The Swimmers Read online

  “That worked for us… We were just trying to be happy.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not what living with someone is all about.”

  Sergio noted then that Jonás didn’t have the strength for a conversation. He’d never seen his friend look so crushed; it worried him so much that he had to remind himself several times of the results of Martina’s pregnancy test, so as not to lose himself in the tiny chestnut-colored waves that had formed in the bottom of his whisky glass, with Jonás inside, crying for help. Now was not the time for giving advice, or confessing that Martina’s rationality and restraint never quite clicked with Ada’s naïve eccentricity, something both of them knew anyway and which didn’t bear repeating. But what could he say to his friend now? Maybe he didn’t even need to say anything, just stay with him until he finished his drink, though Sergio couldn’t have another; if he’d seen this coming he would have gotten up right after the fruit salad, being well aware that from that point on Jonás was capable of downing glasses of whisky or whatever else he found until the early morning or even the next day, and Sergio wouldn’t be able to keep him company and help him root out his pain. That pain belonged to Jonás, and he had to sweat it out or digest it himself, Sergio would not try and save his night: he had to go home—he wanted to, honestly—to the warmth of Martina’s body, he wanted to see her again and lay his head down slowly on her belly, imagine hearing heartbeats and remember that outside, beyond the hedge-lined streets of his neighborhood, Jonás was out there somewhere.

  “Maybe you needed a bit more common ground, because you had everything else in spades. Ada’s a great girl.”

  “Yeah, great.”

  “So, are you headed home now?”

  “Sure. Home.”

  “What I mean is, are you going to see her?”

  “No, she’s staying with a friend until I find something. I decided I should be the one to move out.”

  “You can come stay with us in the meantime. There’s still a spare bedroom.”

  At that moment, Sergio was unable to repress a slight but contented smile that was so intimate and all-encompassing that Jonás thought to himself then that they really did give off a glow; maybe he and Ada had too, for a second, but Martina and Sergio had achieved a much more profound brilliance, nearly opaque it was so solid, something they have still—a gleam escapes Sergio’s eyes despite his efforts at self-control.

  Jonás has a trick, though: despite the constant sensation of being on the verge of slipping, he’s never fallen because he’s learned to use the soles of his feet like makeshift suction cups. He first figured it out when the flip-flops he was wearing felt too flimsy. Then he found it could work to his advantage: if he arched his feet ever so slightly with each step, the rubber floor would curve, too, and when he looked at the floor, whether or not there was a puddle there, he was able to achieve that instantaneous suction cup effect. Ever since, he has always worn the same style of flip-flops: not the ones with the horizontal strip that covers part of the instep, but the ones with a thong between the toes that fans out to both sides and joins up again behind the ankle.

  He always liked Ada’s ankles. How many photographs had he taken of them?

  “Not much. I called her up a couple months ago, and she seemed fine to me.”

  Chapter 4

  The pool is on the north, and Jonás lives in the southern part of the city. Before, when he still shared an apartment with Ada, he would make the trip back from the pool on foot. Sometimes the after-lunch chat stretched out, and then Sergio would ring up his secretary and call off a meeting or two if he could, or even ad-lib instructions over the phone to one of his team members so they could hold the meeting without him. When that happened, the afternoon was often accompanied by a long coffee and three or even four whiskies more. They had started swimming together each week a couple years before Paula was born, when Jonás and Ada had just moved in to their apartment. Around that same time, Sergio consolidated his position as the youngest member of the upper management at his insurance company, as well as his relationship with Martina, the girl he’d met at the law firm where he’d worked before that, while Jonás started to see his photographs appear not only in the newspaper that had hired him, but also in several well-received group shows featuring up-and-coming artists; but, above and beyond any incipient success, his most secret joy consisted of being there when Ada woke up, with her pallid white eyelids and her long placid lashes, waiting for the day’s first glimmer of light to slip into her immense and ghostly blue irises; when she opened her eyes, it was if she was still startled, even after several months, by the sight of Jonás’s attentive gaze, and Jonás discovered he could never quite grow accustomed to the modest miracle of watching her stretch her limbs there beneath the sheets.

