This is the reason, in my opinion, why young men grow up such blockheads in the schools, because they neither see nor hear one single thing connected with the usual circumstances of everyday life, nothing but stuff about pirates lurking on the seashore with fetters in their hands, tyrants issuing edicts to compel sons to cut off their own fathers’ heads, oracles in times of pestilence commanding three virgins or more to be sacrificed to stay the plague …
The advice is still valid today. When will we at last renounce the detective novel, the fantasy novel and the entire prolific, varied, and ambitious literary genre that is fed by unreality? When will we return to the path of the salubrious picaresque and pleasant local color?
The sea air had begun to filter through the window. I closed it. I fell asleep.
2
FOLLOWING MY INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER, the steward woke me at six in the morning. I performed a few brief ablutions with the remainder of the bottle of Villavicencio water that I had requested before retiring the night before, took ten drops of arsenic, dressed, and went to the dining car. My breakfast consisted of a fruit salad and two cups of café con leche (it’s worth remembering: the tea on trains is from Ceylon). I was sorry not to have the opportunity to explain a few details of intellectual property law to the couple with whom I’d eaten dinner the previous evening; they were going much further than Salinas (known these days as Colonel Faustino Tambussi), and, undoubtedly intoxicated by the effects of an allopathic pharmacopoeia, they were giving over to sleep these liminal morning hours that are, thanks to our own indolence, the exclusive province of country folk.
Running nineteen minutes behind schedule—at 7:02—the train arrived in Salinas. No one assisted me with the luggage. The stationmaster—who was, as far as I could tell, the only person awake in the entire town—was too engrossed in a childish game of tossing wicker hoops with the engineer to help a solitary traveler, oppressed by time and luggage. At length he finished his dealings with the engineer and walked over to me. I am not a resentful person, and had already arranged my mouth in a friendly smile and was reaching for my hat, when, like a lunatic, he set upon the freight-car door. He opened it, lunged inside, and I saw five clamorous bird cages fall out into a heap on the platform. I was choked with indignation. I would gladly have offered to take charge of the hens in order to save them from such violence. I consoled myself with the thought that more merciful hands had wrestled with my suitcases.
I turned quickly toward the station’s rear courtyard in order to confirm that the hotel car had arrived. It had not. Immediately, I decided to question the stationmaster. After looking for him for a while, I found him sitting in the waiting room.
“Are you looking for something?” he asked me.
I did not disguise my impatience.
“I am looking for you.”
“Well, then, here I am.”
“I am waiting for the car from the Hotel Central, in Bosque del Mar.”
“If you don’t mind a bit of company, I suggest that you take a seat. At least here there’s a bit of a breeze.” He consulted his watch. “It’s 7:14 and already this hot. I’ll be honest with you: this will end in a storm.”
He took a small mother-of-pearl penknife from his pocket and began to clean his fingernails. I asked him if the hotel car would be much longer. He replied:
“My forecasts do not cover that issue.”
He continued his work with the penknife.
“Where is the post office?” I asked.
“Go to the water pump, beyond the railcars on the dead-end track. Leaving the tree on your right-hand side, turn at a right angle, cross in front of Zudeida’s house and don’t stop until you get to the bakery. The tin hut is the post office.” My informant traced the details of the trajectory in the air with his hands. Then he added: “If you find the guy in charge awake, I’ll give you a prize.”
I indicated where I’d left my luggage, begged him not to allow the hotel car to leave without me, and set forth into that wide-open labyrinth, under a blazing sun.
3
FEELING MUCH RELIEVED BY THE PRECISE instructions I had given—all correspondence in my name should be forwarded to the hotel—I embarked on my return. I stopped at the water pump, and, after some rather vigorous exertion, I managed to stave off my thirst and to wet my head with two or three splashes of tepid water. Proceeding unsteadily, I arrived at the station.
In front sat an old Rickenbacker, loaded with the chicken cages. How much longer would I be forced to wait in this inferno for the hotel’s car to collect me?
