Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (29 page)

I thought
you'd
know that, says Joaquim, and points at the window. Somebody broke in.

That was me. Get off this land, and don't come back. If I catch either of you here again, things are going to get ugly.

You found it, didn't you?

Out of here.

He takes Joaquim by the arm and leads him toward the gate for a few yards. The young man puts his cap on backward and glares at him as if reinforcing a curse before following the old man and disappearing up the driveway.

 • • • 

O
n the seventh day,
Jasmim sends him a text message saying that she is in Porto Alegre, that she needs to think, and that she'll call him as soon as she gets back, which should be in the next few days. He texts her back asking if he can call, but she doesn't answer. He tries anyway, but she doesn't pick up. He calls five times in a row until she turns off her cell phone. He goes to the police station and withdraws the missing person report. She's at her parents' place in Porto Alegre. The officer says it's always like that.

She doesn't call until mid-August. She and a cousin visited the cabin in Ferrugem two days earlier to pack up her things, put everything in a small removal van, and hand over the keys to the owner. She is already back in Porto Alegre. She apologizes for not calling and for disappearing without an explanation in the first place. She doesn't want to live in Garopaba anymore and doesn't intend to finish her master's. She was lost for a long time and didn't realize it. She is going to live with her parents for a while until she gets back on her feet and finds a new direction for herself. At one stage she thought she might fall in love with him, but she warned him, didn't she? She doesn't know how to really love someone. She says he's a good guy. Handsome, affectionate, and a good guy. She hopes he hasn't fallen in love for real. It's always hard to do what has to be done, to break up with someone nice, even when you're sure it's for the best. She says she felt she had no choice. That morning, after digging up the treasure, she woke up alone and in a panic at around ten o'clock and felt an urgent need to get out of there. The objects were no longer on the counter, but when she saw the blender on top of the fridge, she figured it out and hunted for the box until she found it under the sink. She put on warm clothes, boots, and gloves, attached the cargo box to her motorbike, put the candlestick and goblet inside it, got her handbag, and left, determined to rid herself of the objects in the most remote, out-of-the-way place she could get to with the fuel in the tank. She took Highway BR-101 south, and the farther she sped down the road, leaving Garopaba behind, the more she felt that she wouldn't be coming back, because she was somehow going to die before she could get rid of the accursed treasure that was like a grenade without a pin in the back of her old motorbike, and in those final moments of clarity that precede death, a clarity brought on by desperation and fatalism, she perceived the size of the farce she had been living for the last few years. She felt as if the years, after she'd turned twenty, had lost the unique personality that they'd had when she was younger and become nothing more than vague references to the passing of time. She didn't want to believe that anymore. She didn't want to live on her own in a cabin by a lagoon or keep asking people if they took medicine and were happy and then go and design Excel spreadsheets and graphs and not come to any conclusions. She didn't know what she wanted to do, but it wasn't that. She wasn't like him, who seemed to belong there. She would never belong and had been there long enough to learn this last lesson, the only one still available to her. Before she knew it, she was near Criciúma, and without thinking too much, she decided to take the first exit on her right and keep going as far as she could. The road narrowed, and the postapocalyptic towns on the edge of the BR-101 gave way to simple villages and green farms, while the monstrous mountain walls of the Serra Geral loomed ahead. She saw parrots and toucans flying close to the forest and filled her tank in a small town called Timbé do Sul, where the gas station attendant suggested that the remote place she was looking for might be at the top of the Serra da Rocinha Mountains, and that was where she headed after drinking a Coke and eating a packet of Ruffles and turning off her cell phone, when she saw that he'd sent several messages and tried to call numerous times. If she replied to him at that moment, she'd be putting everything at risk. The dirt road was
extremely
steep and
extremely
dangerous, and after a few miles in first gear, riding over huge stones and using her legs to stop the bike from plunging into terrifying abysses, praying on the hairpin bends with limited visibility that she wouldn't be hit by a cargo truck lurching down the hill without brakes, she stopped at a kind of natural lookout where she could see everything from the canyon walls and the coastal plains to the ocean itself, took the candlestick and goblet out of the cargo box, and hurled them with all her strength, one after the other, into the closest ravine, where the dense forest swallowed them without a sound. Then she continued up the mountainside thinking that maybe now she was free of the curse, and by the time she got to the top, she didn't believe in legends anymore and realized that her terror was of another nature and that the curse had just been something to blame. She could see everything from up high and far away and was free. An afternoon fog was beginning to condense on the canyon slopes, forming prodigious clouds of white vapor that curled and twisted before her eyes and soon threatened to engulf the whole edge of the mountain range. She started up her bike and rode along dirt roads covered in thick gravel. She crossed hills and aqua-green, almost oceanic fields, slightly burned by the frost, feeling cold to the bone, until she came to São José dos Ausentes and then Bom Jesus, where she rented a hotel room for twenty-five reais and collapsed onto the wool bedspread, completely exhausted and happy. The next day she took the paved roads down to Porto Alegre on a beautiful five-hour journey that ended at her parents' house, and after a few days of reflection and listening to advice, she decided to cut her ties with Garopaba and everything there because she was already a new person and couldn't live there anymore—it no longer made sense. She didn't answer him or call because she didn't have the words to explain what was going on and because she thought that perhaps it was better like that. How sad it is to talk about things, to try to explain yourself, try to express yourself. As soon as you name things, they die. Does he understand? Does he forgive her? Is everything okay?