  The two years after Sergio and Jonás started swimming together were good ones. Certainly neither of them had ever felt so satisfied with their respective lives, so sure of their potential, their plans built on a present in which not all of their aspirations were yet completely attained, but which gave every indication of a promise that would be fulfilled in due time. They discussed where they saw themselves in the future, discovering that the same attitudes and behaviors could occasion the same auspicious results in apparently unrelated occupations: photographer and executive at a major insurance company. They had grown used to demanding of themselves exactly what they wished, and they couldn’t conceive of anything that might put a damper on the determination of two young men who were so sure of their self-control in a changing world, a world which, in its metamorphosis, would always find a place for them, for their ambitions and aspirations.

  They swam together three days a week, but only one was reserved for socializing, depending always on Sergio’s agenda, much tighter as a general rule than Jonás’s somewhat unpredictable schedule, which hinged only on a sudden call asking him to cover a story in any corner of the city. Normally he took the subway wherever he went, except the pool, since back then he was living in the north and it was barely a twenty-minute walk from the apartment where, upon returning, he would have dinner with Ada.

  Perhaps that’s why he enjoyed the trip back so much, especially when it got dark later: he would retrace his own steps, knowing he’d already finished his work, that he’d swum hard for 2,500 meters and confirmed once more that he and Sergio were still the owners of all that they did not possess, the effervescent substance of their dreams, although the distance between reality and ideals was growing ever shorter. Watching the twilight from the protection of those great glass windows, seated at the table as the sun set in a shadowy, metallic lethargy, with the whisky warming beneath their palates and the air tempered by the cold pavement, they also felt, for that fleeting second, that they had set aside the period reserved for competition. They would often compare their best times, their progress, and the refinement of their styles, in and out of the water; but there was a hidden part in each of them where they could find sanctuary from the demands that no one ever actually placed on them, that anxiety in the face of life they had recognized in one another the first time they met, at college, like newfound twins from disparate upbringings who find themselves, without warning, in the same portrait.

  On his way home, Jonás would cross a main thoroughfare that emptied into an uninviting square. Then he would push forward through a row of immense skyscrapers, the majority occupied by offices, the buildings’ silhouettes solidifying under the opal blanket of the nascent night sky as the hours passed, with a few windows lit up like undimmed beacons in the cloudy heights; maybe someone was still tied up with interminable meetings—maybe Sergio himself, who worked in the highest tower, its craggy gray façade slicing open the sky—while Jonás crossed the lush gardens below with their bent and lurking shadows. There were no shops beneath the offices, only stalls that had been abandoned for the night, arcades with their recesses, and closed restaurants that served fast food during the day to office workers and their managers, all types of sandwiches an
d hamburgers and snacks, shutting down by mid-afternoon; and strange creatures, covered by cardboard and inertia, who began to appear silently, as if emerging from the bowels of the concrete. Jonás thought only of making it to the butcher’s, with its alluring ox meat, on the bustling avenue on the opposite side of the dark gardens; buying himself a vacuum-packed T-bone steak and throwing it in his backpack next to the wet towel; then getting home and cooking it, like the world’s first man eating his very first dinner.

  That was how things had been before. Now Jonás says goodbye and starts walking toward his former home, betrayed by his memory after three whiskies with Sergio, but he must abolish the very memory of those steps, walk down the stairs to the Estadio subway stop, and head back to the south of the city.

  Chapter 5

  But he doesn’t head back. The thought of getting off the subway in his new neighborhood is too horrifying, and he disembarks early: exactly halfway home, in the center. It’s not the first time he’s tried to avoid his new apartment. He has his entire life strapped to his back: a single bag with a wet towel, a bathing suit, his red cap, the swim goggles stored away in their plastic case, and the moisturizing soap he uses after his swim to heal his skin, restore its pH—chlorine is a malignant agent that intervenes in the unadulterated clarity of any accidental underwater contact—and his shampoo too, as well as a hair cream for just after his shower, with its silk proteins, its vitamin B5, bringing a shine to his damaged hair and fighting off the harmful effects of the elements, like the seawater that time he took an island vacation with Ada. Suddenly the subway is an island too; still inside the car, Jonás looks into that other interior, that of his backpack, in search of something to read—the whale inside the whale—something to keep him relatively oriented, to help restore his sobriety before he arrives anywhere. Sergio must be home already; Jonás knows the night, its indigestion: it will swallow him whole. He prefers to reread all the properties of the hydrating cream, with its silk proteins, and tries to focus his attention on those liposomes with provitamins, because he can read them, because all this makes him feel safe, because his whole life is strapped to his back and right this instant it takes up no more space than that backpack, he could go practically anywhere, he wouldn’t be leaving anything that important behind, in truth there’s nothing waiting for him, just that fifty-meter stretch across the water.

