Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (6 page)

He falls asleep again and wakes a little later to the sound of voices engaged in animated debate. After urinating and splashing cold water on his face, he opens the shutters, dampened by the sea breeze, and sees a boat anchored right in front of the apartment. Several fishermen are perched on the rocks and footpath. He watches the scene from the window for a few minutes. The night wind has died down, and the sea is smooth and opaque. The water looks hot. A black power cable trails from the back of the boat, suspended over the water, and is wrapped around the trunk of a tree right in front of his building. One of the men is in the boat, another is sitting on the stairs, and the rest are standing around the white fishing net heaped up on the rock. Slowly the fishermen make eye contact with him and nod. He goes inside and makes some coffee. He is sitting at the table eating a sandwich when there is a knock at the door.

Hey, champ. The boss wants to know if we can plug this in here.

The man's bottom teeth are rotten, and he has a long rodent's face. He raises a cigarette to his lips with thick, cracked fingers that get thinner at the tips and end in ragged nails. With his other hand he is holding up a plug with two rusted pins and a clump of black electrical tape holding it together. It is the other end of the power cable trailing from the boat.

It's for the soldering gun, says the man when he sees him hesitate. We're fixing the boat's motor over there.

Okay, you can use that socket there.

Thanks, champ. You're a good man.

In a moment the soldering gun goes into action somewhere in the innards of the boat, a white whaler with decorative yellow and red stripes called
Poeta
. It must be about forty feet long. Sparks fly from an opening in the deck while the vessel softly rolls from side to side. He leaves the apartment and goes to watch the activity from the footpath. The men on dry land make fun of one another and joke about money. The man who knocked at his door, who looks like a beaver with a long face, is the one who talks the most, and someone calls him Marcelo. It is hard to decipher much of what they say, but he understands that one of them, a fat man who is watching the scene from a certain distance and may be the owner of the boat, has just received an army pension. The others are asking him for money jokingly.

Gimme a hundred bucks.

Haven't got anything.

Don't you feel sorry for me? I can't even afford a packet of crackers.

That's your problem.

The man who was welding the motor appears on deck and shouts that the soldering gun has stopped working. The others start to examine the cable, looking for the problem. There is a patch on part of the cable, and one of the fishermen takes to it with his pocketknife. In the meantime the boat has drifted closer to the rocks, and the cable that was previously suspended above the water has lost height and is almost completely submerged. The whole situation looks risky, not to say insane.

Do you want me to unplug it?

No, champ, thanks, but it won't be necessary.

The fisherman somehow manages to reestablish the electrical current by fiddling with his pocketknife in the cable. The soldering gun starts droning and spraying sparks again in the bowels of the boat. The job is quick. Marcelo pulls the plug from the socket and tosses the rolled-up power cable to the man on board. The man takes the cable, collects up his tools, jumps from the whaler into a rowboat, and joins the other men on the rock. He turns out to be the owner of the whaler and is burly, with a sparse beard, curly hair, and impassive facial expression. He introduces himself as Jeremias. He thanks him for the use of his socket with a handshake and says that tonight they are going to sail south, looking for a school of croakers that was sighted in Itapirubá, and that they'll bring him some croakers the next morning to return the favor.

Jeremias and another fisherman use the rowboat to take one corner of the fishing net to the deck of the whaler. The net is attached to a crank-operated reel, and with the help of this mechanism, they begin to transfer it from the top of the rock to the whaler.

He offers the fishermen water, coffee, and sandwiches, but they don't want anything. He asks how long the net is. Marcelo says it is two thousand fathoms, but he doesn't know what that is in yards. A young man with blue eyes who has been quiet until now says that it's about one and a half miles. It's a small net. They often use nets that are three miles long or more. They get enthused and start telling the newcomer stories. Last year this boat came back up to its eyes in water. Eleven tons of croakers. It was riding so low that water was washing over the top of it, and they had to bail it out with buckets. They all hold their cheap cigarettes with the tips of their fingers, and when they aren't taking a puff, they keep their hands behind their backs, as if they want to hide the fact that they smoke. They are wearing faded sweatshirts and rubber boots or worn-out sneakers.

