Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) Read online

  The owner of the house, Ricardo, is a nervous Argentinean who seems to switch off at regular intervals as if he doesn’t want to stop thinking about some urgent problem. He looks to be in his early forties and has watery eyes and gray stubble on his chin. They walk down the driveway to the back of the house, where the entrance is. An outdoor grill made of scorched bricks piled up on the ground looks as if it was built many summers ago. The patio is all cement and gravel. The floor and walls of the veranda are covered with horrible whitish tiles that remind him of cold and death. The house is neat and tidy on the inside but too dark, even with the windows open. The noises of the calm afternoon reverberate in the rooms and suggest the infernal symphony of busier days.

  Ricardo doesn’t interfere or explain anything, just accompanies him through the house. He seems impatient. As they leave, Ricardo asks in a lazy mix of Spanish and Portuguese why he is moving to Garopaba. He says he just wants to live near the beach, and the Argentinean replies that yes, of course, everyone wants to live near the beach, but why does he want to live near the beach? Naturally hard-wired not to trust Argentineans, like so many Brazilians from the south, he ignores the question. After locking the door, Ricardo asks if he surfs. He says he doesn’t. He asks if he wants to learn to surf. He says he doesn’t. He asks if he intends to open a business. It’s not in his immediate plans. The Argentinean gives him a good once-over.

  Then the problem is woman.

  What?

  People come to surf or to forget woman, solo eso.

  I just want to live near the beach.

  Sí, sí. Of course.

  How long have you lived here?

  Almost ten years.

  And why did you come here?

  To forget woman.

  Did you?

  No. You rent the house?

  No. I think it’s too dark.

  Dark. True. Well, good luck.

  • • •

  He parks the car in the Hotel Garopaba garage and pays the employees an extra thirty reais not to see the dog. He lies on the bed as it grows dark outside. His nap is interrupted twice by phone calls, which he tries to keep as short as possible because his cell phone is from Porto Alegre and the roaming charges are devouring his credit. His friends are calling to wish him happy birthday and to give their condolences after his father’s death, unaware that he doesn’t live in Porto Alegre anymore and that he left without telling many people, a detail that he himself omits because he knows he still doesn’t have any answers or patience for the questions they might ask.

  He wakes up hungry and feeling as if he has been inside for too long. He leaves the dog in the room with some dog food and water and heads out on foot to look for a restaurant. He takes the map with him to mark the locations of relevant places and people, a preventive measure against the pathological forgetfulness he has had since he was a child. He passes two bars offering steak and cheese sandwiches, then a buffet with hot meals and ice creams. A pizza parlor on the main avenue has a special all-you-can-eat price that night. The attractive round wooden tables are almost all taken, and three waitresses glide calmly past, serving the customers, who are colorfully lit by hanging oriental lanterns in the shapes of vases and stars. He picks a table for two in the outside area, near the sidewalk, the seat for which is a comfortable sofa with its back to the wall. The waitress who serves him is a tall brunette with skin peeling from too much sun, pouting lips, and shoulder-length curly hair. Knowing that her hair alone is probably enough to recognize her by, he nevertheless focuses on her oval face and slanting eyes. Sometimes he wonders if women in general are as beautiful to other men as they are to him, inwardly suspecting that his incapacity to remember any human face for more than a few minutes gives them extra appeal that others might think was just his eyes playing tricks on him. Because beauty is fleeting, he has learned to see it everywhere. This woman, however, must be beautiful to everyone. She is used to being looked at like this and returns his stare with a combination of politeness and tiredness, activating a perfunctory smile. With the rising inflections typical of small-town Santa Catarina, contaminated with sarcasm or incredulity, she asks if he wants the all-you-can-eat.

  Are the pizzas the same as the ones on the menu?

  What do you mean?

  Do they use the same ingredients as they do on the pizzas on the à la carte menu? Or is the cheese on the all-you-can-eat ones not as good?

  She lets out a hearty laugh, changing to co-conspirator with surprising ease.

  Just between you and me, the cheese isn’t as good.

  Okay. I won’t be having the all-you-can-eat, then. It’s my birthday. I’ll have a half-margherita, half-pepperoni, please.

  Well now. It’s your birthday. Happy birthday!

