Patricia Ratto: Proceed with Caution: Stories and a Novella

Air circulation has stopped, and the absence of that faint, familiar, constant noise throws me into a state of alarm and awakens me; I sit up and look toward the sonar; the three sonar operators are there, a sign that they’ve detected something. It seems to be coming from the two ships that were on their way to Puerto Argentino earlier, comments Heredia as he crosses in front of me, loping toward the torpedo area. I stand and listen to the CO order a course that will cut off the enemy’s retreat and also issue an order to pass out life jackets. Olivero is in charge of the life jackets, which are stored at the bow, in the row of cots that were left assembled, and now he starts handing them out, starting at the bow and moving toward the area of the disassembled cots where I am—I don’t want one, I don’t think they’ll do us any good if a torpedo hits us—he keeps distributing them near the command post, all the officers put on their life jackets, the CO refuses with a shake of his head—he hasn’t used one in all the time we’ve been crossing and he’s not about to use one now, and he heads for the periscope, most likely in order to spot enemy targets. Olivero walks toward the fire control computer, about to hand a life jacket to Marini, who he hasn’t spoken to since they boarded the sub that foggy Sunday when we weighed anchor. When he reaches the computer, he stops next to the seat Marini occupies at the monitor; he taps him on the shoulder, Marini turns his head and watches as Olivero unties a little bag he wears knotted to his belt. They’re chocolate bars, Olivero says to him, try not to get them wet, they’ll come in handy if we have to disembark; Marini stands up and keeps staring at him, he seems surprised, as if he doesn’t exactly know what to do; suddenly he gives Olivero a hug and hears Olivero say: What assholes we were, right? I hear him, too, and stand there watching how they disentangle themselves from that embrace and how Olivero hands Marini the lifejacket, which Marini accepts with a smile. Now Olivero continues with the distribution, moving toward the sonar area; then he’ll go on toward the control compartment, and finally toward the engine room. The night is too dark, says someone passing nearby on his way to the officers’ cabin, his face concealed by the periscope. Since it’s not my shift in the engine room, I set out for the bow; Grunwald and Heredia are once again sitting on the bench near the torpedo launchers, both of them in lifejackets. Grunwald is wearing the little wire glasses, Heredia has a rosary dangling from his neck; Olivero shows up, having finished handing out the lifejackets; we’re within firing range now, between the two ships, an ideal location, he remarks; it looks like one of them is a missile boat, and just as he says it I see the dead: they’re floating in the frozen, gray sea, around twenty of them, and behind them is a seriously damaged Argentine ship, fuming its defeat into the equally gray sky. Movement in the torpedo area jostles me out of these imaginings, two lights flicker on the screen next to the torpedo launchers, number one and number eight; that means we need to prepare two SST-4 torpedoes for launching; Olivero and somebody else flood tubes one and eight, the air comes out of the tubes and a little water spills out, the outside door opens; they’re probably working at the command post to coordinate data, another light goes on, indicating that the doors of torpedo launchers one and eight are open, Olivero activates one of the lights, then the other, to notify the command post that the torpedoes are ready. The CO issues the order to fire number one, I imagine Marini at this moment pressing the computer button to fire it off, you can hear the torpedo’s engine revving up, but seconds go by and the computer doesn’t fire, while a couple of men work quickly to stop it, the CO gives the order to fire the other readied torpedo, the engine starts up, you can hear the buzz it makes as it slides along the torpedo launcher, its fall into the water, the slightest pause, the beginning of its trajectory. Luckily the torpedo that failed has been deactivated, or it would have exploded, along with us, here inside. Grunwald looks at his watch through his empty glasses, Heredia, in turn, stares at him gazing at the watch, Olivero observes both of them; I turn toward the bow and see the rest of the crew looking this way, toward the valves of the activated torpedo launcher, their eyes fixed on it, as if by all of them looking at the same point they might achieve a concentration of will that could hit the target and explode these unpredictable torpedoes that up to now have done nothing but fail us. One minute, Grunwald shouts, and after that brief phrase, silence; a couple of meters forward, the