Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) Page 28

  Where did you see him the last time?

  Behind here on Freitas Hill. The other two times were in Ouvidor. But he wandered all over the place. In each place they call him something different. In Jaguaruna there’s talk about an old man who is sometimes seen around the shell middens, and I’ve always thought it was him.

  Santina covers her mouth with the back of her fingers and stares at him until he looks away at the wind-ruffled lagoon.

  You’re going to look for him, aren’t you? I know you are.

  I think so, Santina.

  I can see it on your face. You’re just like him.

  So I’m told.

  There’s a man in Cova Triste who doesn’t know how to read or write, but he makes up rhyming verses. He dictates and people write them down. One of them goes like this.

  every old man was once young

  every boy will be a man

  I pray to God that he may earn

  a good name if he can

  don’t be proud my son

  for pride the earth doth spurn

  because from dust we come

  and to dust we shall return

  Part Three

  TEN

  The car skids in the middle of the interminable drive up to the top of the hill, where the Encantada Buddhist Temple is located. Leopoldo pulls on the handbrake and lowers the volume on the avalanche of distorted electric guitars coming out of the speakers. Staring straight ahead, he focuses for a moment, his lower lip hanging open, and accelerates carefully. It is and it isn’t raining. A thick mist is always waiting a little farther up, but they never reach it. Parts of the steep dirt road are cemented over, but even then Leopoldo, who knows the way well, is unable to get out of first gear. They finally reach the highest point of the road, and after a brief descent the forest opens to reveal a cleared area of uneven land. On the right is a statue of Buddha, and on the left is a flagged driveway up to the temple, a two-story building with Portuguese roof tiles and wooden walls painted an earthy red. An SUV is parked outside the front steps. It is still before nine o’clock in the morning, and the sunlight that manages to filter through the clouds has the flickering, dreamlike whiteness of a spent fluorescent bulb. The Buddha statue still isn’t finished and is covered with patches of dark concrete at different stages of drying. The entire statue is over ten feet tall, and the Buddha is a little larger than a normal human being. His throne is borne on the backs of lions sculpted in relief on the pedestal. The Buddha is sitting with his legs crossed in the lotus position with one hand in his lap and the other raised, both holding objects that he can’t identify. Leopoldo, who has helped build parts of the temple on a number of occasions, goes to talk to two men who are working on a roof structure that is being built next to the statue, while he goes to look for Lama Palden, whom he has arranged to visit.

  The floor, walls, ceiling, and beams inside the temple are made of wood and are painted blood red. Several statues three to four feet tall represent sitting divinities making a range of gestures with their hands and arms or holding swords and other relics. They are painted gold with details in blue, red, green, and yellow. In one corner is a shrine with a portrait of a lama. The ceiling is covered with lanterns decorated with scraps of colorful fabric, and there are Tibetan inscriptions everywhere. The smells and sounds of the wet forest mingle with the aroma of incense sticks and the squeaking of the floorboards under his feet.

  Lama Palden suddenly emerges, through a door at the back that opens onto an enclosed courtyard, accompanied by a little girl. Both are blond and barefoot in spite of the cold. They introduce themselves, and Lama Palden doesn’t seem to remember that he phoned the day before. As she sends the girl outside, he wonders what exactly he has come to ask and how he should do it without sounding ignorant or disrespectful, but before he can say anything, she tells him that he is the first to arrive and invites him to place some offerings before the six Buddha statues on the altar in order to earn merit. Lama Palden moves her tall, slender body with elegance. She has on a seed necklace exactly like the one Bonobo wears and a pink cashmere sweater. From time to time her bony feet peek out from beneath the beaded hem of her long, intricately patterned skirt. Her most striking facial feature is her long, narrow chin. Her blue eyes and almost transparent eyelashes radiate serenity, and her physique suggests that she adheres to some kind of radical vegetarianism. Her voice is soft and resonant at the same time. Her sparing use of words seems to be underpinned by a deliberate reverence of silence. She doesn’t appear to be happy, much less unhappy. She goes into the courtyard, where she fills a bucket with tap water, and returns. Following her instructions, he makes three consecutive greetings by pressing his hands together above his head, then in front of his face and chest, symbolizing spirit, mind, and body, and then prostrates himself and touches his forehead to the ground for purification. Lama Palden gives him a few last instructions and withdraws. He uses a plastic jug to carry water from the bucket to fill approximately thirty bowls arranged around the main shrine and a smaller shrine in the corner. He feels like he is being watched by the statues. He hears two other cars pull up outside, and devotees start to arrive: three discreet, well-dressed elderly women, two young women who seem slightly crazy, a short-haired Brazilian woman and her long-haired Argentinean boyfriend, a typical middle-aged surfer with prominent veins and faded tattoos on his neck and forearms, and finally six-foot-tall Leopoldo, who greets everyone as he enters.

