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.
A group, larger this time, is gathered around the radio, there must be six or seven of them, packed in tight, trying to find out how things are going outside. I imagine they couldn’t possibly be worse: I have the strange feeling we’re alone. Somebody raises an arm with a closed fist, shaking it as though he’s celebrating something. Soria goes over to him and asks him a question, whispering in his ear, then he comes over and says—I don’t know if he’s talking to Albaredo or to me but it doesn’t matter—that an English helicopter fell into the water and a petty officer has died. Some people smile, happy, and I wonder if it’s good or bad, given the state of things, that an English helicopter has fallen into our sea. I turn around and head for the galley; maybe—to the English, anyway—the death of a petty officer doesn’t matter much. Now I’m walking past our head, the one for the petty officers, and I see Torres waiting outside because the head is occupied; he scratches his scalp, poor Torres, he must be struggling to hold it in because it’s his bad luck to be a petty officer and have to share the head with 27 others like him. I reach the galley and look for a little juice; the nurse is at the counter helping himself to some coffee. Lieutenant Rabellini walks in, rubbing the back of his neck, he says something about a terrible headache, then the nurse leaves his full pitcher on the counter and walks away, going for his satchel, I imagine, because Rabellini follows him. In the end I give up looking for the juice and return to the engine room. Torres is still waiting outside our head while the officers’ toilet is unoccupied.
Today several of the others are standing around the radio again, all of them silent, leaning over the device waiting for some news from outside. One of them straightens up, turns around, and says something about the English landing at South Georgia Island. Faces change, shrink: this time there’s no turning back. The one who delivered the news returns to the radio. More silence. Then he looks this way again and announces: The Santa Fe was captured and strafed near South Georgia. And that’s all, no message from the Submarine Forces, no order to indicate how this story is playing out, nothing to do but lower the antenna and dive once more at full speed. The Santa Fe strafed, there must be wounded, no doubt they’ve been taken prisoner, our comrades, prisoners, maybe someone’s dead; then I think of Mancuso and the dream I had about him, the boat tips as we descend. The Santa Fe’s out of circulation, someone behind me remarks, and the Santiago del Estero was in such bad shape that it probably never even left port. I return to Mancuso, I can’t get Mancuso out of my head, I go back to the bullet in Mancuso’s body, the last breath escaping from Mancuso’s body. Where are you now, old buddy? We’re alone, says one of the others, we’re alone down here, and he touches his shirt at chest level, right on the pocket where we all know he carries the photo of his mother. Almaraz opens his black leather notebook and tries to write something, leaning against the control room map table. Farther along, in one of the upper bunks, the cook looks at his wristwatch, closes the comic book he’s been reading, Tony this time, he places it under the pillow, climbs down, and sets out for the galley.
Finally a message today from the Submarine Force, but no one feels calmer. Make our presence known in the Malvinas area, and so in a little while, around midnight, we’ll start moving toward the islands. That means we’ll have to cross the exclusion zone set by the English. Several of us go to bed with our clothes on; we have to be ready in case they call us to our battle stations. From this point on water and electricity are severely restricted. I climb up to my bunk, fully dressed too; for days now I’ve been going to bed in my clothes. I arrange the pillow and once more think about Mancuso’s death, if that thing about Mancuso’s death was really a dream. If it wasn’t a dream—and I’m more and more convinced it wasn’t—if that wasn’t a dream, it’s likely that the others weren’t either, that somewhere down the line there’ll be a tiger waiting for Grunwald, a cadet who hears voices through the walls of the Navy Petty-Officers School of Mechanics, a taxi that Polski will drive through the streets of Mar del Plata, a grave with my name on it. Suddenly everything in here turns red: the night navigation light has just been turned on, and that gives the boat a ghostly appearance. I close my eyes to make everything go black, an opaque surface where I can project those images I thought I’d dreamed.
