Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (12 page)

The newspaper was lying on a bench in the gym dressing room as if someone had left it in their backpack and relieved themselves of it days later without going to the trouble of putting it in the trash. It strikes him as odd that no one at the gym, at the beach, at Pablo's school, in restaurants, bars, or the Internet café, not even Cecina or Renato or Dália, or the grocer or the fishermen, has mentioned such a heinous crime, something that happened so close to their beautiful, happy little coastal town, a town that appears to have been abandoned for good by the tourists, at least until next summer, and now looks more like a pavilion of closed shops and empty houses, entire blocks deserted except for the very occasional visit of a caretaker to trim a tree. The sudden emptying of the town, the arrival of the cold weather, the brutal murder of a teenage girl not far from there, nothing that he finds worthy of note seems to worry the locals. They talk about how this year's mullet season is going to be an even bigger disaster than the last, and the population in general concerns itself with what to do with the money earned during a tourist season that has been well and truly left behind and already feels like a distant memory, a time when they worked so hard amid so many people from elsewhere that they barely managed to see one another and talk to their own friends and family, months spent less like residents and more like the employees of an enormous convention center in the midst of a megaevent. In the streets people are also talking about a municipal election that won't take place until September. He has the impression that everyone is merely hoping to rest up and breeze through the cold, sunny days during which nothing will happen. They say the calm will bring boredom and sadness and that the cold and solitude will resuscitate all the familiar ghosts of the season and some unfamiliar ones too, but they say it as if it's still a long way off and there is plenty of time to prepare for it.

I
n the first few days of
May,
he sees something that he will later suspect was a dream. It is a muggy afternoon, and since Pablo has gone to spend the long weekend with his dad in Criciúma and Dália has gone with her mother to Caçador, he gets on his bike after his shift at the pool and rides to Ferrugem Beach, where he hopes to find some good waves for bodysurfing. The beach is empty, and its coppery sands are warm and still scarred from the last influx of tourists. The Bar do Zado is open as always, but there are no customers, not even the occasional surfer or pot smoker contemplating the waves from one of the wooden tables. An adolescent tends the bar while watching a game of European soccer on the TV on the wall and later, still glued to the screen, now for the UFC, will say he saw nothing. The sky is overcast, and someone in one of the houses or bed-and-breakfasts behind the dunes is trying to drill through something very tough, perhaps a tile. An early fog is covering part of the sand, and a smell of decomposing sea creatures hangs in the air. He leans his bike and backpack against the wooden wall of the bar and heads down to the water's edge. The water is freezing cold, but he enters nonetheless. He swims out to the sandbar in a few strokes, then wades into the water on the other side and dives in again, swimming vigorously to where the waves are breaking. His lungs fill in desperation and squeeze every bit of air out of their alveoli in reaction to the freezing temperature. His skin burns, his head throbs, and his body just won't warm up. Afraid of taking a bad turn, he catches the first wave back to the sandbar and gets out. The transition from the icy water to the warm air perks him up, and he decides to walk until he is dry. The fog disappears as he walks along the beach and is there again when he reaches Índio Hill, at the end, and looks back. The mouth of Encantada Lagoon is silted up with sand, so he is able to walk across it to Barra Beach, which he also walks end to end, and returns. He sits on the sand and stares out to sea, then lies down and shuts his eyes.

He gets up a while later, not really sure if he dozed off or not. Something important has changed in the atmosphere, but it is hard to tell what. The clouds have grown thicker, and the dusk is colorless. The fog has disappeared. He looks at the horizon and feels a chill run down his spine. A terrifying storm is gathering out at sea. Dark clouds rise up like mountains advancing toward the beach, an ominous wall that extends along almost the entire visible horizon, but something about it doesn't seem right. The storm moves and doesn't move at the same time. It changes shape, but the transition from one state to the other can't be perceived. The more he looks, the more unsure he is that they are storm clouds. There is no lightning or thunder. The dark mountain range is mirrored by the horizon and deformed here and there as it compresses and stretches. Its shapes appear both close and blurred by the distance. They are somewhat holographic. If they are as close as they look, he'll be engulfed by a typhoon before he can run to shelter. If they are as distant as they also look, they must be of gigantic, otherworldly dimensions. He thinks he might be watching a tidal wave roll in. The effect of an apocalyptic meteorite in the heart of the Atlantic. The end of the world approaching in silence. He is hypnotized as he watches the phenomenon change shape, float, always looking like it is arriving without drawing any closer. Shortly before nightfall the vision begins to fade and disappears uneventfully.