You live there? Marcelo asks with a jerk of his head.

I moved in yesterday.

You surf?

No.

What happened then? Get divorced?

I just wanted to live by the beach.

Right you are. Life's good here. This place is beautiful.

It is.

It's peaceful. To see the ocean in the morning.

It's priceless.

Everyone here is really nice. Did you know no one's ever been killed here in Garopaba?

Never?

Lots of folk have died, of course, but there have never been any murders! It's really laid-back. There's almost no violence.

I don't believe no one's ever been murdered here.

Marcelo doesn't answer. The tiny waves tickle the still air.

I heard my granddad died here.

What was his name?

People used to call him Gaudério.

No one says anything, in a way that says a lot. He decides to carry on.

The story I heard is that he was murdered here.

Here? How? I don't think so.

But that's what my dad said.

They called him Gaudério, did they? Gauchos are pretty common in these parts.

The blue-eyed young man's lips curve up in a private smile, and he continues staring out to sea.

My granddad used to go spearfishing for grouper. Ever heard of him?

Marcelo raises his eyebrows and turns his head theatrically from side to side. He is squatting at the top of the stairs like a bird on a perch, hugging his knees with one arm, and smoking with the other. He stares deliberately straight ahead and keeps quiet. The conversation runs dry, and everyone looks more concentrated than necessary on whatever it is that they are doing. A couple of tourists glide between the boats on kayaks, the man stopping every so often for the woman to catch up. A cloud covers the sun. The weather is beginning to turn.

You from Porto Alegre? Marcelo breaks the silence.

Yep.

Porto Alegre is really violent.

True.

I lived there for two years. Long time ago. I know it well.

Yeah? What did you do there?

A bit of this, a bit of that. Do you know Bar João?

The one over on Osvaldo?

That's the one. It was wild. That was my haunt.

It's not there anymore. They tore it down.

Really? Well, there you go. I used to drink jaguar milk there. They also had cachaça with a brick in it. There was a guy who used to drink it. The place was full of crazies. And a few bad folk too.

I used to live in Porto Alegre too, says the oldest of the group. He is a thin, wrinkled man with enormous ears with tufts of white hair growing out of them. I spent ten years there. Back then I worked in a bar. Remember the trams? Did you ever see a tram in Porto Alegre? Right, you're too young for trams. They got rid of the trams in 'seventy-one. There were trams going up and down Cristóvão Colombo and several other streets. You could go all over the place on them. They auctioned them off, and the owner of the bar I worked at bought one. He took off the front of the carriage with a blowtorch and stuck it on the front of the bar. The place was small. It fit perfectly. Know the place?

No. I think I was a kid.

The old guy doesn't continue his story. There is an anticlimactic silence. The owner of the whaler is still on board winding up the net with the crank.

Jeremias!

The fisherman raises his head.

Ever heard of a guy who lived here in the sixties called Gaudério?

Gaudério?

He was my granddad. I'm trying to find someone who knew him.

Mustn't be from my time, says Jeremias, without taking his eyes off the net. Try talking to someone who's been around longer. Lots of folk pass through here. Most end up being forgotten.

Marcelo tosses his cigarette butt into the water and gets up.

I'm off.

Jeremias finishes winding up the net minutes later, and they all get on the whaler. The motor coughs out puffs of gray smoke. The boat advances with its propeller gurgling to a point farther out and is anchored. The smell of fuel hangs in the air.

He goes inside. Beta is prostrate, in the same position as the day before, lying on her favorite towel, and as is often the case, he can't tell if she is asleep or awake. She breathes very slowly and needs a lot of encouragement to go out for walks. He sets her dishes of water and food in the outside laundry area, which at least forces her to get up to eat.

He gets his wallet from a drawer in the kitchen cupboard. Among his documents and bank cards is a recent passport-size photograph of himself, one of those neutral, bureaucratic photographs whose only function is facial recognition. He is in the habit of carrying this kind of photo around so he can remember his own face, since the photos on his driver's license and ID card are too small and too out of date, respectively, for this purpose. He takes the photo out of its plastic envelope. He goes into the bedroom, opens his backpack of personal belongings, and takes out his most cherished photo album, the one that serves almost as a catalog of the faces of the greatest sentimental importance to him. He finds the photograph of his grandfather that his father gave him and compares it to his passport photo. Then he goes into the bathroom and holds the photo of his grandfather next to the mirror.

