The Storm

by Tomas Gonzalez

  “Loosen the ties a little. Her hands are turning purple.”

  “She was fighting so hard, she actually cut herself. She’s dying, Imogenia. Her eyes are rolled back.”

  “What would she be dying of? Don’t be an idiot! Nobody hit her, nobody did anything to her. It’s a miracle she didn’t take my head off.”

  “She’s gotten so fat – a heart attack or something. She looked like she was possessed, the way she was punching and screaming at Carlota, didn’t she, Imo? And she’s so heavy, just impossible to handle. She sure does eat! Even with four of us, she was still kicking.”

  “Uh-huh. And who’s this Carlota woman? She talks about her all the time, as if she came by every day.”

  “You tell me.”

  “At least she’ll be calm when they come back, the old man and the boys.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If they come back.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re so reckless.”

  “The seas are quieting down. The storm wasn’t so bad.”

  “Not here. It did a lot of damage around Rincón. The radio said so. I’m worried about my family up there, Imogenia.”

  “Is she asleep?”

  “Her eyes are closed.”

  Candle that I gave him. Knot in his throat the night I saw him. And now I am all alone, far from my sons, far from everything! All I have is that image that agitates me, only that figure that takes my breath away and which I’d rather not name…

  “Have they come back?” Nora asked.

  “No,” said Imogenia.

  “Did they drown?”

  “Who?” asked the husband.

  “What do you mean who, dummy? No, Doña Nora, they’ll be back soon.”

  My mouth, fishing line that embraces him, thought Nora. Thread of blood in my mouth. Family tombstone. Barrier and hay. Barrier and sweet. Barrier and prostration.

  “No, don’t just loosen the cords,” said Imogenia. “She’s calm. Untie her right now.”

  2:00 a.m.

  Javier saw the wave racing toward the bow, lit by a flash of lightning, and managed to grab one of the ropes they’d used to lash the oars to the hull and ride out the pounding, inhuman pull of the sea, which seemed to invade his lungs.

  Up until that point, they’d been sailing well, since the wind wasn’t at full force and the waves, though they reached towering heights, were not crashing down. In the glow of the lightning, they looked like huge mountains gently collapsing – impressive, yes, but almost benevolent in their power – and nothing had presaged the one that came toward them against the tide, crashed over them, raked the boat, and carried off everything in it except the gas cans, the anchor, the motor, and the twins. The oars, the pole, the hook, the bucket of bait, the bags, the jugs of water, the basket of beer, the fishing rods, and the buckets of reels were all swept overboard. The father was snatched by the sea.

  Javier coughed, took a deep breath, and coughed and inhaled again until he was able to catch his breath. He felt the water lapping above his ankles and realized he needed to start bailing immediately. He called out to Mario and Mario responded; he called to his father and silence replied. Thunder boomed. The Evinrude started up again, and Javier saw Mario’s flashlight go on and sweep over the entire boat, especially the place where their father had been, and then go off again. He heard the motor rev and keep sailing in the same direction as before, as if they hadn’t just been hit by a wave and been on the point of shipwreck. As if they hadn’t lost everything and their father hadn’t been snatched by the sea.

  In his astonishment, it took Javier, holding the bailing bowl, a moment to react.

  “What the hell are you doing? Shit!” he shouted. “Hey, hey! Turn around! Turn around, damn it!”

  His brother seemed to have gone deaf.

  They couldn’t hear their father shouting from the darkness of the water, and when the lightning flashed, they couldn’t see him floating or waving his arms or swimming anywhere. Javier kept yelling at Mario to turn back, but his brother didn’t answer. Javier sat there a moment, in silence, and felt dizzy. The boat was moving inexorably away from where the father had fallen overboard. Javier went over to his brother and, without yelling at him, without saying a word, punched him in the face and then the head with all his might, his knuckles almost shattering, trying to stun his brother and seize control of the boat, which started to yaw so that at any moment they might be struck by a wave from the side and shipwreck for real this time.

  Mario, only half conscious, crashed to the bottom of the boat. Javier grabbed the flashlight, took over the steering arm, and, in a daze and distressed by his brother’s inert body, didn’t make sure to take the wave on the diagonal as he changed course, and they nearly capsized. He managed to get the boat upright again and started shouting, illuminating the mountains of water with the tiny flashlight. He was relieved to see his brother sit up and start to bail, but since Mario still looked pretty out of it, he didn’t ask him to yell too, and instead kept shouting on his own.

  Javier was right not to expect much from Mario when it came to rescuing their father, since the first thing he said once he’d pulled himself back together was:

  “The old bastard drowned. Let’s go.”

  “Keep bailing, keep bailing or we’ll sink.”

  Javier continued shouting till his throat began to hurt. The beam of light flitted to and fro, almost comically minuscule in the vast darkness, and the boat moved in aimless circles through the massive waves. “We’re nothing, we’re worth absolutely nothing,” Javier used to say on those late nights when he’d had a lot to drink or smoke and his mood grew dark. Now the infinite world of darkness proved him right. There was nothing left of the father. He’d disappeared into the sea like a drop of ink or oil.

