Colorado Chico came to find them on his launch and they knew the day had come.
‘Let’s go!’ was all he said. And they went.
They’d put him in a small room, alone.
‘Looks like you’re a big shot now,’ said Bastos.
It was two days since he’d known who people were. His eyes, even deeper now, were all that there was left, still shining while the rest of him had slowly drained away.
A couple of hours went by like this, the four of them just watching him, dumb and feeling sorry, not knowing what to do.
A pair of nuns then entered and began to cite the rosary. It made them feel still more distressed. What did they think they were doing? When they understood that the old man’s time had come, the old woman moved towards the bed and stroked his hair. There was an unspeakable tenderness and care in it.
And then the old man sat up in the bed and looked at each of them with curious lucidity.
He seemed serene and victorious and stately.
He took hold of his wife’s hand.
‘Old girl!’
And nothing else.
The men leap from the grave and mop their sweat with their shirtsleeves. Recovering their breath. The small group and the men look at each other mistrustfully. Boga sees their muddy boots, splitting at the seams and very slowly sinking down into the wet earth of the mound. They hold on to the shovels with a small show of impatience.
The place feels quiet and empty, like the islands on the open sea. White gravestones and white crosses doze in the sun.
‘Right!’ one of the men says, and both take up the coffin, and then they let it run to the bottom on the ropes.
They stop then and they wait, but no one makes a move.
The man says:
‘Throw the first earth in.’
The old woman picks up a lump and throws it on the coffin. The others use their feet. The clods land with a dead sound, a little like the rain, when they drop onto the lid. The two men begin to shovel strongly now. When they finish there’s just a little hill of loose earth. No one understands how they’ve done it all so quickly.
The men leave, but the small group stays, uncertain what to do. The old woman holds the bunch of flowers in her hand, her eyes completely dry. They look at her in glances, waiting for a sign. Colorado speaks at last.
‘It’s best we go, old girl.’
She lifts her eyes towards him, with that ageless, gentle manner that resigns itself to everything. She bends towards the ground and puts the flowers on the hill of loose earth.
They go. Then when they reach the gate, Bastos says:
‘Well, he got his way. Once he had an idea in his head, there was no stopping him.’
The river always changes. At times it’s hard and brutal, at others it seems measured for a man.
The start of summer came at the same time as December’s great bajante, lasting five days. They watched the waters falling and the river go on emptying as if it wouldn’t stop. At night there were recoveries, but nothing much to speak of, and within a couple of hours the water turned around again and headed out towards the open sea, thicker all the time, dragging mud up from the riverbed.
Boga and the cream-coloured dog went about plastered head to toe in muck. The dog seemed pretty pleased with things. For the others, a kind of irritation was developing, suppressed, but always there. Now he spent the nights sleeping stretched out in the passage, the dog across his feet, with the mud stuck on his skin drying out and tightening. The cuts and drains that flowed into the watercourse were infinite, their soporific murmuring still louder in the night, so it got into his blood. The clicking of the catfish, trying to reach the open sea, caused the dog to start. Then he’d take the lamp down, and the dog would go out beside him to the midpoint of the channel. Stationing himself at the point that seemed the shallowest, he beat the fish to death. Their dorsal fins stood out a little way above the water, and he would aim the final blow just a little further forward. And so it went, every night.
When the sixth day dawned, all the world was under water. It was early in the morning that the south-east wind began, and the water flooded in at a rate you couldn’t credit.
The first thing he did was to jump into the water and wash all the filth away. Then they went out further, beyond the river mouth onto the middle of the sandbank. The water stood so high now that the two of them appeared to be abandoned on an endless sea. But with the water high and the sky a solid cloud, every sound you heard appeared to come from very close.
He thought he heard some voices coming over from the river, until he saw the vague shape of a boat across the sandbank, advancing with its sails unfurled. He’d never seen a boat like that on this part of the river, which showed how high the water ran. The boat looked like a great bird making smooth, majestic turns. He thought, from its shape, that it was the Pintarrojo, a ketch rigged in the old style.
He stood there for a long time in the middle of his boat, watching it in silence as if dazzled by the sight. The south-east wind blew steadily, but now it wasn’t so strong, bringing in that smell that made you think of the sea. The sky began to clear up on the easterly horizon and the light began to penetrate. The Pintarrojo slowly turned its prow in that direction. He watched it move away and then it vanished over the rim of light.
One could take it as a sign.
He went that very day to visit Bastos in his cabin and, as soon as he got back, gathered all his things into a tarred canvas bag. This was when the cream-coloured dog started whining, running everywhere in front of him, watching him uneasily. At last, when he’d got everything, he stepped into the kitchen.
‘Are you there, abuela?’
‘I’m here and listening to you,’ said the voice inside the shadows.
He took some time deciding.
‘I’m going, abuela,’ he said at last, struggling with the words.
‘Yes, I can see.’
He heard her as she got up and came towards him. When she stood there right in front of him, she looked into his eyes.
‘As you wish, son.’ She said it in that patient voice which nothing ever troubled.
He was standing there in silence, wondering what to do.
‘Don’t worry about me, if that’s what’s on your mind.’
Then he looked at her in turn. She knew them well, these men like him.
‘I’ve spoken to Old Bastos… he’s going to come up here… I think it would be best.’
‘If that’s what he wants… but don’t you worry about me.’
‘Yes, yes I know…’
‘I think the old man owed you.’
‘I don’t want any money.’
‘It isn’t right.’
‘No, I don’t want…’
‘All right, then take the old man’s gun.’
‘No, you’re going to need it… I’m going to take the boat, Old Bastos’ rowing boat, and the small trammel net and a couple of paternosters.’
‘That’s not very much at all.’
‘It’s fine for me.’
‘The rowing boat’s not ours, and besides, it’s rotten.’
‘It’s fine for me.’
‘Honestly, this man!’
Boga scratched his head.
‘That knife, the old man’s knife… what will you do with that?’
The old woman faintly smiled.
‘What do I want with a knife?’
He took his turn to smile, and then he scratched his head again.
Old Bastos’ rowing boat is a boat that has a story, as do all these things. Not many folk would give you something for it now, but in its time it really was a great little boat, and more than just a rowing boat. A ready eye can still pick out the elegance of its lines. The boat was old even when Old Bastos bought it, from the hands of Old Messali. And Old Messali bought it, in his turn, from Old Sotelo. It was round this time that some bottom timbers were changed. As for Old Sotelo, it seems that he received it from a Turkish man called Zarur, and in exchange for a cow that had a story of its own. But this is too far back in time and no one can agree the facts from Old Sotelo on. The boats are often mixed up and the stories get confused. You talk about a boat, at least you think that it’s a boat, and in fact it’s really two boats, or even three at once. Apart from that, a single boat gives rise to different stories. It will happen there have been so many changes to the boat, that you reach a point in time when it is taken for a new boat. It happens that a boat is quite another as time goes by, excepting for its shape or in the nature of the spirit that gives it life, because there’s not a timber or a nail or any other piece that hasn’t been replaced. There’s nothing odd in a rowing boat of a certain length being turned into a little launch, a splendid one at that. So it was that Old Messali thought to fit an engine, a little Lauson 2 h.p., back in ’38 when they were selling very cheaply as they came on the market, and complete with the propeller shaft, the screw and packing gland. But fate had other plans for this boat.