  She chews on some gum that was hidden in a corner of her mouth.

  And a beer.

  She finishes taking his order and leaves. It is a while before she returns with his beer. He focuses on her face again.

  You should wear your hair up.

  Come again?

  It’s beautiful down. But I can imagine it up. Do you ever wear it like that?

  Sometimes.

  The way it is now it hides your face a bit.

  Sometimes hiding’s a part of the game.

  She leaves bashfully, and he quickly downs his beer with satisfaction.

  Later he strolls, belly full, down the main avenue and through the cross streets, marking on his map a café, a hardware store, a Laundromat, and a Uruguayan grill, until he realizes that many of the establishments are transitory and open and close with the summer season. Taking a look around, he sees that many have already closed after Carnival, and some of the windows are covered with brown paper or cardboard. A handwritten sign in an ice cream-parlor window says that it will continue operating during the winter on another street. Everything that isn’t summer is winter. A sign on the Laundromat door says it will reopen only in December. A bookstore, a corner shop, and several boutiques selling women’s clothes appear to still be in operation but have already closed for the day, and an Internet café is turning out the last few clients from its computer terminals. People are still drinking beers in snack bars, and there is a hot dog stand in the supermarket parking lot with clients sitting on little plastic stools on the sidewalk. There is a European-style pub called Al Capone. Adolescents smoke and shout on the lawns of the empty summer-rental houses. He returns along the main avenue and stops just before the seaside boulevard at the Bauru Tchê, a snack bar operating out of a trailer with a tarpaulin covering half a dozen metal tables. He takes a seat and orders a beer. A small TV over the counter is showing a documentary about Pantera on MTV. Phil Anselmo is banging the mike against his forehead until he bleeds and Dimebag Darrell is soloing. A drunk of indeterminate age and a fat teenager are glued to the program. At another table an old man and two youths in baseball caps who look like locals are drinking beer. The old man is talking, relaxed in his chair, while the youths listen.

  Ninety percent of the world’s evil is the rich guy paying for the poor guy to do it, he says. The young men nod in agreement.

  A boy of about ten, the snack bar owner’s son, comes to clean his table even though it doesn’t need it. He wipes it down with ostensive efficiency, removing the bottle and putting it back when he is done. He thanks him. The boy says, You’re welcome, and races back to the counter.

  The kid begs to work, says his father at the counter. I’ve never seen anything like it.

  The accent of the old man at the next table is hard to understand, and the blaring Pantera video clips don’t help, but now he is saying that the Department of Public Prosecution owes him two million reais. His two listeners nod.

  The boy comes back and looks at him.

  Heard the one about the pool table?

  No.

  Leave him alone, says his father without
taking his eyes off the money he is counting.

  What’s green on top, has four paws, and if it falls on your head, it’ll kill you?

  A pool table?

  How did you know? the boy hollers, and dashes back behind the counter, cackling with laughter.

  Leave him alone, repeats his father.

  He has two beers while joking with the boy, eavesdropping on the conversation at the next table, and watching people going past on the sidewalk. On the TV, Dimebag Darrell is shot dead on stage by a crazy fan. He is a little tipsy when he gets up to leave. He pays the manager, a friendly, tired-looking man with deep bags under his eyes and stubble growing on his chin.

  My family used to own Rua da Praia in Porto Alegre, the old man is telling the youths in baseball caps as he leaves. I’ve got the deed to prove it. The youths nod.

  He walks along the seaside toward the fishing village and the hotel. The waves make a crashing sound like breaking tree trunks. He carries a flip-flop in each hand and feels the wet sand on his feet. The idea that the day is ending disturbs him. Behind Vigia Hill, speckled with the lights of houses and lampposts, looms precisely the emptiness that he came here to look for. It’s too early to find it. He has fantasized about a long or even infinite search, and it is frustrating to be reminded so soon of that which he would rather keep pretending not to know, that the feeling of emptiness he yearns for is dormant inside him, that he takes it with him wherever he goes. It’s like a surprise party announced in advance or a joke that is explained before it is told. He remembers the boy in the bar’s joke. He hadn’t laughed at the time, but now he does so, absurdly.

