He asks the young men for a cigarette. They look at him with blank faces, and he asks again. The muscular one gets up, walks over to his table, holds out the packet, waits for him to take a cigarette with his long, mud-caked fingernails, and holds out the lighter for him. He thanks him, puffs on the cigarette a few times without inhaling, and tosses it half burned into the middle of the puddle-filled road.
Argh! Disgusting shit.
He clears his throat and spits on the sidewalk. The skinny one lets out a scornful chuckle.
Where’d you come from, nutcase?
He gets up, signals to the waitress, leaves the money on the table, turns his back to the men, and walks away talking.
It all started a long, long time ago, he says in a drawn-out, theatrical voice as he walks toward the beach and points at the shadowy mass of the hills. It was a dark… stormy night…
What a mess, he hears one of them say.
He laughs to himself, checks to make sure Beta is behind him, and stomps his way through the puddles until he reaches the sand. Garopaba is on his right, far away and ghostly. He walks to his left until he comes to a seaside hill and takes a trail that soon leaves him on a craggy headland. The waves crash with gusto against the larger rocks, throwing spray high into the air. The rain has dwindled to a drizzle, and he looks for a way through for the dog, but it is growing more and more difficult. Over the rocks, over the rocks, this is the way, he mutters to himself. He steps from one to another and slowly leaves Siriú behind him. For a long time all he can see is the top of the next rock.
When he finally raises his head to look around, he realizes that it is growing dark. He is in the middle of a rocky headland between nothing and nowhere and has already come too far to turn back. He steps on a loose stone, and his fall is broken by his backpack, but his elbow gets a good whack, and he feels the pain travel up his arm to his shoulder like an electric shock. He tests the joint and feels his arm with his other hand. A little blood and some throbbing, nothing to worry about. He lifts the dog onto the larger rocks before scaling them himself. He progresses in this manner until the boulders of granite give way to greenery. He tries to climb the slope, but the barrier of bushes is too dense and thorny. He returns to the rocks, and shortly before it is pitch black, he spots a natural shelter between two large boulders. As he draws closer, he discovers that the narrow cavity extends inward a short way, forming a small, dry grotto. He leaves his backpack inside, makes the dog comfortable, and sits at the entrance to his triangular niche as if he were a stone statue placed in the most improbable, absurd place precisely so as not to be seen. The ocean in front of him is a large mass of darkness that is darker than the night, a monster that is both invisible and manifest. He knows he is well above the high-tide mark but is afraid anyway. It is the same kind of irrational fear that slowly grips him when he is swimming alone in deep water. On the other hand, where else could he be safer and more protected? Nothing can touch him here. In a few hours the day will dawn as always, and he will be able to leave. No possible surprises tonight. Nothing can happen. Not here.
He strokes Beta, who is warm in spite of everything. Suddenly, without warning, he sees with tremendous clarity something that he has wanted to see for a long time and starts to cry with happiness. He wishes Jasmim were here now, and Viviane, and his mother and father, and even Dante, even the people he wishes he could hate but can’t: he wishes they were all here with him now. His dad said it once. You aren’t capable of hating anything, kid. It can’t do you any good. But that’s life, Dad, he answers now staring into the darkness. That’s life. He feels lighter and lighter as he thinks these things and falls asleep leaning against the rock.
It takes him the whole of the next morning to get over the rocks and pick his way around a gorge. The next trail crosses the hill through thick vegetation. It is overgrown with grass and bushes, and he moves forward almost chest deep in the dark green tangle, hewing a path for the dog, who comes limping behind. Little by little his legs grow accustomed to the squelchy mud that has replaced the slippery solidity of the rocks. He mutters to himself from time to time. At the top of the hill the trail comes out above a village and a long beach. The residents watch him from the doors and windows of their houses that sit in a cluster of alleyways at the foot of the hill.
He sees people with bags full of fruit and vegetables leaving an old bus parked at the side of a sandy road. He enters the bus through the back door. In the place of seats are boxes and crates of market produce, and some women with cloth shopping bags are chatting in the middle of the aisle as they smell pineapples, squeeze mangoes, and inspect heads of lettuce. He looks around, and the profusion of colors and sweet aromas makes him dizzy. Other customers have already entered behind him, and he is forced to go with the flow toward the front door. In the closed environment, he realizes that he is wheezing and a little feverish. He gets a bunch of ripe bananas, a pear, and two oranges. The woman behind him knocks over a box of beets, which roll across the floor, and he helps her pick them up. A plump old man with white hair sitting in the driver’s seat weighs the customers’ choices on a pair of scales and takes their money. He places his items in the crate for weighing and rummages through the outside pocket of his wet backpack until he finds his last two coins.
Is this enough?
There’s a bit left over.
Keep the change.
The tabby cat on the wooden deck of an isolated beachfront bar is unperturbed by their presence. He pulls a stool up to a table and eats the fruit, gazing at the steep beach pummeled by heavy rain. He starts talking to himself and the dog and realizes that he shouldn’t stay still for too long or he won’t be able to continue. He stands, takes the steps down to the sand, and walks along the beach to the next hill.
The stormy seas have excavated the dune leading over to the next beach, exposing stone steps that are so regular they look man-made. On the other side a long series of dunes and clumps of coastal scrub hugs the contour of a beach that extends almost as far as the eye can see. He advances at a firm, slow pace, staring into the distance, lightly buffeted by the wind blowing from the ocean. He passes the skeleton of a porpoise or a right whale calf, with a crocodilian skull poking out of the waterlogged sand and a long row of half-buried vertebrae. He can’t imagine what a day without rain is like anymore.
In the middle of the afternoon he arrives at the mouth of a river that flows slowly and mightily like lava toward the sea, dragging tree branches from distant mountains. On the other side is a village, and a few fishermen are attempting a risky crossing on narrow rafts. One of them, wearing a heavy-duty raincoat, agrees to transport him to the other side and asks where he is from, where he is going, and if he needs any help. He gives each question a great deal of thought, as if he hasn’t understood it and is trying to come up with an answer only to be polite. I’ve come from there, he says pointing. I’m hiking around. Following the hills. I’m fine, thanks. Bringing me across the river is already a big help, he says, as his hand is crushed in a good-bye handshake. The fisherman then watches the hirsute figure walk away with the dog limping behind him until he disappears down the trail to the next beach, and the other fishermen come over one by one wanting to know what that was all about.