Kamchatka Page 19

  Papá and mamá said goodbye again and we drove off.

  While we were in Dorrego, I didn’t have Lucas, but at least I had something. Every time I thought about him, I pictured him in a trench coat, looking mysterious, enigmatic, darting through the shadows from one doorway to another, his eyes small and bright – like the marbles we played with one time – alert to the possible presence of the enemy. I imagined Lucas trying to make it to a vast, shadowy building without being spotted. Once inside, he took off his trench coat and, protected by his orange T-shirt, he forgot about his secret mission for a while, forgot the danger that awaited him outside, and striding in his seven-league boots, he’d walk up to the desk and say: ‘Good evening, señora, could you tell me where I might find out the temperature of the sun?’

  Playtime

  * * *

  Fourth Period: Astronomy

  * * *

  Noun. the science of stars and heavenly bodies.

  64

  DORREGO

  The gate rose up in the middle of nowhere. That’s how it appeared to my child’s eyes, the path wound endlessly around the wire fence until it came to the gate right in the middle of infinite nothingness, because you went through the gate and on the other side there was nothing, nothing but fields and a curved horizon, a green sea on which Christ could have walked in his sandals. Even in the Citroën we had to drive for quite a bit before we reached anywhere. First we saw the olive grove – the trees were only a couple of years old and were hardly as tall as me. (Me and the Midget liked playing in the olive grove, it made us feel like giants.) Then came a thicket and beyond that the tilled fields and the livestock and from there, in the distance, we could make out the mill; the house was close now.

  It was nice but it was simple, a one-storey house with a red tiled roof, a living/dining room with huge windows and a fireplace, where, family legend had it, I ate half a beetle when I was a year old. There was a long corridor that led to the bedrooms, to grandpa’s study and to the kitchen, which was so huge that me and the Midget played handball against the back wall. We called it the Chickendrome, ever since papá, determined to prove that he was a real farmer, tried to kill a chicken by wringing its neck. The poor bird fell on the tiled floor as though it was dead, then suddenly got up and started scurrying around the kitchen, its neck forming a perfect right-angle, flapping its wings wildly.

  There was no swimming pool in Dorrego, but there was a big rainwater tank we bathed in with the Salvatierra kids; if we wanted a proper swim we went down to the lagoon, though even on the hottest days of summer the water was freezing. But for adventure, the lagoon was unbeatable: we fished from the pier or out of boats, we practised ducks and drakes, skimming flat stones across the water, we lashed reeds together to make rafts that we never completed and we patrolled the banks of the lagoon searching for nature’s endless surprises: lizards, dead fish, bare bones for which we invented macabre origins. (‘We thrive on bones,’ writes Margaret Atwood, ‘without them there’d be no stories.’)

  The Salvatierra kids were identical Russian dolls of various sizes. There were two boys, the oldest and the youngest, but the middle child, Lila, was by far the bravest of the three. They were quiet but friendly, with permanent smiles, dazzling as the sun, shining out of tanned faces. They had a sixth sense for devilment, and could sniff out an opportunity for a practical joke as if it was sulphur. Wherever there was something that might be dangerous – quicklime, axes, bulls, a sow with her piglets – we would find them hanging around, waiting for the right moment. Their father would invariably end up hauling them home by the ears. Given that he didn’t have hands enough to drag all three of them, Lila had to grab the littlest boy by the ear, and off they’d go, all four of them, like a human daisy chain.

  When I was little, their father asked Lila to teach me how to ride a horse. I remember how nervous I was, especially since Lila’s horse seemed to want to break into a gallop at any minute. I spent my whole time tugging on the reins to try and get him to stop, until eventually I saw the shadow on the ground that explained why he was in such a hurry. Sitting behind me, Lila was digging her heels into his flanks, trying to goad him. Every time I stopped the horse, she’d dig her heels in again, trying hard not to laugh.

