“Documents, ID, papers?”
“Everything’s in the glove box.”
They got out and closed the back of the van.
“You open the garage door and I’ll take a turn around the block while you close it, just in case, and I’ll come back and get you in two minutes. Then we’ll stop and switch.”
* * *
They drove in circles, moving further and further north each time, until they got onto the highway. They went several kilometers and exited onto a solitary road that led to a double row of eucalyptus trees. They set up the chair, and Duarte smacked him a bit to wake him up, but there was no reaction.
“This one’s got a while to go.”
* * *
Halfway back, they called the boy’s parents on the phone, giving them the description of the place they had left him.
“He’s still sleeping, we medicated him so he wouldn’t be stressed. Next to the chair there’s a bag with the things I had left over, diapers and stuff like that. There’s an inhaler too, almost full.”
He listened as someone replied.
“You’re welcome, I told you we’d behave. You all behave, we behave.”
On the way back, they crisscrossed the city eight times, driving first in one direction and then in the other. They did it attentively and without impatience, chamamé on the radio, the windows down. The night was hardly fresh and no wind blew. Every once in a while Duarte recognized a song and would sing the chorus slowly, tapping the roof to the rhythm with his fingers.
Chapter 8
Cetarti occupied a large part of the morning walking in circles through the house like a low voltage bumper car, smoking and stopping every once in a while in front of the fish tank. He observed the dead fish’s subtle responses to the movement of the aerator bubbles on the water’s surface. He looked for the little medicine box and took two aspirin because his head hurt a little. He turned on the TV. In Córdoba, the news of the day was that a circus had donated a female elephant to the zoo. “Donation” was a euphemism; in reality the animal was malnourished, mistreated, and in a very bad state, and the people from the circus were giving it away to save themselves the unpleasantness of dealing with a moribund animal of that size. He noticed that the elephant never stopped moving her feet; they explained that this was one of her very serious problems: she had been “taught to dance” by putting her on a sheet of metal and running electricity through it. The elephant had kept the conditioned response, and never stopped moving her feet. None of the other things on TV interested him, and after a while he fell asleep on the sofa. He dreamed that his mother, naked and with the hole from the gunshot in the middle of her sternum, was handing him his brother’s yellow bag. Cetarti opened it and took out a giant beetle, like the one he had seen at the service station in Lapachito, only much bigger, almost like a soccer ball. And while the body was the same, the creature didn’t have any legs, only tentacles that attached tremblingly to his arms. He knew the beetle was full of poison, but in the dream Cetarti thought, “It’s full of sadness and it’s not going to bite me.” Then he put his hands back into the bag and took out some old and dirty clothing, until he got to the bottom, where his brother’s running shoes were, along with the photo of the two of them holding hands. Cetarti put on the running shoes and looked at the photo, him and his brother with serious expressions on their faces. It didn’t seem like a photo, which is the frozen record of something that can go on moving. It was more like the film recording of something that is still, so still it seems like a photo, until something in the picture changes position: the leaf of a plant blown in the wind, a fly that crosses in front of the camera.
Chapter 9
Cetarti went to the bakery and bought three pastries and a liter of chocolate milk. Along the way he also bought the newspaper, so he could look at the classifieds and find out how much money he might be able to get for his car. While he ate breakfast, he looked at the newspaper, starting from the back: the jokes, the horoscope (“Your talent for public relations is put to the test by people of very aggressive temperament. Don’t lose your calm or your sense of humor”), the police reports, and when he reached the “World” section, his attention was caught by the word “tentacles” under a blurry photo.
