The Swimmers

by Joaquin Perez Azaustre

  Jonás’s father narrows his eyes and turns his head toward the coffee machines.

  “You’re right. Those two pictures are new. Of course I remembered the images, but maybe from one of the photo albums, or from when we took them. So when I saw them next to the phone, I thought they’d always been there.”

  “But they haven’t. Mom must have replaced the one from the wedding with those two. I don’t think it’s especially telling, considering she’s kept the picture in the entryway all this time.”

  “Your mother would never replace that picture. But for some reason she went back to those two moments, at the water park and our vacation on the coast.”

  “There’s one other detail,” Jonás grabs his father’s arm and wonders how he failed to realize before. “There was a tape in the VCR. It wasn’t rewound, it was about halfway through. Of Mom and me at the water park.”

  His father finishes his coffee in one gulp.

  “I remember that day. It may not mean anything, but we should check it out. That park is abandoned now.”

  “I know, I read about it in the paper. Maybe she was feeling nostalgic before she left.”

  “Could be. But there’s one other thing, something that would be trivial in anyone else: knowing how orderly your mother is, do you really think she’d leave with the cassette in the VCR, without taking it out, slipping it in its case, putting it back where it belongs in the cabinet, and storing the two remote controls in the drawer?”

  Jonás lets out a sigh, although he’s starting to see that act of neglect from a different perspective.

  “It’s true; it’s not like her. But you don’t think…”

  “At this point,” his father leaves a bill on the bar and pats him on the shoulder, “I don’t think anything at all. But maybe she was interrupted.”

  Chapter 33

  It’s five in the afternoon. The clarity of the foothills is enveloped by the specter of rain. There is no countryside beyond the city, just a wasteland, a barren stretch of dry earth. On the right-hand shoulder, the bus leaves behind a hamlet of moveable homes and shacks erected with miscellaneous materials from demolition sites. He sees no one, not a single face. They take off so quickly that later, after driving out of sight of the wood and tin huts, some of them made from old emptied-out bodies of cars and trucks, scrap metal with plastic curtains and tarp roofs, Jonás starts to doubt their existence, as if the expulsion from the city had turned them into phantasms, as fleeting as the rest of the bare mounds of earth. The temperature has risen steadily: it’s not muggy yet, but it will be if the heat continues along its steep climb; it’s as if autumn had pulled back, not so much suddenly, but belatedly, and any warm clothing may become unnecessary within a matter of hours if the leaden hardness of the sky persists.

  Through the bus window, Jonás sees a stop up ahead. A green car is parked next to it. A man is sitting on the hood with his legs stretched out; he looks burly in his double-breasted suit, although later, when Jonás walks down the steps and can contemplate him up close, he sees the shiny, sweaty jowls above the ironed collar of the white shirt. The knot of a black tie sticks out, bulging with a kind of ostentation, not unlike that exhibited by the man when he takes a stride toward Jonás and addresses him, without offering his hand; Jonás observes the movement of his muscular body, though overweight and somewhat strangled in his suit. There are several cigarette butts crushed next to his shoes, surely shined when he got out of the car but covered now by the dust of the road. When the bus moves off, Jonás thinks to himself that, except for the metal bus stop bench, the asphalt, and the car, there is nothing around them, only that sunken and arid vastness, a sterile, clay-filled depression in the terrain that offers only distant peaks of the same gray-brown color.

  “The photographer?”

  Jonás nods. He takes his backpack from his shoulder and leaves it hanging in his hand as he studies the man’s face: not only is it swollen with fat but it’s also vaguely brutish, perhaps from an excess of steroids, with a neck which—seen from up close—would be impossible to encircle even using both hands.

  Without further preamble, the man in the double-breasted suit opens the back door for him, and not the front passenger’s side. It’s a luxurious and roomy sedan, much more comfortable than the hard plastic seat of the local bus, with leather upholstery and an impeccable wood-paneled glove box. It doesn’t look new, but it’s clean and well cared-for.