  But underlying all the games, I felt an unspoken hostility towards me, an outsider coming from a different world and attempting to annex their territory. With almost animal instinct, they insisted that I prove myself worthy to join their gang and, like a bull faced with a red cape, I blindly tackled every dare – some successfully, others disastrously – and while no blood was shed, there were a few broken bones. And still they kept drawing imaginary lines in the sand which I continued to cross, determined to prove myself worthy at any cost: scratches, threats, plaster casts, I didn’t care. But whenever I went back to playing with my city things – my trading cards and my books – they kept their distance, as though afraid to expose themselves to the effects of a magic whose rules they did not understand. They only got involved when they saw me playing at being someone else – a cowboy, or Robin Hood or Tarzan. Playing characters in a story I made up came naturally to them and they threw themselves into the roles with an energy and an imagination that surpassed my meagre stage directions: they were born actors.

  I still bear the scars of the ordeals the Salvatierra kids subjected me to. Strangely, I don’t remember ever feeling any pain, but I do remember the joy I felt the first time I beat Lila in a horse race – we were riding barefoot and the stirrups rubbed my instep raw – or when I got the highest walnut from the walnut tree, flaying the skin from my hands in the process. On the map of my body, these scars mark out the course of an initiation for which I feel nothing but gratitude. In their own way, the Salvatierra kids understood the Principle of Necessity. If they had not created the conditions that forced me to change, I would still feel like an outsider in Dorrego, an intruder, a stranger.

  65

  IN WHICH WE VISIT THE FARM AND I BECOME A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

  The trip to Dorrego passed without incident, given that the Midget slept almost the whole way. There was a reason he was so tired. Mamá had got him up to pee three times the night before so that he wouldn’t wet the bed. Unaware of this, I had also got him up to go to the toilet when I happened to wake up in the middle of the night, and papá, not knowing mamá and I had already done so, also took him to the toilet twice. The Midget had done more walking in his sleep that night than he usually did during the day.

  Hardly had the racket of the Citroën announced our arrival than our grandparents came out to greet us. Grandpa was as fat as ever; I remember the vicuña poncho he was wearing. Tall and thin, grandma had a natural elegance. She looked like a number 1 standing beside the chubby 0 that was grandpa; together they formed the binary system on which my entire universe was based.

  Awake now, the Midget gave grandpa his first present: a box of Romeo y Julieta. I followed, with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. These were presents that never disappointed: we knew that grandpa would enjoy them. But even so, he managed to needle papá.

  ‘Would you look at this?’ he said, showing grandma the whisky and the box of cigars. ‘I don’t know whether they’re trying to spoil me or bump me off!’

  Papá glanced at mamá, as if to say ‘You see?!’

  Worse still, grandpa took it upon himself to tell us how long it had been since he’d last seen us. He rattled off the number of months, days and hours, having worked it out exactly, or at least that was what he made us think.

  ‘That is a pretty long time,’ the Midget admitted.

  And grandpa, having persuaded the jury to convict, rested his case.

  It was true that we didn’t visit often. At 500 kilometres from Buenos Aires, the trip is no joke, especially in the Citroën. Usually, when we hadn’t visited for a while, grandma and grandpa would come and visit us, but it was obvious that papá and grandpa’s quarrel the last time they had come to visit had been more acrimoniou
s than usual. (The great advantage of a farm is that, if the conversation turns ugly, there are lots of places you can go to get away.) As a result, we hadn’t seen our grandparents since.

  During lunch, which was fantastic, the conversation was light enough to ensure that there would be no quarrels. The subject of the farm came up, but it was grandpa who quickly changed the subject. The state of the nation was mentioned, but both papá and grandpa agreed that Argentina was becoming a subject best not talked about. Me and the Midget ended up monopolizing everyone’s attention: he stood on a chair and performed his version of the national anthem – with the line ‘Great big Nesquiks in their bodies’ – and I gave a demonstration of the various knots Lucas had taught me using napkins.

  Eventually papá and mamá went for a siesta. Grandpa retired to the living room, lit a Romeo y Julieta (there are few things in the world that stimulate daydreaming like the smell of a good Havana cigar) and sat in his chair facing the window. Next to the fireplace, the Midget was talking to the two Goofys, explaining to the plastic Goofy, the newest member of the family, that it was right here that I once ate half a beetle. The Midget had inherited grandma’s fondness for recounting memories; grandma was the permanent curator of the Museum of Our Happiness: anywhere she went evoked some memory she felt compelled to share with whoever was with her, even if they had already heard the story a thousand times.

