Читать книгу Fish Soup - Margarita García Robayo - Страница 8

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One day, I went to school, waited for them to take the register and then left. I used to do this with Maritza Caballero, a friend who didn’t live there anymore because her dad, who was a soldier in the Marines, had been posted to Medellín. I didn’t understand what she was going to do in Medellín, which was all mountains. The soldiers lived in Manzanillo, a gated community at the edge of the bay, in prefab houses that smelled of damp because of the humidity there.

Water and wood are not good friends, that’s what Maritza would say about her house.

So that day they took the register and I left, but without Maritza. I left school at quarter to eight, I was hungry and didn’t have much money. I wandered around the city centre for a while. It was full of people hurrying to work at the law courts or going to sit in Plaza Bolívar to read the newspaper. I sat down in the square and was bored.

When Maritza was there, we used to sit on the city wall to look at the avenue, the boardwalk, and beyond that, the sea. She wanted to be a lawyer and work in the courts; I told her I did too, but that was a lie. I didn’t want to be anything. Maritza said that I could be anything I wanted, because I did well at school. Maritza would look me straight in the eyes when she talked, which made me uneasy: she had yellow hair and yellow eyes and very pale skin. She was the most washed-out person I knew.

I was one chromosome away from being an albino, that’s what Maritza used to say about herself.

But she was beautiful, especially at night, because in the daytime, in the sunlight, her veins were really visible.

I caught a bus to Gustavo’s house and found him with a far-away look in his eye. When I found him like this, it was because he had an easy order to deliver that day. For a lobster, all he had to do, for example, was reach into the pool and grab one when he needed it.

Make me a little prawn cocktail, I said, handing him the bag of limes I had picked up at a fruit stall by the road, before I got on the bus. It was only then that he turned to look at me, squinted and said: this morning, there was a cold draught of air coming through the crack under the door and running up my legs. Oh? And he went on talking: that made me get out of bed. I had a rum to warm myself up and chewed on a piece of old bread that was so hard it practically broke my jaw. What did you do then? Then I went fishing, but I didn’t catch anything, the sea was too choppy. Mm-hm.

It was nine thirty.

Gustavo peeled some prawns and told me to fetch some onion, mayonnaise and chilli from the kitchen. The kitchen in that shack was filthy, the whole shack was filthy, and I hated going inside.

I told him I didn’t want a prawn cocktail after all. What? I don’t want any-fucking-thing now. He replied: I’ll wash that mouth of yours out with bleach. So I went to get what was needed and Gustavo made me a delicious cocktail, I wolfed it down in one go. I sipped the pink juice at the bottom of the glass, and it tasted spicy. Wake me up at one, I told him, and went to sleep in the hammock.

Another day I did the same thing, but I didn’t bring any limes, so I went straight to the hammock to have a snooze. Gustavo didn’t pay me much attention as he was peeling a mountain of prawns, which he was putting into a Styrofoam cool box filled with ice. In the evening he had to deliver several kilos for a big quinceañera party.

Wake me up at one, I told him, and shut my eyes.

It took me a while to fall asleep: it was hot, it smelled of salt, my skin felt clammy.

When I opened my eyes, they met Gustavo’s.

What are you doing? Nothing. He was studying me, sitting on a stool in front of the hammock. The sun streamed in through one side of the roof where the tarpaulin was ripped, and it illuminated part of his face. I told him he was going to get burned just on one side, like a carnival mask. My brother had a carnival mask he had bought in Barranquilla. “Night and day”, it was called. I used to put it on sometimes, but it was too big for me. Gustavo got up off the stool and went back to his prawns. Is it one yet? No. What time is it? Half past eleven.

The next time I opened my eyes, Gustavo wasn’t there. The mountain of prawns was on the table and there was a four-door pick-up truck parked on the beach. I sat up in the hammock and looked at the sea: a boat, a man with a net in the distance. Somewhere a dog was barking.

After a while, Gustavo got out of the pick-up truck, adjusting his shorts. Behind him, a lady got out, rearranging her hair. Gustavo picked up the cooler and carried it to the pickup truck. The lady said to me: have you turned fifteen yet? No. Good. Why? Her: because lately, nobody splashes out on quinceañeras anymore. If it’s a buffet, they don’t serve seafood, forget it; and if it’s a sit-down affair, not even a whiff. And what do they serve? They serve rice and chicken and a potato salad packed full of onion, so that when the girls go and chat to the boys afterwards, they have dogshit breath. But not Melissa. Melissa’s going to have a party the way a quinceañera party should be.

Melissa?

Gustavo came back. The lady pulled out some notes that were tucked inside her bra and gave them to him. I’m going to serve them with tartar sauce, she said, what do you think of tartar sauce? He put the notes down on the table. I thought they might blow away.

It makes me want to puke, I said.