He liked the place in spite of this, and very soon he’d start work on the pen.
The same day that he lit perhaps the first fire of the winter, something strange took place. He’d been here for a while now and the pen was underway. It happened then.
He’d just hung up the trammel net between a couple of trees. He was going to light the fire now, and then, first thing in the morning, he would start to check the net, with the daylight. Busy as he’d been with the pen, he’d snacked on a bit of cold fish in the middle of the day, eaten with some sea bread and a drink of water, and only now, with nightfall, was he lighting the fire, at this auspicious twilight hour.
He’d brought a lot of firewood to the middle of the garden, or what had been a garden once, including several timbers from the house, where it was falling down, and lit the wood with a handful of dried grass he’d doused in fish oil. The flames expanded quickly and he circled round the fire a while, as if around a party. Any good-sized fire produced this feeling when he saw it. It seemed like something living, with the sparks of many lives. It’s great company, without a doubt.
His hands and face were burning, but he stayed there and withstood it. He was dazzled by the brightness and could only just make out the very highest of the treetops, which seemed as if they nodded at the bidding of the flames. He made his way up to the house and lay on the veranda. He watched the fire from there. Some branches that were still green made brief explosions as they burned, and the crackling of the flames, as it came across the distance, sounded rather like the sighing of the water on a beach.
The darkness had set in, but there was still a little light far off, high above his head. He lit a cigarette, and when he raised his head again he saw the dog there, looking up at him, watching from the garden; its tail was wagging urgently as if it stalked a rat, or an opossum, something like that. He couldn’t see it well because the fire blazed on behind it. So he leaned forward a little and the dog began to bark.
It was the first dog that he’d seen round here. Just two or three times, when the easterly was blowing, he believed he’d caught the sound of several voices in the distance, and the noise a household makes. On the Piccardo Canal side. This dog must be from there, because it didn’t look like a stray. It was small and very skinny, and its coat was short and white, but with one or two black patches, and it had the look of all the dogs that live here on the islands — unhappy and resigned.
He spoke to it, but didn’t move, so as not to scare it, his voice was sweet and gentle and sounded almost festive.
‘Hi amigo! What’s with you? Amigo, don’t make so much noise! Hey, hey, amigo!’
The dog gave up its barking, and stood and watched him carefully, stretching out its neck with its head down, like a tortoise.
‘Come on now, amigo… here, say hello…’
He slowly straightened up. The dog sent out a growl and moved away from him a little. He was up on his feet now, at the rail of the veranda.
It was then he had the feeling that a man’s head had appeared, behind the maritime pine. He waited without moving, looking all around the tree. Now he was convinced that there was someone there behind it.
‘Who’s that prowling round out there?’ he called into the shadows.
He’d taken several steps back now, looking for the shelter of the area in darkness, and he took out and opened up the knife. It was then he saw the man’s head quite distinctly.
‘You can come out now, my friend… there’s no point… I can see everything you’re up to.’
The head at last came right out and it stayed there for a while, looking up towards the house. He couldn’t see it clearly, but the face looked rather childish. It even looked amused. He’d be thinking he was doing something very funny.
The dog had almost joined the stranger beside the maritime pine, wagging with its tail as it barked first towards the house and then away, behind the tree, to where this person hid himself.
‘Ok,’ he said. ‘You’ve had your fun. It’s time to come out now.’
He waited for a while yet. Then he made his way towards the end of the veranda, but keeping in the shadow. He could drop down from this end and make his way around the house, and not be seen. He was just about to jump down when he caught sight of the other man, on the move as well. The dog moved back behind the pine. He knew the man was leaving. He jumped off the veranda and went straight across the garden, to the pine.
There was no one there.
The dog turned up alone the next day.
Two days after this, he was finishing off the pen when he sensed that they were watching. He turned around and saw him, this little fellow with his gigantic smile, standing right in front of him.
He stood there for a good while, looking back without a word, but feeling ruffled. There the fellow stood and watched him in the half-light of the evening, quite undaunted. He was small and very skinny, rather like the dog. There are those who say a dog will end up looking like its owner. It’s right what they say.
He wore a small white hat pulled right down on his ears, a grey, coarse-weave jumper that was buttoned to the neck, black trousers tucked into his socks, and basketball slippers. He looked pretty funny. His face still had that smile, but underneath, it held something sad. He leaned a little forward, looking up towards this fellow, and tried to decipher what was written on his shadowed face, which seemed to hang in silence from the sky. Now he thought he knew this chap from some place or another, and was trying to remember. He really looked just like a child. But the truth was very different.
‘You’re Cabecita,’ he said at last, from his crouching position. His voice was quite contained and the words emerged slowly, in a tone of mild surprise.
The other didn’t answer. He simply started scratching. He did so in a manner that was thorough and drawn-out, with the same neat attention as a cat does when it washes.
Yes, and now it came to mind. He’d seen this Cabecita just the once, and from a boat, but his face wasn’t easily forgotten. Long and very lean and with a mouth that bulged with teeth, and those big glossy eyes that had no spirit. All he did was smile, and for no reason. Looking at him closely, it was just a fleeting movement of his large and silent lips, an automatic gesture that lacked any real meaning, for nothing else across his face expressed the slightest thing.
It could be Cabecita. Or at least, it might have been him, if it wasn’t for the fact that Cabecita had been drowned, and several years before this, on the sandbanks as you’re leaving the Anguilas.
He’d forgotten this at first. Although, if he was honest, he wasn’t very sure now that he’d heard the story told in full. But anyway, he wouldn’t have been the first man that they’d given up for dead. Colorado Chico was another case in point, and Ítalo Bordenave much further back in time, and then Lefty La Rocca, and several times in his case, so they came to think him immortal or a ghost or something like that, and no one came across him now without feeling suspicious, if they saw him at all, that is.
The river is immense. It’s impossible to know of all the things the river does.
So there he was, that afternoon, this man who was like Cabecita and who could have been the man himself: Cabecita in the flesh. But things were less than simple, for you couldn’t get a sane word from an idiot like this, who only grinned and nothing else, so never mind the time he stayed, you’d never really know if you were dealing with a dead man, or someone still alive, or even resurrected, or just some other nobody, in one of those three states.
‘Are you Cabecita or aren’t you?’ he was still asking, just for the sake of asking really.