“We’re already out near the surf, then,” Miguel said finally.
“Yeah. We swam fast.”
“I’ve never seen so much fog.”
“You very tired?” Rubén asked.
“Me? You crazy? Let’s get going.”
He immediately regretted saying that, but it was already too late. Rubén had said, “Okay, let’s get going.”
He succeeded in counting up to twenty strokes before telling himself he could not go on: he was hardly advancing; his right leg was half paralyzed by the cold, his arms felt clumsy and heavy. Panting, he yelled, “Rubén!” Rubén kept on swimming. “Rubén, Rubén!” He turned toward the beach and started to swim, to splash about, really, in desperation; and suddenly he was begging God to save him: he would be good in the future, he would obey his parents, he would not miss Sunday mass, and then he recalled having confessed to the Hawks that he only went to church “to see a chick” and he was sure as a knife stab that God was going to punish him by drowning him in those troubled waters he lashed so frantically, waters beneath which an atrocious death awaited him, and afterwards, perhaps, hell. Then, like an echo, there sprang to his mind a certain old saying sometimes uttered by Father Alberto in religion class, something about divine mercy knowing no bounds, and while he was flailing the sea with his arms—his legs hung like dead weights—with his lips moving, he begged God to be good to him, he was so young, and he swore he would go to the seminary if he was saved, but a second later, scared, he corrected himself, and promised that instead of becoming a priest he would make sacrifices and other things, he would give alms, and at that point he realized how hesitating and bargaining at such a critical moment could be fatal and then he heard Rubén’s maddened shouts, very nearby, and he turned his head and saw him, about ten yards away, his face half sunk in the water, waving an arm, pleading: “Miguel, brother, come over here, I’m drowning, don’t go away!”
He remained motionless, puzzled, and suddenly it was as though Rubén’s desperation banished his own; he felt himself recovering his courage, felt the stiffness in his legs lessening.
“I’ve got a stomach cramp,” Rubén shrieked. “I can’t go any farther, Miguel. Save me, for God’s sake. Don’t leave me, brother.”
He floated toward Rubén and was on the point of swimming up to him when he recalled that drowning people always manage to grab hold of their rescuers like pincers and take them down; and he swam off, but the cries terrified him and he sensed that if Rubén drowned, he would not be able to reach the beach either, and he turned back. Two yards from Rubén, who was quite white and shriveled, sinking and surfacing, he shouted: “Don’t move, Rubén. I’m going to pull you but don’t try to grab me; if you grab me we’ll sink, Rubén. You’re going to stay still, brother. I’m going to pull you by the head; don’t touch me.” He kept at a safe distance and stretched out a hand until he reached Rubén’s hair. He began to swim with his free arm, trying with all his strength to assist with his legs. The movement was slow, very laborious. It sapped all his power and he was hardly aware of Rubén, complaining monotonously, suddenly letting out terrible screams—“I’m going to die, Miguel, save me”—or retching in spasms. He was exhausted when he stopped. With one hand he held Rubén up, with the other he traced circles on the surface. He breathed deeply through his mouth. Rubén’s face was contracted in pain, his lips folded back in a strange grimace.
“Brother,” murmured Miguel, “we’ve only got a little way to go. Try. Rubén, answer me. Yell. Don’t stay like that.”
He slapped him hard and Rubén opened his eyes; he moved his head weakly.
“Yell, brother,” Miguel repeated. “Try to stretch. I’m going to rub your stomach. We’ve only got a little way to go; don’t give up.”
His hand searched under the water, found a hard knot that began at Rubén’s navel and took up a large part of his belly. He went over it many times, first slowly, then hard, and Rubén shouted, “I don’t want to die, Miguel, save me!”
