Kamchatka (18 page)

The questions had to do with things we needed to find out. One of the subjects we needed to study was how locks worked, from the simplest to the most complicated, obviously focusing on padlocks. Another one was something mamá mentioned to me, the importance of calculating how long it would take me to escape from the chains or the ropes so I would know how much air there needed to be in the trunk. This note read: ‘
How much time?
'

Sometimes I'd find myself doing embarrassing things in front of Lucas, the sort of things I'd only ever do when I was with Bertuccio: picking my nose and wiping the snot on the nearest available surface, or staring at a photo of a girl in a bikini as though I could undress her with my eyes. I lost the ability to censor myself, maybe because Lucas was an easy-going guy and sometimes I'd come home and find him watching
Scooby Doo
with the Midget, both of them breathing through their Nesquik. Some things about him I found weird, like
him shaving every day (which was pointless since he didn't have a beard, apart from the four hairs on his chin which sprouted again, black as ever, after a couple of hours) or his obsession with reading the newspapers. These were grown-up things, but he did them with the same artlessness as he ran laps or read my
Dennis Martin
comics: Lucas never tried to hold back, except when we persisted in asking him the wrong questions.

In any case he gradually told us things, drip by drip. The stuff about his grandparents was true. They'd been to Europe and to Japan and they'd brought him back the knapsack and the T-shirt and a lot of other things. When he talked about them, his voice was more high-pitched, like he'd been breathing helium. His papá and his mamá still lived in La Plata, but he didn't see them anymore. Seeing in my eyes the question my lips refused to utter, he gave me the same explanation papá had given when he told me Bertuccio couldn't come to the
quinta
: he didn't visit his parents so as not to put them in danger.

He supported Estudiantes, but he wasn't really a football fan. And when all this was over, he planned to study medicine. He wanted to be a paediatrician. He'd had offers from lots of sports clubs to compete as an athlete, but he was indifferent to his abilities; he was flippant about them, as though he didn't want to be enslaved to a gift he hadn't asked for.

I kept up my exercise programme, and astonished my family not only by giving up fizzy drinks but by my sudden fondness for fruit. (Healthy eating was part of the plan.) But Lucas noticed that I was too impatient for his gradual plan and decided to speed things up a bit. He taught me some knots and showed me a technique for escaping: the knots he had learned while he was camping out. The technique was something he'd seen on TV and had managed to work out for himself. It involved being in complete control of your body while you were being tied up. If your wrists are being tied together,
you have to keep them stiff and not give in to the pressure of the knot. Once you're all tied up, you just relax your wrists and then you can wriggle one hand out of the ropes. The same thing works with the ankles and even the torso – you just puff out your chest and hold your breath while you're being tied up; then, when you breathe out, the volume of your body is reduced and the rope goes slack.

Lucas offered to demonstrate. In the tool shed there was an old length of rope. I tied his hands behind his back as tight as I could; I pulled and pulled until I thought I might hurt him. He didn't protest. When I'd finished, he turned around, took two steps back, his hands hidden behind his back.

‘How can you possibly like Superman?' he asked.

I stood, frozen. The concept that there were people who didn't like Superman had never occurred to me.

‘Why? Don't you like him?'

‘Not really, no.'

‘What's wrong with Superman?' I said, immediately defensive. The question was rhetorical, but Lucas took it seriously.

‘The colours of his costume are horrible,' he said quickly, as though he had a long list of things. ‘Bright red underpants? Please … ! And the stuff about his secret identity doesn't make sense. Why can't he just be Superman all the time? That way he could do twice as much justice. And the bad guys in
Superman
have no style – you can't compare Lex Luthor to the Joker or Catwoman, or the Penguin or Two-Face … !'

‘I knew it!' I said, pointing a trembling accusatory finger at him. ‘You're a
Batman
fan!'

‘Batman's a thousand times better!'

‘But he's got no superpowers!'

