I came to
Miramar
for work, to perform at the Kafandra bar.
The function was good.
I had to leave the hotel at 12 noon.
My transfer to the Camet airport picked me up at six in the afternoon.
Until that time, I rented a tent at a spa.
As if time had rewound, Suache, my childhood friend, appeared
in tent 47
: as many summers in Miramar as there were winters on the forehead of the narrator of Vóvo uno noche.
More than anywhere else, our childhood had occurred in front of that sea, like that of
Serrat
in the Mediterranean.
If any Argentine coastal city is in some way related to that motionless sea that runs from Algeciras to Tel Aviv, it is undoubtedly Miramar.
We lightly bumped fists with Suache and wondered about our lives.
He was there with his grandchildren, a girl and a boy, 4 and 6 years old respectively.
He was a young grandfather.
"On this beach, I last saw a boatman," he revealed.
I don't remember how long ago.
"You are very lucky to remember it," I conceded.
I would pay for a dozen wafers to remember when I last ate one.
The wafers were flat fans of cone dough.
For some reason, we children of that time considered that mortar a treat, perhaps more appropriate for the construction of
Hansel and Gretel
's house .
The sellers included a resource that distinguished them: they loaded the wafers inside a large white metal cylinder, on whose upper base a roulette wheel worked.
The customer paid a fixed rate, which bought two wafers.
But the seller spun the roulette wheel, with a compass-like needle instead of a ball: the customer could receive as many extra wafers as luck dictated.
The maximum was twelve.
I don't know if receiving twelve wafers, if you had no one to share them with, was considered a reward or a punishment.
But among friends, brothers and cousins, he was never superfluous.
"I do remember when I saw your father for the last time," I said.
An outburst.
I have never liked sand.
I paid the price of stepping on it to get closer to the sea (like as a child I paid the price of the wafer, which I didn't like, just to see the roulette needle spin, which dazzled me).
After fifty years, not even the proximity of the sea was worth it.
I was only there until I picked up the truck.
Perhaps the silence, not having something to talk about with Suache, after so much life together, made me utter that heresy.
Suache nodded with a sadness devoid of tragedy.
That summer of our eight years, when his father was gone forever, was a traumatic event.
For a time they thought he was dead.
He had left behind a pile of unpaid bills.
There was talk of a kidnapping, of a settling of scores.
On one occasion, more than thirty years after his disappearance, they told me this story: he had gone into the sea at night with a woman, also from the spa.
Tony, as Suache's father was called, had drowned.
The panicked woman had never spoken.
Until thirty years later.
At the time I didn't believe the species, but I found it interesting.
Now Suache completely undid it:
"He came in person shortly before his death," he summed up, pointing to his male grandson.
He even gave her a Matchbox car.
I have no idea where he got it from.
A fortune, for sure.
He gave him the little car, and he really died.
The ice cream man came by: Suache bought two of water, one for each grandchild, and a cone of his own.
"My old man wouldn't buy me a Conogol even if I won it at roulette," he said.
He asked me if I wanted one, but I joked:
-A wafer.
"I'll leave you the empty cone, if you want," he smiled.
-What did you say to him when you saw him again?
-I consulted-.
What did he tell you?
"I always knew where I was," Suache confessed.
My eyes opened in a way that allowed me to see the past.
Behind the sea, there was no Africa.
Just Suache and I, at eight years old (everyone else was extra).
Her father had disappeared.
That meant our lives had no anchor.
Not even us children were safe.
But now he discovered, like a volcano dug into the shore, that the sacred fire of knowledge had indeed belonged to Suache.
While I remained uncertain: a variant of orphanhood.
-That afternoon, my old man dressed up as a barquillero.
He left the spa with me, I was hiding inside the wafer bin.
He put me in the back seat of the car.
When we passed the Arch, on the side of the road, he told me that he should escape.
That he didn't say anything to anyone.
Not even my mother.
But I always knew where he was.
He always communicated with me.
My mother, you know, from the first debts, she took refuge in Armando.
That walk, from the Arch to the spa, at the age of eight, without telling anyone, was the longest I took in my life.
-Were there wafers in the bin?
-I asked stupidly-.
Suache nodded.
-They saw him pass in front of the spa, shouting “wafers”.
But no one recognized him.
It seemed spectacular to me, helping him escape like that.
-Did he sell any wafers while you were in the bin?
Suache denied.
-Like those bus drivers that you see drive by, when you're at the stop.
-And now the whole family came?
-I tried to get out of that train of melancholy-.
-Luca is Emanuel's son.
Sofi is Meli's daughter.
I don't have a wife anymore.
They spend the weekend with me.
"I can't imagine what it will be like to go around hidden inside the barquillero's bin," I rewound, just as time had done without my consent.
"It depends," Suache conditioned.
If your father takes you...
Neither the barquilleros, nor our parents, nor an infinite number of things that made me pay the price of stepping on the sand, would ever return.
But they had given me an afternoon with the truth.
I could now return to Buenos Aires.
POS