Patricia Ratto - Proceed with Caution - Stories and a Novella

We’ve been snorkeling now for a long time; several of the others are gathered around the periscope and the masts because that’s where the sea air, the fresh air, gets in; a few of them are smoking; all of them, those who smoke and those who don’t, look upward even though you can’t see anything, just feel the damp, icy, penetrating air of this sea against your face; I’m standing close by. Navarrete approaches, too, and remarks that they’re not receiving signals on the radar screen, so they’re going to retract the antenna to see what’s happening. There’s tension: whenever we snorkel, the sub becomes vulnerable, easier to spot, and besides, we have no radar now, which is one of the pieces of equipment that allow us to spot the enemy. They lower the antenna; some of the smokers move aside, Navarrete and Marini come over with tools and start checking it; it seems the receiver is broken. Even though it’s not time for my shift yet, I decide to go to the engine room to see what they’re doing, but no sooner do I take a couple of steps than a song hits me; in spite of the low volume, I think I recognize the voice of Joan Manuel Serrat— Which of my many loves will buy flowers for my funeral? —the voice grows louder as I approach, Who will take care of my dog? , and now, as I reach the control compartment, I run into Soria, who’s sitting in the helmsman’s seat, opposite Polski and Almaraz, each one in his seat at the horizontal rudders. Who will pay for my burial and a metal cross? On his knees, like a curled-up cat, Soria has his little tape recorder with its colored keys that reproduces the Catalonian singer’s voice, Who will lie down in my bed, wear my pajamas, and support my wife? Damn, I say to myself, it’s as if the guy was here among us saying what we’re all thinking, Who will that good friend be, the one who’ll die with me, even a little? Polski draws spirals on his thigh with his index finger, on top of the wrinkled cloth of his blue pants; Almaraz adjusts the beret he’s wearing today and strokes his beard; Soria moves the little metal extension on one of the open buckles of his life jacket up and down; Who will finish my diary … all three of them listen silently,… when the last page falls from my calendar? Some voices come up behind me; I turn toward the control room, the radar screen is registering signals, it seems they were able to fix the antenna, there’s no enemy in sight, the helmsman comes and occupies his place, the snorkel operation is over and we’re going to total immersion. Soria presses the black key, turns off his tape recorder, and stands, but the song still repeats in my head: Who will finish my diary…? Which will be the last page on my calendar?

I dream about Mancuso, Mancuso from the Santa Fe . He looks tired, very tired, with rage or worry; we did a few campaigns together and I know how his face looks when things aren’t going well. Someone’s coming, he’s coming in through the battery hatch at the stern, not one of our guys, he has a weapon in his belt and he stops a few feet away from Mancuso; the intruder’s eyes are too blue, and it seems like he’s watching him. It’s a silent dream, I can’t detect any sound at all, and that makes it terribly annoying. Suddenly the sub lists, Mancuso jumps up and starts to open one of the valves at port to avoid a disaster, but just then I see him slump over abruptly. The guy who isn’t one of ours looks at his drawn weapon in shock, two other guys show up in the same crisp uniforms as the one with the weapon, but I don’t see them anymore, just Mancuso’s face, lying on his side on the floor, with a grimace of rage, as if he had asked a question that no one will ever answer.

I dream about Marini, our fire control computer operator. I see him swimming, swimming desperately in a stormy sea, beside a brightly colored fishing boat, he paddles, picks up momentum, and dives, once more emerges, paddles, picks up momentum and dives again, as if he’s looking for someone, and so on for a time that feels maddening, eternal, to me, because I can see him from here but can’t do anything to help him. And then his arms no longer appear emerging from the water, I can’t see him anymore, only the sea, the sea, and the tiny boat whose colors slowly fade from my view.

I don’t know why I have these dreams that sometimes don’t seem like dreams, it’s as if I was living them, as if I could momentarily access another time and another place, as if all that was real, too.

I dream about Polski: I’m standing on a broken-up stretch of sidewalk and I see him driving a taxi; I motion for him to stop, I want to say hello, and besides, I urgently need for him to take me someplace, though I don’t yet know where, but he doesn’t stop, it’s as if he doesn’t see me, as if I’m not there, but I run after him anyway, I shout out his name and run behind the car for a couple of blocks, but in the end I lose sight of him down some dark little streets on the outskirts of Mar del Plata.

I dream again about Polski driving a taxi, but this time when the dream starts I’m inside the taxi; he’s picked me up as a passenger, but I have the feeling he doesn’t recognize me, I give him an address and he seems to nod in agreement, but after a few blocks I see that he’s taking a different route and we’re going, going, going, never stopping, not braking, not accelerating, as if the car was mounted on a conveyor belt: I look down and see that I’m wearing my boots, I’m absorbed, staring at the dent in the left toe, as we keep on going, till I lift my head and realize that we’re approaching the cemetery. Polski stops the car, turns around toward the passenger seat and sees me, he sees me and I understand that he knows who I am; we’re here, he announces. But I don’t want to get out of the taxi, not at a cemetery I didn’t ask to be taken to. And so I stay there, just looking down, absorbed by the dent in the tip of my boot, which is growing deeper, deeper and warmer and finally cozy.

Sometimes I dream of a circus, with a tent all made of more and more triangles of brightly-colored canvas, and edged with thousands of little electric lights; I dream, as if seeing all that from the air, flying over it. There’s some land behind the circus, and on it a cage with an enormous Bengal tiger that always paces from one side to the other, in a back-and-forth that falsely expands the space he doesn’t have, and, as I float a little lower and closer now, I see Grunwald, too, walking over to the cage and talking to the tiger as if the tiger was a person and could understand him, he talks to him and through the bars he offers him a huge chunk of meat; then the tiger approaches with his heavy, but silent, steps, stretches out his neck, brings his head over to the bars, spreads his jaws and bites the meat: Grunwald screams, it’s an automatic, piercing scream that lasts as long as it takes for him—also automatically—to pull his hand away, now bleeding and missing the thumb. Grunwald curses as he rips off his tee shirt and wraps the wound, and then I see it peeking out from underneath his tee shirt, creeping and obvious against his skin, a black line that grows and rises quickly, quickly, as though time were speeding up, it climbs up his arm without stopping, and I begin to fall in a spiral toward a void, also black, where nothing more remains: neither Grunwald nor the tiger nor the colored triangles of the circus tent, nor the little electric lights, nor me.

Other times I dream that someone, who I can’t identify because I see him from behind, is moving around the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics at night, groping, half-naked, as if just out of bed, the skinny body of a teenager gropes his way as though looking for something. Then he reaches a door, tries to open it but can’t, turns a little to his right and continues walking close to the wall; suddenly he stops, places his ear against the wall and listens, moves away, looks toward the door, comes back to rest his ear again, as if his extreme attention might scratch the wall in search of the echo of a voice or maybe a repeated moan; he listens once more. Now he quickly returns to the door, turns the doorknob in vain, the door won’t yield, he shakes it; he wants to get out of there, it seems, but the door remains closed, the lights go on, and the boy stands there quietly, petrified, his eyes fixed on the floor; the officer in charge of the school comes toward him, jostles him: you’re asleep, you’re sleepwalking, cadet, go back to bed and don’t let it happen again. Two other officers appear out of nowhere and take him away, subdued. Then I wake up and think I hear footsteps, but there’s no one walking here, it’s the bilge pump that keeps making noise and I can’t go back to sleep.