‘Watch that one, it wants to jump,’ said Bastos.
Boga waved his fist and the dog backed off a little. There it stayed, fidgeting, until they moved away.
‘Ok, let’s go,’ said Bastos.
Then the old man got to his feet. He cast his gaze one last time across the empty house, then across the trees, and then along the footpath. The dog had fallen silent, looking at him with just a glint of hope.
He sat down at last. Boga got the engine going. The old man stared ahead now, his eyes towards that secret point.
They left.
The dog followed on, running quickly down the bank. It got ahead at one point but fell behind before they’d made it to the outlet, as the launch gathered speed.
But they still heard its barks for some time to come, stubbornly pursuing them across the river.
They waited for an hour in that white room lit by sunlight. The old couple sat there together on a bench. She was barely on its front edge, her purse in her lap and both hands on the purse. Boga waited standing; he moved his hands around at first, not knowing what to do with them, then stood completely motionless. They looked somewhat defeated.
A nurse asked them two or three times what they wanted, and two or three times they answered slowly and laboriously.
Boga at last said, while searching for a stub:
‘That bitch thinks she’s the boss.’
They listened to her cluck behind a door of frosted glass. It opened once or twice, and through it they could see a bit of trolley and a glass case, above it an electric clock. At last the door opened for them and they made their way inside.
The doctor went on speaking to the nurse for quite a time, as if they were alone. He hadn’t even given them a look when they’d come in. They waited, still and silent, watching the pair without the slightest interest in their words. Then the doctor stopped and turned, awkwardly, to have a look. His look confronted Boga’s for something like a second, and then he turned away, his composure rather lost.
‘Well, and what’s the problem?’ he asked the nurse instead of them, taking up that cold-blooded tone that public servants use.
‘You’re asking me!’ the woman said, with a shrug. ‘I can’t make them out.’
‘So you will have to tell me,’ the doctor said, turning round to face them.
Boga tried again, still more slowly and laboriously, certain from the outset that they wouldn’t understand him.
He signalled at the old man. ‘He said that he was going to die. It’s some time since he said it…’
The other man stood and waited. Then he made a gesture as if to say, ‘And what else?’
‘Well, I think he’s doing it…’
The doctor glanced at the nurse as if to make a joke but turned back without speaking, and searched the old man’s face with a sudden look of kindness.
‘And what have you to say, old chap?’ He approached the old man as he said it.
‘I don’t think he’ll answer you,’ Boga said at last.
‘Well, that doesn’t matter… I think we’d better take a look.’
They crossed the giant ward, between two lines of beds, preceded by the nurse and a nun. They walked close together, as huddled as possible, not daring any sideways looks but feeling all the eyes in those gloomy faces turned towards them. Bastos smelled the medicine and instantly felt ill.
They went into a side ward that only had four beds, two already occupied. Like animals in wait, the patients pulled themselves up and observed the new arrivals with a look of some resentment. The old woman set to stripping the old man of his clothes, then they put him in an empty bed.
‘The padre will come to see him later on,’ said the nun. ‘I’m certain that the old chap will have many things to tell him. Isn’t that so?’ she added, trying to make it friendly.
‘And what padre’s that?’ said Boga, believing she was joking.
‘What padre do you think?’ Bastos said, trying to set things right while not quite sure himself. ‘The Heavenly Father, probably.’
The nun was dismayed and gave them a look, believing in her turn that this was some kind of joke.
‘It’s not a laughing matter,’ she said, maintaining her decorum, and smoothing down her habit with her hands.
‘No, madam!’ Bastos said, needing to say something, and feeling that the smell would drive him mad. ‘Not on your life.’
The nun’s skirts rustled as she slipped out of the room. Bastos thought she looked just like a boat with all its sails up; he felt quite relieved as he watched her move away, as if she were walking among clouds.
‘It’s better if you go now,’ said the nurse after that. ‘Visits are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, two till four, and Sundays, one till five.’
They felt bereft as they listened, and she seemed to understand.
‘Don’t worry about the old chap. He’ll be fine here with us.’
The old woman went to smooth the sheets on the bed, and also the old man’s hair and his best fleece shirt, which he still had on in bed. He looked like a small creature captured in a corner. She tried to delay, begging his forgiveness with that look of desolation, astonishingly meek and sweet and sad. And then at last she kissed him on the forehead, and went.
Boga paused beside the door, his fingers on the handle.
‘See you then, old man!’ he said, forcing out a smile. ‘There’s no need to worry about anything. It will all turn out fine.’
The spring was almost over. He continued in the reed bed, all the time working his way closer to the sandbanks, along the open sea.
The singing of the islands sounded more intense each day. It was always in his ears.
Now he also stayed there by the lines all through the night, stretching himself out in the bottom of the boat, looking at the stars as they made their steady journey. A curious disquiet was eating him inside. The summer wasn’t far off.
As long as it continued, the old woman went to San Fernando every Tuesday, also on Thursdays and Sundays. Most times with Old Bastos. On these days he was left with the older man’s rotting boat. He could reach the sandbanks on foot if he went along the shore, but he might need the boat for something else. When he had a load he had to carry to San Fernando, he chose one of those three days or, to be precise, one of the two weekdays when visiting was allowed. He went all the way to the hospital with a half-pound of chocolate, a bag of sweets, a basket of fruit and some newspapers. The old man didn’t touch them but he took them all the same.
He sat between the beds on a cast-iron stool and looked up at the old man, mostly saying nothing much. The old man seemed to overlook this presence by his side, but once he turned and fixed him with a long and steady look, as if he’d just remembered him.
He spoke from time to time for the sake of saying something, although not sure that the other would be listening.
‘I brought three hundred bundles today… at eleven pesos a bundle. I’ve heard Fat Soriano pays two pesos more… I’m going to start the cutting on the other bank tomorrow… still the same sandbank… depending how things are. The moon brought the bajante this time. If it carries on like this…’
He looked at the old man through his big eyes of a dying fish. It was pretty clear to see that he wasn’t listening. Even so, he said:
‘I’d like your opinion, about Fat Soriano…’
No, he wasn’t listening.
‘I wouldn’t mix with that old skinflint if I were you,’ one of the other patients said. ‘Not for anything in the world!’
Boga turned towards the haggard face.
‘The last laugh is the longest,’ the nasal voice insisted, shifting in his bed.