Blood-drenched Beard

The next day he climbs the steep trail up to the top of Branca Rock. He discovers that behind the small escarpment visible from the road is a long wall of rock streaked with lichen. At the top he finds a very beautiful woman in a leotard and tracksuit practicing yoga. He puts Beta down after carrying her up the last difficult stretch of trail and looks at the woman, not entirely sure what he is seeing. She is sitting in a strange cross-legged position, completely wet, with her short black hair slicked back on her head. His footsteps finally rouse her from her meditative trance, and they stare at each other for a moment, not really understanding each other’s presence there. He gets the last two apples from his backpack, and they eat them together and talk. She tells him she is on a retreat at a nearby meditation center and explains that they are sitting on the exact site of one of the biggest energy portals in South America. You can feel it, can’t you? The first inhabitants of the region used to speak of a wagon of light that left the lagoon in the south and crossed the sky until it disappeared behind Branca Rock. She shows him the path of the wagon with her pointed finger. Even blurred in the distance by the rain, the landscape is immense. Beyond the highway the swamps and waterlogged fields make everything down below look as if it has become a giant lagoon, and the dunes and hills of Ferrugem appear as ghostly contours against the phosphorescent gray sky. He says good-bye to the woman, takes the trail back down, and continues toward the hills behind Encantada.

The dirt road passes an old sawmill with wooden gears powered by water, and an ox-drawn manioc flour mill. Children in blue and white uniforms carrying umbrellas come out of a tiny municipal school and point at him, laughing and whispering shamelessly. The lampposts end at two wooden houses surrounded by vegetable gardens and pastures fenced off with barbed wire. After this the trail disappears, and he doesn’t see anyone else for days.

On his second morning lost in these hills, he is awoken by warm sunlight. Birds sing and swoop through the air, narrowly missing one another. Colors pulse. There are shadows. He takes off his jacket and T-shirt and feels the sun on the top of his head, nose, shoulders. Lizards with enormous tails warm their blood lying on the rocks, gazing upward like martyrs. He spreads out his clothes and sleeping bag on the rocks, takes the soap, and looks for a stream to bathe in. The dog goes with him, snapping at flies, trying to catch them midflight. He fills his water bottle and remains naked in the midday sun until he is dry. Half of the sky is blue. Butterflies and cicadas vie for space in the underbrush, and the air slowly fills with buzzing in a variety of timbres. Blades of grass sway as crickets land on them. A tiny bush is covered in red wasps that don’t look like anything he has seen before with his own eyes or in photographs or documentaries. He crouches down and watches them for a long while. From time to time they all move a fraction of an inch in perfect synchronicity, reconfiguring their occupation of the bush. He looks around and hasn’t a clue where he is. He knows more or less where he came from and where he needs to go from here. A fertile smell wafts up from the moist soil warmed by the sun. Hairy black bumblebees hover in the air, pollinating orchids. The overcast half of the sky starts to encroach on the blue half, and he can hear thunder in the distance. He decides to move on and walks along the crest of the hill, picking his way through the vegetation.

In the short space of time between nightfall and the return of the rain, he comes across a valley of low scrub covered with a luminous mist of fireflies. He doesn’t dare move, as if a single footstep might scare off the thousands of bugs all at once and break the spell. Large raindrops start to fall, and the little dots of green light slowly disappear.

He improvises shelter beneath a leafy tree and in the middle of the night is awoken by the dog howling. She is a short distance away, and he can’t see her. It is the first time he has heard it, and he feels strangely guilty, as if he were spying on her in a moment of intimacy. Her howls are long and far apart, and there is no answer.

At the end of the next day, he realizes that he is walking along the ridge of Freitas Hill. To his left he sees the streets and houses of Paulo Lopes and on his right Costa do Macacu and Siriú Lagoon. Somewhere nearby must be the land that Santina’s children will inherit. He spends another night out in the open. It no longer bothers him that he is wet, and the hunger that has clawed at his stomach over the last few days has disappeared. The following day he continues walking from one hilltop to the next with plodding footsteps, followed by the dog a short distance behind him, avoiding roads and plantations, until he is close to the village center of Siriú Beach.