  The service itself consists of sitting cross-legged in front of little wooden prayer-book rests, expelling air through his left nostril, then his right, then both together to symbolize the expulsion of hatred, selfishness, and ignorance, listening to Lama Palden talk about the need to avoid the pitfalls of the ego, to observe the mind, and to recite a series of prayers and mantras, almost always three times in a row. The mantras are chanted quickly and monotonously, sometimes with small melodic variations, in long sentences that take up all his breath. Between one set of prayers and another, the lama asks the devotees to visualize spheres of light coming out of the mouths, throats, and hearts of the divinities and penetrating their own. He tries to imagine it, tries to keep up with the mantras as much as possible and to focus on her teachings, but it isn’t long before his thoughts start to wander. The trees are dripping outside, and someone is walking and knocking things over on the upper floor, maybe the little girl who was with Lama Palden when he arrived. He has been attracted to a series of Buddhist ideas and concepts patiently explained by Bonobo: the impermanence of all things, the illusion of individuality, the vision of a person as nothing more than a fleeting configuration of the unstable components of body and mind, the need to fight the erroneous notion that we are whole, permanent, durable, autonomous, and unconnected to the flow of all things, so that we may interact with the world with more spontaneity, compassion, and detachment, so that we may suffer less and cause less suffering. Many of the ideas that were being explained to him for the first time corresponded with his own intuitions and convictions, but nothing could be further from the path that had brought him to them than this repetitive reading and group meditation. Even in this moment of prayer and meditation, he feels an urge to stop all the talking entirely, eliminate lamas and statues, and be alone and silent with a wall or with the horizon or run and swim until the constant awareness of being a person is naturally dissolved by the extreme physical effort and the conversion of all thought into strides, strokes, breathing, heartbeat. He understands what these people are seeking. It is what he and everyone else seeks, but their methods are different and perhaps, he suspects now, incompatible. He begins to grow impatient with the ritual. From a certain point on, all he wants is for it to stop.

  When it is over, he waits for the lama to finish talking to the short-haired woman about Buddhist decorations that are going to be made to sell in the temple, so he can ask her the question that brought him here in the first place. He asks how Buddhists
can talk about reincarnation if the whole philosophy preaches detachment from any notion of an ego that endures through time. Because for a being to reincarnate—I mean, to be reborn—something of what he was must reappear further down the track, or it doesn’t make any sense to use the term. Bonobo has told him it’s not exactly like that, it isn’t beings that are reborn but states of mind and, truth be told, it’s pretty hard to explain, but he sees no difference between a reincarnated spirit and a state of mind reappearing at some point in the future and being attributed to someone who died as if something of the person still existed. He can’t find the words he is looking for and knows that his question is starting to border on total incoherence, but Lama Palden listens with all her attention until he tires of speaking. Then she says that only meditation can lead to the rational certainty of the existence of karma and rebirth. The path to enlightenment is a training of the mind, analogous to training the body. Only practice reveals the teachings, she says. Truths cannot be understood through a rational, dualistic Western outlook. She also points out that enlightenment eliminates the cycle of rebirth and asks if he would like to know anything else. He stares at her as if he is taking it all in, thanks her repeatedly, and says good-bye. She tells him not to miss the coming services, which are every Sunday morning at nine.

  Leopoldo agrees to stop by the bed-and-breakfast to visit Bonobo, who is watching a porn movie at a high volume on the computer in reception and shouts when he sees them walk in.

  Captain Ahab! Leopoldo Beefsteak!

  I told you not to call me that. I don’t like it.

  Okay, Leopoldo Beefsteak.

  You really are an idiot.

  You guys call me Bonobo, and I don’t complain.

  But you like it, don’t you? It’s different. I’m going to make up a bad nickname for you.