He looks back and forth at his grandfather's face and his own reflection. He runs his hand over the beard that he has been growing ever since he spoke to his father for the last time. He finds a pair of blunt, slightly rusty scissors in the silverware drawer and, with some difficulty, cuts his grandfather's portrait down to the size of an ID card and places it in the same plastic envelope in his wallet where he has kept his own picture until now.

T
he village cemetery is located on
a square plot of land between two summer homes. Behind it is an abandoned smallholding covered in emerald-green grass and, farther back, Silveira Hill, with a winding dirt driveway announcing a future housing development. The incandescent green of the vegetation makes it look as though it's about to catch fire under the sun. The graves are blocks of cement, bare or covered with tiles or flagstones, almost devoid of adornment. Here and there is a silver angel statuette or a cross decorated with gold paint or colorful stones. Not many graves have photographs on them, and most of the flowers are plastic. He tries to walk through the middle of the cemetery but can't. The graves are so close together that the few available passages turn out to be dead-ends. The labyrinthine layout forces him to jump over graves and lean against them as he looks for a way through. More than once he has to retreat and find another path. At times there isn't even enough space to maneuver and turn around. He tries using the edges of the cemetery, but the graves touch the wall. They appear to have been repositioned throughout the years so that more bodies could be buried there, until every possible space has been used and all that is left are a few holes and furrows, like a faulty puzzle. He spends a long time trying to get to the back of the cemetery, where, craning his neck, he can see the oldest and simplest graves, among which are some small, worn gravestones atop mounds of soil covered with clover and other weeds. From afar, two or three of these gravestones appear not to have any inscriptions. He trips over a grave that is no more than a little fence of bricks and falls onto another, bigger one, smashing a vase of plastic flowers. He picks up the flowers and tries to rearrange them as best he can on the dark slab of imitation marble covering the grave. He looks around for a gravedigger but doesn't see anyone.

 • • • 

T
he sun is almost
setting behind the hills in the neighborhood of Ambrósio, and everything in the bay dozes under the rosy light. He pulls on his Speedos, gets his swimming goggles out of a backpack, and takes the stairs down to Baú Rock, feeling the roughness of the cement and warm stone on the unaccustomed soles of his feet. Boats and flocks of gulls bob up and down on the shiny water, and the ocean's vapors instantly unblock his nasal passages. He jumps carefully from the rock, so as not to cut his feet on the tiny barnacles, and his body is annulled by his own reflection, shattering the water's filmy surface. His feet disappear with a swallowing noise, and concentric circles ripple out for a few yards before he reappears much farther along, near an anchored boat, and starts swimming out to the deep. He swims following the coast, happy with the freedom of the cold, salty, endless pool, a little wary of the growing darkness and the probable proximity of some marine animal. It is almost night when he leaves the water. He is relieved, still a little giddy from the effort and musing over everything he thought about while swimming. He has decided to sell his car.

The waning moon is rising behind the hill when he gets his map of the town and heads for Nestor Gas Station. He talks to the manager and, in exchange for a commission of three hundred
reais,
leaves the Fiesta parked next to a flower bed at the entrance to the gas station with a for-sale sign printed out in an Internet café and taped to the window. The market value of the car is fifteen thousand, but he offers it for fourteen. He buys a can of guarana soda in the corner shop and asks the girl at the cash register about gyms in the town. There are three main ones. He marks them all on his map. Academia Swell is opening a new heated indoor semi-Olympic pool, the first in the region.

With Beta on her leash, he walks the six blocks from the gas station to Bauru Tchê and orders a cheese-and-chicken-heart sandwich. This time the owner of the trailer strikes up a conversation and introduces himself. His name is Renato. Three girls are drinking beer at a table, and the TV on the counter is showing the eight o'clock soap opera.

Who's the mutt? shouts Renato.

My dog. Beta. She was my dad's, but now she's mine.

Didn't he want her anymore?

He passed away.

Oh, pardon me. Sorry to hear it.

