Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (31 page)

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H
e spends his entire
afternoon shift at the pool thinking about what he is going to say to Saucepan, and when it is time, he just says that he wants to leave the job, if possible only for a while. Saucepan can't accept it.

Do you want a raise?

That's not why.

Why, then?

I need a bit of time.

When do you want to leave?

Now.

You know that's not how it works. I need a month's notice.

A bald guy with a hugely muscular upper body and skinny legs lets out animallike grunts as he completes his last few reps in a set of lateral raises, dumps the dumbbells onto the wooden floor, and paces in circles around the weights room next to reception, panting as he goes. Débora rolls her eyes and goes back to the game she is playing on her cell phone.

A month is too long for me.

I need at least two weeks to find someone else.

I'll stay another two weeks, then.

Okay, but talk to me. What would make you stay?

Nothing, Saucepan. Sorry. But I might be back in a while.

I can't guarantee that you'll have your job back.

I know. When it's time, we'll see. Thanks for the opportunity to work here. It's been really important to me.

You'll be missed, man.

Saucepan shrugs and leaves. Débora was listening to everything, and now looks at him with her lips pressed together and raised eyebrows.

I hope you have a good reason.

Me too.

Aren't you ever going to shave off that beard? You'd look a lot better without it.

You think so?

Not just me.

I'll give it some thought, then.

Are you okay?

In what sense?

You've been looking a bit down in the dumps lately. I've seen the winter here do a lot of people in.

It's like a summer's day today.

You know what I'm talking about. A guy finds himself on his own without his girl in the cold weather, quits his job, stops going out, no one sees him anymore. I don't want you to . . . I dunno.

It's not like that, Deb. I'm fine. Don't worry about me.

If you need anything, talk to me. Okay? Anything.

He nods.

Take care, Mystery Face.

I bet the twins invented that one too.

Of course.

I haven't left yet, Débora. I've still got two more weeks. See you tomorrow.

He hesitates a little before leaving and walks around the counter. Débora stands before he gets there, and they hug at length without saying anything. Beta walks past the glass door.

Your dog pulled through, didn't she?

She's great. I walked here today, slowly, and she came with me.

I heard she swims out in the deep with you.

She swims a little, yes, but not out in the deep. People exaggerate.

He tells Débora about his early-morning encounter with the whale, and she doesn't seem particularly impressed. She touched a whale while surfing at Ferrugem Beach four winters ago and has seen dolphins leap out of the water right before her eyes as they chased a school of mullet. He gives up and says good-bye.

He buys a cheese sandwich from an itinerant vendor in the Silveira Supermarket parking lot, eats it sitting on the low wall next to the sidewalk, and by the time he starts to head home, night has fallen. The Al Capone is open as always, and he has a beer sitting at an outdoor table. Janis Joplin is playing softly in the background, and he remembers a cassette-tape compilation that he used to listen to on his Walkman on the bus to school. The Rastafarian waiter strokes Beta's neck and looks both ways down the avenue as if something might happen. There is a couple inside, and two men at a table outside near his. They all know that this winter night is already over, and they'll soon leave. No stranger will talk to him. No one has talked to him lately. He eats the salted peanuts, finishes his beer off quickly, and pays the bill.

He has walked just over a block toward the sea when a blackout blots out the town. The main avenue becomes a dark tunnel of cold wind. The stars slowly become visible, and his eyes adapt to the light of the new moon, revealing a world of silhouettes. On his way to the beach, all he can hear is the sound of Beta's paws clicking on the tarmac. The black ocean snores in the darkness like a large slumbering animal, its waves breaking rhythmically like gentle breathing. Solitary figures go past on the sand, though it is unclear where they are coming from or going to. Gas lanterns light the insides of some of the fishing sheds. He carries Beta up the rickety steps and sets her down again on the footpath. The glow of a cigarette reveals another three or four figures coming in the opposite direction, and when they pass him, not far from his apartment, he feels a fist land with full force in his face and falls onto the narrow grassed area between the path and the rocks. His partial vision fails him altogether now, and his head throbs. As he tries to get his bearings, he hears Beta yelp. He clambers into a standing position and sees the figures crossing the strip of sand between the end of the path and the entrance to the square. A valve of pain opens, and he feels his left eye swelling. Beta is leaning against his legs. He squats and pats her. She appears unharmed. She must have been kicked. He almost shouts something and goes after his attacker, but the group is gone. They didn't laugh, swear at him, or threaten him with anything, but their message was clear.

