Daniel Galera: Blood-drenched Beard

So why did they kill him?

I’m getting there. Patience, tchê . I wanted to give you the context. Because it’s a good story, isn’t it? Oh yes. You should’ve seen him back then. It’s not normal for someone to leave one environment and go somewhere really different and adapt like that.

Don’t you have a photo of Granddad somewhere? You showed me one once.

Hmm. I don’t know if I still have it. Do I? I do. I remember where it is. Want to see it?

Yeah. I don’t remember his face, obviously. It’d be nice to look at the photo while you tell me the rest.

His dad disappears into the bedroom for a few minutes, beer in hand, and comes back holding an old photograph with scalloped edges. The black and white image shows a bearded man wrapped in a sheepskin, sitting on a bench beside a kitchen table, starting to raise the straw of a gourd of maté to his lips, looking kind of sideways at the camera, unhappy about being photographed. He is wearing leather boots, bombacha pants, and a sweater with a pattern of squares on it. There is a supermarket calendar with a picture of Sugarloaf Mountain on the wall, and the light is coming from up high, from louver windows that are partially out of frame. There is nothing written on the back.

He gets up and goes to the bathroom. He compares the face in the photograph with the face in the mirror and feels a shiver run through him. From the nose up, the face in the photo is a darker and slightly older copy of the face in the mirror. The only difference worthy of note is his granddad’s beard, but he feels like he is looking at a photograph of himself in spite of it.

I’d like to keep this photo, he says as he settles back on the sofa.

His dad nods.

I visited your granddad in Garopaba one more time, and it was the last. It was in June, during the church fair, which is quite an event there. Music, dance performances, everyone stuffing their faces with fresh fish, and so on. One night a folk singer from Uruguaiana got up on stage, a big kid of about twenty-five, and your granddad took an immediate dislike to him. He said he knew the guy, he’d seen him play over near the border, and he was crap. I remember liking him. He plucked at the strings vigorously, made deep-and-meaningful expressions as he played, and told rehearsed jokes between songs. Dad thought he was a clown with a lot of technique and not much feeling. It wouldn’t have gone any further, but after the show the singer was having some mulled wine at a stall, and someone thought it would be nice to introduce them, seeing as they were both gauchos in baggy pants. The guy took the singer by the arm and brought him over to Dad, and the two of them quickly locked horns. I found out later that it was much more than a question of musical quality, but at first they pretended they didn’t know each other, out of respect for the guy who was so excited to introduce them. But the guy made the mistake of asking Dad point-blank if he’d liked the music, and Dad was the sort who, if you asked, you got his honest opinion. His answer made the singer furious. They started to argue, and Dad told him to turn his face away because his breath smelled like a dead pampas fox’s ass. Several people heard him and laughed. The singer got nasty, of course, and then it wasn’t long before Dad whipped out his knife. The singer let it go, and that was the end of it, but the thing I remember was the reaction of the crowd that had gathered around. It wasn’t just that they were curious about the fight. They were looking sideways at your granddad, whispering and shaking their heads. I realized that in the time between my visits they’d started to disapprove of him. I mean, nobody wants a bad-mannered, knife-wielding gaucho around. I told him to cool it, but it was useless with your granddad. He wasn’t even aware of his own stupidity. The people here are scared of you, I told him. That’s not good. You’re going to get yourself into some serious trouble. I left and didn’t hear from him for ages. At the time I was kind of stuck in Porto Alegre, working a lot, and it was also when I started seeing your mother. We dated for four years and she left me three times before we got married. But anyway, I didn’t visit your granddad for quite a while, and several months later I got a call from a police chief in Laguna saying he’d been murdered. There had been a Sunday dance at some community hall, the kind where the whole town goes. When the dance was in full swing, the lights go off. When they come back on a minute later, there’s a gaucho lying in the middle of the hall in a pool of blood, with dozens and dozens of stab wounds. Everyone killed him; that is, no one person killed him. The town killed him. That’s what the police chief told me. Everyone was there, entire families, probably even the priest. They turned out the lights, no one saw a thing. The people weren’t afraid of your granddad. They hated him.

They both take a swig of beer. His dad empties his bottle and looks at him, almost smiling.

Except that I don’t believe that story.

Huh? Why not?

Because there was no body.

But wasn’t it him lying there all cut up?

That’s what they told me. But I never saw the body. When the police chief called me, it had all been more or less wrapped up. They said it had taken weeks to track me down. They had gone looking for me in Taquara, as someone in Garopaba knew he was from there. They found someone who recognized Dad from their description and knew my name. By the time they called me, he’d already been buried.

Where?

There in Garopaba. In the little village cemetery. It’s a stone with nothing written on it, at the back of the cemetery.

Did you go there?

I did. I visited the grave and took care of some paperwork in Laguna. It was all very strange. I had the strongest feeling it wasn’t him in that hole. The grass growing over the grave was pretty tall. I remember thinking, I’ll be damned if this here was dug the week before last. And I couldn’t find anyone who could confirm the story. It was as if it hadn’t happened. The story of the crime itself was plausible, and the villagers’ silence made sense, but the way I found out about it, what the police chief told me, that awful stone with no name on it… I was never really convinced. But at any rate, whatever happened to your granddad, it was bound to happen. People meet the death they’re due in most cases. He met his.

Have you ever thought about having the grave opened? There must be a legal way to go about it.

His dad glances away, annoyed. He sighs.

Listen. I’ve never told this story to anyone. Your mother doesn’t know. If you ask her, she’ll say your granddad disappeared, because that’s what I told her. As far as I was concerned, he really had disappeared. I left it at that. I didn’t give it any more thought. If you think it’s horrible, that’s too bad. The way I was at that age, the life I had back then… it’d be hard to make you understand now.

I don’t think it’s horrible. Relax.

His dad fidgets in his armchair. Beta gets up and with a small lurch puts her front paws on her master’s leg. He grabs and holds her face as if muzzling her, lowering his head to look her in the eye. When he lets go, she lies down next to the armchair again. It is one of many inscrutable rituals that are a part of his dad’s relationship with the animal.

So why are you telling me this now?

You haven’t read that short story by Borges that I mentioned earlier, have you?

No.

“The South.”

I haven’t read anything by Borges.

’Course you haven’t, you read fuck all.

Dad. The pistol.

Right.

His dad opens the bottle of cognac, fills a small glass, and downs it in one go. He doesn’t offer him any. He picks up the pistol and examines it for a minute. He releases the magazine and clicks it back into place, as if to show that it isn’t loaded. A single bead of sweat runs down his forehead, drawing attention to the fact that he is no longer sweating all over. A minute earlier he was covered in sweat. He tucks the pistol into the waistband of his slacks and looks at him.