  The man’s eyes in the rearview mirror are small and close-set, framed by two thick, wavy eyebrows, almost completely united beneath the narrow forehead. Jonás notes that his chest extends well beyond the edges of the driver’s seat.

  The car leaves the highway behind and heads along a gravel road. They drive for nearly half an hour until they reach a steep slope: at the top, he can make out a single-story building with a façade of rock and slate, a porch, unbarred windows, and a pitched roof. The door, wooden with a rustic finish, gives a striking impression of sturdiness. There’s not even a wall around the place, or a barbed-wire fence, nothing: as if all the land the eye can see in every direction was the property of the homeowner, and he wasn’t the least bit worried about unexpected visitors. All that defenselessness, the view of those desolate flatlands, provokes in Jonás a feeling of abandonment, a sensation of sudden vulnerability that reminds him of the doorman’s submissive look and his own supposed expertise as a portrait photographer with a touch of creativity; as soon as this is over he’ll be back home, and he finds that reassuring.

  The automobile slows as it reaches the top of the slope, rounding the building and affording Jonás the chance to confirm his initial conclusions: four plain slate walls, giving off the same air of confidence and firmness the chauffeur seeks to transmit; he’s stopped eyeing Jonás in the rearview mirror and has concentrated on a right-hand turn, coming around to the back of the house, with its immense garage doors next to a garden: not quite abandoned but mistreated, with a swing set eaten away by rust and a blue seesaw whose low end seems to be sunken into the earth. The car stops, and the man hurries to get out first, opening the door for Jonás without neglecting his static smile: something in his attitude has changed very slightly, as if he were suddenly endeavoring to emulate the amiable face of a wax figure, though his façade is at imminent risk of melting away; there’s a threat of heat in the air, and the wind that reaches them from the foot of the mountain, at the start of the slope, brings with it a scorched desert dryness under the yellow sky.

  With an affectedly obliging disposition, the man accompanies him along a dirt path to the greenhouse. He steps aside and opens the transparent door with its aluminum frame, cocks his head, and motions for him to step inside. Jonás is left alone. In the entry, there is a nursery in a swampy hush, the temperature nearly asphyxiating, like an overpowering sleepiness coagulated in his forehead, in the palms of his hands, the thick, humid air mopping the nape of his neck; the vapor impregnates the cloying aroma of the orchids, pent-up and distressing, into the thick slow drops overflowing the flower pots. Following his reflection in the fogged-up windows, surrounded by those corporeal stalks like svelte guardians under the ambery halo of the day’s dying light, standing in an unreal and stifling forest, he perceives a movement through the leaves.

  Chapter 34

  He photographs some of the orchids, flexible and outstretched toward the translucent roof. A soft autumn light, waning now, settles with a considerable humidity on the branches that hang from the trees; Jonás starts sweating. Some of the pots are resting on trays with wet gravel and pebbles, not yet in contact with the water, though there are full tubs between the plants, creating a microclimate of crushed leaves, like a porous indoor rain that seems only to have fallen on the forest of stems, though never on their petals.

  Jonás takes four or five shots, and as soon as he does he knows they’re no good. Did he ever really think he had a talent for this? He must have, yes, and between Sebastian, Ingrid, and even Ada—though she ultimately distanced
herself from any sort of lavish praise that might have inspired self-confidence—they supported his idea that it was a good way to live; now here he is surrounded by orchids creeping up tree trunks, inside flower pots, piled up, voracious, sweating like never before in his life, with the sole intention of doing what he came to do and getting out of here. Again he senses some movement in the undergrowth and turns his lens toward it.

  “Very good. I see you don’t waste any time. Don’t let me stop you. I’m Sulla Montesinos.”