In the waiting room I found the stationmaster speaking with a man in a thick leather jacket. The man asked me:
“Doctor Humberto Huberman?”
I nodded. The stationmaster said:
“We’ll load your luggage now.”
It is incredible how much happiness these words afforded me. Without too much trouble I managed to settle in among the chicken cages. We began our journey toward Bosque del Mar.
The first fifteen miles of the road consisted of a series of potholes; the admirable Rickenbacker progressed slowly and hazardously. I looked for the sea, like a Greek advancing on Troy: not a single trace of purity in the air seemed to announce its proximity. Clustered around a water trough, a flock of sheep tried to find shelter from the sun in the feeble strips of shade cast by a windmill. My traveling companions stirred in their cages. Each time the car came to a stop at a gate, a dusting of feathers, like flower pollen, would spread through the air, and an ephemeral olfactory sensation would remind me of a happy episode from my childhood, with my parents in my uncle’s henhouses in Burzaco. Might I confess that for a few moments I took refuge, in the midst of the jostling and the heat, in the pristine vision of a boiled egg set in a white porcelain teacup?
At last we came to a range of sand dunes. In the distance I made out a crystalline fringe. I greeted the sea: Thalassa!… Thalassa!… It was a mirage. Forty minutes later I saw a wine-dark expanse. Inwardly, I yelled: Epi oinopa ponton! I turned to the chauffeur.
“This time I am not mistaken. There is the sea.”
“It’s a field of purple flowers,” he replied.
A short while later, I noted that the potholes had ceased. The chauffeur told me:
“We must move quickly. The tide comes up in a few hours.”
I looked around. We were advancing slowly over some thick planks, in the middle of a stretch of sand. The sea appeared in the distance, between the sand dunes to the right. I asked:
“Well, then, why are you going so slowly?”
“If a tire goes off the planks, the sand will bury us.”
I did not want to think about what would happen were we to encounter another automobile. I was too tired to worry. I didn’t even notice the cool marine air. I managed to formulate the question:
“Are we nearly there?”
“No,” he replied. “Twenty-five miles.”
4
I AWOKE IN THE DARK. I DIDN’T KNOW where I was or what time it was. I strained to orient myself. I remembered: I was in my room at the Hotel Central. Then I heard the ocean.
I turned on the light and saw by my timepiece—on the pine nightstand amid the volumes by Chiron, Kent, Jahr, Allen, and Hering—that it was five o’clock in the evening. Sluggishly, I began to get dressed. What a relief to be freed of the rigorous attire that the conventionality of urban life imposes upon us! Like a fugitive from clothing, I sheathed myself in my Scottish shirt, flannel pants, raw-canvas jacket, foldable Panama hat, old yellow clodhoppers, and my walking cane with the handle in the shape of a dog’s head. I tilted my head and, with barefaced admiration, studied my protruding thinking-man’s forehead: once again I had to concur with so many an impartial observer that the likeness between my facial features and Goethe’s was authentic. As for the rest of me, I am not a tall man; to use an evocative term, I am pocket-sized—my moods, my reactions and my thoughts neither extend nor blunt themselves over a distended geograph
y. I am proud of my mane of hair, pleasing to both sight and touch, of my small and beautiful hands, and of my slender wrists, ankles and waist. My feet—“frivolous travelers”—do not rest even when I am asleep. My complexion is soft and pink; my appetite, perfect.
I made haste. I wanted to take full advantage of my first day at the beach.
Like those long-forgotten memories we recall only later when we come across them in a photo album, the moment that I loosened the straps on my suitcase I saw—for the first time?—the scenes of my arrival at the hotel. The building, white and modern, appeared picturesquely set in the sand like a ship on the sea, or an oasis in the desert. The scarcity of trees was compensated by some random green blotches—dandelions that seemed to advance like a multiplying reptile, and the murmuring stalks of tamarisk shrubs. In the distance were two or three houses and a few huts.
