Mouthful of Birds(13)

“There’s no problem with you leaving the hole?” I asked.

The digger stopped.

“Would you rather I go back?”

“No, no, I’m just asking.”

“It’s just that if anything happened”—he seemed poised to go back to the hole—“it would be terrible, sir.”

“Terrible? What could happen?”

“Just got to keep digging.”

“Why?”

He looked at the sky, first to one side, then the other.

“Well, don’t worry.” I went on walking. “Come with me.”

The digger followed me, hesitant.

Once at the beach, a few yards from the sea, I sat down to take off my shoes and socks. The man sat next to me, put his shovel aside, and took off his boots.

“Do you know how to swim?” I asked. “Why don’t you come in with me?”

“No, sir. I’ll just watch, if you don’t mind. And I brought the shovel, in case you come up with a new plan.”

I stood up and walked toward the sea. The water was cold, but I knew the man was watching me and I didn’t want to back out.

When I returned, the digger wasn’t there.

With a doomed feeling, I looked for footprints heading toward the water in case he had followed my suggestion, but I didn’t see anything and I decided to go back. I looked in and around the hole. In the house, I made an uneasy tour of the rooms. I stopped on the landings of the stairs and I called to him from the hallways, a bit embarrassed. Later, I went outside again. I walked to the hole, looked in, and called to him again. I couldn’t see anything. I lay facedown on the ground, stuck my hand in, and felt the walls: this was a meticulous job. The hole was approximately three feet wide and seemed to go down toward the center of the earth. I entertained the possibility of getting in, but right away I ruled it out. When I put one hand on the ground to push myself up, the edge crumbled. I held on to the scrub, and, paralyzed, I heard the sound of the earth falling in the darkness. My knees slipped on the edge and I saw the mouth of the hole break apart and disappear inside it. I stood up and observed the disaster. I looked fearfully around me, but I didn’t see the digger anywhere. Then it occurred to me that I could fix the edges with a little damp earth, although I would need a shovel and some water.

I went back to the house. I opened the closets, went through two back rooms that I was entering for the first time, and searched the laundry room. Finally, in a box with other old tools, I found a trowel. It was small, but it would be a start. When I went out of the house, I found myself face-to-face with the digger. I hid the trowel behind my back.

“I was looking for you, sir. We have a problem.”

For the first time, the digger was looking at me with distrust.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Someone else has been digging.”

“Someone else? Are you sure?”

“I know the job. Someone has been digging.”

“And where were you?”

“I was sharpening my shovel.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to be decisive. “You dig as much as you can and don’t wander off again. I’ll keep an eye on the surroundings.”

He hesitated. He took a few steps away but then stopped and turned back toward me. Distracted, I had let my arm fall and the trowel hung alongside my legs.

“Are you going to dig, sir?” He looked at me.

Instinctively, I hid the shovel. He seemed not to recognize in me the man I had been for him up until a moment before.

“Are you going to dig?” he repeated.

“I’ll help you. You dig for a while and I’ll take over when you’re tired.”

“The hole is yours,” he said. “You can’t dig.”

Then the digger lifted up his shovel and, looking me in the eyes, drove it into the ground again.





IRMAN


Oliver was driving. I was so thirsty I was starting to feel dizzy. The truck stop we found was empty. The restaurant was big, like everything else out in the country, and the tables were littered with crumbs and bottles, as if a battalion had just eaten lunch and there hadn’t been time to clean up. We chose a spot by the window, near a whirring fan that didn’t move a hair on our heads. I desperately needed to drink something, and I said so to Oliver. He grabbed a menu from another table and started reading aloud the options he found interesting.

A man appeared from behind the plastic curtain. He was extremely short. He had an apron tied around his waist and a grimy kitchen rag draped over his arm. Although he seemed to be the waiter, he looked disoriented, as if someone had plopped him down there all of a sudden and he didn’t really know what he was supposed to do next. He walked over to us. We said hello; he nodded. Oliver ordered the drinks and made a joke about the heat, but he couldn’t get the guy to open his mouth. I got the feeling we’d be doing him a favor if we kept our order simple, so I asked if there was a daily special, something fresh and quick, and he said yes and walked away, as though something fresh and quick were an option on the menu and there was nothing more to say.

He went back to the kitchen, and we saw his head bobbing up and down in the window above the counter as his small figure passed by. I looked at Oliver and he was smiling; I was too thirsty to laugh. Some time passed, much longer than it should take to choose two cold bottles of whatever and bring them to the table, and finally the man appeared again. He wasn’t carrying anything, not even an empty glass. I felt awful. I thought that if I didn’t drink something right away I was going to go crazy. What was wrong with this guy, anyway? What question could he have? He stopped at the table. There were drops of sweat on his forehead, and his shirt was stained under his arms. He made a confused motion with his hand as if he was going to give some kind of explanation, but then stopped short.