Jolts

  We stayed a bit longer, Manuel and I chatting about Christmas, about never going back home this time of the year, about how we’d rather not go back at all, about how it’s impossible after a while, how it doesn’t make any sense. Mika stayed quiet throughout, listening, smiling at me tenderly every now and then, taking in the details, I guess, thinking about her film about a film.

  When we left, the kid was still there, shoving his piece of wire into the phone box in the dark.

  SOMETHING ABOUT THIS SUMMER AND THE SUMMER LAST YEAR

  To Beatriz Viterbo

  The house sits on top of a hill.

  It must be ten thirty in the evening and we’re still playing tennis on the clay court. We’ve been playing for a while, but after I throw a volley Nico connects a smash and the ball — our last one — disappears over the hedge, downhill, where it’ll be swallowed by the sea overnight, like all the other balls. This means I’ve won. But Nico doesn’t agree and throws the racquet in my direction, missing me by an inch or two. We insult each other, barely kept apart by the net, until he calls me a ‘big-eared poof’ and I run back inside.

  In the lounge Patricio and Seba watch music videos and drink Coke straight from a glass bottle. I sit in the armchair behind the sofa, worried that they’ll torture me as they’ve been doing for the past two weeks, pulling my ears and sideburns, beating me up, or pinning me to the ground to play yo-yo with spit on my face. But both are hypnotised by the screen.

  A tall man wearing a hat walks through some catacombs carrying a blonde woman, probably dead.

  There are candles everywhere. The tall man repeats the same lines over and over and I ask what he’s singing. Seba replies that it’s ‘something about this guy called Jimmy’ and Patricio laughs, they both laugh; I laugh too but I don’t get the joke. The music video ends with the tall guy twitching in a white room with padded walls while the blonde woman, now alive and dressed in beige with a sweater wrapped around her neck, teases him. Now that the music is over I know I’ll get it. But suddenly we hear Nico scream and we run outside to rescue him from under one of those things they use to flatten the tennis court.

  _________

  The cast runs from ankle to knee. Nico tried to pull the court roller downhill and got his leg crushed against a rock. His ankle is broken but Carlos and Alicia decide we won’t cut the holiday short — ‘it won’t change anything,’ they said, and ‘it’s only a small fracture’. They’re right, it won’t change anything for them. Because now Nico won’t be able to get in the water and he’ll expect me to skip the water too. I’m supposed to keep him company, just like Seba is supposed to keep Patricio company. This is why they invited us here. That’s what Alicia told my mother. It might be something to do with Helga.

  _________

  We wake up late and Carlos grills a large piece of flank steak, sausages, sweetbread and black pudding. We drink three bottles of Coke and Carlos and Alicia drink two and a half bottles of wine — the barbecue is too salty, we all agree. After eating Patricio and Seba say they’ll go downtown, Carlos and Alicia stumble upstairs to take a nap and Nico and I stay downstairs watching the telly.

  A short brown alien with big blue eyes rummages through the trash.

  It’s the third time we’ve watched the film while we’ve been here. We now know the dialogue by heart and laugh a lot at the ‘E.T. home phone’ part, which Nico repeats with a metallic voice and a cushion cover for a hat. And then we catch an old Argentine comedy about a guy who doesn’t want to go to work and stays in bed all day, lazying around and calling his wife names.

  A man pinches his wife’s bottom as she walks past.

  We watch the film all the way through because of the tits. But this film must be an exception because there are no tits. And Argentine films, when they don’t have tits, apart from an exception, are a waste of time.

  _________

  When the cicadas go quieter we go down to the dunes round the back of the house. The sun is weaker now but there’s no wind and the air is full of bugs and so thick you could slap it. Nico has trouble walking and he moans each time he pulls his right leg from the sand. He complains that it itches, and says that the ankle isn’t really broken, that it’s all a plot by his parents to ruin his summer. I tease him saying that it is broken for real, that he might get gangrene, and that they’ll have to chop it off, that it’ll be really bad but that he’ll save a lot of money on shoes — he doesn’t find it funny. Finally, he limps all the way to the trees, and we sit there, in the shade, cursing, spitting and throwing pinecones at each other.

