Blood-drenched Beard

I’m not sure. You meet half a dozen individuals in your life who make such a strong impression on you that you never forget them. People who give you the creeps. It’s like there’s something evil in them, but it’s an evil that’s only evil in the eyes of mankind, not in the eyes of nature. I remember another man like that who I met a few years back after I sang at a rodeo in São Jerônimo. Know where that is? Down around Pântano Grande, Charqueadas… The day after the rodeo I went to see some steers that a guy there wanted to sell to a friend of mine. The place was quite far out, in the hills. The man there said he had something to show me, a man who lived in a hut at the bottom of the valley. We rode down a craggy slope on horseback, and down at the bottom was this hut made of stone and clay, really old and beaten, almost falling apart, and in it lived an old man, hard to say exactly how old, with really wrinkled, dark skin, white hair down to his shoulders like this… he lived there without anything. Just a teapot and a dagger. He slept with his pigs. But the man had some money hidden somewhere nearby. I don’t know if it was a fortune, but it was a lot for the old guy to have buried. He had a son who had his eye on the money, a son who’d gone to the city and was waiting for his old man to die so he could get his hands on the cash, but the guy didn’t want anything to do with his son. He said he was a good-for-nothing and never wanted to set eyes on him again. He said the son had threatened to kill him and he’d been waiting for the son of a bitch to show up there for months. He had one of those turn-of-the-century derringers, falling to pieces, this big. He showed us the weapon. Rusted through. You could see it couldn’t fire a bullet anymore. It looked pretty sad, but the guy slept clutching his pistol, waiting for God knows how long for a showdown with his son, living there like a wild animal. And there was something in his eye, deep in his little eyes, that you could barely see. He had small, closed, deep-set eyes, but they gave off a fury that sent shivers down your spine. And your granddad gave me the same impression. Not the first time we met. Just the second, here in Garopaba. He’d changed. Don’t ask me what it was. It’s the night of the world. The kind of thing that gives me nightmares.

And do you know what happened to him?

To Gaudério?

To the old man in the hut.

He died hugging his derringer and was eaten by his pigs.

Fuck.

The son found his body but didn’t find his money. How about that?

And what about my granddad? Did you ever hear of him again?

I never saw him again after our fight. The next time I came here I thought it was strange that there was no sign of him. It wasn’t just that he’d disappeared. No one talked about him. No one remembered. But it couldn’t be true ’cause he was well known. People were lying. I don’t know why. I asked, Where’s that son of a bitch that sliced my arm open? I don’t know who you’re talking about. Gaudério. Did he leave town? Kick the bucket? I don’t know who he is, they all said. When you brought the subject up, folks would suddenly go quiet.

Dad said he was killed at a dance. Someone turned out the lights, and they stabbed him to death.

Really?

That’s what they told Dad at the time. He’d caused so much trouble, they decided to get rid of him. And they did it in such a way that no one would ever know who did it. Maybe that’s why to this day everyone pretends that nothing happened.

Makes sense. I didn’t know about that. Did you, Homero?

Nope. I’ve lived here for twenty-five years, and it’s the first time I’ve heard this story. But this place is full of legends. There’s even the ghost of a whale here.

But that kind of explains it, muses Mascarenhas. That could well be what happened. Especially since—

He stops.

Especially since what?

I don’t know if it’s worth mentioning, because I’m not sure if it happened. But someone must have told me back then, or I wouldn’t have remembered it just now. It’s not the kind of thing you dream up. They said Gaudério had killed a girl.

Really? Someone from here?

I don’t know. It was just something that someone said. I understood that it was a young girl. She’d been found dead, and people were saying that he’d done it.

How was she killed?

Kid, I told you, I really don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s true. But I don’t think your granddad was just a thorn in the side of a few people. He may well have done something bad and had it coming, and that’s how they settled the score. At the dance. But don’t take my word for it. I might be wrong. That’s the problem with booze. You get old and can’t remember things.

He sits there thinking about it and can’t say anything else. He had imagined his grandfather many ways but not as a killer, much less as a psychopath. The idea doesn’t sit well in his mind, and his body rejects it.

A girl was killed a few weeks ago in Imbituba, he says suddenly. Did you hear about it?