The Backwater

The Backwater Ranch was four hours away by train, to the west of Buenos Aires. The country was so flat that the horizon climbed up the sky on all four sides, in the shape of a bathroom sink. Chinaberry trees flourished on the grasslands, plum-colored in the summer and golden in autumn; the cries of strange birds floated on a lagoon; there were clusters of casuarina trees that seemed like recent arrivals from a journey by train, with their pine needles still harboring a pure sound, soaked in the sea. There was a predictable avenue of eucalyptus trees going up to the house: here it was possible to see the horizon from all sides except one, and that side of the house wasn’t where the sun would rise or set. A veranda wrapped around the house, reflecting the bright sunsets; from there you could hear the mooing of the ranch’s cows.

It was a sunny morning when Venancio Medina arrived at the country estate, in a wagon lent to him by the owner of the general store, loaded up with a battered trunk, an armoire without a mirror, four bundles of clothing, a little white dog with wiry fur, his wife, and two daughters. They had directed him to the small white house with two rooms where he and his family were going to live. From the very first moment, Venancio Medina had scrutinized the veranda of the big house, where the owners sat on half-moon-shaped chairs made of old carriage wheels. There were half a dozen kids; the family was actually several families together, and Venancio thought at first that most of them were visitors.

The family, stalled in progressive stages of slumber, seemed to come to life when they saw Venancio Medina step down from the wagon carrying his youngest daughter in his arms. More than a little girl, she looked like a tiny monkey dressed in red. Part of the immobile family was suddenly in motion, running to see the little girl. Venancio Medina felt on his arm the soaking wet skirts of his daughter, who had just peed, but he couldn’t keep her from the hands that carried her into the dining room of their house, where they placed her on the table like a dessert, surrounding her and musing over her unintelligible cries. Medina watched from the doorway, riveted, and his daughter’s name fluttered around the house, like the name of the curly-haired dog in his own house.

More than ten years had passed since then. Venancio had come to the ranch as a caretaker, but his multiple roles ranged from dining room server, when all the servants abandoned the house, to gardener when the gardener went missing. It was later on that he definitively chose to be the coach driver. He was obviously meant to be a coach driver, with his big mustache and the unmistakable click of his tongue against his palate, which made any horse trot over the thickest mud. The kids, sitting in the driver’s seat, tried to imitate that splendid magical sound that helped the whip get the horses’ haunches moving.

Meanwhile, Venancio’s wife looked after the house; it was she who did the work of both of them, always grumbling and slapping her daughters, always overwhelmed with work, with her head ready to retreat into her body like a turtle as soon as anyone approached.

Her two daughters grew up as lazy and languorous as hothouse flowers. The other kids always called them to come and play in the garden just at the moment when their mother was chasing after them with a broom to get them to sweep. And Libia and Cándida would run off giggling to play in the trees, where among clouds of mosquitos the surprising secrets of that family of boys and girls of all ages and all sexes awaited them. They had become indispensable. If Libia and Cándida weren’t around, there weren’t enough trees to play Four Corners; if Libia and Cándida weren’t there, there weren’t enough cops to play Cops and Robbers; if Libia and Cándida weren’t there, there weren’t enough fair ladies to play London Bridge Is Falling Down. And after playing all day, they made a game of escaping the siesta in sleepy rooms. They felt delicious pleasures pulling them away from their parents. Seated on benches in a meditative pose, they witnessed how the childrens’ deadly hatred divided them into flocks of insults shouted from one end of the woods to the other. (At times, there weren’t enough names of animals with which to insult one another, and they had to resort to the dictionary.)

Libia and Cándida had filled their prayer books with pictures of their friends. They felt adrift because they couldn’t choose a favorite friend, for fear the others would be resentful. They spent their winters on the empty estate, awaiting letters that were promised but never arrived. And as they grew, the sun-colored bond of affection that held them together during the summers diminished imperceptibly. The dresses handed down to them grew tight, and there was no longer a hem to lower or a sleeve to lengthen. When the family wasn’t around, Libia and Cándida entered the big house like intruders, to look at themselves in the full-length mirrors. Usually they could only see themselves in a cracked mirror, with distorted eyes and swollen lips, their dresses always in shadow, but in the big house they’d open the shutters and stand there to adore themselves, imagining they were seeing the young ladies of the house in those mirrors.

One day Cándida came so close to the mirror that she gave herself a kiss, but when she felt the smooth cold surface where kisses could not penetrate she realized that her girlfriends were all abandoning her in the same way. The love they had previously sent her, sometimes in a postcard, they now sent as clothes; when they were around, they could spare only a frozen smile. No longer were there words or actions, except perhaps the embrace of empty sleeves of the dresses that arrived, packaged as gifts. Cándida recoiled from her image with her eyes fixed on the mirror, and in that pathetic flight from herself she thought she saw a distant resemblance to a movie star she had seen in a film once, where the heroine escaped from her house.

Summer came, winter came, and summer returned: they were grown-ups now, and the owners of the estate barely managed to remember to take them to church. They grew to hate more and more their contented father and enraged mother.

Venancio Medina increasingly assumed the role of owner of the ranch. When he’d go to the station to pick up visitors, and these travelers would exclaim in admiration, he’d shake his head and say with modesty: “It’s not that nice, not at all! There are much nicer ranches than this one!”

Venancio’s daughters thought that no ranch could be nice. They hated the quiet song of the doves at midday, they hated the sunsets that left dirty fruit-colored stains in the sky, and they especially hated all the human horrors, the silence. Libia married the first man who offered to take her away to live with him near a paved road. They spent all their savings on furniture that didn’t fit in a house that was too small, where she lived cramped in with newborn babies, soiled furniture, embroidered rugs, and cushions, and where she never had any time to sit down and rest.

That same day Cándida, without any goodbye to her parents, took a train to Buenos Aires, carrying with her a bundle of dresses with the empty sleeves of her friends.