  Marius the doorman appears, dressed like a man of means. Jonás recognizes him: they crossed paths a few days before, at the door to his building. He is Marius, and yet he isn’t Marius: distinguished, slender, clad in an ivory-colored linen suit and a burgundy shirt opened down to the second button, revealing a slightly bronzed chest. The head is the same, hairless at the parietals, with a shiny skull above his eyes, which are lively, agile, and bright, the nose perhaps more aquiline or somewhat more pronounced, but he has the same tapered chin and emaciated cheekbones. It is the same face on another man: because it is a different man, and a different voice, more in command, much more confident of its impact and its consummate yet amiable authority, with a serene and assertive equilibrium given off only by those accustomed to imposing their will on others.

  “Jonás Ager. Just taking a few test shots. Since I didn’t see anyone around…”

  “I’d like to see those too. You can send them to me with the final prints.”

  “Sure. That wouldn’t be a problem. We should probably agree on a price, before…”

  “Please,” he raises his open hand while tilting his head slightly back, and Jonás discovers then the gold band on his ring finger, “there’s nothing to agree on. Just write in the amount you feel is appropriate and I’ll sign the check.”

  “Alright. Do you mind if we get started? I’ve got a few different flashes, but I think it’d be better if we use natural lighting, while it lasts.”

  “Let’s. Do I need to pose a certain way?”

  “That won’t be necessary. All I need is for you to continue walking around there, like you were doing just now.”

  Sulla moves among the orchid plantation as if he were a part of the plants. The white of his suit melts into the violet shade of the petals, and Jonás photographs him then, as if his hands, upon touching them with the lightness of a butterfly, were an extension of the upstanding stems, the fleshy leaves, plunged into a silence that’s broken only by the sound of the camera’s shutter; Jonás begins slowly to penetrate into the image until he gradually recognizes it, visualizes it before it appears in front of him, as if all the subsequent movements of his hands, the calm expression on his face, had already been planned beforehand, deliberately. It is then that he begins to shoot with authentic intensity, even kneeling a few meters from his subject, framing angles and then climbing atop a stool for a bird’s-eye view of Sulla circling about, surrounded by hundreds of tiny corollas in the sun’s white backlight, like a father watching over his sleeping daughters.

  “My proposition didn’t seem odd to you, Mr. Ager? Or do you normally receive these sorts of offers?”

  “Yes, it did seem odd. Maybe that’s why I accepted.”

  “Hmm,” for the first time Sulla looks directly at the lens and Jonás takes the chance to shoot, “my brother is convinced you accepted out of sympathy for him. Poor man. He has a habit of imagining that the tenants of the buildings where he works feel some sort of affection toward him. I’ve suggested other occupations, more lucrative and more exciting ones, but he seems to like what he does, which I find hard to understand.”

  “You know,” Jonás lowers the camera, which has hidden his face up until that moment, and looks at Sulla frankly, “it’s actually not a bad life. As soon as he finishes his chores, he just reads until it’s time to go home.”

  Sulla stretches his arms, sighing, and looks at the methacrylate roof; Jonás takes the opportunity to capture him as his jacket falls open to the sides.

  “Ah, his science fiction novels. He’s been obsessed since we were kids.”

  Jonás arches his brows slightly and positions himself behind the camera again.

  “I think we’ve got all the material we need for at least ten or twelve different portraits of you with your orchids. We’ve just about covered every nook of this greenhouse.”

  “Now I see that you’re truly an artist, as well as a good photojournalist.”

  “Thank you.”

  With a rapid movement Jonás separates the long rubber strap from his neck. Crouching, he sets the case inside the camera bag, which he then proceeds to place in his backpack. From the ground, feeling the folds of his pants grown soaked with sweat behind his knees, he looks at the silhouette of Sulla Montesinos from a low angle, carved out against the dusk through the greenhouse windows, luminous still in his linen suit, with the same mauve tones as the flowers, which are strewn now like heavy brushstrokes in that burnt and dwindling blueness. Jonás thinks to himself that this could have been his best photo, the one that captured his subject most faithfully, in that asphyxiating and opaque darkness.