[1. article text]
When he finished the pastries, he looked up his car’s model in the classifieds. From what he gathered after making some basic calculations in the margin of the page, he figured that he could live four months from the proceeds, five if he tightened his belt a little. He thought about how he would have to receive people in his house, converse and haggle with guys who were going to rummage around in the vehicle and search for hidden defects. That idea was like a yoke hanging around his neck. He looked in every place in his house where there could possibly be money, and he managed to collect 940 pesos and change. He had to sell the car before that ran out. He thought that later in the afternoon, if he went out for a walk, he could go to the area where the used car dealers were and sound them out—that way he could sell it faster and without so much chatter, even if it was for a little less money. He turned on the TV, lit the first joint of the day, and watched Animal Planet—an octopus was sorting objects in a laboratory tank and learning to go through a maze to get a live crab. To eat its prize, the octopus wrapped the crab in its mantle with a sudden, sure movement, but with all the obstacles and passageways, it could only fumble its way forward uncertainly. It took a close-up shot of a tentacle coiling around a transparent cylinder for him to remember his dream from the night before. He went to the car and took out the yellow bag. He removed his mother’s things and went through his brother’s; the contents were somewhat less spectacular than in the dream: jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and a sweatshirt. A pair of off-brand running shoes. A set of keys. A wallet with a hundred thirty pesos and his ID card from the federal police. He looked for the address: Brigadier Lacabanne 2532, Hugo Wast, Córdoba. He had never been there, but he knew that Hugo Wast was close to the municipal slaughterhouse, on the other side of the city.
But in the same city.
* * *
Article text ↩
First Images of Live Giant Sea Monster Tentacles: The animal struggled for hours and left one behind on the hook.
Tokyo (Agency): A team of Japanese scientists has managed to capture the first images of a giant squid swimming in open waters in the Sea of Japan. The specimen, which is estimated to be around eight feet long, was seen at nine hundred meters deep, and seems to be much more aggressive than previously thought.
The giant squid is one of the most enigmatic animals on the planet, and, of course, one of the most sought after. The only previous specimens were found dead, and never before have images been taken of one in its natural habitat. In order to locate the giant squids, the team of Japanese scientists traveled to the North Pacific, where there is a large population of sperm whales, the only natural predators of these invertebrates. They placed twenty buoys from which photographic cameras hung at a depth of one thousand meters. They had attached a hook with bait to each camera. The cameras stayed in a vertical position, snapping photographs every four seconds during sessions of four hours. Finally, a giant squid attacked one of the cameras. After an initial assault in which one of its tentacles was speared by a hook, it disappeared from the frame for around twenty minutes. For the next eighty minutes, the animal thrashed about, trying to escape, even releasing jets of ink that impeded visibility. The first attack was so powerful that the camera was dragged six hundred meters further down, although squid and camera later returned to the initial thousand meters.
After some hours of struggling with the hook, one of the squid’s feeding tentacles broke off and stayed attached to the hook, while the animal managed to escape. The tentacle, five and a half meters long, was recovered by the scientists once the camera reached the surface, and it was found that the suckers were still active, and were trying to trap the fingers of the scientists who touched it.
Chap
ter 10
“It’s good you’re here. The dogs caught a cat.”
Danielito looked out the window. On the grass there was a lump of gold-colored fur. The lump was bigger than one would expect a cat to be.
“Looks like it was really fat.”
“It’s bloated. They got it yesterday morning, and every time I get close to it to bag it up, the dogs look like they’re going to bite me. I thought I’d get it while they were sleeping, but they just laid down right next to it and wouldn’t let me get close. See if you can do it, they’re a little more afraid of you.”
She handed him a plastic bag. Danielito went out to the yard, and the dogs, a male and female bull mastiff, both over thirty kilos, came over and looked at him sideways, with their heads down and their tails between their legs. He scratched behind their ears and the dogs licked his hand. He walked closer to the cat, and they followed behind him. When he wrapped his hand in the bag to pick up the body, they growled. He straightened up and the dogs resumed their submissive posture. He looked them in the eyes and knelt over the cat again. Crouching and averting their eyes, the dogs growled again, and showed their teeth. He went back toward the house, the mastiffs beside him nudging his hand so he would pet them. He offered them food and got them into the garage, shutting them in. He went out to the yard, bagged up the cat, got onto the roof, and threw the bag down onto the sidewalk. He let the dogs back into the yard, went out to the sidewalk, picked up the bag, and carried it to a vacant lot.
“OK, done,” he told his mother when he got back.
“Thank you, that was good, I should have thought of that.”
“Thought of what.”
“Putting the dogs in the garage and taking the bag out over the roof. It was obvious. It’s just that when they’re so mean like that, they scare me a little.”
“They’re animals, they’re motivated by stimuli. If they’re doing something and you want them to do something else, offer them a stronger stimulus.”
“Sometimes I think they know what I’m thinking, I forget they’re animals.”
“And why do you have them if you’re afraid of them.”
