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

  He asks the bouncer at the entrance for instructions on how to get back to Garopaba by car. He drives drunk and tense and starts to hiccup. He drives down the empty highway and crosses the dead city. The hiccups still haven’t stopped by the time he enters the hotel room. He gets a surprise when he walks in. The dog is sitting on the bed. Beta, Beta, Beta, he repeats affectionately, hugging her tight. She is warm and submissive, and her soft hide slides over her muscles. He inhales her salty smell with pleasure and finally lets her go. She remains sitting near the pillow. He notices that he has stopped hiccuping only when he is brushing his teeth.

  Before lying down, he looks for his cell phone to see what time it is and finds a missed call from his mother.* There is also a birthday text message from her. No matter how much I curse you I love you son. A mother has no choice, has she? Happy birthday darling. I hope you got there okay. Take care. Mother. It’s four o’clock in the morning. He types an answer and sends it. Thanks. I got here fine. Love u too.

  • • •

  A coal-colored dog slumbers in the ethereal blue of a fishing net coiled up on the lawn in the square. The sun strikes the gray stairs up the hill to the parish church face-on. The short, steep cobbled street next to the church passes a boat shed and a prefabricated wooden house. He waves at the tanned old lady basking in the sun on the veranda in a colorful beach chair. A salty northeasterly rustles the trees and waves. Vast clouds advance in formation from the sea to the continent like an army in a trance. The street curves to the left and passes in front of a small eighteenth-century building with peeling white walls and freshly painted cobalt-blue window frames. A craft shop exhibits striped rugs, miniature ships, and wicker baskets piled up in the doorway and windows. A group of hyperactive children in blue and white school uniforms passes in the opposite direction, led by a tense teacher. The street continues toward Vigia Point, passing summer homes perched on the hill. He slowly surveys the sweeping view of the ruffled ocean and the beaches and hills stretching around in a big curve to what he imagines to be the distant Guarda do Embaú Beach. He walks slowly so Beta can keep up. When she decides to stop once and for all, he fastens the leash to her collar and urges her on with little tugs. On the tiny Preguiça Beach, he sees parents sunbathing as they watch their children playing on the stretch of sand protected from the wind. Washed-up bits of algae, tree branches, and mollusks form fans on the ochre sand and give off a pungent smell. He nods at the bathers as he passes and takes a trail that starts at the rocks. His feet sink into the warm salt water hidden under the prickly grass. The houses here are immense palaces with glass fronts, solar panels, and ample wooden verandas jutting out over land that has been radically reworked by landscapers. At Vigia Point a megalomaniacal mansion leaves little room for pedestrians, and on the other side of the low wire fence, a hysterical toy poodle wildly dashes back and forth, squeaking like a bat, while a woman in the house yells at it to come inside. Beta completely ignores the fellow member of her species. Cloud shadows slide across the frothy sea, and he imagines the fish believing the shadows to be the clouds themselves. He walks along, jumping over rocks, until he comes to a series of corroded metal girders sticking out of a concrete base. The sharp skeleton of a mysterious structure has long been disfigured by the sea breeze, and its crusts of orangey rust give it a deadly look. From here he can see all of Garopaba Beach head on. Beta watches water bugs darting through the rocks at the tideline.

  He is almost back at the church when he notices a small handwritten rental sign on the wall of one of the old blocks of apartments built by the fishermen on the slope between the street and the sea. On the other side of the gate all he sees is a long, narrow staircase following the wall down to the base of the two-story construction and ending at a footpath around the rocks, some ten or so feet from the waves. He dials the number on his cell phone and asks the man who answers if the apartment is for rent. In an instant the man appears out of one of the nearby houses. He is short and tanned and looks as if he is amused by something, but he isn’t. The apartment is the ground-floor one, right in front of the rocks. The man takes a padlock off the gate, and they head down to the bottom of the stairs, passing the entrance to the upstairs apartment. Under the stairs, in the damp space between two neighboring buildings, is a brown door. They enter a small living room with an adjoining open kitchen. The furniture is limited to two beat-up sofas and a rectangular wooden table. It is much colder inside than outside. There is a predictable smell of mildew. The short guy tinkers with the latch on the living-room window and opens the shutters after a few jolts, revealing a view of the entire bay of Garopaba, the fishing sheds and the old whaling boats anchored offshore. Right in front of the window is a flight of cement steps from the footpath down to a large, smooth rock that the bigger waves are covering with spray but that is probably dry when the sea is calm. On top of the rock is a large blue tarpaulin protecting what appears to be a fishing net. The guy shows him the bedroom, which has a double bed, the bathroom, and the kitchen, with a small outside laundry area, but he doesn’t really care. He’d decided he wanted to live there when he saw the shutters opening.

