“Where are you going?”
“We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
“Nonstop to the USA.”
“Have a good trip, guys.”
“Take me with you, pal, don’t be mean!”
By some miracle, the contraption floats; With a cry of Eureka, they set out to sea, rowing with broomsticks. Everything is crude (the raft, the oars, the crew, the country). The onlookers make a tremendous racket (some smile, others look worried) and he ends up going closer too, with a mixture of anxiety and envy. He’s surprised there are no accusations—gusanos! traitors!—or other similar insults; on the contrary: The people appear to be part of the odyssey (the enthusiasm is contagious). The waves rock the boat, caressing what should be the keel, and six or seven faces laugh like kids with a new toy: They won’t make it, he thinks, seeing the raft move away and disappear amid the waves.
19
For an hour, the onlookers stay in the same place, talking among themselves, recounting what they’ve seen to other people who approach (flies, he thinks, surrounding the scratched record of shit). He chose this spot thinking it would be quiet and now he’s seen himself overtaken by reality. There have always been crazy people who throw themselves in the sea in unbelievable rafts; The unbelievable thing now is that it happens in broad daylight. He asks himself if he’s been too immersed in his own thoughts to the point of not seeing what’s happening around him, or if things are happening too quickly and he, wrapped up in his metaphysical crap, is unable to keep a grasp on events. It’s as if his memory has also been subordinated to the great scratched record that governs life: Selective memory, rabbit-like memory, clear memory, correct and filtered of impurities.
He heads back home. He enters the apartment, takes off his shirt (he puts on a Mussorgsky cassette), and calls the office, inventing an excuse. The manager reassures him.
“It’s all right, son, but make sure you go to the doctor”—he’s never missed work (even though he hates it) so his absence is a cause for concern: “Are you sure you aren’t sick?”
“No, comrade, it’s just . . . a little discomfort.”
He hangs up: Rum, cigarette, couch. He picks up a book at random, opens it to any old page, any old paragraph, any old line, and reads from there, without paying attention.
The scratched record of daily life superimposes itself onto the story and, of course, onto any hallucination about the future (the only thing that really matters is today): The rest is mental masturbation. He shuts himself in the bathroom with the Russian woman in his head (taking advantage of the fact that there’s water, he takes an unhurried shower): He ejaculates, spattering the walls (he goes weak in the knees). He dries his body with an old, frayed towel; then he defecates: He’s already a new man.
20
He wakes with a ray of sunlight tormenting his left eye, the hum of the fan settled in both eardrums, and the stickiness of summer soaking the sheets and the pillow. Without thinking, he calls a doctor friend and asks for a medical note (they agree to meet in a park they know from their childhood); he takes his camera, a few rolls of old film, and goes out. He walks along the seawall all the way to the end (he crosses through the tunnel on Fifth) and sits down to wait. To wait for what? For the scratched record of the inevitable to play out.
An hour later, a group of teenagers approaches the shoreline with planks, ropes, and empty barrels. In just under forty minutes, they put together a floating contraption of limited dimensions (they make a mast out of a pipe, and a sail from a number of sheets). A few gallons of water and cans of cookies will serve as sustenance for the crew. The kids prepare the raft—he photographs the process—until one of them (no older than seventeen) approaches and, with all the insolence of the barrio, asks him, “Man, you a cop or something?”
“No, no, no, me a cop? Forget it.”
“It’s like, I see you taking pictures, man.”
“I’m just a witness of my time . . . ”
The teenager looks at him as you would look at a misunderstood poet. “You’re a fucking stoolie, that’s what you are,” and he turns, leaving him standing there, camera in hand, and no time to tell him to go fuck himself.
21
He’s finishing the first rolls when the floating artifact sets off with its cargo of kids who are sick of it all and don’t have anything to hold them back. While the raft heads for the straits, he sets off for home (dragging his feet) wondering at what moment the dream of the future got stuck in the past: Everything it was assumed we had left behind—he thinks—returns again (all the vices of the old regime, but today) like a screw that’s lost its thread, or a record that gets scratched and turns around and around in the same place.
Everything is violence, he thinks: People are always on edge and any excuse, however minor it is, is enough to trigger crime. Hunger feeds us, despair is the one hope, he thinks. He gets to the park (across from a theater) where he meets his old friend. Sitting on the rim of the waterless fountain, the doctor hands him the paper that makes him officially sick, freeing him from work for a few days. They both smoke and watch the children pass and remember the days when they too were children and played at being agents of the security forces
“I’m going,” the doctor announces. “It’s all over.”
“I know,” he replies. “I know . . . ”
They part with a hug, knowing it will be the last, the final goodbye. He gets home and throws himself on the couch, tired, with no desire to think. He feels old, skinny, dirty, lost—what has changed since yesterday? He asks himself again if he’s nothing more than a tortured aesthete, and he doesn’t know what to reply. On one hand, like any other person in this scratched record he lives immersed in the epic of poor but dignified dignity, sacrifice as a modus vivendi, survival as self-improvement; on the other hand—he tortures himself—he doesn’t understand why poverty is a work of art, or the highest stage of social evolution.