“So they’ll protect me. I’m going to give you some disinfectant so you can wash your hands. I’ll heat up the food in the meantime.”
Danielito didn’t like eating at his mother’s house. While she ate, she hardly talked at all, and she wouldn’t let him turn on the TV. Lunch (potato omelets with salad) took place in silence that was interrupted only by the sound of his mother’s molars grinding the crunchy parts of the vegetables. There were plums for dessert. They were soft and Danielito didn’t want any.
“I’ve got to go to Gancedo,” his mother said eventually.
“What for.”
“I have to do something. I need you to take me.”
Danielito pushed some onion strips around on his plate, trying to line them up as evenly as possible.
“And when do we have to go.”
“Better if we could go this week.”
“OK, I’ll talk to Duarte and see if I can.”
“And why do you have to get permission from Duarte.”
“It’s not that I’m asking permission. We have to do some things too.”
“What things.”
“…”
His mother started to clear the plates.
“All right. Whenever Duarte wants, you can take me then. But it’s got to be this week.”
Chapter 11
Duarte was lit up by the table lamp that shone on the blueprints and the assembled subcomponents of the B-36. He was talking to Danielito, but his eyes were fixed on one of the delicate jet engine gondolas; he was looking through a mounted rectangular magnifying lens to assemble them.
“And how do they knock at the door?”
“I don’t know. On the show they just said they knocked at the door. But they didn’t explain how.”
“I mean, I think I would realize that whatever was knocking wasn’t a human hand. You’ve gotta be pretty stupid not to realize that. A trunk isn’t the same as knuckles. Aside from the whole rhythm aspect. How would a beast like that knock, tap tap tap, quickly? An elephant’s trunk against a door must sound like you were hitting it with a bag of fine sand, maybe.”
“Or a bag of meat.”
“Sure. With a ninety-kilo steak.”
“Maybe they knock with their tusks—they must have some trick. They’re smart.”
“Yeah. Even so, it doesn’t add up. But who knows, we’re caught up on this tangent, and maybe the houses in East Bengal have bells. Or buzzers. I read something once about elephants going crazy, it happens to the males. Excess of testosterone, when they’re mating.”
“Here they said it was something else. Some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“But elephants are sacred in India. What kind of post-traumatic stress could they have?”
“Only the ones in the temples are sacred. Others get taken when they’re little and forced to work. Or the mothers are killed right in front of their babies, and the babies are taken away to be sold.”
“Right, and when did you see it?”
“Last week. They must still be repeating it.”
“I’ll see if I can catch it.”
Duarte relaxed the pressure of his hand and made sure the pieces had attached. Then he took another pair of identical pieces from their blister package and started to spread glue over the contact areas.
“So when do you want to go.”
“She told me it had to be this week.”
“And you come back when.”
“I want to come back the same day. I’ll go early and we’ll be back by afternoon.”
“Sure, go ahead, no problem, from what I’m seeing we don’t have to do anything this week, and maybe not next week either. And what are you going to Gancedo for?”
“She didn’t tell me. She told me she had something to do, but that’s it.”
“I was over at your old man’s house. She’s got it all cleared out, there’s nothing left.”
“I know, she cleaned it all in two days.”
“What’d she do with all the stuff?”
“She had me carry all the furniture out and she burned it in the yard. The rest of the stuff I don’t know. She must have taken it to the dump.”
“Your mom, she’s got some energy, huh? The destructive kind.”
