Daniel Galera - Blood-drenched Beard

Are you okay?

Yes.

Do you get along well with her?

Pretty much.

Must be hard for her to be left alone there.

She’s fine. My dad left her some things in his will, and she’s mediating between me and my brother, because I don’t speak to him. She’s in good health for her age, and her boyfriend’s well off. His family owns a notary’s office. At any rate, the son who really matters to her is the other one. I was just the one who was available recently. She’ll soon get used to it.

But she and your dad were divorced, weren’t they?

Yes.

Why aren’t you speaking to your brother?

It’s not worth talking about. My family doesn’t make any sense.

He dumps the cell phone on the table and sits on the floor next to her sofa. She caresses the back of his neck with her long nails.

Do you think he likes this too, Beta?

He sighs and feels his body slowly soften under the waves of pleasure radiating from the top of his back to the tips of his toes.

I was wondering if I could ask you a favor, says Dália.

She says she has taken a second job, and starting next week she’ll be working in a beachwear shop every afternoon in the nearby town of Imbituba. A friend of hers who lives in Silveira is a bank manager there and can give her a lift home every day in time for her evening shift at the pizza parlor. She needs the extra money so she can move to Florianópolis and go to university, a plan she has had to put off until next year. Her mother has diabetes and has a hard time walking, and she needs someone to pick up Pablo from school and take him home every afternoon, which she will no longer have time to do.

Of course I can.

I pick him up by bike. He’s used to it. He sits on the bar or the rack. He likes it. But if it’s too much of a hassle, don’t worry. It’s just that I don’t have anyone else I can ask at the moment.

Something about the circumstances of the moment moves him. The dog seems happy and at peace for the first time since his father’s death. Dália is entrusting him with the care of her son, whom he hasn’t even met. Maybe it is the urgency with which she is seeking to plant her flag in his life, maybe he just wants to be on his own and is feeling momentarily needy, maybe deep down she doesn’t feel right for him: he doesn’t have a precise diagnosis, but he has a strong feeling that the nascent intimacy between them has just now begun to end. He hopes he is wrong. And at the same time there is a comforting inner coherence in the way in which they have already irreversibly affected each other’s lives. Something good has already installed itself and is protected, and it will last even if these mornings cease today.

I’ll pick him up. No problem.

Just until I find someone else. I didn’t want to have to ask you.

I’ll pick him up for as long as you need. Don’t worry about it. But it’s probably a good idea that I meet the kid first.

We’ll arrange it tomorrow. I’ll call you. How are you going to recognize him at school?

There’s always a way. Let me meet him first.

He’s got big ears.

I’ll figure it out.

Okay.

I’ll put a bike seat on for him.

Don’t worry about it. He sits on the bar. He never…

She trails off without finishing her sentence. Outside, the Lendário blows its long, shrill whistle once, twice, while tourists hurry down the path outside his window. They are couples and small families trying to make the most of the schooner tours during the last few warm weekends of the season. The knowledge that this is a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning before an afternoon of rain in late March is written in their eyes and their reverent attitude before the schooner. He kneels next to the sofa Dália is on and kisses her. The bitter coffee tastes nice in her saliva. They shoo away the dog, close the living-room shutters, take off their clothes, and are soon in the bedroom. The rumble of the diesel engine passes through the walls, the whistle sounds again, and the schooner takes off. A cloud covers the sun behind the closed shutters, and the room slowly darkens. With him on top, Dália comes without a sound, and a tear slides out of each eye. She rolls over and sniffs.

Shit.

You okay?

No, I’m not. If I were moaning like a whore, it’d mean I’m okay.

The cloud uncovers the sun. Dália rolls back and places her hand on his chest.

Just pretend I didn’t say anything.

• • •

I t takes about ten minutes pedaling slowly to get from the Pinguirito Municipal School, where Pablo is in the first grade, to Dália’s house, but today he takes a detour past the Gelomel ice cream parlor before handing the boy over to Dália’s mother, who had a foot amputated a few months ago as a result of a diabetic ulcer. She always invites him in for some cake and juice. Sometimes he accepts the invitation. Dália’s mother likes him. She claims to be something of a witch and says she dreamed about him before they even met in person, perhaps influenced by the things Dália had already told her about him.* At each visit she adds some details to the dream, things she has remembered or new interpretations she has made. He has already told her he doesn’t believe in such things, but she doesn’t seem to care. Sometimes he gets the impression that she makes up her dreams on the spot.

He is still riding down the main avenue to the ice cream parlor when he passes a corner block in front of the supermarket and hears a shout and a loud thud. Two men are demolishing the wall of a semidestroyed kiosk with kicks and an enormous sledgehammer. He has never paid the place much attention but is sure the kiosk was intact yesterday. The bold, dark-skinned man holding the sledgehammer has a pear-shaped body, with a potbelly, short arms, and no shoulders. He waves at Pablo.

Hey, Pablito! Go Grêmio!

The boy raises a fist and shouts, Grêmio!

They arrive at the ice cream parlor. He leans the bike against the glass door and unbuckles Pablo from the bike seat.

Who was the man with the sledgehammer?

Bonobo.

Booboo?

No, Bo-nooo-bo!

At the ice cream counter, Pablo fills his bowl with balls of coconut, grape, and chocolate chip ice cream. To top it off, jelly teeth and a good dose of condensed milk. According to his mother, he can put whatever he wants in his bowl as long as he doesn’t overdo it on the quantity. It can’t cost more than five reais . Pablo is an easy child to deal with, at least as far as he is concerned. He doesn’t complain about anything and doesn’t make extravagant requests. Dália says that sometimes he is stubborn and hyperactive, and she thinks he might be bipolar or something of the sort. He never recognizes Pablo among the dozens of children in the schoolyard, but Pablo always gets his backpack and comes running over. All he has to do is wait a little.

Pablo pulls out of his SpongeBob backpack the swimming goggles that he gave him as a present the day they met. He has been the Goggles Guy ever since. Pablo puts on his goggles and attacks the ice cream. There are milk teeth alongside half-grown adult teeth in his mouth, smeared with melted ice cream.

So, Pablito. Are you going to learn to swim now?

No.

I’ll teach you.

Okay.

You can use your goggles to protect your eyes when we ride on the bike. They’re for that too.

Okay.

He takes an alternative route through back streets and drops Pablo home. He doesn’t stay for juice or cake today. He doesn’t want to know why he is a vampire. On the way back he passes the corner where the two men were trying to demolish the kiosk wall. Now they are trying to get an ice cream freezer onto the back of a pickup. It isn’t working. The shoulderless man who had waved at Pablo turns his head and shouts.