Synopsis: The Obstacle is a short story by Juan Carlos Onetti, published in 1935 in the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación. The story follows a young man who meets with his companions to plan an escape under the cover of night. Walking in the shadows, he relives his past in the institution where he grew up, marked by discipline and harshness. Uncertainty and resentment accompany him on his journey while a shadow of fatalism hangs over him and his desires.
The Obstacle
Juan Carlos Onetti
(Cuento completo)
He came to a slow stop, fearful that the abrupt cessation of his steps would violently unbalance the set of noises mixed in the silence. Silence and shadows in a strip that ran from the muffled roar of the illuminated plant to the four windows of the club, poorly closed for laughter and the clash of glasses. Also, sometimes, the tacazos on the pool table. Silence and shadows riddled by the trembling of the crickets on the ground and that of the stars in the high black sky.
It must have been ten o’clock by now, there was no danger. He turned right and entered the bush, walking carefully over the rustling of the leaves, holding the sack against his back, his arms crossed over his chest. Dark and cold; but he knew the way by heart, and his half-open mouth was warming his chest, sliding long warm strokes under the striped gray shirt.
Next to the gate, painted whitewash, he stopped again. There began the white checkered brick path that led to the Directorate under a dangerous lantern light. If they see me, I say I couldn’t sleep. They won’t tell me anything. That I went out for air. He flew a leg over the fabric, but a thought stilled him, riding the wire. How changed everything! Ten years ago… He thought no more; but quick memories came, clear and familiar by dint of always being the same… The summer morning they brought him to school… The principal’s office, the fat man looking at him fondly from behind his glasses and slaps it.
—You have a good face, black. And laughing because he was so small and weak. You’re not going to escape, are you?
He turned the other leg and sat down. And I did not escape, just. But when he was retired and the German came. He smiled…
When the German was brought in… He balanced on the wire, watching the flight in the evening, the shelter of the reed beds, the men bent over him, taking turns beating him.
Children of…
She trembled at the noise of the voice and continued walking rapidly through the trees. You sons of bitches. And they were all the same. He stumbled on a log and looked around with his eyes widening. The ditch, the eucalyptus log, the spear from the old gate… No, later. It continued. The point was to remember when they put the brick sidewalk and the lanterns and the wire. He was sure they had done everything together with the new Directorate building: but now he seemed to see the gym teacher watching him work on the sidewalk. And since the professor had come long after the new building had been inaugurated… He sniffed the tobacco and stood, hugging his back to a tree… Yes, there they were. I could see the faces flushing softly next to the cigarettes. He whistled slowly, two short and one long. They answered him and he crossed in a straight line to join the others waiting on the ground.
—Hi, Black.
—Great.
“Have you just arrived?
Barreiro was sitting up, his hands clasped on his knees. El Flaco smoked stretched out on the grass, facing the sky, planted his cigarette between his lips. He looked at them distractedly, then toward the windows of the club. Who knows when they will tire of playing. On the floor, he continued to think with pleasure of the clubroom where voices rose through the floating bluish smoke, in the soft leather chairs and the huge portrait above the fireplace. And the brick sidewalk and the row of lights hanging over the street were missing when they made the principal’s house. Insurance; but, nevertheless, he kept seeing the gym teacher, with his white cloth hat and his hands in his pockets, saying something to the men who built the path. He shrugged his shoulders and pulled the cap over his eyes.
—Give me a cigarette.
Laboriously, Skinny put a hand in his pants pocket, handed him the package and stayed again as before, the butt on one side of his mouth, his eyes narrowed looking up. Barreiro caught fire:
—And? Just tonight?
He ignited and swallowed hard, warming himself to the harsh smoke.
—Yes; As soon as the club lights go out, we go out.
—And wouldn’t it be better to cross the farm straight onto the track?
—No, we’re going by the stream.
The other crossed his hands again on his legs… Carefully, Skinny took the cigarette and threw it away. He bent his head to watch the embers die. Then he spat, folded his hands under his neck, and laughed softly.