  A sensation of physical discomfort, doubtlessly motivated by the heat of the greenhouse—his clothing is more soaked than even the towel in his backpack—runs down his wet ankles, and he spots among the shadows of the plants, next to the door, the hulking figure of the driver, stationed there. The man uncrosses his arms, extends one of them, and flips a switch, turning on the glass halogen ceiling lamp and forcing Jonás to squint.

  Sulla sticks his hand inside his jacket and takes out a newspaper clipping from nearly a week ago, carefully folded, displaying Jonás’s photograph of the university protests. He holds it in front of him and points at a girl in the foreground.

  “Very beautiful. Is she your daughter?”

  Posted in the door, the driver’s bulk suddenly shifts as he lowers his puffy chin and looks down at his shoes—newly shined.

  Sulla Montesinos puts the piece of paper back inside his jacket.

  “No, she’s not my daughter; but she isn’t what she may seem. Perhaps she was once, but that no longer matters.” He breathes deeply. “She disappeared eight days ago. Since then I’ve done nothing but search for her. When I saw the photograph in the paper, at first I was skeptical. Then I was certain: it’s her. But what could I do? I had to track you down and ask you myself. I called the newsroom, but they wouldn’t give out your phone number. Then, while talking with my brother, he told me there was a press photographer who lived in the apartment block where he works; I asked him, out of curiosity, what his name was… And here we are.”

  Jonás looks from one side to the other with an exasperated slowness.

  “I thought I was here to take your picture.”

  “Which you’ll be paid for. But I’d also appreciate it if you could give me some information—should you happen to have it—about the girl in the photograph. All you have to tell me is whether you know anything about her, or if you’ve seen her again. Anything. No matter how insignificant it may seem. Please bear in mind that it isn’t easy for a man like me to admit he’s desperate.”

  “Look,” Jonás walks by him in search of the exit, but the driver’s heavy figure makes it clear that won’t be possible, “I’d like to help you, but I can’t. I don’t know that girl, I just took the photo and that’s it. I haven’t seen her since, and I’d never seen her before. She just happened to be there among the protesters, and she was photogenic.”

  “I hope you’ll understand,” he passes his hand over Jonás’s shoulders, shaky now, quivering beneath the other’s man’s fingers as if receiving an electric shock, “that I’ve looked for her everywhere these last six days, and I’m willing to cling to the faintest of hopes. Are you sure you don’t know her?” He stops, and again he shows Jonás the girl’s image, but this time in a passport-size photo which he draws slowly from the same pocket.

  Jonás looks at the door, reconfirming the driver’s compact build be
neath his double-breasted suit. The heady perfume of orchids all around him starts to take on a sickly quality.

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  They draw close to the door; the chauffeur lumbers submissively to one side and shuts it behind them. Jonás greedily inhales the clear night air. He realizes the encounter is over when Sulla holds out a purple business card.

  “You know this place?”

  Jonás reads The Lunar Cave 2, next to a drawing of a piano, a telephone, and an address.

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “That’s my nightclub. Bring me the photographs there and I’ll pay you for them.”

  The driver opens the rear door of the automobile, parked just outside the greenhouse.

  Chapter 35

  The trip back seems shorter. They cross through the immensity in complete silence. When the car enters the city, with its pristine and colorful lights in the shop windows, the traffic signals, the building façades, and signs, Jonás feels like he’s woken up from a deep slumber, as if in fact he were returning from one of the radio stations situated on the outskirts, from doing an interview like when he first began to exhibit; he had piqued a certain curiosity among the critics, and so he thought, with the innocence of his early success, that this was life: a handful of highly-publicized photos in an up-and-coming gallery and attending a cocktail party or two.

  After getting out of the car, he stands motionless on the sidewalk until he’s sure the driver has disappeared. He walks by the café with the rotating doors where he sometimes meets his father and looks in, just in case he might find him leaning on the bar, expectant, but he’s not there; by night the café is empty, though there are still a few tired silhouettes, reading matter in hand, hidden behind some of the tables to the back. The armchairs along the wall are so low that the dark marble tiles, shot through with strands of white, conceal the lower half of their bodies like conspirators in a sheltering womblike shadow.