 • • • 

S
tudents start showing up
in the afternoon at the pool. Some are surfers and tend to have poor technique but excellent fitness, good students to work with as long as they accept that there is room for improvement. This is the case with Jander, a short, stocky, bald guy of about forty who is always sunburned and owns a roadside pet shop and kennel in Palhocinha famous for housing some of the town's most beloved dogs when their owners are away. Jander surfs, swims, runs, and rides a bike regularly, but without any supervision or method. His incredible endurance is wasted with an ungainly swimming style, and his first few lessons are devoted to trying to make his reddish body turn less in the water and to better synchronize his arms and legs. There is a strapping young Rastafarian surfer named Amós, but he is always off his face and refuses to take any advice. He stops, listens, agrees, and then ignores all instructions. His impermeable hair doesn't fit in his swimming cap, but Saucepan's orders are to turn a blind eye. He uses up all his energy in the first two or three sprints of each set and then straggles through the rest of the session, breathless, swallowing water, swimming slower and slower and with ever-more visible suffering. On the third week, a pair of introverted teenage twin girls enrolls, Rayanne and Tayanne, who arrive together, swim bureaucratically with identical black bathing suits on very white, almost identical bodies, and leave together. He tells them about his problem with faces because they suffer from the inverse problem of not being immediately recognized by most people. He thinks it is funny, but they don't. Two students are triathletes. One is professional, swims like a missile, and comes with his preprepared session written in blue pen on a small white piece of paper that he always leaves stuck to a tile on the edge of the pool when he goes. He doesn't ask for or need his attention. The other one is a rheumatologist who has seen better days as an athlete. He always brings giant hand paddles that he insists on using every session despite the fact that they are the obvious cause of his constant shoulder pain, probably tears in his supraspinatus tendons. But he's the doctor. There are two students who can barely stay afloat. One is a corpulent, hairy, bearded man who likes to clown around and showed up on the first day laughing and asking if he could swim in his tracksuit. He calls himself Tracksuit Man and gets a laugh from the twins when he announces his Special Weapon, the Dive Bomb, then leaps into the pool as dramatically as possible. The other one is Tiago, a polite, shy, hard-working seventeen-year-old with a severe case of gynecomastia. His favorite student so far is Ivana, a friendly, plump little woman in her early fifties. At first Ivana struck him as the sedentary sort, but she has proved to be an experienced and dedicated swimmer. She occasionally participates in the Santa Catarina short-distance swim circuit and is interested in training for longer distances. She is a public prosecutor and works in the Garopaba Courthouse. She is one of those people for whom swimming is not a means to an end such as losing weight, curing a disease, or winning medals; rather, it is as much a part of her life as working, eating, and sleeping. She is someone who can't not swim. In that, they are the same. Swimming for them is a special relationship with the world, the kind of thing that those who understand it don't need to talk about. Ivana swings her shoulders in an odd way, and he recognizes her by her walk.

At times he isn't sure of the identity of a new student. Sometimes someone comes in just to look at the pool or ask for information, and he thinks it's a student he knows. Instead of explaining his problem, he prefers to let people think he is forgetful, strange, absent-minded. Some think he is a misanthrope. But in that small, three-lane pool with his handful of students, misunderstandings are rare and short-lived, and there are no hard feelings. He likes meeting new people, starting a whole set of social relations all over again. He ignores faces and learns to recognize people by their attitudes, problems, stories, clothes, gestures, voices, the way they swim, the progress they make in the water. Their characteristics congeal to form a diagram that he can evoke and study in his free time. Each person has a recognizable pattern that he can situate on an imaginary panel with a little sign underneath saying:
MY STUDENTS.
He keeps many such pictures in his head. His picture of Academia Swell also includes Débora, who insists she is going to teach him to surf, and Saucepan who, as well as being a partner in the gym, also works as a
pizzaiolo
at a gourmet pizzeria at the entrance to the town, a jovial sort with a shaved head and well-defined muscles who is an enthusiastic spokesman for his undertakings day and night and puts in an appearance at every social event in town. His partner in the gym, Spatula, is an international kite surfer who spends much of his time abroad. Sometimes Spatula comes to swim in the pool at night, after he has already left. Débora assures him that they have already met at some point, but he doesn't remember. Spatula sent a message to say that he doesn't want any dogs on the gym premises, but Saucepan doesn't mind having Beta lying on the cement floor in front of reception or being patted by students on the lawn near the front gate. He has told Débora to tell Spatula that if there really is a problem, to come and speak to him directly instead of sending messages through others.