  Through one of the windows, he makes out the name of the stop exactly halfway between north and south and decides to get off the train. He wonders if anyone will notice how difficult it is for him to put one foot in front of the other; he sees himself from the back row of an empty theater, where a silent film that interests no one has been replaced with his worst scenes as a tightrope walker on an invisible wire. Something inside Jonás keeps his self-criticism intact: just how far can he take this current state, how long can he grope about in front of a mirror he can imagine without actually seeing? He’s drunk more than an afternoon’s worth: six whiskies is too many before nine o’clock, no matter how handily he’s beaten his own records and almost kept up with Aquaman, who slipped out of the water at his usual unhurried pace, with his elegant stretches and far-away gaze, as if the real strain awaited him outside the pool and not in the protean ponderousness of his strokes.

  Watching him move, neither Jonás nor Sergio could say for sure that he strains to maintain his pace. In fact, he often gives them the impression that he swims to relax. They, however, must shave time off their personal bests in order to keep up with him when swimming in the next lane over, or in the same one, while he continues in the meantime with the oxygenated elasticity of someone who is gliding along without a past, as if he never had to look behind him: because a good swimmer contemplates his future unhampered by obligations, he molds time to his intent there under the water, before breaking the surface.

  When Jonás leaves the subway, the cold whistle of the wind wakes him to the awe-inspiring night, its stars splattered across the void, with that clarity sometimes gained in a long pause between drinks, and he thinks of Australia, whom they haven’t seen again since Jonás gave him a heel to the ribs.

  “Australia hasn’t come around for a while. At least two or three weeks.”

  “So you miss him?”

  “Things are nicer without him. If you want to go around acting like that, build a pool behind your house and swim alone, without bothering anyone.”

  “Not alone, in his case; probably with a couple kids splashing around in there with him.”

  “You’re right. I’d forgotten your hunch: Australia’s a pedophile.”

  “He probably got arrested; I’ll bet he’s in custody right now, or with a restraining order keeping him away from the school. Imagine that, a pedophile in the locker room of the sports complex, with all those kids walking in and out.”

  Australia was the nickname they’d given an enormous guy who was Aquaman’s exact opposite. Aquaman wore his hair short, almost always cropped close, and kept his body shaved, with its dynamic, flexible anatomy swimming gracefully at a speed so astonishing that not even Sergio could top him, and yet he always yielded for the other swimmers, while Australia sported a mane that wasn’t exactly long, although it did frizz out from under his hat and leave a tangible trail of wavy hair. His body was too hairy; they should have made a special rule for him, forced him to cover himself with a neoprene suit, if they cared about ensuring the cleanliness of the water. He swam the butterfly in two extremely violent first laps, failing to integrate his body into the water’s loquacity, never becoming a voice flowing in a single horizontal line but rather striking with his open palms at whatever crossed his zigzagging path. Australia, who wore the tightest speedo around, black with the word AUSTRALIA on the back in capital letters, possessed a mountainous and abrupt anatomy, one that wasn’t inclined to float; he would slow down after the initial explosion of foamy battering, crisscrossing lanes, eventually dealing seemingly involuntary blows to whomever happened by his side. They had received several in recent years, until Jonás got an elbow to the throat that had knocked the air out of him for a few seconds; on passing alongside Australia once more, he let fly a kick to the guy’s abdomen and immediately raised his head from the water to apologize for the collision: Australia didn’t even look at him, instead shrinking back and swimming for the ladder as best he could.