I was no longer tired. I felt a kind of jubilant ecstasy. I, Doctor Humberto Huberman, had discovered the literati’s paradise. In two months of working in this solitude I would finish my adaptation of Petronius. And then … A new heart, a new man. The moment to seek out other authors, to renew my spirit, will have arrived at last.
I moved stealthily along darkened passageways. I wanted to avoid any possible conversation with the hotel’s owners—distant relatives of mine—that would have delayed my encounter with the sea. I had the good fortune to slip outside without being seen and to begin my trek across the sand. It was a difficult peregrination. City life weakens and enervates us to such an extent that, in the shock of the first moment, the simple pleasures of the countryside become a torture. Nature wasted no time in persuading me of the inadequacy of my attire. With one hand I pressed my hat to my head so that the wind would not snatch it from me, and with the other I sank my cane into the sand, futilely seeking the stability of the planks that surfaced, every so often, to mark the path. My shoes, filled with sand, were but further hindrances to my progress.
At last I came to an area of more firmly packed sand. Some two hundred feet to the right, a gray sailboat lay in the sand; I saw that a rope ladder hung from the deck over the side, and I told myself that on one of my next walks I would climb it and explore the boat. Closer to the sea, next to a stand of tamarisk shrubs, a pair of orange umbrellas fluttered in the wind. Emerging against a backdrop of an unbelievably bright sea and sky, in sharp focus as though seen through a lens, were two girls in bathing suits and a man in a blue captain’s hat with the legs of his trousers rolled up.
There was nowhere else to take shelter from the wind. I decided to move closer to the tamarisks, behind the beach umbrellas.
I took off my shoes and socks and stretched out on the sand. A perfect sensation of pleasure. Almost perfect: it was tempered by the thought of my inevitable return to the hotel. In order to avoid any intrusion by the neighbors—in addition to the three already mentioned, there was another man hidden by an umbrella—I turned to my Petronius and pretended to be engrossed in my reading. But, in truth, my only reading in those moments of irremissible abandon was, like a vision or an omen, the white flight of seagulls against a leaden sky.
What I had not foreseen when I settled close to the umbrellas was that their occupants would be talking. They spoke without the slightest regard for the beauty of the afternoon or for their weary neighbor who was trying, in vain, to lose himself in his reading. The voices, which until then had mingled with the chorus of the sea and the cry of the gulls, were now disagreeably clear and distinct. I thought I recognized at least one of the female voices.
Moved by a natural curiosity, I turned toward the group. I did not at first see the girl whose voice I thought I had recognized; she was hidden behind an umbrella. Her companion was standing: she was tall and blonde and—dare I say—quite beautiful, with strikingly pale skin and pink cheeks (“the color of raw salmon,” as Doctor Manning would later declare). Her body was too athletic for my taste and, like a tacit presence, she exuded an animal magnetism that attracts certain types of men about whose inclinations I prefer not to comment.
After listening to their conversation for a few minutes I had collected the following facts: the blonde girl, named Emilia, was a dangerous music-lover. The other girl, Mary, translated and edited detective novels for a prestigious publishing house. Two men accompanied them. One of them—in the blue cap—was a Doctor Cornejo; I was impressed by his good-natured manner and his intimate knowledge of the ocean and of meteorology. He must have been about fifty years old; his gray hair and thoughtful eyes lent him a romantic air, not without vigor. The other man was younger, and of a darker complexion. Despite a certain vulgarity in his manner of speech and an appearance that brought to mind the posters for Tango à Paris—straight black hair, sparkling eyes, aquiline nose—he seemed to exert over his companions—none too brilliant, in any event—a certain intellectual superiority. I discovered that his name was Enrique Atuel and that he was Emilia’s fiancé.
“It’s too late for you to go swimming, Mary,” he said, in an even tone. “And besides, the ocean is rough and you don’t handle the undercurrent too well.”
The voice that I recognized rang out happily: “This girl is going swimming!”
“You’re a brat,” replied Emilia, affectionately. “Are you trying to kill yourself or just hoping to scare the rest of us to death?”