  “Take the steering arm and keep going in circles,” Javier ordered, and Mario didn’t dare disobey. I can go around in circles all night, but that’s not going to make the old bastard rise up from the sea floor and crash back onto his seat, his body language seemed to say when Javier sternly pointed the flashlight at him. The minutes stretched out so long that to Javier it seemed as if the world had become a bell of anxiety, without a before or an after. He was terrified that he and Mario, especially Mario, might have to bear the burden of their dead father for the rest of their lives. He shouted for his father, illuminating the waves and bailing at the same time, and after a while he was ready to jump into the sea himself. He shouted at his brother to call out, but Mario didn’t, though he kept tracing large circles with the boat in the darkness. They’d taken on a lot of water. He ordered Mario to leave the motor in neutral and start bailing, and when the twin obeyed, they heard their father’s voice, very weak, as if it were coming from the air and not the sea.

  Time unfurled and then began to pass again for Javier, who returned to his senses. He realized that his brother was pretending not to hear their father, and he realized, or sensed, that Mario was going to try to break from his circular path and move away so that the detested voice would be silenced once and for all. Javier shone the light on his brother again, as a warning or a threat, and had to hold back his rage to keep from giving him the beating he’d been ready to give him if Mario didn’t do what it took to rescue their father.

  He lit up the water again.

  The voice cried out. Javier didn’t aim the flashlight at his brother this time, since it was clear he’d heard it too and had started turning the boat nearer. The voice became louder, more of this world. Bolts of lightning flashed one after the other, and Javier spotted his father’s head at the crest of a wave. He pointed the light at Mario and saw that he too had seen it, so there was no need to shout or point. The boat took the wave on the diagonal and arced even closer. “Here, over here, assholes!” The lightning flashed and they saw him waving his arms in the water. When it faded, only the beam of the flashlig
ht remained, which now reached their father’s position.

  Javier grabbed him by the armpits. Mario couldn’t and didn’t want to help, so his brother had to do it in two stages: first lifting the father till he was hanging halfway into the boat, and then grabbing his legs and lifting him the rest of the way in. When the father tumbled into the boat, Mario sped up and started turning back toward the middle of the gulf. Their father lay on his back for a while in the water at the bottom of the boat, which Javier had started bailing again. Then he sat up.

  “You were going to let me drown.”

  The intensity of the storm was diminishing. Javier had turned off the flashlight and just let time and the movement of the boat go by. He was tired and had lost interest in his father’s well-being. If the old man wanted to die, he could go for it. If he was still alive when they arrived – if they arrived – he’d take him to Montería and do everything he could to save him. But if he died anyway, that wouldn’t be his problem. Might be best, thought Javier. He’d done his part, and he wouldn’t have anything to feel bad about.

  The lightning flooded the boat with light, and when everything went dark again, the father asked, “Where are the coolers, you idiots? Where is everything?”

  3:00 a.m.

  I’m Dairon, the tourist who was drinking aguardiente and doing cocaine behind my wife’s back in bungalow four. The thunder was rolling and Gardel the mute was singing. I’d been up drinking still at dawn for the past three nights, while she and my two children slept under the mosquito nets. Every once in a while she’d get up and come in all drowsy and say, “Jesus, Dairon, drinking alone again? You’re on your way to becoming an alcoholic. Look at the time.”

  It must have been because I had the volume turned up really loud, because she always uses earplugs and never usually complains when I put on my music. And after all the time they’d spent in the ocean, nothing could have woken the little ones up.

  “I’m going to bed soon. I’ll listen to this record and then go to bed. Vacations are about enjoying yourself, right?”

  Three claps of thunder boomed out, and she waited with her eyes squeezed shut till they were over. She opened them again very patiently:

  “And that’s what you call enjoying yourself?”

  “Did you see we had to tie the nutbag up?” I asked her to change the subject, but she was already walking away and wanted to sleep, not to hear about tied-up nutbags. I turned down the volume and, once I figured she’d fallen asleep, turned it up again.

  I take it easy with the coke, just six lines a night, but it makes it so I don’t feel like sleeping much. I use it only on vacation or when things get stressful at the little print shop I’ve got in Robledo and I have to get rid of a client and clear my head, stuff like that. But hardly ever. I bought a couple of grams off Javier, the owner’s son, who’s a cool guy. He reads a ton and he likes tango too, but he mostly listens to rock, which I like too, but not for drinking. I listen to Alberto Castillo, Agustín Magaldi, and of course Gardel with my aguardiente, and sometimes Olimpo and Alci Acosta, but mostly tango.

  It took four of us to hold her down. The cook’s not tiny either, but her husband is this black guy who’s like six feet tall – like Foreman, but mean. Everybody says he’s just huge and useless, does less work than a weevil on a gravestone and mooches off of her. And he’s always dressed nicely – Speedo shorts, flowered shirts, imported sandals. They say he sells weed too. So we managed to get her under control. The other tourist who was helping us, the father of the little girls with the light-colored eyes, the cocky guy with the Toyota – the crazy lady bit him on the arm. So the only skinny people there were the pretty girl who works in the hotel and me. The Toyota guy’s got a belly, which is probably a beer gut, because he’s a businessman with a lot of money. At least until he gets himself kidnapped – later, alligator.