  I sank into a big armchair, intent on capturing this moment: my grandparents, the smell of the Romeo y Julieta, the perfect idleness of a Saturday afternoon that seemed eternal. It didn’t last long. In that moment the glass seemed half-full, yet a nagging doubt prevented me from draining it.

  Maybe that’s the way I’ve always been, from the moment I emerged from my mother’s belly and was launched into the world; I know what I want and how to get it, but once I have it in my grasp there is always some part of me that refuses to relax, to enjoy the moment; a part of me that is already worrying about what will come next, about a future that has not yet taken shape. That afternoon remains in my memory as the first time I became aware of my limitations. I can never live entirely in the moment. There is always a part of me that is absent, not where I am seen to be, where I seem to be, a part that is somewhere in the future, waiting for the call ‘action stations’.

  ‘When will you teach me how to drive the tractor?’ I asked grandpa, who was lost in his own daydream. (When you’re a kid, it’s impossible to imagine all the things that might be going through the mind of a grown-up who looks as though he’s not thinking about anything.)

  Grandpa exhaled a plume of grey smoke and said, ‘Right now.’

  When we were down in the country, grandpa liked to take us around and show us things. Whenever he drove the tractor, I sat up beside him, perched on a metal toolbox. If he went riding (though he was fat, grandpa was an excellent horseman), he always asked for two horses to be saddled. If he went to pick tomatoes, I took another basket and we went together. I didn’t ask, but I figured he had done the same with papá when he was little and that my being there helped him forget the void that had been by his side for twenty years.

  ‘So, how are things, che?’ he asked ingenuously as I was practising changing gears on the tractor. ‘How’s your friend, the little Chinese guy?’

  ‘Japanese!’ I corrected him, as I always did. Grandpa liked winding me up. I must have been in first or second grade when he told me he was psychic and that he had had a vision that I had a Japanese friend. At the time I was stunned, but later, when I became a little less gullible, I realized that it had been a lucky guess. There were Chinese, Japanese and Korean kids in every state school in the country. Probability was on his side. But I never dared question his psychic gifts.

  ‘Chinese, Japanese…’

  ‘I don’t know… he left the school last year.’

  ‘You don’t say? What about the other lad, what’s his name, Bertolotti, Bergamotti…’

  ‘Bertuccio!’

  ‘How’s Bertuccio?’

  I couldn’t get the hang of changing gears. I tried to force it.

  ‘Hey, hey, easy does it, che. It takes skill, not brute force.’ By now grandpa had realized that something was wrong. He didn’t need to be psychic. ‘Don’t tell me Bertuccio left too?’

  At this point I would like to say that I carefully considered the possible consequences of my actions, but that would be a lie. It was like someone had given me a truth serum with lunch; I would have answered any question grandpa asked me, however private or embarrassing the answer.

  ‘He didn’t leave. I left. Me and the Midget. We’re going to a religious school now. The priest is a friend of papá. Since we started going there the Midget wants to be a saint. Mamá got fired from the laboratory. Papá’s law office is gone, some guys stormed in and trashed everything. He worked in bars for a while, but there’s too many police now, so he works at home. But it’s not our home, it’s someone else’s home. We’re living on a quinta now, with a swimming pool and a bunch of suicidal toads.’

  Grandpa didn’t say anything. For a minute I thought he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I wondered how a foreign correspondent would have put it, the guy who was on the TV every night at midnight, just before the ‘moment of meditation’. His voice and his face were funereal, if memory serves; his name was Repetto, Armando Repetto, he had dark hair, slicked back like Bela Lugosi. I could almost hear him intone, in his deep baritone voice: ‘The situation of the vicente family has taken a turn for the worse. Already facing the challenges of living in secret, they are now in financial trouble. Flavia has lost her job and the future of David’s work is precarious, raising the threat of insolvency… David’s father confessed to media sources that he was not surprised, and insisted that he intended to take steps to…’

  ‘Abuelo, abuelo, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  ‘Don’t fight with papá, please. Not this time.’

