Kamchatka (19 page)

But the chief reason for my indifference only gradually occurred to me. Who would worry about being accepted by a bunch of ten-year-old kids when he's got a grown-up friend who's eighteen years old? Compared to Lucas, my classmates all seemed like silly, stupid babies. Lucas was my Green Lantern, my sun and my radioactive spider: the true source of all my powers. While they were kicking a ball in the street, I was practising sailors' knots. While they were stuffing themselves with chips, I was doing four laps of the grounds of the
quinta.
While they were watching TV, I was practising holding my breath in the bath. (mamá was eternally grateful to Houdini for getting me to do something she had never got me to do: take a bath every day.)

After a while they stopped whispering, stopped making fun of me, stopped pretending. It was obvious that none of it had any effect on me. I had done nothing to try to be accepted, not so much as a smile. In fact, I'd even turned down an invitation from Denucci to
play with his trading cards. It was at this point that they started to wonder about my true identity. Why did I sometimes forget to say ‘Here' when my name was called during roll call? Why did Señor Andrés let me off that time, when I didn't know the answer and shouted ‘Next!', taking the words out of his mouth. Why did I always go off by myself at break time, with a piece of paper that I started scribbling on if anyone came near me? Was it possible that all these things obscured some mystery?

They offered me chewing gum and sweets. They offered to trade cards with me.

I always said ‘No'. At first as a safety measure but later because I enjoyed it. There's nothing in the world more fun than being a man of mystery.

And yet through all this there was one friend who kept me company and never said a word. Don Francisco put me in charge of Mister Corpuscle, the school skeleton. My responsibilities included making sure that he was in the classroom at the beginning of biology lessons and putting him back in a dusty corner of the Secretary's office afterwards. Since the Secretary's office was on one side of the playground and my classroom was on the other, I had to push him as the rickety wheels on the wooden base squeaked across the tiles and his bones clacked against each other, making music like a xylophone.

I was not absolved of my responsibilities when it rained, and on such occasions I used an old umbrella that also lived in the Secretary's office. Since it was difficult to hold the umbrella and push at the same time, I always ended up giving it to Mister Corpuscle. I'd put the handle into his bony hand and balance the rim of the umbrella on his skull – and we would dash through rain and storm so that he wouldn't be late for his big entrance.

The best thing was that biology didn't come before playtime; it came before Señor Andrés' class. Since I had to walk Mister Corpuscle home, I had permission to leave the classroom and thereby miss precious minutes of the Spanish class; this way I avoided numerous
opportunities to be called up in front of the rest of the class to be tested on the pluperfect or the perfective aspect.

Our walk back to the Secretary's office was always slower. Sometimes I'd pretend to be tired, stop halfway and sit on the concrete bench that ran all the way around the playground. Mister Corpuscle never complained. He seemed to enjoy this little breather as much as I did, this moment devoted to contemplation before he was again abandoned among the maps and the compasses and the boxes of chalk. We made a strange couple, me sitting there, him standing, staring in the same direction. Over time we came to trust each other and I found myself talking to him, nothing out of the ordinary, just stuff about the class we'd just been in (he didn't have much respect for Don Francisco, though he was very fond of him), stories about Bertuccio, that kind of thing. When we were together, I never felt alone: he was a master of the eloquent silence.

I spent much of my time in exile in Kamchatka alone, isolated by eternal snows. Eventually, you find yourself saying aloud things that, until then, only echoed in your head – I hate this fucking cold, I must remember to buy deodorant, who the hell is calling this hour? – and eventually you accept that silence is an aria scored for one voice. Throughout those years I often felt that I wasn't talking to myself, I was talking to Mister Corpuscle: I could sense him in the shadows of my cabin, listening with his usual patience, offering tea and sympathy through my sorrows, staring out through empty sockets that had seen everything.

Lucas thought I was making a mistake. That I was missing out on something. If life had dictated that I had to go to this school, why not at least enjoy the good bits? I told him that, given that my classmates were all dumb, there were no good bits. He stubbornly argued that that was impossible; that, if only because of the laws of probability, there had to be at least one cool kid: one in thirty wasn't much to ask for. I figured that even if this was true, I was better off the way I was. After all, what was the point in making friends with someone who might disappear at any moment, never to be seen again? I was angry enough about what had happened with Bertuccio, even though I still hoped I would get to see him again soon.

