Tubarão means “fierce father” in Tupi-Guarani, not “shark,” as it does in Portuguese. It’s in the Garopaba history books. I can lend you one. Anyway, people believe that the Jesuits left silver objects buried here and there, gold coins, that kind of thing. Some fifteen years ago they found a kind of vase in the shape of a ram’s head buried in Encantada. It was made out of a metal that looked like bronze, and no one could say what it was. Have you ever heard of the Caminho do Rei? There are lots of bed-and-breakfasts and gated communities named after it these days. It’s a trail in the hills that still exists and was used by the Jesuits and colonizers. It had its origins in an indigenous path that came from the Pacific, crossed the whole Inca Empire, and ended here on the coast of Santa Catarina. Many legends date back to that era and — he interrupts her and asks what it has to do with her problems. Well, I’d heard of this legend about the buried treasure and the three dreams, and maybe for that very reason I ended up dreaming that there was treasure buried under the steps leading up to my front door. The first time was almost a year ago. And more recently I dreamed the same thing again. I thought it was funny and made the mistake of mentioning it to some people in Ferrugem. One day I was at the supermarket buying some things, and a really old man came up to me. I knew him by sight: it was old Joaquim, a local who makes fishing nets over by the lagoon. I don’t know exactly how old he is, but he looks about eighty. He’s blind in one eye, really rickety. He took hold of my arm and asked me about my dreams. He told me that when I dreamed about it for the third time, I couldn’t dig up the treasure or I’d die. He said to call him, and he’d dig it up. At first I was amused, but I started to get scared. He was dead serious. Since then he’s been keeping an eye on me, and I’ve seen him prowling around my house twice with a young man who looks like a psychopath who must be his grandson or something. He’s really sinister. Legends might be harmless, but sometimes the people who believe in them aren’t. Your granddad’s story sounds a bit like that. Don’t invest too much energy in these things. Folk tales can bury reality forever. You’ll only be able to reconstruct what really happened up to a certain point. The rest becomes legend. And it’s pretty cool, isn’t it? Having a granddad who’s kind of a local legend. Yes, it is, he agrees. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. He wishes he could think of other things in her terms too and wants to tell her this but can’t find the words. She pauses, eats the last nuggets, and sips the wine. He stretches, stares at the intestinal-looking fluorescent light tube on the ceiling, and lets the pleasure of listening to her settle for a few seconds. I’m talking too much, she says. Tell me more about yourself. When he mentions that he did the Ironman in Hawaii, she gets excited and wants to know everything. What was it like? What’s Hawaii like? What do you guys eat during the race? How do you train for it? He shows her his medal, and she turns it over carefully, as if it were fragile. She seems shocked by the object. It’s just a medal for completing the race, he tries to explain. Even so it’s incredible. Have you thought about entering again? No way, those days are over. Don’t be silly. You should do it again. Aren’t there people who do it at the age of fifty or sixty? Isn’t this the perfect place to train for it? I don’t know, but people say it’s the perfect place to be happy. Jasmim is perplexed by this comment, and he has to explain that it is just a joke based on the guarantees of bliss that he has heard from so many people since he arrived. People say that kind of thing a lot, as if they were trying to convince you and themselves of it. She is visibly perturbed, and he worries that he has said something really wrong but can’t figure out what. Funny you should say that, she finally explains, because it is precisely what my master’s thesis is about. Have you got any more wine? I’ve got another bottle, but it’s a crappy label. It’ll do. As he removes the cork, she tells him that she decided to do her research in Garopaba because she had a theory already formulated that there was a dark side to life in this place. I spent a summer in Ferrugem in my first year of college, and just out of curiosity I went to see the Center for Psychological and Social Assistance here. A woman who worked there told me that the incidence of psychological disturbances and use of psychotropic drugs in the town was astounding. Adolescents addicted to two or three different medications. Mothers using Klonopin to calm three-year-olds. She told me it would be easier to put amphetamines, tranquilizers, and antidepressants in the town’s water supply once