The fishermen don’t talk much to him. Everyone he has tried to talk to about his grandfather’s death now ignores him. Some watch him with hostile looks as he walks through the village center, while others greet him with an exaggerated friendliness. At times he worries that he is being paranoid. He isn’t really sure who is who and has stopped asking questions because he is starting to feel scared.
Often, through the shutters, he overhears the conversations of fishermen or kids who come to smoke pot or sell drugs on the stairs next to Baú Rock. The fishermen’s topics of conversation are as infinite as they are unfathomable. Disputes over the division of the mullet catch, insults and effrontery, village gossip.
Another day, returning from one of his morning runs to Siriú, he stops for a swim and a stretch near the Embarcação Restaurant and sees a woman stretching by the wooden fence next to the ramp down to the beach. He approaches her and asks if she minds if he gives her a suggestion. From close up he sees that she has slightly Asian-looking eyes and milky-white skin behind her rosy cheeks. She is covered in sweat from head to toe. She has no dissonant features, and he doesn’t find anything that might help him recognize her in the future. She is stretching the backs of her legs, and he teaches her to point her supporting leg forward and straighten her torso, holding the toe of the leg she is stretching with both hands, which she is able to do without any difficulty once he has shown her how. She recognizes that she is stretching the muscle differently now. Her name is Sara and she is a pharmacist. She works in one of the town’s many pharmacy chains. She mentions her husband, who is a dentist. They both graduated a few years ago in Porto Alegre and have been in Garopaba since the previous year, motivated by the dream that brings so many dentists, pharmacists, physiotherapists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and small-business owners here from capital cities: to be an independent professional living a simple life by the sea, surfing and sunbathing every week, earning less but happy, with space in the garden and on the sand to let their Belgian shepherds, Labradors, and future offspring run free. Sara started running when she moved there but is already thinking of giving up because she is experiencing strong, chronic pain in her shins. She shows him where it hurts. When he presses on the sides of her tibia, she shrieks and jumps. It appears to be a fairly serious case of shin splints, and he offers to give her some strengthening exercises to do at the gym. And it would be a good idea to ice the region and rest up for at least two weeks. She thanks him and leaves in a brand-new economy car parked on the waterfront, which greets its owner with a shrill beep. Two days later a woman strikes up a conversation with him at the gym, but he only recognizes her about five minutes later when she mentions the pain in her shins. He teaches her to stretch and strengthen her lower leg muscles with exercises. Because she attends another gym closer to her house, they arrange to meet and exchange phone numbers. He agrees to be her running coach three times a week starting the next week in front of the Embarcação, bright and early. She has a friend who also runs and is interested in working with a coach. She suggests that they start putting together a running group.
Some mornings he forgets any modest ambition he may have and doesn’t know how he ended up there. He thinks that deep down there is nothing to uncover or understand no matter what. Mornings like the cloudy one when he sits for a while outside the window with the dog beside him and watches a furious northeasterly whip up the water, which is somewhere between blue and green, with no shine, as if seen through a polarizing filter. The waves explode on the rocks in fans of meringue-white spray, and the thick drops wet his feet and give off a perfume of salt and sulfur. Then the wind turns without warning. Its invisible force reconfigures the entire landscape in moments. Blowing from the south, it stretches the ocean’s agitated surface toward the horizon as if smoothing a crumpled sheet over a bed. The silence contains something of the tension of the previous moment. The water becomes smooth and glossy, and the waves form long, gentle rows that break near the beach, lifting up crests of vapor against the sunlight that has just appeared out of nowhere. The filmlike surface slides over the waves in the opposite direction. The ocean recedes, the exposed strip of beach grows and the temperature drops a little. The sun comes out and encourages a group of kids to go swimming in front of the rock. The four boys, wearing shorts and no T-shirts, quickly dive into the water. They jump off the wharf and swim near the rocks, swearing at one another. The two girls are about twelve or thirteen and walk over the rocks with ease. One is wearing a bikini, and the other, in a white dress with a triangular-shaped hem, has an upturned nose and high forehead. They take red lollipops out of a bag and sit on the rock. The one in the white dress turns her head and briefly looks at him for the first and last time with honest disinterest, emanating at once a precocious sexuality and the profound boredom that prevents her from using it. The boys splash water on them and try to pull them in. They tolerate it as if it were no more than a fleeting interruption and quickly return to their lollipops and monosyllabic conversation. Then the girl in the dress stands and climbs down to a larger rock at the water’s edge. The tame waves wash over her feet. She stares at the sea and the boys playing in the water as if joining them were an inevitability, an implicit obligation of her female existence. The white dress is removed with resignation, folded, and carefully placed on a rock. She turns and looks at her friend. In agreement, the two of them go to meet their destiny. They enter the water at the same time in lookalike black bikinis and are immediately surrounded by the boys. They get water splashed in their faces and are grabbed and dunked mercilessly. The boys fall about laughing, and the girls resist but end up laughing too, the same way that adults laugh when they feel like children. From where he is, he can see the eyes of the girl who was wearing the white dress lit by the reflected sunlight and notices that they are exactly the same color as the ocean that day, the same coppery green and the same translucence that, in the case of the sea, allows him to see pieces of seaweed and little clouds of sand hovering at the bottom. In her case he can’t tell. They are big eyes. He can see them well in spite of the fact that she never looks at him, just as horses and birds watch you without ever looking at you.
