Alberto Barrera Tyszka - The Sickness

As regards his other patients, Andrés had spoken to Miguel, who promised to attend to them in case of emergency. Maricruz Fernández, another doctor at the hospital, had also undertaken to step in if necessary. He met with no objections from his family either: Mariana thought it an excellent idea, and the children, after some initial resistance, soon had to admit defeat: their father and grandfather would be traveling during the week, and the children couldn’t possibly miss school. His father was somewhat suspicious at first, but Andrés soon clarified any doubts he might have by saying that the trip was strictly a business matter: a company on the verge of bankruptcy was offering him a house in lieu of payment, and, thinking it might be a good investment, he’d decided to go and take a look at it, and then remembering the journey they’d made there together all those years before, he’d thought: why not repeat the experience?

Now he’s on the deck of the ferry looking back at the port. It’s so similar and so different from the image of himself in that same place and in that same position all those years ago. He has a faint smile on his lips. He’s amused by his own silliness, by the childish ploy of inventing a house and a bankrupt company; there’s something about the lie that delights him: it’s the blithe uncertainty, the not knowing how or when he will continue the lie or make it real or where he will find such a house, and just how he will disentangle himself from the fantasy that is serving as the reason for the trip. Andrés rests both arms on the ship’s rail and watches as the port of La Guaira grows gradually smaller. The horizon is the only reliable measure of speed, and that horizon, growing ever more blurred and diffuse, is the only sign of reality he now has. The boat is too large a piece of machinery for him to be able to tell whether it’s really moving or not, or if, like a dog, dizzy with salt and seawater, it’s going round and round in circles on the waves. Only the horizon changes, by disappearing.

“What are you thinking about?” His father has come back from the bathroom and joins him at the rail.

“Oh, nothing. I was just looking at the sea. Would you like a beer?”

His father says he would and they both make their way to the bar. The ferry is almost empty, apart from a few German tourists, who always look slightly lost, as if someone had tricked them, as if Venezuela were a geographical error, a mistake in their Berlin travel agent’s pamphlet. One of the tables inside is occupied by a man and a woman. Andrés had noticed them when they boarded the ferry. She is a good-looking mulatta of about thirty, with straight hair and a slightly sad expression. She’s wearing a pair of beige shorts and a white sleeveless T-shirt that barely contains her small, firm breasts. The man is a classic fat guy, with the typical belly of a forty-something male who spends more time drinking beer than doing sit-ups. In fact, he’s drinking a beer right now. He’s also glued to his cell phone and talking in a very loud voice, moving about in his chair, making grandiloquent gestures, and looking scornfully at the woman, as if she were a nuisance, as if being with her were a tiresome duty. His attitude is so blatant that Andrés begins to wonder if he’s actually talking to anyone. He speaks so loudly, issuing orders and instructions, as if he were addressing employees, mere subordinates. He never receives any calls. As soon as he ends one call, he immediately dials another number and recommences his brief routine: he gets to his feet, paces up and down, beating the air with one hand, projecting his voice and generally strutting about, with the clear intention of being noticed and heard by other people. He shows no hint of embarrassment and never lowers his voice. Andrés concludes that the whole thing is an act, an act that the woman finds harder and harder to bear, which is why she has that melancholy look tattooed on her face; she clearly does feel embarrassed and probably thinks this must be obvious to anyone. Perhaps she’s thinking that her husband, boyfriend, partner, or whatever is making a complete fool of himself. At one point, when he’s some distance away, he shouts something to her that Andrés doesn’t quite catch, and then he realizes that the fat guy has ordered her to go and buy him another beer. He’s gripping his cell phone in his right hand and the empty can in his left. The cell phone survives, but the can is crushed, crumpled and hurled into the sea.

“Do you mind having to travel by ferry?”

His father feels guilty: the only reason they’re on this five-hour boat trip is because of him and his phobias. If he wasn’t still so afraid of flying, they could have made the same journey by plane, gliding through the air for a mere thirty minutes. Andrés tells him it doesn’t matter, it’s fine, they’re in no hurry, besides, he’s enjoying being back on a ferry. Javier Miranda isn’t so sure and thinks his son is just saying this to keep him quiet. Not that he minds; in fact, he’s very grateful. His fear of flying is far greater than any other fear. He can’t control it. He feels that he couldn’t even step onto a landing strip without trembling. He imagines he would turn blue, that his lips would swell up, and he’d feel a sharp pain in his cheekbones, as if his eyes were trying to escape into his body. The mere image of a plane in the air is enough to make him feel sick. He needs to think about something else.

“The last time we made this trip, your mother had just died,” he says.

“Yes, I know. You wanted to take my mind off things,” replies Andrés. “You wanted to get me out of the apartment. That’s why we came.”

Then Javier thinks that perhaps they’re doing the same again, only in reverse. It takes him a while to unravel that sentence, although he understood it perfectly well when he thought it: they’re making the same journey, but this time, perhaps it’s Andrés, his son, who’s trying to take his mind off things. Can this be true? It’s a question he doesn’t dare ask himself.

When they can just make out the port of Punta de Piedras, when it’s still only a smudge of shadow sewn onto the bottom of the sky, the fat guy asks the woman to get him another beer. Now everyone is out on deck. Most of the few passengers gather at the front of the boat and watch the coast, their next fixed destination, coming nearer. A boy is shouting insistently at the sea, the same word over and over: dolphins! He elongates the vowels, stretches them out until they squeak: Dooolphiiins! And then he whistles to them. Perhaps someone has told him that dolphins are like dogs. At any rate, the boy shouts at them as if he believed they were. He shouts at his parents too, protesting, complaining that during the whole trip, they haven’t seen a single memorable sea creature. Not a whale, not a tuna, not a dolphin.

“You lied to me!” he screams.

His parents look thoroughly fed up and, as if their son were the responsibility of the other passengers, go back inside, leaving the child on deck.

“We’ll be right back, Roberto,” they say.

“Dooolphiiins!”

Andrés goes inside too. The truth is he’s intrigued by the woman with the fat guy. On the pretext of getting a coffee, he heads toward the covered part of the boat. His father stays outside, staring at the horizon, at the fringe of land that is still no more than a mist, a distant stain. The interior of the boat is air-conditioned, but it still doesn’t make things very cool, or at least not cool enough. There are flies as well, buzzing unsteadily about, almost as if they were giddy; they drift drowsily around in the middle of the room. It occurs to Andrés that the boy on deck would be better off looking for flies rather than dolphins. But he forgets the thought at once when he approaches the bar where the woman is waiting for the beer she’s ordered. He leans on the bar next to her and smiles, trying to be friendly. He’s suddenly filled by a sense of the ridiculous: how many years has it been since he did something like this? He doesn’t want to seduce the woman, simply to play at seducing her, to flex his flirting muscles and return to a gym he hasn’t visited in a long time. The woman smiles back. It seems to Andrés, however, that the smile is just a smile, and so he says nothing. A few seconds pass, then Andrés gives a half yawn, a fairly bad imitation, but he can’t do any better, and he smiles again. He orders a coffee. He waits a few seconds more, looking at the woman out of the corner of his eye before attempting to start a conversation: