NOBODY ASKED DR. Cochrane to bear witness to that night in the Phoenix. The telephone did not ring on the desk of Dr. Cochrane. If it had, it would have jangled there alone, ringing and ringing pointlessly until the gardeners watering the laburnum trees down in the gardens below tilted their hats and looked up with annoyed frowns, while millions and millions of specks of dust, some of them stirred up from the crumbling textbooks that lined the walls, most of them—as anybody in the Medical Faculty would testify—the jettisoned skin particles of long-forgotten students, danced in the sunbeams streaming through his window.

Dr. Cochrane was not in his office. Dr. Cochrane was not at home. He was not in the Phoenix and he was not strolling, pointlessly, in the gardens of the Ottavio House. Dr. Cochrane had awarded himself a holiday.

He had no lectures to give and there was a large envelope pinned to his door with a note, announcing that he would not be available that day, inviting his students to leave any messages for his later attention. Nobody left any messages.

When the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics—a man who never expressed any admiration for the late Colonel Presidente, nor made any comment on the present Colonel Presidente—saw the note and tutted his disapproval about 9:30 that morning, Dr. Cochrane was already far away.

A couple of hours earlier, Dr. Cochrane had joined a throng of travelers at the quayside where he was jostled and bumped along the broad gangway of the Merino ferry and up onto the waiting ship. Dr. Cochrane knew the old ferry well.

It delighted him that, just below the stern rail, where lovers liked to lean and watch the churn of the propellers and gaze at the arrow wake streaming away from home, where years of paint had been layered on, as thick as wedding-cake icing, he could still read the words “Hippocampo” and “Glasgow.” It was a Scottish ship, as Scottish as his ancestor the Admiral and perhaps only a little more Scottish than Dr. Cochrane himself.

He often stood at the river’s edge to watch her tie up, waiting for the moment when one more lorry would roll down the clanging iron gangway and shift enough weight onto dry land to let the painted Plimsoll line appear from beneath the green-greasy river water. It showed the captain had faith in his old ship. He knew her. He knew what she could take. He knew she would not let him down. Dr. Cochrane approved of that buccaneering defiance of the rules, just as the old Admiral would have done. But he found it easier to approve when he was safe on shore and not slipping across the oily deck with a host of other passengers, hurrying to claim a place close to the lifebelts. After all, the Merino was very wide.

Dr. Cochrane drove such thoughts from his mind as he tucked his cane under his arm and gripped the handrail which was still, more or less, recognizable under layer upon layer of leprous paint and climbed up the worn metal stairway to the First Class deck.

A strange thing happened to Dr. Cochrane as he climbed those steep stairs.

He seemed to unfold a little when he reached the top deck and, miraculously, he no longer needed his cane. He held it in his fist like a sword, the way the Admiral might have gripped a cutlass as he came storming down an enemy deck. He felt young.

The First Class accommodation was directly under the bridge deck. Lifeboats hung in reassuring garlands around the rails, strung together with tarry ropes and looped with automatic lamps which, the signs claimed, would light on contact with the water. Dr. Cochrane could hear the captain up above, just out of sight, giving his commands in a quiet, confident voice as electric bells clanged and radio speakers squawked their replies.

From far below, through the soles of his shoes, Dr. Cochrane felt the powerful stir of something awakening. At the back of the ship, the water gathered itself into a knot like clotted emeralds, swelled and boiled over, creamed and foamed. Nothing happened. And then, so slowly that at first he doubted his own senses, the ship began to move. Dr. Cochrane watched a yellow beer can trapped in the narrow strip of water between the dockside and the ship. The gap was opening, widening toward the prow, and the suck of water from behind made the can rush toward the back of the boat, spinning through the narrowing gap, turning and tilting, into the shadow of the stern and then, suddenly, plucked down under the water. If he had been a poet, Dr. Cochrane would have found inspiration for a sonnet in that, but he was a mathematician and he followed the can downward in a turmoil of parabolic equations, measuring the rush and swirl of it as it went. And then the gap at the back of the ship opened. Little by little the concrete columns along the dockside began to appear from the stern shadows, the tops of them hung with old tires, huge iron bolts holding the pillars in place, lazy green water surging around them as, at last, the ship lost its grip on the land.

