Blood-drenched Beard

The running group now has four members. The other three were brought by Sara. Denise, her best friend from the pharmacy, is overweight but has a lot of willpower and is immune to tiredness. Clóvis wears glasses and seems like an intellectual sort. He doesn’t know how to explain what he does for a living but he has a state-of-the-art watch with a heart-rate monitor and a GPS that costs several hundred dollars. Celma is a slender, elderly woman who runs a home bakery business specializing in banana and muesli pies and delivers her wares to her customers by bicycle. They all meet three times a week in front of the Embarcação Restaurant at seven in the morning with still-sleepy bodies and tight muscles. Sara always gets out of her car in the same way. She activates her car alarm and approaches the group with a focused, studied air, as if she cannot forget that she has an important part to play on a stage. By the time she has walked down the ramp, she is already in character. She loosens up, laughs with her eyes, and shakes her ponytail, clapping her hands and encouraging the group. Shall we go, then? Let’s shake a tail feather?

Clóvis says he woke up with a dwarf clinging to each leg. He grumbles that today isn’t going to be easy. He coordinates his students’ stretching, and Sara shows off her brand-new Asics running shoes filled with cushioning gel.

How’re your shins, Sara?

Much better!

She squats down and massages the muscles along her bones as he taught her.

They’re better, but they still hurt a bit.

Are you doing your exercises at the gym?

Yep.

Let’s take it slowly. You’re going to use this here today.

He shows her a watch with a heart-rate monitor and explains how she should position the chest strap right under her breasts.

Your mission today is to control your heart rate. Let’s keep it at a hundred and forty, okay? If it drops below that, you pick up the pace. If it passes, it you reduce it.

Can you give me a hand?

She shows him the strap. It appears to be in the right place.

What’s the problem?

Is this the right height?

He pushes it up a quarter of an inch.

There.

The ocean is choppy. Much of the sky is covered in clouds, but orange streaks indicate that the sun has just risen behind the hill. An enormous catamaran is anchored about five hundred yards from the beach with its sails down and its mast conducting the rise and fall of the waves. The group sets out running along the sand, slowly. Sara’s watch beeps. Her heart rate is already one hundred and fifty-five, and they slow their pace. Clóvis takes off ahead of the group. He lets him go. At the end of the beach, they take the road to Siriú, which has a short paved section and then is all dirt road and sand. A kid shoos chickens from the patio of a roadside hut. Every two or three minutes a car or motorbike goes past, and he insists that they all run single file along the edge of the road and keep an eye out on bends. Sara finds her pace, and Denise accompanies her, puffing loudly. Clóvis has left them all behind, and Celma, who has yet to build up her endurance, has started to tire. He tells the girls to go ahead and stays with Celma, alternating between running and walking. Celma says it is a blessing to live here and to be able to go for an early-morning jog in such a beautiful place. She says that God made her go through a lot before she arrived here. He encourages her, and she tells him her whole life story.

When they get back, Sara is sporting the flaming-red cheeks that are her trademark. Her face is covered in sweat and visibly giving off steam. She says that her husband, the dentist, wants to have a barbecue at their place, and the group is invited. Then she takes his arm and pulls him aside as if she wants to tell him a secret.

We still haven’t settled one thing.

What?

How you’re going to charge for the lessons.

I’m still not sure. We’ll talk about it later.

But don’t you have a price?

I’m going to think about it. We’ll talk about it later.

It’s just that it’s been almost a month, and they want to know how much they’re going to have to pay.

Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk about it later.

She looks frustrated but lets it go for the time being.

After the students have gone, he gets the backpack he left hidden behind the wall of a house and puts his running shorts, T-shirt, and shoes in it, leaving on the swimming trunks he is wearing underneath. He gets his goggles and heads out for a swim. The water is cold but bearable. The wind is blowing hard enough to whip up the waves, and he heads through the choppy sea toward the catamaran, planning to swim around it, return to the beach, and repeat the circuit until he is tired. He doesn’t want to swim to Preguiça Beach, as it might anger the fishermen, who are still exercising their right to exclusive access to the bay during the mullet season.