I’m sitting at the aft table with a book I found somewhere, old, yellowing, missing a cover, who knows how it made its way onto the boat, but you’ve got to do something while you wait, especially when you’re not on duty, so I read the story of a creature that’s just finished building his den deep in the earth; next to me, Almaraz writes in his black-covered notebook, from here I can make out a few phrases: We leave today at 0:00 hours, soon we’ll enter the two-hundred mile zone that’s under English control. Opposite me, on the other side of the table, Nobrega is drawing on legal-size paper with a very soft black pencil, retouching the shading on the figure of a beautiful, curvy woman; many of the others are sleeping; Grunwald, on the bench next to the torpedo launchers, is working with pliers and a piece of steel wire; Heredia is cutting strips from a burlap bag that just a few days ago held potatoes, but they’re gone now, all we eat now are dried foods that need to be rehydrated; my animal, the animal in my book, runs through the tangled tunnels of his lair and reaches the center, the storeroom for provisions, but he can’t keep still and he destroys walls and builds new tunnels. The computer is still broken, Almaraz notes, as he stares at the torpedo launchers, with the pencil suspended between his fingers and resting against his mouth. Nobrega prints in capital block letters in the empty space on the page above the woman’s head: I’M WAITING FOR YOU; Grunwald maneuvers the pliers and turns the obedient wire into a small circle with a stub on one side and the rest of the wire, still unbent, at the other; Heredia has grabbed a monkey wrench and is wrapping the handle with one of the burlap strips he’s just cut. I go back to my book; the animal rubs his forehead against the dirt wall of the enclosure to smooth and harden the structure till his skin bleeds: the damn animal seems crazy. Radio Colonia talks about an English attack on the Malvinas any moment now, writes Almaraz in his notebook, and once more he raises his head and gazes at the torpedo launchers. DON’T MAKE NOISE WHEN YOU’RE AT SEA, Nobrega has written on the poster of the woman, this time on the right side of the sheet, which was empty, and now he goes over and over each letter, darkening them with his pencil. Grunwald puts the finishing touches on his wire construction, a pair of eyeglasses that look like John Lennon’s, and he tries them on; his pale blue eyes shine, sparkle: So? What do you think? he asks; Almaraz stares at him, smiles, You’re a real wacko, he replies. Soria shows up inside his life jacket, holding a pitcher of steaming coffee, which he deposits on the table just as Nobrega adds to the poster: YOU DECIDE, beneath the woman’s bare feet; Heredia leaves the wrench with the wrapped handle in a tool box on his right and takes another wrench from a box on his left, then he picks up another burlap strip and begins to roll it around the naked handle of the naked tool; Grunwald struts around in his little wire glasses, making exaggerated gestures. Soria watches him and smiles, it’s the first time I’ve seen Soria smile since we weighed anchor; Almaraz jots down something else in his notebook, and I return to the animal who is piling up the pieces he’s hunted in the central part of his den and gloating over the smell of the pile of meat; Nobrega draws something on another sheet of legal paper, at first it looks like a skull. Almaraz closes the notebook and tucks it away, along with the pencil, in one of the top pockets of his blue shirt; Soria has walked over to Grunwald, who puts the wire glasses on his nose, and pats him on the back; you look like a bookworm, he says, laughing; my animal runs back and forth, digs, carries, sighs, yawns, stumbles; Nobrega’s sketch, which he now retouches and shades in, looks like the outline of a skull; Almaraz gets up from the table and heads for the galley; Heredia keeps plugging away at his task of wrapping tool handles; Cuéllar comes over to the table with another pitcher of coffee; he stands there watching the scene between Grunwald and Soria with those useless glasses; Nobrega writes I’M WAITING FOR YOU on the sketch; I close my book and watch him; MAKE NOISE WHEN YOU’RE AT SEA, he’s added. Why are you doing that, man? Cuéllar asks Heredia, who keeps on rolling ragged strips around the tools; to muffle the noise when we use them, and especially if they capture us. Che, Bighead, c’mon Cuéllar, Nobrega interrupts, would you put that drawing over there in the control room for me? The one of the woman? Cuéllar asks; yeah, the one of the woman, replies Nobrega as he darkens the letters on the second poster. No, says Grunwald, moving toward the table, send the guys in the control room the one with the skull, and leave us the one with the woman. Okay, says Nobrega, put it over there near the torpedo control panel, then shhh, goes someone from the control room; everybody falls silent. My animal tries to decide whether or not he should leave the den; I close the book, leaving the creature alone while he makes up his mind, and I set out for my bunk; I’ll either read for a while or I’ll fall asleep. As I climb up, I feel my feet all damp and cold, their usual condition ever since I’ve been here.