Diving Board, page 1
English translation © Sarah Moses, 2025
El lugar donde mueren los pájaros © Tomás Downey, 2017
Originally published in Spanish by Fiordo Editorial
Acá el tiempo es otra cosa © Tomás Downey, 2015
Originally published in Spanish by Interzona
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any method, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or, in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Diving board / Tomás Downey ; translated by Sarah Moses.
Names: Downey, Tomás, 1984- author | Moses, Sarah, translator
Description: Includes stories originally published in Spanish in the collections El lugar donde mueren los pájaros and Acá el tiempo es otra cosa.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20250192322
Canadiana (ebook) 20250192845
ISBN 9781778430732 (softcover)
ISBN 9781778430749 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.
Classification: LCC PQ7798.414.O94 D58 2025 | DDC 863/.7—dc23
Edited by Norm Nehmetallah
Cover design by Jazmin Welch
Interior design by Megan Fildes
Invisible Publishing | Halifax, Fredericton, & Picton
www.invisiblepublishing.com
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.
Driving in the rain, I see a crumpled brown thing ahead in the middle of the road. I think it is an animal. I feel sadness for it and for all the animals I have been seeing in the road and by the edge of the road. When I come closer, I find that it is not an animal but a paper bag. Then there is a moment when my sadness from before is still there along with the paper bag so that I appear to feel sadness for the paper bag.
—Lydia Davis, “Examples of Confusion”
The Cloud
Lobos
Horce
A Love Story
Mirko
Astronaut
Alejo
Miguel’s Eyes
The Island with No Shore
Diving Board
Sisters
The First Saturday of Every Month
The Men Go to War
Variables
A Cemetery with Palm Trees
Sensitive Skin
The Täkis
The Place Where Birds Die
A Bouquet of Thistles
The Cloud
Translated with the author
At first, it was like a frayed ball of yarn, white and translucent, hanging motionless in the sky. The year had just begun and we were excited. Martín was starting elementary school and Clarita was already in fourth grade. She’d heard it would be the toughest year yet and she wanted to be ready. As for Pía, the worst of it was over; she hadn’t had a bout of restlessness in months. We were happy.
Over the next few days, the cloud began to thicken and its greyish hue darkened. Within a week, it was like solid, wet dough. At home, we waited for rain. We sat under the awning, convinced it was about to pour, and gazed at the black sky. Martín and Clarita played with the snails; there were dozens of them, maybe hundreds, crawling up into our yard. Pía smiled at the kids and I kept thinking we really did have the perfect family.
The temperature rose slowly and at first we didn’t notice. We tolerated the heat because we figured it would cool down at any minute, as soon as it rained. The branches hung heavy in the trees, bowed toward the ground. The air was stagnant and sticky. Every room in the house was impregnated with a pungent smell, like wet cardboard. The walls and floors began to sweat and were soon covered with tiny drops. Then the furniture swelled and slugs appeared, feeding on the moist wood.
Pía began to behave oddly again. She was overflowing with energy. She stayed up late and went on about how beautiful the fog was, how mysterious everything now looked.
The cloud lowered and became foamy and tangible. It was around then that one of the floorboards snapped into the air and landed on the table during dinner. Pía let out a scream that seemed to come from deep within her, one impossible to contain. Then she looked at us and burst into hysterical laughter.
I convinced her that she needed to get some rest and took her to bed. The sheets stuck to my back, it was impossible to get comfortable. I listened to her talk about ghosts. She told me stories from her childhood in the country, about how the dead rose at dawn and wandered, hidden in the fog. She talked like she could see them, as though they were there, staring at us from the darkness. When she fell asleep, I got up and walked to the window. I wanted a smoke, but my lighter wouldn’t work and all the matches broke when I struck them. Instead, I looked out the window for a while, the street lights glowing with weak halos.
* * *
There was mould on every surface. If we kept still, we could see the white fuzz growing slowly, spreading over the walls, floors, and ceiling. One morning, Martín slipped and broke his elbow. Our car wouldn’t start; the ignition had rusted and I couldn’t get the key to turn. The cab we took almost crashed twice. The driver couldn’t see anything. Martín was on my lap and Clarita sat to my right. Pía was on my left, but she just looked out the window like her mind was further and further away.
The hospital was dark. Doctors roamed the aisles like sleepwalkers. The waiting room, which was huge, felt like a sauna. We heard mute whispers, coughs, distant cries. Shadows appeared next to us and then vanished.
We waited an hour. The doctors set Martín’s bones. When he cried out, I felt it deep inside me. They put a cast on his arm and gave him a bunch of pills that upset his stomach and made him drowsy but didn’t help much with the pain.
Pía couldn’t keep still. She danced through the house, humming all day long. Or else she was silent for hours, hidden in the cloud. I’d look for her, without success, until finally she’d come up and scare me from behind, roaring. I’d try to grab her, ask her to please calm down and help me with the kids, but she’d always vanish, leaving behind nothing but her laughter, coming from all over.