It's okay.

Renato asks where he is living and ruminates on his answer as if he really doesn't care much. The subject is redundant, and people come and go from these seaside dwellings year after year. Registering who comes and who goes is like talking about the weather, which is what he does next.

It rained all summer. Then March comes along, and it's all fine and dandy, sun every day, no wind. It's not fair.

His wife prepares the sandwich on a hotplate behind the counter, wearing an apron and a hairnet. They are going to close the snack bar in two weeks' time. He says this year wasn't very good. There won't be much left after he's paid the rent. He plans to return to Cachoeirinha, where his home is.

Hey there.

The person who says this is one of the girls sitting at the next table, and the voice is familiar. It is the tallest of the three who is looking at him. Her curly hair is down, and he had memorized it on top of her head. It would be silly to pretend that he has only just noticed her, as she is sitting right in front of him at the next table, and it would be equally ridiculous to try to make her understand, under the circumstances, that only her voice or some more complex form of interaction could have revealed her identity to him. It is an explanation that he has learned to give a little further down the track, when he has had more contact with a person. People tend not to believe him straight up, and the bad first impression can almost never be undone.

Dália.

He pronounces her name in a cautious, almost interrogative tone. It is inappropriate, but he can't avoid it in these situations.

I wasn't going to say anything, man, but you're pretending not to see me so openly that I couldn't keep quiet.

Sorry. My mind was elsewhere.

Well, then your mind's always elsewhere, because I passed you on the beach yesterday, and you acted as if you didn't see me then either.

He could say his mind is always elsewhere or apologize a second time, but neither solution is satisfactory, the first because it is a lie, the second because it is unfair. Until a few years ago, he was always apologizing for not recognizing people—it was part of his routine—but he started feeling silly and stopped. The forgetting isn't his fault. The only thing he can do is keep quiet in the face of people's indignation and wait to see what happens next. He has learned that most people can't stand not being recognized. There are some who rise above the momentary awkwardness, who don't take themselves so seriously that they are truly offended, and joke about it, and even make an effort to situate him and provide him with the context of their previous encounters even though they aren't aware of his handicap. And there are some who take offense and end the conversation, even going as far as never speaking to him again or paying him any kind of attention.

Come join us, says Dália.

He moves to the empty chair at their table. The boy brings him his sandwich, playing his waiter role ceremoniously. The girls talk as he eats. He tries to participate in the conversation between one bite and another. One of the friends, Neide, is thin and quiet. She lives in town, worked the summer in a little bikini shop, and doesn't know what she is going to do for the rest of the year. The other one, Graziela, is plump, an attention grabber, and is there only on holidays. She is heading back to Porto Alegre in a few days to continue her law degree. Compared to Dália, neither of them is attractive. He never has conflicting impressions about a woman's face on different occasions. A beautiful woman will be beautiful each time. For those who remember, it isn't always so.

After half a dozen bottles have crossed the table, the four of them pay the bill and walk down the sidewalk to the beach. Graziela rolls a joint, and they smoke it. The sand is already cold, and the sea breeze relieves the sting and lassitude of a scalding-hot day.

March is the best month, says Neide.

It's the month for those who live here, says Dália. The best is left for those who worked all summer long.

How amazing a day was that? Graziela says slowly. I wish I could stay another two weeks. I wish I could stay forever.

The perfection of the month of March is a fertile and ongoing topic of conversation. The dog sprawls on the cool sand but at a given moment gets up and stands in front of him with her tongue hanging out, panting.

I think she's hungry.

Girls, there's a party at Bar da Cachoeira today. Shall we?

Let's go!

Dália asks if he can give them a lift.

He isn't at all partial to the idea of getting his car from the gas station, but he says yes. Before he does, though, he has to take the dog home.

Have you found a place already? Whereabouts?

He points at the right-hand corner of the beach.

Over there at the foot of the hill. In front of the lamppost. With the brown windows.

We'll wait for you here, says Graziela, lighting a cigarette.

He stands and picks up Beta's leash. He waits a second and looks at Dália. She gives him a sleepy smile, eyes half shut from the marijuana.

Okay. I'll be back soon.

He takes a few steps and turns.

