It was now growing darker and he heard the small uncertainty that got into his voice as it went across the garden like a solitary bird.
The little man’s smile grew wider, and now he raised his eyebrows, and said nothing.
So he got up on his feet and put a hand on his shoulder. He felt a bit uneasy.
‘Where’s the dog?’ he said.
And now he tried to think if he’d seen this Cabecita with a dog. Not that this would mean that much, necessarily. He could have got himself a dog later. The thing was that he now believed he’d seen him with this dog, exactly this dog. But this didn’t carry a lot of weight either, if you consider that a dog lives fifteen years, if all goes well. It was the fact he’d thought him dead, or that he’d seemed so dead to him, and that now he was in front of him, like this — if it really was Cabecita — standing stock-still and mute in this garden lit by evening, watching from those giant eyes that looked just like a dead man’s, even if he wasn’t actually dead, as if it were someone else who gazed at him through those eyes, through that mask.
It struck him as a waste of time to ask him any questions. Not because he wouldn’t understand, or wouldn’t answer, but because his attention simply slipped across such things as these, to settle in a feeble way on something else completely, on the movement of his lips, it seemed, or else that look of puzzlement which played across his face.
He gave a shrug and turned and made his way towards the house, enveloped in the shadow of the twilight. He looked across the garden and, further off, the river, there between the uprights that were eaten through and blackened by damp. The river was in darkness.
He passed below the house and came back out around the front. Night was very close now. It felt a little chilly. The house, the boat, the trees were somehow plunged into a curious kind of languor. The noises from the scrub had dimmed, had almost disappeared. A great silence emerged from the darkness. He pulled up several floorboards and prepared to light a big fire that would keep the winter ghosts away. He gathered up some sticks and also looked back every now and then to where he’d left the little fellow. He couldn’t see things clearly as the light was very pale. Perhaps the fellow had gone. And yet he had the feeling he was watching him from somewhere.
It was then the dog appeared again, right up against the house. Then he saw the little fellow was stationed up on the veranda. No more than a shadow leaning slightly down towards him.
‘Hello there, amigo,’ he called towards the dog, in defiance of the shadows, and his voice resounded very strangely in the solitude and silence and the half-light.
The little fellow left the veranda, and it seemed he’d gone to gather up some branches.
He built himself a new fire on the ashes from the day before. The ground was damp and cold now, but the spirit of the fire was there. He was tending to the ashes when the fellow came up next to him with his handful of sticks, and put them to one side. He made as not to notice him, although he used his sticks.
He got the fire going and then he didn’t feel so alone. The little fellow had made him lonely. This hadn’t happened once in all the summer.
Finally he looked at him, standing in the firelight. Of course, he was smiling. There was something very sad about this little man, something wretched. He seemed to see, behind him, all the long days of the winter, its sky of grey, the dried-up trees, the earth sunk in its sleep, the clothes that never dried out and the mud that got in everywhere, this mud that seemed the substance of the winter. At least he had the fire. When all is said and done, the winter also has its charms, even in these islands with their frightful melancholy. Every season has its charms, every season has its fish.
He lit a cigarette with a burning twig, and then lay down beside the fire. The frozen stars were twinkling high above, very distant.
‘Don’t stand over there, like an idiot,’ he said at last.
He seemed to understand, because he came a little closer and sat down, though still apart. The dog sat down as well. Its look was very serious, and also seemed respectful. This caused him some amusement.
‘What’s it called?’ he said.
‘Ca-pi-tán.’
‘Capitán!.. Hey, Capitán!’
The dog picked up its paw and looked at both the men in turn. He had a little laugh.
‘Where did these chaps spring up from?’ he said, more entertained. ‘Hey, Capitán!’
The flames were burning higher. He started laughing harder now, not quite sure why this was. Then both of them were laughing. The dog looked on astonished. Their laughter rang like gun shots out across the silent islands.
He didn’t ask more questions. From time to time the little fellow heard him say, jokingly: ‘Where did these chaps spring up from?’ or, ‘Where has this one sprung from?’
He took the boat beyond the line of reeds, one afternoon, and on the open sea, and he saw that little fishing boat which see-sawed in the distance, out towards the Sueco.
‘It’s them,’ he thought. ‘The time has come.’
He never came to know if it was really Cabecita, and neither did he worry now. He came most afternoons, when his interest seemed to centre on the trammel-net repairs. He hadn’t yet decided if he liked him being around or not, standing there or squatting down, watching everything he did as if he were some rare species, but he was getting used to throwing him a word or two every now and then. He was just thinking things aloud, in fact, a frequent habit among fishermen and loners, since, as a rule, he answered too.
‘You always know it’s time, when your nose begins to prickle. The first cold days of April… it must be April, don’t you think? I’ve seen the Flecha de Plata… you didn’t see it on the Sueco?’
He didn’t need to worry about the fire, now, not that it had ever really worried him that much. The little fellow took charge of lighting it each evening when he came. He seemed a bit impatient as he waited for the moment, as if it was the only thing he had to do in his life, and, scarcely had the sun gone down, he went collecting wood. He didn’t mind the fellow building it, especially now that firewood was starting to get scarce, and you had to go into the scrub, and yet he still preferred to light it. The lighting of a fire is a lovely thing to do, especially in this season.
The two, or rather three of them, stretched out beside this bonfire and lay staring at the flames, dozy with the warmth, with their faces very flushed and their eyes dazzled. Every now and then they made their way into the darkness, returning with more wood. He’d barely make to stand up and the little fellow was on his feet. It riled him, just a bit.
‘It’s better if we take turns… and don’t pull up more floorboards or we’ll end up with no house.’
It made him smile at first to see him go off in the darkness with that kind of little trot, and the dog not far behind, and then, a short time later, hear the racket of him ripping out the boards. But lately he’d been worrying, above all after going out one night on the veranda, and putting down his foot where he believed it carried on, and his foot not stopping until it hit the ground, beneath the house. It was so unexpected, and it left him so bewildered, that at first he didn’t know quite what had happened.
‘All I need now is for them to set fire to my boat!’ he’d said, shouting as he lay there on the ground beneath the house that night.
He’d said it rather vaguely, to no one in particular, as if it was the work of many, or of two, at the very least, and not an individual, perhaps to be emphatic or because he was thinking of the dog, which was there sniffing round him as he lay stretched in the mud.
He’d finally got sick of eating nothing else but fish, and now that it was cold he felt the need for something different. This little fellow, in contrast, gobbled up whatever fish there was, and no matter how insipid.