When he is close to the rocks, he holds his breath, dives under and hears the tremulous symphony of the shellfish, a sound he has heard before when swimming near rocks on some beaches but never with this intensity. The clattering of the shellfish is frightening, as if billions of pinchers or teeth are chattering and reverberating in hollow caverns. His swimming goggles allow him to see only the closest rocks. The clamor ceases entirely when he raises his head out of the water, and not even the murmuring of the ocean and wind disrupt the sudden impression of silence. Two distinct worlds.
In the murky seascape of rocks and corals, he sees shellfish and some fish he can’t identify. No sign of shoals of fish, much less groupers, which is what they were hoping to find. Matias had told him to look in holes and crevices, where they like to rest. Most groupers nowadays weigh about five pounds, sometimes ten, with a lot of luck fifteen. More than twenty is a trophy. Nothing compared to what his granddad must have caught several decades earlier, when they often weighed sixty or seventy pounds. He dives down a dozen times but doesn’t see any holes or caves or groupers. He doesn’t see anything that deserves to be the target of a spear gun.
He returns to the boat, and when he comes up, he sees a storm approaching from the south, covering the hills of Ibiraquera and Rosa Beach. Matias and Antenor are still underwater, among the rocks. Their yellow buoys vanish and reappear in the rise and fall of the waves. They don’t seem concerned about the leaden clouds that are drawing near, or about the wind that is whistling louder and louder. They’re the experts. He leaves the spear gun in the bottom of the boat and dives down again. He tries to measure the depth at that point. He descends until his ears hurt from the pressure, and he can see large yellow rocks at the bottom. They must be some fifteen to twenty feet below the surface. He swims back to the reef. At some points the rocks almost reach the surface, and he is able to stand on them.
According to his dad, his granddad was able to hold his breath for three or four minutes or even more. Another diver had died of a pulmonary embolism trying to match his time. He dives under, swims around the rocks a little, checking the time on his watch, and emerges only when he starts to feel the terrifying throbbing behind his eyes that is brought on by a lack of oxygen. One minute and five seconds. On his next attempt he sees a purple octopus dragging itself along the bottom, stirring up a small cloud of sand before hiding under a rock. The duration of this dive is only forty-eight seconds. He decides to rest for a moment. The wind churns the waves. On his third attempt, he stays down for one minute and six seconds and decides to call it a day. He doesn’t have his granddad’s lungs.
He returns to the boat, puts on the waterproof jacket in a useless attempt to warm up a little, and tries to measure how long his companions are able to hold their breath. One of Matias’s dives lasts one minute and forty seconds. He hasn’t been there long when Antenor swims back to the boat and climbs in with difficulty. When he goes to help him, he sees that his snorkeling mask is full of blood. Antenor takes off the mask and blood streams down his face and neck.
I’ve burst something, he says, holding his nose. Fuck, it hurts like shit. I think I’ve got sinusitis.
The bleeding stops, and Antenor starts feeling nauseous.
Fuck, fuck, he stammers. I don’t feel well.
He opens his packet of strawberry-cream-filled cookies and offers some to Antenor. Large waves toss the boat about violently. The temperature has plummeted at least ten degrees, and the entire horizon has disappeared in the approaching storm. The wind roars and flings fans of spray into the air. The birds are all long gone. Antenor glances uneasily toward the reef.
Matias found a big grouper in a hole and won’t come back until he’s got it. I know him.
But soon, to their relief, Matias is swimming toward the boat. After climbing in, he tugs on a rope and pulls two copper-colored groupers out of the water, a large one weighing some eighteen pounds, and a small one of about five and a half. He poses holding the larger of the two by its enormous, scary-looking jaws with both hands, and Antenor takes a photograph. The camera’s flash lights up the bright red interior of its mouth and rings of sharp little teeth. It starts to rain. Matias pulls a tube of condensed milk out of his bag and starts eating the sugary goo. Antenor starts the motor and the boat tears off toward the bay, fleeing the storm.
• • •