Want to come keep me company?

Dália gets up immediately.

Sure. I think I need to use the bathroom. May I?

Grazi and Neide give them suspicious looks.

We'll be right back, girls.

Yeah.

Don't be long.

Dália is wearing a colorful ankle-length skirt that flutters rhythmically around her long legs. The circular movements of the hem allow him to see only the tips of her long feet clad in pink plastic sandals, with burgundy toenails. Her sleeveless white lace blouse shows off her narrow waist and broad hips. She isn't wearing the silver necklace today, but she has on a pair of spiral earrings, two delicate metallic structures that manage to find room under her mane of curly hair. The lampposts on the beach promenade project bright, orangey light over the sand. It is like walking through an empty stadium ready for a rock concert at night. Their long shadows drag their heads through the calm sea.

What are you looking at?

Your earrings.

She fiddles with them.

Did you manage to get back from the party that night?

Jesus. I was really out of it. I can hardly remember a thing. But it was okay, a guy gave me a lift.

That dickhead with dyed-blond hair?

Don't remind me. I hooked up with him once, and he thinks he can just rock up talking shit and it's going to happen again whenever he wants.

Next time I won't let him bother you.

Tough guy. The worst part is that I hooked up with him again.

He raises his eyebrows and doesn't say anything.

Why did you leave?

I was a bit worried about the car. And to be honest, I haven't got much patience for parties.

You left me there alone. You didn't feel sorry for me. Not nice.

So I passed you on the beach yesterday, did I?

You did, and you pretended not to see me.

When?

Yesterday afternoon. You were running. I was with Pablo.

Who's Pablo?

My son.

I didn't know you had a son.

Didn't I tell you? Pablito, my love. I did so tell you.

No, you didn't. How old is he?

Six.

I didn't know you had a son. But that kind of explains it. If you had been alone, I think I would have recognized you. By your hair.

Man, you're really weird.

The stream that runs into the sea in front of the row of fishing sheds is too wide to jump over. Near the old stone bridge, a footbridge has been improvised with a plank. He touches Dália's arm and nods to indicate where to cross.

I'm going to tell you something, Dália. But you have to take it seriously, okay?

Okay.

But let's cross this plank first.

He goes in front with the dog and holds out his hand to Dália just before he gets to the other side. She lifts up her skirt a little and takes his hand. She crosses the plank with a single step.

I'm incapable of recognizing faces. That's why I didn't realize it was you on the beach. Or in the bar tonight.

That's no excuse for ignoring someone you've known for two or three days. It means you couldn't care less about them.

Listen. I can't recognize any face. It's a neurological disorder.

She stops and stares at him.

Take a good look at my face, she says, pointing at it. Can't you see it? Can't you see my mouth, nose, eyes? Is that it?

I can see it. But I won't remember it. My brain doesn't retain it. I have brain damage right in the part that recognizes human faces. If you leave my sight, I'll forget your face in five minutes, or ten, or half an hour with a lot of luck. It's inevitable.

I've never heard of it.

It's very rare.

She stares at him for another instant, then starts walking again.

Don't you believe me?

You said you were serious, so I'm taking you seriously. But if you're messing with me . . . the sooner I know the better. A moment from now is going to be too late.

I'm serious.

The fishing sheds are all closed. They pass a young couple heading in the opposite direction, coming back from the rocks, listening to electronic music weakly amplified on a cell phone.

So you'll never be able to recognize me? If I want to talk to you, I have to go up to you and say, Hi, I'm Dália, remember me? Waving my hands and all? She opens her eyes wide and makes a funny smile, gesticulating as she talks.

No, of course not. There are lots of things besides a person's face. The voice almost always helps. And the context. I know you're the tallest girl in the pizza parlor. If I go there while you're working, I'll know who you are immediately. Sometimes it's an item of clothing that the person wears a lot, and I memorize it. A way of walking. I always have to be on the lookout for things that can identify a person, besides their face. I scan the details. In your case, the first things I noticed were your height and your hair. The better I know someone, the easier it is to recognize them. But it's always a little complicated. Yesterday on the beach, for example, it would have been almost impossible because you were with your son, and I didn't know you had a son.