Blood-drenched Beard

Later, after Lockjaw’s engine has laughed and started and the noise of the car has disappeared into the distance and the fishermen’s dogs have stopped barking and rattling their chains, he opens one of his backpacks in the closet and takes out a photo album. He sits on the floor and flicks through it. There are photos of his father, his mother, Dante, and Viviane. He takes out a photo of his older brother and compares it to one of himself to see once more how different they are. His brother takes after their mother. He looks at photos of his first girlfriend and his favorite cousin, Melissa, who lives in Australia and hasn’t been in touch in months. Photos of a few university friends. Fellow triathletes. He looks at the images and tries to guess who is in them. He is actually capable of getting his brother wrong, or even his parents in some cases, but he has memorized most of the photos in the album, which he considers his most important album, a catalog of his family, social circle, and love life. He gazes at a photo of five sweaty athletes in the early-afternoon sun posing side by side on their racing bikes with Lami Beach in the background and the corner of a fruit stand on the right, each of them holding a different piece of fruit: Maísa with a bunch of bananas, Renato with a slice of watermelon, Breno with a pineapple, himself with an orange skewered on the end of a kitchen knife, and Pedro on the right with some pink grapes. It was one of the group’s last workouts before the Ironman in Hawaii. The people’s names are handwritten on the backs of the photos, at the bottom or right across the picture itself. “FATHER.” “MOTHER.” “PARENTS.” “DANTE.” “VIVIANE”, “ME AND VIVIANE.” “VIVIANE (2ND ON RIGHT) AND FRIENDS.” “TRAVELING SALESMEN CLUB: RENATO, ME, BRENO, MAÍSA, SANDRA, LEILA” hugging by a poolside and “PEDRO” with an arrow pointing at a smiling face in the pool. There are three portraits of himself, all labeled “ME.”

• • •

Thousands of people flock to the main square on the second Wednesday in June, on a freezing cold night, for the opening of the XIth Garopaba Church Fair with a Gian & Giovani concert. The country music duo’s songs have been playing nonstop on the local radio stations, and a five-year-old girl is now singing one at the top of her lungs while swaying on her father’s dancing shoulders. The square itself has disappeared beneath the crowd, the small stage, the main stage with its green, red, and blue spotlights and the dozens of stalls selling arts and crafts, drinks, pine seeds, mulled wine, and endless sweet and savory snacks. The air is filled with the smells of caramel, spices, baked mullet, fried foods, cigarettes, wet earth, minty colognes, and trampled grass. The whole town has turned out. Younger children climb the trees and sit there with their little legs dangling like rotten branches to watch the concert from above the mass of teenage gangs, hand-holding couples, and families advancing as a solid block. Everyone seems eager to see and be seen in the ant colony of the community in celebration, seeking a promised and greatly desired social catharsis. Some people are wearing their best dresses and suits. Heavy earrings and gold watches flash in the dark. Politicians, the disabled, doctors, police officers, fishermen, athletes, couples with prams, tramps, tourists. The town’s crazies are all there, mellowed by the chaos. There are also the bored, those who can’t sleep because of the noise and those who glance around with looks of disapproval or incomprehension. Everyone.

He walks alone holding a cup of mulled wine. He takes short, quick sips, partly because he is anxious about being in the middle of a bunch of people he knows whose faces he cannot recognize and partly because the icy night air cools the steaming mixture of sweet wine, sugar, cachaça, and cloves in a matter of minutes. One of the singers — he isn’t sure if it is Gian or Giovani — asks those who are in love to raise their hands and shout between one song and another. Everyone is in love. He watches the children playing on the plastic slide in the playground and riding around in the cabins of a tiny Ferris wheel as their parents look on and take pictures. Some parents smile and talk to their children, while others are lost in thought. Each cabin of the miniature Ferris wheel is a small, closed plastic cage, each cage is a different color, and the children inside them look frightened, about to fall asleep, or improbable as it may seem, self-conscious about where they are. Other children leap about wildly on trampolines and scamper like rodents through the passages and labyrinths of complex inflatable structures, screeching with laughter and shouting as they chase and flee from one another.