Kamchatka (29 page)

I wondered if there was a message somewhere in the house, somewhere that, in the darkness, we hadn't found.

I was on my way out to the swimming pool to check on the toads when I saw a light in the near distance.

It flashed on and off, on and off, like a signal.

I threw myself at Lucas and gave him a hug that winded him. He was leaning against a poplar tree. Next to him was his sleeping bag and his Japan Airlines knapsack.

‘What are you doing out here? Can't you see it's going to rain?'

‘I was waiting for you.'

‘What happened to the lights?'

‘There's a power cut, the whole area is pitch dark.'

Clearly I must have been none too satisfied by Lucas's answer, because I tried my luck again. ‘What are you doing out here?'

Lucas didn't answer. He seemed more interested in papá, who had spotted us and was coming over. This pissed me off. In ignoring me, I felt as though Lucas was breaking a pact and that I therefore had every right to feel upset. But I didn't have time to tell him how hurt I felt. Things happen faster than feelings.

‘You got a minute?' Lucas asked papá.

Instead of answering, papá sent me inside.

‘Go in and help your mother, she's in there all alone with all those suitcases.'

Unwillingly, I did as I was told. When the Midget, who had woken up and was stretching, made some inoffensive comment, I laid into him.

He started whining and went out to the swimming pool where he found a body floating in the water. ‘Dead toad! Dead toad!'

For some strange reason, I felt relieved. It was good to have something to do, something to keep me busy. I sent the Midget off to find some newspaper and a piece of string. I went to get a spade.

We buried the toad at the foot of the tree, next to all the others.

‘It's not really a hole,' the Midget whispered to the little package that passed for a shroud, ‘it's a lift. We put you in here and you go straight up to toad heaven.'

He put the toad in the ground. I started filling in the hole. The Midget made an elegant, painstaking sign of the Cross and ran back to the house.

I was still wrestling with the spade when Lucas came up to me. He had his sleeping bag under one arm and his Japan Airlines knapsack over his other shoulder.

‘I'm off, Harry.'

‘In this weather? You'll get soaked!'

‘Your papá is going to take me to the station.'

‘Can I come?'

‘No.'

‘Why not? I'm nearly finished.'

‘I can't wait any longer. I should have gone ages ago, but I wanted to wait for you guys. So I could say goodbye.'

I started hitting the ground with the spade to level it.

‘I'm going, Harry. And this time I won't be coming back.'

‘Do you really,
really
have to go?' I asked, tamping down the grave with the sole of my shoe.

‘Wrong question.'

I knelt down, searching for stones to put on the grave; I didn't want the dogs digging it up in the middle of the night.

‘Is this how it's going to be, then? Ciao and I just turn around and walk away? I thought we were friends.'

‘But we're never going to see each other again!'

There was a silence, which seemed conclusive. I had my hands full of stones when Lucas said: ‘I left my orange T-shirt in the bedroom.'

This felt like the last straw. The only reason I didn't throw the stones at him was because I needed them for something else. ‘Go and get it yourself!'

At some point it started to rain, but I didn't notice. I was still on my knees; I was placing the stones in a spiral, starting at the centre and working out in wider and wider circles when I noticed mamá standing next to me.

‘Why won't you say goodbye to Lucas?'

‘Because I don't want to.'

‘You'll be sorry later.'

‘What do you know?'

‘I know. Believe me, I know.'

‘Can't you see I'm busy?'

Suddenly mamá was down on the ground next to me, kneeling on the wet Earth. She put her hands on my shoulders and forced me to turn and face her.

‘Look at me. Look at me!' she said, holding my face as I struggled to turn away. ‘You can't keep on shutting yourself in. It's horrible when you get hurt, I know, nobody likes it; we'd all like to have a suit of armour to protect us from suffering. But if you build a wall to protect yourself from the world outside, you end up realizing you've shut yourself in.
Don't shut yourself in, darling. It's better to suffer than to feel nothing at all. If you spend your life in a suit of armour, you'll miss out on the best things! Promise me something… promise me you won't miss out on a single thing, not one… Will you promise me that?'

