Diving Board, page 4
She said no, nothing was going on. But it was too literal for him to get the double meaning. She felt dirty, she added, and wasn’t in the mood. Agustín, understanding, said there was no problem and went to lie down. Ana read until late, smoking one cigarette after another.
* * *
Agustín woke her with breakfast. She looked at her watch and saw she had only slept for three hours. Her mouth was pasty after smoking so much and there was a stabbing pain behind her eyes. She swallowed an ibuprofen with her coffee, and they sat in bed, silent, listening to the wind blow between the trees on the other side of the window. Then he looked at her and asked how much she would give for a shower. She said she’d love one, but she was fine. He insisted, and a few minutes later they were outside, Agustín climbing a rickety ladder. As he got higher, he said something about her being a queen who deserved to shower with mineral water. Apparently, this was a joke. Ana smiled as best she could and handed him the first jug. At that moment she sensed a vague desire that made her smile. It would be so predictable if he ended up falling, she thought.
Agustín removed the screws from the tank’s lid with a knife and began to pour the water in. The sky was cloudy and seemed on the verge of rain. Ana looked at her watch and right then, at nine fifty-five in the morning, a tile shattered at her feet. She raised her head and saw Agustín in an impossible position, leaning back, half his body in the air, as though he were floating.
This can’t be, she thought. But she had no time to consider the idea further, only to take a step back so Agustín wouldn’t fall on top of her. From a height of three metres. His body did a half turn. He tried to absorb the shock with one of his arms, but his elbow buckled and his head struck the stone ground.
He lay face down, one arm outstretched and the other under his body, twisted at an unnatural angle. He was bleeding from the mouth. Ana looked at him for a few seconds, unable to believe it.
But there he was. She leaned over Agustín and touched his shoulder. He opened his eyes, looked at her as though she were very far away, and closed them again. On the left side of his forehead a pink bruise was beginning to turn purple around the edges and black in the centre. She looked at him, unsure what to do, and suddenly had a thought: she was in love, she must be in love with him. Her legs went weak and she had to sit down on one of the stone benches.
She went inside, moving slowly, as though she were in a trance. She looked for her cellphone, went back out, and kissed the nape of his neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and told him to hold on, said she was going for help. She couldn’t remember where in the woods they’d managed to get their cellphones to work.
She walked to the beach. The sky was black, laden with clouds. The wind rang in her ears. She sat down in the sand, under the rain that had begun to fall. She couldn’t take her eyes off the ocean, which seemed to be boiling, waves full of spray plunging into each other. It was all too intense, too beautiful and unbearable. She didn’t understand what was happening to her, but she didn’t try to understand either. That was the surprise. The rain turned into a storm, the water didn’t stop falling. Ana was still for a long time. She felt like someone else. What an ending, she thought.
Mirko
Mirko was born on a ship.
He is the son of a Polish sailor and a fifteen-year-old who
snuck into the hold at some port.
The Polish sailor and the girl disembarked where they could
and left Mirko behind for someone else to look after.
No one looked after Mirko.
Or maybe everyone did a little.
He sailed around the world about thirty times on
board that ship.
He disembarked in the port of this city, where a woman
looked at him from the mainland.
The woman screamed when Mirko approached in his
sailor suit.
The police stopped him.
When they told him he should not be on the mainland
without documents he’d never had, the ship had set sail.
Mirko is mute.
* * *
The note said all this, and Mirko took it with him wherever he went. It was printed on a piece of yellowed paper, the ink faded. The paper threatened to rip at the folds. At first I assumed Mirko had written it, but later I learned he didn’t understand the language—not this one, nor any other.
I met him at a party. There was something about his demeanour that drew us all to him—he seemed like a mythical creature. My friends and I hung around him, staring at him out of the corners of our eyes. Nobody seemed to know who he was. He’d been outside on the sidewalk and someone had let him in. I sat down next to him and smiled. He smelled like a bar of soap. We spent the night drinking silently and then I brought him home. He was carrying a bag that looked like it held everything he owned. I figured he’d been moving from place to place, sleeping wherever he got tired.
He stayed for two or three months, during which time I learned a little about him: he was very clean, seemed to like fucking, or at least didn’t mind it, and he hated fish. Sometimes he’d leave and come back a few days later. Or weeks would go by without him looking at me. But he was always there; his sinewy body was unavoidable and his silence made his presence concrete and solid. Like a mountain.
* * *
My birthday happened. Thirtysomething. I held a party to celebrate myself, and that’s where Mirko met Sofía. Someone sat her down on the couch next to him. She had drunk so much she was practically passed out. Mirko looked at her and gave her his smile, a slash across his face. She stirred suddenly, opened her eyes wide, and summoned all her concentration to stand and find her balance. She emerged from the bathroom with her face washed and her hair looking impeccable. They kissed until I kicked them out.
At first I pretended I didn’t care, then I was angry, and ultimately I got so depressed I didn’t leave my apartment for a week. I missed him a lot. I’d thought Sofía was going to mean more erratic behaviour on his part. That’s the price of a man as spontaneous as he is. But the weeks passed, slow and monotonous, and there was no news. I met other men, brought them home. But none fucked me as hard and naturally as Mirko did. They all got boring fast.
