The pain had gone almost completely. The drug in the end hadn’t been any more than that: a little bit like seasickness which, once it’s passed, leaves no trace and it’s hard to believe it could ever have been so bad, the relief of treading on land again so pleasurable that you even look back with a little nostalgia.
Was this how it was ten years ago? Was this what I’d been spared: this silent, floating moon-walk my companions’ tales had allowed me to remember as if I’d been walking with them? Had they plodded on as I did now, drawn towards the plain by the inertia of defeat, descending the mountains towards the doomed capital like a flood, pouring through its streets minute by minute in an unstoppable olive green torrent, knocking down fences, trampling on vegetable patches, lapping against the walls of houses at whose windows the terrified Kelpers dared not show themselves; spreading little by little, milling around till they settled like the waters of a lake, depositing a flotsam of abandoned weapons, ammunition boxes, empty helmets, rucksacks, kicked bags — all useless now that the only thing left to do was to sit down in silent bunches and wait for the English to come? I have to get there before they do, I said to spur myself on down the deserted slope of Avenida San Juan, my steps so silent that not even I seemed to be there; I have to hurry, I repeat to myself, even if I know that I’m ten years too late, that the Kelpers and the English are sleeping safely in their beds and I’m the last Argentinian in the Islands.
I had trouble getting my key in the lock and there was no need to turn on the light to see what had happened. They hadn’t been content to take the floppies and the hard disks of my disembowelled computers; if what they’d wanted was information, they could have got it over the Web without setting foot in my house. No, they’d done it their way, the best they knew, with that characteristic blend of method and brutality, reliving the good old days that had never quite gone. I groped about for the phone, which at that moment was the only really indispensable thing and, after scavenging around in my own rubbish for some time, I found part of the casing. I went on crawling mechanically across the irregular mattress of my belongings strewn from wall to wall over the floor, groping mechanically for what I was looking for. Under the collapsed boxes of Christopher products appeared a pair of thick socks into which I stuck my feet, blistered and scratched by the last few blocks, which I’d walked on bare soles and, in a lower stratum, my Topper baseball boots, which it took me some time to lace up; all the while not bothering to turn on the light, or to close the door on my way out.
As if the visit to my house had been just a quick stopover, I carried on walking down San Juan against the flow of traffic. The first few blocks I was too numb to even look when I crossed and in the wide open spaces of Avenida 9 de Julio it was only the time of day that saved me from being run over on the motorway access roads. Only when I reached Avenida Entre Ríos did I feel any emotion: it was hatred. I was crossing Avenida Boedo and I still didn’t know what I was doing, so I decided not to do anything, just to go on walking till something happened. All need for a decision vanished, trampled underfoot by the simple fact of walking, sheer stubbornness, the soul’s most mechanical faculty. By now the lights were bowling handfuls of cars down the avenue every so often, which, with their uneven speeds, broke up till the next set of red lights marshalled them again. I took advantage of one of these starts to run across to the other pavement, laughing at the desperate flashings of headlights, the sudden meandering brakings and the long, continuous tooting of horns, and I would have done it again had it not been for the breathlessness that clouded my eyes so badly that the buildings began to waver like flames and I had to sit down and close my eyes until the city had settled again. ‘Go away,’ I shouted at it, trying to sound defiant. ‘Get lost, leave me alone. I don’t need you, I’ve never needed you. Why go on kidding ourselves? I never came back. I never left the Islands.’
I turned right at the next corner without knowing why, until I looked up and saw the name of the street: Malvinas Argentinas, what else. When I looked down, they were walking beside me.
They hadn’t aged, as I hadn’t either: like the clocks of Hiroshima, time for us had stopped at an instant. The time and place were just right for the meeting: the dead hours of deep night, the junction of the indistinct streets of Buenos Aires and Puerto Argentino. Their casualness would have made my astonishment sound rude and, with nothing more than an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders (although who knows what they could perceive?), I walked between them on the pavement, where only my steps rang out. The first to speak was Carlitos:
‘City’s changed, eh, since the last time.’
‘You don’t come often?’ I asked him.
‘Not unless we’re called,’ he looked at me. ‘Which is like saying …’
‘… less and less.’ Rubén finished the sentence. The charred rents in the material of his uniform looked like black holes in a sky of dry blood. ‘Why didn’t you call us before, Porteño?’
I hung my head as low as I could to escape the stabbing of accusing eyes. They still hurt on the back of my neck though.
‘I missed you all as well. I miss you more than ever. But I was afraid of calling you.’
I looked up slightly. They were looking at each other, winking.
‘Way hey! We’re wicked we are.’
‘We frighten the little boys.’
‘And fondle the little girls.’
They drew a smile from me. Bastards, over there too, against all the odds, they used to manage it. No one had ever done it, against my will like that, ever since. Well, one person had, I corrected myself. But she’s further away than they are now. With a supreme effort, more for their sake than mine, I looked up into Carlitos’ serene eyes. He was massaging his wrist. He’d let his moustache grow to cover the split lip.
‘Do you still hate me?’ I asked him.
‘Since when did I hate you?’ He answered me with another question, like a good Jew. Try as I might, I couldn’t detect the slightest trace of irony in his voice.
‘Since that day when I stood by and let Verraco do … Since that night when I fell asleep with you dying at my side. And all these years for letting the monster go on living. As if that wasn’t enough.’
The cars had reappeared by the time we reached Avenida Rivadavia. In the two blocks we’d been walking down the avenue, none of the drivers seemed surprised at the strange patrol of dead soldiers walking the streets of the empty city. Maybe, like me, they hadn’t bought the story about the end of the war either.