Kamchatka Read Free Page B

for a while, the edges of the screen began to disappear and it was like I’d fallen into magma.
    At first it was fun. It was like being in
Fantastic Voyage
, that film where they shrink a submarine down to microscopic size and inject it into the bloodstream of a human guinea pig. But after a while, I felt dizzy. If I didn’t stop, I was going to throw up my breakfast.
    I turned around in my seat, looking for somewhere to rest my tired eyes. In the half-light of the classroom, Mazzocone was eating the sandwich that was supposed to be his lunch, Guidi had fallen asleep and Broitman was playing
Six Million Dollar Man
with a toy soldier. (Making it run in slow motion and jump like a cricket.) Bertuccio had his back turned to me. True to form, he had leapt to his feet and was telling Señorita Barbeito that he was not about to swallow the idea that once upon a time there was just a single cell in the ocean, then time passed and – boom! – that cell turned into us.

7
ENTER BERTUCCIO
    Bertuccio was my best friend. It might sound like bull, but I swear that by the age of ten Bertuccio was reading Anouilh’s
Becket
and claiming he wanted to be a playwright. I had read
Hamlet
, because I didn’t want to be outdone, and because we had a copy of it at home (we didn’t have a copy of
Becket
) and even though I didn’t understand a word of
Hamlet
, I wrote an adaptation that I planned to perform with my friends in the alcove between the kitchen and the patio, which would make a fantastic stage if mamá moved the washing machine.
    But I was only trying to seem grown up; Bertuccio actually wanted to be an artist. He had read somewhere that an artist questions society and ever since he had been questioning everything, from the cost of school fees and the point of wearing a white smock in the morning and a grey one in the afternoons to the veracity of the story about French and Beruti handing out blue and white ribbons to the rebels of the revolution of 1841. (How could they have known that Belgrano would make the Argentine flag blue and white? What were they, psychic?)
    Bertuccio was forever embarrassing me. One time we went to the cinema to see
Gold
, which was over-fourteens only and the guy on the ticket desk asked us for ID. Bertuccio admitted that he was underage but said that he had read the book and hadn’t found anything liableto deprave or corrupt in it and informed the guy that no one had the right to presume that he was too immature to see a movie. When the ticket seller tried to interrupt him, Bertuccio solemnly announced that he, my dear sir, had already read
Becket, The Exorcist
and
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
(or parts of it, at least) ‘which is more than many adults can say, or are you calling me a liar?’
    Whenever he got me into this kind of mess, I was the one who came up with the solutions. When Bertuccio got tired of talking and the guy on the ticket desk couldn’t stand it any more, we went up the marble staircase to the first floor of the Rivera Indarte Cinema and hid in the toilets, waited until the usher had punched all the tickets for the Pullman seats, then, when he went into the cinema to show a latecomer to his seat, we snuck in behind him and hid behind the curtains. We’d missed the first fifteen minutes, but at least we got to see the film.
    Gold
was shit. There weren’t even any naked women in it.

8
THE PRINCIPLE OF NECESSITY
    On this particular morning, while Bertuccio was challenging Señorita Barbeito over the very foundations of the temple of science, I was looking for a pencil and some paper to play Hangman.
    Señorita Barbeito sighed and told Bertuccio that of course there was a principle that explained everything: cell division, cells combining so as to develop complex functions, creatures leaving their aquatic environment, developing colours and fur, seeking new sources of energy, evolving paws, moving about and standing erect.