Sofía and I had some friends in common and I asked about him. Apparently, he’d moved in with her for good. I made some calls and invited myself over for dinner at Octavio’s place. He and Sofía were good friends and he owed me at least one favour.
* * *
He gave me a hug when he saw me. I tried to interpret this as a good sign, but the person standing there was not the Mirko I knew. He began to move his hands strangely. His fingers were spastic; he’d bring them to his chest and then show them to me. I didn’t understand what was going on until Sofía came to look for him. She explained that he wanted to say hi and then led him away by the hand.
My stomach was in a knot and I couldn’t swallow more than a few bites of food. I stared at Mirko, who was moving his hands non-stop, as though he were anxious and didn’t know where to put them. Even his smile had changed. It was no longer cold and enveloping, an icy gust of wind that froze you, seemed to undress you. Now it was warm and fleshy. A baby’s smile, after the baby has taken a shit, because it knows someone’s going to come and clean it up.
Now that I understood him fully, he had ceased to be the immense and mysterious stranger who seemed to have come from nowhere. He said stupid shit like everyone else. He laughed and clapped, wanted to participate.
* * *
When we stood to clear the table, I told myself I had to do something. I got started on the dishes, and people came and went from the dining room. Eventually, Mirko and I were alone. I made my move then. He gave me a look, and a half smile formed on his face like he was remembering me. He rejected me calmly and I tried again. I felt his firm hand on my chest, burning through my shirt. I waited without moving, looking him in the eye, until I heard heels clicking, getting closer. Sofía walked in and found us in a sufficiently compromised position. Mirko shook his hands desperately, while I explained it was nothing personal.
They left right away. She was furious, she lost her shit. As if Mirko belonged to her. I finished doing the dishes and had another whisky with Octavio and his boyfriend, who was pretty nasty and looked dirty, and I went home.
Mirko was sitting on the curb, his bag next to him, waiting for me. I opened the door without looking at him and he followed me in. We lay down in bed and didn’t move for a while. When I could stand it no longer, I took off his clothes. In the dark, I groped around for his dick. It was soft. I turned on the lamp and looked at him. He gave me a melancholic smile I’d never seen before, hideous wrinkles forming around his eyes. Then he shook his head and began to make signs with his hands. I don’t understand, I told him, and turned off the light.
The days passed and he didn’t get off the couch. He spent his time reading and studying the language. I left him a set of keys he never used. I’d liked it when he came and went all the time, had desired that tiny dose of anxiety and uncertainty he’d provoked in me. Now I knew he’d be in the same position when I got home every day.
We fucked now and then but not like before. He moved half-heartedly, as though he were repeating choreography. And when we came, he tried to say things with his hands. I didn’t want to listen to him. Over time, he became entirely average, mediocre in every way. All he did was study and blow kisses at me when I walked past.
* * *
Then one day I woke and told him we were going on vacation. He smiled and waited for me with his bag next to the door.
My car easily reached 160 kilometres an hour. Mirko looked out the window as we flew across a highway I’d chosen at random. Between one gas station and the next, there were hundreds of kilometres of grassland. After an hour of nothing but fields, I stopped. I opened the door and walked into the tall grass. In the distance, next to a thicket, a house was visible. A weak light in the middle of nowhere. Night was beginning to fall and the air seemed charged with static. The sound of insects, my piss in the grass, the car’s engine humming—everything seemed to be telling me something. I did up my fly and went back to the car. Mirko’s gaze was still lost on the horizon. I pointed to the weeds and he opened the door. He walked slowly, and when he undid his belt, his jeans fell to his ankles. He had on yellow briefs that were worn and very tight. He’d gained a lot of weight.
I got in the car and looked at him. The stream of piss splattered onto his pants and shoes. I put the car in first gear and slowly reversed. He turned around, taking short steps, his feet tangled in the folds of his clothes. Then he stopped and watched me drive away.
Astronaut
The first thing I’m compelled to write is this: what’s happening to me is incredible. But immediately, I stop—I’m suspicious of everything. I think about it, reread the sentence, and the pen slips through my fingers and falls to the floor. It bounces and flips in the air, does some involuntary acrobatics. Describing what’s concrete is easier.
I go down to the floor to get the pen and grab a dictionary while I’m at it. Incredible is something that “cannot be believed” or that is “very difficult to believe.” The word is no longer of use; what’s happening to me is happening—my belief is irrelevant. The only thing I can do is verify it.
I close my eyes in an attempt to control the dizziness, and I think that all those years of reading have ruined me. Nothing surprises me anymore and I become resigned too easily. I measure reality in terms of plausibility, and in my case, as I’ve said, it’s a matter of either belief or implosion. Analysis exhausts itself too fast.
Incredible is being able to get up, eat, go out into the street, and sit down to read in a park without succumbing to panic. Without losing oneself in thoughts of how insignificant we are, of how impossible it is to apprehend the universe.
