Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (37 page)

But you were right about what you said over in the kiosk, says Bonobo. I'm glad I came. I see myself in the old man. I almost wound up as big a prick as him. But now he's there with his new family, more laid back, retired, living off all the land he bought in the south zone of the city. His wife and little girl love him. And I'm out of the rut I was in and have a bed-and-breakfast near the beach. I think I surprised him as much as he surprised me. He and I might've gone to the grave without ever knowing the whole story. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

It does.

How are things at your end? You haven't been answering your phone. Your landlady said you'd disappeared.

I discovered more or less what happened to my granddad, and I found him, still alive, in a cave over near Pinheira.

No way.

He was missing two fingers on his right hand, just like Dad said.

Are you sure you didn't dream it? It sounds like a dream.

I'll tell you more when you get back. I'm almost out of credit. To be honest, I'm calling to ask a favor. I lost Beta up in the hills. I want to go back to look for her.

Which hills?

Behind Pinheira Beach. It's a long story, but I need to go back and look for her. I doubt I'll find her, but I won't be able to rest until I've tried. I feel like total shit. She was Dad's dog. And you know, before he died, he asked me to have her put down.

I get it.

I screwed everything up.

Take it easy, man. We'll find her.

It's killing me. I thought we could go to Pinheira together in Lockjaw, and you could give me a hand. I'm not really well enough to go on my own. We can look for her for a couple of days, spend a night there. When do you get back?

In three days.

Shit. Any chance you could come back tomorrow?

I can't. But if you wait for me, I'll go with you. I owe you one.

I'll wait. Thanks, man.

I'll go straight to your place when I get back.

I've missed you, man.

You too. Hang in there.

Same to you.

 • • • 

H
e can barely get
out of bed on Saturday morning. His cough has worsened considerably over the last few days, and now he is starting to experience chest pain and shivers. The rain stops at dusk, the sea becomes calm, and a flaming sunset appears and disappears in an instant as if it has walked through the wrong door. His wheezing is noisy in the silence of the night, and he is thinking about dragging himself off to the health clinic when he hears Beta yelping.

It must be another dog. Or just in his head. But Beta yelps again, this time insistently. The sound is distant and despairing and seems to be coming from the beach, the hills, and the walls of the apartment all at once. He pulls on his sneakers, opens the door, and stands outside. His shivers worsen and run through his body like electric shocks. He wonders if he is mad or delirious with fever. He hears the yelping again. This time he is almost certain that it is coming from the beach or the seaside boulevard.

He follows the path to Baú Rock without bothering to close the door, arms folded over his chest, listening carefully. He heads down to the beach promenade and is walking in front of the brightly lit, empty restaurants when he hears the barking again, frenetic and incessant. He crosses the street, ignoring an oncoming car, which flashes its headlights and honks twice. The barking is coming from a small bar with outside tables that is famous in summer for its
caipirinhas
made with bergamot leaves and a dash of curaçao and that opens only occasionally in the off-season, when it is frequented by locals. There are two barmen and another three men sitting at a small wooden table on the sidewalk. One of the barmen has served him on two or three occasions, a middle-aged man with an accent from the Brazil-Uruguay border, a mustache, graying side whiskers and goatee, skin wrinkled from the sun, and a body hypertrophied from decades of weightlifting. A blender is roaring away at top speed, Sublime is playing at a low volume somewhere behind the counter, and someone is smoking marijuana. No one greets him, but they all stop what they are doing for a moment, emphasizing the hostility that has just filled the air. One of the men leaning against the counter turns to face the street and starts drumming heavily on the slats of varnished wood on the facade of the bar.

Beta is barking loudly and incessantly, but it takes him a while to locate her in the driveway beside the bar behind a low wooden gate. She is tied by the neck with a red rag or item of clothing to the pipe of an outdoor faucet. Her protuberant ribs and cloudy eyes explain why she hasn't been able to pull the pipe away. When she smells him nearby and finally sees him, her barks grow louder, more broken and sharper, like howls. The improvised cloth collar is strangling her.

He climbs over the gate, kneels next to her, and focuses all his attention on undoing the knot in the cloth, without wasting time trying to pat or calm her. She stops barking but keeps trying to raise her front paws and lick his face. The gate opens with a creak.

Leave the dog alone, kid.

The knot is as hard as cement.

I said leave her alone
.

A kick in the ribs throws him against the wall between the driveway and a closed shopping arcade. Beta starts barking wildly again. He tries to get up but gets another kick in the stomach, just above his inflamed cut. This time he cries out in pain.

Who do you think you are, coming in like this and taking my dog, you piece of shit?

He starts to get up again, expecting the next blow, but this time his attacker decides to watch the spectacle of the man slowly picking himself up off the ground. He is a local, unshaven, with an animallike ignorance in his eyes. His blond surfer's hair is poking out from under his red and white baseball cap and covers his neck and ears. He is tall and fills his baggy jacket and pants well. A hard man to take down.

Do we know each other?

Are you retarded?

I'm serious, I forget people.

The other men in the bar come over, forming an attentive audience on the sidewalk. One of them opens the gate and enters. The mustached barman hasn't bothered to come out from behind the counter and can't see anything. Beta snarls. The local kicks her and then immobilizes her with the makeshift collar.

'Course, we know each other, asshole. And if you don't get out of here right now, you won't forget me again, believe me.

The dog's mine, and you know it.

I don't know anything about that. I found her wandering along without a collar on the edge of the beach.

You're the dickhead who was after Dália, aren't you?

The local gives a little snort of amazement and takes a step forward, letting go of Beta.

What was that?

You've got a shark tattoo or something like that on your leg, haven't you? I recognized you by your girly voice.

Jesus, this guy's really asking for it.

