The Plimsoll Line Read Free

stretches out his arms toward the two women in a paternal gesture, resting his hands on their shoulders, one on his wife, the other on his daughter. Closely cropped, grayish hair, bags under his eyes, and still-flexible skin are the features of a man aged around fifty, attractive, dressed casually for a Sunday outing, satisfied, perhaps, with what he has achieved, at least that’s what can be deduced from his smile, his squinting eyes turned toward the camera, which he possibly can’t see, blinded by the evening’s golden light, and the relaxed gesture with which his arms embrace the two women, leaning forward so he is at their height. On the right, the woman with dark blond hair is a less clement replica of the woman in the portrait. Neither the zoom nor the shutter have been kind to her, her face is long and thin, skin hanging off her cheeks, and the light, which on the other faces acquires an optimistic quality, on hers appears frozen, as if the photographer had managed to reveal a tiredness that had been accumulating in her features for quite some time. On the left, the girl wears an expression of incredulity. A surly gesture which, far from belying her age, emphasizes it with exultant obviousness—sixteen, perhaps seventeen, a still slightly masculine slenderness, and like her father, she also flashes the half-smile of a well-brought-up teenager who smiles because that’s what Uncle Óscar has asked her to do, camera at the ready, urging her to join her parents because “it’ll make a good photo, just look at the light, that’s it, like that you’re all perfect,” which forces her to drag her chair over to her mother’s and straighten herself up against the metal back. While her father follows the advice of her uncle and stands behind them, the girl puffs at her bangs, moistens her lips with her tongue, a little dazzled by the sun, worried by two thoughts that rapidly cross her mind: that her sweater is going to reveal the now definitive size of her breasts, and that she should tilt her head a little in order to disguise the blackhead that appeared under her lip the night before. “Come on, Laura, smile,” somebody says, and she smiles, and the three of them say
cheese
in unison, at the exact moment she feels her father’s hand pressing down on her shoulder and hears the click of her irritating Uncle Óscar’s camera. The observer, however, steps back, moves away from the photograph, and the three characters in the portrait return to their initial hieratic state, frozen in the evening light, their mouths open and jovial, there being heard now the groan of a mattress spring followed by a dry cough, a long yawn, and another cough, sounds that indicate someone upstairs has just awoken.

    The man opens his eyes. Bewildered, it takes him awhile to focus on the tiny crack that looks like a crater, over there, in the distance—a wrinkled spot lost on the pearl-colored wall stretching out in front of him, imitating a lunar landscape. The surface appears immense, as if when he opened his eyes, everything had taken on a novel quality it previously lacked, and so the space stretching between the tip of his nose and the pearl-colored wall is now a vacuum vibrating up and down, full of light, extending toward him and folding him in. The man feels he might explode and that
that
is getting mixed up with him, with his swollen eyelids, his hair stuck to his brow, the old sweat impregnating the sheets. For a moment, everything seems to emerge from the tiny crack in the wall, a muffled bellow that could demolish the partitions in the house and his consciousness. He feels he could cross through the air or disappear effortlessly until he attained the quietude of that tiny crater. Without fear. The man shudders, coughs again, and the impression of plenitude vanishes as soon as he realizes it’s still day outside and that under the pillow, he still feels pain in his arm from the injections. He senses he is still accompanied by