cook, sitting on the floor, reads another comic book, and I think that in one of the drawings I can see the floating dead, and in the panel following that one, a burning ship, THE ISLA DE LOS ESTADOS SINKS, announce the upper-case letters that I can’t quite see from here, but can guess; two minutes, Grunwald says, Heredia clasps the cross on his rosary with one hand and I find myself looking at the poster Nobrega drew a few days ago, from there the woman looks back at me, framed by her long, blond hair; the cook turns the page to keep reading, I hear “the torpedo cut the wire, sir,” over the fire control console, two minutes thirty, Grunwald pronounces; it’s too soon, Olivero mutters in a very faint voice, stating what we all know, or maybe he didn’t really say it, he’s thought it but kept his mouth shut; in this state of silence and these brushes with death, it sometimes happens that I hear everything that the others seem to hear, the others’ voices, what they’re going to say and never say. Then there’s a crash of sheet metal, as if someone is striking a giant gong, the gong from the Rank Organization films I used to watch with my father when I was a boy, about war, about con-BOYS, as my old man used to call cowboys, with an “n” and stressing the last syllable, but there’s no explosion: the torpedo has hit the target without exploding; fucking torpedoes, everyone shouts with their mouths closed, they shout it in their heads, in the midst of a sea of curses, motherfucking torpedoes, to be here and be unable to do anything, to be here and accomplish nothing, nothing. Somebody next to me snorts the air of his disappointment; a tear rolls down the cook’s face; he stops it with his blue shirt cuff and conceals the action by turning his eyes to the magazine again; Ships retreating, sir, Elizalde announces from the sonar area, and we all know—even though nobody says so—that it will be impossible to catch up with them. In any case that doesn’t make us feel any better: even if these two ships don’t attack us, they’ll report our position and soon they’ll come after us.

I bring my book over to the table at the bow, settle myself in, open it, but instead of reading, I sit there watching what Almaraz is writing in his black notebook: the CO sent a wire where he explained everything. This afternoon they replied, ordering us to return. We’re to arrive at Puerto Belgrano on the nineteenth at 2 AM. The Executive Officer must be happy we’re going back, Heredia remarks; I, on the other hand, am really angry that we’re leaving just like that; Nobrega pulls up to the table with paper and pencil in hand, sits in the empty place that was left next to Heredia, but that’s where they’re fixing the computer and the engine, so we go back. Soon those Brits will get what’s coming to them! Grunwald promises, smiling; I don’t know, I think we all have that bitter taste in our mouths, right? pipes up Almaraz, who’s stopped writing and now closes his black notebook; Nobrega gets ready to sketch; Yeah, Heredia says, we’re returning with the feeling that all the stuff we went through was totally useless; Nobrega raises his eyes from the sheet of paper and stares at it without offering an opinion; But we’ll never know it, locked up in here with no communication, we’ll soon find out what things are like, says Grunwald; Nobrega draws a line that twists and straightens and twists and folds back on itself; deep down, I think we all know what things are like, says Almaraz, and adds, turning to Heredia: At least think of this, you’re going to meet your son, and we’re going to see our loved ones, our families, and in a few days… now Nobrega retouches the line, giving it thickness and depth, as if he were drawing the wall of an endless labyrinth; Sure, sure, of course, Heredia replies, but first we have to get back, right? Then I return to my book; the animal complains that he no longer understands his earlier plan, he can’t find anything reasonable in it; Almaraz stashes the notebook in the pocket of his overalls and gets up from the table; Nobrega’s labyrinth becomes compact and gray; once more the animal abandons his labors as well as his eavesdropping task, he doesn’t want to discover that the noise is growing louder, he puts everything aside in order to try to calm his inner conflict; They’ll be looking for us, no doubt about it, Grunwald announces; meanwhile, the animal doesn’t know what he’s looking for, possibly just trying to buy himself a little more time. We’re going back, and I wonder how you can return to a place you no longer remember; ever since I woke up that day of the noise, everything seems to be limited to what happens in here, plus a few scraps of the past that my memory arbitrarily cuts short. Nobrega’s labyrinth is now dense and indecipherable, and it looks like it’s going to lift off from the paper.