Dr. Cochrane could deceive himself no longer. The ship was moving. He felt sick. He spread his legs and braced himself against the rail and felt his stomach heave. In the bar of the First Class saloon the glasses on the shelf stood without so much as a tremor, the beer in the necks of the bottles was dead level. Dr. Cochrane suffered a surge of shame and promised himself that, for the Admiral’s sake, he would not vomit.

He concentrated. He turned his face into the wind and fixed his eyes on the horizon. It was flat. It was constant. Far ahead there was a squadron of pelicans flying along the river in an undulating line. Somehow they managed to match their movements to the very opposite of whatever the river was doing. If it rolled like olive oil in a bottle, they dipped to meet it. If it dropped away, they climbed a little with an easy flick of prehistoric wings. He felt the boat rise and fall under him as if it were plowing through breakers.

His agony went on. He gripped the rail. His palms were slick with sweat, his mouth thick with spit. He was looking ahead to the end of the harbor wall and the little lighthouse stuck on the very tip of it like an icing-sugar castle. They would be in the river after that. There would be wind. It would strike the side of the ship. There would be waves in the river and the waves and the wind would act on the motion of the ship. He was ready. But then a sudden swirl of smoke, greasy with the smell of diesel, whipped down from the funnel and Dr. Cochrane tasted bile at the back of his throat.

He stood there like that, a clammy sweat leaking from beneath his hat band, for almost two hours until it was time for the flag-changing ceremony that marked midstream.

For those few moments when he stood bareheaded, waiting for the whistle toots which would signal that the flag, out of view behind the bridge, had been properly dipped, properly hoisted, like a widow changing her loyalties with a new wedding ring, Dr. Cochrane was convinced he would vomit at any second.

The heat of the sun beat down on his bare head while the breezes of the river mopped his sweating brow with cool kisses. It was agony. He looked about for some place he could throw up discreetly. Not over the rail. The First Class deck was sharply stepped over Standard Class and, even in his distress, Dr. Cochrane took pity on the family below, sitting in the sunshine with their picnic. He thought of fleeing through the First Class saloon to the toilets but he knew he could never make it without disgracing himself so he did the only thing he could do. At the very moment of the third and last blast on the whistle, just as the ferry lurched forward again over the imagined border, Dr. Cochrane puked in his hat. Retching at the sight of it, he carried it like a sick-room basin and quietly, trying not to attract attention, he placed it under one of the wooden benches that lined the deck and returned to the rail, where he slumped in an agony of nausea and humiliation.

“Here, wash your mouth out.” There was a hand on his shoulder and a glass of water held in front of his half-closed eyes.

“Just spit it on the deck. In this heat it’ll be gone soon. You’ll feel better for it.”

Dr. Cochrane did as he was told. “Thank you,” he said.

“No, no. Thank you for coming. I know what it costs you.”

“I feared you were not aboard.”

“I waited until we were back across the line. I hid. I’m good at hiding. They can’t touch me here.”

“Old friend, they could reach you anywhere if they knew where you were.”

“You worry too much. I’m small fry.”

“They don’t forgive, they don’t forget.”

“Here. Take a little of this brandy. Just a drop. It’ll settle your stomach.”

If the captain of the ferry had chosen that very moment to fill his pipe, if he had turned to the mate and said: “You have the wheel, Pedro,” and walked out on to the wings of his bridge, as sometimes he had to do when getting into dock was proving particularly troublesome, he could have looked down and seen two friends, one of them foolishly hatless, shoulder to shoulder, sharing a flask. Nothing odd about that. Nothing to attract attention.

But if the captain had known his patriotic duty, he would have turned his ship around and radioed ahead to have Camillo and half the battalion of police waiting for his return.

“I feel a little better now,” said Dr. Cochrane. He handed back the silver flask. “Thank you.”

“Good. Why don’t we sit down on one of these benches in the shade?”

“Yes. But not that one. Let’s move round a little.”

Dr. Cochrane collapsed onto the bench, its wooden slats pressing uncomfortably into his backside, the hot, painted metal of the First Class saloon pressing against his back.

“I do feel better,” he said. “A little better.”

“Good. And how are things?”

“Much the same, you know. Nothing much changes. We go along just as always. The faces change but only at the top of the tree. The truth is one colonel’s uniform is much like another.”

