Patricia Ratto - Proceed with Caution - Stories and a Novella

It’s Sunday, somebody says, which means it’s already been a week since we weighed anchor. We’ve had no communications or news, we don’t know what’s happening outside. Today the technicians were working on the computer again, it seems there are operational problems that prevent us from calculating the torpedo launches precisely, leaving us helpless and hopelessly ridiculous. My shift is over, and before going off to take a nap, I go on a quest to recover my boots; I decide to return to the bunks in the red light district to see if someone has hidden them there again; it doesn’t seem likely they would choose the same place, but I can’t think of where else to begin, and so that’s where I’m going. There are noises in the galley, I peek in through the open door and see them, Almaraz and Polski, opening a couple of boxes of powder, one of them preparing to make cakes, the other cracking eggs, both of them standing before an enormous metal bowl. Now Polski uses a spoon to pry open the cover of the tin of powdered milk that sits on the counter, then—spoonful by spoonful—he transfers the white powder to a plastic measuring cup with lines to indicate measurements, adds water, stirs. Almaraz takes a huge pot from the pantry and places it on a burner. Now Polski beats the milk with the rest of the preparation. Almaraz greases a large mold, turns on the oven, dumps cocoa powder into the pot, adds several measures of powdered milk, a few tablespoons of sugar, then enough water to combine, stirs, lowers the flame under the pot, while Polski pours the batter into the greased mold and puts it in the oven. I continue walking toward the bow; there are a few people gathered there, playing truco again. At the same table Olivero writes something on some papers, concentrating hard; he writes and crosses out and writes again. Heredia asks them to let him know when they’re done, as Polski has put him in charge of cleaning and setting the table. I take advantage of the situation to slip unnoticed behind those who are sitting around the table, and suddenly I see them, in the same spot where I found them last time, both boots, their tips barely visible beneath the bunk’s drawn curtains. What a stupid joke, I say to myself, and suddenly the dark groove at the tip of the left boot reminds me—I don’t know why—of the Hyena’s grimace. We’re on a mission, sailing in the Lemere Canal, near the Picton Islands, at that time in conflict with Chile; it’s very shallow where we are, and the sonar tech reports that he can hear noise on the hydrophones that he thinks is a launch. The Hyena is the commanding officer and he’s taking us to a place where we shouldn’t be, so shallow that if it does turn out to be one of the Chilean torpedo boats patrolling the strait, it could destroy us even if it launched candies. At the sonar tech’s warning, the Hyena’s face wrinkles up, he turns even paler than usual, we all see the fear on his face and the fact that he doesn’t know what to do. Like every other day, he’s wearing his red bathrobe with the white scarf around his neck, acting for all the world like a German submarine captain from the Second World War. Suddenly, to our collective relief, the sonar tech announces: Sir, I classify the contact as a crabbing launch or a fishing boat. Then he half-collects himself and orders the periscope raised to confirm what the sonar tech petty officer has just announced, immediately followed by the order to lower periscope at full speed because the launch is getting closer, closer, it starts to pass over us, very nearby, continues on its way, still above us, till it passes by, starts moving away, away; we were lucky, that’s all, just a bit of luck. A few hours later, now out of the strait, we emerge: the Hyena, in his red robe and white scarf, peers out of the sub’s sail with a pair of binoculars. I stand there watching him as if all that were happening right now; suddenly a fog begins to cover him, a fog thick enough to hide his loud bathrobe and his bright scarf, though not solid enough to conceal his smile, which is now a laugh, a thunderous burst echoing inside the dark dent in my left boot. My boots! I grab the boots, I don’t know how much time has passed, sometimes I’m not fully aware of that, time turns elastic here, it goes by quickly or stops indefinitely, but the fact is that now the others have finished their card game and are gathering the cards together, tidying the table. Olivero picks up his papers, covered with strikeouts, folds them, and stores them, together with the ballpoint pen, in his jacket pocket; Heredia has returned from the galley with a damp dishrag, waiting for everybody to finish so he can start wiping down the table. Since they’re busy, I use their distraction to remove my jacket and wrap up my boots in it, and I slip away to my bed, wondering why the hell I’m so concerned with getting my boots back if I don’t wear them, if the joke is just an innocent