Chapter 12
Cetarti went down to the Hugo Wast neighborhood on foot, asking directions along the way since he had never been before. He avoided downtown by walking along the riverside, though it meant going far out of his way. It took him a little over three hours to get there; it was past noon and the sun was beating down hard, not as hard as in Lapachito, but hard. Hugo Wast was a typical housing development put up by the provincial government, from the design Cetarti figured the houses must be some thirty or thirty-five years old. They were poorly built and hadn’t held up well against the passage of time. Every once in a while, the smell of rotting meat from the slaughterhouse wafted in on the wind. Around number 2500, Brigadier Lacabanne was a particularly ugly street, with the sidewalks full of loose paving stones and dog droppings, and old men sitting in the doorways of ruined houses. His brother’s house had a little garden by the entrance—all tall grass and dried out plants—that was full of paper and muck. He inspected the keys to see which one matched up with the outline of the lock, and inserted the one that seemed most probable. The key turned once and stuck, but after forcing it a few seconds he managed to get it open. Inside it was very dark, and there was a particular mixture of smells: confinement, wet paper, and kerosene, plus others that he couldn’t put his finger on. He closed the door and switched on the light; the bulb was twenty-five watts, forty at most. The yellowish light took a moment to make its way into the room, where it revealed mountains of various materials that filled up most of the space, reaching almost to the ceiling in some places. There was a certain order to the accumulation: improvised sh
elves held bags and loose things, and the rest of the stuff was stacked in boxes. He opened a black plastic bag cautiously, as if some animal might jump out and bite his hand; it was full of old cables, separated into bundles by type: rigid and flexible electrical cords, spiral phone cords, three-phase and bipolar cables, and others he didn’t recognize. One of the boxes was full of phone books from the province of Formosa, 1981/82 edition. Two other rooms were just as full. The boxes were piled up against the walls, blocking the windows, and in the middle there were two shelves (three in the biggest room), leaving just space enough for narrow passageways that gave access to everything. There was no organic or decomposable garbage. In the bathroom, next to the bidet and up against the wall, hundreds of copies of Reader’s Digest, very old but in good condition, were piled up. He flipped through one from 1962: the dangers of communism in Southeast Asia, the drama of a man trying to make it out of a forest after accidentally severing his aorta with a chainsaw, the eternal enchantment of Naples. He noticed that all the coupons on the advertisements had been filled in. The names and addresses changed, but they had all been written in the same labored and childish handwriting. The kitchen was evidently where his brother had actually lived. And, judging by what he saw, he had lived minimally: there was a mattress, a small wardrobe, a kerosene heater, a freezer, and an electric stove. Next to the mattress there were more small piles of Reader’s Digest and a pair of moccasins that were flattened around the heel. On the table there was a little cooking pot, a mug, and two spoons, all clean. There was also a twenty-liter fish tank with murky water and a fish at the bottom. At first he thought the fish was dead, but as he examined it he saw it move. It was a strange fish, with little feet and tree-like antlers coming out of the back of its head. He felt sorry for the animal, it must be hungry (how long had it been since his brother had left? Four days? Six?), and the fish tank didn’t have an aerator, so the water must not have much oxygen. He used the pot to change a little of the water, so it would be a bit more breathable. There wasn’t a food container nearby. What did it eat? The only decoration on the walls was a little portrait, a yellowed print with a detailed and realistic drawing of an elephant. Below the drawing it said “Fig. 51—Indian Elephant (Elephas maximus).” A narrow door led from the kitchen to the yard. He went outside. There wasn’t much there: a mountain of rubble—wooden boards, rusty steel bars—took up a fifth of the space. The rest was a small forest of overgrown grass. A delivery bike that was leaning next to the door was in usable condition (its tires inflated) with a large basket between the handlebars and the front wheel. Another small door led to a garage, also full of junk. Next to that door, over the tiles of the covered entranceway, there was a heap of mandarin peels that could fill half, or a little less than three-fourths, of a standard trash bag. He went back inside and investigated the little wardrobe. There was a waterproof jacket, an overcoat that was a little worn but in pretty good shape, a hanger with four shirts on it. On a shelf there were two pairs of pants and a couple sweaters. He went through the drawers: one held three pairs of underpants and four balled up pairs of socks. There were no other personal objects. Another two drawers were empty, and in the bottom one there was a multicolored collection of desiccated insect cadavers; a collection. There were too many for them to have ended up there by accident, and after a brief analysis he realized not many specimens were repeated. Apart from that, the bodies were loose. They all had their legs folded inward, that is, they had been collected after they were already dead. Most of them were fairly common: there were rolled up pill bugs and centipedes, spiders of various sizes (a couple of them relatively large, but most of them small), cockroaches, scarabs, ground beetles, cicadas, crickets, and locusts. There were three large specimens that stood out: a giant water bug (sometimes called a water cockroach), a mantis that was over ten centimeters long, and a beetle that looked like the one he had seen at the service station in Lapachito, only a little smaller. He took another couple of turns around the house and then went out onto the street, walked to the first big avenue, hailed a taxi, and directed it back to the house, so he could bring the fish tank with him.
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