Blood-drenched Beard

The pool room looks much smaller from the inside than from the outside and is filled with white steam and the strong smell of chlorine and clay tiles. He breathes in the warm, moist, slightly caustic air. It feels like home to him. In indoor-pool areas he always remembers the sessions he had with a nebulizer to treat a brief bout of bronchitis when he was a child: the green plastic mask, the noisy little machine like a small pool pump, his mother looking on approvingly as she oversaw things. The semi-Olympic pool is the narrowest he has ever seen, with only three lanes demarcated with lines of navy blue tiles and still without floating lane dividers. There is a swimmer at each end. Both are finding it hard to breathe properly in the choppy water. The swimmer on the left is older and fatter and wearing a yellow snorkel, goggles, and flippers. He is the one responsible for the explosive sounds he had heard earlier. The man raises his right arm completely out of the water, very slowly, as if trying to project his hand as far as possible from his body, holds it out of the water for a moment, then brings it down with supersonic speed, like the arm of a catapult, slamming it into the surface of the pool with a deafening bang and splashing water several yards away. His left arm doesn’t even leave the water properly and makes an atrophied movement that generates zero propulsion. If it weren’t for the flippers on his feet, the guy would barely leave the spot. The world’s swimming pools are full of these comical, extreme cases that can rarely be remedied. The swimmer on the right is younger and swims well. His rhythm is firm, and he takes a breath every four strokes, but his legs are scissor-kicking and his right arm is coming down a little too far to the side. He turns swiftly and fluidly, surfaces quickly, crosses the pool again, and stops at the edge, panting, consulting his watch to count the interval before his next sprint. Twenty seconds. He is doing a set of one-hundred-meter sprints, and he does each in ninety seconds, some in eighty-eight, eighty-seven. As he watches the man swim, he can’t help but count the seconds in his head. Swimmer’s tic. Over the years his inner clock has become precise, almost infallible.

• • •

A barber by the name of Zé calls about his Ford Fiesta early one Friday afternoon. They meet at the gas station. Zé looks under the hood, inspects the engine, and says he can pay that day. They go straight to Laguna in the car itself to transfer the ownership of the vehicle and arrange for the deposit. The whole operation takes less than two hours, and soon they are back in Garopaba. They park in front of the barber’s shop. He hands the new owner the car key and orders a Coke at the bar adjoining the barber’s. Zé offers him a shave.

Thanks, but I’m letting it grow.

Want a trim?

A what?

A trim? Trim your beard. Tidy it up.

But tidy it up how? Cut it shorter?

Haven’t you ever trimmed your beard?

I’ve never grown it before.

A drunk with a shaved head who is drinking beer alone at the counter slurs something incomprehensible and stares into space. His moist eyes shine in his puffy red face.

How long have you been growing it? Three months?

Two and a half.

You need to trim it. So it’ll grow right.

Nah, don’t worry about it.

It’s for free.

But what’re you going to do?

I’ll just shorten it a little with the scissors and shape it here at your neck and here on your face.

Zé points to where he intends to shape it. He is a man of almost seventy, short and gray-haired with sun-ravaged skin. Zé appears to be laughing inwardly, and he realizes that other locals have given him the same impression.

Okay, you can shape it then, but don’t take any length off it.

The operation takes some time. The reclining barber’s chair is in the center of the modest shop, and a window lets in the glare from outside. There is a wooden bench under the window, a small chest of drawers, and a square mirror in an orange plastic frame hanging on the wall. There are no work tools in sight. Zé comes back from the adjoining bathroom with a bowl of warm water and a traditional razor, applies a warm towel to his face, and takes it off only when it starts to cool. Zé applies lather to his neck and cheeks with a shaving brush and passes the razor fastidiously, with long intervals between strokes. He gazes out the window as Zé works. The drunk from the bar stumbles through the door and across the street. He gets into the cabin of a white flatbed truck parked on the other side, starts the engine, and drives off.

You living in Garopaba?

Yeah, I moved here not long ago.

Do you surf?

No. I just swim.

What did you come here for?

To live. I didn’t come to surf or to run away from something. Isn’t that what they say everyone comes here for?

If someone said it, it wasn’t me. I don’t know anything.

Next Monday I start teaching swimming at the gym.

But do you swim in the sea?

Yes.