detail in the midst of all we’ve living through, but there I go, making my way down the corridor, boots in hand. When I pass by the galley, Polski is taking the sponge cake out of the oven, Almaraz has put the pot on the countertop and is stirring the steaming chocolate with a wooden spoon, no doubt to avoid forming that kind of skin the milk forms on the surface when it cools. I keep moving till I reach my bed, where I lay the package with the boots, looking both ways as I think about where to hide them; two or three of the others are sleeping in their bunks; from one of them, behind the little corduroy curtain, you can hear Torres’ voice whispering, I’ll bet he’s recording a cassette for his girlfriend; Torres has a little tape recorder, half the size of the one Soria uses for listening to music; Soria’s always making jokes about that, telling Torres—referring to their tape recorders—that they’re father and son. I see Polski coming along toward the control room; I pretend to be straightening out the blanket and the jacket; Torres keeps talking to his girlfriend as if she were here, recording words he knows there’s no way she’ll receive. Polski returns with a sheet of lined paper and goes into the galley again; no one’s coming, so I take the jacket with the boots and head for the engine room. Now there are four men hunched over the fire control computer; it looks like they can’t figure out the problem and this is a big, scary deal. In the engine room Soria and Albaredo are busy with one of the engines and don’t even notice me, so I go ahead and hide my boots behind the convertor. When I leave the engine room, I see that the CO has joined the group around the computer, so I keep on going and run into the Executive Officer, who’s also headed there. Before joining this boat, the XO was chief engineer on the Santiago del Estero; one time I visited that sub because the bubble on ours was broken, and they sent me there to get the part because they had one on the Santiago del Estero. I go below, and when my eyes grow accustomed to the interior of the sub, I see people gathered in the periscope area; I start to move forward, but someone breaks away from the group, takes a couple of steps toward me and arrogantly says, Hey, you, what are you looking for? I try to explain, but he cuts me off before I can finish and says: Wait here, someone will help you. Now Maceda is the XO on this boat and he’s going toward the fire control computer. I try to be positive, not to worry, if each one does a good job with what he has to do… Then I sneeze and taka-taka-taka, taka-taka-taka-tak, again that damn noise, maybe I’ll go to the galley and get something hot, a nice cup of coffee will do me good, and then I’ll lie down to rest because by the time I remember, it’ll be my shift again. I leave the jacket on the bed and set out for the galley, the cake that was in the oven just a while ago now rests on a tray. I stand there, watching how Polski frosts it with dulce de leche and now he writes HAPPY BIRTHDAY NOBREGA with thick blue marker on a sheet of office paper, which a few minutes earlier he had brought to the galley from the control room, making a cone with it and pressing it into the thick frosting layer on the cake. He carries the tray with the cake on it toward the multiuse table in front of the torpedo area. I turn my eyes toward the galley counter in search of the coffeepot; with a large spoon, Almaraz is completing the process of pouring the hot chocolate into some cups on a tray; now he carefully picks up the tray and leaves. Heredia walks in, drops the dishrag in the sink, and walks out again, most likely also on his way to the bow. I decide it would be better not to take anything, the coffee will just keep me awake, so I leave the galley and for a few seconds I stand there in the doorway, hesitating, not quite knowing what to do. At the bow someone is giving out cups of hot chocolate; you can hear laughter; I finally head back to my bunk; someone else emerges from the galley carrying cider and glasses; I climb up into my bed and from there I can hear them being served, now they’re singing Happy birthday, happy birthday Nobrega, and many more, applause, some howling, the crowd is celebrating, spirits are high today after what happened yesterday, and I’d like to be a part of it, I’d like to be there, too, but I’m exhausted, with a weariness that drags me toward the dark pit of sleep. I look forward again, the others are posing for pictures, squeezed together around the table, somebody yells whiskey , then a click, applause, more laughter. I lie down just as I am; I don’t even feel like getting undressed; Torres has finished talking to his girlfriend and is coming down from his cot, still wearing his life jacket; Soria’s coming, also bundled up in his life jacket, he leaves the engine room and goes into the petty officers’ head; Torres walks over to the table where everyone is celebrating. I close my eyes and lose contact with my surroundings.