The Swimmers Read online

  “Call me with a bit more notice and we’ll make plans. And don’t go obsessing over this thing with Mom. There are thousands of families in this city who don’t see each other on a regular basis, friends who lose track of one another, and that doesn’t mean anyone’s vanished into thin air all of a sudden. I’ve had friends where if I fall out of touch or lose their cell phone number, if they move to a new place or change their email address, I’ve got no way to find them. Maybe you just miss your job.”

  His father rubs his hands together again, as if trying to tell him something difficult.

  “Speaking of work, I saw a photo of yours in the paper this week.”

  Jonás hesitates an instant.

  “The students protesting against the privatization of public education?”

  “Yeah. Really impressive. One of your best.”

  “I didn’t know you were interested in photography now.”

  “I’ve always liked it; I just never told you.”

  He considers hugging his father, but something stops him; he comes up short and puts his hands on his shoulders, which he has always remembered as solid and wiry. He finds in those eyes the sheltering warmth of a hot coffee, and perhaps it is then that Jonás notes an unfamiliar fragility in his father’s body.

  Chapter 11

  The protest over public education was three days ago. If he hadn’t had his press pass, laminated and properly visible, he could have wound up back at the newspaper with his arms bruised up; but Jonás has seen the rubber bullets fly at too many peaceful gatherings and he moves nimbly among the tumult. When the paddy wagons show up, no one knows what will happen, who’ll attack who first—it doesn’t even matter if the demonstration is in favor of democratic regeneration and against the destruction of the middle class, like when he and Ada went to the most massive protest in recent memory, scheduled at the same time across the world, to defend the right to quality housing and public services: a tranquil march made up of mothers and fathers, of grandmothers and grandfathers moving at their own pace, of couples and groups of young people, and even children walking along as if it were a big party, turning out quietly with picket signs decorated with lively drawings. Suddenly, in the main square of the city, four caravans of paddy wagons had come driving down the four main exits, along four wide avenues, together with four lines of sappers who let no one pass, forming a cross that began to collapse in on its center as those four groups of paddy wagons moved up to the edge of the square, where the crowd had already gathered, and there they halted: a tense silence built, and nobody said a thing until someone started throwing eggs and one splattered against the helmet of a riot policeman, now with his transparent shield raised, and the yoke dripped down his chinstrap. Shouts spread among the people like an electrical current; they’ll all be trapped as soon as the four armored files plug the exits from the square. I don’t like the look of this, this is going to get ugly, let’s get out of here, Ada; because he has that instinct, he’s always had it, he’s seen it so many times in his father that he can calibrate that moment when the blows will start to fly: whether he’s at a nightclub or standing behind a protest banner, it’s all the same; it’s all about buckling down and blending in, or having two strong legs that react and get you out of there. He knows how to fade into the background, to take cover and wait it out; he can even get his pictures on the run, he can frame things just right even if he’s got to elbow his way in.

  Chapter 12

  You picked the wrong side, his father said to him then. He had gone with Ada. He felt comfortable there in the fourth or fifth row of protesters, which had suddenly become a campout. He was wary of the most enthusiastic ones; he just wanted to be there, form part of that snaking mass of citizens for once. How was it possible that so many people had come together to demand accountability from the financial entities, and that tall girl, with her tight jeans tucked into her black boots, and her blue eyes, was there with him, carrying a picket sign she’d made that same afternoon; she lifted the sign, as if raising the blinds, while her body danced, following the rhythm of the drums as some of the protesters hammered away: there were guitars and powerful voices too; it had been some time since Jonás had heard the likes of this, maybe in a club a long time ago. It was his first demonstration, and he’d gone for her, to be close to her, because he knew that beneath her angelic expression she possessed the inner flame of a kamikaze which might cause her to throw herself without warning into the protest: and there she was, marching to the beat of the music, with her green pea coat hugging her fluorescent wasp waist and her close-fitting pants; you picked the wrong side, I’ve been with them lots of times and I know how they prepare.

  He felt comfortable in the fourth or fifth row, but not her: she was already out in front, she’d always believed in this and he had only converted hours before, when he discovered that enthusiasm pulsing in her oceanic eyes, a soft glow tenuously lighting her cheeks, which grew redder as she stepped outside into the cold of winter. That same passion had convinced him it was necessary to be there: I don’t think they’re planning on trampling us, but I’m not sticking around to find out, and suddenly his arm is reaching out to grab her, he practically has to drag her out of there, but it’s too late, the crowd has begun to scatter; if he was alone he’d be much faster. The explosions come from close by, everything is happening so fast when suddenly a woman, disconcerted, maybe fifty years old, falls to the ground in a daze with a gash in her forehead; he can’t stop, Ada moves with agility, if Jonás brings up the rear he can cover her from the blows: he can take them; how long is this boulevard, the woman still laid out on the ground, he sees a man get clubbed in the ribs while trying to help her, everything is a chaos of scrambling limbs, panic and screams, in the distance he can make out the lights of the paddy wagons scratching at the wavering fog beneath the darkness, her hand slips from his and he loses her.

