When Boga asked the old man if he’d lend him the double-barrelled shotgun, which had been hanging near the headboard since the day he’d arrived, the old man looked him in the eyes and didn’t say a word. Two months after that, when you’d imagine he’d forgotten, he took the shotgun off its hook and put it in the passage, leaned it up against the wall right next to Boga, who was lying there, puffing on a cigarette. Boga took the gun onto the boat from that day on, and kept it on the floor between his feet while he was rowing. He worked out in the reeds with the shotgun there to hand, hanging on a forked stick that he’d pressed into the mud. When a limpkin or another bird he thought was worth the trouble paused nearby, he gathered up the shotgun with a straightening of his arm. The shot rang harsh and sad, like a punch across the vastness, rolling on and on across the undulating field, and then across the water, and after that the nearest islands. Once back in the house, down on the floor of the veranda, he cleaned and stripped the shotgun down, absorbed in his meticulous attention to the work. It was a Belgian shotgun, a Pirlot & Frésart, that took 12-cal cartridges of 65 mm. He would have given his all to own this gun, but he knew that the old man prized it just as much as he did. What he might instead dare ask him for, at some point, was the Sheffield knife he used to cut all kinds of things, including his cigars.
The old man did his work barefoot, in trousers that were worn out, cut off just below the knee, and wearing two jackets which he tied round with sisal. Boga himself wore a sweater with a high neck and a pair of long johns with a fly that was sewn closed. It was dirty work, and hard, and it numbed them by degrees. The wind buzzed round their heads continuously, on most days, rather like a swarm of wasps, dizzying them and stabbing at the skin on their faces.
Boga took the lines in when the light began to fail, and then they would go back to the house, dead tired and ill-tempered. He didn’t take his long johns off but pulled trousers over them and lay down in a corner of the passage. The old man, on the other hand, gave himself a wash that seemed to go on an eternity, then put on a clean, fleece, collarless shirt, full-length trousers and a pair of Pirelli boots. Then, on the veranda, he sat and used his Sheffield knife to cut one of his Avantis and smoked it until dinner time, very slowly, with the cream-coloured dog beside him, looking at the river, looking at the heavens, looking at the night begin in silence. The old woman lit a lamp.
The old man would get up first, in the grey light of the dawn. Boga listened to him prowl around the house (the only time he did seem old), until the slow, heavy steps grew loud towards his room. He let fly with a kick against the door, then went away. It was his one show of authority, and Boga understood it as such, for it made no other sense. Both knew it was useless. He’d been awake a long time, and knew just how the light grew in the cracks that lined the door, and how, at a certain point, the light and the kick would meet.
But this day, just before the spring, the light rose past that moment and he didn’t hear the kick; he hadn’t even heard the footsteps, slow and rather heavy, make their way towards his room. He’d only heard some muted steps at dawn. And now he doubted even that. Then the steps had stopped and the light grew on alone. Now the day had come. The vague shapes of his feet were there, opening in a V. He was still lying on his back, his ears alert despite himself, looking at a small hole in the roof that shone like money.
He heard the half-past-seven plane that came in from the south and seemed to roll across the roof, then he got out of bed. He stood there in the half-light with the silence lifting from the floor, or seeming to lift, before it flooded through the room. He went into the passage then, smoothing down his hair with both his hands.
He saw the old man there at the far end of the passage, sitting in the reed chair with a blanket on his legs. He was looking at the river.
Boga paused and looked, still standing in the doorway of his room, his eyes half-closed, but his face betraying no surprise. The cream-coloured dog was lying close beside the old man and, sensing him there, it raised its ears. He went into the kitchen that was always left in darkness, with its soot-layered walls that smelled of smoke from long ago, and had a feeling the old woman was waiting in a corner, looking out at him and the old man and, beyond them, at the river. The old woman had put the kettle on the range but not quite on the flame, so the water wouldn’t boil, and left the maté ready in its upturned lid. Just as every day. He reached up to the bag that was hanging on the wall and took himself some sea bread, which he stored under his sweater. He went into the passage with the maté and the kettle, and sat down on the floor.
The old man’s face was thin and gaunt and unshaven, his beard now growing as if sprouting from an overhang.
Boga threw some sea bread to the cream-coloured dog, but the dog merely sniffed at it and went on with its sleeping.
‘Those reeds,’ the old man said, ‘they must be dry by now. They can come inside today, in what’s left of today.’
The dull hum of the fire could be heard here in the passage, stirred up by the suction of the chimney.
‘Ok…’
‘They can come inside today and then tomorrow go to San Fernando.’
‘Ok…’
‘While you’re there, you’re going to bring back several things we need.’
‘Ok…’
They heard a launch out in the distance.
‘It’s nine o’clock.’
‘Shit!’
‘You’d better make a start.’
Boga got up from the floor.
‘What’s wrong with you, old man?’
‘I’m not going. No.’ He made a gesture of annoyance. ‘You’d better make a start.’
‘Ok…’
Going down the willow steps, he paused and turned around and clicked just once with his fingers. The dog got to its feet with no visible transition from total relaxation to absolute mobility, and jumped aboard the boat before he’d got there.
He gathered in the reeds and killed a pair of scrub-hens that he came upon near the sandbank, and he returned when it was dusk.
The old man was still there, sitting quietly in the passage with the blanket on his legs. He’d listened to the barking of the dog out in the distance; he’d heard it through the day until the time the shots rang out.
Boga crossed in front of him as he went towards the kitchen.
‘The buggers with the net were there.’
‘Fuck ’em!’
‘And Old Bastos.’
‘What did he say, seeing I wasn’t there?’
‘Nothing.’
The old man sat there thinking. Boga took the pair of scrub-hens into the kitchen and held them out at arm’s length, towards the corner where he felt the woman waited.
‘And the reeds?’ the old man said.
‘They’re done.’
The old man sank back in his thoughts. Among other things, he was tormented by what that lousy Bastos might have said.
The old woman came out from the shadows and leaned down across the range. Boga touched her shoulder and, when she turned to face him, he gestured to the old man.
‘He says he’s going to die,’ she said, and shrugged.
Boga gave a frown.
‘It’s what he’s saying now.’