Daniel Galera - Blood-drenched Beard

Do I know any of you?

Slowly they say no.

Nice to meet you, then. Good-bye, gentlemen.

He walks back to the village through the trail of silence, flags, exhaust fumes, and beer cans left in the wake of the rally. The jingle, the yelling, the engines, and horns grow more and more distant until they completely disappear.

H e waits for the rain to stop for two days, but by the third it is evident that it isn’t going to let up anytime soon. Matches won’t light. Droplets of water slide down the sides of the old white refrigerator as if it were in a feverish sweat. The moisture in the air weighs down his greasy hair and the dog’s fur. He packs his camping backpack with two changes of clothes, a towel, a bar of soap, a toothbrush, the knife with the armadillo-leather handle, his tightly rolled sleeping bag, two lighters, a small mirror, a bottle of mineral water, a quarter of a wheel of cheese, a salami, two packets of cream-filled cookies, dried bananas, a few apples, and a packet of dry dog food, all in plastic bags. He puts on a tracksuit, his waterproof jacket, his running shoes, and a cap. He firmly closes the windows and waits for Beta to come out before locking the door and hiding the key under a rock among some plants alongside the building. He pats Beta’s ribs, and she wags her tail a little. The winter cold has gone, but the sun is unable to force its way through the clouded sky.

After thinking for a moment, he decides to head out through Vigia Point. He passes the unoccupied summer mansions on deforested grounds and reaches the headland. The trail grows narrower and steeper as the native vegetation closes in. Where it starts to drop down toward the sea, the scrub gives way to bromeliads, cactuses, and small coastal bushes capable of withstanding the constant wind and drawing sustenance from the saline soil. Thorny leaves nick the legs of his tracksuit. Beta isn’t intimidated and moves at her steady, tenacious pace, disappearing in stretches where the grasses are high. The trail ends at a granite outcrop made dark by the rain, and he looks for another, higher way through for Beta. The going is treacherous, and he advances one step at a time. His feet slip on smooth rocks and sink ankle-deep into mud. Halfway up the headland, he looks down and sees tide pools shielded from the waves by rocks and covered with thick layers of brown foam. He moves cautiously until the slope levels out and the low scrub gives way again to the grass of a large residential subdivision that is for the most part undeveloped. Near the only house standing, a man shouts something and starts walking toward him. Beta stiffens and growls. The man stops about thirty feet away, adjusts his straw hat, and places his hand on the handle of a large knife hanging from his waist.

You can’t come through here. Private property.

I’m taking the trail to Silveira.

You’ll have to go back.

I won’t walk on your land. I’ll go around it.

You can’t come in here.

The watchman spits on the ground and points at a row of stone markers in the sand a few yards from the waves.

Is that the perimeter?

Yep.

That’s totally illegal.

Not my problem. You’ll have to turn back.

No way.

He clicks his tongue to call the dog and starts heading up the next hill. The man comes after him.

Hey. Don’t make me—

He turns and walks toward the watchman with firm footsteps as he lets the backpack slip off his shoulders. Beta growls again.

Get out of my way and leave me alone, or I swear to God I’ll kill you here and now.

His backpack drops onto the grass, and the watchman takes a step back. He has drawn his knife but is holding it down by his thigh. The two of them study each other for a time, then the watchman leaves without a word.

He puts his backpack on again and resumes his hike. The rain grows heavier, and rivulets of water run down the grassy slope between cowpats. Halfway up, three bay stallions and a white mare snap out of a contemplative daze and enter a state of alert as he approaches. Their manes have been clipped, and their taut bodies look waterproof. He feels a foolish urge to mount them, and one of the stallions stomps its front hoof as if it knows.

On the Ferrugem headland he inspects a few steep trails that lead down through the cliffs and finds a natural shelter covered with cave drawings among the rocks. After carrying Beta down, he spends the first night there, drying off as best he can and curling up in his sleeping bag. He uses a lighter to study the triangular patterns and large circles and diamonds decorating the walls, but the drawings remain indecipherable. He can’t imagine ancient people trying to represent anything but fish, waves, arrows, and celestial bodies, but the geometric shapes in the cave don’t remind him of any of these. They are codes for other things. The cave is dry and clean except for a green plastic bottle and the waxy remains of a white candle that may have been left there by a solitary fisherman or a hermit. When night falls, the darkness is absolute. Waves are breaking nearby, but they sound farther away. Little by little the subterranean rumble and the smell of stagnant seawater make the cavern strangely cozy, and he sleeps peacefully.

He continues heading south for a few days. He hikes up and down hills with the sea and cliffs on his left, and on his right, stretching for miles out to the dark green wall of the Tabuleiro Mountains, a landscape of slopes and flatlands where he sees summer homes, deforested subdivisions, islands of native forest, dunes covered with a dark web of grasses, rice plantations, cattle pastures, lagoons, and dirt roads. When the rain lets up, from higher vantage points he can see the paved lanes of the highway and roadside communities. The tapestry of vivid contrasts comes to life on the rare occasions that the rain stops and the clouds part enough to allow a few rays of sunlight through. Night falls, and the day breaks as always, but he goes for days on end without seeing a shadow. There is no thunder or wind. When he comes to beaches, he crosses them quickly and returns as soon as possible to the hills, valleys, and headlands. He finds the vestiges of fires and campsites in clearings beside trails beaten by the herds of cattle that roam the slopes looking for places to graze. On the surfaces of some beachside rocks are polished circles and longitudinal grooves used by indigenous peoples to sharpen their instruments thousands of years ago. He walks slowly so Beta can keep up and takes long detours to avoid more difficult stretches. Sometimes he carries her over rocks, and sometimes she waits for him to return. She eats her dog food faster than usual and looks surprised when she is finished.

When he gets to Ferrugem Beach, he takes shelter for a few hours at Bar do Zado. He orders a fried pastry and a Coke and drapes his sleeping bag over one of the tables to let it dry out a little. The incessant rain has driven away even the surfers, and the girl at the cash register asks if he is lost and keeps a watchful eye on him the whole time he is there. On Barra Beach a man in a light purple bathrobe smoking a cigar on the second-floor balcony of his house waves when he passes, and he waves back. On the trail to Ouvidor Beach he passes a man in a blue raincoat fishing and finds two arrow tips in a small landslide of sandy soil eroded by the rain. The bed-and-breakfasts and beach bars in the south corner of Rosa Beach are still closed or undergoing renovations. Concrete mixers, shovels, and piles of wood sit idle in flooded, temporarily abandoned building sites. He hasn’t seen a soul all day and doesn’t think twice before stripping off his clothes and using an open-air shower. He manages to sleep, clean and dry, on the deck of a small shopping complex, built over a strip of sand beside the dirt road. In the morning he is awoken by Beta’s barking and sees some cars parked nearby. A surfer is cursing as he tries to do up the zipper on his wetsuit a little farther down the deck. He gets up and offers to help, but the pale, red-haired kid takes a few steps back, says it isn’t necessary, picks up his colorful surfboard, and heads for the water with his zipper still open. The waves are big, and every so often he sees a small, courageous figure in a black wetsuit dropping into a wall of water and tearing the surface of a wave. The rain hasn’t stopped and the shops haven’t opened their doors, but the presence of surfers guided by weather reports, who have probably come a long way to make the most of the portentous swell, indicates that it must be Saturday or Sunday. He realizes that he has lost track of the days.