  Chapter 13

  The faces are the same: agitated, intense. Many of them have had the same redemptive idea as they passed by the window, with the bar so packed now that Jonás has to nudge his way through; how is it that they all have the same face, sweaty and exhausted? They down their beers with such voracity that the waiter, still young despite a receding hairline, announces with a placid gaze that they’ll have to change the keg soon; the same face, it’s true, sweaty and exhausted, but vaguely satisfied, as if they’ve won the battle, as if the mere fact that they’re all there together, though they hardly know one another, with a news story about the demonstration showing on the television hanging from the wall, was a collective victory: they didn’t go out to win this afternoon, only to defend a set of ideas, too foggy perhaps, to regain the agora with those unending assemblies, what does it mean to protect the environment?, a pipe dream compared to the temptation to make the world’s largest jungle into a desert just to build a handful of hydroelectric power plants, an empirical truth, the gavel of economic theory; but there they all were, hundreds, thousands, brought there by the same idea, now doubtlessly disseminated in countless other bars throughout the city, too nervous yet to go back. He looks for Ada in the meantime, and for a second he thinks he’ll never find her; he stands on tiptoe, thinks he spots her at the end of the bar, concealed by other bodies, next to the bathroom door: the throng has gradually cornered her as she struggles to get some air, and they meet up; he wonders then what secret hides in her eyes: why is it that in a single instant, simply by spotting them among all the others, among all those faces that are the same face with that same tiredness and ardor, her eyes, like the bright summer sky, can steal from him that moment too, tear him away from there, take him out of that bar, away from the riot police and the congregations in the square, impose silence around them as if they were all alone, still without touching each other, as if it didn’t even matter whether they embraced or not, or waved or nodded or made any other subtly intimate gesture? She doesn’t need any of that, and neither does he once he’s made contact with her eyes.

  Ch
apter 14

  Jonás comes out of the subway. He’s used to boarding the cars at rush hour and flattening himself out, trying to make himself even more willowy, thin, nearly transparent if he could, straightening his spine among the thickset bodies, covered by overcoats, pea jackets, hats and purses, men and women who leave their work at noontime, who are coming from somewhere and seem headed somewhere else even more atrocious: faces wasted away by an exhaustion more mental than physical, all of them hanging from the horizontal bars or sitting, but meshed now with one another, as if all cut from the same ragged, mediocre pattern, overcrowded and quarrelsome, ready to fight for a sliver of space or a puff of air; such that when the door opens, Jonás must find a crevice in which to lodge himself, occupying and lining it with his body, filling it full of himself.

  Normally he removes his backpack and places it between his feet. It’s not that there’s anything valuable inside, but this way he saves everyone the futile temptation of finding out for themselves: what could there really be in the backpack of a guy whose only true occupation is swimming, aside from a cap and goggles, a towel, a bathing suit, as if there were nothing constant in his life apart from showing up at the pool on an almost daily basis. He carries his camera in a separate case. A few years ago, who would have said that they’d pay him a salary just for being in the right place at the right time and snapping the shutter, showing up and shooting.

  Not at the beginning, no. At the beginning, just before he was hired, Jonás bought every treatise on photography he could find in the neighborhood bookstores. He was especially interested in the work of war correspondents, particularly the pioneers: those photographers who were employed by the major international agencies, whose shots showed up in every single manual on the genre. He bought them, he studied them, and tried to learn them by heart. The biggest lesson he learned from them was that reality, as a subject, can be portrayed by anyone; but only a handful of seasoned practitioners, somewhat more intuitive, are able to transform a landscape, capture it in their own way, molding the criteria of the photograph through their ability to predict it. Only a certain few already have their photographs inside them: they observe tensely, hunched down, able to dissolve into the frame; they are part of the same space, they wait and suddenly the image is there, it has appeared, they have it before them and they subjugate it; they didn’t stumble on it, they recognized it. A true field photographer never finds a picture by chance, nor does he create it, or adulterate it, or stage it; rather, he recovers it, because he has already seen it before and memorized it: it forms part of him before it exists, it has appeared to him in dreams or in actuality, and all he has to do is put a name to it.

  Ada admired his luck, having found a vocation and made it his job; even better, he pretty much set his own schedule, because that freedom also affected her: it helped make her life easier, more pleasant, especially since she had started working at the School of Geology on a research grant. Almost daily, while they were still together, Jonás would pick her up during her hour-and-a-half lunch break, showing her one of the books he had bought that morning or his most recent photographs. Then Ada would merrily celebrate his supposed talent, that ability or luck in arriving at the scene and snapping just a few shots, the recognition of all types of contexts, that sensation of a smooth landing, with a feline grace and precision, as if it were a space that already belonged to him, greeting him familiarly; she showed much more pride than he did in his skills, checking the newspaper whenever one of his pictures appeared there, on some occasions opening to the local politics section, to the national news every once in a while, sometimes to sports and only rarely to the arts. She stored the clippings away carefully in a file cabinet.