“It’s the same across the river. Everything changes and it always stays the same. Living over the Merino is like looking back from inside a mirror.”

“It’s hard to believe we could have cared so much,” said Dr. Cochrane.

“No. No, not really. Hope is a powerful narcotic.”

They were quiet for a while and then, as old men will do sometimes, they found themselves holding hands.

“Anyway, how is the boy?”

“Good. Very good,” said Dr. Cochrane. “But he’s not a boy any longer, you know.”

“I know, I know. It’s just. Well, you understand.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Did you bring a book?”

“There is no book this year, I’m afraid. He’s working on something—I saw him only the other day, sitting at the side of the river and scribbling away madly in his notebook, filling it with page after page of wonderful things. It’s coming along. Perhaps next year. I’m sure it will be ready for your next birthday.”

“I am so proud of him, old friend.”

“And well you should be. He’s a national treasure. Nobody understands us like Chano. We read his books and it’s as if he’s right there, talking to us of ourselves.”

“Do you think that? I’m glad. I like to think that. Those books are the only way I have to know him and it’s good to think that he really is that man. Is he happy?”

“Is he happy?” Dr. Cochrane was amazed. “Are you? Am I? How can I tell you that? Ask me about the weather or the next month’s Lottery numbers. Ask me something easy.”

“But he is well?”

“He is well and admired and honored and wealthy and—more—he is safe.”

“That’s all I wanted. All I ever wanted.”

“I know.”

“And still no wife.”

“No. He is very busy. Too busy for a wife.”

“But …?”

“Oh, no! Oh, put your mind at ease about that. Your Chano is very much a ladies’ man. Rather too much for his own good.”

Dr. Cochrane decided not to mention anything about the Ottavio House. A man who was content to see his colleagues in such a place might, all the same, be uncomfortable to have his father hear of it.

“That’s good. That’s good. Not that there is anything wrong with. Well, with that kind of thing.”

“I am not offended,” said Dr. Cochrane. “My own father would not have been delighted to have a mariquita for his heir.”

There was a moment’s awkwardness. “And his mother? How is Sophia?”

“Just the same. Still sad. She never,” Dr. Cochrane’s sentence lost its way, as Dr. Cochrane’s sentences often did, “well, she never, really.”

“No. She never did. She couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“It was for the best.”

“Was it, Cochrane? Nearly forty years and for what? Nothing’s changed. And, you know, in all that time, I don’t think they tried to kill me even once.”

“But if you had stayed, they would have. They would have killed you and they would have done worse. They’d have made you talk and they’d have used the boy to do it. The boy and Sophia. They are alive now because they think you are dead—them and God knows how many others. Me. You saved my life!”

They looked straight ahead, so as not to look at each other, to where the bow of the ferry was nudging through the syrupy waters of the Merino toward the opposite shore.

After a time, Dr. Cochrane said: “Have you any more of that brandy?”

“Of course. And I brought sandwiches. And birthday cake.”

“I don’t think I could. My stomach, you know. But you go ahead. I will toast your anniversary in your own excellent brandy.”

“This is what we’ve come to, eh, Cochrane? Two firebrand revolutionaries, two comrades, two dangerous enemies of the state, eating birthday cake on a filthy old ferry.”

“One of us is eating birthday cake. I’m too busy throwing up in my hat.”

“Yes, I wondered about your hat.”

“I can get another one,” said Dr. Cochrane.

“Yes, and for the record, I am officially not laughing.”

All the way across they sat together in the sunshine talking for hours of their lives, how they lived, what they hoped for in the days when they still had hope and, eventually, because all journeys eventually end, they reached the other side of the river.

“So that’s it for another year,” said Dr. Cochrane.

“I suppose so. I should go. Thank you again for coming. Thank you for watching over them. You are a good friend.”

“I am happy to do it,” said Dr. Cochrane.

“You know, I’ve noticed, you never ask what I do, where I live, how I make my living. You never even ask my name.”

“If I don’t ask, you won’t tell me. If you don’t tell me, I won’t know and, if I don’t know, they can’t make me tell.”

“We worry too much. Sometimes I think, I’m almost sure, I could come back. I could cross over. But I’m afraid to go.”

“I’m crossing over right now and already I’m afraid. I’ll be sick all the way. Stay here, Valdez. Stay here.”