—Look, Negro… If the director were to think of you tonight to make you foreman of the plant. And you starving out there…
He laughed again as he crossed his legs.
—There’s no care… They’re going to make Fernández’s adulterous foreman. I heard it from the engineer this afternoon.
Barreiro looked at him with a sympathetic smile:
“So… are you coming with us?
—And of course… they fooled me enough.
El Flaco laughed again and, without thinking why, El Negro wanted to step on his face; but he said nothing and continued smoking, observing the yellow rings on the front of the club through the fog of smoke. It would be nice to be inside, sit in an armchair with your feet on the table and order something strong to drink. Make carambola and carambola, without ever failing, until you get tired. Playing cards, him and the director against the doctor and the engineer. A trick game in which his hands would be filled with flowers and thirty-eight. But nicer than all that would be to start beating up with the employees, the lights and the bottles. You sons of bitches…
Entering his sudden hatred, Skinny’s laugh had something of a personal insult to it. He waited, gritting his teeth.
“Do you know that Forchela is wrong?” He turned his head quickly, looking at the other’s pale and evil face.
—What a blast!
El Flaco laughed again, now for a long time, his chest shaking in shakes. He muttered:
“What way do you have to treat your…” The Negro jumped to his feet, fixed his gaze on the face he was about to crush under the booty.
“What to me, did you say?
He didn’t care if they said it; he didn’t mind saying it himself. But he knew that Skinny was mocking behind his back and he was moved by bitter spite.
“Come on, come on… They’re not going to fight now,” Barreiro intervened, fearful that the dispute would cause the escape to fail. I was late at the hospital. Forchela is in a delirium.
He bit his cigarette angrily and stared at the windows. They would not leave until twelve. If the nurse let you in…
Barreiro stretched his arms, yawning. Then he lay down.
“Why don’t you take a tour of the hospital?
The other underlined hoarsely:
—Sure. You have to say goodbye to your friends.
El Negro walked a few steps, hesitating, trying to guess the thoughts of the others. He said forcefully:
“Me? And what does it matter to me… ” He put on his jacket, adding between his teeth,” Yes, I’m going for a walk. Total, until twelve…
He still waited for something; a movement, a phrase of protest and distrust that would help him to assert himself. Understand why he was now weak and restless. But they did not help him and he had to go again between the trees, looking with a tight frown at the still leaves that, from time to time, gently polished a lantern strained between the branches.
Ten years ago. Everything was changed and the gym teacher spent the bright morning placidly chatting with the bricklayers. Behind the glass, the director’s eyes shine sympathetically as he taps him on the shoulder. “You are not going to escape…”
He shook his head to plunge her into other thoughts. In two hours they will be running across the damp earth, slipping between the lined reed tubes. Buenos Aires. He thought of the city and was taken aback, scratching the rough surface of the gate.
Because behind the name was Flores’ base, the newspapers sold in the plaza, the corner of the Banco Español, the first cigarette and the first theft in the warehouse. There was childhood, neither sad nor happy, but with an unmistakable physiognomy of a different, strange life that could not be fully understood now. But there was also the Buenos Aires that had been made by the stories of the boys and the employees, the photographs of the heavy Sunday newspapers. The soccer fields, the music from the target shooting rooms in Leandro Alem.
Thoughtful, he pedaled on the wire and a vibration ran fast in the shadows. He couldn’t put the images together, understand that the city contained both. Sometimes, Buenos Aires was the people surrounding the red awning that they put up on Saturday afternoons in San José de Flores; others, a street lined with full-color billboards and moving lights, where people walked laughing and chatting aloud. And there was always, by the friendly door of the shooting house, a drunken blond sailor, with a prisoner rose between his teeth.
A sound of footsteps shook him and Barreiro, already next to him, didn’t give him time to panic.
—Look, Black.
He spoke quickly, cigarette in his mouth, fists clenched at his waist, darkly translating some resolution and defiance.
—I warn you that, if you stay, we will go anyway.
