Yacyretá

I don’t know what to tell you, he tells her as they stand on the shore of the lake that did not used to be here. The water is ragged, like scraps of torn newsprint pasted hastily to a sheet of dark blue paper, little peaks of semi-translucent foam the color of dried glue cresting the chop churned up by the wind.

Maybe there, the father points at forty-five degrees. He adjusts slightly to the right. Or there. That’s where our street was. Our house.

But only the upper city still stands. The dam a hundred kilometers to the east has flooded the lower city. Lights start to twinkle on behind them—houses, offices, streets—winking and laughing as the sun fades. How bright they are, how insistent and full of wires and filaments. The electricity gushes in from the engineering marvel, half the city swallowed in payment, a fair price for the hum of refrigerators and the whir of fans.

There, he says again, not pointing, only staring, sad but settled, as though he can see the roof, the terracotta tiles half shaded by the cassia tree and its weeping clusters of yellow flowers, the other houses too maybe, the neighbors. There must have been neighbors, though she has no idea. The only photo she has seen is of her father, a toddler still, seated on a terracotta step in nothing but a diaper, smiling, toy truck in hand.

As she thinks about the photo, she realizes she does not know how long they even lived here. How could her father possibly remember where the house was if he had been so young? She opens her mouth to ask, but he is staring, nodding at a fixed point in the center of the lake. He is certain. His certainty is more comforting than her doubts. There—they will look there.

 

The wooden boat is rickety. How do boats float? She is unfamiliar with the physics of it, but the wind dies down, and they sink low enough into the water that she feels secure, wedged in and stable instead of wobbling on the surface. They have two diving masks and two oxygen tanks, even though she will not be getting into the water—she cannot swim. They have an infinite coil of rope, thin, fluorescent green, a guideline so when her father disappears below the surface he is not gone forever, not lost to the current or the confusion of up and down once the bottom of their little dinghy is invisible to him. They have been organized, methodical, in their quixotic task. Leave nothing to chance. Life itself is already so chancey, already her luck is so poor.

What about sharks, she asks him, and he smiles half-pityingly.

It’s a lake from a dammed river. Where would the sharks come from?

She asks about other large creatures—squid, whales, tuna—and he wants to laugh at her, poke gentle fun, but he also wants to weep, his tragic daughter. What are you really afraid of, he wants to ask, but he knows the answer, so he says nothing, pats her shoulder and tightens the strap of her life jacket. He lowers the mask over his face and leans back, eyes taking in the gray expanse of the sky until—splash—his body smacks into the water, which folds, jealous, around him.

 

His daughter is dying. Not in the sense that she is mortal, as everyone is thus, in their way, dying, but actively. The cells of her body are deteriorating with more rapidity, more vigor, than they remake themselves—her dying is not a passive drifting away but a determined march. They speak little of this. There is no need. They are only here because she is dying, only searching, foolishly perhaps, for the house of his childhood for her, this girl, his dying girl. He says there is something in the house that can help her. He is sure of it. When he suggested the trip, she had said, I suppose it would be nice to see where you were born. I’d like to know more about your origins, not acknowledging his quest, or perhaps she had not heard him say that part. No matter. He knows what he is looking for.

 

 

To read this story in its entirety, please purchase a copy of the print edition of Issue #23