‘That's exactly why he's got style. Superman's powers are a gift from the gods. He's always the same; he's two-dimensional and never learns anything. Batman's just a guy like me or you. He suffered a
terrible tragedy when he was a kid and that's what makes him who he is now. Besides, he's a lot more intelligent. And he's more creative. And he's got a really cool car. And the Batcave is awesome.'

‘Superman's got the Fortress of Solitude.'

‘So what? He never uses it.'

‘He does use it!'

‘When?'

Silence.

‘When?'

I couldn't think of an answer. Maybe because I didn't have time.

Before I had a chance to open my mouth, he threw me the rope he'd just wriggled out of.

Whether it was from sheer resignation or whether I had adapted to my new environment, going to school ceased to be the torment it had been at first. I came to quite like San Roque school and was amused by the differences with ‘my' school back in Flores. At San Roque we had prayers at assembly every morning, we had the catechism class, we had different teachers for each subject, rather than one teacher who taught everything, and there were no women teachers. Some of the teachers were called ‘Father' and some of them were called ‘Brother', a distinction that, like the Midget, I never fully understood. A ‘Brother' is sort of like a doctor who's got his degree but decides not to do his residency: he's got the qualifications but he's not allowed to practise.

After a while I gave up my self-imposed boycott on learning. At first I only bothered to learn the absolute minimum, just enough not to get into trouble – the Vicente family had to be discreet and what better camouflage than academic mediocrity. But the teachers' enthusiasm for their subjects was contagious and the atmosphere, which was always friendly, made you want to get involved. One day I found that I'd put my hand up to ask a question. The teacher praised me for my curiosity and told me I could ask questions whenever I wanted. After that I left Hangman for break time, when Haroldo
Vicente would retreat into the shadows again, protected by his vow of silence.

The staff were a colourful collection of creatures. González, the school secretary, wandered around in a cloud of chalk-dust like a dragon breathing smoke. He was always the first to arrive and the last to leave – if he ever did leave – his whole life was San Roque. (Once a kid in seventh grade asked him the make of the tape recorder in the Secretary's Office and González said: ‘Automatic Rewind'. The biology teacher, who told us to call him Don Francisco, had an anthropological worldview summed up by the phrase: ‘Man is an animal that eats and excretes.' The maths teacher, Llamas, always wore the same clothes: a white teacher's gown with nothing but a vest underneath, even on frosty mornings. Señor Andrés, who taught Spanish, had a peculiar way of testing us on our lessons. He'd get us all to stand up with our backs to the wall, all around the classroom. He'd throw out a question and if a boy hesitated even for a second, he'd say ‘Next!' and pass the question over to the other side and the mortified boy had to go back to his seat: it was terrifying and exhilarating, like an intellectual version of dodgeball.

He was the youngest of the teachers, and the cleverest. Most people use their intelligence as a weapon, but Señor Andrés had the intelligence of someone who could have aimed high but had settled for a quiet life. As a result, he was always in a good mood and he loved to surprise us with strange facts, puzzles and stories with riddles that he would leave us to brood over. Language, he would say, is the sieve of human experience; we only understand something when we articulate it. As I tell this story now, I'm tempted to believe him.

What most intrigued me about Señor Andrés was the way he looked at me – eyes half-closed with a knowing smile – as though he knew more about me than I knew about myself. At the time, I assumed that Señor Andrés knew my secret and this was his way of letting me know that he knew. The fact that he tolerated my
apparent lack of interest only seemed to confirm my suspicion that Señor Andrés knew I was the victim and was making allowances for my extenuating circumstances. Now that I can articulate it, now that I am putting my story into words, I wonder whether Señor Andrés knew that all time occurs simultaneously; whether, when he looked at me, he could see not only who I was then, but who I would be; whether he saw not only Haroldo, but Kamchatka too.

