Ana and the Water

121 ur neighborhood’s community pool had been built back in 1929, when President Ibañez decided that “the physical fitness of the youth” had to be improved. A replica of the grand School Pool, in Independencia, ours was scaled to half its size and had been neglected over the years by each successive mayor of the city of Santiago. By the time I was a teenager, the building was falling to pieces, but it still maintained—without a doubt—its nostalgic yet majestic air. On its art deco façade, the word piscina was carved in flowery letters that, its architect had believed, would lend it the air of a French spa. It was there I took refuge after the coup. The house where I lived with my mother and father had become a living hell. Every day after school I went to swim. For a while a rumor went around fiction Ana and the Water Carla Guelfenbein, translated by Nicole Bell O that the neighborhood rats had built nests in the facility, and now almost nobody used the pool. Just toothless elderly people who stayed by the edge, eyes half-closed, half-floating, half-living. Every once in a while, someone else appeared who swam laps compulsively , maybe trying to flee from something, like I was. Papa until then had left every morning with his hair slicked back, carrying his briefcase, not to return until night. He worked at the Central Bank. After work he usually stopped by his Socialist Party chapter meeting or met up with some colleague in the neighborhood bar. A few days after the coup, he lost his job. “Back again, idiot? Socialist scum. Best get home if you don’t want ’em to jab your ass with the rifle.” That’s what the new guard at the Central Bank told him, blocking the doors. Papa had passed through those doors each morning on his way to the basement office where he worked archiving “very valuable documents.” He was incapable of hiding his pride when he said it, which was embarrassing. The chances that a man like Papa actually had such important responsibilities were next to nothing. But in any case, those were his glory days, when with his briefcase in hand, his back straight, wearing his only dress pants—shiny from Mama’s incessant ironing—he passed through the elegant doors of the Central Bank. He was forty-eight. And his passions were—besides the Colo-Colo soccer team—that miserable job and the dream of socialism, which would finally arrive with the government of Doctor Salvador Allende. The president of the people. But everything had gone to hell. Now Papa was staying at home, like a man on a planet shrunk to the size of a pinhead, just trying to survive. I remember the first time I saw him drunk when I arrived home from school. He was staggering from the kitchen into the living room, until he collapsed onto the floor. A shiver went up my spine. A terrifying shiver, as if I had suddenly been transported to a barren arctic landscape, nowhere to go. I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand. Mama appeared in the hallway and, wiping her hands on her apron, took me by the arm and led me to her room. 122 | CARLA GUELFENBEIN 123 Jonathan Williams, Pool, mid-1970s. 124 | CARLA GUELFENBEIN “Stay here, you hear? Don’t move.” I heard her try to lift Papa off the living room floor. He groaned, she shouted. He had twisted his ankle when he fell and had no intention of getting up. A short time later, Mama returned carrying a tray with a plate of mashed potatoes and a fried egg, still runny. It was my favorite dish; I loved breaking open the yolk on top of the fluffy mashed potatoes and then stirring it all together into a wet mixture that I savored with every bite. From that day on, the shouting never ceased. When I returned from school in the afternoons, I could hear them from the street: “You’re going to get yourself killed! And then what the hell are Ana and...