Blood-drenched Beard

He strokes Beta, who is warm in spite of everything. Suddenly, without warning, he sees with tremendous clarity something that he has wanted to see for a long time and starts to cry with happiness. He wishes Jasmim were here now, and Viviane, and his mother and father, and even Dante, even the people he wishes he could hate but can’t: he wishes they were all here with him now. His dad said it once. You aren’t capable of hating anything, kid. It can’t do you any good. But that’s life, Dad, he answers now staring into the darkness. That’s life. He feels lighter and lighter as he thinks these things and falls asleep leaning against the rock.

It takes him the whole of the next morning to get over the rocks and pick his way around a gorge. The next trail crosses the hill through thick vegetation. It is overgrown with grass and bushes, and he moves forward almost chest deep in the dark green tangle, hewing a path for the dog, who comes limping behind. Little by little his legs grow accustomed to the squelchy mud that has replaced the slippery solidity of the rocks. He mutters to himself from time to time. At the top of the hill the trail comes out above a village and a long beach. The residents watch him from the doors and windows of their houses that sit in a cluster of alleyways at the foot of the hill.

He sees people with bags full of fruit and vegetables leaving an old bus parked at the side of a sandy road. He enters the bus through the back door. In the place of seats are boxes and crates of market produce, and some women with cloth shopping bags are chatting in the middle of the aisle as they smell pineapples, squeeze mangoes, and inspect heads of lettuce. He looks around, and the profusion of colors and sweet aromas makes him dizzy. Other customers have already entered behind him, and he is forced to go with the flow toward the front door. In the closed environment, he realizes that he is wheezing and a little feverish. He gets a bunch of ripe bananas, a pear, and two oranges. The woman behind him knocks over a box of beets, which roll across the floor, and he helps her pick them up. A plump old man with white hair sitting in the driver’s seat weighs the customers’ choices on a pair of scales and takes their money. He places his items in the crate for weighing and rummages through the outside pocket of his wet backpack until he finds his last two coins.

Is this enough?

There’s a bit left over.

Keep the change.

The tabby cat on the wooden deck of an isolated beachfront bar is unperturbed by their presence. He pulls a stool up to a table and eats the fruit, gazing at the steep beach pummeled by heavy rain. He starts talking to himself and the dog and realizes that he shouldn’t stay still for too long or he won’t be able to continue. He stands, takes the steps down to the sand, and walks along the beach to the next hill.

The stormy seas have excavated the dune leading over to the next beach, exposing stone steps that are so regular they look man-made. On the other side a long series of dunes and clumps of coastal scrub hugs the contour of a beach that extends almost as far as the eye can see. He advances at a firm, slow pace, staring into the distance, lightly buffeted by the wind blowing from the ocean. He passes the skeleton of a porpoise or a right whale calf, with a crocodilian skull poking out of the waterlogged sand and a long row of half-buried vertebrae. He can’t imagine what a day without rain is like anymore.

In the middle of the afternoon he arrives at the mouth of a river that flows slowly and mightily like lava toward the sea, dragging tree branches from distant mountains. On the other side is a village, and a few fishermen are attempting a risky crossing on narrow rafts. One of them, wearing a heavy-duty raincoat, agrees to transport him to the other side and asks where he is from, where he is going, and if he needs any help. He gives each question a great deal of thought, as if he hasn’t understood it and is trying to come up with an answer only to be polite. I’ve come from there, he says pointing. I’m hiking around. Following the hills. I’m fine, thanks. Bringing me across the river is already a big help, he says, as his hand is crushed in a good-bye handshake. The fisherman then watches the hirsute figure walk away with the dog limping behind him until he disappears down the trail to the next beach, and the other fishermen come over one by one wanting to know what that was all about.