  The dog has eaten her food and drunk all her water. He refills her water dish while she watches him from her favorite rug on the sticky tiled floor of the hotel room. He brushes his teeth and throws himself onto the bed, wearing only his underwear. The room smells of cement and fabric softener. He listens to the waves breaking two hundred yards away. He hears motorbikes at high speed and the prevailing silence.

  He gets up again and pulls on jeans, sneakers, and a clean T-shirt. The clock on the beach promenade says that it is just past midnight. He walks quickly to the pizza parlor. Two tables are still occupied by customers who are smoking and dawdling over their last few drinks. The employees are clustered in the small interior of the restaurant, impatient, staring outside and biting their nails. He looks for the curly hair, the tallest waitress. He should have asked her her name. There are lots of curls here. In his memory, her face is now an almost abstract caricature of watery brushstrokes. But he recognizes her from her posture. She is outside, farther back, half hidden in the penumbra of the small gallery of closed shops, trying to pack up a folding table. Something isn’t snapping into place. He approaches her timidly. There is nothing left of the momentary impulsiveness of customer-chatting-up-waitress. He thought she was beautiful the first time around, and this fact remains, but the content of her beauty was lost and is now recovered. He gazes at her as if for the first time. She smiles when she sees him. Everyone can tell when they’re recognized, but he has refined this ability more than most out of sheer necessity. An expression of recognition may contain everything he needs to know.

  Hey. Want to do something when you get off work? Want to go out for a beer?

  She thinks for a moment, as she finally manages to fold up the table.

  There’s a little party today over at the Pico.

  Pico.

  Pico do Surf, don’t you know it?

  No. I got here today. I don’t know anything.

  Over in Rosa. I said I’d meet some girlfriends there. But I haven’t got a lift.

  I’ve got a car. Want a lift?

  Her name is Dália, and she asks him to come back for her in half an hour. He runs back to the hotel, takes a quick shower, and heads for the adjacent parking lot. He stands there a moment, staring at the car still piled high with his belongings. He takes out the other suitcase of clothes, the TV, the bag containing his PlayStation, a box of documents, and everything else of any value that can be seen and takes it all into the hotel room. He has to make three trips. Beta is asleep and doesn’t wake up. He is running late and sweating by the time he turns the key in the ignition. The car smells of dog.

  Dália is smoking in front of the closed pizza parlor, accompanied by a young man in a baseball cap and board shorts.

  Is he coming too? I don’t think there’s enough room in the backseat.

  She opens the door, gets in, and says the guy was just keeping her company until he got there. He has already forgotten her face again. He isn’t able to get a proper look at her in the short instant of a peck of greeting on the cheek, and now she is looking straight ahead, revealing only her profile.

  I need to swing by my place quickly, okay? To get changed. If you don’t mind?

  She guides him through roughly paved back streets that lead to the town’s older districts. Enormous dogs and swift cyclists move through these nocturnal streets that have only the occasional lamppost. Everything is dark, with the exception of a few taverns. The houses are asleep, and the hills surround the town with their imposing shapes. The radio is playing reggae music at a low volume. She talks about her routine at the pizza parlor, and he explains that the junk in the backseat is part of his move from Porto Alegre. They turn onto a dirt road and then a trail of tire tracks through the grass. A streetlight illuminates old tree trunks and the fronts of four or five houses. She points at one of them, and he parks.

  Wait here, okay? I’ll be right back.

  She takes almost an hour. He waits without getting out of the car, investigating the radio stations. He knows how to wait.

  Dália reappears smelling of vanilla-scented perfume and wearing jeans, light-blue sandals, a black top with almost invisible straps, and a necklace with a silver sun pendant. Her hair is strangled by a white elastic band on top of her head, sprouting over it like black coral. Her lips are shiny.

  Let me see you, he says, and she turns to face him.

  Along the way she asks to stop at the gas station. She reemerges from the corner shop with a beer and a bar of chocolate. He accepts the sip and the bite she offers him. The road is empty, and she likes to talk. She is twenty-two, was born and raised in Caçador, where a lot of tomatoes are grown, until she was a teenager, and intends to move to Florianópolis in July to study naturology at the university. She isn’t particularly interested in the fact that he is a PE teacher but enthusiastically approves of his move to Garopaba.

