Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer Page B

found it or no? In the place where it should have been there was a mountain of scrap metal,” he made the face Buonarroti would have made, or that I imagine Buonarroti would have made had he seen the Pietá smashed with hammers, “and it could have been in that heap. Sometimes it seemed to me it was, sometimes no. I was so depressed, I didn’t even know what to do. Meaning, I knew what I had to do but I didn’t know how: I had to find someone who would explain to me what had happened, but I also remembered how little importance the concierge had given to the part of my problem that he knew about—and that irritated me, yet at the same time suggested that everything was probably going to work out easily. I went to the bar in the port, I ate a few sandwiches that tasted like cardboard, I drank some very bad coffee and I pumped up my bad mood until it was pretty late at night. When I left the bar, instead of going to the taxi stand, I headed for the road and I started to walk feeling very sorry for myself. Around then it seemed to me the sun was rising, the sky turned an ugly gray and I had a sensation of unreality and even insecurity, as if I were about to lose my balance, but I didn’t pay any attention and I kept walking. It got dark again. I got tired. I sat down on the shoulder, I walked a couple of kilometers or maybe more. I didn’t pass a soul and that began to seem strange to me because I had seen earlier that it was a very busy road. When the sun came out for real, I saw the city far off and I had the hope that it had again become Welwyn. My fatigue passed and I picked up my pace. I saw the remains of a burnt truck on the side of the road that, although it had been smooth and new the day before, was quite damaged, full of cracks and potholes. I approached the city. Which, of course, was not Welwyn. Nor was it New York. It was a bombed-out city.”
    “I know what was happening.”
    “Not for nothing do you like Philip Dick. I’ll tell you, I do, too. But reading a novel or listening when someone tells you the story is one thing, and being thrust into the situation is quite another. I was in no mood that morning to be satisfied with explanations.”
    The Burgundy was very busy. Almost as if I, no, not I, almost as if Philip Dick had made it fashionable, but Marcos didn’t forget about Trafalgar. I stuck to the orange juice.
    “I started to see bunkers, trenches, the remains of more trucks and of tanks, too. And bodies. The country was burnt and not a tree remained and there were pieces of walls or some bit of tamped earth where perhaps there had been houses at some time. Someone called out from beyond the shoulder. I turned around and saw a tall, thin guy who was desperately making signs at me. ‘Careful! Duck!’ he yelled and he threw himself to the ground. I didn’t have time. Two military trucks appeared, braked beside me, and five armed soldiers got down and started to kick me around.”
    “I retract that about wanting to spend the summer on Uunu,” I said.
    “Many screwy things have happened to me,” said Trafalgar; I agreed silently, “but nothing like being knocked down with rifle butts at the side of a road after a sleepless night by some guys in scarlet uniforms appearing from who knows where and without you knowing why or having time to react and defend yourself.”
    “Scarlet uniforms? What an anachronism.”
    “The machine guns and bazookas they carried were no anachronism, I can assure you.”
    “Then the question of defending yourself was purely rhetorical.”
    “Well, yes. First they beat me to a pulp and then they asked who I was. I grabbed my documents but they stopped me short and the one giving the orders called over a soldier who searched me. They looked at everything, passport, identity card, even my driver’s license, and they halfway smiled and the head honcho said from up in the truck that they should execute me right then.”
    “It must be the eighteenth time you escape