He glances around and sees faces hungry for violence. Beta is sitting between him and the local, tired and confused, hungry and strangled, oblivious to the nature of the dispute. The animal his father loved more than anything. On his left, in the distance, a delicate veil of daylight glimmers on the horizon over the ocean. More or less here, on this same stretch of beach, his grandfather sank into the night sea and never returned, after rising up from a pool of blood as a whole town looked on, riddled with a hundred stab wounds, the living-dead going home. Right there where the waves are now breaking, grinning white smiles in the darkness. In the icy-cold water that helped Beta walk again. Beta, the old dog that everyone had given up on. Maybe that was what his father had feared. Not dying easily. Not dying ever.

The dog's mine, and everyone here knows it. You've all seen me with her ever since I arrived. I'm taking her back, and I'll be off now.

He bends over to start undoing the knot and receives a kick in the side of the face. There is a crack, and he feels tooth fragments on his tongue. Beta barks desperately. He and his attacker quickly end up on the sidewalk, and the group of locals starts in on him, from all sides. He manages to land a couple of punches, but he can no longer see a thing. Someone grabs him by the hair. His head is smashed a single time against the hood of a car, and blood stops up his nose and fills his mouth. A flying kick in the back brings him down in the middle of the road. He pulls his knees toward his chest as they continue to attack him, unable to react now. He hears Beta barking until it is over.

A car stops in the middle of the street, and its headlights reveal the silhouettes of those who have been watching from a safe distance. More and more people arrive. He manages to sit on the curb and realizes that he has been kicked right across the street to the beach promenade. He keeps his mouth closed and is afraid to open it, as if something vital might leak out.

Get him out of here, someone says.

Take him down to the sand.

Several hands pick him up by the arms and legs. He is carried for a time and then gently placed on the cold, hard sand, as if they now want to be careful not to hurt him. He lies there, his breathing heavy and bubbling with blood.

Sit him up.

Someone helps him sit, and he wavers like a gymnast making a concerted effort to keep his balance.

Can you make it home?

I need to get my dog.

Go home.

They leave, and his sight slowly returns. He is sitting facing the sea with the wall of the promenade at his back. Two men come down the nearest set of steps and approach him.

How are you?

Need some help?

He needs to go to a hospital.

Do you want to go to a hospital?

Where do you live?

He's having trouble talking.

I'm going to call the police.

Stay here with him.

One of the men crouches down next to him and asks him the occasional question, but he isn't listening. All he can hear is Beta's tireless, surreal barking. She managed to make it back. Starving. Limping. She made it all the way back through the hills.

He starts to get up. It takes him a while, but he manages. He stands there for a few minutes, coughing and steadying his feet on the ground. The man looking after him holds his arm and tells him to stay still, but he pulls his arm away and looks at him with an expression that makes words unnecessary, because the man doesn't touch him again. He takes a few tentative steps. He can walk.

He stumbles across the sand to the steps, climbs them, walks a little way along the promenade, and starts back across the street toward the bar and Beta's barking. He wipes the blood from his eyes with his sleeves and has another little fit of coughing. Those who are still standing around talking about the fight stop talking and stare at him. Someone in the bar points across the street, and everyone else turns to look. He stops two paces away from the sidewalk.

Five men are sitting at one of the tables. The mustached bartender is behind the counter drying cups with a white tea towel. Everyone stares, and no one says a thing. He has already forgotten what they look like and glances from one to another, feeling the blood running into his eyes, blinking without stopping, and frowning with his swollen face. Four of the five are wearing baseball caps, three are blond, and he can't take in any more than that. He places his hand around his chin and runs it all the way down to the tip of his blood-drenched beard, which drips into a small puddle on the white paving stones.

Which one of you was it that took my dog?

You're kidding.

He's in a state of shock.

He takes a step closer and runs his tongue over his teeth, feeling two crushed molars and a loose canine.

I forget people's faces. Now, who was it?

It was me.

Ah, right.

Still not happy, jerk?

Can I take my dog now?

Give him the dog, for Christ's sake, says the bartender with the mustache. The dog's mine, says the local.

Then I want to know if you're man enough to fight without the help of your girlfriends here.

What?

He repeats himself, trying to pronounce each syllable clearly with his bitten tongue and cut lips.

I don't kick dead dogs. Go home, motherfucker.

He spits all the blood in his mouth at the guy, who sits there frozen for a few seconds, wipes himself off, gets up, and turns to his companions.

Wait here.

He takes a few steps back into the middle of the street and waits for the local to come. He raises his fists up to fight but receives three punches in the face in rapid succession and falls to the ground.

Someone tries to help him up, but he waves everyone away and stands up again. He knows that if he takes just one more punch, it'll all be over. He goes down to the beach and signals to the local again.

This time the local hesitates, feeling sorry for him. He watches him come down the steps looking disgruntled, visibly annoyed to still be fighting a broken opponent. Or maybe he is scared. Maybe he remembers certain stories about things that happened in decades past, right there. Things that his parents and grandparents refuse to talk about.

He sets one foot in the sand. The strong light from the lampposts on the promenade give the sad scene with its audience of twenty or thirty people the contours of a spectacle. The two of them study each other, and he takes advantage of the local's hesitation and bored stance to kick sand in his face. The local reels back, rubbing his eyes, and as soon as he takes his hands away from his face, he gets a blow square in the nose. They start blindly throwing punches, a few of which hit their target, until he manages to grab the local between the legs with one hand and his throat with the other at the same time. He can feel the guy's crushed testicles and windpipe squashed between his fingers. The local's legs grow weak. They topple onto the sand together, but he doesn't let go. He keeps squeezing and sees the local's numb, terrified face start to turn red and then blue.