I took Martín to our bed and opened the windows wide. The air in the kids’ room was stifling. Clarita helped me with the errands. One morning, we went out to look for a supermarket. We had to walk for a while; everything was closed and the streets were deserted. We were about to give up when we heard noises. We followed them through the fog to a huge supermarket where people were fighting, trying to take home more than their quota. Long lines had formed to pay for a few goods. The computers weren’t working; all the electronic devices were broken. Bills had to be taken carefully out of pockets and placed in a cashier’s hand, one at a time, so they wouldn’t tear. There were just a few rusty cans of food left. On the way home, we had to stop and rest a couple of times. Our bodies felt heavy, like wet wool.
The snails and slugs became a plague. They fell from the ceiling, crawled into our shoes. We tried to build barriers with salt, but the little we had left was a wet mush that stuck to our hands. Clarita swept the bugs out of the house three times a day, but then she started to have trouble breathing. The air was full of spores that closed up our throats. I took her to our bed and placed her next to Martín. I tried to make them comfortable, but their postures seemed unearthly, like they were broken dolls. With every breath, a dirty whistle rose from their chests.
Pía perfected her hiding spots and I couldn’t find her anymore. In some corner of the house, she hummed in a low, phantom-like voice from morning until night.
* * *
I found the first sore on my index finger. The skin tore open, revealing threads of red flesh. It didn’t bleed, just oozed sticky and watery pus. I stripped. My body was covered in small wounds; ulcers like tight lips opened outward. They didn’t hurt, only itched. I checked the kids. Like mine, their motionless bodies were swollen and covered in small cuts.
They had trouble eating; their jaws were stiff. When I tried to feed them with a fork, they just turned their heads and moaned. It sounded like a death rattle.
I looked for Pía one last time. Her voice seemed to come from everywhere, like she had merged with the cloud. I went out and tried to scream, but I didn’t have enough air in my lungs. I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway, or who to say it to.
I went back into the house to lie down with my children. I was exhausted and decided not to get up again. I don’t know how many hours passed; it could have been two or twenty. Day and night differed only by a pale glow that barely came in through the window. I felt like I was choking and clenched my fists as tightly as I could, clutching the sheets like I was about to fall into a bottomless pit. I saw colours bursting behind my eyelids and heard a buzzing in my ears.
I imagined this was how it felt to die: mounting confusion, a disturbing sound that rises to a climax and then cuts out suddenly. But I was wrong. It was raining.
Lobos
The first part of the move was tough. The same furniture that had come from Lobos all those years ago was now going back. It had been Grandma’s, and I couldn’t convince Mom to sell it, though she didn’t need it and there definitely wouldn’t be room at my aunt’s place. It was going to be full enough with the two of them
We took the highway there. Mom and I rode up front in the cabin. The windshield was as big as a movie screen, and the driver said nothing. Same with Mom. She probably couldn’t stop thinking.
* * *
I hadn’t been to Lobos in years—not since that Christmas. The fights over the restaurant closing had become a thing of the past. Mom and Dad seemed to have made up; at the very least, there was less drama. Aunt Julia called often, but it was usually to speak to her nieces—to me and my sister. It was like she and Mom were avoiding each other. I’m not sure what was going on with Dad. That year Mom and Aunt Julia agreed to spend the holidays together. I thought this was an awful idea, but Mom’s mind was made up. She kept saying she couldn’t believe two years had passed since she’d seen her sister. Dad pretended to be difficult, but he wanted to go too; that much was apparent. We arrived at night on the twenty-third, and everything was fine until the next afternoon. Dad went shopping with Aunt Julia, and when they got back, her eyes were swollen, her makeup running. I was reading in the garden, and through the window I saw Mom yelling at them, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I went inside and they said we were leaving. Aunt Julia locked herself in her room and we heard her crying through the walls. They told me to go look for my sister, and I rode my aunt’s bike down to the lake.
On the opposite shore, all the way around the lake, was Nicolás Villegas’s red Fiat 128. It took me half an hour to get there. I didn’t care that they were fucking. When I knocked on the window, my sister raised her head and looked at me, her teeth clenched. Villegas smiled, a perverse look on his face. He was such a tool. Get lost, my sister said. I told her we were leaving, that we were all going back to Buenos Aires. Shit, she muttered. She was sitting on Villegas, pressed between his body and the steering wheel in that tiny car. Her underwear was on the passenger seat. She asked me what had happened. We’re leaving, I said again. I turned around and started to pedal. They caught up with me halfway there and we stuffed the bike in the trunk.
* * *
The highway was empty and we got to my aunt’s place pretty quickly. It looked the same, except that everything was a little older. Her yellow bike, now rusted, was propped against a wall. She came out to meet us and gave Mom a cold hug. They were both uncomfortable. The movers started taking things out of the truck. I helped as best I could, but the furniture weighed a lot.
