Blood-drenched Beard

The bathroom door is unlocked. Viviane walks past him, goes over to the window, and stands there, staring at the ocean. He sits on the sofa again and remembers her face as he gazes at her long legs and black hair that spills halfway down her back and looks as if it is in motion even when it isn’t, some hairdresser’s magic. He needs to get her to turn around. The blurring will start if he gives it a chance.

Did you come here just to see how I was, or have you got something to tell me?

She turns.

I’m pregnant. You’re going to be an uncle.

How long have you known?

For two months. I’m fifteen weeks along. It’s a boy.

Congratulations. I’m happy for you.

Are you really?

Of course, Viv. You’re happy, aren’t you? You wanted this.

I did.

Then I’m happy too. I’m able to see it independently of everything else. I knew it was going to happen. I knew one day you’d come to me to tell me this. Remember that little piece of paper you signed for me?

What piece of paper?

Before you went to São Paulo to live with him. We were still together. In that café in Moinhos de Vento.

I don’t remember any pieces of paper.

You dated and signed a piece of paper, and I wrote something on it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

He gets up, goes to the wardrobe in the bedroom, and rummages through the contents of a box until he finds the folded piece of paper. He hesitates for a moment. Part of him doesn’t want to show her and would rather tear it up, throw it in the trash, and change the subject. But another part remembers that nothing can be erased. You can’t pretend that something doesn’t exist.

He goes back into the living room and hands it to Viviane. She reads it quickly and looks up with an expression of confusion and disappointment.

Is this a joke? I didn’t know what you had written here.

But you remember that you dated and signed it, don’t you?

Now I do, but what the fuck? If you knew that we were going to break up, if you knew that one day I’d show up to tell you I was pregnant, why didn’t you say so then? Why didn’t you do something?

I did everything I could. Maybe it feels like nothing to you, but I did everything I could. It wasn’t a lot. There wasn’t a lot I could do. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

She walks over, hands the paper back to him, and sits on the sofa.

I really don’t like this. What did you do it for? Seriously, what was your intention? To be able to say “I told you so” or “I knew it” or something like that? Does it make you somehow superior to me? Superior to your brother? Do you know everything that’s going to happen to everyone? Who do you think you are?

No. That’s not it. I think I wrote it down more to assure myself that I wasn’t crazy. So that when it happened, I’d know that I really had seen what was to come. And that there was nothing I could have done. Or you.

Or Dante.

Dante too.

But why did you let me go, then? Why didn’t you try to keep me in Porto Alegre? Why didn’t you come with me?

You know the story as well as I do, Viv.

No, I don’t. You’re the one who knows everything. Help me out here, because I don’t get it. I don’t know how you see things. I don’t know what you’re doing now.

Dante decides to move to São Paulo, and a month later you get a work offer there. You’d dreamed of it for a long time, to get you out of that suffocating little backwater, as you used to say, like a house with a low ceiling that forced you to stoop. And you were right. For someone like you, Porto Alegre is small. I couldn’t go with you at the time because I was training for the Ironman in Hawaii. Which was my dream. There was no way I could just stop and move to São Paulo out of the blue. Then Dante goes and gets a huge apartment somewhere or other and invites us to go and live with him in the beginning, and you ask me if I’d mind if you went on ahead. If I’d mind. Which was the same as asking my permission. I think that was when I saw everything. It was pretty easy to see. Everything that was taking shape at that moment in time, forgetting the little stories we make up in our heads, our desires, the things we’d like to happen, just looking at reality, every single thing had a consequence. It wasn’t a puzzle. Because I knew Dante liked you.

Did he ever tell you that?

No, but he’s my brother. And I could see how much you admired him. Especially after he published his book. Or the second or the third, I don’t know. The one that did well. I read that crap. I recognized everyone in it. Friends of mine were characters in it. The only part of our adolescence that he didn’t devour with his fanciful imagination was me. He had the decency to leave me out. All the rest is there. And he calls it fiction.

Well, technically—