—Of course we’re going. The three. What’s that about?
Barreiro shook his head and stopped looking at him:
—No, not for nothing. I was just telling you. Let’s go anyway.
El Negro shrugged his shoulders. He choked on a lot of words and a fierce, incomprehensible hatred. As Barreiro leaned over the gate to look at the club, he breathed longingly, narrowing his eyes.
—When will those…
Barreiro adjusted his belt and walked away noiselessly, slowly entering the darkness.
The Negro looked to the end at the white stripe on his neck that was slipping under the trees. He put his legs over the wire and kept walking into the night.
He stopped, undecided, inhaling the vague smell of disinfectant. Like a museum skeleton, the pergola in Pavilion A. He thought he would have to cross the great hall and that the boys not yet asleep would see him pass. Shame that they knew that he had come at that time to ask for Forchela. The mocking looks and rude jokes were going to link her legs. He leaned against the woods where the rose bushes were tangled. One flower, the last one, hid the yellowish petals against the white ribbon. Since they were going to laugh, let him be the first. He would walk across the room with a cynical smile, the rose high in his hand.
He tore it off and climbed the three steps. In the hall, the nurse sat on a bench reading, while sucking mate with a snore.
“Hi, Black.” What are you doing at this time?
—Nothing… They sent me to see if the tools were stored and it occurred to me…
The nurse took off his glasses and looked at him for a while, stopping at the hand that was clutching the cap and the flower. But despite the open invitation on the boy’s face, he didn’t laugh. Maybe he didn’t know. He put the journal down and got up wearily.
– Did they tell you about Forchela? If you want to see it… Difficulty spending the night.
She followed him between the rows of beds, seeing nothing, now hanging her face in an idiotic expression and mechanically hiding the rose in her pants pocket. From between the gray blankets on the beds words leaped toward him; but they all fell without touching him, as if defeated in the air for lack of weight.
Alone in the living room, at the foot of the bed, he tried to fight the torpor that enveloped him. He leaned against the bars and smiled at the head of the pillow. The other arranged the covers, took the pulse of the patient and stood up saying:
—If you don’t have what to do, stay a while. I am preparing a remedy at the pharmacy.
El Negro shook his head in agreement; but he didn’t understand anything, looking terrified at the skinny and reddened face that Forchela was moving in a rhythmic way, helping himself to breathe. There was something of the boy left in his light hair, in his teeth where the light streaked, perhaps on his round forehead. But the rest was the face of an old man, a disgusting man aged by vice.
He was staring, hypnotized by a strange fear, afraid to speak and move, waiting at the thought that the other would wake up, to smile at him with his mouth flushed and withered, to look at him with his glass eyes as well.
He made an effort and managed to get off the bed, taking a few silent steps across the tiled floor. He searched uselessly for something to linger on on the clean tiled wall. By the ajar window, the night air helped her cling to the idea of escape. Before morning they would be crossing in front of the cavalries, two blocks from the road. At dawn, at the corner of the warehouse… But immediately he turned around, afraid to offer his back, sure that, if he were to neglect himself, the dying man would smile at himself, lift his head, his eyelids, his skinny hands clenched. Cold and terrible things because death had already entered his body and any movement could spill it in the room.
He walked over to the bed, took down the cardboard. Name: Pedro Panón. Argentinian. Diagnosis. He did not understand the strange words in round type or the zigzagging black line that showed the fever. Then he sighed, raising his eyebrows, reassured in the cowardice of being able to pretend that he was absorbed in the indecisive broken line, carefully analyzing the patient’s condition. Nothing but a moment; because immediately he sensed a new and anguishing meaning in the name written on the cardboard. The name that designated the immobile body in bed and that, however, was no longer Pedro Panón or anyone else. He hung up the painting again, his chest filled with relentless unease, his eyes rolling like an animal in distress. He sighed and moved closer to the head.
Yes; it was necessary to have the courage to walk until the head was below her eyes and to look at her attentively, with cold curiosity. So it was that, in his mystery, his face was making an invisible call to him in the silent room. You had to go see.