  When we get bored of this too, we build a small castle with twigs and leaves. We’re about to build a second one so that we can have a war when Patricio and Seba turn up, kick the castle to the ground, pull my ears and tell us to fuck off back to the house. Nico says that he’ll tell Alicia about their escapes to the dunes and the smoking. Patricio threatens us with telling Carlos about the money that vanished from the kitchen. We leave before things escalate and go back inside.

  Some guys with weird hair and make-up sing a strange song in a strange greenhouse; there are caterpillars on the piano keyboard and the keys move up and down as if they had springs underneath.

  Four men dressed in camouflage dance with an oil rig in the background.

  A blond skinny guy with bad teeth plays an electric guitar on top of a mountain; he’s wearing white gloves.

  Patricio and Seba come back from the dunes and beat the living shit out of us while a brunette woman crosses a bridge, drives a car, rides on a horse, all in the space of three or four minutes, the time it takes for our living shit to get beaten.

  Then we spend the rest of the night hunting for caterpillars but catching fireflies instead, watching them switch off one by one.

  _________

  A picture of Helga on the mantelpiece. She’s dressed in her First Communion clothes, her hands united in prayer, smiling at the camera. It looks like a professional photo and it must have been taken not long before the day she tried to rewind a cassette without leaving the swimming pool. She looks nothing like Nico and Patricio; she looks like a nice person, a bit like Alicia. Big brown eyes and brunette hair; pale face and delicate hands. I never met her, I was never invited back then. I wish I had met her at least once.

  Helga’s room in this house remains locked and nobody talks about her. But she’s everywhere and there are still traces of her all around. Drawings, her face in a large and yellowing family photo hanging from the kitchen wall, books, magnets on the fridge, a pink bike, her parents’ naps and empty bottles of wine. A Hello Kitty eraser forgotten under a cushion.

  I kept it in my pocket and every now and then I smell it. In my mind Helga smells of strawberries but I’ve heard the dead smell of rotten flowers and naphthalene.

  _________

  Carlos and Alicia say that we’re going to another beach, that we need to go somewhere with a tent, because of Nico and his broken ankle. Patricio and Seba say they’ll stay. Nico pretends to light a cigarette, releasing the smoke into the air, but his parents don’t see him. Patricio licks his right index and shoves it in Nico’s ear. Carlos and Alicia miss this too.

  We drive downtown. It takes us half an hour to find a parking space near the casino and at least fifteen minutes of walking under the sun to reach the beach. There’s hardly any space left in the sand — it’s all cluttered with parasols and mats and people in colourful bathing suits; the air smells of tanning lotion, cigarettes, car fumes and mortadella sandwiches. The engines from the neighbouring avenue, brought by the wind, mask the sound of the sea, which is nowhere to be seen because the beach has a slope in the middle.

  We’ve got one of the tents at the back, a large green thing with a pitched canvas roof. There must be a thousand identical tents stretching until the eyes can no longer see. It took us at least ten more minutes of Nico’s moaning to find the right number. Now Carlos and Alicia are sleeping on the loungers, snoring, and Nico is reading Alicia’s fashion m
agazine. Every now and then he rips a page out, folds it into a square, and then puts the piece of paper away in his pocket. I can’t figure out why.

  We play a game of cards and Nico wins. He taunts me while I ignore him and play a game of Solitaire. Carlos and Alicia wake up at one point and go back to sleep pretty quickly, after having a couple of swigs from the bottle of red they’ve been keeping from the heat in a portable cooler. When Nico falls asleep too, with the magazine on his face, I escape.

  I run, free and wild, like the boy in this black and white film they showed the other night on the telly and that everyone but Carlos hated. I can’t remember what the film was about but just before the end the boy was running on an empty beach, running away from something or someone, just like me now, and then it said ‘FIN’ over his body and I couldn’t find out if he managed to escape or not. But here the beach is packed and it takes me at least five minutes to get to the water, jumping over stretched and crumpled towels, zig-zagging with burning feet around parasols and sunbathers.

