Blood-drenched Beard : A Novel (9781101635612) (33 page)

The next day he climbs the steep trail up to the top of Branca Rock. He discovers that behind the small escarpment visible from the road is a long wall of rock streaked with lichen. At the top he finds a very beautiful woman in a leotard and tracksuit practicing yoga. He puts Beta down after carrying her up the last difficult stretch of trail and looks at the woman, not entirely sure what he is seeing. She is sitting in a strange cross-legged position, completely wet, with her short black hair slicked back on her head. His footsteps finally rouse her from her meditative trance, and they stare at each other for a moment, not really understanding each other's presence there. He gets the last two apples from his backpack, and they eat them together and talk. She tells him she is on a retreat at a nearby meditation center and explains that they are sitting on the exact site of one of the biggest energy portals in South America. You can feel it, can't you? The first inhabitants of the region used to speak of a wagon of light that left the lagoon in the south and crossed the sky until it disappeared behind Branca Rock. She shows him the path of the wagon with her pointed finger. Even blurred in the distance by the rain, the landscape is immense. Beyond the highway the swamps and waterlogged fields make everything down below look as if it has become a giant lagoon, and the dunes and hills of Ferrugem appear as ghostly contours against the phosphorescent gray sky. He says good-bye to the woman, takes the trail back down, and continues toward the hills behind Encantada.

The dirt road passes an old sawmill with wooden gears powered by water, and an ox-drawn manioc flour mill. Children in blue and white uniforms carrying umbrellas come out of a tiny municipal school and point at him, laughing and whispering shamelessly. The lampposts end at two wooden houses surrounded by vegetable gardens and pastures fenced off with barbed wire. After this the trail disappears, and he doesn't see anyone else for days.

On his second morning lost in these hills, he is awoken by warm sunlight. Birds sing and swoop through the air, narrowly missing one another. Colors pulse. There are shadows. He takes off his jacket and T-shirt and feels the sun on the top of his head, nose, shoulders. Lizards with enormous tails warm their blood lying on the rocks, gazing upward like martyrs. He spreads out his clothes and sleeping bag on the rocks, takes the soap, and looks for a stream to bathe in. The dog goes with him, snapping at flies, trying to catch them midflight. He fills his water bottle and remains naked in the midday sun until he is dry. Half of the sky is blue. Butterflies and cicadas vie for space in the underbrush, and the air slowly fills with buzzing in a variety of timbres. Blades of grass sway as crickets land on them. A tiny bush is covered in red wasps that don't look like anything he has seen before with his own eyes or in photographs or documentaries. He crouches down and watches them for a long while. From time to time they all move a fraction of an inch in perfect synchronicity, reconfiguring their occupation of the bush. He looks around and hasn't a clue where he is. He knows more or less where he came from and where he needs to go from here. A fertile smell wafts up from the moist soil warmed by the sun. Hairy black bumblebees hover in the air, pollinating orchids. The overcast half of the sky starts to encroach on the blue half, and he can hear thunder in the distance. He decides to move on and walks along the crest of the hill, picking his way through the vegetation.

In the short space of time between nightfall and the return of the rain, he comes across a valley of low scrub covered with a luminous mist of fireflies. He doesn't dare move, as if a single footstep might scare off the thousands of bugs all at once and break the spell. Large raindrops start to fall, and the little dots of green light slowly disappear.

He improvises shelter beneath a leafy tree and in the middle of the night is awoken by the dog howling. She is a short distance away, and he can't see her. It is the first time he has heard it, and he feels strangely guilty, as if he were spying on her in a moment of intimacy. Her howls are long and far apart, and there is no answer.

At the end of the next day, he realizes that he is walking along the ridge of Freitas Hill. To his left he sees the streets and houses of Paulo Lopes and on his right Costa do Macacu and Siriú Lagoon. Somewhere nearby must be the land that Santina's children will inherit. He spends another night out in the open. It no longer bothers him that he is wet, and the hunger that has clawed at his stomach over the last few days has disappeared. The following day he continues walking from one hilltop to the next with plodding footsteps, followed by the dog a short distance behind him, avoiding roads and plantations, until he is close to the village center of Siriú Beach.

