What’s her name?
Beta.
He settles the dog in the shade of the beach umbrella and walks toward the water, feeling the cold, squishy sand on the soles of his feet. The bay is calm, ruffled by a weak southerly breeze that makes the small waves break with fine, almost foamless crests over a smooth, glassy surface. The clear, icy water wets his belly, and he raises his arms in a reflex action. He plunges his hands into the water to wet his pulses and minimize the thermal shock, something he learned from his dad. It doesn’t work, but he always does it anyway. On days like this the ocean resuscitates in him a childhood vision that miniaturizes everything. Tiny waves seen with his eyes at surface level are mythological tidal waves breaking over his head. The sinuous sand at the bottom is a scale model of a great desert where a crab’s chitinous shell looks like the bones of some giant creature extinct many eras ago. Scraping his chest against the sandy seabed, holding his breath and with his eyes wide open, he sees the landscape of tiny dunes rippling out until they disappear in the opacity of the blue-green water. The vision is crystalline and silent, and farther up the sun refracts on the surface in shards of white, flickering in a scramble of geometric patterns. Back at the surface, he swims out deep with long strokes, testing the resistance of the salt water. His muscles, aching with cold, slowly relax. When he stops swimming, his body is warm, and the ocean floor is already out of reach. He sees Coral Island on the horizon, with its white lighthouse almost indistinguishable in the distance, and much farther away the south of Santa Catarina Island, with its hazy green mountains dissolving into the atmosphere. A seagull almost touches the water in a low flight toward Vigia Cove where, among a dozen fishing boats, a two-masted schooner, with the name Lendário in large red letters on its white hull, softly rocks near a wooden jetty. He turns his back to the ocean and looks at the beach. He has swum out farther than he thought. He sees the row of fishermen’s sheds facing the waves with their fronts of grayish wood or painted in soft tones, the beach promenade lined with bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants, the pine trees in the seaside camping ground being targeted by solitary swallows that appear from all directions, Siriú Hill, and, behind it, the creamy dunes of Siriú Beach extending for a few miles toward the cliffs that hide the tranquil Gamboa Beach. A world of gold, blue, and green. The windshields of the cars coming around the bend at the beginning of the seaside boulevard reflect the sunlight in flashes that blind him. Tired of the excess of light, he takes a deep breath and lets the air out little by little, letting his body sink vertically. He keeps his eyes open at the bottom as long as his lungs can bear it, feeling protected from everything. Then he holds his nose above water and moves his feet and hands just enough to float upright in an almost imperceptible rise and fall, his body already used to the temperature, experiencing the salty taste, mineral smell, and sticky texture of the water. He doesn’t notice the time passing and remembers to get out only when he starts to feel his forehead stinging in the sun.
When he approaches the woman, she is already defending herself.
You said to let her go, that I didn’t have to do anything. You said she’d stay put. She took off. I tried to call you, but you were too far out, she rants. There is a smooth depression in the sand in the place where the dog was.
Which way did she go?
That way.
He thanks her and takes off running over the firm sand toward Siriú. He passes a kiosk with half a dozen thatched umbrellas protecting obese men and women, the unmanned lifeguard post, a platform built on top of a knoll with exercise bars. He keeps running until he sees the dog in front of the lookout in the camping ground, drinking the water trickling from a cement pipe. He kneels next to her and strokes her vigorously, pulling her ears back. The dog pants with her wet tongue hanging out and appears to be smiling, as all dogs do when they are hot. There you are, he says in a reprimanding tone of voice. Rather than a problem, Beta’s solo walk is a welcome sign of her old energy and initiative. She follows him back to the car, but she stops several times and needs to be called again. He calls her by her name in a dry, commanding voice, as his father used to.
• • •
That afternoon he starts house hunting. He visits three real estate agents and gets just one contact. The agents say there are no yearlong rentals in the town. One of them even seems angry about it. People here don’t rent for the whole year, only for long weekends and the tourist season. We’re trying to change this culture. Garopaba is going to grow a lot over the next few years. People are coming here to live. Property owners want to charge an arm and a leg in the summer and not think about the matter for the rest of the year. You won’t find anything.
He gives up on the real estate agents and drives around the streets near the beach, looking for rental signs and marking the addresses on a map of the city. Contrary to what the agents say, many landlords are willing to discuss year-round rentals. One of the houses he sees is on Rua dos Pescadores, in the heart of the original fishing village, separated from the beach only by the fishermen’s sheds. The varnished brick facade has two windows with cream shutters and practically juts out over the beaten-earth sidewalk and cobbled street, where barefoot children, dark from the sun and scantily clothed, are holding a penalty shootout with a torn, deflated ball. There is a faint smell of fish and sewage in the air. Over the murmuring of the waves, he can hear an old man guffawing, pool cues clacking, and women whispering on the side veranda of the house across the way.
The owner of the house, Ricardo, is a nervous Argentinean who seems to switch off at regular intervals as if he doesn’t want to stop thinking about some urgent problem. He looks to be in his early forties and has watery eyes and gray stubble on his chin. They walk down the driveway to the back of the house, where the entrance is. An outdoor grill made of scorched bricks piled up on the ground looks as if it was built many summers ago. The patio is all cement and gravel. The floor and walls of the veranda are covered with horrible whitish tiles that remind him of cold and death. The house is neat and tidy on the inside but too dark, even with the windows open. The noises of the calm afternoon reverberate in the rooms and suggest the infernal symphony of busier days.
Ricardo doesn’t interfere or explain anything, just accompanies him through the house. He seems impatient. As they leave, Ricardo asks in a lazy mix of Spanish and Portuguese why he is moving to Garopaba. He says he just wants to live near the beach, and the Argentinean replies that yes, of course, everyone wants to live near the beach, but why does he want to live near the beach? Naturally hard-wired not to trust Argentineans, like so many Brazilians from the south, he ignores the question. After locking the door, Ricardo asks if he surfs. He says he doesn’t. He asks if he wants to learn to surf. He says he doesn’t. He asks if he intends to open a business. It’s not in his immediate plans. The Argentinean gives him a good once-over.
Then the problem is woman.
What?
People come to surf or to forget woman, solo eso.
I just want to live near the beach.
Sí, sí. Of course.
How long have you lived here?
Almost ten years.
And why did you come here?
To forget woman.
Did you?
No. You rent the house?
No. I think it’s too dark.
Dark. True. Well, good luck.
• • •
He parks the car in the Hotel Garopaba garage and pays the employees an extra thirty reais not to see the dog. He lies on the bed as it grows dark outside. His nap is interrupted twice by phone calls, which he tries to keep as short as possible because his cell phone is from Porto Alegre and the roaming charges are devouring his credit. His friends are calling to wish him happy birthday and to give their condolences after his father’s death, unaware that he doesn’t live in Porto Alegre anymore and that he left without telling many people, a detail that he himself omits because he knows he still doesn’t have any answers or patience for the questions they might ask.