  I finally make it to the shore. The sea is dark and dirty and there’s all sorts of trash floating in it: white plastic glasses, nylon bags, paper, cigarette butts, seaweed, pieces of wood, fish scales, and what looks like a swollen turd.

  I walk back to the tent. When I get there the three of them are still sleeping. I try to sleep too but the snores keep me awake. I count from 0 to 7,348.

  _________

  The line of cars drags slowly and the air conditioning doesn’t work. We listen three times — back to back — to a mix of Brazilian carnival music and two hours after we left we finally make it to the house.

  _________

  Later in the evening Patricio and Seba come back home stumbling and singing while we’re having dinner. Patricio’s nose is bleeding and he’s slurring and can’t explain what happened. Seba says something about a bus driver Patricio might have called a ‘wanker’ and the bus driver beating him up, but he can’t be sure and Patricio just keeps saying, ‘It was so cool, man,’ over and over. Until Carlos bangs his palms against the table, gets up, lifts Patricio by the collar of his polo shirt and shakes him several times so that a lighter, roll-up cigarettes and other things fall from his pockets. Patricio starts laughing and keeps laughing while Carlos slaps him around several times, back and forth. Alicia starts to cry and shouts something incomprehensible. Seba just looks like an idiot. The four of them rush upstairs and they keep shouting.

  Until a plane cuts the screen from right to left, spinning around its axis, and a boat explodes several times.

  The voice says these planes could fly very low, so low that radars wouldn’t detect them. The voice also says the aviation played a heroic part during ‘their baptism of fire, many times paying the ultimate price with honour and courage’. Then they play the national anthem. And then some dark-haired guys with snot and mud on their faces surrender to some soldiers who are all blond, shaven and clean. It’s the same every year, although this year it happens two or three months earlier than usual. They must have run out of films. Nico gets up and changes channels.

  A giant turtle with fluorescent green eyes swims towards us.

  I remember this film, I remember watching it two or three years ago. There was a beautiful brunette mermaid called Jennie. And Apollo Creed was there too although he wasn’t a boxer. And there was something about making a deal with the devil and never dying and never-ending love. And many other things I can’t recall.

  Alicia comes to the kitchen to get a glass of wine from the fridge. She tells us to turn the telly off and go to sleep.

  The screen fades to black as two children carve their names on the back of a turtle, the same turtle when it was normal size, before it turned into a monster, before its eyes became fluorescent and green, before it ate Apollo Creed.

  _________

  Early in the morning I go downstairs for a glass of water or I dream that I do. On the way back I spot or dream that I spot the door that leads to Helga’s room half-open. I peer or dream that I peer inside: the bed is unmade and Alicia’s slippers are lying on the floor, one on top of the other.

  The sun pierces through the blinds, falling in streams, dripping all over the floor, the bed, the shelves, the walls. There’s a desk full of picture frames: Helga in profile and in full colour; Helga wearing a mask at some party; Helga at her First Communion (a different angle from the picture downstairs); Helga at the seaside with an old couple — the man looks like Carlos but older; Helga with a Pekingese dog; Helga during her first year at school; Helga during her second year at school; Helga during her third year at school; Helga during her fourth year at school; Helga during her fifth year at school. A picture of the five of them next to a Mickey Mouse statue and another statue of a guy who looks like someone’s uncle. A picture of the five of them wearing skiing clothes. A picture of the five of them in the dunes round the back of the house. A picture of Alicia, a young and happy and tired Alicia, holding Helga, a baby. There are teddies on the bed. Books on the shelves. Pens and pencils in a glass.

  I go back or I dream that I go back to bed.

  _________

  I wake up with Nico banging my head with a pillow. We go downstairs, toast some bread and eat while watching a German game show.

  A man in lederhosen falls into pink water. Other accidents happen. People laugh. One of the teams wins.