Emilia’s fiancé was insistent: “You can’t go swimming with the current like this, Mary. It would be crazy.”
Cornejo consulted his wristwatch.
“The tide is coming in,” he pronounced. “There is no danger whatsoever. If you promise not to go too far, you have my consent.”
Atuel addressed the girl:
“If you can’t get back in, his consent won’t do you a bit of good. Take my advice and don’t go in.”
“To the water!” shouted Mary, gleefully.
She jumped up, adjusted her swim cap and said: “I am a girl with wings! I am a girl with wings!”
“In that case, I want nothing more to do with this,” said Atuel. “I’m going back.”
“Don’t be silly,” Emilia said to him.
Atuel walked off, ignoring her. As he was leaving he discovered my presence and gave me a stern look. For my part, I admit that I was captivated by Mary’s graceful body. It was true: she was a girl with wings. At each wave she raised her arms high above her head, as though playing with the sky.
“Mary? Miss María Gutiérrez?” I wondered. It is so difficult to recognize people in their bathing suits … The young woman whom I had seen earlier this year in my office and to whom I recommended a vacation in Bosque del Mar? Yes, I was sure of it. That young woman delicately lost in a fur coat. There were the same dark eyes, by turns mischievous and dreamy. There was the cowlick on her forehead. I remembered that I had said to her, good-naturedly: “We are kindred spirits.” As with me, her case called for arsenic. There she was, jumping up and down in the ocean, the very same girl who had lain, sick, upon the comfortable cushions in my office. Another miraculous cure by Doctor Huberman!
I was startled out of my reverie by some anxious shouts. In point of fact, the famous swimmer had gotten very far out with extraordinary ease.
“She swam out there in grand form,” observed Cornejo in a calming tone. “She’s in no danger. She’ll be back.”
“She’s that far out because the current carried her,” declared Emilia.
Hearing someone shouting, I turned my head to look.
“She can’t get back in!”
It was Atuel, coming towards us and gesticulating wildly. He confronted Cornejo face to face:
“Did you get what you wanted? She can’t get back in.”
I deemed it high time for me to intervene. In truth, it was a perfect opportunity for me to practice the crawl and the life-saving skills—so easily forgotten—that Professor Chimmara at the Health Department had imparted to me.
“Gentlemen,” I said resolutely, “if someone will lend me a bathing suit, I will rescue her.”
/>
“That is an honor I reserve for myself,” declared Cornejo. “But perhaps we can indicate to her that she should swim at an angle, in a north to southeasterly direction …”
Atuel interrupted him:
“At an angle, what rubbish! The girl is drowning.”
An instinctive movement, or else the desire to avoid witnessing a fight, turned my gaze in the direction of the boat. I saw a boy climb down the rope ladder and come running toward us.
Atuel was getting undressed. Cornejo and I were arguing over a pair of swim trunks.
The boy was screaming:
“Emilia! Emilia!”
Before our astonished eyes, Emilia ran down the beach, swam out to Mary, returned with Mary.
Joyfully, we surrounded the swimmers. Slightly pale, Mary looked more beautiful than ever. With forced nonchalance she said:
“You are all a bunch of alarmists. That’s what you are: alarmists.”
Doctor Cornejo tried to persuade her:
“When the water is whipped up by the wind, you shouldn’t let it hit you in the face.”
The boy was still crying. To console him, Mary put her beautiful wet arms around him. She said tenderly:
“Did you think I was drowning, Miguel? I am the girl of the sea and the waves and I have a secret.”
Mary was demonstrating, as always, her exquisite grace, but she also revealed a dark vanity and that fatal ingratitude of swimmers who never admit to the danger they had been in and who dismiss those who have rescued them.
Among the characters in this episode there was one who made a vivid impression on me. It was the boy—the son of Andrea, the hotel owner’s sister. He looked to be about eleven or twelve years old. His expression was quite noble; the lines of his face were even and well defined; nonetheless, his face also revealed a mixture of maturity and innocence I found unpleasant.