  Back in Porto Alegre they also used to call me Monkey, Ebola, and Velvet Dick. Your choice. But tell me, swimmer, did you talk to the lama?

  Yep, we’ve just come from the temple.

  Cool. Wait around. A family from Curitiba is going to check out in about fifteen minutes, and then we can fire up some pizzas. Grab some beers from the fridge in the café.

  The three of them spend the afternoon drinking and eating at one of the four tables in Bonobo’s Café. Leopoldo is a big man, but he gets drunk quickly and starts joking about his participation in that morning’s service. Bonobo listens to everything, shaking his head, and then tells him off.

  You’re really something, aren’t you, swimmer? Jumping on the lama like that with the whole rebirth thing.

  What’s the problem? I wanted to know.

  What did she say?

  To meditate until I understand.

  Leopoldo laughs.

  I told you, Bonobo, let’s not go there.

  Man, you’re obsessed with this rebirth thing. Turn the page. Why is it so important to you to know if rebirth exists?

  It’s important to know that it doesn’t exist. All the rest seems right to me, but that detail spoils everything.

  Listen, swimmer. The question of rebirth isn’t all that important in the original Buddhism. There was a lot of black magic in Tibet when Buddhism first appeared there, and part of the madness stayed on. But it isn’t like the Kardec brand of reincarnation. If you understand that a person is just a dynamic agglomeration of states of mind, the idea of a soul that can reincarnate stops making sense. To put it in crude terms so you can understand it, it’s these states of mind that are reborn, that continue on and recombine to a certain degree. Just as your body feeds plants and worms if you’re buried in the ground. Just as the atoms of your body are stardust.

  The atoms of my body might be stardust, but that doesn’t mean there are stars in me.

  Stop talking like hippies.

  Do you get what I’m trying to say, Bonobo? The star is dead, I’m going to die. It doesn’t make any difference. The atoms didn’t belong to the star. My states of mind aren’t mine. And what the fuck is the mind anyway? I think it’s just a clever way to believe in a soul. It’s the leftovers of permanence that Buddhists keep stashed under their beds.

  We’ve created a monster, Beef.

  I warned you. We shouldn’t have gone there.

  Life can’t continue after death. I can’t. It’d be ridiculous. If they prove that it does, I’ll kill myself.

  But in that case it’d be pointless.

  You’re a piece of work. The most skeptical bastard I’ve ever met.

  No, I’m not. I just don’t believe in any old thing.

  If there was a God, he’d be amused by you.

  Leopoldo raises a bottle and hiccups.

  Here’s to the passionate belief that none of this exists.

  He and Bonobo join the toast. The three bottlenecks clink together, and his bottle shatters, sending beer and glass flying. The trio looks at one other with their arms still outstretched and their shoulders up, unmoving, slowly taking in what has just happened. The bottle broke up in the air instantly, but the feeling that he is holding it is slow to disappear.

