Blood-drenched Beard

On the first Saturday in July a game of water volleyball is held in the gym pool. It was an idea he had to bring together students who trained at different times, and everyone opted in. They are all there. He bought the net himself and installed it in the shallower part of the pool. The twins, Rayanne and Tayanne, asked for permission to bring a friend and are the first to arrive. Ivana comes and tells him she is not going to play but ends up being convinced to participate and discovers that she is a good setter. Then Jorge, the rheumatologist, and Tiago, with the enlarged breasts, arrive, followed by Jander and Rigotti, a triathlete who trains with him from time to time. He had asked Débora to call the students who had stopped coming to the pool, and some are there, including Amós, the Rastafarian, who is now married to a hippie woman several years older than himself who speaks slowly and coats each gesture and word with a somewhat disturbing tenderness and calm. The gym owner, Saucepan, also participates. Most of the students already know he can’t remember their faces and identify themselves as they greet him. There are so many in attendance that they have to form three teams and play sets of ten points, in which the winning team remains and the losing team is replaced with the one on the sidelines. He isn’t a good player himself, and they spend the morning teasing him about his disastrous attempts at bump passes in the water. Afterward his younger students decide to dunk him. He spends five minutes trying to get away from them. After the game there is going to be a barbecue at Jander and Greice’s house. As he leaves the dressing room, Débora approaches him. She says the students love him. You know that, don’t you? It makes him bashful, and he says she is exaggerating. At the barbecue Jander shows off the power of his sound system, applying several different equalizer settings to Rush and Pink Floyd CDs, and then puts on a DVD of Charlie Brown Jr.’s MTV Unplugged

. Greice comments once again on how well Beta is doing. He visits her every day now, and the vet is more and more confident that she will regain her mobility. Jorge is there with his boyfriend, an American millionaire investor who lives on Silveira Hill and spends half the year in Garopaba and the other half in New York. Everyone has brought meat, and the raw steaks wait their turn to be barbecued, lined up on a wooden platter, which inspires looks of disgust and vegan preaching from Amós’s wife. Only Tracksuit Man and Jander drink heavily, crumpling one can of beer after another. The women have brought red wine. He sticks to sodas himself as he doesn’t like to drink in front of his younger students. At one point he comes out of the bathroom and finds the group gathered on the veranda in a strange silence. Ivana, the spokeswoman, says that everyone there is happy to have him as their swimming instructor and that they forgive him for never remembering their faces. She says he doesn’t need to be ashamed of it because they can tell how much he cares about them, and they are all improving and enjoying swimming more and more. She says they all hope he has a happy life in Garopaba because the town welcomes him with open arms, and he is already a local. Then she says that they all pitched in and bought him a present. The twins appear carrying a paper bag from a sporting goods store. Inside is a Nike windbreaker, for running.

That night after the barbecue he goes to Bonobo’s bed-and-breakfast. Sitting around the kitchen table are Altair, Diego from the gas station, and Jaspion, a large young man with long, straight hair, the son of a Korean father and Brazilian mother. Jaspion lives in Rosa and is a knife maker. He sells his knives, with minutely worked blades and handles of ivory, giraffe bones, and other highly regulated or prohibited materials, for thousands of dollars to collectors and white-arm enthusiasts all over the world. He lives comfortably with his wife and young daughter in a studio-home near the beach and sells only five or six knives a year. Bonobo’s kitchen is hazy with smoke and stinks of Diego’s Indonesian cigarettes and Bonobo’s crappy cigar. Bonobo asks him how his trip to see the police chief in Pato Branco went. He fidgets a little in his chair to reposition the geriatric diaper, which is uncomfortable in the groin area, and narrates his misadventures in the state of Paraná.

Fuck, says Bonobo. God is dead? I couldn’t fuck a chick with that tattooed over her butt.

He replaces two cards and finds himself with three of a kind and a low pair. He doubles the ante. Bonobo folds. Diego folds. Brimming with confidence, Jaspion doubles the ante again, sucking in his top lip, wrinkling his chin, almost smiling, eyes glued to his own cards at all costs. Bluffing, of course. He calls. Jaspion has two high pairs.

Full house.

Fuck, Bonobo, why did you invite this cunt to come and play with us?