The river has its ways. When you least expect it, it remembers you, or seems to. If he were a man who could hold in mind a thought with some persistence, this would be it, and he’d have thought a thousand times about something like what had just happened. And, starting now, he’d think of it more intensely still.
In these days, in these rivers with their dark and surly fish, it’s pretty much unheard of for the man who casts his lines come what may, and with dogged steadfastness, to hook a three-kilo tararira. It’s not a fish for deep or for fast-running waters, but he’d caught it with the line that he’d thrown across the gunwale closest to the shore, right in there among the reeds. Sometimes you can find it in a ditch with little water, filled with logs and branches, where you’d never think to find a fish belonging to this species. And then the thing is big, a fish right for the sea, you’d think, and yet it has a spirit that is really of the river. Sly, savage, pitiless. He looked with exaltation at its battle-hardened head, its sunken eyes, its fearsome jaws, and its gills that rose and fell with a rhythmic movement that didn’t betray its pain. What manoeuvres had he not tried, what places and what hours had he not used in his bid to catch this fish? Now the fish had come to him without his having decided on it in any real sense, excepting for this state of being ready at all times. This is what the river’s like.
He held the tararira up against the morning sky, feeling the exuberance of life there in its weight, multiplied by torment. He’d have liked to stretch this moment out to something quite impossible. And then he felt a little sad, and didn’t know why.
He took enormous care when he was prising out the hook, and threw the tararira in the bottom of the boat. The animal began to fight and throw itself around, splashing water back at him. He couldn’t believe its strength.
He sat and took the oars. He was still filled with excitement. The tararira gradually became a little quieter, and then he started rowing. He really couldn’t believe it.
When he thought it over, the Chanacito way had to be a little shorter. But then, on the other hand, the time he saved by going up the Piccardo Canal would be lost on the Baldozas, which twists away south-west. And so he went upriver on the Chanacito Stream. He could have a look, in passing, up beyond the Ignacio, where at certain times of year the fishing turned out pretty good. He could even drop a line and pick it up on his return. But he didn’t get as far as the Ignacio in the end. He met with the provisions boat before he’d got that far, and was back at Punta Morán before the middle of the day.
He saw the boat come round the bend that meets the Caguané; it sailed out in mid-river with a judder in its engine and a blue plume of smoke rising upwards from its funnel. The boat was of the island type, special to these rivers, constructed with a double prow and flat bottom, a decent length and not a lot of beam, but with its overall proportions something larger than the standard. The superstructure windows had been cut out very large to allow for loading goods.
He heard it long before he saw it come out from the bend, in the middle of the river, its plume of smoke escaping from its funnel. It’s rare to see a vessel of this class that has a funnel. There’s usually an outlet in the stern, to the side. But this was a launch that at first had carried passengers, and as a rule a vessel of that kind will have a funnel. And then the boat had once belonged to Deaf Angarita, a man who had his own ways. A launch with a funnel has a different air entirely.
He knew it by its sound before the boat came into sight, and it made him glad to see its smoky plume above the river.
The launch stopped at a jetty, its engine still running, and he rowed across towards it. The man didn’t see him as he made his way across. He was speaking to another man, standing on the jetty, and he opened up the throttle just as Boga came up close. He hammered on the side of the launch with an oar, and the man turned to look.
He stood there without speaking and just studied him a while, with the noise there in between them, rhythmic and intense, and didn’t seem persuaded that he merited attention. Boga got up on his feet and wrapped his hands around the gunwale, and then the man decided that he’d throttle down his engine, now that, by the look of things, he didn’t have a choice.
‘What?’ he shouted from the wheel at the bow, and making it quite clear that he wasn’t for wasting time.
‘I want a couple of things.’
‘WHAT?’
‘I WANT TO BUY SOME THINGS!’
He was still looking back but he hadn’t made up his mind. Then he came towards him, weaving down the boat between the crates and all the tins.
‘All right then, all right. What is it you want?’
Boga fixed him with a stern gaze and the man looked disconcerted.
‘I haven’t exactly got much… you can see what I’ve got.’ He spoke without ill humour now.
‘I’ll take a bit of sea bread to begin with.’
‘How much?’
‘How much can you give me?’
‘I’ve only got one bag. I can give you up to half of it…’
‘How much is that?’
‘Five or six kilos… at ten pesos a kilo…’
‘All right, as it comes.’
The man got the bag and began with the bread. ‘What else do you want?’ He was weighing out the bread. ‘Have you got something to put it in?’
‘A bag.’
Boga crouched down in the boat and lifted out the bag.
‘Give me two or three of those chorizos.’
‘Two, or three?’ the man said.
‘Two. When are you round here?’
‘Every other day… usually around this time. Whereabouts are you?’
‘Away down the river… at Punta Morán.’
‘I can go as far at that.’
‘I prefer to come up here… I’m not always in one place… Give me a packet of that yerba maté.’
‘Which?’
‘Whichever. A kilo. Better give me two.’
‘Two packets of a kilo.’
‘Now I’d like a bit of meat.’
The man scratched at his head. ‘That’s another matter.’
‘Anything… a few bones with a little bit of meat… bones would be good.’
The man opened a metal box.
‘I’ve got some ossobuco, then.’
‘I’ll make do with that.’
The man wrapped up the shinbone in some pages of a newspaper, then waited, watching Boga.
‘Matches, several boxes… a packet of coarse salt… I’m sure I’m forgetting something.’
He crouched down again and took a five-litre can.
‘Kerosene, for one.’
While the man was filling it, he wondered about buying a bottle of wine. Until now he’d been drinking only water from the river. When he thought it over, he could get by fine without it. It’s not going to kill me, he said to himself. Back with the old man, he’d rarely tasted wine.
‘Have you cigarettes?’
‘Some, yes… these.’ He placed a wooden box on the gunwale of his boat.
Boga reached in and rummaged among the packets. He took out five packets of light Particulares, twenty cigarettes in each, and two packs of Regia Italiana.
‘I think that’s all I want.’
He opened up a packet, and lit a cigarette.
He started with the stowing while the man made up the bill. The tararira flailed when he bent down just beside it, splashing up some water.