Daniel Galera - Blood-drenched Beard

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A coal-colored dog slumbers in the ethereal blue of a fishing net coiled up on the lawn in the square. The sun strikes the gray stairs up the hill to the parish church face-on. The short, steep cobbled street next to the church passes a boat shed and a prefabricated wooden house. He waves at the tanned old lady basking in the sun on the veranda in a colorful beach chair. A salty northeasterly rustles the trees and waves. Vast clouds advance in formation from the sea to the continent like an army in a trance. The street curves to the left and passes in front of a small eighteenth-century building with peeling white walls and freshly painted cobalt-blue window frames. A craft shop exhibits striped rugs, miniature ships, and wicker baskets piled up in the doorway and windows. A group of hyperactive children in blue and white school uniforms passes in the opposite direction, led by a tense teacher. The street continues toward Vigia Point, passing summer homes perched on the hill. He slowly surveys the sweeping view of the ruffled ocean and the beaches and hills stretching around in a big curve to what he imagines to be the distant Guarda do Embaú Beach. He walks slowly so Beta can keep up. When she decides to stop once and for all, he fastens the leash to her collar and urges her on with little tugs. On the tiny Preguiça Beach, he sees parents sunbathing as they watch their children playing on the stretch of sand protected from the wind. Washed-up bits of algae, tree branches, and mollusks form fans on the ochre sand and give off a pungent smell. He nods at the bathers as he passes and takes a trail that starts at the rocks. His feet sink into the warm salt water hidden under the prickly grass. The houses here are immense palaces with glass fronts, solar panels, and ample wooden verandas jutting out over land that has been radically reworked by landscapers. At Vigia Point a megalomaniacal mansion leaves little room for pedestrians, and on the other side of the low wire fence, a hysterical toy poodle wildly dashes back and forth, squeaking like a bat, while a woman in the house yells at it to come inside. Beta completely ignores the fellow member of her species. Cloud shadows slide across the frothy sea, and he imagines the fish believing the shadows to be the clouds themselves. He walks along, jumping over rocks, until he comes to a series of corroded metal girders sticking out of a concrete base. The sharp skeleton of a mysterious structure has long been disfigured by the sea breeze, and its crusts of orangey rust give it a deadly look. From here he can see all of Garopaba Beach head on. Beta watches water bugs darting through the rocks at the tideline.

He is almost back at the church when he notices a small handwritten rental sign on the wall of one of the old blocks of apartments built by the fishermen on the slope between the street and the sea. On the other side of the gate all he sees is a long, narrow staircase following the wall down to the base of the two-story construction and ending at a footpath around the rocks, some ten or so feet from the waves. He dials the number on his cell phone and asks the man who answers if the apartment is for rent. In an instant the man appears out of one of the nearby houses. He is short and tanned and looks as if he is amused by something, but he isn’t. The apartment is the ground-floor one, right in front of the rocks. The man takes a padlock off the gate, and they head down to the bottom of the stairs, passing the entrance to the upstairs apartment. Under the stairs, in the damp space between two neighboring buildings, is a brown door. They enter a small living room with an adjoining open kitchen. The furniture is limited to two beat-up sofas and a rectangular wooden table. It is much colder inside than outside. There is a predictable smell of mildew. The short guy tinkers with the latch on the living-room window and opens the shutters after a few jolts, revealing a view of the entire bay of Garopaba, the fishing sheds and the old whaling boats anchored offshore. Right in front of the window is a flight of cement steps from the footpath down to a large, smooth rock that the bigger waves are covering with spray but that is probably dry when the sea is calm. On top of the rock is a large blue tarpaulin protecting what appears to be a fishing net. The guy shows him the bedroom, which has a double bed, the bathroom, and the kitchen, with a small outside laundry area, but he doesn’t really care. He’d decided he wanted to live there when he saw the shutters opening.

I want to rent this house. Will you rent it to me for a year?

You’ll have to talk to my mother.

Do you go through a real estate agent?

You’ll have to talk to my mother. She’s the one who handles the place.

His mother, Cecina, lives two houses up the street. Her veranda projects over the slope and is surrounded by the tops of lime and pitanga trees that are rooted several yards downhill. Cecina invites him into an impeccably arranged living room with ocean views and asks him to take a seat on a leather sofa. There is a beautiful collection of Marajoara ceramic vases on the coffee table. Cecina’s face is beautiful, wide and round with narrow eyes and slightly puffy eyelids. After they sit, she remains silent and appears to be trying unsuccessfully to stifle the flicker of an indulgent smile. She has the poise of a priestess waiting for a disciple who has come to her to pour out his soul. He tells her that he wants to spend a year living in the ground-floor apartment. She explains in a soft, sibilant voice that she rents it out only in the high season and that the most she can do outside that season is rent it on a monthly basis, renewing it month by month if both parties are still interested, until November at the latest, when the high season starts. She would lose money if she accepted an annual price because the prices are five times higher over the summer and she has regular customers who come back every year. He proposes that she calculate how much she would make in the high season, add it to the monthly rent for the rest of the year, divide it all by twelve and tell him the price. He is willing to pay. He assures her that she won’t lose any money. She tells him that she has had too many problems renting out apartments in the low season to people like him who show up alone or couples or friends who want to spend the winter living in front of the beach. People leave without paying, she says. I don’t have any way to go after them afterward. He suggests that they draw up a contract and have it notarized as a guarantee. She laughs heartily and says she doesn’t bother with contracts. Contracts are no good to me. What am I going to do with a contract? Waste my time chasing after people? And even if I find them, am I going to sue them? Lose my peace of mind over the whole thing? He proposes a monthly price that, multiplied by twelve, is equivalent to almost all his savings. This time she doesn’t answer right away. She sits there reflecting, still with a somewhat indulgent smile on her lips. She asks what he does. He says he is a PE teacher. She asks what he has come to do in Garopaba. He says he wants to live in front of the beach. She asks if he intends to work and settle there. He says yes. That he wants to teach, that he has future plans to rent a professional space and maybe even, if everything works out, open a gym. He says he is an athlete and intends to train too. Ocean swimming is his favorite thing, and her apartment is five yards from the swimming pool of his dreams. Cecina says that the year before two friends rented the same place for a year. They were surfers and wanted to surf and settle in Garopaba and open a bed-and-breakfast. They disappeared four months later, with the rent in arrears, leaving the apartment completely trashed. They broke furniture and walls. There was marijuana smoke coming from the apartment all day long. The neighbors heard fights and shouting almost every day. They were homosexuals, nothing against that, and drug users. They started hanging out with the druggies who dealt and smoked in front of the building, and they did lots of drugs and broke everything and then ran off without paying. Everyone comes here saying the same thing, she says softly. I just want to live in front of the beach. I just want to surf. I just want to think about life. I just want to enjoy nature. I just want to write a book. I just want to fish. I just want to forget a girl. I just want to find the love of my life. I just want to be alone. I just want a little peace and quiet. I just want to start over. And then people fight, get depressed, break things, drink too much, shout, have orgies, do drugs and disappear without paying, or kill themselves. It’s tough, she says. We never know who to trust, and it’s a shame. I don’t know you. To be honest, I’m planning to renovate the apartment in April. I need to fix it up during the year so I can receive visitors in the high season. So I can’t rent it out.