ONETTI, Juan Carlos

El astillero / The Shipyard

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He watched the ferryboat arrive and be unloaded, examined carelessly the faces of the group of passengers; he yawned, took his pearl tiepin out of his black tie to use as a toothpick. He thought of the deaths various people had met and this led him on to other memories, of depreciatory smiles, of proverbs, of attempts, usually muddled attempts, he had made to put right other people’s lives.

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Right from the very beginning and for all eternity, there was nothing more than the steeply pitched roof, the layers of rust, the tons of metal and the weeds blindly growing and twining around everything. Tolerated, temporary, alien, he too was there, in the middle of the shed, impotent and absurdly mobile, like a dark-colored insect waving its legs and antennae in the air filled with legend, seafaring adventures, past labors, and winter.

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The mistake we make is to think that life is like us; that it is not what it does. But that is not true; it is nothing more than that, what we all see and know.

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