Then the moon had gone, and until his eyes adjusted the darkness was intense. From time to time a match flame lit the man’s face for a moment. He always felt his face, despite the darkness and the distance.
A limpkin started calling in the middle of the scrub. At first he just ignored it. But when an hour had passed, he longed to have the old man’s gun to blast it in the middle of its squawking. Its cry was tired and whining. First there came a lengthy cry, then four to seven shorter ones. Between the cries, the silences themselves became unbearable, wondering if the thing would start again. He couldn’t time the silences. Ten, fifteen, twenty seconds. The pause was absent sometimes, and the cries just ran together in a line of three or four. He thought that an opossum must be prowling round its nest. He thought of this each time, to feel some pity for the creature. But even so, its crying seemed to sound inside his head. One long, four short… one long, six short. When the bird had finished, everything he heard seemed further off.
Until he heard the Caporale’s engine. At first he’d been impatient as he waited for the boat. He didn’t know what was coming, but the simple fact of waiting for it made him feel impatient. When several hours had gone by, he’d convinced himself the sound would never come. Anything might happen, but they’d never hear the boat. In some way it was up to him to goad the night and use his will, or maybe his impatience, whatever else it took, to summon the Caporale’s sound. But then, it was his will, or his impatience, that presented the greatest difficulty.
Still, there was that face lost in the shadows, quite assured, hardened by a wait that had been considerably longer.
And so they heard the sound, and he knew that something in the man had still to finish waiting, had worked out every move they made with absolute assurance.
From over on the other bank, the man produced the whistle.
He didn’t whistle back at once. He’d lost the thread a little. It was the engine all the same.
Rubia had gone to sleep. He bent down quickly over him and shook him into life.
The engine noise grew louder.
He set to raise the cable. The man had said to steady it just slightly off the water. He waited there for Rubia to come across and hold it. Then he bent to try to see its distance from the water. He looked towards the other bank.
‘I think it’s right,’ he said.
They tied the cable firmly.
He’d brought a tin they’d packed with tow and then filled up with alcohol. He levered off the lid and set the tin down on the ground, just in between himself and Rubia. Cabecita only had to light a match and drop it in. Nothing more than that. Rubia wanted either one of them to light the match, but he’d said no, it’s better this way. They’d argued on the other bank, before they crossed the stream. Now they argued once again, their voices taut and smothered, listening as the engine noise grew steadily towards them.
‘His hands are better out of it…’
‘He’s not a fool.’
‘I’m telling you it’s better…’
‘It will save us time.’
‘There’s no way I can trust him.’
‘He’s not a fool.’
‘He damn well is! And now he’s going to fuck us up!’
‘It’s not the time to argue.’
‘He’s going…’
‘Enough!’
‘Fuck it!’
All at once the engine noise grew distant.
They left the quarrel there, and listened.
‘It’s in the bend,’ he said, and felt a little startled.
The boat was in the first bend. When it came out from the bend, its noise would be much greater, right on top of them.
They were hanging on the engine sound. They couldn’t argue now. Everything now ran on at a certain pace.
He looked out to the other bank. He couldn’t see a thing.
‘Stay exactly where you are,’ he said to Cabecita, quietly.
‘Don’t strike the match until they’re right beside us,’ Rubia said, his voice a little shaky.
‘I’m going to tell him when…’
Rubia grabbed a bottle, and rearranged the rest to hand. Boga did the same. He placed the other two between his legs. He only had to bend to pick them up. Cabecita waited, standing in between them. He could feel his body close to him, shrunken by anxiety and fear.
He tried to see the cable. Nothing. Would they see it?
Now the Caporale turned. At any moment it would appear just metres off, with the final bend behind it.
They were tense and didn’t move. With that sound, which collided with the pumping in their ears, advancing through the night.
He heard it when the man released the safety catch.
Now.
Then the noise grew suddenly loud and the two position lights appeared, coming straight towards them.
The boat now had to veer twice rather quickly on the stream, which meant at least one man aboard was busy with the steering.
And then, out from the shadows, came the dark smudge of the vessel, very close, its mast in silhouette against the sky at night, lengthening alarmingly and right above their heads as it arrived.
He tried to see the man who was standing at the tiller. The glare sent by the lights made this impossible. They came on, one green, one red, at the level of his eyes.
He reached a hand to Cabecita.
‘When I say,’ he whispered, almost breathless.
They were completely in the noise now.
The prow was all but up to them. He squeezed the bottle’s throat.
‘Now!’
Almost as he shouted, the boat snagged on the cable. The tree shook to its roots. First he saw the quick and vivid flaring of the phosphorous and then the soft blue flicker of the alcohol in flame as it sprouted from the ground with a snort. He quickly bent and set light to the tow inside the bottle, then threw it hard away towards the middle of the river, to where he gauged the cockpit was. The plumes of fire flew parallel, but only Rubia’s bottle hit a bullseye in the cockpit. His fell on the housing. They sent up dull, suppressed explosions. Then the plumes inflated with a buzz. He saw the man there at the tiller. His silhouette was bright and inky, leaping at the night as if lit up by the flashing of a magnesium lamp.
They threw another pair of bottles, this time both on target in the cockpit. But now the man had gone. They heard the desperate howling of the engine revving flat out, and the shaking of the tree beside them. And then they also heard the shots. One man started shooting at them, aiming through a porthole. They threw the last two bottles fast and dived onto the ground. One of these two bottles hit the boat along the side, and a stream of fire ran down towards the water. The bullets fizzed above their heads and rapped against the leaves that hung a little way behind them.
One of the position lights exploded with a stunted bang. The engine kept on straining. Perhaps they didn’t know that they were dealing with an 8-mm steel cable.
The flames inside the cockpit caught and swelled and gathered height. The man had thrown his pair of bottles. Not that they were needed, and this was when he understood the man had other plans. The boat could burn for all he cared.
The two men made their way out from the cabin. The fire had blocked the entrance. The black, cramped silhouettes danced between the flames. They clambered up on deck, crouched behind the housing and began to shoot towards them. They fired away quite blindly, their backs towards the other bank. He’d overturned the tin of tow.
It was what the man had waited for. There in the shadows, he aimed at the head of one of the two men with care, and pressed the trigger. The man’s head hit the housing and he sat down on the deck. He fired again at once, at the other, but this man had dropped down at the first shot and escaped towards the bow. He saw him when he half-stood and dived into the water. He fired towards the splash and then a little way ahead. The fire lit up the water and he caught sight of the man’s back, then his arms as they were turning in the air. Now he aimed carefully, taking his time, and fired. He fired off several shots, and one of them at least produced a dead sound as it landed, as if it had hit a bag of sawdust, something of that sort.