‘A woman who is any man’s does nothing for me,’ he said, before he started on his way again.
They carried on walking.
Now, on the other hand, the sticky, fated summer sun had heated up their blood.
‘That’s her place,’ said Rubia.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ said the man.
The old man with the rowing boat had come out and was watching. They looked at him in turn, with a kind of cold displeasure. He went back to his boat.
They heard his blows redoubled in the quiet afternoon.
‘I don’t see what the problem is,’ said Rubia.
‘And if her man’s there?’
‘It’s how he makes his living.’
‘They don’t take to it kindly if it’s done right there in front of them, however dumb they are.’
‘He isn’t going to be there… and even if he is,’ said Rubia, and laying bare his teeth.
‘I don’t want any trouble ’cause I don’t.’
Rubia crossed the street, going in and out of shadow. The rest of them remained there on the other side. The man took out a cigarette and leaned against a fence.
Rubia went around the house and called out at the door that stood behind a hessian curtain.
‘Rosa!’
They waited there in silence.
‘Hey, Rosita!’
The old man stopped his hammering. Rubia turned and looked across the street, lit up by the sunlight, to the others. They stood there, still and vacant.
His mood began to change.
‘Rosita!’ he was shouting, and kicked out at a strut.
Then he heard the rub of naked feet along the floorboards.
There she was, Rosita. The curtain moved a little and her head came into view, and she looked across a distance there was no way to negotiate, as if she looked into a well, or simply at the stillness of an empty afternoon, with no one there.
‘Rosita…’
At last she seemed to know him.
‘Hi…’
He gave a little wave, and then unleashed a giant smile towards that quite indifferent face. She noticed there were other men, installed across the street, and then she smiled in turn, rather weary and complicit. The man was always maddened by this willingness of whores. There’s nothing quite so chilly nor more distant than a whore.
She smoothed her hair a little and came out to the veranda. That was when they saw that she was pregnant. She wore a simple cotton dress, with nothing underneath. Her skin was smooth and bright and dark.
The man now crossed the street.
‘This is Rosita,’ Rubia said.
‘I’m glad.’
He looked into her eyes that had that empty look that stretched away behind you.
‘Now I want you to go inside, Rosita.’
He thought he felt her body heat, worked up by the pregnancy. She looked at them, each one in turn, and didn’t understand him. She took at the other two, now crossing through the sun, and went inside.
‘I don’t like things like that.’
Rubia gave a shrug.
‘It’s when they’re at their best.’
‘No, it’s not my thing. I can’t get up on top of that.’
‘Ok, I’m sorry.’
The other two had crossed.
‘And what do you two want?’ said Rubia, just a bit put out.
‘They haven’t said a word. It’s me who tells you what’s what.’
‘Don’t give me that.’
‘Leave the girl alone.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s my decision.’
‘The coast is full of whores,’ the man said. ‘Leave the girl alone.’
‘I’m sorry… I’m going in. Who else is coming in?… Aren’t you going to come in, pal?’
It took Boga some time to answer.
‘No, I won’t come in. It’s not the way I like it either.’
Rubia stared at them a moment with his eyes lit up by fury. He seemed about to speak. But then he shrugged and quickly climbed the steps.
The man took out a cigarette.
Four barges joined in tandem, and driven by a tug, were advancing in the middle of the channel.
‘We’ll have to buy some things,’ he said.
They stood and watched the barges.
It was the first time that he’d felt something different for the man. Something very subtle. He wasn’t quite sure what it meant.
The night would not be long, now. They heard the little noises that came down from overhead.
‘We could find a bar to eat in,’ he said after a while.
‘I don’t know.’
They heard some silly laughter, and after that some moaning.
‘I’m going to have to buy some cigarettes if nothing else.’
The man saw Cabecita then, underneath the hut. He gathered up a piece of wood and threw it at him, hard. Then he shook his fist at him. The dog began to bark.
They made their way a bit inland and walked along deserted streets, between deserted houses. At the far end of a street, now and then, they saw the river. The presence of the sun was even stronger on the asphalt. Boga put his boots on. He preferred to go barefoot when he was walking on the coast. He laced the boots together and he hung them from his shoulder.
They went through empty playgrounds, through empty stations, with the tireless train that came and went, and empty too. They walked between long lines of tables set beneath the trees. There were bits of fires and bits of food and, out among the trees that were the furthest from the path, some contraceptives. All of this was hellish if you saw it at the weekend, but now it had the look of something dreamlike. Especially the billboards, announcing things to no one.
They went back to the coast when they arrived at San Isidro. Things looked very different here. They left the rails behind and carried on along the roadway that went off between the trees.
He’d been here just the once, in ’47 or ’48, when the Republicano sank and they killed Lalo Centurione. He saw the ancient shipyards and the silent ships again, and that special breed of men who have their lives bound up in boats.
The bare hull of the Ráfaga was still there at the entrance to the shipyard of the YCO. Taller than its sheds, or just as tall, at least. The planks set at a man’s height were completely covered with numbers and with sketches that belonged to other ships.
‘Still there…’
‘Who is?’
‘She is.’
‘They’ve still a lot to do.’
‘It’s a lot of draught for round here…’
‘It must cost several fortunes to fit out a boat like that…’
‘It is a lot of draught…’
‘An arm and a leg…’
‘They’re always about to get the work underway…’
‘Two arms and a leg.’
‘There’s always one like this, as long as I’ve been round here.’
‘The day will come it’s useless.’
‘Maybe it’s already come.’
‘Yeah, maybe so…’
It was, in any case, condemned to die a long way from the sea, on the land, among the men so busy and so silent, watching other boats be born and die. It would take a while to happen, for the boat had been well built. And perhaps the men would only see she’d died a long time afterwards. Not these men, but others. These men couldn’t think of her nor see her any other way. Waiting for her day to come. He thought about the Aleluya. Was she dead already?
The man went through the gate into the Astillero América shipyard, and asked to see Machito. It was the second time he’d asked to see Machito. They’d heard him ask the first time in Olivos, in a bar. Has Machito been round these parts? he’d asked. And now he asked the same thing.
He crossed the yard between the boats and came out at the gallery that stood below the office, with templates hanging on the posts and woodwork benches set against the tin partition wall. There were a few blokes perched on crates and playing cards, next to the bandsaw.