The Light Is Like Water Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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.

2. 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.

3. - 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

4. 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 bran dy 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.