22
The twilight is slow, a hot micro-inferno in the middle of summer: A lethargy as big as the sea takes possession of life. He dozes off, letting himself be carried by images filled with sharks and corpses; he dreams that he bets on the eight (the dead man) and the ten (the big fish), winning a journey to the other world. He wakes bathed in sweat. It’s nine o’clock, he knows that because of the thousands of TV sets around him all tuned in to the soap opera at high volume (the city comes to a standstill at that hour, hanging on other people’s love affairs and dramas). He drags himself to the bathroom and throws a bit of water on himself, as an ineffectual solution to the heat. Then he makes a light, cold meal and devotes his night to a science-fiction movie. He sleeps on the couch, with the TV on, the balcony door open, and the minimal summer breeze sweetening his long sleep.
23
He wakes at six-thirty. He makes a strong cup of coffee without sugar and drinks it on the balcony, looking at the sea. He goes down to the bakery, where the people are standing and grumbling as they wait for their daily ration. He gets back to the apartment an hour later, knowing he’s one of the privileged, that he doesn’t depend, like others, only on his salary and the ration book: With the dollars his mother sends, he can stretch to a few luxuries—butter, yogurt, milk—allowing him to eat in a way that’s unthinkable for many of his neighbors.
He devours his breakfast and smokes his first cigarette of the day with the news station on in the background. He reads a Russian novel. He’s in a very good mood, he’s slept well (in spite of the terrible state of the couch) and has several free days that he can add to his vacation. The news says nothing new (nothing he didn’t hear yesterday, or last week, or the previous month) and he gradually stops paying attention to the monotony of the presenters. The novel, on the other hand, grabs him on each page, sinking into the announced tragedy of an anonymous, everyday person—so far, so alien, that he ends up feeling close to him.
Toward noon, he makes a frugal
lunch and without stopping reading devours it in a few minutes. He’s washing the plate and the frying pan when he hears voices in the corridor—first he takes no notice, thinking that it’s a private matter, then, gradually, he understands that it’s something less usual. New voices are added, questions are asked on all sides, there are concrete assertions (he hears the expression “Many died,” and now there can be no doubt).
“What’s going on?” he asks, going out into the corridor, where a group of five or six people are talking without stopping.
“My nephew who works in the harbor,” a woman in her eighties starts saying, “called me just now: some individuals stole a boat.”
“A boat?” he asks, surprised.
“Yes, yes, a boat, one of those they use in the harbor”—a tugboat, someone specifies. “They hijacked it to leave the country, and apparently it sank as it left the harbor.”
“They sank it!” exclaims a neighbor, known for his eccentric opinions.
“How could they sink it? It sank!” replies a comrade, looking the eccentric in the eyes (a loud sarcastic burst of laughter can be heard).
“But when was this?”
“Last night, in the early hours, I don’t know.”
“I’ve been listening to the radio all morning and they didn’t say anything.”
“What could they have said, if they sank it themselves?” insists the eccentric (the comrade glares at him).
“And did anyone die?” he asks.
“Lots of them, apparently, but my nephew doesn’t know how many. He says when he finds out more he’ll call me back.”
“It must be the work of the enemy!” the comrade cries with patriotic fervor.
“Of course! If the enemy’s at home!”
The debate freezes when another neighbor appears with a uniform from head to feet (serious face, pistol at his belt) and quickly walks past the group.
“So, is it true?” they ask him.
“All I know is what they told me over the phone: that something very serious happened and I have to go to my unit as soon as possible”—he pauses—“but I don’t like it,” he says, before being swallowed up by the stairs.
He goes back to his apartment, just long enough to put his shoes on, change the roll in the camera, and go out to the street, where the sun strikes him as even more scorching than usual. He walks in the direction of the bay, observing attentively—pretending to be distracted—the huddles forming on the corners, among the people standing in line, and on the seawall. To all appearances, the scratched record of everyday life continues intact, repeating itself as it does every day; but deep down, something is moving, falling apart, breaking up.
He reaches the oldest part of the city and enters the harbor. There are lots of guards (public adornment): He can’t get closer. A cop stands in his way and with regal courtesy advises him to beat it, comrade. He takes a few photographs. A small group is gesticulating, pointing to the old fort and then out to sea—he approaches—one of the guys asserts: “Yes, pal, I was standing right here last night, making out with my girl, and I saw it all, friend.”
24
He stops outside the eighty-year-old woman’s door, a little hesitant. Before he can ring the bell, she opens, always on the alert for any movement in the corridor (local chatter, no doubt unfairly, brands her a gossip).
“Er . . . I’d like to know if you have news from your nephew . . . You know, about what happened in the harbor.”
The woman looks around, as if this is a bad spy movie, and murmurs conspiratorially:
“It’s better to talk inside.”
