Blood-drenched Beard

It’s not reincarnation — it’s rebirth. It has more to do with the propagation of states of mind through time. What you understand to be your mind, which is really an illusion, also continues acting in the world after your physical death and comes back to manifest itself. They’re cycles. The mind continues on, mixes, recombines, and reemerges.

But my mind isn’t mine, man. You just said so yourself. How can I say that some part of me will be reborn sometime in the future? It doesn’t make sense. It’s just things mixing and recombining.

So we have a materialist swimmer. In which case I think it’s funny that you’re so worried about what your dead father would think about what you have or haven’t done with his dog. Since death is death. I mean, if that’s how it is, why worry? Why not be selfish and wild and live it up as much as possible until you die a little desperate?

’Cause it’s important. ’Cause only an asshole wouldn’t care. Death isn’t an excuse to be an asshole.

We have an existentialist-materialist swimmer.

You making fun of me?

No. I’m still a bit drunk. So are you. Go on.

I don’t know if I agree with this idea of yours that I can know what the best decision is based only on the amount of suffering that it does or doesn’t cause. Suffering isn’t always an indicator of what is best or worst. Sometimes the right thing to do causes suffering. Suffering is bad, but it’s a part of life.

Now try to decide the right thing to do based on those principles. Good luck.

Bonobo stands and goes to check the messages on his cell phone.

Altair texted me. He left your place and is back at the kiosk to finish knocking it down.

Shit, I just remembered I left my bike there.

I’ve got to buy things for breakfast. I can give you a lift in Lockjaw.

Nah, I’ll find my own way back.

I insist. It’ll be my good deed for the day. My debt is big, swimmer. I’ve got an overdraft, credit cards covering credit cards, loans, money in my underpants, everything. I’ll be paying it off for many lifetimes. Besides, the road’s beautiful this time of day.

• • •

Before the long weekend in early May, he comes across a week-old edition of a local newspaper with news of a murder stamped across the front page. It says that the body of a sixteen-year-old girl from Praia da Pinheira has been found in some vegetation near Highway BR-101, just north of Paulo Lopes, a few miles past the turnoff to Garopaba. Her eyes and lips are missing, and there are clear signs of strangulation, the probable cause of death. The forensic expert suspects or wants to believe that the mutilations on the victim’s face were made after death, and the missing body parts have not been found. She wasn’t wearing a blouse, but it still hasn’t been confirmed if there was any sexual violence. There is also considerable evidence that she was dragged, leading the police to believe that she was murdered elsewhere, probably in an area of dense vegetation and rocks, then moved by one or more people who couldn’t or didn’t want to carry her and dragged her instead. The story was published two days after the discovery of the body. A photograph shows the victim covered with a small, light-colored blanket or sheet. All that can be seen of her are her hands with bent fingers, wrists, and part of her arms, up by her head like a baby in a crib. When he looks at the photo, he suddenly imagines the girl’s face under the blanket or sheet like a hideous flashback in a horror movie, and the image haunts him for a few days. Experts have discarded the theory that her eyes and lips were eaten by an animal because of the precision of the wounds: almost clinical incisions, made with a sharp object. The girl told her parents that she was going camping with friends at a waterfall in the region, and her friends actually did go camping but said she hadn’t shown up at the agreed time and place so they had gone without her. The police are working on the hypothesis of a revenge crime but stress that they are still examining all the evidence and anything is possible. The story doesn’t go into any more detail.