After a night of sleep like any other, he wakes up on October 30, 2008, in a dirty, mold-infested apartment, with no money and no job but with no fear either. He phones a laundry service and arranges to have them pick up his dirty clothes. He phones Saucepan, who tells him that at the moment there is no way he can have his old job as swimming instructor back. The new instructor is doing well, and he has no reason to replace him. Besides which, it wouldn’t be fair to the guy. The number of people using the pool has actually picked up a little. He tells Saucepan that it’s not a problem and congratulates him on the success of the gym. Then he goes out for lunch and stops at an ATM to withdraw the last of his savings. He phones Sara and asks if she thinks Douglas would agree to fix his teeth and let him pay the following month, presuming he doesn’t know anything about the day of the barbecue, etc. She calls him back a few minutes later with an appointment time. Back at the apartment, he starts cleaning. He is scrubbing the floor with bleach when he hears someone clapping to get his attention outside the window. He doesn’t recognize the strong, tanned young man smiling at him.
Good afternoon.
Afternoon. Who are you?
Don’t you remember me, Tom Hanks?
He invites the man in.
All I can offer you is cold water.
No problem. I stopped by here a few days ago to see if you’d survived, but the windows were shut. Are you okay?
I’m still a bit weak. I spent a few days in the hospital. I had a bad bout of pneumonia.
Do you remember what happened that day on the beach?
Yep. I fell off a headland near Pinheira in the middle of the storm and swam all night trying to get to a beach.
And you ended up on Siriú? From Pinheira to Siriú?
I guess so. I must have caught a current.
Beta comes through the door and goes to drink water from her bowl.
So that’s the dog you went to get back from the guy.
You hear about it?
Everyone heard about it. They told me not to come and see you.
Huh? Why?
I dunno. People invent stories.
What stories?
The man raises his eyebrows.
Forget it, he says. Tell me something, when’s that course for volunteer lifeguards that you told me about?
End of November. It runs for three weeks. There’s a theoretical component and a practical one. The problem’s the practical component. They put you through the wringer.
But if you pass, you’ll have work all summer?
It starts just before Christmas and goes until Carnival, at least.
How much does it pay?
It’s pretty good. A hundred reais a day. Even counting days off, you bring in over two thousand a month. Did you mean what you said? About giving me a hand with my swimming?
I meant it. But I want to do the course too. Where do you sign up?
At the fire department. Over in Palhocinha.
Great. Just give me a few more days ’cause I’m still a bit weak, but we can start next week. Meet me here at eight in the morning, even if it’s raining, if there’s a northeasterly blowing, whatever. What’s your name?
Aírton. Are you going to charge me for it?
Absolutely not. Take down my phone number.
After Aírton leaves and the laundry lady stops by to pick up his clothes, he takes Beta for a walk along the beach and is still thinking about the course for lifeguards when he remembers a story that was born, lived a long life, and died in his own mind, or at least was dead until now, a story that he had started imagining for no apparent reason when he was about twelve or thirteen and continued imagining until the end of his adolescence. It was just a sketch or daydream that never came to a conclusion worthy of the name but that always began in the same manner. He’d be sitting on the beach looking out to sea, when he’d see someone waving for help out in the deep water. After swimming past the surf, he’d discover that the person drowning was a girl his age, a girl who gradually got older as he imagined the scene year after year. He would pull her out of the sea, and she’d cough up water and lie on the sand, weary and breathless. Sometimes she’d be wearing clothes; other times she’d be in a bikini. Her skin was always very white, her hair always black, straight, and long. Her eyes were blue. She wasn’t anyone he knew or came to know. After recovering enough to stand up and walk, she’d thank him with a hug or just a word and a look, and she’d run off down the beach without looking back, her thin arms swinging, until she disappeared along a path through the dunes. Months would go by, sometimes years. He imagined he was older than he was. These futures varied, but in all of them he’d find the girl again, and she’d be in a terrible state. She had suffered at the hands of men or had become an addict of some sort. A suicide. A wandering orphan. She’d end up crying. Her hair would stick to her cheeks streaked with tears. The slightly older version of himself that was now the protagonist of the story had spent months or years looking for the girl, imagining who she was, how she had come to be out in the deep, where she had gone after disappearing down the beach, and now she reappeared, and he loved her. It was that simple. Nothing easier than loving a nameless girl who was a mere idea, delivered to him by fate, vulnerable and sensuous, ready to be rescued, run away, and reappear. But she hated him. Sometimes she accused him of saving her against her will. Why did you pull me out of the water? You shouldn’t have. More often she would accuse him of abandoning her. How could you have abandoned me? How could you have let me go? But I saved you, he’d argue. She’d shake her head, saying no. Why didn’t you ask my name? Why didn’t you hold my hand? Why didn’t you come running after me? Why did you let me go? You didn’t want me. And to him it all seemed terribly unfair. How was he supposed to have known? He’d done what had to be done. He’d done everything that could have been done. How unfair it was that she could look back after so long and accuse him of not having done something differently at the time. Didn’t she remember running off without a word? Sometimes there was a sexual tension in this conflict, sometimes he felt sheer desperation. It ended in that, in the intrinsic unfairness of the act of looking back, of daring to imagine a past different from the one that had brought him to precisely where he was now. He imagined variations on this story for years on end. In all of them, he ended up alone. It never occurred to him to tell it to someone, write it down, draw it. Why this story? Why any story? Where had it come from, and where had it been all this time?
THIRTEEN
He sees a pair of gray-green eyes above fleshy cheeks with dimples that frame a pearly, expectant smile. Light olive skin and thick, peeling lips almost the same color, just a little rosier. He knows the nose ring in one of the nostrils and the small scar right in the middle of the forehead, but he is unable to retrieve the entire face from memory. Long black hair tumbling over the shoulders. His eyes take in every quadrant of this face in the space of a breath, and he could swear he’s never seen this woman before in his life, but he suddenly knows who she is. Something tells him. He thought about her a few days ago and always knew she would come someday. At the same instant in which he recognizes her, she gets a fright and her smile gives way to a pained expression.