Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (11 page)

Sorry to hear it. That must have been hard to deal with.

A rooster crows once, twice, three times.

It was. But life goes on. Didn't you like Liz?

She seemed nice. But there was no chemistry.

Chemistry? What sissy talk. Liz is a wild thing—all you had to do was make a move.

I'm tired as fuck.

Uncle Bonobo spoon-fed you, and you—

I'm really drunk.

—give me this shit about—

I stink. We're revolting.

—
chemistry
. C'mon now. You left the girl high and dry.

She'll get over it. What about Ju?

I was teaching her some stuff.

Did she achieve nirvana?

Actually, it's serious. Ju's in a really fucked-up cycle of suffering. Her marriage broke up, and she can't accept it. She needed to talk a little. I think she's starting to understand the question of impermanence, and it's helping. I suggested that she visit Lama Palden over in Encantada. But come with me, I want to show you something.

He follows Bonobo into his room. There is a monstrous ball of pillows, sheets, blankets, and items of dirty clothing on the mattress of his double bed. The floor is hidden under a layer of underwear, towels, T-shirts, shorts, and a long black wetsuit. The reigning fragrance is one of rancid human secretions, incense, and wet clothes forgotten in a plastic bag. Two incense sticks are filling the room with a light haze. On one wall are posters of Led Zeppelin and a Buddhist divinity with writing in Tibetan. The desk is completely covered with a printer, an old laptop, a small LCD TV, a jumble of papers, bottles, cans, used glasses, a full bottle of tequila, and a picture frame with a black and white photograph of what looks like a Chinese man in suspenders pointing a revolver at his own head. A shelf on the wall is curved under the weight of a few dozen books.

See over there?

What?

Leaning against the wall.

The sandboard?

No, next to the cupboard.

The rifle?

Bonobo leaps over the bed and picks up a weapon.

It's a spear gun. Come here.

How do I enter?

You can step on the clothes.

He walks around the bed and takes the spear gun. He has never held one before. Bonobo shows him how to load the galvanized steel spear in the bands of rubber and ready the spool.

You mentioned that your granddad used to go spearfishing here. I remembered that I had this spear gun and never use it. I tried to fish with it a few times, but I can't stay underwater for long. You can have it.

Fuck, these things are expensive. I can't accept it.

Stop being such a girl. It's a present from a man to a man. Catch some groupers so we can cook up a
moqueca
.

They shake hands firmly, and Bonobo gives him a kind of sideways hug while patting him on the shoulder, staring seriously into his eyes. To escape the unexpected and slightly disturbing familiarity, he glances around for something to change the focus. A red T-shirt catches his attention among the dirty clothes.

Aren't you a Grêmio supporter?

Obviously, says Bonobo.

So what's that Internacional T-shirt doing on the floor there?

It takes Bonobo a moment to locate the item in the mess.

Ah, that's for the chicks to wear.

You ask Inter supporters to wear that T-shirt?

Yep.

And do they?

Most do. Some Grêmio supporters do too if you know how to ask. There's this humiliation thing that some of them like. An Inter chick with a mouth full of cock, nothing better.

They sit in the bedroom and continue drinking. It's still dark out, but two little birds are engaged in a twittering duel.

I won't even be able to sleep, says Bonobo. The girl who makes breakfast called in to say she's not coming today. Shit. I forgot to buy fruit.

Since you're religious, let me ask you something. Let's say that a famous writer writes something that he never publishes, but he gives the manuscript to a trusted friend, his best friend, and asks him never to publish it. The writer dies. The friend reads the manuscript and discovers that it's a masterpiece. So he shows it to an editor, the editor publishes it, and everyone agrees that it's a masterpiece, and the writer becomes even more respected after his death.

Okay. What about it?

Is what his friend did wrong? Did he betray the writer?

I don't follow. Do you have a writer friend?

No. Fuck. Hold on.

What's it got to do with religion?

Wait. I'm going to change the question.

Bonobo's cell phone beeps, but he doesn't get up to check the message.