  66

  THE LARVAE

  I remember once there was this opossum that drove grandpa crazy. It laid waste to the chicken coop. I have a fleeting memory of blood and feathers and broken eggs. Grandpa laid traps, blocked every hole in the coop, but the opossum kept squeezing through and decimating the hens. Until one day grandpa decided enough was enough and we set out to hunt down the opossum.

  I was excited by the prospect of joining the hunting party. It was like a Western. The opossum was a cattle-rustler, grandpa was the sheriff and I was his trusty deputy; I stood next to him as he took down his shotgun and filled his pockets with red buckshot cartridges and I ran over to get Señor Salvatierra when he asked me to. The two boys came, too. Lila wanted nothing to do with the whole thing. Women have better instincts.

  We wandered around in circles for so long that for a while I thought the opossum was outwitting us. Finally Señor Salvatierra tracked him down. He stopped about a metre from a tree, stared at a hole in the trunk and announced that the opossum was inside. At first I didn’t believe him, but then he pushed the barrel of the shotgun into the hole and fired.

  Shotguns sound like cannons. I can’t imagine what cannons sound like.

  Then he put his arm inside and pulled it out.

  Opossums are disgusting animals. On the outside they look like little furry cushions, but inside they’re all vicious teeth and claws. Señor Salvatierra threw it on the ground and poked it in the belly with the barrel of the shotgun. This seemed to me a little unnecessary, given that it was obviously dead, but it confirmed what Salvatierra had been thinking.

  ‘She’s with young,’ he said.

  Inside her pouch were several white hairless creatures that looked like little more than larvae, twisting and turning as though stretching themselves.

  ‘What’ll happen to them now?’ I asked.

  Señor Salvatierra looked at grandpa. Grandpa said nothing. He was busying himself unloading his shotgun and stuffing the cartridges back in his pockets with the others.

  Man
olo, the older of the Salvatierra boys, who was kneeling next to me beside the opossum, said, ‘They’ll die.’

  I gave him a push and he fell on his backside. ‘No, they won’t,’ I said stubbornly. ‘If I feed them and keep them warm they won’t die.’

  ‘They’re too little,’ said Manolo. ‘Can’t you see, they’re still suckling? Look at their mouths. You’ll never find a teat small enough to feed them!’

  ‘Get on home!’ Señor Salvatierra said imperiously. Manolo looked at him resentfully. Why was he being sent home, when I was obviously the stupid one? But he reluctantly headed off, his little brother trailing behind him. Señor Salvatierra quickly took his leave. I stood, frozen, caught between disgust and helplessness, wanting to take the larvae with me but terrified I would hurt them if I picked them up, not knowing how to hold them, where to put them, what to do. Looking up, I saw grandpa watching me, the look on his face was one I’d never seen before – the forlorn expression adults have when they are unable to shield their children or grandchildren from pain.

  I didn’t even want dinner. I sat by the fire, cradling a cardboard box filled with scraps of cloth, a makeshift mattress for my larvae. After she put the Midget to bed, mamá came over and sat next to me; after a while she told me to sit on her knee, and I did, still clutching the cardboard box. The larvae were sleepy and so was I.

  The next morning I woke up in my own bed. For a minute I thought the whole thing had been a nightmare. But mamá, who had been waiting for me to wake up, took me in her arms – I would have been about six or seven then, and still manageable – and carried me out to the bank of the lagoon.

  She had buried the larvae there, in the mud bank where the rushes grew. She told me that their bodies would help the rushes to grow strong and supple. Living creatures never completely disappear, mamá told me, when something we love dies, it lingers in the air that we breathe, the food we eat, the ground we walk on. I didn’t know what to think, I didn’t really understand what she was saying, and I wasn’t sure that I believed what little I did understand. But I felt reassured to know that the larvae were close by, somewhere I could visit whenever I liked.