Although he’d already read it twice, once silently when he received it and then again aloud, Delfor Colotto decided to go over it one more time while his wife was out shopping, just to be sure he’d understood it right. He put on his glasses and sat in the rocking chair on the back porch. He read slowly so he wouldn’t have to move his lips, but still, if he’d been in front of the house, where anybody could see him, he would have felt uncomfortable.
When he finished, he removed his spectacles and folded the letter along its original creases. The stationery was smooth and very white, unlike the skin of his hands, which resembled coarse sandpaper. He’d understood the letter, despite his initial fear that some of the words, elegantly handwritten in black ink on both sides of the page, could stump him. “Imperative” was the only one that had given him trouble. He’d had an idea of what it might mean, but he’d wanted to be sure, and so he’d picked up the dictionary the girl had left in the house, and that had done the trick: his son-in-law needed help—urgently, a lot, whatever it might take. He’d understood the rest of the letter with no trouble. At the end, his son-in-law had written, “I leave it in your hands,” because he was “certain that you’ll devise the best way to go about it.” And just here was the thorny problem that had kept Delfor Colotto on tenterhooks ever since the arrival of the letter, two days previously: What could that “best way” be?
He got to his feet. The only thing he could accomplish by staying in the rocking chair would be to make himself more nervous. Maybe his plan wasn’t a good one, but he’d devised nothing else. His son-in-law should have been clearer in his letter. The older man felt the younger one hadn’t told him the whole truth. Did he consider him unworthy of his confidence? Or—worse—did he think he was an idiot because he hadn’t finished school? Don’t get worked up about it, Colotto told himself. Maybe his son-in-law hadn’t given him more details because he hadn’t wanted to make him even more nervous. In that case, he’d had a point, because the little Delfor Colotto knew and the great deal he imagined were already driving him crazy, and he hadn’t slept a wink for two consecutive nights. More knowledge, or a confirmation of what he feared, might well be worse. Besides, he’d always been fond of his son-in-law, even though that “always” sounded a bit exaggerated, because how many times had he seen him? Three, four at the most? So he didn’t really know him, but hell, that wasn’t the young guy’s fault, after all.
These thoughts gave him the impetus he needed. He went into the house and walked to the bedroom. On the back of the chair a shirt was hanging neatly. Colotto put it on over his undershirt, stuffed the shirttails into his trousers, and readjusted his belt buckle. Then he left the house and strolled to the corner, pausing briefly on the way to greet a couple of his neighbors, who were drinking maté on the sidewalk. Dusk was falling, December had let loose one of its infernal heat waves, and some people were trying to find a bit of fresh air outside.
At the corner he turned right. “We’re practically on the same street,” he thought. And he felt uncomfortable, as though something had been put over on him. He stopped in front of a house just like his and just like all the others built according to the government’s plans for residential development. The little yard in front, the porch, the door flanked by two windows, the American-style asphalt roof. He clapped his hands. From behind the house a pair of dogs came running and barking into the front yard, only to be silenced almost completely by a female voice from inside the house. A rather small woman with white skin and light eyes came out onto the porch, drying her hands on the apron she wore over her skirt.
“How are you doing, Mr. Colotto? What a surprise to see you over this way.”
“Still here, Miss Clarisa. Hanging on.”
The woman seemed uncertain as to how to continue the conversation. “And how’s your wife? I haven’t seen her around the neighborhood for a long time.”
“She’s plugging along, you know, getting a little better.” The man scratched his head and frowned.
The woman interpreted this gesture as a desire to change the subject, and therefore she raised her hand to open the little black door before she spoke again: “Come in, please, come in. Would you like some maté?”
“No, thank you, Miss Clarisa, thanks a lot anyway.” He held up both hands, palms outward, as if softening his refusal. “I appreciate it, but this is just a quick visit. The truth is I was trying to locate your nephew Humberto.”
“Ah …”
“It’s for a job. The supervisor over in the municipal lumberyard asked me to do a little carpentry work on his house, see, and I might need an assistant, and so it occurred to me that maybe Humberto …”
“It’s really too bad, Mr. Colotto, but it so happens Humberto’s gone to help my brother in the country, you know, out there around Simoca.”
“Ah, right.” Colotto thought things were going too smoothly. The fact that the small talk perfectly suited his plans made him, if possible, even more nervous. “What a shame. The thing is, I don’t want to hire someone I don’t know, if you see what I mean.”