  • • •

  Some winter days are like summer days, and this Monday in early September is one. Clotheslines sag and mattresses sunbathe on lawns and verandas. Those who can, enjoy the sunshine on the beach. Leaders of the two political parties running for election in the town set out early on their rounds to buy votes by giving away bags of cement and paying off motorbike loans. Poor children receive free surfing lessons and eat oranges for breakfast by the beach. He pulls on his wetsuit, lets the dog out, and walks across the rock to the ocean. With his first few strokes, the freezing water works its way through the neck opening and zipper and down his back and belly, but in seconds it is warmed by the heat of his own body, and the suit becomes protective and cozy. When he turns his head to the side to breathe, he can see Beta limping across the sand, accompanying his forward movement through the fishing boats. He doesn’t know how she does it, but she does. On the main avenue a mentally disabled man holding the Olympic Week torch runs slowly beside a guide, followed by an Association for the Handicapped microbus occupied by other disabled people taking part in the relay and two police cars with flashing lights. They are headed for the town of Paulo Lopes, where the torch will be passed along. In Rosa, Bonobo receives a phone call from a friend in a fix whose first thought was to talk to him and if possible see him, if that’s okay. In her house in Ferraz, a local woman is talking on Skype with her thirteen-year-old son who lives with his dad in Spain and comes to visit only during the summer. A gardener stumbles across the body of a dog that died of cold two nights ago in the flower bed of a summer house on Rua dos Flamboyants. In an isolated community in the hills of Encantada that lives according to the Mayan calendar, a toothache brings a young woman to tears, and she can’t stop thinking about what her life will be like if the world doesn’t end in December 2012 as predicted. He swims out deep and feels the waves growing larger and the surface growing rougher as he approaches the middle of the bay. The wetsuit attenuates his fear of the ocean, but it is still there and looms up as soon as he starts thinking about it. He has the feeling that the ocean wants something from him, but he can’t imagine what that thing might be. Perhaps a piece of information that he has forgotten or doesn’t even know he has. The ocean interrogates him and seems on the verge of losing its patience, but he usually gets out in time to avoid an attack of fury. In the health clinic, the doctor on duty is sewing up the face of a handsome surfer who hurt himself with his surfboard on the rocks in Ferrugem, using plastic surgery stitches to try to preserve his appearance as much as possible, while his girlfriend records the procedure with the camera on her cell phone. A group of young women working in lottery houses, pharmacies, and clothing shops exchange text messages to arrange the details of a secret party with champagne and vibrators that night. A coral snake slithers over the foot of a small-time drug dealer sm
oking marijuana on Siriú Hill without him noticing. A pyromaniac’s car is seized because he was driving without a license, and he decides to set fire to the entire town. In the municipal school, a teenage boy wants to talk to the girl he lost his virginity to the night before after the Campinense Club ball but isn’t sure of her name. The owner of a coffee shop on the outskirts of town tallies up the weekend’s takings and calls his wife to let her know that the new all-you-can-eat pizza service at night has brought them profits in the winter for the first time in three years. In some offices in a small arcade on the main avenue, a designer tweaks the vectors on the logo of a surf boutique, a lawyer holds an almost-full packet of cigarettes under the bathroom tap until it is drenched and then throws it into the bin, and a Pilates instructor hangs a student upside down on a wall using hooks and belts. He has been swimming without looking ahead for several minutes when he senses something strange. He raises his head and sees what appears to be a rock but then reveals itself to be the warty black mass of a right whale some thirty to forty yards away. His first reaction is to swim away in panic, but he calms down as he observes the unmoving animal. It must be one of the last whales of the season and is incredibly close to the beach, perhaps eighty yards. He sees Beta as a bluish blob with legs in the sand. A handful of humans are admiring the cetacean from the beach. The whale blows, and a shiver runs down his spine. Then there is another jet, smaller and higher-pitched, and he realizes that there is a calf near the mother, out of sight, on the other side of her. The whale doesn’t seem bothered, and he can’t tell if she is watching him. Her enormity is intimidating, but she gives off a sense of calm and camaraderie. Her back appears and disappears in the waves, reflecting the blue of the sky, and she flaps her flippers out of the water. It occurs to him that the whale is nursing and the calf is probably a newborn. As he emerges from the water, Beta throws herself into the shallow waves to meet him. He plays with her in the sand a little, and suddenly everyone around them gasps in admiration. The whale starts beating her tail in the water. A young woman standing nearby says with a smile that the whale is happy because of her baby. Each beat of her tail makes a big splash and produces a pleasant boom. The whale starts to swim away, and he heads home too, walking slowly with Beta limping behind him. She is already able to walk long distances but still has difficulty running. Over in the direction of the town, he sees a column of gray smoke and then another. It is too much smoke to be garbage burning in empty lots. A man is surfing the point break in the south corner of Silveira Beach alone. The sea is calm, and the waves are low. There is no one else on the beach, and a feeling of solitude suddenly grips the surfer with a mixture of ecstasy and terror. It is a winter day that feels summery. Sitting on his surfboard, he wiggles his toes in the cold water and imagines that there is no world on the other side of the hills. A gull appears out of nowhere and starts flying in circles over his head. It is all white, and he wonders if maybe it isn’t a gull after all. He can’t tell. The circles get smaller and smaller, and the surfer is suddenly certain that he is receiving a warning to get out of the water immediately. He has been detecting a series of subtle variations in the sea, invisible phenomena that are hard to describe. The rocky bottom starts to bubble. He paddles with all his strength toward the water’s edge, electrified with fear, aiming at a fixed point in the sand. As the surfer runs through the shallows with water up to his knees, he finally looks back and sees gigantic waves breaking over the rocky seabed, the waves that he believes would have drowned him.