We’re sailing northward, always submerged and alert to every noise; we have to cross a zone we imagine to be loaded with English ships and subs, they’ve mapped a defeat for us that starts in the Malvinas and goes straight north, near Necochea, and from there we’ll have to go back hugging the coast, returning southward as far as Puerto Belgrano. Since we can’t shoot off those worthless torpedoes anymore, the CO has given the order to set up the bunks again, so several people are busy securing them in place and then picking up the mats, sheets, and blankets that are still on the floor. I gather up some sheets to help out a little, but they fall from my hands a couple of times, so I give up and leave to keep from getting in the way. I walk toward the torpedo area and sit on the bench opposite the instrument panel, I sit there staring at my hands, without feeling them; I bring my right hand to my eyes, raise it, and move it to my head; when we were cabin boys we didn’t wear sailors’ caps because we were too new and didn’t even know how to salute; whenever a superior passed by, we had to put our hand against our head to pretend we were covered; everybody was superior to us at the Naval Mechanics’ School, even the pigeons, and there were enough of those to be a real pain. Now I can’t feel my hand against my head, I move it down to stop it, with the palm turned inward, right before my eyes, and what I see is a map of slightly faded grooves.
Meanwhile the operator snorkels and some of the others take the opportunity to listen to Radio Carve. It seems an English warship was attacked by a torpedo that hit but didn’t explode, more or less in the area where we were; it might have been the torpedo we thought was lost. The others say they hear that the aircraft carrier Hermes won’t be received for repair in Curaçao; they also heard that the prisoners from the Santa Fe arrived today in Argentina from the South Georgia Islands. But we won’t know anything, really, till we get there. I think of Mancuso again. It won’t be long now, the others say; I’m sleepy nearly all the time, and, even though I sleep a lot, the days of this return trip seem long. So, to keep myself entertained, when this semi-permanent drowsiness I’ve fallen into lets up or a few moments, I go back to reading my book, the ridiculous digressions of the animal in his den, who lately has caught on to the fact that the other threatening thing, which he doesn’t understand and which he sometimes calls a noise and sometimes an animal, seems to have a plan whose meaning he can’t figure out; then he surrounds the noise, digging circles around it because he understands that the fact that the noise comes back louder each time means that the circles are growing narrower and that the other thing is coming ever closer.
Today is Navy Day, one of the others remarks, and that phrase—coming from nearby, though I can’t say exactly from where—rouses me; we’re nearly opposite Necochea, the voice adds, so now we’re starting to turn south. I had fallen asleep with the book open on my chest; now I close it and stand with the intention of getting up and walking a little to see what’s going on; we’ll be emerging shortly and will travel on the surface till we arrive in port. Book in hand, I gather momentum and scramble down from my bunk just as the jar of capers, which obviously had been in my bed and which I might have accidentally pushed with my numb feet, rolls with a dull noise into a jacket that’s fallen from another bunk, and comes to a halt at the feet of someone passing by. This jar again? It’s a miracle it didn’t break, says one of the others, startled by the noise and poking his head out from a bunk on the other side of the corridor; it’s been rolling around from one place to another; why doesn’t somebody take it to the galley? I did, replies the guy who had been walking down the corridor a moment ago and who now bends down and grabs the jar; I took it there but it showed up again somewhere or other, he adds as he heads to the galley with the jar and disappears behind the door. At that very moment, a few steps closer to me, someone comes out of the head bare-chested, a grease-stained towel rolled around his waist, on his way to the bunks, crossing paths with another guy going by, also bare-chested, but with a dry towel—or rather, as dry as a towel or anything else can be in here—a towel, at any rate, rolled around his waist. Most likely they’ve given him permission, and water, to wash himself, as we’ve nearly arrived. The grubbier one has disappeared behind the bathroom door; the recently bathed guy rummages through his belongings, I imagine in search of a clean change of clothes. I’ll stay here, says Soria, who has just drawn the curtains of his bunk and is now sitting up there, legs dangling, for the first time in weeks without his life vest; with all the filth I’m carrying around, I need liters and liters of water and at least one packet of Camello detergent. He pauses, and as nobody says anything, he continues: Besides, I’ve run out of clean clothes, I’ve got that new shirt they gave me when we left, it was so stiff that the first day I tried it on, it hurt my neck and I had to take it off. The guy who came out of the bathroom and is now changing, stares at him as he balances on one leg and sticks the other into a seemingly clean pair of blue overalls; he looks at Soria as if he’s trying to make a comment he can’t quite express in words; then Soria explains, in reply to that question, which didn’t need to be pronounced: That’s fine for you because you’re nice and comfortable sitting in front of the radio, but those of us who are in the engine room, stinking of diesel and with greasy hands… for us a little bit of water makes no difference. At last, taking long strides, I set out for the table at the bow; with all this commotion going on at the head, the place is pretty calm: Almaraz writes in his black notebook, Nobrega takes down the poster he drew a few weeks ago, which someone hung next to the torpedo indicator panel; he folds it in quarters and returns aft, possibly to take down the other poster, which at this point is no longer necessary.
I open my eyes, I’m in my bunk, there’s a faint glow from the night lights, and so I realize that it must be nighttime outside. I lie still in bed, a slight panting invades my space and I think I can tell that it’s coming from the bunk above mine; this is another way I can see that we’re heading back: people have started to think about things nobody thought about during those dangerous days. The panting grows in rhythm and intensity, and I wonder if I’m the only one who hears it; some of the bunk curtains are closed, others are open; I can see a few of the others from here, they’re sound asleep; I might be the only one who hears the sighs, the slight friction produced by the regular movement of the mattress against the upper bunk, like an owl’s shush, a shh, shh that repeats, shh, shh, and repeats. I close my eyes and little by little the noise turns into light, a light that grows brighter and more enveloping, and then I see the sub as if I were outside, flying above it, it’s skimming along the surface of the water, the crests of the waves forming to port and starboard glisten with phosphorescent edges that contrast with the black boat and the black sky, a milky wake that shines like a beam from an immeasurable lighthouse. I plunge into the light, I am the ship itself, making its way among the waters, through the pure, intense radiance; I let myself be carried along, as if the light sustains me, floating above it effortlessly, but now, suddenly, the sea recovers its dense, ordinary appearance and I am no longer the boat, I’m a man out here, standing in the conning tower, a man who turns his head and can see behind the boat and behind himself, all the way to the horizon, how the sky reflects the luminescence of the water that remains farther and farther behind us, slowing yielding to the darkness. I open my eyes, the night navigation light outlines my bunk and I realize that the panting has ended; a little creak—which I recognize as the curtain of the upper bunk being opened—suggests that the guy up there is going to come down; now I see a pair of feet wrapped in dark socks dangling a few inches from my face, but I choose to close my eyes in order to recapture that image I had of the outside. I try and try, but I can’t do it; it seems there’s nothing left; I persist, but I can’t get back, there’s not even a trace left of that calming, enveloping light, only the black void of what just a moment ago were empty glimmers.