Half of it ended up on the veranda because there was no room inside. We spent the whole day working, ate a light dinner, and then lay down. My aunt offered to share her bed since Mom’s was a single, but I said I’d rather sleep on the couch. I lay there listening to the sounds of the night, to the insects and the old furniture creaking in the damp that rose from the lake, until my eyes closed.
In the morning, I had breakfast with my aunt. I can’t believe there’s grey in your hair, she said, after we’d been silent for a while. Mom didn’t get up till noon. She had bags under her eyes and couldn’t handle the light.
I helped them unpack boxes and move furniture around until five in the afternoon. The silence was unbearable. After that I rode my aunt’s bike to the lake with my books and a bottle of water. On the way, I passed the entrance to my old high school. The garden was well kept and full of flowers. It had been a patch of dry earth when I’d gone there, dust rising from it on windy days. Everything else was the same.
I sat down on a bench along the shore to read. A few metres away, a group of five women were drinking mate in the grass. One of them was pregnant. She had shoulder-length black hair and wore a white tank top, her belly button poking out, six or seven months along. She kept glancing at me. I could feel her there, out of the corner of my eye, and I had trouble concentrating on what I was reading. At one point, I looked up and our eyes met. She stood and walked over. Mariela? she asked. I nodded. I didn’t remember her. She was very cute, her eyes green and her hands tiny, like a child’s. It’s me, Luisa. Luisa Pellegrini. From elementary school. I don’t remember you, I said. You sat behind me in third grade, I had curly hair. I remembered her then. Her head full of tight curls, an afro almost. Luisa, the little doll.
What happened to your hair? I asked. She smiled. I don’t know, it got straight over time. I looked at her belly. I’m thirty weeks along, she said, and ran one of her hands under her stomach, as though she were supporting it.
I had one book open in my hands and another on the bench. She looked at them, curious, and I told her I was working on my thesis. I closed the books, piled them up on one end of the bench, and moved over to make room for her. Luisa glanced at her friends, hesitant. Some of the women snuck looks at us, but the largest, who was very blonde and had bright blue eyes and long hair down to her waist, a Valkyrie, was staring at me shamelessly.
Luisa sighed and sat next to me. They’re jealous. Small-town life. She talked a lot, but she was soft-spoken and I liked listening to her. She remembered me well because of Mom, Dad, and Aunt Julia’s restaurant. All of Lobos had eaten there at one point. And apparently my sister and I had had a bit of a reputation for being the owners’ daughters and because we’d been born in the city.
She also remembered when we’d left, when we’d gone back to the city and closed the restaurant. I was twelve. New places had opened on the main street, well-lit places with mirrors, televisions. That’s what became popular and all the clients had begun to go there. Still, the restaurant could have survived, but it was clear that Mom, Dad, and Aunt Julia were waiting for an excuse to get into a fight.
* * *
It was night when I got back. Aunt Julia was asleep and Mom was in the kitchen. I asked her if she’d eaten. She said she wasn’t hungry, so I opened the fridge and took out a plate of cold pasta. I ate it standing there, looking at her. She took one sip of mate after another while she ran the tip of her finger over the patterns on the tablecloth.
In the morning, we went back to arranging the furniture and deciding what would stay and what would go. Mom didn’t want to get rid of anything, and she tried to find places for as much of it as possible. The movers had left the china cabinet in the middle of the dining room. It was huge, impossible to move. Aunt Julia wouldn’t keep still. Despite her age, she was pretty strong, and she helped me with whatever was too heavy. Every so often she walked to the door, scanned the dining room, and nodded or cocked her head. They had difficult personalities and seemed to be sizing each other and themselves up. It was as though each had promised herself to be patient without really believing it. They were biting their tongues because neither wanted to be the first to explode.
Thinking out loud, I said they’d have to get rid of some stuff. The house was just a tad overcrowded. They looked at me to avoid looking at each other. My aunt nodded and Mom said she found the space warm. She liked rooms full of things, and all her furniture was wood, and that gave off good energy. Energy? I asked. This was not a word she would have used to refer to anything other than electricity or fuel. She looked me in the eye and nodded. This house is going to be impossible to clean, my aunt muttered.
* * *
I showered, asked my aunt to borrow her bike, and left with my books. I stopped by the ice cream shop where Luisa worked and looked at her through the glass. She had on a hat with a visor, a white apron over her huge belly, and she was flipping through a magazine next to the cash register. Her head was tilted to the side and her tongue poked out between her lips. I watched her for a minute or two, spying on her intimacy, her movements, and the look on her face when she thought no one was watching. Then I started pedalling again and rode down to the lake. I read and took notes until seven.
* * *
My aunt was dragging furniture around the dining room, trying to move pieces as close together as possible to free up some space. I helped for a bit, but it felt like we were moving everything in circles. One of Mom’s coffee tables ended up on the veranda because it was blocking the hallway. When she got back from her walk, she saw it outside, picked it up, and put it back in the spot we’d moved it from. Then she went to the bathroom and took a shower that lasted almost an hour. Her hair was shoulder-length when she came out. You cut it, my aunt said. Mom smiled and I got started on dinner.