He says he doesn't forgive her, but he understands, and it's okay. She knows where to find him if she wants, and he hopes she's very happy. He doesn't see any reason to tell her that he spent ten days suffering as if his life had lost every possibility of happiness and enchantment, drinking until he blacked out, and running and swimming until his muscles cramped, but that afterward everything went back to normal, and to be honest he doesn't miss her all that much anymore, and her face vanished from his memory fifteen minutes after he left her sleeping that last morning and will never return unless she sends him a photo, which he'd really like, by the way, and truth be told he has already forgotten her in the other sense too, the sense that would make him suffer now, but he ends up telling her all this anyway, and she falls silent for a few moments and says, See? You didn't really love me all that much.

 • • • 

C
ecina doesn't seem surprised
by his visit and invites him in without asking why he is there. They exchange the usual pleasantries. The TV in the living room is showing the midday news, and an old man in a vegetative state watches his arrival from a wheelchair next to the sofa, protected from the cold by a wool ski cap and blankets. The smell of fried fish wafts up from the kitchen downstairs.

You've never met my husband, have you?

No. What's his name?

Everyone calls him Quem. His real name is Quirino.

Afternoon, Quirino, he says waving.

The old man's breathing grows labored.

Please, have a seat. Would you like a coffee?

No thanks, Cecina. I'll be quick. I just want to ask you something. Do you remember that my mother was here a few weeks ago and you talked to her in front of the apartment?

Yes. Very friendly, your mother.

She thought the same about you.

And how's the girlfriend?

She's gone. She went back to Porto Alegre.

For good?

I think so.

Aren't you going to go after her?

No.

Oh dear.

Cecina, I was swimming with my dog this morning over near Baú Rock, and—

How's she doing?

She's great. She still walks a little crooked, but she's already running around with her tongue out and goes everywhere with me.

She looks like a fish in the water.

She does. And it was precisely as I was taking her for her swim this morning that I looked up at the door to the apartment and remembered that time you stopped to chat with my mother. Something was niggling me, and I couldn't work out what it was, and then suddenly it came to me. You mentioned my grandfather. Remember?

Did I?

Yes. But I'd never talked about my grandfather to you.

Old Quirino wheezes in his wheelchair.

People are saying that you've been asking around about your grandfather. And to be honest, if it were up to a lot of people, you wouldn't be here anymore. Several people have asked me to turn you out. But you gave me a check for the whole year. It's become a problem for me.

You said he wasn't easygoing like me, or something to that effect. Did you know him?

No.

But what do you know about him? I know that he died here, but besides that everyone tells me different things. I had decided to forget about it, but now it's all come back to me, and this whole story is driving me crazy.

Are you sick? You didn't have dark circles under your eyes before.

I can't move on with my life as long as I don't know, Cecina. Before he died, my dad told me about my grandfather. He wanted to know, and now I want to know. I need to. You have to help me. Of the people who were around back then, you're my only friend. I'm begging you. Please.

Old Quirino starts gurgling saliva. Cecina is silent. She looks at her invalid husband, gets up, and disappears down the corridor pushing his wheelchair. She comes back several minutes later and sits on the armchair opposite him again.

I knew your grandfather. Everyone knew him during the time he spent here. But few people knew him well. I was a teenager.

Do you know how he died?

Yes, but I can't tell you.

Why not?

I'm afraid. No one who saw it and is still alive will tell you.

Did you see it?

I did, and I pray every day to forget it.

He rests his forehead in his hand and sighs. Cecina goes to fetch a pen and notepad then sits and starts writing something in her slow handwriting to the sound of a hysterical department store advertisement.

Don't tell anyone I told you about her, she says, handing him the paper. Say you found out some other way. My husband's the only one who knows you came here, and he can't speak.

He looks at the paper. There is the name of a woman, Santina, a cell phone number and a street address in Costa do Macacu.

She didn't see what happened that day with her own eyes, but she knows everything. She's the only person who will tell you.

Who is she?

She was your grandfather's girlfriend.

 • • • 

T
he dirt road follows
the edge of Siriú Lagoon, passes through the communities of Areias do Macacu, Macacu proper and Morro do Fortunato and arrives at Costa do Macacu, a huddle of wood and brick houses perched on a partially cleared hill, the slope of which ends at the edge of the lagoon. From the village itself, the hills appear to embrace the lagoon, leaving only a narrow opening through which he can see the creamy sands of Dunas do Siriú, and beyond them the ocean stretches out to the fold of the horizon. Two cows chewing the cud in a small roadside barn look bored with the landscape, and friendly mutts keep an eye from verandas and gates on the traffic of motorbikes and bicycles, protecting their tiny kingdoms. Most of the houses are closed due to the cold, and clusters of children in blue uniforms walk down the middle of the road on their way to school. Beyond the school, there are fewer houses, and the steep little road that leads to Santina's house appears on his left. After his arduous ride up the long, winding road to the village, he has to push his bike up this last stretch. The door and windows of the light blue cottage are ajar, and he can see several people moving about inside.

He knocks lightly on the door and is greeted in seconds by a young woman with cheeks flushed from the cold, black hair in a ponytail, and a wide scar on her jaw. He says he is looking for Santina, and she gives him a good look up and down while holding her cardigan closed at chest height. He explains that he tried to phone beforehand but no one answered, and it is an urgent matter. He expects to be interrogated and to provide explanations, but the woman opens the door and invites him into a dimly lit dining room with one door leading to a corridor and another to the kitchen, from which wafts a strong smell of chicken soup and cilantro. The table is set for lunch on a pink tablecloth embroidered with flowers, and an old man and two children are still eating. Near the door to the kitchen a small woman of about sixty in a thick brown wool cardigan is kneading bread dough on a smaller table beneath a large framed portrait of Christ. The young woman nods at her, and at the same time the older woman stands, wipes her floury hands on a white tea towel, and speaks in a weak, croaky voice.

Come in, son, come in. Have you had lunch?

I have. Are you Santina? I—