  This all gave Jonás quite a boost of confidence; he himself had never thought of taking pictures as an especially laudable activity. He had already learned enough to be reasonably sure he had a special facility for finding the time and place, the framing and light, the subtext suggested by a fleeting expression, but he didn’t consider it anything admirable, merely a quality. He did, of course, feel respect for any profession that required hard work, determination, and perseverance; his own, on the other hand, was a matter of luck, or at least that’s how it seemed to him for the first few months. Later, when Ada stopped praising him, when she abandoned her habit of buying the paper and even started to express disdain for his working conditions—you’ve got too much time on your hands, you don’t understand how exhausting it is for people with normal jobs, you make too big a deal out of seeing a photo in print when we both know it doesn’t cost you much effort—was when Jonás had to start valuing his own work.

  His introspection ends when he sets foot on the platform. He puts his backpack on and raises his collar. The floor is covered with dirty footprints, and the people waiting to board the train carry dripping umbrellas, which strike him as vaguely aesthetic while unclosed and dry: not fully spread like parasols in the sand but simply at rest, limp, on their wooden or metal tips, with that air of tired transience, as if they had accomplished their mission. With the clarity of the water emphasizing their colors and designs, or the silent and distinguished solidity of the black umbrellas, they seem to reveal something merely by how they are carried, whether like a nuisance or with determination. He has portrayed them in several series of shots featuring passersby, pictures he’s never developed; his photographs have been strictly professional since he separated from Ada.

  Inside the subway car, he is engrossed by the physiognomies, floating back in his memory to a time when life was different and he hadn’t yet started swimming with Sergio. He tightens the backpack against himself and walks down an extremely long corridor, recently renovated, with the gleam of nickel in the glittering walls, in the signs which point out different exit routes, and in the silver-plated frames of the advertisements. Jonás quickens his step: as always he’s late to the pool, Sergio must already have a few laps on him, and at any rate the passageway from the subway to the school is a good a warm-up; this way he can dive into the water with a certain guarantee of starting off at a respectable rhythm. When he begins to climb the escalator he doesn’t let the steps carry him to the surface, instead ascending them in a rush, five flights in all before he reaches the exit: his calves and quadriceps accumulate a sensation of lightness and warmth, his body begins to function.

  He steps out into the metallic light of the sky, gray and drizzly; he fills his lungs and exhales, knowing he’s headed from one form of water to another. He enjoys that perception of exterior humidity as his members start to stretch out in the pool, alternating kicks and strokes, while he observes the indoor picture windows where tall blurry figures watch the goings-on, the different lanes and the swimmers; surely they must be professors or parents, thinks Jonás, although at that hour the pool is populated only by those from outside, like him.

  Chapter 15

  How strange the mystery that occurs beneath the water, how subtle the level of perception attained by submerged limbs, what clarity is harbored in the temples, the respiration, the rib cage, like an internal water line. Since pushing open the school’s main door, since coming up on the ramp to the information desk and ticket booth, Jonás has felt sure that today he will only regain his composure once he’s in the water. He has taken care on the access ramp, lined with a rubber mat that does nothing to stop anyone from slipping—although that’s what it’s designed for—instead making the ramp more slippery, especially on rainy days, when dozens of shoe soles come in from the street covered in a tenuous layer of water, multiplying the effect as they enter into contact with the black surface. Jonás slows his step as he passes through the door: he’s always been weary of that potential misstep; he even leans back slightly as a sort of counterweight, though with this tactic he also runs the risk of tumbling backward. He overcomes this stretch, his right hand with a slightly more solid grasp on the strap of the backpack on his shoulder, his gait more decided; for a second, he has the impression that his performance in the
pool depends on his mood, on his motivation, not only as he walks through the hall but also as he changes, when he leaves his clothes hanging in the locker, his determination as he slips off his flip-flops, slings the towel round his neck and pulls on the cap. He can anticipate the unhurried rhythm of his body as he gains confidence in himself; he becomes increasingly comfortable, relaxing after he realizes that he’s not as exhausted as he thought, and the water, in any case, almost always has a surprise in store.

  To cross the complex, he has to walk down a short slope, with a laminated poster by way of a blackboard next to the locker room door, just below the clock across from the reception desk: a white rectangular announcement board which serves as the pool’s newspaper. One of the attendants has noted in black, red, and green markers the water temperature and pH, the humidity level, the analyses for algaecide (negative) and turbidity (null), conductivity and chlorine, typically low. It’s a slow dip: there is also a moment when his heartbeat decreases, when he can hear himself even better, all the outside noise has been extinguished and only the smooth, measured, and vigorous movement of his body exists, or at least that’s how things would be if he hadn’t arrived late, already tense, with the thought of his mother inside him like an air bubble straining his pulse, an urgent need to go out and look for her: again he hears the bleak tale told by his father, grim but not yet resigned, aching for his son’s response with an acute impotence. Later, as Jonás exercises, this too grows dim in his head and he reaches the bottom of that well, that rare silence of sharp strokes, of corporeal nothingness, like a slender stiletto of words progressively blurred.