Lucas understood, but he said that my logic was flawed. Don't you make friends when you're on holiday, friends who might live in Salta or Bariloche, even though you know that when you go home you won't be able to see them? And don't you have fun with them in spite of that, in spite of knowing that it will end? In conclusion, he offered me what he believed was irrefutable proof. If I was right, if it was sensible not to forge new ties, to make new friends in times of change and uncertainty, then what were he and I doing here, at the foot of a poplar tree, practising knots in the weak winter sunshine?

It was impossible to fight with Lucas. He avoided all confrontation – something that was usually my style – but it was not out of cowardice or lack of conviction, it was simply a different way of making a stand.

Lucas knew how to listen, and when he thought it was his turn to speak, he outlined his position clearly and carefully: he never became bitter or aggressive, neither when his position was weak nor when – as now – he obviously had the advantage. And even when he had come up with one irrefutable argument after another, he always left the door open so that the other person could make a dignified exit. I took this route, arguing that it wasn't the same, that he was my trainer and I was his pupil; we were master and disciple, Lucas was Master Po, I was Grasshopper: a kind of relationship that was permissible in times of change and uncertainty. Then he smiled, his fingers moving restlessly over the rope, and said that our relationship was about to come to an end because the knot he was about to show me – he called it a buntline hitch – was the last thing he had to teach me.

From now on we would be equals. And everything we lived through, whether it lasted or not, we would live through together.

My first attempts as an escape artist were a disaster. At first, feeling bold, I told Lucas to tie the knot tighter and tighter around my wrists. As a result, after a few minutes it cut off the circulation to my hands and my arms went numb. It felt as though I was missing an arm – or worse, it felt like having two sandbags strapped to my sides. Then I started to get the hang of it; I kept my wrists stiff while he was tying the knots. When I relaxed the rope slackened a bit, but then I started to pull and tug and the ropes burned my arms and all I succeeded in doing was pulling the knots tighter. The trick was to be relaxed. When I stopped obsessing about the escape, my heart stopped racing, the blood stopped pulsing in my hands, making me supple rather than stiff and, with a bit of effort, I was free. Lucas suggested I think of a poem or a song or something I could recite to
myself while I was doing it, to take my mind off the knots. I promised I'd think about it, but for the time being, given that I wasn't in a padlocked trunk at the bottom of the sea, I'd prefer to chat to him – which had the same effect.

I remember one of those conversations vividly. We were out in the gardens. It was about five o'clock in the evening, the time the sun sets in the winter. Papá and mamá still weren't back from their daily expedition into the jungle of Buenos Aires. The Midget was in the house, and though I couldn't hear him, I could hear the TV, which was reassuring. Lucas tied my hands while I worked at keeping the muscles in my arms tense, so as to offer the greatest resistance.

‘If you can get out of that in less than a minute, you're Houdini,' he said as he adjusted the final knot. ‘If you can get out in two, you're Mediocrini. If it takes you longer than that, you're Disastrini.'

I asked him to stand on the other side of the tree. I didn't want him to see me as I struggled with the knots.

This was the moment when I needed to relax, to breathe out, let the rope go slack; the moment when conversation should have helped take my mind off the fears and anxieties conjured by my conscious mind. Feeling I needed to find something to talk about, I went back to the subject that had been nagging at me for days. I had been losing sleep trying to think of a convincing proof for the superiority of Superman. Lucas's attack had taken me by surprise, and I had been preparing my counter-attack ever since.

‘Superman can save more people in less time.'

‘Sure,' said Lucas from behind the trunk (it was as though the tree itself was talking to me), ‘but most of the time he's too busy saving Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen.'

‘Superman is global – he can get to anywhere on the planet in a matter of seconds.'

‘That's true. But have you ever seen him dealing with a disaster outside the USA? have you ever seen a poor person in a
Superman
comic? Have you ever seen Superman take on a Latin American dictator? And this guy is supposed to work for a newspaper!'

