My brother had gotten it in him that he wanted a duck after seeing several of them jumping inside a foul-smelling box at the fair. The sun didn’t come out that summer, it rained for thirty-five days straight. My parents had been separated for two years but they kept sending us to Valdivia at the end of the school year. Sometimes we came back by train, but the normal thing was to drive back with my dad listening to Las Jaivas, his favorite band. Or The High and Bass, as he’d repeat so that we wouldn’t miss the joke. Ayer caché, my old man would sing, and he’d give us a side glance and a fierce smile we never knew how to respond to. We liked Los Jaivas, my brother and I, especially that instrumental song in which violins would suddenly pop up, and which reminded us of the Invid music of Robotech’s third generation.



My grandmother refused at the beginning, she said that if we bought some critter she’d end up caring for it. My brother threatened never to speak to her again. And I won’t talk to you either, ugly old woman, I added. So the old lady, who was actually quite nice, agreed and we bought the duck. A small yellow duck that came in a shoebox with holes punched in and that ran everywhere, following us, and moving its almost nonexistent wings without even chirping. We set it free in the house, thrilled to bump into it every once in a while, or hearing the maid shouting because she’d almost stepped on it, until my grandfather forced us to take it outside because it had left the rug full of ashen, whitish stains. At night we’d put it in his box, which smelled worse every day, and bring it inside the kitchen so that it wouldn’t freeze to death.

One day we forgot to bring the duck inside and it stayed out in the cold all night. In the morning it was stiff. We put it inside the oven to see if it’d react but nothing happened. My brother said he was going to bring it back to life and began massaging its breast with the index and middle finger of his right hand. I could see how the beak of the duck began filling up with snot and how his breast then sunk in. We buried its ashes under the quince tree, after incinerating the duck with one of my grandfather’s magnifying glasses.



That same weekend, with the summer almost over, my dad unexpectedly came to visit us. On Saturday we crossed the bridge to Teja Island, and went to a fair at the German School. Las Jaivas were playing and my dad was buying Pepsis for the blonde girls on the other side of the river, who grew more and more flushed as night fell. They played “Mira niñita” three times. My brother fell asleep under one of the tables, we covered him with the plastic tablecloth and let him sleep the rest of the concert.