Blood-drenched Beard

The sun has already risen behind the hill, but it doesn’t seem all that willing to warm up the winter morning. He takes the dog out to do her business on the grass along the seaside trail and then takes her into the water and exercises her for twenty minutes. A boat arrives laden with fish, and the fishermen greet him with nods and stare at him from afar. Cecina comes walking down the trail and stops to watch him and Beta up to their necks in water. She says good morning, laughs, and shakes her head from side to side. She treats him cordially with a smile on her face, without much chitchat, as if he were a harmless lunatic. Back in the apartment, he gives Beta a warm shower, has one himself, makes some coffee, and sits in the sunlight on Baú Rock, looking at the beach with a steaming cup in his hands and Beta lying beside him. He runs his fingers over his oily, still-wet beard and feels his mustache hairs creeping over his top lip. Beta stands up and lies down again as if trying to show that she’s making an effort. She is able to move around with more ease. She is already attempting to run a little but still can’t. Light gray downy fur is growing back over the areas shaved by the vet. The missing piece of ear makes her look cute. He still has to lock her in the apartment when he goes to the pool to teach, but he always comes straight home after work and takes her out again. Débora gave her a doggy bed as a present. He thought it was unnecessary, but Beta likes it, and the bed protects her from the cold.

Late in the morning he locks Beta inside and rides his bike down to the fishing village. Another boat has just arrived, and a fisherman is filleting hake and flounder on a wooden cutting board. Gulls and vultures are having a jolly time with shark heads, and tabby cats prowl around the sheds in search of something that appeals to their finicky tastes. A blue plastic drum full of fish offal stinks in the sun. Locals are warming themselves in the sun, sitting on the steps of their houses. The Caminho do Sol travel agency is closed. An old man standing in the doorway of the house next door says they are closed on Mondays. He thinks a little, gazing at the office through the window, then leaves. He rides the entire length of the seaside boulevard and the main avenue to the turnoff to Ferrugem. He pedals down the winding road, passing houses and schools, swamps and thick tangles of vegetation, the sparkling lagoon and hillsides studded with large empty houses, grocery stores, and cattle farms, looking for any woman who might be Jasmim and any red motorbike with a low cylinder capacity, until he gets to the beach, where there are only two women sunbathing and a child digging a channel in the wet sand. He rides back to the entrance to Garopaba, stops at a self-service restaurant, and fills a plate with rice, beans, and grilled fish. His afternoon shift at the gym drags along at a torturously slow pace. The first chance he gets when the pool is empty, he goes to get a juice at the snack bar, and Mila asks what’s wrong. He doesn’t go into detail but asks what she thinks is the best way for a guy to get a woman to like him. The Chilean answers in her melodic mixture of Spanish and Portuguese that she doesn’t know, but she thinks it’s best never to go to any trouble to get someone to like you. Things that require that much effort cause problems later.