“Oh, sure I do, Mr. Delfor, and I thank you for remembering him …”
“Well, look, Miss Clarisa.” Now. It was now or never. “How about Isidoro? What’s he doing? Could he be interested in a temporary job?”
“Noooo …” Her “no” was long, high-pitched, convinced, trusting, innocent. “Isidoro went to Buenos Aires almost a year ago, didn’t you know that? Well, not a year ago. A little less, to tell the truth. But when you miss somebody, it seems longer, you know how it is.”
Colotto opened his eyes very wide, but he figured the woman would interpret that as simple surprise.
“Let me see,” she went on. “We’re in the beginning of December …” She raised her hands to count on her fingers. “So he’s been gone around ten months. It was the end of March, you know. I mean, I thought you knew. Well, I guess I don’t go out very much, what with my rheumatism and all …”
“Of course, Miss Clarisa, of course.” (Almost there, Delfor, he thought. Control yourself, for God’s sake, stay calm.) “But I had no idea. I imagined he was working somewhere around here.”
“No. There wasn’t much work for him last summer. A few little odd jobs here and there. Nothing to speak of. Oh, I used to tell him he wasn’t trying very hard. It made him mad sometimes when I said that, but it was true. He’d stay shut up in his room all day, staring at the ceiling. He looked sick, he never went out. Never, not even to have fun with his friends. I’d ask him, what’s wrong, Isidorito, tell Mama what’s wrong with you, but who can figure kids out? He wouldn’t say a thing. And … well, he’s turned out to be just as reserved as his father, may he rest in peace, and you know, getting two words out of him was a real triumph. And so I let him be. He’d put on a long face and stalk around the house like a caged lion. Finally, one day he hit me with the news that he didn’t want to stay here anymore and he was going to Buenos Aires. It made me sad at first, you know—my baby, my only son, and so far away. But he looked so bad, so … it was like he was angry, you know? So in the end it seemed almost like a good idea for him to go away.”
The woman wanted to go on talking, but standing up for so long made her joints ache and obliged her to keep shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She settled for leaning on the porch pillar. “Anyway, I’ll tell you something, Mr. Delfor. Every month, he sends me a money order. Every month. With that and my pension, I can get along really well, you know?”
One more to go, Colotto thought. One more. He said, “That’s just great, Miss Clarisa. I’m happy for you. Look, the way things are these days, finding a full-time job so fast—”
“Right, right,” the woman said, agreeing enthusiastically. “That’s exactly what I tell him. I say, you have to run and thank Our Lady of the Miracle, Isidorito. Well, but I call him Isidoro, because if I don’t he gets annoyed. A miracle, the way things are these days. He should be grateful. Because when he got there, he had a recommendation from my brother-in-law for a job in a print shop, but that didn’t work out. But then, soon afterward, in fact right away, he found a job on a construction site. Not only that, but it seems they’re building something really big, so the job’s going to last awhile.”
“What a break! It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?” Colotto swallowed saliva.
“I know, Mr. Colotto, I know! It’s just fantastic! An apartment building in the Caballito neighborhood, he said. Down there around … around Primera Junta, I think. Could that be right? Real close to that train, the sebway or whatever it is. The building’s going to have something like twenty floors.”
The woman kept on talking, but Delfor Colotto missed most of the rest of her conversation, because he was trying to decide whether he should be happy or sad about what he’d just found out. He made an effort to concentrate on her words and save his evaluations for later. She was talking about going to Salta for the Miracle Fiesta if her rheumatism would allow it, because she was very devoted to the Blessed Virgin.
“Well, all right, then, Miss Clarisa, I’ll be on my way.” Suddenly, he remembered his excuse for being there in the first place. “And if you hear about anybody who needs a temporary job … I mean someone you could recommend, of course.”
“I’ll keep my ears open, Mr. Delfor. Now I have to tell you, I don’t get much news, stuck inside the way I am, but if I hear anything, I’ll let you know, and God bless you.”
Delfor Colotto walked back home, bathed in the dim glow of the recently installed street lights. It was strange. Two years before, when he was president of the Development Association, he’d moved heaven and earth to get streetlights put up in this part of town. And now, he felt about street lighting the way he felt about almost everything else; he didn’t give a shit.
He stepped into his house and looked at the clock. It was too late to go out to the phone booth. That would have to wait until tomorrow morning. He heard the sound of pots and pans—his wife was busy in the kitchen. He decided not to tell her anything for the moment. As he walked to the bedroom, he took off his shirt. He hung it up again on the back of the chair, went back outside, and sat on the porch. There was a very slight breeze.