The Islands by Carlos Gamerro

Author:Carlos Gamerro [Carlos Gamerro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908276131
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2012-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

THE VIGIL

They brought the draft round to my house one night in a patrol car (I’m talking of course about the first half of this story, the part that took place ten years ago). Not that I wasn’t expecting it: when I’d heard about the recovery of the Islands on 2nd April, I knew that if my bad luck had made my military service coincide with our only war in a hundred years it wasn’t just to give me a fright. For a few days I toyed with the idea of dressing up as a Chola and decamping to Bolivia on the Estrella del Norte; only half-heartedly, because I knew my fear and inertia would win the day, so to save time I put the books and notes for my programming degree under the bed (I’d only started the week before) and got down to the only thing I knew how to in these situations: waiting. I remember that night well because I was stroking Ana’s naked back (still unused to the miracle), when her skin began to flicker in electric blue flashes and, peering through the blinds, I saw them get out. It would have been around eleven at night and I tore it open in front of them in my T-shirt and underpants. I was to present myself at 0600, and when I’d finished reading, they stood there staring; for several seconds I wondered if they were waiting for a tip. ‘You’d better be there or we’ll come looking for you and you won’t get off so lightly then,’ spat a titch with a Chinese moustache, and the three of them turned and left like the Three Wise Men to carry on the distribution, every draft promising a pair of ill-fitting old army boots, a FAL with a bent barrel, a dented helmet without a strap in every little pair of shoes that nobody had left outside, their gifts to receive. Ana rang home to say she was staying the night at a friend’s house, while I tried unsuccessfully to explain to my mum but couldn’t make her understand or even stop smiling; she told me to wrap up warm and send a postcard (I think she thought that I was off to England for a computing course and, humouring her as I always end up doing, I found myself telling her not to worry, it’s summer over there) and not to forget to write to my father (whom I’d never even met). That night was the first time that Ana, softened by the filmic romanticism of the situation (‘This could be our last night together’), let me go down on her, and we lay there hugging, wide awake and barely talking, till the time came. At about three in the morning we took the bus to Retiro, then the coach to the regiment, which was out in La Plata, and it wasn’t till the belly of the plane, in the darkness and the deafening roar (quite

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