Prohibited by the fishermen from swimming in the ocean since May 1, which marked the beginning of the mullet-fishing season, he swims in the pool before lunch or runs on the beach or dirt roads of Ambrósio and Siriú, passing rural properties overshadowed by fig trees, pigs running loose, and smooth dunes crisscrossed with the marks of sandboards. One cold morning he witnesses the first big mullet haul of the year on tiny Preguiça Beach. Dolphins follow the shoals, displaying their dorsal fins and leaping joyfully, guiding the boat as it moves in on its prey. Two dozen fishermen surrounded by a flurry of gulls drag in the nets teeming with plump, terrified fish with straight rows of silvery scales and bellies gleaming like molten lead, which are piled up on the sand until they form an inert mountain, working their gills in vain as they wait for death. A shirtless young fisherman has “Joseane, Tainá and Marina, The Stars of My Life” tattooed across his back. A drunk with white whiskers and bulging eyes pulls in the net, in a trance. An older fisherman oversees the work with a disdainful air born of decades of experience at sea. They all take the job very seriously and don't crack jokes or chat, limiting conversation to practical interjections. Cats and dogs prance around the nets, and the more experienced ones grapple with the heads of the smaller fish discarded by the humans. The local dogs treat Beta with hostility, and she has already learned to keep her distance from them. He helps the fishermen pull in the net and is given two fresh mullet, which he cleans on the rocks using his father's knife. He sets aside two steaks to pan-fry with a little olive oil and lime and freezes the rest. Later that afternoon, after picking up Pablo from school and leaving him with Dália's mother, he returns home to find four launches moored in front of the fishing sheds near the remains of an almost eleven-ton haul. People are finishing loading the fish in white plastic tubs into two small refrigerated trucks. Locals cart off their quota of fish hooked over their fingers by the gills or in plastic supermarket bags. In spite of the large quantity of mullet caught this day, the fishermen are pessimistic and fear the worst season in years. Some blame the temperature, others the huge amount of rain in Patos Lagoon. The street lighting comes on, and there is a soft red glow in the west behind the hills where the sun has set. A sudden silence settles over the bay after everyone has gone, and for a while the only sound is the waves, until someone decides to play electronic music from the open trunk of a car parked on the waterfront.

The fishermen don't talk much to him. Everyone he has tried to talk to about his grandfather's death now ignores him. Some watch him with hostile looks as he walks through the village center, while others greet him with an exaggerated friendliness. At times he worries that he is being paranoid. He isn't really sure who is who and has stopped asking questions because he is starting to feel scared.

Often, through the shutters, he overhears the conversations of fishermen or kids who come to smoke pot or sell drugs on the stairs next to Baú Rock. The fishermen's topics of conversation are as infinite as they are unfathomable. Disputes over the division of the mullet catch, insults and effrontery, village gossip.

Another day, returning from one of his morning runs to Siriú, he stops for a swim and a stretch near the Embarcação Restaurant and sees a woman stretching by the wooden fence next to the ramp down to the beach. He approaches her and asks if she minds if he gives her a suggestion. From close up he sees that she has slightly Asian-looking eyes and milky-white skin behind her rosy cheeks. She is covered in sweat from head to toe. She has no dissonant features, and he doesn't find anything that might help him recognize her in the future. She is stretching the backs of her legs, and he teaches her to point her supporting leg forward and straighten her torso, holding the toe of the leg she is stretching with both hands, which she is able to do without any difficulty once he has shown her how. She recognizes that she is stretching the muscle differently now. Her name is Sara and she is a pharmacist. She works in one of the town's many pharmacy chains. She mentions her husband, who is a dentist. They both graduated a few years ago in Porto Alegre and have been in Garopaba since the previous year, motivated by the dream that brings so many dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and small-business owners here from capital cities: to be an independent professional living a simple life by the sea, surfing and sunbathing every week, earning less but happy, with space in the garden and on the sand to let their Belgian shepherds, Labradors, and future offspring run free. Sara started running when she moved there but is already thinking of giving up because she is experiencing strong, chronic pain in her shins. She shows him where it hurts. When he presses on the sides of her tibia, she shrieks and jumps. It appears to be a fairly serious case of shin splints, and he offers to give her some strengthening exercises to do at the gym. And it would be a good idea to ice the region and rest up for at least two weeks. She thanks him and leaves in a brand-new economy car parked on the waterfront, which greets its owner with a shrill beep. Two days later a woman strikes up a conversation with him at the gym, but he only recognizes her about five minutes later when she mentions the pain in her shins. He teaches her to stretch and strengthen her lower leg muscles with exercises. Because she attends another gym closer to her house, they arrange to meet and exchange phone numbers. He agrees to be her running coach three times a week starting the next week in front of the Embarcação, bright and early. She has a friend who also runs and is interested in working with a coach. She suggests that they start putting together a running group.