The man bought a 32 Beretta, second-hand, and a power-driven screwdriver, and this was them established. The screwdriver was used to strip the fittings from the boats, grim work at the best of times. Rubia had the knack for it. They stripped out two or three boats in a night, if things went well.
He was good with his hands, like Rubia, when he wanted, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was more like a spectator. He looked on at himself as he looked on at the others, from an incredible, exhausted distance. He’d been taken by the river. The summer. It would end one day. He could have broken free with just a little bit of effort. But he couldn’t make an effort, big or small. Things had got all tangled up in one way or another, and him there in the middle. He thought about the islands, and Punta Morán, he thought about the boat, about his point of setting out, just the summer before, when the cream-coloured dog had at last dropped out of sight, and of the face of the old man, the face of that fisherman he met on the Anguilas, with his gaze being dazzled by the sun as he spoke, and of the old woman’s face that was further off again, and all mixed up and overlaid, forming in his memory a single, cryptic face.
‘What’s up?’ the man once said to him, and giving him a look.
‘Nothing’s up,’ he said.
‘You’re always somewhere in the clouds.’
‘What with this one and the little boy, we’re going to fuck things up.’ It was Rubia.
‘There’s no need to exaggerate.’
‘You just can’t work like this.’
‘There’s no need to exaggerate…’
The truth is that the man’s mind was on other things as well. There was something else. Something in the man that was stony and relentless, a mechanism working away.
Twice he disappeared and was absent for a day. The third time it was two days. And then when he returned he decided they must leave.
He arrived back with the last light and he leapt onto the boat. The rest of them were on the deck, stretched out half-asleep, and he came back in a fearful rush, and landing on the deck he said:
‘Is everybody here, boys?’
They gave each other puzzled looks and then they gave a shrug.
‘We’re leaving right away.’
‘What’s all this about?’
‘I’m the one who needs to know what this is all about. Collect up all the bottles you find and put them in the dinghy.’
It had to be a big job. Or else it was Machito.
They loaded all the usual things and then a roll of steel cable, 8-mm gauge, a drum filled up with petrol and a packet that the man had brought back with him. And they set out on the river in the dimness of the twilight.
They rowed the boat all through the night, and barely said a word. One did the rowing while the others got some sleep down in the bottom of the dinghy. The man remained awake all night. Boga saw his cigarette, its red point in the darkness as it climbed and then it fell, and now and then he saw his face, lit up by the glowing when he pulled. They reached the Arroyón at dawn and halted in its narrows, just behind a bend. They put the dinghy in a ditch and waited out the day sitting in among the trees. The man, helped by Boga, stretched a length of steel cable out from one bank to the other, letting it hang slackly so it rested on the stream bed. In the morning three barges travelled by on their way out to the coast, and only one upriver. They lay on the ground until the vessels were away. The little fellow restrained the dog and made it lie down at his side. They could hear them coming easily, and well before the bend. One of the same barges which had gone out to the coast sailed back in the afternoon, and four more travelled one way or the other.
The man went in among the trees and used the can of petrol, the things inside the packet and the bottles to assemble, with the necessary care, nine Molotov cocktails. It seemed that he enjoyed it.
‘They might not come down this way,’ said Rubia.
‘Maybe not,’ the man said. ‘But I’ve got a hunch. They’re going to leave the Honda fast.’
‘I don’t know that they will…’
‘They’ll go in search of hidden water… anybody would.’
‘How many of them are there?’
‘I don’t think more than two.’
They spaced their remarks widely, then they spoke as if it bored them, with the light exploding silently around them in the trees.
‘It won’t be all that easy.’
‘No, this time it won’t.’
Somewhere up above them a cicada started tuning up, and then released its strident screech.
‘There isn’t another way?’
‘No.’
‘All hell is going to break loose.’
‘As soon as they feel the blow.’
It was midday. They caught sight of the little fellow, at the edge of the scrub, followed in and out of the light by the dog. Boga slept against a tree, his cap across his eyes.
‘One of us is going to have to go the other side.’
‘You two. I’ll stay over here with the boy.’
‘He’s going to be a nuisance.’
‘No, no he isn’t.’
The cicada started tuning up again.
‘So how does it work?’
‘It couldn’t be easier.’
They were practising a good while with a bottle filled with water. They practised more when Boga woke. They had to get to know the weight and calculate the swing. All in all, it turned out fun. They marked themselves a circle in the middle of a clearing and then took turns to throw, making wagers.
The river started rising as the evening came upon them.
Cabecita started with his screaming once again, and Rubia punched his head. He clapped his hands or screamed every time they threw the bottle, and sometimes both together. The man held up his fist up in threat, but Cabecita soon forgot.
‘I’m going to beat you to a pulp!’ said Rubia ferociously, turning for an instant at the climax of the game.
But he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t help himself when the bottle fell off target. Rubia punched him in the neck and then the dog was off again, barking like a thing possessed and nobody could stop it. Rubia ripped away a branch and chased it through the trees, which only made things worse. The dog barked even louder every time he gave up the chase. It was barking at a distance, its head and neck down low, switching to another spot as soon as Rubia moved. When it seemed that it was going to stop, it started up again. He couldn’t make the slightest movement.
‘You shouldn’t have chased it,’ the man said, fed up with it all.
‘I’m going to break its skull!’
He said the words with feeling, his voice contained, and mostly to console himself with the anticipation of his revenge.
‘I don’t know what the hell made you chase it in the first place.’
They sat among the trees, and looking at the river.
The final barge went by and they lay on the ground, and the dog gave up its barking.
The reddish evening sun sent its light between the trees, bearing off the shadows to the far bank of the stream. They couldn’t look behind them. The glare had wiped out everything that lay behind their backs, and they sat there now against the light. Then the sun went down and an endless stillness followed. The shadows brought a wet smell as they lifted from the ground, a smell of old leaves. They saw the water rising, slowly and determinedly, while they sat on the riverbank, and now he couldn’t recall why they were there. A little light remained out in the middle of the river. The water carried some branches off. And brought along some weeds that they’d been cutting down upstream, and then a cardboard box. They drifted on in silence, their motion very steady, as if they’d been arranged on a conveyor. They were all still and silent, and feeling rather sleepy; the river, on the other hand, seemed to be enlivened by a secret obligation. The cardboard box came up against the length of steel cable, it hovered for a moment, as if to feel it out, and then it tumbled round it and away. He was drifting into sleep. He heard, far in the distance, the growling of a river bus. Closer, overhead, was the gentle agitation of the birds come to roost in the treetops. A scrub-hen started squawking somewhere out there in the bushes. The silence after that was more intense and seemed to hammer in his ears.