The Third Bank of the River
A quiet, orderly, unremarkable man has a canoe built to his own specification, gets into it and rows out onto the river beside the house, where he simply stays — never crossing, never landing, holding to the current within sight of the family he has left on the bank. The son who tells it grows up inside that refusal, leaving food at the water's edge, fielding the neighbours' explanations, watching his mother and his sister give up and go. Published in Primeiras Estórias, the collection in which Rosa turned to very short forms, and the most anthologised of all his stories.
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