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H
e wakes up with
a black half-moon under his eye, but the swelling has been brought down by the previous night's ice pack. Broken blood vessels have tinged the white of his eye red. The pain comes and goes and extends up to his forehead and down to his chin. He goes for his walk on the beach with Beta and watches her enter the water on her own and paddle in the waves for a few minutes. On his way back he finds a fisherman sitting on a mountain of blue and white nylon that has been resting on Baú Rock for a few days. The man is strong, with tanned skin, a sparse beard, and curly hair and is dressed in a pair of dirty white soccer shorts and flip-flops. He stops for a moment at the top of the cement steps and watches the man use a reel of nylon twine, a small penknife, and a kind of plastic needle to mend the fishing net with the fast, hypnotic movements of an illusionist. The fisherman glances up from his work for just a second and smiles out of the corner of his mouth.

Trip over?

I got a free punch last night.

Who was it?

Couldn't see. It was during the blackout.

I almost didn't recognize you with that beard there.

He studies the fisherman again, looking for a sign that might remind him of his identity, but doesn't find anything. He wants to ask but feels his pride like a hand on his mouth, the pride that Jasmim recognized. The lion on his throne. He misses her. Everything he imagined he'd share with her.

I'm sorry, but do we know each other?

It's Jeremias, the owner of
Poeta,
the boat that was being repaired in front of the rock on his first morning in the apartment. He sits on a step and asks how the fishing season went. Not good, not good, says Jeremias. We get fewer fish every year. It's the anchovy season now, but nobody's catching anything. It's tough. There's croakers. The season opens soon, and we're hoping to catch a few. All the while continuing to mend his net, he says that the
Poeta
's motor died in June and will have to be replaced, but he doesn't know where he'll get the money. I'll tell you something. Fishermen like me will last another ten, fifteen years at the most in these parts. The big industrial boats are doing away with the fish. They round them up out at sea, and nothing comes to the coast. There's no money in this anymore, and the young folks aren't interested. None of my boys or nephews have gone into the trade. Not one. Of everyone here in the village, only three or four fishermen's boys fish. The ones who've got money get degrees, open shops, become dentists. The ones who don't work in tourism or look after summer houses. And there're the ones who hang around and do nothing. Even us fishermen end up having to work on the side as bricklayers, waiters, garbagemen, postmen. When the seas are rough and it's raining, you need five or six men to pull in a net, and there aren't enough for the job. All these boats here, he says, pointing with his needle at the boats anchored in the bay, the whole lot'll be running boat tours in ten years' time.

When I first arrived here, I read in the paper that the biggest school of croakers in the history of the town was caught here last year. There was a photo of a pile of fish the size of a truck.

Jeremias laughs and shakes his head as if he shouldn't talk about it but reveals that the school of croakers was rounded up out at sea by a large industrial trawler in an illegal maneuver during the closed season. The local fishermen found out, put several boats in the water, and sailed out to the trawler. There were threats of violence, the trawler's crew got scared, and when everyone had calmed down, they struck an agreement. Most of the fish brought in were already dead. The trawler kept five tons, and the fishermen of Garopaba took the rest. When they arrived, it looked as if they had caught those sixty-four tons of croakers with their own nets. The story, he says, just proves that our days are numbered. It's not worth it anymore to buy a ton of nylon and pay someone to hand-sew a net. The industrial nets are cheaper. This net I'm mending here is two and a half miles long. It'll take me another three days to finish. In the past the women used to stay at home making nets. Those days are over too. They don't think it's their job. The younger generation doesn't even know how. Ever been to Laguna? The women there still make nets. It's a pleasure to watch. They're so fast you don't even see the needle. It's all over here. Soon there'll be universities and the young folks are going to get degrees and move away as soon as they can. Not to mention the climate. It's a mess. They all sit around arguing about whether the climate's changing, but us fishermen know for a fact that it is. In the old days we knew that in October we'd have calm seas, southerly winds, blue skies. It'll be October soon, and you'll see the mess. It won't change anything for me. I'm getting on in years. That dog of yours likes the water, doesn't she? She goes out swimming with you. I've seen her.

