He walked around the hull at first, measuring the water. Twenty centimetres, you could think of it as dry. With its weight, the boat had dug itself in twenty centimetres more. It rested on the port side, but it wasn’t leaning hard, simply tilting gently over. The timbers on the bottom had been flattened out a little. The screw had disappeared, but the shaft was still in place, and, most curious of all, the Goodrich bearing too, with its bright sleeve cast in bronze. He read the name again. This name Long Fourcade couldn’t keep inside his head, and that he found so pleasing though he didn’t understand it.
He lifted up his hand and gave the hull a gentle pat.
He stepped up on the rudder blade and climbed aboard the boat.
The engine had been taken, which is as you would expect. An old and loyal Ailsa Craig, or perhaps one of those Renaults, the two-cylinder model with its low revolutions which appeared around 1914 and was modified in 1920, the one Old Bastos spoke of with a certain veneration. (There was something mythic and pitiable in those endless conversations about engines. There was Della Vedone, for one, with his passion for any engine that was put into a boat and for the Kermath in particular, and which involved, as any passion did, an element of torment and a little desperation.)
A gust of wind blew in. He heard the water as it licked around the timbers on the bottom. The wind drove all the sounds in the direction of the islands, and for a moment all fell quiet, or it seemed as if it had. But this was when he noticed the persistence of the murmur that was coming from the islands, and surrounded him like the air.
He used his foot to push the cabin door. They’d thieved all the portholes, naturally enough. Even so, the light was faint, he had to wait a while before his eyes adapted to it. The grey and chilly light pressed itself against the ceiling. Level with his eyeline, it left him almost dazzled. He could barely see a thing that lay below the cabin line. He waited, crouching down, until his eyes adjusted. The door through to the lower deck was left a little open. He slipped up to the door and reached his head inside. He couldn’t see a thing. The main deck hatch was closed. He reached into the gloom and moved his hand around the place the tank was fitted. They’d taken that as well. Some pay forty pesos for a kilo of zinc surplus, and sell it on for smelting. And then it might be copper.
He lifted up the covers in the deck and saw the water shine. He stuck his arm inside and felt his way around the timbers, to see if she was holed. No, if she was, it had to be the port side, and below the waterline.
Each one of the couchettes was a long crate with a lip to take the mattresses. There were doors on either side of them. He pulled them open on the port side. The deck planks had been thrown around and some of them were floating. He reached inside and felt the mud. This is where it was. He felt around the hole. Big enough to pass both fists through. And then there were the timbers that had split along their length. It could have been a log that had been covered by the water, a post, perhaps a house beam. There are times when an old buoy, or its remnants, does more damage than a buoy in good condition can prevent.
In spite of all he saw, he still couldn’t fathom why the boat had been abandoned. They could have pulled it further onto land and then repaired the hole. Then they could have got it off the sandbank, with a decent tide. And if this didn’t come, they could have opened up a trench, as when the Doris ran aground in the entrance to the Luján, in December of ’15, or this was what he’d heard.
He went out to the cockpit. The wind was blowing harder now, with scarcely any lull. More water would be coming in. The Bajo del Temor, from here, looked wide as any sea. In moments when the wind let up, a silence fell across the boat, the sound of desolation. Then he felt this loneliness and death, and very close.
It was better to go back.
He went back to the Sueco in the days that followed this, returning to his fishing. Then the morning came he saw the Flecha de Plata, and decided to go out, in between the pair of islands, to the sandbanks. Sardines are abundant there. He spent the hour of midday in the hut he’d used one night at the beginning of the summer. There were the ashes of a fire here and some empty tins of food. In the afternoon he saw Lefty La Rocca, far out on the Bajo, on his way to Punta Morán.
He moved around a lot these days. But always had the boat in view, tilted on its side just at the entrance to the Chaná.
One day he came back early, without waiting for Fourcade. The little fellow saw him come, and in something of a hurry, and saw him jump from the boat and make his way into the house. He was quite a long while going round from one room to another, and making a fair racket. The little fellow was just below the house, standing with the dog, and watching with that docile look that drove him round the bend. He stepped into the passage and began to hurl some things into the garden. He was careful not to look at them, but knew their eyes were on him every second. It unsettled him to start with, and then it made him angry. But he couldn’t say a thing. He was putting things that might break to one side, on the veranda. It started getting dark. This was when the little fellow began to sort among the things that had been thrown into the garden.
‘Why don’t you keep your fucking hands off?’ he shouted in his fury. ‘Did I say you could touch anything?’
He didn’t even notice he was speaking to the both of them, as if the dog were human.
The little fellow stepped away and left the things there on the ground, and looked at him, upset. He felt himself turn red and he was even more embarrassed, seeing there was no reason at all to take things the way he had done.
He jumped down to the garden and went looking for the otter trap, the last thing on his list. He hadn’t used it once and it was hanging round the back on a post, beside the pen. He lifted off the trap and, before he went back round the house, he kicked the pen to bits. The little fellow watched him do it, looking underneath the house.
Then he started carrying all the things out to the bank. The little fellow came with him, there and back, but keeping at a distance. He paid no heed at first, trying to ignore him. But the little fellow was just infuriating. One time, on a trip back, he got tangled with the dog, which was also trailing after him, and this was just the limit. He was carrying a tin and he threw it at its head. The little fellow just stood there, startled. He made no move to flee, but put his arms across his head, waiting for the explosion to come. Instead, he picked up all the rest and took it to the riverbank, thoroughly ashamed.
He waited for the daylight, and had a last look round before he went. Then he jumped onto the boat, and this time left for good.
He’d hardly slept that night and sensed the little fellow was even more awake, breathing very calmly, but watching in the darkness, aware of every move he made. He knew that his intention was to go away without him. Which was exactly right. He jumped onto the boat and started rowing with his eyes glued to the deck.
And yet it wasn’t long before he saw the little fellow was following, coming on the bank. They disappeared from sight, at first, but as he reached the estuary he saw them almost up with him. He felt his fury rise again, but now not quite as fiercely. They’d more than likely turn back when they reached the river mouth. What else was there to do? Stand there like two idiots until they’d seen him disappear. Yes, that was it. He moved on round the coastline making headway to the west, and leaving them behind. And the pair of them just standing there, looking rather desperate. The dog had started whimpering, looking at the little fellow first, and then towards the boat that sailed away. He was glad and he was sorry, and both of these at once, but without either feeling going very deep at all, for the river made him hard. They’d soon be lost from sight. That’s what he thought, at least.