Though this is of no help whatsoever, I’m not the only one. I’ve seen the others on television: lying on the ceiling, crawling up the wall, hanging from a hook on the floor, their legs dangling up, kicking into the void. All of them smiling, seemingly proud of their ephemeral fame, of what makes them different. But in the whites of their eyes, I can see the dread lurking, waiting for the cameras to disappear, for night to fall. I know they can’t sleep either, and I know the constant fear—that the floor will cave in on you, that windows like black holes will draw your body to them like a moth to the light.
In the midst of the initial confusion, I came to believe we were chosen in some way, that we existed so the universe could mock humanity and its longing for knowledge. The impossibilities were so perfect they seemed to have been planned. But chance is capable of anything; its combinations contain absolutely all possibilities. The universe lacks a will—it just exists, occurs.
* * *
Lying on the ceiling—face down or up?—I watch my wife. She’s fast asleep, a hand between her thighs. Her nostrils expand when she inhales. She looks peaceful. I’d like to go down and touch her, but the dizziness is unrelenting. Moving is incredibly difficult. I should be used to this, but my body refuses to accept its new axis. In some remote place my consciousness cannot access, I sense I’ll fall face first to the floor. When I finally close my eyes and sink into a tranquil slumber, instinct takes over and all my muscles twitch to hold on.
Eating is torture. I can only nibble on plain crackers. And only lying down. If I stand up, it all goes back to where it came from.
* * *
During the first few weeks, the apartment was a circus. Everyone came to see me. They watched me from below, their mouths open, and asked me things I couldn’t answer. My wife smiled, filled thermoses with coffee. One afternoon, a few friends stopped by. They lowered me together and sat me down on the couch. They took turns holding me there. I fought back the nausea and tried to be sociable, but all it took was a second of carelessness: they let go and I fell to the ceiling headfirst. Some of them laughed, others apologized. I told them it was no big deal, and when my nose began to bleed, I let it drip onto the table. They didn’t come back after that—no one did.
There was this one thing. It happened on a cold afternoon. My wife came home from work crying, climbed onto a chair, and tried to hug me. I wrapped my arms around her and squeezed. By then I was very thin, and I saw her feet lift off the floor. She raised her legs and locked them behind my back, which had come away from the ceiling. We floated there, mid-air, our weight balanced. We held on as long as we could, but eventually our muscles seized up. We let go slowly and looked each other in the eye. Neither of us said anything, but I think we both understood it was too beautiful to attempt again.
* * *
It’s three in the morning. The world is silent and I’m dragging myself slowly along the ceiling. I’m looking at things from up above, from the zenith. They seem unreal. As though the apartment were a two-dimensional map. My wife’s purse is open on the table, some of its contents scattered: lipstick, a small notebook, a few coins. Trivial objects that from this perspective look slightly sinister. They remind me of the world, of all that’s out there.
I’ve thought it through carefully. I’m not suffering anymore, nor do I despair. Now I’m pure lucidity and comprehension. I’m an accident, just another absurdity.
I don’t know what else to say. The only thing left is silence: the most radical of acts, that which follows the goodbye.
I wonder what will befall me as I approach the window and look up. What’s beyond the grey sky? Will I burn like an asteroid or drown in the void of space? How quickly will I rise?
Alejo
Alejo woke earlier than usual. He’d been dreaming of Inés. He couldn’t remember what had happened in the dream exactly, but he was distraught when he got up, felt he needed to touch her. His mother and her boyfriend were asleep. Alejo showered, dressed, and went to the kitchen for breakfast. There was some day-old coffee on the counter. He mixed it with milk, heated it in the microwave, and nibbled on a few crackers. He wasn’t hungry.
He looked at the time. He hated having to go into his mother’s room when Juan Pablo slept over, but he was going to be late. His backpack on, he crossed the dining room and knocked on the door timidly, too softly. He wondered if he’d woken them up, but he couldn’t bring himself to knock again. After a few seconds, he heard whispers and went back to the kitchen. Juan Pablo appeared in a wrinkled shirt. He had sleep in both eyes. I’ll give you a ride, he said.
As soon as they got into the car, Juan Pablo lit a cigarette. Alejo stuck his head out the window as far as he could and inhaled the warm morning air. Your mom says to take the bus home, Juan Pablo told him, his mouth full of smoke. Do you have change? Alejo shook his head and Juan Pablo pointed to a handful of coins next to the gearshift. Alejo put the exact fare in his pocket without saying anything. Ten blocks later, Juan Pablo honked his horn at a van and swerved to pass it. Alejo grabbed his seat belt, and when the car stopped at the corner by his high school, he opened the door and ran.
After stopping by the office to sign in for being late, he went to his classroom. Everyone looked at him. He mumbled good morning and walked to his seat, his eyes on his shoes. His laces were undone and he panicked at the thought of tripping in front of everyone. Inés was leaning over her notebook, drawing something Alejo couldn’t see. She was wearing a white shirt rolled up above her elbows. Looking at her, his dream returned. But just a trace of it. Darkness, silence, and the feeling of choking. It made him a little more nervous than usual.