He started swimming again, dragging Rubén by the chin this time. Whenever a wave overtook them, Rubén choked; Miguel yelled at him to spit. And he kept on swimming, without stopping for a moment, closing his eyes at times, excited because a kind of confidence had sprung up in his heart, a warm, proud, stimulating feeling that protected him against the cold and the fatigue. A rock grazed one of his legs and he screamed and hurried on. A moment later he was able to stand up and pass his arms around Rubén. Holding him pressed up against himself, feeling his head leaning on one of his shoulders, he rested for a long while. Then he helped Rubén to stretch out on his back and, supporting him with his forearm, forced him to stretch his knees; he massaged his stomach until the knot began to loosen. Rubén was not shouting anymore; he was doing everything to stretch out completely and was rubbing himself with both his hands.
“Are you better?”
“Yeah, brother, I’m okay now. Let’s get out.”
An inexpressible joy filled them as they made their way over rocks, heads bent against the undertow, not feeling the sea urchins. Soon they saw the sharp edges of the cliffs, the bathhouse, and finally, close to shore, the Hawks standing on the women’s balcony, looking for them.
“Hey!” Rubén said.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t say anything to them. Please don’t tell them I called out. We’ve always been very close friends, Miguel. Don’t do that to me.”
“You really think I’m that kind of louse?” Miguel said. “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”
They climbed out, shivering. They sat down on the steps in the midst of an uproar from the Hawks.
“We were about to send our sympathy to your families,” Tobias said.
“You’ve been in for more than an hour,” the Brain said. “C’mon, how did it turn out?”
Speaking calmly while he dried his body with his undershirt, Rubén explained: “Nothing to tell. We went out to the surf and came back. That’s how we Hawks are. Miguel beat me. Just barely, by a hand. Of course, if it’d been in a swimming pool, he’d have made a fool of himself.”
Slaps of congratulation rained down on Miguel, who had dressed without drying off.
“You’re getting to be a man,” Melanés told him.
Miguel did not answer. Smiling, he thought how that same night he would go to Salazar Park. All Miraflores would soon know, thanks to Melanés, that he had won the heroic contest and Flora would be waiting for him with glowing eyes. A golden future was opening before him.
The Challenge
We were drinking beer, like every Saturday, when Leonidas appeared in the doorway of the River Bar. We saw at once from his face that something had happened.
“What’s up?” Leon asked.
Leonidas pulled up a chair and sat down next to us.
“I’m dying of thirst.”
I filled a glass up to the brim for him and the head spilled over onto the table. Leonidas blew gently and sat pensively, watching how the bubbles burst. Then he drank it down to the last drop in one gulp.
“Justo’s going to be fighting tonight,” he said in a strange voice.
We kept silent for a moment. Leon drank; Briceño lit a cigarette.
“He asked me to let you know,” Leonidas added. “He wants you to come.”
Finally, Briceño asked: “How did it go?”
“They met this afternoon at Catacaos.” Leonidas wiped his forehead and lashed the air with his hand; a few drops of sweat slipped from his fingers to the floor. “You can picture the rest.”
“After all,” Leon said, “if they had to fight, better that way, according to the rules. No reason to get scared either. Justo knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah,” Leonidas agreed, absent-mindedly. “Maybe it’s better like that.”
The bottles stood empty. A breeze was blowing and just a few minutes earlier, we had stopped listening to the neighborhood band from the garrison at Grau playing in the plaza. The bridge was covered with
people coming back from the open-air concert and the couples who had sought out the shade of the embankment also began leaving their hiding places. A lot of people were going by the door of the River Bar. A few came in. Soon the sidewalk café was full of men and women talking loudly and laughing.
“It’s almost nine;” Leon said. “We better get going.”
“Okay, boys,” Leonidas said. “Thanks for the beer.” We left.
“It’s going to be at ‘the raft,’ right?” Briceño asked.
“Yeah. At eleven. Justo’ll look for you at ten-thirty, right here.”
The old man waved good-bye and went off down Castilla Avenue. He lived on the outskirts of town, where the dunes started, in a lonely hut that looked as if it were standing guard over the city. We walked toward the plaza. It was nearly deserted. Next to the Tourist Hotel some young guys were arguing loudly. Passing by, we noticed a girl in the middle, listening, smiling. She was pretty and seemed to be enjoying herself.