I roughly drew my face away. I was sick of the wrong questions, of suicidal toads, of my mother talking gibberish, which, as you've seen, did not stop when it rained. But if I thought my rejection would force my mother to admit defeat, I was wrong. Even soaking wet, this woman saw motherhood as a test of endurance.

‘Do you know the worst pain I've ever felt?' (She didn't wait for me to answer, but just went on.) ‘Pain so bad I thought I'd die, I swear. I couldn't bear it. But I had consciously chosen to suffer this pain. I had two choices: I could choose to do what I wanted, knowing I would suffer, or I could choose not to suffer and be left with nothing. And I made the right choice. The suffering I went through was worse than anything I've ever known, but I came through it and I was happier than I've ever been. And I wouldn't change it for anything in the world. Do you know what it was? Do you know what I'm talking about?'

I didn't want to answer, but I was intrigued by this unfamiliar fragment of the family legend. Which story was this one? What had happened to mamá, what suffering? Was there some scar she'd never mentioned?

‘I'm talking about you. I'm talking about when I had you, dummy.'

When I got back to my room, I realized what Lucas had been trying to say when he said goodbye. I'd thought he was asking me to go and fetch his T-shirt, but it wasn't that. Lucas knew how much I loved the fluorescent orange, the print that felt like rubber, the incredible drawing of the motorbike. That was why he'd left it on my bed, clean and carefully laid out in all its splendour. He had given it to me.

I ran down the driveway as far as the road, but he was gone.

Trains lend themselves to daydreaming. It must be something about the jolting, the rhythmic clacking, the drone of the refreshment sellers the same the world over – a lullaby of the post-industrial world. Or maybe it has something to do with the idea of letting yourself be carried away: you pay your fare and surrender yourself to the machine and by the time you realize it – whether you're sitting in a carriage or standing crushed by the crowd – your thoughts have already carried you away. Or maybe such speculation is unnecessary, maybe a daydream is simply a logical extension of the train itself, the very idea of it. After all, several tons of metal hurtling at top speed along a straight line is an idea that could only have occurred to someone in a dream, someone deep in an extraordinary dream, the sort of dream that only a train can produce.

I like it when the train is travelling on an elevated track, because I can see the roofs of the houses. People treat roofs as though they did not exist. They toss all the things they no longer want onto their roofs – rusty tricycles, children's paddling pools, empty bird cages, tins of
paint, the skirting boards they never get around to fitting, the tiles left over from a renovation. They also use them to put out of sight those things they don't want to deal with: the washing line of damp clothes that includes an oversized bra, the illicit TV connection, the chimneys pouring out their brazen black smoke. I know you're not supposed to notice these things, that they've been placed there so that they won't be seen, but I like noticing things other people ignore: they speak to me, and, besides, it's not my fault, it's the train's!

On this, my very first train journey, I am heading to Buenos Aires. I leave from the same station that Lucas left from a few hours earlier. The knowledge that I am duplicating his every movement – getting a ticket, waiting for the train, choosing a carriage – makes me feel close to him, but the feeling is fleeting. Once aboard I don't recognize anything or anyone. The carriages seem unfinished, as though someone had taken them out of the oven too soon. There are too many people ignoring each other. The seats are filthy and broken. Worse still, I spot a man who terrifies me. He is holding his newspaper in one hand, and his little finger is suspiciously stiff. When we get to the next station I change carriages, but it doesn't make me feel any better. There are more and more people. I'm drowning in a sea of elbows and armpits. I manage to poke my head above the tangle of limbs, almost throwing myself onto a woman who is still – sleeping – her mouth hanging open. Through the window, the city seems to be running away as fast as its legs will carry it.

