Stars and Stripes

At first, no one believed that Manuel’s detention would last too long. It had to be a mistake. Or the admiral would make certain it was a mistake. But it seems Manuel was carrying too much cocaine for the matter to be ignored, or even for him to be given a light sentence. And apparently his father didn’t tolerate that kind of behaviour in his family. He used all his connections to get him a decent cell in a maximum-security prison, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t do more.

Another boy in the neighbourhood told me all this, and when I heard about it, I felt guilty for having ignored Carlitos’s phone calls. I went to see him right away. His mother received me with a sombre expression that I didn’t want to interpret as a reproach for my absence. His father didn’t even know who I was.

I found Carlitos with his GI Joes, which were beginning to seem anachronistic in a boy his age, and his American footballs, which he never used because nobody knew how to play the game. I didn’t know what to say and sat down on his bed. He didn’t say anything either. His room smelled strange, but it always smelled strange.

After a time spent in silence, the clock struck five, the time when Mily walked her dog, and it occurred to me that I could do something to make up for my bad behaviour. I took him to the park and tried to organize some lively talk between the three of us. When I thought everything was off to a good start, I pretended I had to go to the dentist and left them alone. I never found out more, and Carlitos never talked about it.

Some six or seven years later, I ran into Mily at a discotheque. We danced, laughed and recalled the old days. In the end we spent the night together. It was fun, and a little nostalgic. Before I fell asleep, I remembered the episode in the park and asked: ‘Listen, do you remember the afternoon when I left you with Carlitos? Did you do anything? Even just a kiss?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I tried, that afternoon and many other afternoons, but he only wanted to show me his baseball cards.’

I never knew Carlitos to have a girlfriend. Neither did anyone else, as far as I know. As my interest in women increased and his remained at zero, we began to grow apart.

Of course, from time to time we’d run into each other on the street and exchange a few words, but increasingly they sounded empty, merely the inevitable formulas of courtesy. He would recount the entire plot of the latest movie he had seen, or the most recent matches in some sport I didn’t understand, and actually it was all the same to him whether I listened or not. He recited the complete event, second by second, telling me each point in detail, and if I interrupted him, he would let me speak for a few seconds and then return to his monologue.

Given his general autistic state, people in the neighbourhood speculated about the possibility that Carlitos was gay, which was what they said about any unusual person. But the rumour died almost as quickly as it had started. In reality, Carlitos didn’t seem capable of any kind of sexual behaviour.

When we had all stopped growing, he continued to lengthen and soon became too big to climb comfortably into the spacious 4x4 vans into which his bodyguards would cram him. The urgent need for security – by now his father was an admiral of the fleet – prevented him from joining us for a swim at the beach or simply wandering around with us, so that as he grew his entire body turned into a flabby, shapeless mass, like a mutant jellyfish. But all that physical growth was not accompanied by any hormonal development. Carlitos had no facial hair, his voice was unpleasantly high-pitched and shrill, and in summer his hairless legs looked like those of a gigantic baby in imported sneakers.