The apartment is a museum of useless objects: Russian dolls, images of saints, and Chinese ornaments of little aesthetic value, he thinks. He sits down on a red couch covered in transparent nylon and full of cushions and plastic dolls. The kitchen is from the Fifties: the refrigerator and the shelves, all Formica and enamel, with rounded corners and alarming proportions in the context of that small space. The woman pours some herbal tea into cups that look like porcelain (are they?), and starts her babble:
“My nephew says it wasn’t an accident at all”—he raises an eyebrow—“he says there were orders from above to prevent that boat getting away”—he feigns surprise—“that first they hosed down the deck with water cannon—like firefighters,” she adds, “and then they started to ram the boat until it sank.”
“It sank?” he asks.
“Well, actually, the boys had orders to stop it, not sink it”—and the woman, with a startlingly coquettish gesture, winks at him with one eye while staring at him fixedly with the other. “There were about seventy of them, and at least thirty drowned.”
Back in his apartment, he tunes to the news station to see if they say anything. He knows it’s always like this; faced with a lack of information, all that is left is speculation and gossip. News items travel from mouth to mouth, getting distorted on the way (like a damned scratched record) until they become urban myths of more than dubious veracity. They spread like a virus in this defenseless organism, making any distinction between reality and fantasy, metafiction and fiction, impossible. There’s a lack of verifiable sources, he thinks: Like the news, as unlikely as it is uncertain (next year production will increase by such and such percent; the new trade deal with China will raise our consumption capacity by this much percent, the radio headlines recite). He eats rice and fried eggs without any appetite, all the while asking himself what’s going to happen now. He goes blank for a few minutes, staring engrossed at the wall. The question returns, obsessively, and the wall doesn’t answer.
25
He goes up to see the Russian woman. He knows that she receives foreign radio every day: That’s how he finds her, sitting by the radio. The scratched record of criticism from overseas echoes around the living room of her small apartment, as square and Soviet as the building. The Russian woman bites her lip, anxiously. Political nature has operated in her since childhood: When she was little, she received letters from her parents, both guests in Siberia, and at one time in her life she herself was accused of the worst crime of all: doing business.
They sent her to this inhospitable island, a last chance to go to the heaven of the righteous: She came to redeem herself and ended up black marketeering, he thinks. He observes her on the sly (her hard, stiff beauty, and that warm smile of hers). He thinks he’s starting to fall in love with her, and is surprised: He comes to the conclusion that she is the only thing dear to him in his life. She asks:
“You’re going too, aren’t you?”
They look at each other for minutes, maybe years, and he doesn’t answer. They converse in silence, accompanied by the muffled noises of the city and a pathetic bolero spewing out apathetically from the radio.
26
He calls a former classmate from the university, whose interest in the mechanics of cameras led him to become passionate about photography itself. He goes to visit him just after the soap opera, with a bottle of rum, some cigarettes, and two undeveloped rolls.
The kitchen is transformed into a small darkroom; on the little table there appear a Czech enlarger and trays of developer, fixer, and water, and they spend the next hour developing and printing a few copies.
“Things are getting bad,” his friend says with cinematic gravity. “This is a shipwreck and the rats are abandoning the ship. Mark my words: The revolution has failed,” he says, not devoid of grandiloquence and provocation (enfant terrible), he thinks. He used to be truly fat, Pavarottian, with a spirit the size of the universe; now he’s skinny and dull, lacking in charisma. Anemia has stripped him of his identity. His optimism disappeared along with his belly, as if that had been the precise measure of his hopes and happiness.
“It isn’t just failing,” he continues, “but it insists on dragging us down with it. And what the fuck can we do? Do you realize we’ve always been part of this? What are we go
ing to do now?” cries the former fat man, on his third or fourth rum.
He lights a cigarette, smiles faintly like an old, badly paid clown, and starts to sum up:
“First, this island is sinking into the sea—”
“That’s the problem,” the former fat man cuts in, “the island is sinking and we can’t blame anyone else. We’ve torpedoed ourselves. Mark my words: ourselves.”
“Of course,” he intervenes as if the thing were of little importance. “Do you know anything about the tugboat they sank?”
“What tugboat?” the former fat man retorts. “Boy, haven’t you learned that things only happen if the news says they happen? Have you heard an official version?” At his negative gesture, the former fat man continues, “If they haven’t said anything, it means nothing happened. And that isn’t up for debate, comrade.”
They drink rum for hours. The alcohol invites inevitable nostalgia, that scratched record of the distant past . . .
“What about my photographs?” he asks. “What do you think?”
“Boy,” the former fat man replies, “for a beginner they aren’t bad. What camera do you use?”
“A Kiev,” he replies.
The former fat man looks at him sarcastically. “Pal, that’s not a camera, it’s a device that’s useless for contemporary photographic practice.”
“What?”
“Throw that shit in the garbage, man, it’s no good for anything.” The former fat man goes to a cupboard filled with parts and cameras and comes back with a black Pentax (old, solid), two lenses (a 35 and a 200), and a flash. “This is a basic but decent kit. It’s a loan,” he adds. “The only thing I ask is that you take good photographs. This won’t last: We’re making history, comrade.”
33 Revolutions Page 3