He heads down the first trail he finds, stops at the first diner he sees, and orders a cheese and chicken-heart sandwich. The sound of his own voice echoes in his head, and it occurs to him that he hasn't uttered a word since his conversation with the yogi in Encantada. Two young men in baseball caps and baggy jeans are drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at the table next to him, slouched in their plastic chairs. Their dialogue is cryptic, but they seem to be talking about a party and a girl who was there. The skinny one talks more, and the muscular one listens as he turns the alarm of his car parked outside on and off with his key. The small TV on the wall is showing a dubbed film, but the volume is so low it is almost inaudible. The pregnant woman in a white apron and hairnet who takes orders and flips burgers at the same time appears with his sandwich and a tray with napkins and sachets of ketchup and mayonnaise. His contracted stomach can tolerate only half the sandwich. He leaves the rest on some grass near a post for the dog to eat. A news bulletin interrupts an advertisement and shows scenes of the flood. A river of chocolaty rapids cutting right through a highway. Men rowing boats around an archipelago of roofs. Families camped out in a gymnasium.

He asks the young men for a cigarette. They look at him with blank faces, and he asks again. The muscular one gets up, walks over to his table, holds out the packet, waits for him to take a cigarette with his long, mud-caked fingernails, and holds out the lighter for him. He thanks him, puffs on the cigarette a few times without inhaling, and tosses it half burned into the middle of the puddle-filled road.

Argh! Disgusting shit.

He clears his throat and spits on the sidewalk. The skinny one lets out a scornful chuckle.

Where'd you come from, nutcase?

He gets up, signals to the waitress, leaves the money on the table, turns his back to the men, and walks away talking.

It all started a long, long time ago, he says in a drawn-out, theatrical voice as he walks toward the beach and points at the shadowy mass of the hills. It was a dark . . . stormy night . . .

What a mess, he hears one of them say.

He laughs to himself, checks to make sure Beta is behind him, and stomps his way through the puddles until he reaches the sand. Garopaba is on his right, far away and ghostly. He walks to his left until he comes to a seaside hill and takes a trail that soon leaves him on a craggy headland. The waves crash with gusto against the larger rocks, throwing spray high into the air. The rain has dwindled to a drizzle, and he looks for a way through for the dog, but it is growing more and more difficult. Over the rocks, over the rocks, this is the way, he mutters to himself. He steps from one to another and slowly leaves Siriú behind him. For a long time all he can see is the top of the next rock.

When he finally raises his head to look around, he realizes that it is growing dark. He is in the middle of a rocky headland between nothing and nowhere and has already come too far to turn back. He steps on a loose stone, and his fall is broken by his backpack, but his elbow gets a good whack, and he feels the pain travel up his arm to his shoulder like an electric shock. He tests the joint and feels his arm with his other hand. A little blood and some throbbing, nothing to worry about. He lifts the dog onto the larger rocks before scaling them himself. He progresses in this manner until the boulders of granite give way to greenery. He tries to climb the slope, but the barrier of bushes is too dense and thorny. He returns to the rocks, and shortly before it is pitch black, he spots a natural shelter between two large boulders. As he draws closer, he discovers that the narrow cavity extends inward a short way, forming a small, dry grotto. He leaves his backpack inside, makes the dog comfortable, and sits at the entrance to his triangular niche as if he were a stone statue placed in the most improbable, absurd place precisely so as not to be seen. The ocean in front of him is a large mass of darkness that is darker than the night, a monster that is both invisible and manifest. He knows he is well above the high-tide mark but is afraid anyway. It is the same kind of irrational fear that slowly grips him when he is swimming alone in deep water. On the other hand, where else could he be safer and more protected? Nothing can touch him here. In a few hours the day will dawn as always, and he will be able to leave. No possible surprises tonight. Nothing can happen. Not here.

He strokes Beta, who is warm in spite of everything. Suddenly, without warning, he sees with tremendous clarity something that he has wanted to see for a long time and starts to cry with happiness. He wishes Jasmim were here now, and Viviane, and his mother and father, and even Dante, even the people he wishes he could hate but can't: he wishes they were all here with him now. His dad said it once. You aren't capable of hating anything, kid. It can't do you any good. But that's life, Dad, he answers now staring into the darkness. That's life. He feels lighter and lighter as he thinks these things and falls asleep leaning against the rock.