  But we did finally manage to get her tied down. We couldn’t call the nurse who lives at a nearby hotel to come give her a shot to calm her down: first, there was that wild storm raging, and plus she wasn’t at the hotel, she was off who knows where. All the locals were saying what storm, that wasn’t anything, especially compared to the one last year. Well, I said, I wasn’t here last year, was I? It was big enough for me! But everybody was worried about the owner and his sons, who’d gone out in that weather and everything. It was already like three thirty. I decided to do one more line and then go to bed, even if I didn’t fall asleep. You can’t stay up all night all the time, even on vacation. It’s hard on the wife and kids to see a father sitting up all night, like Dracula. My wife’s patient, I have to say, but you can’t take advantage. Antioquian aguardiente is the best. Then she came out again, all disheveled:

  “Turn that down a little, would you? Or just go to bed – you need to sleep.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming. You’re a real pain in the ass, aren’t you?” I said.

  “So now I’m the pain in the ass! Turn it off and come to bed, Dairon,” she said.

  At a certain time of night, the best soundtrack is slum tango like Armando Moreno, not that ballroom stuff. At dawn today I saw her, lonely, ugly, and broken, coming out of a nightclub.

  Now those are lyrics!

  And I’m the owner of the Toyota, the father of the little girls with the light-colored eyes. My wife is bandaging my arm where the owner’s wife bit me. I bought the SUV for twelve million pesos, and night before last the hotel owner offered me fourteen in cash. I told him I wasn’t interested, that just last week in Medellín they’d offered me twenty, also in cash. It’s all original, and I added chrome rims and those yellow lights on the roof and bumper. I even added a winch. It’s a sweet ride. I’d sell it for twenty-five.

  “You can see every single tooth,” I said.

  “Not every one. Just the ones she has left. It looks like a vampire bite. Hope you don’t catch rabies.”

  The man is always trying to sell me the hotel, and every time we talk, the price goes up ten million pesos. I wouldn’t buy a high-end place like the Hotel Nutibara in Medellín at that price. Not even Xanadu, Mandrake the Magician’s mansion. The old guy’s a good businessman, and he’s definitely got dough, but that little hotel isn’t worth half of what he thinks it is. Or half of what he’s asking, rather, because he’s asking for a fortune, and if they give it to him, great, and if not, no problem. There are enough mafia guys around those parts, you never know, and maybe he’ll even find a buyer. Maybe he thinks I’m in the mob.

  I don’t think I’m going to get rabies. That lady put up quite a fight! She gave all of us a run for our money, but I got the worst of it. And all because she tried to hit the fat girl from the kitchen over the head. The hotel’s not worth more than a hundred twenty million. The bungalows are falling apart because the sea air eats things up so quickly. Everything but ugly women, ha ha ha. There are lots of sagging doors that don’t shut properly, and the tiles in the bathrooms are all chipped and cracked. The kitchenettes are filthy, and the sinks are made of concrete, like for washing mops. The refrigerator is all rusted, and you have to pray to get it to make a couple of ice cubes. Of course the old man doesn’t give a crap about that – he doesn’t even see those things, or if he does he pretends not to and keeps thinking he’s got some kind of palace.

  “Shh, the Merthiolate’s on its way.”

  4:00 a.m.

  In the flashes of lightning, the father saw that there were no more fish or anything else in the boat. He asked where the coolers were, assholes, the jugs of water, his backpack, but the sons didn’t even answer. He remembered falling asleep in the boat and waking up in the water. Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before, he thought. Time is really catching up with me. Lucky I’m a hell of a swimmer, or I’d have cramped up and drowned.

  The fever was gone, but he was still weak. He felt nauseated too. It would be best to vomit, clean his body out. He leaned over the side of the boat and
retched into the sea with deep heaves that seemed to come from his bones, his very marrow. After a minute he felt better, though he still didn’t feel like talking and just stared at the floor of the boat. For some reason, he didn’t want to look at his sons.

  Javier was bailing in the darkness, and Mario was skillfully guiding the boat through the tall waves. It seemed to the father that the rough seas had grown calmer, or really that they weren’t actually rough anymore. Powerful, yes, but nothing to freak out about. The father was hungry, but there was nothing left in the boat. He wanted to ask Javier how far they were from Playamar, but he was stymied by a mounting wave of weakness. Time gets everybody in the end, he thought, unable to resist feeling sorry for himself. It occurred to him that he was dying, and he discarded the thought as if shooing a fly away from his face. Sadness overcame him again. Tears pressed against the backs of his eyes like water against a stone dam. Quickly he thought about something else.

  He wanted to go to sleep. Two bolts of lightning flashed, tangling together, and lit up the boat, but the father didn’t lift his head to see his ungrateful sons. He would have liked for them to ask after his health, his well-being. It’s like they don’t give a crap about me, he thought. And if, at that moment, he’d realized that he was feeling the lack of his sons’ affection for the first time in his life, he would have figured he was dying again. He put his arms on his knees and his head on his arms, and the world disappeared.