1. The light is like water By Gabriel García Márquez
(...) As tame sharks dived under the furniture and beds and rescued from the bottom of the light things that for years had been lost in the darkness.
At Christmas the boys have to ask a rowboat. - In line - said his father - we will buy it when we get back to Cartagena. Toto, of nine years, and Joel, seven, were more determined than their parents thought. - No - said in chorus. - We need it now and here. - To start - said the mother - here there is no other navigable waters beyond the coming out of the shower. She and her husband were right. The house of Cartagena de Indias was a patio with a dock on the bay and a refuge for two large yachts. In Madrid, however, they were crowded on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana. But in the end neither he nor she could say no, because the two had promised a rowboat with sextant and compass if they won the laurels of the third grade, and had won. Therefore, the father bought everything without saying anything to his wife, who was most reluctant to pay gambling debts. It was a nice aluminum boat with a golden thread in the waterline, - The boat is in the garage - revealed the father at lunch .- The problem is that there's no way to bring him in the elevator or the stairs, the garage and there is no place. However, in the following Saturday afternoon, the boys invited their colleagues to load the boat up the stairs and managed to take him to the maid's room. - Congratulations - the father said. - And now? - Now, nothing - said the boys. - The only thing we wanted was to have the boat in the room, and ready. On the evening of Wednesday, as on all Wednesdays, the parents went to the movies. The boys, lords and masters of the house, closed the doors and windows and broke the bulb in a chandelier in the room. A stream of golden light and made fresh water began to leave the broken lamp, and left running until the level reached four feet. Then turned off the power, took the boat, and sailed with pleasure between the islands of the house. This fabulous adventure was the result of carelessness when I attended a seminar on the poetry of the household. Toto asked me how the light was lit only with the people pushing a button, and I did not dare to think about it twice. - Light is like water - I said. - We open the tap and out. And so continued sailing on the night of Wednesday, learning to move with the sextant and compass until the parents came home from the cinema and were sleeping like angels on land. Months later, eager to go further, asked for a diving equipment. With everything: masks, feet-on-duck, tanks and air gun pellets. - It's bad to have the maid's room a rowboat that serves no purpose. - Said the father - but even worse is also want to have diving equipment. - And if we win the gold gardenia first half? - Asked Joel. - No - said her mother, frightened. - Enough. The father reproached his intransigence. - Is that these boys do not win or a nail with his duty - she said - but on a whim they can earn up to the teacher's chair. In the end, the parents did not say yes or no. But Toto and Joel, who had been the last two years earlier, in July won the two gold gardenias and public recognition of the director. That same afternoon, without having made the request, found in the room the equipment in its original wrapping. So that's next Wednesday, while parents saw Last Tango in Paris, filled the apartment to a depth of two fathoms, as tame sharks dived under the furniture and bedding, and rescued from the bottom of things light who for years had been lost in the darkness. In the final award the brothers were acclaimed as an example to school and earned diplomas of excellence. This time they had to ask for anything, because the parents asked what they wanted. And they were so reasonable that only wanted a house party for classmates. The father, alone with his wife, was beaming. - It is a proof of maturity - he said. - God hear - said the mother. On the following Wednesday, while parents saw The Battle of Algiers, the people who passed through the Castellana saw a cascade of light falling on an old building hidden among the trees. He left the balcony, poured in torrents in the facade, and formed a bed for the great avenue gold in a stream that lit the city to the Guadarrama. Called urgently, firefighters forced the door on the fifth floor and found the house covered with light to the ceiling. The sofa and armchairs upholstered in leopard skin floating in the room at different heights between the cylinders in the bar and the piano with her shawl of Manila that is waved with movements of the wing half water as a ray of gold. The household, in the fullness of his poetry, flew with their own wings across the sky from the kitchen. The band's instruments of war, that the children used to dance, floating aimlessly among the colorful fish tank released from the mother, who were the only creatures alive and happy in the vast lake lit. In the bathroom floated the toothbrushes of all, condoms father, the pots of creams and denture reserve of the mother, and the TV main alcove floated away, still on the last episode of the movie midnight forbidden to minors. Down the hall, floating in midwater, Toto was sitting in the stern of the boat, grabbed the oars and with the mask on his face, looking for the lighthouse from the port to the time when there was air in the tanks of oxygen, and Joel, floating on the bow also looking for the Polaris with a sextant, and floated throughout the house his 37 classmates, eternizados the moment to pee in the potted geraniums in singing the school with a letter changed by verses of mockery against the manager, drinking on the sly a glass of brandy from the bottle of his father. For they had opened so many lights at the same time that the house had flooded, and the entire fourth year of elementary school of St. John Hospitaller had drowned on the fifth floor of number 47 Paseo de la Castellana. In Madrid of Spain, a remote town of burning summers and icy winds, no sea or river, and whose aboriginal land have never been masters of the science of sailing in the light. December 1978.