It takes him the whole of the next morning to get over the rocks and pick his way around a gorge. The next trail crosses the hill through thick vegetation. It is overgrown with grass and bushes, and he moves forward almost chest deep in the dark green tangle, hewing a path for the dog, who comes limping behind. Little by little his legs grow accustomed to the squelchy mud that has replaced the slippery solidity of the rocks. He mutters to himself from time to time. At the top of the hill the trail comes out above a village and a long beach. The residents watch him from the doors and windows of their houses that sit in a cluster of alleyways at the foot of the hill.

He sees people with bags full of fruit and vegetables leaving an old bus parked at the side of a sandy road. He enters the bus through the back door. In the place of seats are boxes and crates of market produce, and some women with cloth shopping bags are chatting in the middle of the aisle as they smell pineapples, squeeze mangoes, and inspect heads of lettuce. He looks around, and the profusion of colors and sweet aromas makes him dizzy. Other customers have already entered behind him, and he is forced to go with the flow toward the front door. In the closed environment, he realizes that he is wheezing and a little feverish. He gets a bunch of ripe bananas, a pear, and two oranges. The woman behind him knocks over a box of beets, which roll across the floor, and he helps her pick them up. A plump old man with white hair sitting in the driver's seat weighs the customers' choices on a pair of scales and takes their money. He places his items in the crate for weighing and rummages through the outside pocket of his wet backpack until he finds his last two coins.

Is this enough?

There's a bit left over.

Keep the change.

The tabby cat on the wooden deck of an isolated beachfront bar is unperturbed by their presence. He pulls a stool up to a table and eats the fruit, gazing at the steep beach pummeled by heavy rain. He starts talking to himself and the dog and realizes that he shouldn't stay still for too long or he won't be able to continue. He stands, takes the steps down to the sand, and walks along the beach to the next hill.

The stormy seas have excavated the dune leading over to the next beach, exposing stone steps that are so regular they look man-made. On the other side a long series of dunes and clumps of coastal scrub hugs the contour of a beach that extends almost as far as the eye can see. He advances at a firm, slow pace, staring into the distance, lightly buffeted by the wind blowing from the ocean. He passes the skeleton of a porpoise or a right whale calf, with a crocodilian skull poking out of the waterlogged sand and a long row of half-buried vertebrae. He can't imagine what a day without rain is like anymore.

In the middle of the afternoon he arrives at the mouth of a river that flows slowly and mightily like lava toward the sea, dragging tree branches from distant mountains. On the other side is a village, and a few fishermen are attempting a risky crossing on narrow rafts. One of them, wearing a heavy-duty raincoat, agrees to transport him to the other side and asks where he is from, where he is going, and if he needs any help. He gives each question a great deal of thought, as if he hasn't understood it and is trying to come up with an answer only to be polite. I've come from there, he says pointing. I'm hiking around. Following the hills. I'm fine, thanks. Bringing me across the river is already a big help, he says, as his hand is crushed in a good-bye handshake. The fisherman then watches the hirsute figure walk away with the dog limping behind him until he disappears down the trail to the next beach, and the other fishermen come over one by one wanting to know what that was all about.

The trail goes around the first hill, following the river, and leads to a small beach occupied by a herd of cattle. The cows wander among the rocks, calves behind them, and the bulls raise their heads to watch him pass. Beta starts to bark, and part of the herd stirs and trots quickly toward the back of the beach, gathering near a small cascade formed by runoff water from the hill. There are two closed fishing sheds, one of which has a sign above the door with the name of a bar that must open only in summer. The trail continues over the next hill and comes out on a deserted beach walled in by an inaccessible green slope. As he is crossing this beach, the lightning starts. The claps of thunder take a long time to arrive after each flash but are slow to pass. He tries to pick up his pace but can go only at the same speed. He doesn't have the strength to go any faster and is afraid he'll give out entirely if he goes any slower.