I replied calmly:
‘An automatic meteor signalling device, and a machine that prints what you dictate to it. I have a letter of congratulation here from Ricaldoni the physicist.’
This aroused the curiosity of the three bored officers, and I realised I had got their attention.
‘All right, sit down,’ one of the lieutenants said, looking me over from head to toe. ‘Explain your famous inventions to us. What were they, again?’
‘An automatic meteor signalling device, sir.’
I leant against the table, supporting myself with my arms, and looked with what I thought was an investigative gaze at the faces with their hard lines and inquisitive eyes, three weather-beaten faces belonging to men used to dominate other men, faces that looked at me with half-curious, half-ironic expressions. And in that moment, just before I began to speak, I thought about the heroes of my favourite books, especially Rocambole: Rocambole with his rubber-visored cap and the rogue’s smile on his twisted lips passed in front of my eyes, pushing me onwards to be confident and strike a heroic pose.
Comforted, sure that I would make no mistakes, I said:
‘Sirs: you know that selenium is a conductor when it is exposed to light, and an insulator in the dark. The signalling device is nothing more than a selenium cell connected to an electromagnet. When the meteor passes over the selenium element, it would trigger a signal, the light of the meteor, concentrated via a concave lens, would turn the selenium into a conductor.’
‘Very good. And the writing machine?’
‘The theory is as follows. In a telephone, sound is converted into an electromagnetic wave. If we use a tangent galvanometer to measure the electrical intensity of each vowel and consonant, then we can calculate the number of ampere-turns needed to make an electronic keyboard that would respond to the electrical intensity of each sound.’
The lieutenant’s frown deepened.
‘It’s not a bad idea, but you aren’t taking into account the difficulty of creating electromagnets that would respond to such small electric variations, and that’s even before you start to think about the different types of voice that there are, or else residual magnetism; another problem, even more serious, the worst, perhaps, is how you make each individual current travel to the correct electromagnet. But have you got Ricaldoni’s letter there?’
The lieutenant bent over it; afterwards he handed it to the other officers and spoke to me:
‘Have you seen it? The problems I noticed have been picked up by Ricaldoni as well. But your idea in principle is very interesting. I know Ricaldoni. He was my teacher. He’s a clever man.’
‘Yes, short and fat, pretty fat.’
‘Would you like to pour yourself a vermouth?’ the captain offered with a smile.
‘Thank you, sir. I don’t drink.’
‘Do you know anything about mechanics?’
‘A bit. Kinematics… dynamics… steam engines and combustion engines; crude oil engines as well. I’ve studied chemistry and explosives too, which is an interesting topic.’
‘Yes it is. What do you know about explosives?’
‘Ask me anything,’ I replied with a smile.
‘Okay, well then, what are fulminates?’
This was beginning to look like an exam, and I replied with an air of wisdom:
‘Captain Cundill, in his Dictionary of Explosives, says that fulminates are the metallic salts of a hypothetical acid called hydrogen fulminate. They can be simple or double.’
‘All right, all right, give me an example of a double fulminate.’
‘Copper fulminate, which forms as green crystals produced when mercury fulminate, a simple fulminate, is boiled with water and copper.’
‘He knows a lot, this kid. How old are you?’
‘Sixteen, sir.’
‘Sixteen?’
‘Are you listening to this, captain? This kid’s got a great future ahead of him. How about we talk to Captain Márquez? It’d be a shame if we couldn’t accept him.’
‘It would indeed.’ The officer from the engineer corps turned to me.
‘Where the devil have you studied all of this?’
‘All over, sir. I don’t know, I go out into the street and I see a machine I don’t know anything about in a workshop somewhere. I stop, and say to myself as I look at the different parts that this bit must work like this, and this bit must do that. And after I’ve made my deductions I go into the shop and ask, and believe me, I’m very rarely wrong. Also, I’ve got a pretty good library, and if I’m not studying mechanics then I study literature.’
‘What?’ The captain interrupted. ‘Literature as well?’
‘Yes, sir, and I’ve got the best authors: Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Baroja.’
‘Che, he’s not an anarchist, is he?’
‘No, sir. I am not an anarchist. But I like to study and to read.’
‘And what does your father think about all of this?’
‘My father killed himself when I was very young.’
They fell suddenly quiet. The three officers looked at me and at each other.
The wind outside whistled, and my brow furrowed even more.
The captain stood up and so did I.
‘Look, buddy, congratulations, come by tomorrow. I’ll try to speak to Captain Márquez tonight, because you deserve a shot. This is what the Argentinian army needs. Kids who want to study.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Tomorrow, if you want to come by, I’ll be happy to see you. Ask for Captain Bossi.’
Heavy with so much happiness, I took my leave.
Now I walked through the shadows, leapt over the fences, with a resonant feeling of courage within me.
Now more than ever I felt that I was to use my existence to fulfil some grand destiny. I could be an engineer like Edison, a general like Napoleon, a poet like Baudelaire, a demon like Rocambole.
I was in the seventh heaven. Because I had won the praise of grown men, I spent nights so overcome with joy that my blood beat against my heart for happiness, and I thought that I was being carried across the world on the shoulders of my happiness, like a symbol of youth.
I think they chose thirty apprentices to study aviation mechanics out of two hundred applicants.
It was a grey morning. The rough field stretched out into the distance. A nameless punishment oozed from its grey-green monotony.
We passed by the closed hangars accompanied by a sergeant, and got into our overalls in the barracks.
It was drizzling, but despite the drizzle we were taken to do exercises on a patch of scrubland behind the canteen.
It wasn’t difficult. As I obeyed the commands given by the voice I allowed the indifferent expanse of the plain to enter into me. This hypnotised my body, letting all the difficult work happen independent of me.
I thought:
‘If she could see me now, what would she think?’
Sweetly, like a shadow on a moonlit wall, I went back over everything to do with her, and in a distant dusk I saw the imploring image of the girl, motionless next to the poplar tree.
‘Let’s see some movement, recruit,’ the corporal shouted at me.
When it was time to eat, splashing through the mud, we went up to the stinking mess-pots. Green firewood was smoking under the pots. We stood close together and held out our tin plates to the cook.
The man dipped his ladle into the swill and stuck a fork into the other pot, then we stood to one side to gobble down our food.
While I ate I remembered Don Gaetano and the cruel woman. And although they did not exist, I perceived huge expanses of time between my silent yesterday and my quavering present.
I thought:
‘Now that everything has changed, who am I in this too-large uniform?’