“Go on, Susi, the duck is looking for you,” said her mother one day. I was mortified at beingdiscovered.In the luminous afternoons of that dusty summer, I would meet Susi at the gate of her family’s little summer house, and we would go walking into town. Tiny, identical homes.Streets of parched earth. Steely blue-green agaves, some thrusting up a single shoot ladenwith capers. Jagged-leafed higuerillas. Ovens for calcining limestone. Ovens for baking bread. The dry park. The church with its miraculous Christ. The villagers, a barefoot child, a bundle of firewood, a cow, a donkey laden with sacks of quicklime.I think that was happiness: the blue sky, the wind that shook the trees, and Susi walking beside me. She would tell me about her parents, her friends, her life in the country’s interior in a city that I would only come to know much later.Always seated on a porch was the Professor, as everyone called him. Aged, paraplegic,wrinkled like parchment and dry as the land itself. Forever repeating his eternal discourse toanyone who came near: the climate here, excellent for rheumatism; the “healthful waters,”rich in iron and other minerals; the limestone quarries; the likely deposits of coal, et cetera.Such an expenditure of hot air seemed an attempt by the old man to convince himself that hehad not spent his life in vain here, at the edge of the world.The pool lay underneath a tremendous pipe, next to the river. In the fantastic cliffs andoutcroppings above, you could see all the ages of the earth. Layers of limestone, sandstone,sandy clay, blue clay and red dirt. High above, at the top of the mountain’s wall, appearedthin, solitary algarrobo trees stretched by the wind. Along the river, green proliferated. And,in the middle of the river, among the round stones, barely covered by the yellow waters, onecould see, here and there, enormous black chunks of lignite, corroded by time. According tothe Professor, the lignite proved irrefutably that there were coal deposits in the area, whichwould, in the “promissory future,” transform the destiny of the nation. “Healthful” and“promissory” were the Professor’s key words—among others even stranger.One day, Susi told him of my skills as an imitator.“Let’s see, boy. Begin your act,” he said without smiling. (He never smiled.) I strove to excelat my imitations. Susi approved each grunt, whistle, and meow with a nervous laugh, whilethe Professor, grave and attentive, listened in silence.When I concluded my repertoire, he commented:“I congratulate you, boy. You have a brilliant future as an animal imitator.”He fell silent, pursing his lips. He focused his eyes on an imaginary point and meditated.“But there is one bird whose song you’ll never be able to imitate.”“He can imitate anything that was on Noah’s ark,” Susi protested.The Professor spoke a name I’ve since forgotten. “It’s a bird that lives in caves and only goes
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