It had been a mistake to choose this subject: Lucas was thrashing me and knowing I was losing made me angry, and the anger made me tense and the tension made the rope bite into my wrists like a rabid dog. To make matters worse, he was already up to one minute. Now I couldn't be Houdini. With a bit of luck, I might still be Mediocrini.

‘Besides, there's a structural problem in the storyline,' Lucas said, merciless now.

‘Huh?'

‘Superman can move at super-speed, right? And when he flies around the Earth at a thousand miles an hour he can make time run backwards, right?'

Reluctantly, I admitted this was true. ‘One time Lois Lane died and Superman went back in time to stop her from dying.'

‘But if he can do that, why can't he go back years and stop the planet Krypton from exploding and his parents from dying?'

This left me speechless. I'd never thought of it this way. Was Superman, as Lucas seemed to be insinuating, an ungrateful son and a traitor to the people of Krypton? If Lucas was right, did that mean Superman was so stupid that the idea had never occurred to him, or did it mean he was so selfish and insensitive that he preferred to cut himself off from his past life so he could be the only superhero?

‘Twenty more seconds and you're Disastrini.'

It came to me out of the blue, a brainwave flying the flag of victory. Don't ask me how, but suddenly I had the answer to the riddle, the evidence that would prove that I was right and Lucas was wrong, and prove that Superman was not only a good person but the greatest superhero of them all. I opened my mouth, prepared to shout it from the rooftops. I barely recognized the voice that came from my throat as my own: it sounded hoarse and squeaky,
as if the rope around my arms had crept up and was now around my throat.

‘Superman can only go back in time here, in this solar system, because he gets his powers from our sun. If he flew back to Krypton, he'd lose his powers so he wouldn't be able to do anything. It's not like he doesn't want to save his parents. He can't. He can't save them, get it? He just can't!'

I stopped squawking and fell to my knees. I was exhausted.

Obviously my voice surprised Lucas too, because he came out from behind the tree, crouched down and untied me.

‘I can't feel anything,' I said, my voice faint.

Lucas rubbed my forearms so fast it burned. He was nearly as fast as Superman.

‘What if they don't come back?' I asked in a whisper. ‘Papá and mamá – what if they never come back?'

He put his arms around me and started to rub my back as though my back had gone to sleep too.

We stayed like that for a while. Before we realized it, it was dark and the cold air prickled our noses.

The afternoon wasn't a complete waste. At least we agreed on the fact that, from time to time, Superman did fly to the Arctic Circle and shut himself away in the Fortress of Solitude.

Words, like all things, exist in time. Some fall into disuse and end up imprisoned between the pages of old books, where nobody ever visits them, like pensioners in old folks' homes. Some change through their lives, losing some traits and gaining others. Take the word ‘father', for example: the dictionary definition is concise and firmly rooted in biology (a man or male animal in relation to its offspring), but the characteristics we associate with the word are very different. Nobody thinks of a father simply as a male animal; the word conjures the image of a lovable man who is a part of his children's lives, who protects them, loves them and guides them. But that definition, which most people would agree on, is more recent than we might think. It might be older than the combustion engine, but it's more recent than the printing press and much more recent than the concept of romantic love. Didn't Romeo and Juliet reject their fathers' authority to be faithful to an emotion they considered more sacred than blind obedience?

What we understand by the word ‘father' is very different from what, for centuries, the word meant. The Book of Genesis makes no mention of what Adam and Eve were like with their children. It doesn't even indicate how they reacted when Cain murdered his brother Abel: that the text is silent on the subject suggests
bewilderment rather than grief. With a similar fatalism Abraham, who for decades had cried out to heaven that Sarah might bear him a son, agreed to sacrifice Isaac, the child he had so longed for, to the very God who had granted his prayer. In the Bible, Yahweh, the Father of humanity itself, is extraordinarily ambivalent to his creatures: twice he almost wipes them off the face of the Earth (with the Flood and again when the people of Moses began worshipping false idols), and both times he repents at the last minute. He only ever unconditionally embraces the human race when he finds himself overcome with love for David, his favourite; it is the first time that he refers to himself as the Father of Man.