping him inside, which is, for her, extraordinary. He's at death's door, she implies, only this is probably an exaggeration.

For now we can only think about the dog, possibly pining away in a damp cold country that is for now too far away. Not even the dusk--blush tinted sky, deep indigo hills at the horizon--can distract us. There are three words for "there" in Portuguese: aí, ali, lá. Aí is far from the speaker but near the listener, ali is not too close and not too far, and lá is out of sight, far, far away from both listener and speaker.

Melancholy, aqui. Or even saudade, a Portuguese word that is difficult to translate but might mean a melancholy more like a longing or a yearning for an absent beloved, whether thing, person, or animal.

Around midnight we pause beside a small municipal building, in which a full orchestra is practicing. The hoarse pitch of horns soothes. Even the sound of the conductor's voice, interrupting play, is comforting. Life goes on. The husband and I listen under a jacaranda tree, his arms wrapped around my waist. When the orchestra finally plays the piece without surcease, the husband says, "Sam's song". It is a wee moment of grace, of respite, mooring us to a present replete with possible felicities.

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