• • •
The Mailer Circus arrives in town in the third week of May. A car drives around town endlessly announcing its presence from a loudspeaker, and posters appear on lampposts and supermarket bulletin boards. Dália has been complaining that she hasn’t seen much of him and that he no longer answers her messages, so to show that he is making an effort, he offers to take her and Pablito to the Saturday-night show. There is also an element of personal curiosity in it. As a child and teenager, he was taken by his mother to see a few plays and dance productions, and his father took him to the Expointer cattle shows, to see the depressed Simba Safári animals and the noisy stock-car races at the Tarumã Speedway, and once or twice a year he’d watch Van Damme or The Lion King at the movies, but he never went to the circus. He stops off at Delvina’s grocery store on Saturday afternoon to pick up three bonus vouchers that reduce the price of adult tickets to five reais and children’s ones to three. The piece of porous paper in black and magenta with the face of a clown in the center promises The Brother Show, Flying Trapeze Artists, Beautiful Girls, Clowns, Jugglers, Aerial Silk, Contortionists, Los Bacaras (International Attraction), Globe of Death with 3 Motorbikes, Spiderman Live, and Crazy Taxi. The moon is shining in the cool night sky, and the popcorn stands trail the aromas of caramel and butter through the air. He meets Dália and Pablito in the main square, in front of the post office. Dália has the night off work and is smiling, beside herself with excitement. She gazes at everything with unbridled fascination. She appears to have suddenly forgotten that she was feeling ignored by him but scolds him nevertheless for not having accepted her friendship request on Facebook, a sign of disrespect. He hasn’t logged on to Facebook for three months. People are converging toward the large, circular blue and yellow big top that has gone up on the block of land behind the municipal health clinic. Pablito wants to see the lion. The circus doesn’t have a lion, but he answers mysteriously so as not to dash the boy’s hopes. Do you really think there’ll be a lion? Yes, Mama said so! cries Pablo, jumping up and down. And a bullet-man! We’ll see, we’ll see, he says. Dália tells him not to worry because the kid’ll love it all, he likes everything and couldn’t care less about promises, maybe it’s even a problem, she thinks he might have ADD, do you think he’s got ADD? They say you’ve got to treat it from a young age. Her hand brushes his arm as they walk, and he doesn’t know if he should hold her hand in front of other people, in front of her son. He is afraid of violating the local codes of social conduct. He is the Goggles Guy. Dália is wearing high heels and shorts. Her calves glisten with moisturizer. He has never seen her so made up. He feels like kissing her but stifles the urge. The back of a pink truck has been converted into a ticket booth, and a splendid young woman with glitter on her cheeks, glossy lips, and a blue butterfly mask painted around her eyes takes his bonus vouchers and money and hands him tickets through the little window. She must be one of the Beautiful Girls. Two boys of about sixteen dressed up as clowns are planted at the entrance not doing anything, in neutral, watching the audience arrive. They pass through a corridor of stalls selling candy apples, cotton candy, hot dogs, popcorn, and churros and arrive in an open space with chemical toilets, trailers, and old cars in a dreadful state. There is a first-generation Chevrolet Opala, a VW Beetle, a good old Ford Belina, a Chevrolet Caravan, and an incredible beaten-up red Volkswagen Passat from the seventies, proud to still exist. The ropes holding up the food tent have been tied to the chassis of an old brick-colored Scania 110 truck that itself looks like an exotic animal with rounded, elephantine contours. Dália wants a candy apple, and Pablito wants cotton candy. He orders a churro for himself. A short time later, beneath circus tents, a huge white horse and three llamas looking rather tense about all the activity chew on things and contribute to the omnipresent stench of manure and quadrupeds. It is almost time for the show, and they hurry into the main tent. They choose a place amid hundreds of plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle around the ring, which has a bulky purple and silver curtain. Dália takes off her jacket, sways her shoulders, left bare by a strapless blouse, and hums the chorus of the romantic country song playing over the loudspeaker. Families are attending the show all together: adults with grandparents and rows of children all holding hands in tow, young mothers with babies. The family groups are counterbalanced by gangs of hyper adolescents