The only thing I don't get is why the writer left the manuscript with the guy if he didn't want to publish it. Why didn't he just burn it?

No, forget the writer. Let's say that a guy has a father who's really attached to his dog.
Really
attached. He's had the dog since it was a pup, and he loves it more than people, more than his wife and kids. The father decides to kill himself and asks his son to have the dog put down after he's dead, because he doesn't have the courage to do it himself and he knows the dog will suffer without him. He manages to convince his son to do it and makes him promise. The son does, more or less. The father kills himself, but the son doesn't take the dog to the vet to have it put down. He keeps the dog and decides to look after it.

Was that what happened to you?

It's just a random example that I made up.

Ah. Right. I get it.

Bonobo hiccups and burps inwardly.

What do you think?

I think the dad's a prick.

Okay, but that's not the question. Do you think the son betrayed him?

If the son made a promise and didn't keep it, then he betrayed him, didn't he? Just like the friend who publishes the masterpiece against the writer's wishes.

And what does a Buddhist think of it?

Bonobo laughs.

Look, I can't speak for all Buddhists, but if you want to know my opinion, the betrayal is what matters the least in this story. What does matter is the result of his decision. How are the person's actions going to affect everyone involved? After the dog's owner kills himself, it doesn't make much difference to him what happens to the dog, right? He doesn't exist anymore, at least not in this life. What matters now is how breaking the promise will affect the son's and the dog's lives and the lives of everyone directly or indirectly involved. Whether it increases or decreases people's overall suffering.

No, but it's just that—

Let's suppose, purely as a completely hypothetical exercise of the imagination, that the dog in this story is the dog sleeping over there on the rug. She looks well fed. Her coat's shiny. She's even got some flesh on her. She's sleeping now, but when she was awake, she struck me as perky and proud. I'd even go as far as to say that she's belonged to you since she was born. And I get the impression that her company is good for you too. If she were the dog in your story, then I'd say that only good things had come of the broken promise. In which case, it's all good.

But even so it's a betrayal. And I don't see how it can be ignored. It doesn't matter that the father is dead. A promise was broken, and it's never going to stop being part of the story. Maybe it'd be better if the dog were dead. The son wouldn't even know what life would have been like with the dog, but he'd know he'd fulfilled his father's last wish. These things matter. Don't they?

Bonobo thinks a little.

Yeah. It's never easy.

Because it doesn't make any difference that the father is dead and doesn't exist anymore and has no way of knowing he was betrayed. Understand? It's a betrayal. The thing is there. Forever.

I understand. I don't agree, but I understand. I don't know what to tell you, sorry.

Bonobo picks up the spear gun and starts winding up the spool.

About three years ago a curious thing happened here in Garopaba. A guy used to go spearfishing with his son almost every week. One day they were snorkeling off the coast between Ferrugem and Silveira beaches at a place called Saco da Cobra. The guy dived down really deep and at some point saw a giant grouper hiding. The water was very clear that day and with several yards of visibility. The fish was monstrous, a size you don't see anymore, and just stared at him from inside its hole, moving its jaw. The following week he went diving at the same spot and found the fish in the same hole. He decided to harpoon it at any cost. He became obsessed with it and couldn't think about anything else. Whenever the conditions were right, he and his son went out in the boat. But the hole was too deep, and the grouper was flighty. Sometimes it didn't appear, and when it did, it just wouldn't let itself be harpooned. No other diver had seen the fish with his own eyes—they had only heard about it. A few weeks later he went out with his son again to fish. He went down the first time without any equipment. He surfaced a few minutes later and told his son he had found the fish. He put on all his equipment, got his spear gun, and went down again. And he didn't come back.

Bonobo places the spear in the gun and aims at the kitchen.

When his son realized something was wrong, he tried to go and help his dad but couldn't get down that far. He left and came back with the coast guard and divers. They went down and found the guy's body with his arm tangled in the cord of the spear gun and the spear through the grouper's tail. The fish was alive, but maimed. The spear had pierced its spine. The guy had tried to pull the fish until he blacked out and drowned tied to it. They took them out of the water together. They say it was the biggest grouper ever caught in Garopaba. It weighed over a hundred and eighty pounds.