In the olden days, teachers were venerated. People would walk for miles to hear them speak, in search of knowledge about the physical world or the laws of logic, about the humours of the body and the celestial sphere, about the cycles of nature or about ancient history, treasuring every word with the fervour of those who know that, unlike secular powers, wisdom does not decay with time. Other teachers, like the monks of Kildare, devoted themselves to the preservation of wisdom, convinced that no one could raise a building when the pillars have been lost, copying down their ancestors' every idea, every intuition – whether sacred or profane – in books filled with exquisite marginalia. (The path of wisdom through the Dark Ages, from the Greeks to the Arabs, and from the Arabs to the medieval copyists, is evidence of a tolerance among men, across epochs and between cultures that we would do well to learn from.) Others, with missionary zeal, brought their teachings to places where they believed they were needed, as though bringing the gift of fire to a world that has known only cold. Many of them accompanied colonial missions, but they cannot be held responsible for the destruction that followed; it would be unjust to blame Aristotle, who was his teacher, for the conquests of Alexander the Great.

My native country, Argentina, is going through its own Dark Ages. The land is owned by feudal lords, who keep for themselves the lion's share and pay tithes to some distant king. The streets are overrun by criminals stealing food they can get by no other means and by soldiers who claim to protect us. Our cities are filthy and
foul-smelling and in their darkest corners breed the germs of future epidemics. An army of indigents delves through piles of garbage looking for something to eat or something to trade. And hundreds of thousands of children eat little and badly, growing up frail, their minds prematurely exhausted while, on the other side of the fence, they watch as grain is harvested to be sent to mouths elsewhere.

These days I think a lot about the teachers at San Roque. They may have been a little plodding, but they erected an effective barrier against the violence of the outside world which never once crossed the threshold of the school; from other accounts, I know that at the time many schools degenerated into savagery, wielding the only language they knew to express themselves. I am certain that none of these teachers (except maybe Señor Andrés, though I couldn't swear to it) knew the effect they had on me. But I remember them: I see them in the teachers of today, whose barricades bear the scars of greater and more insidious battles. The fact that they go on working day after day is a constant affront to the powers of this world who foster ignorance, for they know that it is a prerequisite of their power: they need the stupid, the lazy, the docile.

The main reason that teachers these days are abused, paid paltry salaries and given chimerical tasks is different, more contemptible and as a result is never mentioned. A teacher is someone who chooses to spend his life nurturing in others the spark that was nurtured in him as a child, to give back what he received a hundredfold. To the powerful of this world – who as children were given whatever they wanted and now take whatever they want – the reasoning that underpins this selflessness is obscene. It is a mirror in which they do not want to see themselves, and so they smash it to spare themselves the shame.

At first my new classmates ignored me. Father Ruiz's speech had failed to take account of the unquestioned principle that governs juvenile societies: the newcomer, the ‘new boy' (as though he had just been born), is always a second-class citizen at least until he proves otherwise. Though they were not spiteful, my classmates observed this unwritten rule by ignoring and mocking me. At break time they would shout out the name of the game they were going to play, a game I was never invited to join, a performance with an audience of one. And at the beginning of the day, during roll call, one of them (always a different one, in that much they were organized) would wait until the teacher called ‘Vicente, Haroldo' and then whisper to me ‘Haroldo Vicente what?' as though I had two first names but no surname.

What gradually defused this charade was my uncommunicativeness. The usual reason such games are fun is because the ‘new boy' is desperate to be accepted. I, however, had several good reasons not to want to join their little tribe. I kept my distance –
in part, because of papá and mamá's insistence that I should not give anyone a clue that might lead to them finding out who we really were, which ruled out almost every subject of conversation. Even mentioning Superman might be a clue if someone went and talked to Fernández, the guy who ran the newsstand near my house in Flores, since he could attest that I religiously bought
Superman
comics every fortnight. In part it was sullenness. I felt cut off from my classmates in the same way that mystics and superheroes are cut off from the rest of humanity. I missed my old friends, who were a lot cooler than these guys. As far as I was concerned, none of the boys at San Roque was fit to tie Bertuccio's shoelaces. I spent my whole time comparing them to him: Bertuccio would never play a prank like that, Bertuccio is a much better player than he is, Bertuccio would never have got sent out of class, or if he was he'd go kicking and screaming until he had to be dragged by the scruff of the neck.