He gained confidence by recognizing it more clearly; the forehead and also the eyes. He even smiled at her, hinted at a caress with his hand. But suddenly he felt that it was preferable not to see anything of the boy’s face, the one where the sheet cut off the chin. It was monstrous to see that the features that still resisted the disease, those that were still his friend’s, were united in this face with strange and disgusting features. And they could never be apart, forever fused with each other in the heat of fever. He refused to go; then the old man’s face on the pillow moved slightly sideways, paralyzing him. She could hear him breathing lighter through his trembling nose, while two lines of saliva stretched out at the corners of his mouth. Now he could no longer leave. He hunched his body down to sit on the iron chair, his hands clasped over his belly, and stared quietly at the lean profile, his shaved head thrust forward.
“How’s it going?” Are you still calm? I’m coming right away.
The nurse’s white tunic was removed from the door. He settled his body in the chair, once again with the angular face of the pillow, realizing suddenly that it was useless to continue fighting, that he was imprisoned in the dying man’s room, that he would not leave that night or ever. Barreiro and El Flaco would slide at night towards the river grasslands, they would reach the pastures before dawn and the sun would find them far away, walking quickly along the road. And at night they would be in the city of the drunken sailor, they would pass through the street of jumping lights. He couldn’t leave; he had to attend the mysterious rite of death to the end.
He straightened, always looking at the red nose of the sick man, the drool from his crooked mouth. He slowly bit down on the dirtiest insult and a thought swept across his face like a shadow of a smile. The image of the others, free, running hunched over the dark field burned tenaciously in his chest.
—I don’t like them…
In the hall he passed the nurse. He muttered something and jumped down the steps. He started jogging down the dirt road, staring at the club windows still yellow with light.
He was still looking at the head when the morning light was spreading cloths on the blue glass. She was paler and the air came in and out slowly, without disturbing her, with a faint hiss. It had grown heavier, too, and was now sinking up to the ears in the hollow of the fabric, as if the nape of the neck had used the night in tenacious excavation work. And the retreating illness was showing him again the boy’s familiar face, which the intense morning light finished cleaning the fever stains.
—Good morning. How is the patient doing?
The director’s gray suit and gold glasses. It was strange that he hadn’t heard the car. In the back, a bunch of employee faces. Someone turned off the useless light. The nurse, a moment at the door. Among the clouds of sleep, almost unbearable, he saw them come around the bed and bend over, while they spoke in low voices. Through the window a line of air entered that made the cardboard of the broken black line shake and a noise of rapid footsteps. The doctor came in, buttoning his tunic, thick drops of water glistening on his hair. He took a moment between his fingers the skinny wrist that fell on the bedspread. Then he lifted an eyelid from his head, which continued to whiten. He could not remember whether the doctor had said “it’s sad” or “it’s ready” to the director, who was stroking his mouth with his fingers, his head bent over his chest. He lifted her up and went to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
—I want to thank you; you have behaved like a man. An hour ago we found them, among the reeds of the river.
He paused. El Negro took the opportunity to enjoy the idea of the beating that the others would have taken and those that awaited them, for a few nights, in the prison cell.
—In addition, your attitude has been very noble in not wanting to go to bed to take care of your poor companion. I have imposed an iron discipline here because it was necessary. But I also know how to reward those who deserve it. I just spoke to the engineer. The position of foreman at the plant is yours. You will start work on Monday. And now you need to go to sleep, you need it.
El Negro said “thank you” and smiled confusedly. The employees did not know whether to use their hardened faces of importance to the body of the bed, the escape they had prevented or the generosity of the director. He left thinking that he spoke like the priest and, already at the door, greeted the day with an angry:
—What son of a bitch!
What a son of a bitch! he murmured without knowing by whom, as he got up clutching his aching kidneys. The others went ahead, mixing at times with the fast-falling night. On the blackened sky the bodies, prolonged in the work tools, made strange inky drawings. The guard watched the return line, riding through it, lifting the thick whip that hung from his wrist.
