He’d twice been to the store on the Piccardo Canal, but barely bought the basics as there wasn’t much money left. He had to get a move on with the business of the otters, and try to sell what silverside he could this coming season, regardless of the catch. He scarcely had one patched-up net, fifteen metres in length, but what he lacked in trammels he could make up for in time. By two or three more casts, for instance. This is what he thought about, stretched out beside the fire.
Cabecita, if indeed it was him, brought things back from time to time, but not so he could count on it. And then, when least expected, he was going to disappear in just the same way he’d arrived, and he wasn’t really clear if this would help or be a nuisance, all things considered.
He’d turned up in the afternoons at first, and not stayed long. Then he spent a night, and after that he stayed for two, despite the freezing weather. He didn’t have more shelter than the canvas from the boat, but he wouldn’t have helped him anyway, to see where this was going. Lately he’d been staying there for several days at once, not doing much of anything but mooch around the place, and he gave him little things to do, to see if it annoyed him. But it turned out quite the opposite, for one day he arrived with all his clothes wrapped in a bundle, and with other kinds of junk, and every indication that he’d come to stay for good.
He looked at him a bit perplexed, and didn’t know what to do. He was working on the trammel net and saw him, somewhat blurred, between the threads that formed the mesh.
And now here he was, having stepped out from the scrub; or rather, here they both were, watching him with that tame look that incensed him.
He let them see he wasn’t pleased. He didn’t like the look of this at all. He lived his life alone and he wasn’t going to have this kind of burden on his hands. It was all so very clear, if you weren’t so damned dim-witted. But he couldn’t stand against it, or anything in fact, for things are as they are and come along when it’s their moment. And he was really busy now, as well. Tomorrow or the next day he’d be on the open sea, on the way down to the Sueco, where he’d start to work the trammel net. He couldn’t dwell on everything.
‘Well, don’t just stand there looking at me like that,’ he said at last, when his threads began to tangle.
He wasn’t really angry in the way one might imagine, rather he was worried. And it wasn’t just this halfwit fellow, who comes and goes with the river, but for something that seemed to have turned up with him, or behind him, something dark and ill-defined that travelled through the winter and withdrew into the distance, and was like a silent bird that spreads its wings when night falls.
They didn’t move, however, for they were obstinate and dim.
He went on with his mending, or pretended that he did, to show he wasn’t bothered or, better, hadn’t noticed them, which meant it wasn’t seen if he approved of them or not.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ he asked, seeing that they stayed there.
But they still didn’t move, and then he felt his blood rise.
‘Must I spell it out for you?’ he shouted out this time.
And then, a while later, in a suffocated tone:
‘What shit have I got on my face, that makes you look at me like that?’
On saying this he went towards them, just a couple of steps. That was when the little fellow gave a laugh and came right past him, going on towards the house. He took a kick at both of them, the last thing he’d allow was that this pair would laugh at him, but he missed on both occasions, and he hadn’t really tried to land the blow on either one of them.
‘What’s all that?’ he called, once they’d gone past him.
The little fellow had brought a sack that was bulging with belongings and, when he made to run, it made the devil of a noise.
‘I SAID, WHAT’S ALL THAT?’
The little fellow threw down the sack and then continued to the house. He opened it and rummaged through the junk he found inside, spied on by the little fellow, from the veranda.
It was a perfect pile of rubbish, and his face began to change as he was taking out the things, until he started laughing. There were several lantern batteries and all of them were flat, a lone blade from a hunting knife, a rowlock made of bronze and a spike knocked from a boathook, several ancient magazines, a useless sealed unit, various glass jars, a quantity of dried-up crabs, a lot of snail and oyster shells, a broken vacuum flask and some burned-out radio valves, empty toothpaste tubes, a necklace made from snail shells on a copper-wire thread, some spark plugs and a broken carburettor, and an Esso calendar from 1949.
He put aside the things that might be useful in some way, regretting, first of all, that he didn’t have both rowlocks. The knife blade was a Solingen which, fitted with a handle, could serve him very well. The magazines would kill some time, even though he’d never been a reader in his life, or they could get the fire going, or even make his cigarettes, if it was needed. The boathook tip was good to have, and possibly the best thing there. He’d fit a decent handle to it, privet would be good, or perhaps he’d use bamboo, which even if it fractures does the job. The sealed unit made him laugh. It looked like something precious as it came out from the sack, with its shining yellow glass like a gold pot in the half-light. But the unit was burnt out. The calendar was years old. And it would have been quite useless even if it were this year’s. But he stayed there for a while simply looking at the pictures, and despite the feeble light.
The little fellow left the veranda when he saw him start to laugh, and began to gather sticks to make the fire. He built the firewood up and waited quietly while the other was completing his inspection so he’d come and light the pyre. At last he made his way across, still laughing to himself, and set the fire alight in the way he’d made his custom, the match put to a paper twist, the flame from this applied to all four corners of the pyre of sticks and straw and leftovers of fish, topped by the logs.
He’d hooked a tararira on one line that afternoon, but nothing that he pulled out from the river that was fish-shaped was of any interest to him now.
The flames rose in the night, in the middle of the garden, like a kind of marvellous bush that was lit up by many lives.
And here they were, beside the fire, and each one with his story, as if they were two rivers that have just combined their waters after running for a distance, and now run on towards the open sea, pushed by a single force, a blind and darkened energy.
One early morning, he went out onto the river at last, looking for the silverside, as if going out to fight. Although the fight was with the season and the water and foul luck, because the silverside’s a harmless fish. And it’s not a fight at all, if you consider it a little, because the river weaves its story and a man is just a single thread, woven in with ten thousand others.
He’d made the preparations on the boat the previous evening, and the little fellow’s concern to help him was completely overdone. He didn’t like him helping much, these were things he liked to do alone, if truth be told, doing them unhurriedly, his pleasure in the details, in the way of older men. He put the trammel in the stern, folded in a way that meant he only had to take the tin, painted in bright yellow and that acted as a float, and throw it overboard for the net to follow on; the Primus and the kettle, a litre bottle filled with kerosene, a lantern, some rope, a bit of cold food, and his maté things and sea bread all went in the bow and were covered with the canvas; the tip knocked off the boathook with its new bamboo handle went on one side in the bottom, and the machete on the other, where he hung it on its strap, for whatever need arose; some matches in his pocket and some more inside the maté tin, very tightly closed; and this and that and other things.