“The Gimp’s going to kill him,” Briceño said suddenly.
“Shut up!” Leon snapped.
We went our separate ways at the corner by the church. I walked home quickly. Nobody was there. I put on overalls and two pullovers and hid my knife, wrapped in a handkerchief, in the back pocket of my pants. As I was leaving, I met my wife, just getting home.
“Going out again?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’ve got some business to take care of.”
The boy was asleep in her arms and I had the impression he was dead.
“You’ve got to get up early,” she insisted. “You work Sundays, remember?”
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I walked back down to the River Bar and sat at the bar. I asked for a beer and a sandwich, which I didn’t finish. I’d lost my appetite. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. It was Moses, the owner of the place.
“The fight’s on?”
“Yeah. It’s going to be at ‘the raft.’ Better keep quiet.”
“I don’t need advice from you,” he said. “I heard about it a little while ago. I feel sorry for Justo, but really, he’s been asking for it for some time. And the Gimp’s not very patient—we all know that by now.”
“The Gimp’s an asshole.”
“He used to be your friend…” Moses started to say, but checked himself.
Somebody was calling him from an outside table and he went off, but in a few minutes he was back at my side.
“Want me to go?” he asked.
“No. There’s enough with us, thanks.”
“Okay. Let me know if I can help some way. Justo’s my friend too.” He took a sip of my beer without asking. “Last night the Gimp was here with his bunch. All he did was talk about Justo and swear he was going to cut him up into little pieces. I was praying you guys wouldn’t decide to come by here.”
“I’d like to have seen the Gimp,” I said. “His face is really funny when he’s mad.”
Moses laughed. “Last night he looked like the devil. And he’s so ugly you can’t look at him without feeling sick.”
I finished my beer and left to walk along the embankment, but from the doorway of the River Bar I saw Justo, all alone, sitting at an outside table. He had on rubber sneakers and a faded pullover that came up to his ears. Seen from the side and against the darkness outside, he looked like a kid, a woman: from that angle, his features were delicate, soft. Hearing my footsteps, he turned around, showing me the purple scar wounding the other side of his face, from the corner of his mouth up to his forehead. (Some people say it was from a punch he took in a fight when he was a kid, but Leonidas insisted he’d been born the day of the flood and that scar was his mother’s fright when she saw the water come right up to the door of the house.)
“I just got here,” he said. “What’s with the others?”
“They’re coming. They must be on their way.”
Justo looked at me straight on. He seemed about to smile, but got very serious and turned his head.
“What happened this afternoon?”
He shrugged and made a vague gesture.
“We met at the Sunken Cart. I just went in to have a drink and I bump into the Gimp and his guys face to face. Get it? If the priest hadn’t stepped in, they’d have cut my throat right there. They jumped me like dogs. Like mad dogs. The priest pulled us apart.”
“Are you a man?” the Gimp shouted.
“More than you,” Justo shouted.
“Quiet, you animals,” the priest said.
“At ‘the raft’ tonight, then?” the Gimp shouted.
“Okay,” said Justo.
“That was all.”
The crowd at the River Bar had dwindled. A few people were left at the bar but we were alone at an outside table.
“I brought this,” I said, handing him the handkerchief.
Justo opened the knife and hefted it. The blade was exactly the size of his hand, from his wrist to his fingernails. Then he took another knife out of his pocket and compared them.
“They’re the same,” he said. “I’ll stick with mine.”
He asked for a beer and we drank it without speaking, just smoking.
“I haven’t got the time,” said Justo, “but it must be past ten. Let’s go catch up with them.”
At the top of the bridge we met Briceño and Leon. They greeted Justo, shaking his hand.
“Listen, brother,” Leon said, “you’re going to cut him to shreds.”
“That goes without saying,” said Briceño. “The Gimp couldn’t touch you.”
