Adrift

The man stepped on something soft, and instantly felt the bite in his foot. He jumped forward, and as he turned with an oath, saw a yararacusú coiled upon itself and awaiting another strike.

The man cast a swift glance at his foot, where two drops of blood were thickening with difficulty, and drew his machete from his belt. The viper saw the threat, and drove its head deeper into the very center of its coil; but the machete fell flat, dislocating its vertebrae.

The man bent down to the bite, wiped away the drops of blood, and for an instant gazed at it. A sharp pain arose from the two violet dots, and began to invade the whole foot. Hastily he bound his ankle with his handkerchief and continued along the trail toward his hut.

The pain in the foot was increasing, with a sensation of taut swelling, and suddenly the man felt two or three blazing stabs that, like lightning flashes, had radiated from the wound to the middle of his calf. He moved his leg with difficulty; a metallic dryness in his throat, followed by a burning thirst, wrung a fresh oath from him.

At last he reached the hut, and threw himself face down over the wheel of a sugar-cane press. The two violet dots were now disappearing into the monstrous swelling of the entire foot. The skin looked thinned out and ready to give way, so tense was it. He wanted to call his wife, and his voice broke in a hoarse scrape from his parched throat. Thirst was devouring him.

“Dorotea!” he managed to gasp out in a death rattle. “Give me cane liquor!”

His wife ran with a full glass, which the man drained in three gulps. But he had not tasted a thing.

“I asked you for liquor, not water!” he roared again. “Give me liquor!”

“But it is liquor, Paulino!” protested his wife, frightened.

“No, you gave me water! I want liquor, I tell you!”

The woman ran again, returning with the demijohn. The man swallowed two glasses one after the other, but felt nothing in his throat.

“Well, this is getting ugly,” he muttered then, looking at his livid foot, already possessing a gangrenous sheen. Above the deep binding of the handkerchief, the flesh overflowed like a monstrous blood sausage.

The blinding pains followed one another in continuous flashes, and now reached his groin. The atrocious dryness of his throat, which his breath seemed to make even hotter, increased in tandem. When he tried to sit up, a blinding bout of vomiting kept him for half a minute with his forehead resting on the wooden wheel.

But the man did not want to die, and going down to the bank he got into his canoe. He seated himself in the stern and began to paddle toward the middle of the Paraná. There the current of the river, which near Iguazú runs at six miles an hour, would carry him before five hours to Tacurú-Pucú.

The man, with grim energy, was indeed able to reach the middle of the river; but there his numb hands let the paddle drop into the canoe, and after a new bout of vomiting—of blood this time—he cast a glance at the sun which was already crossing behind the forest.

His entire leg, up to the middle of his thigh, was now a deformed and rock-hard block that was bursting his trousers. The man cut the binding and opened his pants with his knife: his lower belly overflowed, swollen, with large livid patches and terribly painful. The man thought that he would never be able to reach Tacurú-Pucú all by himself, and decided to ask his compadre Alves for help, even though they had been estranged for a long time.

The current of the river was now rushing toward the Brazilian coast, and the man was easily able to dock. He dragged himself up the uphill trail, but after twenty meters, exhausted, he lay stretched out on his chest.

“Alves!” he shouted with all the strength he could; and he listened in vain.

“Compadre Alves! Do not deny me this favor!” he cried again, raising his head from the ground. “In the silence of the jungle not a single sound was heard. The man still had the courage to reach his canoe, and the current, catching it once more, carried it swiftly adrift.”

The Paraná runs there at the bottom of an immense basin, whose walls, a hundred meters high, gloomily hem in the river. From the banks bordered with black blocks of basalt, the forest ascends, black as well. Ahead, to the sides, behind, the eternal gloomy wall, at the bottom of which the swirling river rushes in incessant gushes of muddy water. The landscape is aggressive, and a deathly silence reigns over it. At dusk, however, its somber and calm beauty takes on a unique majesty.

The sun had already set when the man, half-stretched out in the bottom of the canoe, had a violent shudder. And suddenly, with astonishment, he heavily straightened his head: he felt better. His leg scarcely hurt him, his thirst was diminishing, and his chest, now free, opened in a slow inhalation.

The poison was beginning to leave, there was no doubt. He felt almost well, and although he did not have the strength to move his hand, he counted on the fall of the dew to recover completely. He calculated that in less than three hours he would be in Tacurú-Pucú.

Well-being was advancing, and with it a drowsiness full of memories. He no longer felt anything either in his leg or in his belly. Would his compadre Gaona still be living in Tacurú-Pucú? Perhaps he would also see his former boss mister Dougald, and the timber-yard receiver.

Would he arrive soon? The sky, to the west, was now opening in a screen of gold, and the river had colored as well. From the Paraguayan coast, already darkening, the forest let its crepuscular freshness drop over the river, in penetrating effluvia of orange blossom and wild honey. A pair of macaws crossed very high and in silence toward Paraguay.

Down there, upon the river of gold, the canoe was drifting swiftly, spinning from time to time upon itself before the gush of a whirlpool. The man who traveled in it felt better and better, and meanwhile thought of the exact time he had spent without seeing his former boss Dougald. Three years? Perhaps not, not that much. Two years and nine months? Perhaps. Eight months and a half? That yes, surely.

Suddenly he felt that he was ice-cold up to his chest. What could it be? And his breathing too...

Mister Dougald’s timber receiver, Lorenzo Cubilla, he had met him in Puerto Deseado, on a Good Friday... Friday? Yes, or Thursday...

The man slowly stretched out the fingers of his hand.

“A Thursday...”

And he ceased to breathe.