  It became a running joke, before saying goodbye at the subway stairs, that Australia had been put in jail for child molestation, or maybe Jonás had injured him. They’d mentioned it in passing, that he hadn’t shown up in two or three weeks; it’s true that the pool is notable for the consistency of those who frequent it, its steadfast public, since the majority of the swimmers buy monthly passes and all the slots are filled: there’s a waiting list and vacancies are infrequent.

  “You didn’t kick him that hard. He’ll show up, all Johnny Weissmuller on steroids.”

  “He wishes he was Johnny Weissmuller. I couldn’t care less if he never comes back.”

  That was his goodbye to Sergio, barely an hour before dusk. Now Jonás’s thoughts turned to that one-time swimming star, seen in black and white footage, while he walked under the lights of a small square, illuminated by the streetlamps, and opened the glass door behind which he would order a beer, a nice quick beer to slow the pace a moment, the alternative to continuing on to his apartment, leaving behind the late autumn cold, the fallen leaves underfoot like leaden sand pounding at his temples, and that evocation of the great Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic swimming champion, gazing out at the greenish sky of twilight: his choreographed acrobatics with Jane long since passed, trying to summon a bellow in his old age, that muffled underwater bellow, that misplaced and heartbroken bellow of a mute man preceding the great silence.

  Chapter 6

  At first it’s only a distant squeal, intermittent, a high-pitched squeal from seemingly remote regions, through thick curtains of smoke, reservoirs of dirty water: a squeal in the form of a skull pin, a concentrated, mutant scalpel
inside his head, a thin wire slitting open his brain from east to west, entering through one ear and crossing through what’s left of his conscious encephalic mass until it slides out the other side; the few invisible filaments which still pass for neurons are a tickling sensation in his eyelashes. If he could just lift them, if he could move; he hears the door slam in the middle of the night: someone’s come home with him and has left, he can’t remember the face or the body, but a perfume rises off the sheets alongside a whiff of puke. He lacks even the strength to gently prod his stomach, but he hasn’t choked to death on his own vomit; he’s been lucky once again, he’s survived the perpetual night, the light of the next day’s dusk is reflected in his television screen, shining into his eyes, piercing the rough skin of his eyelids until he cracks them open: but this sunny glow to the south of the city is not the squeal that comes intermittently, gradually closer and more sonorous than piercing, becoming more physical and suddenly familiar. It’s his cell phone, it must have been ringing all morning and half the afternoon, he tries to stretch his arm out as far as the table and can’t, it’s impossible, he doesn’t have arms yet; but what does it matter anyway if the cell phone isn’t there, the vibration reaches him from the foot of the window, on the other side of the room, next to the jeans he was wearing yesterday when he said goodbye to Sergio—that he remembers—and his shoes too; from this vantage point, with his body slightly twisted and his head on the edge of the mattress, he can see them, covered in mud, where was he last night, maybe he’ll try to move in a few minutes, his head doesn’t hurt and the sound of the telephone is discernible, how did he ever make it back, all he knows is he’s here and alive, maybe a little worse for the wear; if the world was a fair place he’d never wake up.

  But things aren’t that simple. When he lifts his chest from the sheets and tries to sit up straight on the mattress, he only manages to get his feet to the floor: they are the sleeping legs of a ragdoll, not columns of flesh that might carry him as far as the jerry-rigged kitchen inside the built-in closet; his body remains in the same position, without showing the least intention of following his legs in their pathetic attempt: he looks as if he had been thrown from the roof and gotten haphazardly lodged in his bed, like an inert mass lying in the middle of the street after a five-story free fall, lacking any clear order in the parted legs, the arms, the unflinching gaze, the mysteriously cloven chin busted open like a nut by the sharp edge of the curb. If he had a pistol on hand, he would empty it into the telephone, he can’t get used to its ringing, its tireless insistence contorting his expression into that of a beaten cat; maybe he can make it on hands and knees to the tub, though this won’t prove to be a such a wise move if he’s abandoned by the strength he hasn’t yet regained, at least he’s fine in bed, he may end up stuck somewhere along the short path to the shower, languish on the laminate floor, so hot and pleasant, but not pleasant enough to spend the rest of the day there, showing no vital signs beyond respiration.