The night that Lucas left, I decided that the time had come to prove myself as an escape artist. I had been working out the plan in my mind for some time. To carry it out, I would require perfect self-control. Once I began, there could be no turning back. To the escape artist, this last rule is crucial: when the bolt shoots home, the lid of the trunk closes and there are thousands of tons of water above his head, an escape artist has no time for second thoughts. There is no way back; the only way is forward. Escape is the only option.

The Midget agreed to help, although he was afraid that mamá might not understand the subtle distinction between assistant and accomplice. I had no choice but to resort to bribery. I promised him my
Superman
comics, which were already ruined because the Midget had drawn haloes all over them. (These days he drew a halo over everyone he thought was a good guy. Lex Luthor didn't have a halo.) We headed off for school together, like we did every day. I went with him as far as the gate because he was afraid of getting lost, but before he went inside, I gave him two comics – the down payment; the rest would come later if he held up his end of the deal and didn't say anything about where I'd gone – and I stood there watching until he was inside.

The only thing I hadn't reckoned on was Denucci, a friend from class. He was in the playground, on the other side of the railings, watching me silently. I suppose he must have noticed that me and the Midget didn't go in together. For one endless minute we stood there, neither of us knowing what to do. I saw him look towards Father Ruiz, who was standing at the foot of the steps, greeting the pupils as they arrived, as he did every day. If Denucci said anything to Father Ruiz, my escape plan would fail before it had even begun.

But Denucci did nothing. He stood there, staring at me through the railings, wearing the same expression he did at playtime when he asked me if I wanted to play with his soldiers and I said no. I took one step backwards. Denucci didn't move. I kept walking backwards like a crab; Denucci still didn't move. I had retreated about four metres when he raised his hand and waved. I waved back discreetly. I didn't want Father Ruiz to notice.

Bertuccio always went home for lunch. I planned to confront him as he left school. I was sure he'd invite me to his place and, with a bit of luck, there'd be
milanesas
. Taking trains and buses, I arrived in Flores about mid-morning. All I could do now was wait around until lunchtime. I didn't mind. I could go and see what was on at
the cinema – at the Pueyrredón and the San Martín. I could go to Tonini's bookshop and see if they had a new version of
Robin Hood
. I could go to the shopping centre on the Avenida Boyacá and look in the window of the model shop that was always full of Zeroes and Spitfires. My one precaution was to take off my school smock, so it wouldn't look like I was bunking off school. (In my innocence, I thought that a kid wandering around with a schoolbag would look less suspicious than one wearing a school smock.)

I was surprised to find that nothing had changed. I don't know what I was expecting. I think I was looking for some sign that I had been missed, I don't know, for the colours to be more faded, the newsstands closed out of respect (they'd lost one of their best customers, it was the least they could have done), a crack in the façade of the Iglesia San José, I don't know, something! But everything looked exactly the same: the same colours, the same newsstands, with the same guys running them; the same, graceless church.

People seemed exactly the same too. They walked up and down Rivadavia, popping into shops, into banks, into galleries, waiting for buses, crossing the avenue with the brisk air of people with a lot to do, with the purposeful gait of people who had somewhere to be. All this briskness ended up making me suspicious. I stopped feeling that nothing had changed and began to suspect that things looked
too much
like I remembered them. I began to think that maybe this wasn't Flores but a film set, a mock-up carefully created to look exactly as I remembered it, a replica, accurate in every detail but fake, full of actors playing people I used to know: ordinary people, the guys on the newsstands, the old age pensioners, the bankers who looked exactly as I remembered them (they must have used photos and film clips when they did the casting) but actors just the same, nervous because they were playing out the first scenes, the ones where everyone is so busy trying to remember their lines and their actions that it doesn't quite flow. You notice that even simple
gestures look forced, exaggerated – the way the person across the street raises a hand to hail the bus, the way that old man takes out his wallet, the affected way those girls are laughing; I had been dropped onto a film set without realizing it, or maybe this was all being played out for my benefit. Whatever it was, I didn't like it.