Blood-drenched Beard

He realizes he is dripping onto the floor and goes to eat in the small covered area outside. He gives half of his second pasty to the dog, pays, and starts walking along the edge of the road toward Garopaba, sticking out his thumb to pickups, trucks, and old cars, but no one pulls over, and he soon stops looking over his shoulder every time he hears the drone of an engine. Near speed bumps and pedestrian crossings, drivers slow down and glance curiously at the bearded man and dog walking in the rain. Chances are he knows some of the people heading for Garopaba, but he’d never be able to recognize anyone through the fogged-up windows of a moving vehicle. Just in case, though, he meets every gaze with a smile and a wave. A woman smiles back but doesn’t stop and another gives him a piercing look of indifference. One man is about to pull his van over but decides against it midmaneuver and steps on the accelerator. One or two miles later he spots Branca Rock on his left and decides to leave the highway and continue along the dirt road to Encantada.

He is surprised by the abruptness of nightfall and takes shelter in a garage under construction next to an empty house not far off the road. He can see car headlights passing in the distance, but all he can hear is the water dripping from the roof and the desperate croaking of toads in the flooded land behind the house. Beta insists on gnawing on one of her back paws, clicking her teeth, and panting. He lies down in his sleeping bag, but for the first time in days he doesn’t feel sleepy. He rolls onto his back, puts his hands behind his head, and tries to make out the wooden beams of the roof in the darkness. The cold air has a pleasant smell of wet cement that reminds him of the garage he liked to spend time in as a child. His favorite songs start appearing one after another in his head, and he is surprised to discover that they are still intact in his memory. He sings quietly and little by little raises his voice until he is belting it out in the choruses. They are songs that his mother and father used to listen to when he was young. He sees his mother as a young woman singing the sad verses of “Mucuripe,”* as she trims the pink azaleas and white germanders in the garden of their old house in Ipanema on a Sunday afternoon with the record playing at a high volume in the living room. His father preferred tango and gaucho music, and as a result he is able to hum the melody of a few Gardel hits and sing a number of popular folk songs from beginning to end. He sings “Veterano,” the eighties classic,* in counterpoint to the screeching of the toads and crickets. The louder he sings, the warmer his body gets. He has never again heard songs as beautiful as the ones his parents used to listen to. Whatever became of those records? They were divided up when his parents divorced. His father kept his, of that he is sure. No one remembered the records. It upsets him to think that they may have been sold for peanuts or given to Dante. His brother was obsessed with old blues songs in his adolescence and for many years listened to nothing but blues and underground or indie bands that hadn’t yet found mainstream success. English singers whining that all it does is rain on their heads. And Viviane was the only person he had ever met who liked classical music so much that she frequently went to hear the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra and dragged him along to recitals. She knew more about the pieces and composers than the programs did. To him, it was an ambiguous experience. Sometimes he’d leave the concert hall feeling that he’d been swept away, but he didn’t care if he never heard anything like it again. For some reason his ear was unable to retain the music. He didn’t have a single word to describe his impressions, couldn’t tell the difference between Bach and Mozart, and had only a vague notion that there was that famous piece by Beethoven. And yet one piece in particular has never left him. Just one, the one Viviane said was her favorite and which she referred to as “my Chopin nocturne.” That piece is me

, she used to say. He hums it softly now, most definitely off key, but the melody resonates in all its lunar placidity, with precise piano notes, in the chamber of his imagination.