  I want to rent this house. Will you rent it to me for a year?

  You’ll have to talk to my mother.

  Do you go through a real estate agent?

  You’ll have to talk to my mother. She’s the one who handles the place.

  His mother, Cecina, lives two houses up the street. Her veranda projects over the slope and is surrounded by the tops of lime and pitanga trees that are rooted several yards downhill. Cecina invites him into an impeccably arranged living room with ocean views and asks him to take a seat on a leather sofa. There is a beautiful collection of Marajoara ceramic vases on the coffee table. Cecina’s face is beautiful, wide and round with narrow eyes and slightly puffy eyelids. After they sit, she remains silent and appears to be trying unsuccessfully to stifle the flicker of an indulgent smile. She has the poise of a priestess waiting for a disciple who has come to her to pour out his soul. He tells her that he wants to spend a year living in the ground-floor apartment. She explains in a soft, sibilant voice that she rents it out only in the high season and that the most she can do outside that season is rent it on a monthly basis, renewing it month by month if both parties are still interested, until November at the latest, when the high season starts. She would lose money if she accepted an annual price because the prices are five times higher over the summer and she has regular customers who come back every year. He proposes that she calculate how much she would make in the high season, add it to the monthly rent for the rest of the year, divide it all by twelve and tell him the price. He is willing to pay. He assures her that she won’t lose any money. She tells him that she has had too many problems renting out apartments in the low season to people like him who show up alone or couples or friends who want to spend the winter living in front of the beach. People leave without paying, she says. I don’t have any way to go after them afterward. He suggests that they draw up a contract and have it notarized as a guarantee. She laughs heartily and says she doesn’t bother with contracts. Contracts are no good to me. What am I going to do with a contract? Waste my time chasing after people? And even if I find them, am I going to sue them? Lose my peace of mind over the whole thing? He proposes a monthly price that, multiplied by twelve, is equivalent to almost all his savings. This time she doesn’t answer right away. She sits there reflecting, still with a somewhat indulgent smile on her lips. She asks what he does. He says he is a PE teacher. She asks what he has come to do in Garopaba. He says he wants to live in front of the beach. She asks if he intends to work and settle there. He says yes. That he wants to teach, that he has future plans to rent a professional space and maybe even, if everything works out, open a gym. He says he is an athlete and intends to train too. Ocean swimming is his favorite thing, and her apartment is five yards from the swimming pool of his dreams. Cecina says that the year before two friends rented the s
ame place for a year. They were surfers and wanted to surf and settle in Garopaba and open a bed-and-breakfast. They disappeared four months later, with the rent in arrears, leaving the apartment completely trashed. They broke furniture and walls. There was marijuana smoke coming from the apartment all day long. The neighbors heard fights and shouting almost every day. They were homosexuals, nothing against that, and drug users. They started hanging out with the druggies who dealt and smoked in front of the building, and they did lots of drugs and broke everything and then ran off without paying. Everyone comes here saying the same thing, she says softly. I just want to live in front of the beach. I just want to surf. I just want to think about life. I just want to enjoy nature. I just want to write a book. I just want to fish. I just want to forget a girl. I just want to find the love of my life. I just want to be alone. I just want a little peace and quiet. I just want to start over. And then people fight, get depressed, break things, drink too much, shout, have orgies, do drugs and disappear without paying, or kill themselves. It’s tough, she says. We never know who to trust, and it’s a shame. I don’t know you. To be honest, I’m planning to renovate the apartment in April. I need to fix it up during the year so I can receive visitors in the high season. So I can’t rent it out.

