Fish Soup. Margarita García Robayo

picked up the cooler and carried it to the pickup truck. The lady said to me: have you turned fifteen yet? No. Good. Why? Her: because lately, nobody splashes out on quinceañeras anymore. If it’s a buffet, they don’t serve seafood, forget it; and if it’s a sit-down affair, not even a whiff. And what do they serve? They serve rice and chicken and a potato salad packed full of onion, so that when the girls go and chat to the boys afterwards, they have dogshit breath. But not Melissa. Melissa’s going to have a party the way a quinceañera party should be.

      Melissa?

      Gustavo came back. The lady pulled out some notes that were tucked inside her bra and gave them to him. I’m going to serve them with tartar sauce, she said, what do you think of tartar sauce? He put the notes down on the table. I thought they might blow away.

      It makes me want to puke, I said.

      3

      There was a time when the weather completely changed. It rained all the time, every day it rained. That was bad for the ground because it got eroded; bad for the sea, because it got rough; bad for the TV because it lost signal. We still had the radio. The radio said that the city was going through a tragic situation; not in the modern parts, where the rich people lived, but in the shantytowns around the banks of the Ciénaga de la Virgen lagoon. Because it was full of crap, it overflowed, and the flimsy houses sank into the mud. It was around that time that people started talking about the Submarine Outfall, a metal pipe that would swallow all the shit built up in the Ciénaga, carry it out to sea and spew it out. It was the solution to all the city’s problems. They hadn’t built it yet because there was no money, and there was no money because it had been stolen. Who by? Nobody knew. On the radio everyone was talking about it. After that came the romantic programmes, playing a top ten of songs about rain.

      One day during that time, I dreamed that the wind carried off my brother and his friend Julián, who he used to go to the gym with. They were whisked away, clinging to one another, their teeth gritted like when they flexed their muscles in front of the mirror. I watched them float higher and higher until I couldn’t see them anymore. Another day, I dreamed that the wind blew away Willy’s kiosk: he sold beers near Gustavo’s shack. Willy hated me because one day I kicked a pig in the head as it was snuffling around my feet. The pig ran off, terrified and squealing like an old woman, and I laughed. Willy got angry: you’re evil, he told me. And I told him he was a black bastard. Gustavo grabbed me by the wrist and twisted my arm. I wrenched myself free and ran off. I didn’t go back for months.

      We had arrived at the kiosk half an hour before that, after a long walk on the beach. I’d been talking to Gustavo about Maritza Caballero, who’d sent me a postcard from Medellín, and a photo of her in the mountains; she was wearing a blue hoodie. I’d never worn a hoodie. I was thirsty, and Gustavo said, let’s go to Willy’s kiosk. He ordered an Águila beer for him, and a Coca-Cola for me. We sat on stools at the counter, and Willy started talking about a cruise ship full of gringos that had just come in. He said he was waiting for Brígida, the black fruit-seller who wore bright dresses. They were going to town to flog things to the gringos: beer, rum, shell necklaces. Got any oysters, boss? Willy only called Gustavo “boss” because he was white and a foreigner. Gustavo never tipped him, and even spat on the ground sometimes, but Willy still called him “boss”. That day, however, a black fisherman turned up, ordered a beer and after the first sip, let out a huge belch. Willy said to him: didn’t your mother teach you any manners, you black bastard?

      The rain was also bad for my family, because the sewer pipe near our house overflowed, the pavements turned green and the air stank to high heaven. My dad lost a taxi: it filled up with water, right up to the engine, and had to be scrapped. That time, he sat everyone down around the table and declared: now we are poor, and started to cry like a little child. I looked around: my brother was checking his watch impatiently, because he was supposed to be going to the cinema with Julián and two women from Bogotá they had picked up at La Escollera. My mother was folding handkerchiefs, deep in concentration. Next to her was a wicker basket full of faded underpants and a load of single socks tangled up in a ball.

      Being poor was exactly the same as not being poor. There was nothing to worry about.

      4

      When I left school, I enrolled in a law degree. It was a public university but there was an enrolment fee to pay, which was based on the income of your father. In my case, it was a tiny fee, but my father said to me: hopefully you’ll get a scholarship, so you can carry on. But I don’t want to carry on, I replied. Of course you do, he said, and winked at me. One day a girl in my class told me: they’re giving out visas to go and live in Canada. I went to the consulate to find out. You had to know English and French, and they were giving priority to young professional couples, with plans to procreate. My friend told me that in Canada they were running out of young people, and that this was their plan to repopulate the country. Repopulate it with Latinos? Better than nothing, she said. But I was a long way from being a young professional with a husband and plans to procreate. Canada would not be my destiny. I didn’t even like Canada: not a single film actor was from Canada. There was nothing in Canada, apart from old people.

      In those days, the baby belonging to the maid Xenaida used to cry all night long.

      She’d got knocked up, nobody knew who by. My brother accused the janitor. But she gave nothing away. When she told my mother about the pregnancy, my mother fired her and Xenaida got down on her knees and begged: señora, just let me have the baby and then I’ll go. Now she’d given birth to the baby, and she was still here.

      The baby cried like it was possessed.

      One night my brother went into her room and shook her by the shoulders: Xenaida! She was fast asleep, dead to the world. The tiny wrinkled baby was screaming its lungs out on the floor, on top of a pile of clothes, its arms and legs flailing around, like a turtle stranded on its back. Xenaida used to put him there so he wouldn’t fall off the bed.

      Gustavo. What? Is Olga your girlfriend? No.

      Gustavo was seeing a woman called Olga.

      Foreigners like black women, my mother used to say.

      Olga swept the shack and wore a thin, dirty dress. Olga would put her hands down the front of her dress to hoik up her breasts, and that made me nervous. Olga didn’t understand what I was always doing there, and she didn’t like it: next time you come sniffing around I’ll slash your face with the machete. Gustavo heard her but would say nothing. Once, Olga heated up a banana with the skin on and everything, then she sat down on a stool, lifted her skirt and put it right inside her. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Gustavo and I saw her from the worktable: he was filleting a sea bass, I was descaling a tarpon. The sea was calm, the sun burning bright.

      That’s when Gustavo began telling his stories. This was the first story Gustavo told me:

      When I was young, I had a motorbike and lots of hair on my head. I had blond hair, before it turned white and straggly. It was impossible to drag a comb through it, but some of my girlfriends insisted on brushing it for me. That would really piss me off. And when I got pissed off, I’d get on my bike and go far away.

      Far away from what?

      I finished my first year of law and I was awarded the scholarship. It was easy to get it, I reckon I could’ve got any scholarship I wanted. But I said that I didn’t want any scholarship, that what I wanted was to go far away. But where? the professor of Roman Law asked me, taken aback. I shrugged. He had gone away once, but had come back, he told me. Why? Because I missed it. What did you miss? The food, the culture. I hardly ate anything and didn’t give a shit about culture. I shook the teacher’s hand, then turned my back on him and left. Left his class, and everything else, and started going to the gym with my brother.

      Gustavo. What? Do you think I’m pretty? Yes. Do you want me to take off my clothes? No. Gustavo. What? Don’t you like me anymore? Don’t you have some legal code you’re supposed to be reading? I’ve already read them all. Well, in that case I’ll tell you a story.

      We lay down in the hammock,