  You’ll be happy here. Everyone’s happy here. This place is so beautiful. I’m really happy here. Can I smoke a joint in your car?

  She lights up and offers it to him. He takes a few puffs and starts feeling afraid of other cars’ headlights.

  They arrive at the Pico do Surf along a potholed sandy road flanked by ditches. He tries to remember the route he has just taken and can’t. It takes him a while to park his Fiesta without falling into the crater between the road and a vacant lot. There is a palisade around the nightclub, which throbs with bass notes and emits blasts of strobe lights. Some people are drinking beer outside, leaning against the cars. There is a short queue at the entrance. The girls are all wearing high heels, short skirts, and tops falling off their shoulders and alternate between nervous glances and fits of laughter. The guys are wearing Bermuda shorts, and some are in flip-flops. They all look like surfers and surfers’ girlfriends. Dália says she’s going to get them both in for free, but in the end the doorman only lets her in, and he has to pay the entry fee of twenty reais. They climb a staircase carved into the sloping terrain and cross a garden with large wooden tables and a pool table. The dance floor is dark, and the music very loud. The hypnotic and rather disturbing hip-hop music has an immediate depressing effect on him. They go to buy some beers at the bar in the corner, and Dália disappears as soon as he turns his back to her. He loses sight of her for long enough to
forget her face and identifies her only much later by her necklace, as she dances in a circle of people. She hugs him when he approaches and introduces him to her friends, but then she moves away again, dancing with a can of energy drink in her hand. He tries to dance but can’t get into the mood. He hovers nearby, stationary. A guy with short peroxide-blond hair soon appears and talks insistently in her ear. Dália looks uncomfortable but stays there listening and answering back for a time that seems never-ending. He thinks about the car poorly parked beside a ditch with his belongings in view on the backseat. He forgot to take out the radio. Someone’s going to break the window and steal my radio, he thinks. He buys another beer. He feels as if he’s been listening to the same song since he arrived. Dália’s pulled-back hair reappears in front of him, and she complains about the guy she was talking to. Her warm breath, mint-scented from her sugarless chewing gum, has a calming effect. Jesus, that guy’s totally clueless, she says. Stay here with me, and he won’t bother you, he says. She wraps her long, agitated arms around him, dancing, and asks if he wants an E, because she’s just had one. A friend is selling them for thirty reais a pop. Her sweat is visible on her collarbone and trapezius muscle. He touches her neck with his nose and inhales the sour smell of her skin mixed with her sweet perfume. She says, I’ll be right back, and disappears again. He considers taking some ecstasy too, something he hasn’t done since his college years, and letting it dictate whatever happens for the rest of the night, partly because he still believes that she is his for tonight, and partly because he feels too lazy to take the initiative. When he runs into her again a little later, she is listening to the guy with peroxide-blond hair again. The darkness swallows not only people’s faces but also their bodies, gestures, clothes, and accessories, almost completely eliminating any possibility of recognition. A short, blond photographer is circulating through the party, taking photos. Groups of friends pose with their arms around one another and smile as they poke out their tongues and make a V sign with their fingers. The photographer comes over and sets off two flashes in his face. He thinks again about his car, the dog at the hotel, the house he hopes to find and rent tomorrow. He goes over to Dália, excuses himself to the guy with peroxide-blond hair, and says he is leaving. They are close to a speaker and have to shout to be heard. You can’t leave now, she says, placing her hand on his chest. I’m going! he shouts. I don’t like it here, and I’m going house hunting first thing in the morning. But I need a lift back, she says, a little irritated. Then it’s now. What the fuck, man! she protests. Fine, go then. I’ll figure something out later. You’re so boring. Without thinking he plunges his fingers into her hair, at the nape of her neck, forcefully working them into her taut hair, feeling the roughness of her roots and the resistance of her scalp. He holds her head by her hair in front of his. She stares at him with bulging eyes, not understanding what he is doing, and he doesn’t know what he is doing either, but it feels good and she seems to like it too, in spite of everything. It might be the ecstasy. He kisses her on the face and lets her go. She sort of smiles. The guy with the peroxide-blond hair shoves him away, and he takes advantage of the momentum to move toward the exit with decisive footsteps, laughing to himself.