Ignacio Castro
He danced when he felt sad, and he looked without seeing. His life was a feast of helpless feelings, barely perceptible, but certain. There were times when he would cling to vanities and make the air taste humid. He knew how to breathe; how to breathe in life. Thus he wandered, looking for a little money without trying too hard, without ever longing for it.
Chasing his destiny, always from behind, reaching it in stages. He was happy for brief moments and his brief moments were eternal. He felt himself alone yet surrounded by people who loved him; all were his children. He was born on a rainy day; that’s why he knew how to make it rain. Just a few times, only when he cried or felt so sad that he drank in the salt water of his tears, and in some corner of the universe this unleashed a short-lived but persistent drizzle that would dampen the earth; that’s all.
That was Juan; silent, shy, tenacious and magical. His great dream dangled before him like a carrot and he went on chasing it. It pulled him on towards a horizon that was clearly defined and attainable. Or so he believed. He was persistent in his ideals, he spoke when he needed to and he was sparing with his words, which were his treasures. When he spoke he passed sentence, issued his judgement and didn’t fool around. It was a trait that brought him more than one problem, and many others more than one solution.
Juan was, I say, because he died. Disappeared. His body was never found. He was MIA. They say he was hurled into the sea from a military aircraft. They say. They also claim that as he fell into the void, with his arms open and his face skyward, it began to rain, slowly, just as he knew how to make it rain. And that the pilot-executioner looked once more and saw Juan laughing. Below, as he fell, together with his tears his body exploded in the sea and turned to salt water.
Nobody ever found the body. All that remained of him was a shadowy photo, which appeared in some newspaper. It seems he was swallowed up by the dictatorship, like thousands of others. He was 26 years old, and he was a born dreamer. His greatest sin was to veer to the left in a world turned upside down; his failure to keep silent led him to his physical death.
The plane flew away, but the pilot still can’t stop thinking about that falling body exploding on the water. To this very day, Juan’s laughter rings in his ears; he carries it with him everywhere and when he remembers, he too cries Juan’s tears, and slowly the universe opens, and they fall. One by one, drops that dampen the earth, like memories, like models for living.
Ignacio Castro is a journalist, poet and short story writer from Huinca Renanco, in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. He studied at the Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto (UNRC) and writes for the newspaper Puntal en Río Cuarto, in addition to producing a local television news program and directing the news website HrDigital. This short work originally appeared in Spanish the online literary magazine Mapuche, and this translation has been published here with the permission of the author and the journal’s editor.
Translated by Martin Boyd