I guess it’s dawn because we’re rising to periscope depth in order to snorkel. The sub is rocking, the sea must be rough on the surface; the sub veers from port to starboard, and immediately you can hear the noise of things falling, rolling, crashing, breaking, some glasses, maybe cups that weren’t stowed away in the galley. In the half-light of nighttime, the first mate gets up to see what’s happened. Suddenly I hear him grumble and swear; then I peek out from my bunk and see him lift his foot, maybe the right one, and grab his toes. The nurse, who also has gotten up because of the noise, goes to him and checks him out. I’m very drowsy and go back to sleep.
I’ve just finished my shift and leave the engine room for my bunk. On the way there I see the CO walking from the first periscope to his cabin. I take a few steps down the narrow passageway behind him, and when he reaches his cabin he suddenly turns around to go back the way he came. I stand aside to let him pass and take up my course again. I watch him go back and see that when he reaches the first periscope, he turns again to return to his cabin. I lower my eyes; it makes me uncomfortable to think that he may have caught me watching him, and so I continue walking toward the bunks as the CO once more arrives at his cabin, no doubt with the intention of turning yet again and walking back to the periscope. Standing in front of my bed, I discover that someone is lying in it. That happens sometimes, so I climb up to the top one, which is empty. Meanwhile I see Soria arrive, climb up, and collapse in his own bunk, at the same level as the one I’m in now, but on the opposite side of the passageway. I rearrange the pillow and lie down. Soria lies down too, and now he stretches his arm up in the air. There must be some 40 centimeters between him and the ceiling; everything is narrow here, compressed, and he’s passing his hand over the little photo he had placed in the slot. Forty centimeters to the ceiling, and then, tons of icy water, tons of ocean above my head, above the heads of the others, above the head of the CO as he comes and goes from the first periscope to his cabin and from his cabin to the first periscope, everyone under tons of water. I never stopped to think about this in spite of all the time I’ve been a submariner, never until now, maybe because now everything seems to be different. So much endless water out there, so many things together in the narrow space of this tube. The fluorescent lights go out, the night navigation lights go on. If not for that, it would be impossible to telclass="underline" there’s no day or night in here.
The little black curtain of the bunk beneath Soria’s moves: someone is opening it, he stands up and consults his watch: it’s Heredia, it must be time for his shift, they’re probably going to take advantage of the night to rise to snorkel altitude and do the venting. Heredia climbs out of his bunk, straightens the sheets a little, zips the case shut to cover everything, picks up the crate of apples that’s sitting on the lower bunk and places it on his bunk. For a moment he stands there looking at the fruit, and so do I, some of them wrapped in delicate, purple paper, others unwrapped, red and shiny, crossed by a few green streaks. And Heredia emerges slowly, walking toward the torpedo area. Apples, apples, one on top of another, next to one another, under one another, apples in an apple crate. We’re rising now; I can feel it in my body. Besides, the apple crate has slid a few centimeters sternward.
They’re playing truco on the aft table. Almaraz is writing in his little black notebook again, someone is drinking coffee, Polski smiles as he draws a cartoon of one of us on a piece of paper with the shield of the Argentine Navy. I pass behind the benches, circling around them, and suddenly I think I see—underneath the curtain separating the table from the bunks at stern, which we call the red light district—the tips of my boots. I think they’re my boots because one of them has a small, dark, curved nick at the tip, which I made some time ago. I don’t say anything. Either someone is playing a gag on me or else I must have left them there by mistake, because it was in this section that I fell asleep during the previous campaign. And yet I remember looking for them and not seeing them. Or maybe I just think I looked for them, but I only meant to, I don’t know: lately I’ve been getting things mixed up; it’s as if facts and thoughts have the same weight, as if everything is consistent, but at the same time slippery. No matter: just in case this was only a gag, I carefully pick up the boots and don’t say anything; once more I pass behind the card players and silently walk back to my bunk, placing them on top of it—resting against one of the edges of the bed—and I cover them with the blanket I sometimes use to cover my feet.
For a few days now we’ve had a certain noise; it comes from above, probably from someplace between the hull and the deck. When the sub rolls, the noise begins: taka-taka-taka, taka-taka-taka, tak, and then taka-taka-taka, taka-taka-taka, but we don’t know what causes it. Then it suddenly disappears and we don’t hear it again and we go on doing our usual thing. Today is clothes-changing day, and since we need to save water, the clothes aren’t washed, so all of us put our dirty stuff in a bag and someone adds rocks, too, the rocks that were loaded on board specifically to act as ballast when they throw the filled bags out the garbage ejector at the stern. Nobody wants them to float to the top for the Brits to discover, so that’s why the rocks, to leave our dirty rags at the bottom of the sea. Taka-taka-taka, taka-taka-taka, here comes the noise again. I hope someone will decide to do something, though surfacing at a time like this would mean revealing our presence, taka-taka-taka, taka-taka-taka-tak. The noise, that noise—sooner or later it’s going to give us away.
I watch Soria and Torres work; for days now they’ve been wearing their life jackets all the time. A submariner’s life jacket has its special features: an inflatable part that goes around the neck, and on the chest a metal sheet under which there’s a bottle with gas that’s used to fill up the inflatable part, in addition to a series of straps and loops to adjust it to the body. Well, it’s obvious this isn’t exactly the most comfortable thing in the world. All day and all night Torres and Soria wear their life jackets for doing their work as machinists, for eating, for sleeping, for taking a shit. They’re afraid, though if not for the life jackets, nobody would notice their fear because they keep doing what they have to do like the rest of us. Now they’re calling us to our stations; it’s a drill so that we’ll be prepared in case the day comes when we really do have to man the battle stations. I see Olivero pass behind Marini, who’s standing in front of the fire control computer; Olivero advances, his head hanging, maybe as a precaution to avoid exchanging looks with Marini in case he should accidentally turn around. Ever since we started the campaign they haven’t been talking to each other; they were always good friends, but now they avoid one another all the time. Something must have happened between them. Marini sits down in the computer operator’s seat; we all occupy our stations, Torres and Soria with their life jackets on their backs. The tension has grown, you can tell by certain gestures; I, on the other hand, feel fairly calm even though I can’t really explain why.