messing with anything that moves. Boys with gel-sculpted quiffs, jeans with zippers all over them, and watches borrowed from their dads strut around girls with wet hair, daring little dresses, and six-inch platform clogs. A recording says: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the fabulous Mailer Circus. The opening song has been taken from some American film studio’s jingle. The curtains open. The spectacle begins with the International Attraction: Los Bacaras. The three trapeze artists in gold-sequined costumes scale a mast performing choreography to the simultaneous narration of a ringmaster who treats the performers as nonhuman, if not slightly subhuman. They greet the audience… like this! he cries as the three artists stretch out their bodies parallel to the ground, which isn’t at all easy to do from a muscular point of view but doesn’t get a rise from the crowd. But right after this three clowns come in wearing suspenders and enormous colorful shoes, giant blazers with buttons the size of compact discs, and skull masks from a popular TV show. In a matter of seconds the audience has been won over by the stylized violence of old cartoons and the lewd jokes of Saturday-night television. When the house gets messy, you can call a cleaner, when a girl gets married, she thinks about the wiener! The children’s laughter is constant and explodes with each new joke. Some laugh so hard they cry. The ringmaster announces the jugglers. A man comes in throwing batons into the air while a dancer gyrates around him. The soundtrack of the number is a fast Eurodance song, and Dália closes her eyes, raises her arms, and starts dancing in her seat. Fuuuuuck, this is awesome? she shouts, and only now does he realize that she is high. What are you on? Acid, she says with an ecstatic smile. Then she goes serious and opens her eyes wide as if trying to sober up. He is irritated but doesn’t say anything now. He is overcome by the conviction that he needs to end the relationship without delay, preferably tonight. He won’t be able to take an interest in her life. He won’t be able to be patient with her. He doesn’t think he’ll truly be able to love her, or at least not for very long. He admires her tenacity and finds comfort in her beauty, but they don’t have much else to offer each other beyond what they already have. He doesn’t like this fascination with parties, drugs. Any day now, and it won’t be long, he’ll end up hating himself. He grabs her hair from behind, from the roots, like he did at the party the night they met. Dália likes it. She raises her head and purrs, half-smiling, spaced out. Pablito is glued to the show. Five batons… Perfect! says the ringmaster just as the juggler drops one. The man picks up the baton and tries again. He looks bored rather than focused. It’s the artist seeking perfection! says the ringmaster. The audience grows tense, in total silence, and breaks into applause when the juggler succeeds. Pablito claps slowly and looks at him. Do you really think it’s a good idea to take acid when you go out with your kid? She shrugs it off. It’s okay, she says, looking at him as if it is obvious, as if everyone alive has already taken acid and knows it’s no problem, for Christ’s sake. The juggler makes another mistake, this time with the balls. Oh no! It’s very difficult, almost impossible! But he seeks perfection! Then on comes Jardel, the Bird Man, who leaps and twirls from elastic ropes hanging from the roof, to the sound of New Age music. A human whirlwind! It is every man’s dream to fly through the sky! Stéfany, the Aerial Silk specialist, appears in a tight red vinyl bodysuit with gold detailing. She shakes her bleached ponytail and winds and unwinds herself in the silk several feet above the ground, simulating falls that make the audience gasp. The clowns come back on and announce the NASA Special Attraction, a Secret Super Machine! A tiny car made from the front and back of a Fiat 147 welded together is the centerpiece of several misadventures and gives the audience a number of frights involving bangs, smoke, and a radiator that squirts water. In the interval Pablito asks to see the animals again. Dália goes to the bathroom, and he takes the boy to the animal tents. There they find a weary ostrich and a camel that at first looks like an odd-shaped lump in the half-light but suddenly clambers up, when they approach the fence, and gives them an expectant stare, perhaps thinking it is about to be fed. Pablito is transfixed by the large creature with two mounds wobbling on its back and a curved, jowly neck. Stinky, isn’t it? he says to Pablito, holding his nose. Do you know what those things on its back are called? Humps. It stores water in them so it can survive in the desert. An old drunk also walks over and stands there staring at