El Negro crouched between the wheels again, looking for the reason for the broken tractor. Oiled hands felt the cold of iron. It seems to me… It is night and we have no lantern. He saw himself again, on the way to the cemetery, half a body hardened by the weight of the coffin. Not even that it was filled with lead. All day without sleep. At the memory, the twinge returned to his kidneys. He shifted his hips and laboriously loosen a nut with the pliers. And then the speeches, standing in the cold, dead tired, stupid with sleep. The arm reached out, returning with the cutter. He made a lever, pushing with all his might. Useless. Then he closed his eyes, desolate, motionless on all fours next to the steel blade of the machine. And the worst was not the tiredness or the sleep, but that dull anguish that had been stirring slowly in his chest since yesterday.
That which drowned him without a moment of respite and that it was impossible for him to know.
The warm breath of the horse caressed the back of his neck and his strong voice fell like a stream.
—What’s wrong with you? Still couldn’t fix that?
He answered without moving:
—I don’t know. No light…
He heard the other dismount. Only then did he open his eyes and sit up.
—I think it’s not the nut. The blade will have to be removed.
The other crouched, bending his head to get a better view. The Negro cast his sleepy eyes toward the background of the landscape, where the comrades were no longer more than a long black cloud. Then he looked down. It was then that the stubborn anguish in his chest subsided and an enormous peace violently entered his soul. Now everything was clear and simple; and although he could not have explained the cause of his sudden happiness to himself, he knew at last what had to be done. As if someone, invisible in the still frozen evening, was pouring the truth into his ears.
The man grumbled between the black spokes of the wheels. He brought the hand in which the silver-crowned whippet swung like a sample.
“Do you have a match?
It was a simple joy that affirmed him in his legs, squashing the muscles of his arm.
—Yes. Here.
The chillbreaker flashed in a swift circular trip and struck the man’s bent head, next to the dark curve of the temple. There was no need for more because the body stilled under the machine, curled up so that the heat would go slowly, greedily. He opened his hand and the tool disappeared to the ground. He rubbed slowly against the fabric of his pants the back of his hand that something had just splashed. He raised his head to the wide sky and then the night rushed uncontrollably across the landscape, vibrating mysteriously in the stars, in distant dogs and in the noise of pegs in puddles.
Night was coming. He quickly got away from the tractor and went to meet him. He ran in a straight line, agile and cheerful, sure that the anguish was there, cooling on the rotund black earth. The great incomprehensible and secret night came swiftly in search of him and slid under his tireless body. He dove through the wires of the fence and kept running. He jumped over the ditch with a shattered mirror in the background and continued his run. Now the feet were thumping madly in the damp grass, dizzyingly drawing the ombú by the well. He ran a few yards in an arc and turned right, dragging the long shadow of the moon that had just been born. Weariness shook his chest fiercely, parting his lips over clenched teeth; but he kept running, running, piling up minutes and meters, as if that wild happiness that had suddenly appeared to him was taking him swiftly by the hand, splitting the ice night. He ran into the cornfield; He stumbled quickly, losing face down into the shadow.
He turned with his arms crossed. A burning pain in his cheek made him awake and he opened his eyes to a small round moon, already high in the sky. He rose carefully and listened. Any. On her knees, she stuck her head out and looked around. Nobody. He stood up and continued walking, a little lame, the small circular shadow trembling behind him. Between the wires that bordered the road he was fixed by a crow’s crow, climbing brokenly in the night. Then, jovially, he pulled himself up on the wire and passed the ditch. Like a pale tongue under the moon, the road went into the night. He took his hand out of his pocket with the dry, rough rose; He tossed it aside, away, then rubbing his fingers together to separate the remains of the flower. Then he quickened his pace and went along the road, in search of the next night, which held a ten-year wait for him in the jeweled street of lights, with the trail of detonations from the target shooting room, the great laughter of his women, the wobbly blond sailor.
THE END
1935
