Without realising, I’d fallen out of my own life. Federico realised for me. One evening after work, as I was telling him about my plan to reform the provincial property tax system – a few minor tweaks that would lead to savings for at least 90% of residents in Buenos Aires – he interrupted me with a sharp look and a hand on my shoulder; a gesture that from anyone else I’d have thought was patronising, but from him assumed a mechanical neutrality. He said:
— Do you think you’ve maybe fallen out of your life, out of this world? Just a bit?
I hadn’t really heard what he’d said, but straight away I answered:
— Yes, I think so.
Before he could respond, I started mumbling:
— It was in the Río de la Plata. I was on the ferry to Montevideo, back when I had places to be and people to see, when I had the sudden impulse to throw myself overboard. It was a beautiful day and the water looked extremely inviting. I’d had three medialunas and a coffee at the port and felt sick…
Federico squeezed my shoulder again. He talked for a while. I didn’t catch most of what he said, but I did note his tone: pitiful and concerned. I also caught his mumbled suggestion at the end:
— Maybe you should speak to someone?
Not a psychoanalyst; he knew I’d never speak to one, even though the city was drowning in psychoanalysis (of the other six people living on our floor, four were in analysis; the other two, a couple who lived next door, were analysts themselves). Or maybe he was worried I would, and through a careful elaboration of my dreams and nightmares, discover that I wasn’t a head-case, but a genius.
— Maybe a coach, a life coach or something like that?
I laughed (a horrid laugh that sounded spiteful). I said I’d prefer a death coach, or even better, a life-in-death coach, ideally a descendant or disciple of the figure Life-in-Death who’d crewed one of the zombie wayfarers on the Ancient Mariner’s ship, who’d take me aboard and educate me in the ways of the living dead, the sea, how to understand the wind, etc.
This would be helpful, given that my difficulties, as I’d started to think of them, were to do with integrating an awareness of death into my life. I wasn’t terrified of dying exactly (except when I was in the car with Federico, who drove like a maniac down Avenida 9 de Julio) but that I was already dead; that the fall, to use Federico’s word, had already occurred and there was nothing I could do about it. Unless, possibly, I could think of the fall as being more like a slow-motion plunge, an artistic form of descent in which I was sinking extremely slowly into the sea, where I’d one day settle in an octopus’s garden.
— Technically, I said, this would be a return, or at least a recapitulation, since I’d already spent several years down there (as I mentioned, it was in the Río de la Plata) with Ringo Starr, naturally, or possibly his double (either way he called himself Ringo) reclining in the shade, wondering if there was any point in trying to get back out.
And before you bother with one of your boring little fact-checking interrogations, I went on, nudging Federico in his chest: let me clarify: Ringo and I both had gills. Also, as far as I remember, we didn’t sleep. I also remember I barely said a word, and it’s only since I got back, and took my various seats (on the bus, at the desk, here at the little metal table on the balcony that overlooks Calle Thames, which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is getting dustier by the second) that I started speaking with any fluency again.
Ringo however talked a lot. He told me he’d always wanted to go to Argentina. It seemed like such a mysterious place. He’d heard about the time four young men from Florida had grown their hair out and called themselves the American Beetles and were booked on a South American tour as the real thing. When they came out from behind the curtain for a show in Buenos Aires, a little girl in the audience who’d been going completely nuts started crying her eyes out. ‘Between indignation and laughter,’ was how one witness described the reception. Ringo found this very funny. I raised an eyebrow, as if to ask: why? He peered at me and then said:
— How do you think I ended up here?
I didn’t understand what that had to do with anything. He laughed again (a booming laugh that made my ears pop) and then started talking in an off-hand way about his childhood. He spent a lot of time lying down and sitting still, he said: I was ill, my stomach was ripping itself to shreds. I spent a year in a kind of greenhouse and taught myself to play the drums on biscuit tins.
He talked a lot like this, and I listened. But he also talked to other people, or presences, as he called them. He had discussions with the presence of Isaac Newton, who was hunched over a rock at the end of the garden, staring at the needle of his compass on the seabed. He also sometimes talked with a creature who belonged to a black lagoon but had gotten lost (maybe on purpose). The creature told him he was having relationship problems. He was in love with a woman who loved him too, but they couldn’t be together due to ‘social incompatibilities.’ (Ringo said these words in a bad American accent). Now she goes down to the edge of the black lagoon every day and waits for him. But he knows he’ll never go back; he couldn’t if he tried. Now the point of their relationship was for her to wait and him to be lost.
Occasionally I had questions. I asked him:
— Where’s the octopus?
— He’s away, Ringo said. He lives here for six months, floating in his little den. For the rest of the year he’s elsewhere. Maybe in the black lagoon. He’s very wary about disclosing his location. He’s an odd lad.
— Do you ever go inside the house?
— No, he said. The deal is that I stay here in the shade and tend to the coral in the garden. I did go in once: I thought I heard another presence in there. It was nothing. There’s something like a sarcophagus in the dining room. I stood in the doorway and looked at it for a while. Then I came back outside. Also, it’s not a house: it’s a den.
Unlike Ringo, I didn’t ever go into that den. I wanted to, but I only ever dreamed about it. And it was in one of those dreams that I felt the sudden sensation that I was choking. When I opened my eyes I was slowly rising, and had a birds-eye view (if that’s possible underwater) of the garden. It was empty, but on the edge of the coral hedgerow, I could see the figure of the returning octopus, a huge red creature drifting towards its den with a deathly saunter. As I continued to ascend (which, as I’ve been trying to explain, really was my final descent) I realised that my gills were shrivelling and tightening up. The turquoise water was getting darker, or at least blurrier, and I felt something grasping in my calf. Ringo was holding on to my leg. He had a firm grip.
— I can’t swim, I heard myself saying as the surface of the water came into sight, can you?
— I don’t know, Ringo said. What’s that got to do with anything?
He started laughing, that thunderous laugh of his, which propelled me to the surface and him back down towards the sea bed, where I presumed the octopus was waiting expectantly for his return.
It was at this point that I realised Federico was standing by the kitchen top, rummaging around in one of the drawers. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. I went back inside.
— Have you even been listening to a word I’ve been saying? I almost said. But I said nothing, because I realised that I couldn’t. I could hear the couple next door arguing about something over the TV, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Eventually Federico pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.
— Open it, he said, please, just open it.
I assumed it contained a copy of my tax returns, or a business card for a life coach (hopefully the first consultation was free). I opened it carefully, and examined the contents with the concentration of a dentist. It was a one-way ticket to Montevideo on the ferry for that evening.
I looked up at Federico. He was trembling, he was sweating. I thought he might keel over. For the first time I can remember, I thought I detected a glint of insanity in those calm hazel eyes. At that moment, as he started to back away slowly towards the balcony, I knew with complete certainty that he loved me.
*
A version of this story was first published in The Madrid Review.