  Then we go to the dunes and catch a couple arriving on a motorbike. They hide the bike behind a bush and put a mat on the sand and soon they’re kissing and touching and he goes on top and starts rubbing himself against her. I start laughing, Nico starts laughing too and we whistle and shout at them, and they get up, arrange their clothes, and look in all directions as we run back to the house with Nico limping at fast speed.

  _________

  Six or seven monsters walk across a mountain as we eat biscuits with chocolate milk.

  Big birds with horrible beaks; many of their feathers are missing and they’re pretty boring. We change channels and are about to start watching a film called The Towering Inferno that, for some reason, promises tits, when the car parks in the garage: Carlos is back from the bus terminal, from sending Patricio, Seba and Alicia back to Rosario. He says we’ll pack up tonight and leave tomorrow. He grabs a bottle of beer and goes upstairs and locks himself in his room. He leaves the wallet, the cigarettes, and the car keys on the table. Nico steals money from the wallet and we escape, on the bikes, to the arcade near the gas station. Nico pedals with one foot — we take forever but eventually get there.

  He pays for the tokens. We spend at least two hours playing Wonder Boy and then fight over who’ll break the record at Space Harrier. Nico goes first.

  Bubbles leave the gun and kill all sorts of creatures — it’s beautiful.

  He plays three games in a row, always losing with the first monster. My turn comes and I make it to round two and then three. It’s my moment of glory, perhaps the best moment in my life, and I’m about to make it to round four when the screen turns dark. I curse Nico for shutting the machine off but he swears he didn’t touch anything. We shout at one another for a while but soon realise that all the machines are down. Without the fans the air inside becomes unbreathable and we walk out to the sidewalk. The gas station must have lost power too, because all the guys that are normally playing cards in the bar are now standing outside, smoking by the signs that warn against smoking there.

  We sit near the bicycle rack and make a puddle of spit and sunflower-seed shells at our feet. We stay there at least for another hour, until it starts to get dark.

  Back in the house Carlos is getting the fire ready, drinking beer straight from a one-litre bottle that drips condensation — the burning charcoal hisses with every drop. ‘I’ll grill the rest of the flank steak,’ he says, and also the ribs — ‘no one knows when the power will be back’ and he doesn’t want the meat to go off and in any case, we’re leaving in the morning, we were always supposed to leave in the morning, we can take the cooke
d meat with us. He doesn’t mention the money and he doesn’t ask where we’ve been. He just drinks from his beer, moving the charcoal in silence, alternating his eyes between the fire and some point past the tennis court.

  By the time the fire is ready it’s already night; Carlos throws the meat on the grill and the air fills with smoke and the smell of burning beef. Then he lights the kerosene lamp and we eat in the garden, trying to keep the mosquitoes and the flies and all kinds of bugs away from the food, the Coke, the wine, and us. Carlos mentions something about buying a new road map and getting the oil checked before we leave. He also starts saying something about this summer and the summer last year but suddenly goes silent and pours himself another glass of wine.

  When we’re done, he turns the lamp off and we walk to the end of the garden and sit on a bench next to the empty swimming pool to watch the stars and the moon, to listen to the sound of the sea crashing against the rocks below.

  We stay there, in silence, forever. Until a breeze springs up and the summer is over.

  NOTES TOWARDS A RETURN

  A note (unedited, in English).

  Buenos Aires. 20.12.2016. A return — this seems to be one of the things I’m expected to write about. And now that I return, now that I find myself here, I haven’t even left the airport and I’m already toying with the idea of writing a return, perhaps just to surrender, to stop running away from that mandate. To write about a return to a hot place, by a fictional character, broken by (self-)exile and memories. But how could this return be any different? What could this writerly return add to this well-trodden path? People — broken by (self-)exile and memories — have been returning to hot places, for an audience, since Ulysses (the first one?). And it’s a terrible destiny, to find oneself in the mouth of a lyrical poet. This is very likely the most dangerous part of returning, that poetic possibility, the dangerous and fake nostalgia all poetry entails.