And now this man was here. There’d be some filthy stuff behind him. And now he was here.
He’d become aware of something bad inhabiting the river. It’s indifferent, in general. But at times it’s truly bad. He remembered Sagastume. He recalled a thousand stories more. It was something in the spirit of this river that dragged its tons of mud. A force lodged in the old man and the cream-coloured dog, in Old Bastos and La Rocca, which is to say, in other words, in the river and all its things, and because of that, in him. It was also in him. It was one half of a man, or, and better, it was a man’s final substance and the blind and unchecked element that drove Rubia; the kind of joy or fury that at times broke so insanely in the ways of Cabecita.
There was no way in the world that this old and battered boat could have withstood it. And the badness that had finally destroyed the Aleluya had now brought them all together, these four good-for-nothings with nothing in common but the hate and violence that formed the incredible bond which would hold them fast until the end.
Coming close to summer, or, and better, to the new time, when the days began to take a different rhythm, violent, in a way, he’d seen unequivocal signals of this badness. It came in from a long way off, had ripened in the torpor of winter.
Now it had arrived, in these men aboard this beaten boat, and wasn’t a complete surprise. And he’d expected it, in some way. Not exactly fearing it, for he was also blind and dark. He’d been expecting, even reckoning, that finally this force would drag him with it.
Summer has returned.
The colour of the islands is now hard and doesn’t change, and they lie there in the daylight like the slats of a blind. The thrush sings while the day lasts and is taken for the day, at last, as if it were the pulsing of this light. The weeds grow tall, they overflow and darken; finally they grow corrupted. The fire bell sounds out on the coast; it breaks out at an unfixed point and spills along the distant shore, and then dies in the middle of the water. The river drops, opaque and heavy…
But then, and above all, is the sticky, humid light that goes on beating overhead; this gleaming like a hive of fire bees buzzing in your ears, this fretting light, that hounds and hunts you down, and stirs up your blood.
The man aboard the Aldebarán, on opening his eyes, thought he was hearing Black Carrasco. He’d sailed all through the night and was utterly exhausted. He was waiting for the black man.
He opened, and then closed, his eyes. Lying on a couchette, he could see the ample cockpit through the open cabin door, lit up by the thickened light of summer. Everything seemed still, asleep. The air or else the light, or perhaps it was the silence, was humming in his ears. He closed his eyes again. He’d sailed all through the night, with the glare of the position lights forever in his eyes. He was still wrapped round and covered by the silence. After several hours like this, his grasp of things had drifted. It didn’t seem quite possible he’d planned to reach somewhere by simply sailing through the night and dark, suspended just below the sky, or moving through a tunnel, with that glare ahead of him and the stars behind, and with that soporific throbbing of the engine.
He could sleep a few more minutes while the black man came on board and tied his vessel to the boat. This is what he always did. And this is what he tried to do again.
But instead of dozing off, he began to feel uneasy, and then, his eyes still closed, he was absolutely certain there was someone in the cabin doorway looking at him lying there, someone who was not the black man. Opening his eyes, he saw the three men standing and looking, one there in the doorway and the other two behind and in the good light of the cockpit, and studying him hard. The blood thrashed in his temples. He didn’t try to say a word and neither did the men, and as if, in a second, he had found that he was standing on the edge of an abyss, he saw as clear as daylight what it meant.
His hand went for the Winchester that hung there on the side, but the man had leapt towards him and he heard the wallop land and then he felt a gentle numbness and just after that the pain, all this in a second, and still he tried to get up and the fist smashed into his face again, and smashed and smashed again, like a swarm of livid wasps.
Boga saw him hit the man as he stood there in the cockpit, and felt a strange arousal. Watching someone be punched left him feeling out of breath. He got a bit worked up and his mouth was getting dry. He knew what was to come or he sensed it at the least, but he couldn’t have averted it. He felt the urge to jump the man and take his turn to hit him. His fists clenched in his pockets. The whole thing was disgusting. He heard the punches landing and he listened to the moans. Then the moaning stopped and the punches landed more spaced out, but harder and more considered. He looked across at Rubia. The flanges of his nostrils flared. Cabecita rubbed his hands and punched the air erratically, as if he were a spectator at the ringside.
At last the man was done. There was a silence on the boat. Then he turned around and went back slowly to the cockpit. He tucked his shirt in and ran his hands through his hair. He often seemed agreeable and kind and even calm. But this was him.
‘I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,’ he said.
He’d been thinking all about it, all this time. He’d pictured the surprised expression time and time again, and the look of desperation in his eyes. And the punches. Every one, until he’d bust him up.
He took out a cigarette. His hands were trembling slightly. He took a lengthy draw.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said. Before he left he looked down at the man stretched on the cabin floor.
Boga worked together with Rubia to cast off the Aldebarán. The man had got the engine going. The noise made them uneasy. Perhaps the man felt just the same, for now he stopped the engine and came up into the cockpit.
‘We’d better use the pole until we get onto the river.’
Working with the pole and with the branches of the trees, they got the boat out from the stream.
The man knew very well that the Aldebarán would come back here at some point or another. The stream was very sheltered, and also good and deep. It was where they did the transfers. He thought that, when they reckoned that he’d really disappeared, they’d come round here again. And that was how it was. But they miscalculated badly.
They came out on the river and the man went back and started the engine once again. Boga sat down in the cockpit, where he lit a cigarette. There was a thermos flask of coffee standing on the cabin floor. They drank some of the coffee. The bloke was on the floor and he couldn’t take his eyes off him. His face was just a mess. The man made signs to Rubia, who went to take the helm. They exchanged a little talk, but the racket of the engine meant he couldn’t hear a thing. Some instructions for their course. Rubia took the tiller and the man went to the bloke and started searching through his pockets. Then, back in the cockpit, he called to Boga to gather all the lifebelts. He didn’t know why he wanted them, but took them off their hooks and brought them back in to the man.
‘Shit, these weigh a ton!’ he said.
The man just gave a smile. He opened up his penknife and began to cut the seams. Each one of the lifebelts carried several dozen watches, all without the straps. It was a clever piece of thinking. The man took out the watches and he laid them on one side, all together on a couchette.