and for all. That stuck with me. I worked up a whole theory about the contrast between the ideology of living in a coastal paradise and the oppressive reality of day-to-day life in the place. The following year I spent two weeks here in the winter holidays, and I talked to residents, doctors, social workers. Outsiders think of this as a place to open a bed-and-breakfast, surf, lead a holistic existence in a natural paradise. But if you talk to the right people, you hear about the crack epidemic, drug dealers killing one another. People holding up health clinics to steal packets of Valium. The taboo over homosexuality and all the problems that causes. People suffering a lot in their private lives. The spread of AIDS. It’s a serious problem. Lots of fishermen have unprotected sex with one another, and then they end up transmitting it to their wives too. Didn’t you know about that? It’s kept very quiet. It only takes place on the boats, when they spend the night fishing. And in the heart of outlying communities like Campo D’Una, Encantada, some pretty primitive things go on. It’s really complicated. I was fascinated by this contrast. I ended up writing my final paper on something else, but I designed a master’s project to research the issue of quality of life here and got a scholarship. And I came here with my theory ready. But when I started to do research and conduct interviews, I started to realize that things here are pretty normal when you start to crunch the numbers, look at the interviews. Nowadays the Center for Psychological and Social Assistance has two thousand people on their books and treats about five hundred. That’s five percent of the population. Which is all normal, nothing out of the ordinary. The staff do a really good job and told me the truth. The kinds of problems they see are the same things that happen in Porto Alegre, in São Paulo, in Manaus, or anywhere else. The only difference here is the seasonality of the patients’ disorders. They disappear in the summer and flock back fraught with problems in the winter. Summer is euphoria, money. They’re too busy to suffer. Winter is boredom, lack of perspective. Cold. That’s when it sets in. The cycle is the aggravating factor. Apart from that, Garopaba is the world. I joke with my girlfriends that we’re living through the Fucked-Up Era. It’s a whole society that’s unprepared for suffering or too aware of it. The more we understand and treat it, the more we think we suffer, and at the same time, other people’s suffering starts to seem silly. And who did I think I was, imagining I could see the truth behind appearances? My premise was pretty arrogant. Happiness here is very real, as real as people’s suffering. The beauty here is as real as the degradation. I thought I had a secret, you know? But there’s no secret. My research deconstructed my personal fiction. That could be the conclusion of my thesis, but I lost my enthusiasm for it somewhere along the way. And now I have only five months to finish it, but I wouldn’t mind just working in the tourist industry or a shop, you know? They say life seen up close is more interesting. Delving into things. It’s always the opposite with me. Everything from up close is so banal. I think I’m kind of sick. But I’m going to stop unloading my problems on you. Sometimes I can’t stop talking. I love listening to you, he says. She looks at him with some tenderness for the first time, and her lips part with a little smack. I hardly ever let off steam like this. I’m a bit of a loner here. Me too, he says. You’re strange. I usually have people figured right from the start, but I don’t know what to make of you. You don’t have ambitions. Your face doesn’t tell me anything. It’s really weird. I don’t know if I like it. She finishes her glass of wine and says she needs to go, but she is drunk. You can sleep here if you want. Take the bedroom, I’ll stay in the living room. She sighs. No, I’m going home. I shouldn’t drive in this state, but I’m going to. He walks her to the motorbike, which is parked at the upper entrance to the building. A black cat watches them with gleaming copper eyes from a wall. As she gets settled on the bike, he says he’s been thinking about her nonstop. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and an affectionate tug on his beard, then puts on her helmet. She pulls out her cell phone, dials his number, and lets it ring a few times. Call me, she says. But you’d better not fall in love with me. I don’t know how to really love people. But I like talking to you. Let’s see. She turns the key in the ignition and drives away. He heads downstairs and saves her number in his contacts. Then he sends his mother a message asking her to bring five pounds of yerba maté from the Porto Alegre Public Market when she comes, pure leaf mixed with Ximango.