They both had on the same clothes as before and seemed to have agreed on showing confidence and even a certain amount of lightheartedness in front of Justo.
“Let’s go down this way,” Leon said. “It’s shorter.”
“No,” Justo said. “Let’s go around. I don’t feel like breaking my leg just now.”
That fear was funny because we always went down to the riverbed by lowering ourselves from the steel framework holding up the bridge. We went a block farther on the street, then turned right and walked for a good while in silence. Going down the narrow path to the riverbed, Briceño tripped and swore. The sand was lukewarm and our feet sank in as if we were walking on a sea of cotton. Leon looked attentively at the sky.
“Lots of clouds,” he said. “The moon’s not going to help much tonight.”
“We’ll light bonfires,” Justo said.
“Are you crazy?” I said. “You want the police to come?”
“It can be arranged,” Briceño said without conviction. “It could be put off till tomorrow. They’re not going to fight in the dark.”
Nobody answered and Briceño didn’t persist.
“Here’s ‘the raft,’” Leon said.
At one time—nobody knew when—a carob tree had fallen into the riverbed and it was so huge that it stretched three quarters of the way across the dry riverbed. It was very heavy and once it went down, the water couldn’t raise it, could only drag it along for a few yards, so that each year “the raft” moved a little farther from the city. Nobody knew, either, who had given it the name “the raft,” but that’s what everybody called it.
“They’re here already,” Leon said.
We stopped about five yards short of “the raft.” In the dim glow of night we couldn’t make out the faces of whoever was waiting for us, only their silhouettes. There were five of them. I counted, trying in vain to find the Gimp.
“You go,” Justo said.
I moved toward the tree trunk slowly, trying to keep a calm expression on my face.
“Stop!” somebody shouted. “Who’s there?”
“Julian,” I called out. “Julian Huertas. You blind?”
A small shape came out to meet me. It was Chalupas.
“We were just leaving,” he said. “We figured little Justo had gone to the police to ask them to take care of him.”
“I want to come to terms with a man,” I shouted with
out answering him. “Not with this dwarf.”
“Are you real brave?” Chalupas asked, with an edge in his voice.
“Silence!” the Gimp shouted. They had all drawn near and the Gimp advanced toward me. He was tall, much taller than all the others. In the dark I couldn’t see but could only imagine the face armored in pimples, the skin, deep olive and beardless, the tiny pinholes of his eyes, sunken like two dots in that lump of flesh divided by the oblong bumps of his cheekbones, and his lips, thick as fingers, hanging from his chin, triangular like an iguana’s. The Gimp’s left foot was lame. People said he had a scar shaped like a cross on that foot, a souvenir from a pig that bit him while he was sleeping, but nobody had ever seen that scar.
“Why’d you bring Leonidas?” the Gimp asked hoarsely.
“Leonidas? Who’s brought Leonidas?”
With his finger the Gimp pointed off to one side. The old man had been a few yards behind on the sand and when he heard his name mentioned he came near.
“What about me!” he said. He looked at the Gimp fixedly. “I don’t need them to bring me along. I came along, on my own two feet, just because I felt like it. If you’re looking for an excuse not to fight, say so.”
The Gimp hesitated before answering. I thought he was going to insult the old man and I quickly moved my hand to my back pocket.
“Don’t get involved, Pop,” said the Gimp amiably. “I’m not going to fight with you.”
“Don’t think I’m so old,” Leonidas said. “I’ve walked over a lot better than you.”
“It’s okay, Pop,” the Gimp said. “I believe you.” He turned to me. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Tell your friends not to butt in. If they do, so much the worse for them.”
The Gimp laughed. “Julian, you know I don’t need any backup. Especially today. Don’t worry.”
One of the men behind the Gimp laughed too. The Gimp handed something toward me. I reached out my hand: his knife blade was out and I had taken it by the cutting edge. I felt a small scratch in my palm and a trembling. The metal felt like a piece of ice.