She does. She was hit by a car and lost a lot of movement in her paws. I taught her to swim, and now she's almost recovered.

Is that so? Well, I'll be. Never seen anything like it.

She sees her master swimming all the time: I'd say she got it from me.

Must be a family thing.

They exchange a smile.

Sure you don't know who gave you that black eye?

I couldn't see. I think it was the kids who hang around on the rocks.

If you find out or if it happens again, you let me know.

Okay.

I know everyone.

Thanks.

He gets up and stretches.

See you later, Jeremias. I was going to go for a swim, but it's a bit late now. I'm going to have lunch and go to work. Have a good day.

Jeremias nods without taking his eyes off the net and his needle. He works there from dawn to dusk for three days, sitting in the same position, mending his net with his back to the sea, and on the fourth day the net disappears.

He works his last few afternoon shifts at the pool, unable to hide the fact that his head is elsewhere. The vigilance with which he usually instructs and corrects his students gives way to a glum lack of focus. Spatula, Saucepan's partner, puts in a rare appearance and tells him that if he has to pretend he's working, he's better off leaving once and for all.

One morning the skeletal, long-nosed postman hands him an envelope that isn't an electricity or phone bill. The first personal correspondence he has received since he's been there is from Jasmim. Inside the envelope is a letter
*
written in large handwriting and a photograph that she took of the two of them in Ferrugem. They are sitting at a table in Bar do Zado at sunset. She is wearing a white halter top with a yellow-flower print and hoop earrings. He studies her curls tumbling down over her shoulders, the piercing in her left ear, her black skin with its golden sheen, her flared nostrils, small eyes, and fleshy mouth glistening with lip gloss. There is a certain seriousness in her gaze. Her lips are parted, showing the tips of her white teeth, but her smile is small, as if she were more surprised than happy. He isn't wearing a shirt and has messy hair, a long beard, and a broad smile that stretches from ear to ear. At first he thinks she has sent him a picture of herself with another guy, but it can only be him.

Every morning he runs barefoot to Siriú or rides to Silveira and swims across the bay, where he sees timid schools of fish in the clear water, the first and only sign of the approaching spring in those weeks of dry, persistent cold. Beta is now allowed out all the time and never ventures far from home except on her early-morning walks, when she limps along the beach with growing boldness and swims through the waves like no Blue Heeler before her. She tags along whenever he goes out on foot and heads back to the vicinity of the apartment only if he stomps on the ground and shoos her away with a short, dry hiss, one of the signs of the new language that is slowly replacing the previous one established over a decade and a half of living with his father. His long, frequent runs along the beach bring him knee pain for the first time in years. He spends his nights in bed in his dark, slightly musty room with the windows and shutters closed, eating pasta or rice and meat straight from the pot, bags of ice on his knees, playing FIFA on PlayStation. He feels hungry all the time and takes to going around with bars of chocolate and packets of cookies in his pocket. Every time he goes out, he feels like he is being watched, and he starts to avoid meeting people's gazes. Sleep hits him and passes in a flash. He compares his face in the mirror with the photo of his grandfather and notices that his own beard is already a little longer than his grandfather's. His thinner, more tanned, older-looking face has never appeared more like the one in the photograph, and every time he wakes after a lightning-quick night, he feels as if he has spent the last few hours dreaming he was his grandfather, wandering the coastal cliffs and hills on sultry afternoons filled with thunder, lightning, drops of rain, water splashing up as the waves break against the rocks, herds of cows trampling trails, grasses rustled by snakes, black birds in flight, and ocean winds. The rain arrives quietly. No one gives it much thought, and there is no reason to believe it won't leave in a few days as it always does. The last few whales head with their calves for the Antarctic seas, and with them the last few winter tourists go too.