Some said that the boat was made by the hand of Don Juan Froglia. But this is saying a lot. Apart from any other doubts, Old Froglia died in ’27. Some insist, however. And maybe there’s some truth in it. Perhaps it wasn’t by Froglia’s hand but rather his apprentice’s. Some can see the old style in it, rather like with paintings. Regardless of the truth, though, every time the matter of its sale came into question, the owner mentioned Froglia, and swore the boat was one of his. If this was even half-believed, the buyer asked for nothing more to come to a decision. This is how these people are. Even if the boat might fall to pieces at a kick. The very same Juan Froglia, of Austrian descent, whose boatyard on the Tigre’s left bank quickly rose to fame in the first years of this century, for its motor boats and launches, its Tarpón cruisers, the Italia for instance, the Titania or the Albatros. It quickly reached the point where it was doubtful he would’ve had much to do with any mere rowboat at all. This was at the time when the internal combustion engines started capturing the market, burning ‘Russian petrol’ that was sold in crates of two drums holding eighteen litres each and at $3.80 the crate. It was at that time.
The boat, four metres long at most, was fitted out at first with a short Baltic pine mast, and a small lateen sail for when it went on to the open sea. It kept this mast till recently, but all that was in place now was the beam fixed to the keelson, which served you as a type of cockpit, and a seat there at the mast-hole right above it. There aren’t many folk who would part with cash to buy it now, even if Juan Froglia really had built the boat himself. Half its planks are rotten and the transom’s split as well. Even if her story was complete in every detail, it wouldn’t be enough to patch the smallest of her holes.
Old Bastos turned up first thing in the morning on the following day, his boat jam-packed with junk. Working side by side, they stacked the whole lot on the shore and, when the boat was empty, he began to stow his own things. The Primus stove and kerosene lamp, machete, wooden box with all his odd tools picked up over time — all of this he put into the locker in the prow. He’d held on to the pincers, a pair of Doble Cañón, since the time when he was working on the Pancho Comercio dredger. You can’t put your hands on a pair of Doble Cañón pincers now, not for anything in the world. With the kind of job he used them for, other brands of pincers would have done him just as well, even something made locally. But, when all is said and done, a pair of Doble Cañón is a pair of Doble Cañón.
He put the gill net in the stern, down underneath the seat, with the tarred canvas bag and the basket with the paternoster lines. He set the kettle for the maté and a box holding tins and bottles in the space behind his back, between the seat he sat to row on and the seat beside the mast-hole. Pushed against this large box was a bag that held some sea bread and a decent lump of pork belly. He covered up the bag and box with a canvas large enough to reach across the boat when fully extended.
The cream-coloured dog followed every single movement, letting out a whimper or a bark from time to time. He stood up two or three times, staring at it angrily. He found those gentle, pleading eyes disturbed him in his work.
The dog sat on the bank as if it had the shivers, shaking as it whimpered very softly. One time it got caught up between his feet on the path, and he removed it with a kick. When he had things ready, he called the dog and tied it to one of the house’s uprights. Then, in the middle of the morning, he left.
From inside the house, Bastos and the old woman heard the squealing of the rowlocks and the slapping of the oars moving slowly off in the direction of the river mouth, but they didn’t come to see him leave. The dog, on the other hand, was desperate in its howling. A howling choked off, in part, by the violence of its jerking on the cord, which only made its desperation greater than before, as if it were being strangled. He rowed on with a rhythm that was slow, just like the old folk’s. A long way lay ahead.
He went beyond the final curve and then on past the refuge, and now across the sandbank, going in among the reeds.
The day was very lovely. His plan was to go out onto the open sea a little, to the far side of the sandbank, then carry on around it till the evening, when he’d land on Santa Mónica and stay there for the night.
Then the howling stopped and he knew the dog was loose. He saw it not long after when it ran between the reeds and then jumped out into the water. He went on with his rowing.
You can’t say that the river changes one way in the winter and another in the summer. The river simply changes. The islands, on the other hand, seem different with each season. Not just for the striking green of summer, but far more subtle things. In winter, from the open sea, they vanish in a distant mist. They’re there, and then they’re not. You come to doubt the river and believe you’ll never reach them, despite the faint uneasiness that cuts you off and rocks you and in a way distresses you. Their shores may prove illusory, a shadow out towards the west, swayed by the horizon. And if at last you draw near, they come to seem remoter still, colonised by loneliness, by silence and a sadness past repair.
The light hides high in winter. Dawn and evening come on at the summit of the sky, a long way from the surface. In summer it’s the opposite. The light begins to rise up from the outline of the islands and, pushing out from there, spills its way across the day. The islands look like jolly barges rocking on the water in the middle of the morning. When heading towards them, one heads towards the light. And towards that strange commotion that has slowly gained intensity as summer comes of age.
It all takes place unnoticed. This business of maturing. The winter’s there inside you, the summer’s who you are as well. But, leaving this aside, it’s plain to see that everything comes from the north. The anxiety and the hubbub and the very light itself. All this exaltation and this frenzy of the summer.
Between mid-morning and mid-afternoon, the islands lie there gleaming with a sharp and even light, dozing in the sun. They look a little flattened. A stroke of light, a stroke of shadow. Nothing in the mid-tones. The suffocating air. The sand along the beaches makes a quiet creaking sound. There is a thick and boiling silence. The atmosphere above is clear, but at the level of the ground it quivers strangely. Then the silence turns into a never-ending drone. But this is also summer. The crowning of the day is in its dawning and its nightfall. And then there is the night. The breeze at dawn is cool and draws a shiver from the fishermen. It comes in from the river and the islands give a shake. It’s then that all the bustle and the boiling in the blood begins, the fretting that provokes a man to head for the horizon. An angel, something like that, has just skimmed across the water and around the wind-blown features of the man down in his boat, asleep. It moves too quickly to be seen, cutting through the dawning light that makes the world elusive. You barely feel the touch, but it’s enough to leave you troubled. It’s time to find yourself there now, away towards the north and beyond these early islands. It summons and impels you. You must go.