Angry at the river at first, he’d wondered what to do, how he’d extricate himself. But then he didn’t think at all. The wind that circled round his head and all that devilish whirring like a siege of buzzing wasps, it had left him in a daze. It was the only thing he heard, and all he felt were his tense wet limbs, his feet stuck underwater, and his hands, holding on or even tied to the oars that seemed to circle on their own, suspended from the noise. He went on riding up and down. He saw a light at one point, but he couldn’t tell its distance, though it wasn’t on the channel. And everything at last seemed strange, held there in the darkness, and then his breath was taken by a feeling of euphoria, at times he didn’t know where he was, or even what he did.
Until the water picked him up and threw him on the beach. He’d trusted in the river. Nothing riles the river more.
It was some time since he’d lost track of the passing of the days, but even so, he clearly saw the end of summer coming. It wasn’t a question of dates, but from a sign, and then another. Perhaps it was because of exactly this that he saw it when others didn’t; because he didn’t go calculating the days, which aren’t a line of numbers, but rather, a constant and deliberate movement of the light.
He knew it was a Sunday from the number of small boats that were appearing on the river. He’d seen them springing up, white and frail and silent, like a flock of doves along the shore, when sailing on the channel. But now he didn’t have the little boat to go out when he liked, he saw them from a distance as they sailed towards the east, and with a lot more space between them. Some went round the outside of the Bajo to Punta Morán, and others through the Sueco. Here come the Sunday sailors, he was thinking, with a quiet laugh.
The boat hadn’t suffered too much damage overall, but the sail had had its day. As it was, these circumstances suited him quite well, now, for he changed with the seasons, and the river at this time became more distant every day. Things might change from one moment to the next, they were changing even now. The summer was still here, it seemed. But now the light was different and the colour of the trees had turned quite lustreless and murky. This was one such sign, and so were all the insects that were rising from the weeds, as if the world were too ripe, almost rotten.
It didn’t seem possible that winter would ever arrive, on the face of it. But it would come in the end, without a doubt. It was already arriving, in a way, if you could see these things. Now, when the night fell, a light mist rose to lie across the surface of the water. And as a certain hour went by, a saddened light that came in from the south traversed the evening, and the twilight, if you looked at it, was docile and silenced, a realm between two seasons.
He stayed here for a good while yet, without deciding anything, in spite of all these changes, sometimes feeling restless and at others even grumpy, as if everything he waited for would be resolved by time.
The south wind came one afternoon and swept the beach of sand, and he saw his shadow lengthening grotesquely on the wasteland. Everything seemed desolate, so sad and beyond repair, that he turned back to the land, towards the islands, and set sail at once.
In this very season, but at another time, he’d spent a night inside a ruin that he found on the Riestra, quite close to its outlet. It’s a perfect refuge for the winter, if it’s still there now.
All these streams that drain into the Bajo del Temor offer shelter and seclusion. Their inlets are concealed by an extensive fringe of reeds, which also shields them from the open sea. In the case of the Riestra, you have to find a current that runs out between the reeds, and trace it through until you reach the stream. If you take a careful look, and from the open sea, you might just see a marker buoy that indicates the entrance. But if you’ve been away a while it’s difficult to find, for there are many of these markers and not all of them mark inlets. Quite the opposite, in fact: some of those most visible are placed here to mislead those who might use them as a guide.
Lately, he’d thought often about the place. Every time he’d thought about the winter, you could say. Until he came to see this place and winter as the same thing. It’s a good spot for the silverside, which turn up here in April with the first cold-weather days. And from here, across the Bajo, it’s straight into the Sueco. He could use the days till April to inspect his trammel net, to have it ready for the silverside. But aside from doing that, perhaps the time had come to put an old plan into practice.
He’d brought along the otter trap, the one he’d bought two years ago at San Fernando Fair, when he’d felt the urge to hunt them. The trap was very sensitive, the teeth it had were frightful and his pleasure at the time had been to tease them with a stick.
He’d always had the notion he could be an otter hunter, a first-rate one at that, in the style of Old Manito. It’s a somewhat curious life, and suited to a loner. Speaking of Manito, who lived up on the Gélvez, he was otter-like himself. He moved around the scrub all day, shoving through the grass and sleeping out among the undergrowth, ever more the otter. It was difficult to find him, if that was what you wanted. He had seen him just the once, and that by pure coincidence, in San Fernando Harbour, just before he’d disappeared.
He was short and strongly built, with a very hairy head, and went barefoot in all weather. He held two sheaves of otter skins, one below each arm, at the time when skins began to make a decent little profit. He entered El Progreso, Basque Arregui’s store, and everything he said in there was heard across the street, because he shouted like the damned and he didn’t control his voice at all, and stammered a little, accustomed as he was to being alone, and to the silence.
If a pelt reached seventy centimetres from the eyeholes to the tail, and if he skinned it well, it could make three hundred pesos. He was going to put a pen up on the land behind the house. For now he’d get things started with his trap and with the pen. Then he’d buy more traps and make extensions to the pen. The trick was getting started. There, in the middle of the islands in the winter, it was just the job.
One part of the house had fallen down when he arrived, but most of it was standing. It must have been a fine house in its time. It was constructed on a regal scale, with plentiful high rooms and a veranda right across the front. Most of this veranda had already lost its balustrade, and half its floor had given way. It was a pretty spot to sit out and admire the afternoon. Its steps had disappeared as well, but someone had replaced them with a log cut from a willow.
It was a house of a specific time, not only for its style but because of something subtler, something ill-defined and that perhaps explained its dying. The piece of land in front of it, right down to the river, was a garden in its time, which isn’t something common in these parts. Several handsome trees remained, like maritime pine and monkey puzzle. The scrubland and its undergrowth went right around the house, and yet, for all the time gone by, no weeds had moved inside it in the way that one expects. Something sad and docile, languishing as time went by, persisted in the place. The memory of other men still lived inside its limits and was stronger than the land.
He sensed it all around him, and in the early days he felt he didn’t live alone here. His footsteps echoed strangely up and down the empty house, as if he walked across the deck above an empty boat. The silence was surprising in the late hours of the day, and all the sounds he made seemed disproportionate around him.