  I don’t do drugs. I don’t cause problems. I’m going to live by myself with my dog, and I’m the quiet sort.

  I know. But I’m going to fix up the apartment.

  He thanks her for her time, says good-bye, and leaves.

  He has lunch at the cheapest restaurant he can find, goes back to the hotel, and lies on the bed. He casually reads the entire last issue of Runner’s World, which features yet another article on the interminable debate about the benefits of stretching before and after running, and then lies on the mattress with his eyes open, immersed in extensive calculations and daydreaming.

  Late that afternoon he pulls on sneakers, shorts, and a polyamide T-shirt and goes for a jog on the beach. He leaves Beta in the hotel room. He runs along the beach from end to end four times, with long strides. The bathers have gone, and few people are outside due to the strong wind. A fisherman pedals past on a bicycle with supermarket bags hanging from the handlebars. A tall woman strolls by with a young boy, drinking maté and swinging a Thermos. An elderly couple walks along hand in hand, the varicose veins of their ankles in the water. He doesn’t know anyone because he has just arrived, but they all look his way and make some kind of acknowledgment. Near the fishing village he sees a group of children and teenagers playing soccer between two sets of goalposts marked with flip-flops. There are no lines to mark the field and no clear criteria for differentiating between the teams. They are all playing barefoot, and the girls dribble the ball and attack with notable skill and physical force. Some are wearing only bikinis, sweating and obstinate, their tangled hair flapping in the wind as they fearlessly clash with their male opponents and fight for the ball with an energy bordering on violence.

  He finishes his run in front of the fishing sheds, and from there he can see the front of Cecina’s apartment, with its cream facade and two windows with brown shutters. He can see boats and fishermen in the dark insides of the fishing sheds. The fishermen follow him with their eyes and respond to his waves with economical gestures. Instead of returning to the hotel, he climbs the partially collapsed steps at the end of the beach, takes the footpath around the rocks, and passes in front of the apartment. He stands there a while looking at the closed windows, then sits on one of the last steps of the cement stairs leading down to the rocks. Sea gulls take off and allow themselves to be lifted up by gusts of wind. He rests. A motorboat enters the bay and anchors. A dinghy comes to fetch its two crew members. He gets up and goes to knock on Cecina’s door.

  She laughs to see him again so soon, disheveled from his run and with his face covered in a fine crust of salt.

  What if I pay all of it up front?

  All what?

  The rent. The whole year. The price I told you earlier, except all at once. Today. I can give you a check with today’s date on it.

  She laughs, presses her hand to her mouth, glances inside the house, and shakes her head.

  Ai, ai, ai.

  If I leave or break things, it’s already paid for. You won’t be running any risks.

  You’re crazy.

  He laughs along with her.

  I’m not crazy, Cecina. I really want to live there, and I think this way everyone will be happy.

  He returns that night with the check. She calls her son, not the short one who showed him the apartment but another one, to examine it, then hands him the keys.

  • • •

  The next morning he parks his Fiesta out in the open in the parking lot at the top of the building, by the gate, and carries his belongings down the steps in a long operation that goes on almost until midday. The steps are very narrow, and the low railing is an invitation to fall. He transports one thing at a time. He leaves the inside of the house as it is, not seeing any need to rearrange furniture or do any additional decorating. He goes to the grocery store in the fishing village and buys bathroom and kitchen products, coffee, bread, fruit, yoghurt, honey, granola, chocolate, two packets of pasta, and some ready-made sauce. It isn’t the first time he has slept to the sounds of the sea, but this time they aren’t a distant murmur, a background noise. The ocean breathes in his ear. He hears each wave crashing against the rocks, the fizzing of the foam and splashes. Gulls, or at least what he imagines are gulls, let out guttural cries like cats in heat in the middle of the night and sound like they are locked in bloody battle. He is awakened before sunrise by the growl of the fishing boats’ diesel motors. The yellow light coming through the slats in the shutters is from a lamppost almost directly in front of the apartment. The busy fishermen shout incomprehensible things at one another at an absurd volume until their voices disappear into the rumble of the ocean along with the motors.

  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.