What made you remember that now?

Still sitting on the sofa, Bonobo twists around and points the spear gun at one of the armchairs.

It's like a fable. The guy and the grouper were connected in some way, like you and the dog. We can't understand why exactly—we can't see the whole path that the two beings have traveled to that point. But things like that make you think, don't they? It can't just be chance. There's a whole history of many rebirths that has brought the two beings to a situation like that.

Nonsense. Are you talking about reincarnation?

Bonobo fires at the backrest of the armchair but misses, and the spear hits the wall behind it with a sharp crack.

Fuck! Careful with that shit.

It's not reincarnation—it's rebirth. It has more to do with the propagation of states of mind through time. What you understand to be your
mind
, which is really an illusion, also continues acting in the world after your physical death and comes back to manifest itself. They're cycles. The mind continues on, mixes, recombines, and reemerges.

But my mind isn't
mine,
man. You just said so yourself. How can I say that some part of me will be reborn sometime in the future? It doesn't make sense. It's just things mixing and recombining.

So we have a materialist swimmer. In which case I think it's funny that you're so worried about what your dead father would think about what you have or haven't done with his dog. Since death is death. I mean, if that's how it is, why worry? Why not be selfish and wild and live it up as much as possible until you die a little desperate?

'Cause it's important. 'Cause only an asshole wouldn't care. Death isn't an excuse to be an asshole.

We have an existentialist-materialist swimmer.

You making fun of me?

No. I'm still a bit drunk. So are you. Go on.

I don't know if I agree with this idea of yours that I can know what the best decision is based only on the amount of suffering that it does or doesn't cause. Suffering isn't always an indicator of what is best or worst. Sometimes the right thing to do causes suffering. Suffering is bad, but it's a part of life.

Now try to decide the right thing to do based on those principles. Good luck.

Bonobo stands and goes to check the messages on his cell phone.

Altair texted me. He left your place and is back at the kiosk to finish knocking it down.

Shit, I just remembered I left my bike there.

I've got to buy things for breakfast. I can give you a lift in Lockjaw.

Nah, I'll find my own way back.

I insist. It'll be my good deed for the day. My debt is big, swimmer. I've got an overdraft, credit cards covering credit cards, loans, money in my underpants, everything. I'll be paying it off for many lifetimes. Besides, the road's beautiful this time of day.

 • • • 

B
efore the long weekend
in early May, he comes across a week-old edition of a local newspaper with news of a murder stamped across the front page. It says that the body of a sixteen-year-old girl from Praia da Pinheira has been found in some vegetation near Highway BR-101, just north of Paulo Lopes, a few miles past the turnoff to Garopaba. Her eyes and lips are missing, and there are clear signs of strangulation, the probable cause of death. The forensic expert suspects or wants to believe that the mutilations on the victim's face were made after death, and the missing body parts have not been found. She wasn't wearing a blouse, but it still hasn't been confirmed if there was any sexual violence. There is also considerable evidence that she was dragged, leading the police to believe that she was murdered elsewhere, probably in an area of dense vegetation and rocks, then moved by one or more people who couldn't or didn't want to carry her and dragged her instead. The story was published two days after the discovery of the body. A photograph shows the victim covered with a small, light-colored blanket or sheet. All that can be seen of her are her hands with bent fingers, wrists, and part of her arms, up by her head like a baby in a crib. When he looks at the photo, he suddenly imagines the girl's face under the blanket or sheet like a hideous flashback in a horror movie, and the image haunts him for a few days. Experts have discarded the theory that her eyes and lips were eaten by an animal because of the precision of the wounds: almost clinical incisions, made with a sharp object. The girl told her parents that she was going camping with friends at a waterfall in the region, and her friends actually did go camping but said she hadn't shown up at the agreed time and place so they had gone without her. The police are working on the hypothesis of a revenge crime but stress that they are still examining all the evidence and anything is possible. The story doesn't go into any more detail.